148 Apps on Facebook 148 Apps on Twitter

Tag: Soft freak fiesta »

Daily Double: Soft Freak Fiesta, Balcassa for Free; Sudoku $0.99

Posted by Bonnie Eisenman on December 15th, 2009

We continue our Daily Double article with another bonus freebie in addition to the Appvent Calender. While the Appvent Calender is offering Balcassa, a slider puzzle-Rubik's Cube combo, Gogogic has just released their multiplayer game Soft Freak Fiesta, and it's only free for today! Not to be left out, EA Games is throwing us a familiar puzzle game, Sudoku, for the rock-bottom price of a buck.

Sudoku
Oh, Sudoku, the puzzle that took my school system by storm. I think I've seen enough of these boxes to last me a lifetime, thank you very much, but if you're a fan of the games, EA's version is sure to delight. While it might be one of the older apps in the store, it retains all of the graphical glitz of all of EA's apps. Unfortunately for speed-demon serious players, the animations might get annoying as they slow you down. We looked at it in February, and found it to be a slickly presented clone of an age-old concept:

"Sudoku’s presentation is top-notch. The whole user interface is very slick and has a nice oriental vibe to it. Actual game play is very refined and the way annotations and hints are integrated is simple and easy to use. Initially three difficulty levels are available. You accrue Sudoku points by winning games and those are used to unlock two additional difficulty levels.

When you start a new game you can turn on error checking. This will instantly reveal whether you’ve correctly filled in a cell or not. In-game hints can reveal a particular cell’s value, and you can ask the game to annotate all cells if you wish. These all reduce the number of Sudoku points earned. In-game help explains all modes and aides."

It's not going to get any cheaper than this, folks. Grab it quick!

Soft Freak Fiesta
Yeah, it's not part of the normal Appvent Calender, but you can't pass on this one! We previewed it a few weeks ago and thought that it had a lot of promise, given a large-enough player pool. Obviously anticipating that a lot of players are necessary to make this game work, Gogogic has made Soft Freak Fiesta free for its first day! Here's a snippet from our preview article:

Soft Freak Fiesta is a sort of last man standing game take on marbles played out in turn on various game boards. While there are various game modes, they all have you aiming, bouncing, and rebounding your characters in the quest to destroy the players on the other team.

Complete with cartoony graphics, 3 types of Soft Freaks, 3 modes, and 5 levels, Soft Freak Fiesta looks like a lot of fun. You might as well give it a go while it's free, right? You can connect with friends using WiFi or Bluetooth, or play with anyone on the game's servers.

Balcassa
Like I said, Balcassa is a slider puzzle/Rubik's Cube combo. It looks pretty complex at later levels, so puzzle fans looking to stretch their brains a bit should be interested. Here's what the developer has to say:

"Balcassa includes a variety of games offering hours of increasingly challenging game-play. The object of each of the games is to rotate a number of cubes into a sequence, a pattern or orientation by moving them around the screen. In some games it may be enough to get each cube into position with the correct side showing, while in other games rotation of the cubes must also be considered. The idea is simple, the solution is not!"

If you're interested, remember: this "sale" is one day only!

First Look: Soft Freak Fiesta from Gogogic

Posted by Jeff Scott on November 30th, 2009
iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad
Our rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar :: Recommended :: Read Review »

We've had a chance to take a look at the new multiplayer game from Gogogic, Soft Freak Fiesta. Gogogic are based in Iceland and that strange Icelandic humor shows through in this game. After all, they think Bjork is normal there.

Soft Freak Fiesta is a sort of last man standing game take on marbles played out in turn on various game boards. While there are various game modes, they all have you aiming, bouncing, and rebounding your characters in the quest to destroy the players on the other team.

Multiplayer is key to this game. You can play either local/Bluetooth or over the data connection against anyone in the world. Since it's turn based, a slow connection is of no concern. For each turn, you have the option of either moving a player, dropping a weapon, or skipping. To move, you select the player and give them a direction and speed by pulling an arrow from their current location to the direction you want to go. The longer the arrow, the faster the player moves. To drop a weapon, you select the player and touch the popup for the weapon to drop. Once you are ready and hit the ready button, or the turn timer runs out, your players and the opponent players will move, bouncing off of each other removing energy from each player. A player dies when it falls off the board (or gets bounced by another player) or loses all of it's energy from weapons, hazards on the board, or from rebounding off other players.

This game has real potential to become a compelling quick play multiplayer game. The developers have told us of some new features they plan on adding and this could really turn into a good community game as well. Of course since this is a multiplayer game, the success depends on getting enough players. Because of this we expect to see some pretty aggressive pricing when it's released.

Soft Freak Fiesta has been submitted to Apple for approval and we should see it at any time now. I'll see you there.

Gogogic are based in Iceland and have previously released Symbol6 for the iPhone.