FREEday 4/6/12 - "I Wanna be FREE from You"

Posted by Rob Rich on April 6th, 2012

In attempting to avoid falling into any sort of "theme" for this week's list, I've gone and done it anyway. No zombies and (technically) no city-builders, but half of the games featured here share a commonality anyway. I'm referring to their "retro" style, which is to say they're intentionally pixelated. Granted, one of them is a port of an older NES game but still. I suppose I should just embrace themes in the future rather than fight against them, huh?

8bit Ninja - I'm not even sure where to begin. It's like some bizarre combination of avoidance/fruit mangling with RPG elements, multiple characters, various things to buy in a shop, and some sweet retro visuals. Considering all that, how could I not put it up here?

Amoebas Attack - Okay so a side-scrolling twin-stick shooter set inside the human body isn't exactly ground breaking these days. Neither is controlling an antibody fighting off infectious bacteria and the like. However, allowing players to evolve the antibody as they progress (i.e. new abilities and such) along with the clever way they can move vertically between capillaries in order to adjust the difficulty is certainly cool.

Saturday Morning RPG - It's an RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons from the 80's. That alone should be more than enough to get people on the App Store and downloading. Assuming it isn't, it's still a stylish JRPG-style romp spanning several episodes. So really, why not?

Parallel Mafia - I'm all for using the iPhone's GPS functionality to create location-based (virtual) warfare. But mixing genres and creating a sort of cyberpunk mafia setting is just all kinds of awesome. That and it's quite possibly the closest we've come to seeing a real new Shadowrun game since the 16-bit era.

Beauty vs Beasts - Simple, cute, and goofy. Never a bad list of features for an iOS game. Players control the titular Beauty as she fends off beasts and smooches princes, all with the tap of a few buttons. It's a simple reflex-based high score kind of game, but that's totally fine by me. Sometimes simple is the way to go.

StarSoldier - I did own an NES back in the day, but I spent more time playing outside than parked in front of the TV with a controller in my hand. For the most part. So I never managed to play this particular 8-bit shooter. Thankfully Hudson has decided to re-release it on iOS devices, a decisions that's bound to make more than a few fans quite happy. Heck, it might even create new ones.