Category: Upcoming »

Ubisoft's tear-jerking puzzle adventure, Valiant Hearts: The Great War has just been announced for iOS.

Set during World War I, the game puts players in control of several different characters as they endure all sorts of hardships in an attempt to survive. And some of them may not achieve that goal. So you've been warned: there will be sadness.

The controls have been reworked for touch screens, naturally. You can check out the video below to see it in action.

There's been no word on a price yet, but it stands to reason that Valiant Hearts: The Great War will be a premium release when it comes to the App Store on September 4.

Seriously has brought together some amazing talent for Best Fiends, part one of a series of games about the adorably fiendish creatures of Minutia as they become heroes and fight the insatiable Slugs of Mount Boom. The game will include music from composer Heitor Pereira ('Despicable Me' and 'Minion Movie'), level designs by Samuli Viikinen (Max Payne and Alan Wake), and character designs by Miguel Fransisco (Angry Birds).

Petri Järvilehto, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Seriously said, “This is a game and a world that I have wanted to build for a long time, and it’s a dream to be working with the incredible talent we have at Seriously to develop Best Fiends together. We are thrilled to be revealing a first look at Best Fiends today and can’t wait to share more ahead of our worldwide release in October.”

Seriously is also launching the Best Fiends website today, which will give us a peek at the game's story, character designs, and will eventually offer animated shorts, original music, making of videos, and stickers for messenger apps in partnership Swyft Media.

Best Fiends will be available in October as a free download with in-app purchases.

Skylanders has always been a bit polarizing among gamers. Some see it as a glorified (and expensive) kids’ toy. Others see it as a somewhat ingenious combination of toys and video games. It’s a bit less of a toss-up with kids, though - kids adore it. And they’re undoubtedly excited about Skylanders Trap Team.

The Skylanders series has been brought to iOS before, but Trap Team is a first. It isn’t just a port that’s been cut back to fit or a completely different sort of game that uses the license: it’s Skylanders Trap Team. You can swap between characters by switching out figures (including all the characters from previous console-only versions), capture enemies in special Trap Crystals, and otherwise do all that Skylanders-y stuff you’d expect. It’s the same game console players will be experiencing, only on a presumably smaller screen. The touch controls work quite well too, although they aren’t entirely necessary (I’ll explain in a minute).

The portal that’s included with the mobile Trap Team starter set is quite nifty. It uses bluetooth to connect to tablets wirelessly, has a simple but brilliant little notch in the side so that you can prop up your tablet (just about any tablet, no less) while you play, and comes with its own bluetooth controller that easily tucks into the bottom of the portal. Perhaps the most impressive thing about all this is that it’s incredibly easy to pair the portal and the controller with your device. If you’d rather not use the included controller, Trap Team also supports third-party mobile controllers. Or, if you find yourself with a surplus, you can also pair two different controllers and play co-op.

“It just works” has been the mantra for Vicarious Visions as they worked on the hardware for the mobile version, and it’s something they’ve pulled-off extremely well. So long as you have bluetooth enabled on your tablet all you’ll have to do is press and hold a button on the portal and/or controller and they’ll simply connect. Disconnecting them is just as easy of course, and if the controller becomes disconnected at any point during play (either on purpose or because it’s run out of batteries or something) the touch controls will pop up and you can keep playing. And if, for whatever reason, you either don’t have the portal or don’t have access to one you’re still covered. When Trap Team isn’t connected to a portal it’s still possible to play through the game using two special digital-only characters (each with their own levels, stats, and abilities).

Skylanders Trap Team will be available in the App Store as a free download on October 5 for the iPad 3 and 4, iPad Mini Retina, and iPad Air. The Starter Pack (includes the portal, bluetooth controller, unlock for the full game, and two figures) will be available on the same date for $74.99.

Square Enix has announced that their free-to-play football management game Champ Man will be receiving a new version for the new season - Champ Man 15. This new edition will allow players to manage one of 440 real clubs from 23 leagues from around the world in a realistic season set-up. The game will also come with up-to-date team, player and competition data, new training systems, and more tactical options.

Kenji Hisatsune, Vice President of Global Mobile Contents for Square Enix West, had this to say on the newest edition in the Champ Man series:

Champ Man continues to evolve with each season. We’re not looking to continuously make the same game. We listen to our fans and how we can improve their experience. The series is one of the longest running of its kind and we are very pleased to announce the new release for this football season. Champ Man 15 combines the depth and control you would expect from a management simulation with the speed and accessibility of a mobile game. We’ve improved the match engine to allow for a greater variety of chances, enhanced commentary, additional formations and tactical options. We hope our fans enjoy it!

Champ Man 15 will be free to download when it launches sometime soon.

At some point "very soon," Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies will be making its way to iOS. It's already live on the Japanese App Store, so it's just a matter of waiting and seeing when us Western gamers can enjoy the delights.

Previously solely a 3DS game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies is the fifth game in the Ace Attorney series, with you having to solve various court cases by gathering up evidence and determining contradictions in witness statements. I've played the 3DS version and it's excellent. We can only hope that the iOS version comes to our virtual shores very soon.

We'll be sure to keep you in the know.

Loqheart has unveiled a preview trailer for their upcoming free-to-play wizard academy management game (i.e. Hogwarts simulator), Wizards of Prestige. Your academy is the final hope against the forces of evil, so it's up to you as Headmaster to ensure that your students train up, master their skills, and graduate to fight against the evil. Along the way they may even fall in love or find themselves having a fight in class.

It's also up to you to pick the correct wizards and control them in real-time battles, with good timing and strategy critical to ensuring your wizards get the chance to heal up and fight again another time.

No release date has been announced for Wizards of Prestige as of yet, but you can sign up for the browser pre-alpha now.

A Dark Room was something of an enigma when it first appeared on the App Store - it still is in a way. Here's this text-only game that starts out with nothing but a fire that needs to be stoked in order to keep you warm, that then expands into an unexpectedly large (and depressing) adventure. And now a prequel called The Ensign is on its way to the App Store. Time to get excited!

The Ensign will shed some light on the events that took place before A Dark Room - possibly explaining just what happened to the world to make it so inhospitable - but it's not the same type of game. A Dark Room had you delegating tasks to other survivors and expanding your base of operations while simultaneously exploring the wasteland. The Ensign will focus much more on the exploration side of things. Perks will be replaced with artifacts that can enhance your abilities, there will be new dungeons that won't simply funnel you in a single direction, weapons will break if you aren't careful, and a new (presumably horrible) enemy will stalk you all over the map.

Another key difference is that The Ensign is being designed to be extremely difficult. You will die a lot, but the idea is for you to learn from each death so that you can progress a little further each time. It's also meant to be highly-replayable, which is good since that's exactly what you're going to be doing a lot - because you'll probably die all the time.

The Ensign is still in beta, but we'll definitely keep you updated as we learn more about the release date and price.

State of Decay developers Undead Labs, along with Kabam, have announced Moonrise:  a "multiplayer creature-collection RPG" partly inspired by Monster Hunter, Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, and Hearthstone. The game will feature real-time strategic combat, full character and creature customization, and real-time online play.

In Moonrise, an event called the Moonrise corrupts peaceful creatures, known as Solari, into savage creatures known as Lunari, who will attack towns and cites until the effect of the Moonrise fades. Recently, Moonrises had been rare and the corruption period short, but the cycle is beginning to become more intense.

This is where you, the player, come in. You'll play the role of an adventurer on their path to becoming a master Warden: journeying the land and discovering ancient ruins as you chase down Lunari and attempt to cleanse them of the corruption of the Moonrise. Along the way, you'll recruit newly cleansed Solari and challenge fellow Wardens for pride and rewards.

No release period or pricing has been for Moonrise as of yet, but a beta build of the game is set to be playable at PAX Prime later this month, with more details also set to be announced at that time.

Popular heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold has been working on their own dungeon crawler for the last couple of years, and the results are a lot more impressive than most would probably expect. No, seriously, this is actually a thing.

Hail to the King: Deathbat is the brainchild of lead singer, M. Shadows. This is no mere town builder or casual-friendly hack-n-slasher, however; it’s meant to be a throwback to a bygone era, when games didn’t coddle their players and the only way to advance was to get better at playing.

According to M. Shadows it’s been quite the experience to take the game from an idea to an almost ready to release product. The game has gone through several iterations for optimization and tweaking, but it’s finally nearing release and it’s looking pretty neat. The visual’s have a very ‘dark fantasy’ feel, and the music is appropriately moody but also carries just a hint of retro charm.

At first glance it looks similar to other action-adventure games like Diablo, but it’s far more ‘Classic’ than that. Players won’t be leveling-up or upgrading skill trees; instead they’ll be gathering and purchasing brutal weapons and unlocking powerful magic spells. In action it feels more like playing an older Castlevania, really. You’ll be dodging traps, timing your attacks against enemies, learning boss patterns, and all that other good stuff.

Perhaps the most promising thing about Hail to the King: Deathbat is that it’s obviously been a labor of love for M. Shadows. I’ve spoken to card-carrying game developers who weren’t as enthusiastic about their work as he is about this game.

Hail to the King: Deathbat should be coming to the App Store soon for $4.99. Additional in-app purchases are available to unlock members of the band as a sort of “easy” mode, but aren’t necessary to progress. Not unless you’re really bad at video games, anyway.

The original Bioshock is pretty much the greatest video game adaptation of an Ayn Rand novel in existence. It’s also a pretty darn awesome game in its own right. And it’s coming to iOS later this summer.

No joke: Bioshock on iOS is a direct port of the classic first-person adventure/shooter. The whole game - all the areas, enemies, dialogue, memorable moments, hidden cats, etc - has been made to work on the iPhone and iPad. There’s even that odd dip in the right-hand staircase in the lighthouse when you find the bathysphere.

The visuals have been scaled-back a bit, of course. Otherwise there’s no way it would clock in at just under Apple’s maximum download size of 2GB. That’s not to say it looks bad, though. There may not be dynamic shadows or fog effects, and the textures may be a lower resolution, but Rapture still the super-creepy underwater dystopia we’ve all come to know and love.

The port supports MFi and other bluetooth controllers, but also sports a set of touch controls that have been optimized for the experience. Naturally a controller is the more comfortable of the two options when it comes to a game like this, but the touch interface is about as accessible as I could’ve hoped for.

Bioshock doesn’t have a concrete release date or price just yet, but it will be available later this Summer as a premium release with no in-app purchases.

Back in March, Radiangames had to take down its neon-tinted arcade shooter Super Crossfire from iTunes, due to a trademark clash with an online F2P FPS. For those to you who missed out on the game, don't despair, as an updated version will be making a welcome return to iTunes soon with a new name - Super Crossfighter.

Alognside various minor fixes, this updated version of the game has rebalanced victory points and upgrades, with enemy shots designed to be more visible. The game now also supports iOS7, MOGA, and Bluetooth controllers during gameplay, with iCade support also improved. Alongside this release, all of Radiangames' iOS library will on sale from now through Sunday evening, cutting the price of each game down to $0.99.

Super Crossfighter is set to fire its way onto the App Store sometime soon at the time of writing, where it will be free for a couple of days so owners of Super Crossfire can get their hands on it. After this period, the game will go up to its usual price of $1.99.

Ballistic SE - $0.99
CRUSH! - $0.99
Fireball SE - $0.99
Fluid SE - $0.99
Inferno+ - $0.99
JoyJoy - $0.99
SideSwype - $0.99
Slydris - $0.99

Over at San Diego Comic Con, Bandai Namco announced two new games for iOS: PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX, a sequel to Championship Edition, and PAC-MAN Friends, a new original game for the platform.

PAC-MAN Friends will challenge players to use 'intuitive' tilt controls in order to rescue Pac-Man's nine friends from the ghost's castle, with the game containing 95 increasingly challenging levels across six worlds. PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX, meanwhile, will bring the three modes of the original (Score Attack, Time Attack, and Ghost Combo) and add in seven zones with over 150 levels between them into the mix. New power-ups and boosts will also make their way into the game, hopefully giving players a leg-up on their way to high scores.

PAC-MAN Friends is set to make its way onto mobile devices this September, whilst PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX will arrive this November.

Announced over the weekend at San Diego Comic-Con was the fairly exciting looking Marvel Contest of Champions.

Set to be released this Fall, the game hopes to be an immersive beat-em-up of sorts, offering players the chance to fight their way through various iconic locations from the Marvel Universe. You'll be able to collect your favorite heroes and villains such as Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, and Thor.

The title comes from Kabam, best known for titles such as The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth and Fast & Furious 6: The Game, so expect Marvel Contest of Champions to be a free-to-play title when it hits the App Store later this year.

Check out the teaser trailer below.

Set for release on the App Store in September is Beatbuddy, previously a success story for the PC, Mac, and Linux.

Beatbuddy combines puzzle solving, enemy vanquishing, and plenty of exploration. Even better, it offers a fascinating story contributed to by Rhianna Pratchett of Tomb Raider and Mirror's Edge fame. There'll be six hand-drawn worlds to explore, each offering their own original soundtrack.

That's not all, though! Beatbuddy is also set to allow you to buy the game's tracks from iTunes without leaving the game. A feature that hasn't been available in a game for iOS before.

Developer, THREAKS, promise that there will be numerous free updates post-launch, ensuring that Beatbuddy sounds pretty cool to us.

Check out the gameplay trailer below for a sneak peek at what to expect, come September.

Out this Fall is a new kind of card battle game: Outcast Odyssey. From This Means WAR! developer Magic Pixel Games, and Bandai Namco, you'll be able to explore and discover new worlds, fight various foes, and take on a number of quests.

There'll be guilds to join too, so you can tag along with friends!

Set to offer hundreds of cards to collect and evolve, Outcast Odyssey is set for release later this year. Check out the teaser trailer to get an idea of what else to expect.