Reviews & Articles

Space Shuffle Extreme is one of those arcade gems that are a must-have.

Cube Connect is one of those logical puzzle games but on steroids. The game’s goal is to group two or more matching cubes together over a series of increasingly challenging 25 levels. The player can avoid getting trapped by making sure no odd cube is left over.

Flick Cricket HD allows one to experience all the fun cricket offers. For those not familiar with cricket, it is a game that influenced the development of baseball.

Penguin versus Yeti Gold Edition is an iOS port of an award-winning Windows game in which players control a snowboard-riding Penguin. The game is reminiscent of an old school side-scrolling game with an added twist — it is also a racing game.

Born to be Rich Slot Machine is a free casino simulation in which the player plays a variety of slot machines. The game literally puts Vegas in one’s palm through polished HD graphics, sounds effects and realistic models of a slot machine, making for a challenging but fun experience.

Heist and Run is a lightning-fast casual 3-D racing extravaganza of a game. You are put in a role of car driver navigating across three lanes of traffic with cops after you.

Rasta Slots is a neat slot machine simulator game with a reggae theme for the iOS. The game offers built-in reggae music with more than 20 downloadable tracks that you can import to your iTunes library or play in the app.

Epic Adventures: La Jangada is a hidden object/puzzle game. In this case, I played it on the iPhone.

The Night Flier: Seasons is a fun iOS/Android game in which the player flies a bat in a scroller-type arcade game. The controls are very intuitive: The player taps and holds a finger to the screen to ascend and descends the bat. The objective is to keep moving the bat over the rooftops and avoid various obstacles, pop air-balloons, and eat midges to increase the bat's health. The levels gradually increase in difficulty.

Blackjack 21+ is a fantastic single and multiplayer blackjack game that allows three blackjack hands to be played simultaneously on one table. In Blackjack 21+ the casino famous card game of blackjack has been re-created entirely within intuitive gameplay with all the standard blackjack features (doubling down, splitting pairs, taking insurance, etc.). The game allows players to save their gameplay statistics for both review and bragging rights

Penny Arcade is an insanely fun game that reminds me of some of my favorite old-school 1980s arcade hits. The goal in this single-player game is to collect yellow coins (worth 10 points) by capturing them as they fall down in a nicely done gravitational simulation. If a yellow coin is not caught, five points is deducted from the player’s score. It is important to note that red coins are to be avoided as capturing them eliminates the player lives.

Flick The Fish is a catchy arcade game that tests the player in how many fish he or she can catch within a 60-second period. The act of catching fish is intuitive and involves swiping the finger over fish that jump out of the ocean. The trick is to catch only certain fish as the wrong types eliminate various combos accumulated in the adventure.

Kick the Politician is one of the most unique games that I have come across in a while to help kill time. The whole point behind the game is to destress by allowing the player to take out his or her frustration at the following world leaders: Barack Obama; Mitt Romney; George Bush; Osama Bin Laden; Saddam Hussein; Sarah Palin; Adolph Hitler; George Osborne; Margaret Thatcher; or Tony Blair.

Bubblien Attack is an insanely addictive and fun single-player 2-D game in which you launch bubbles at falling bubbles thus bursting them clearing various levels all the while racking up tons of points. The game uses the accelerometer-based controls that results in intuitive controls, fun gameplay and smooth animation.

Over the years we have seen several great game concepts employing physics simulators on the iOS. Such simulations offer fun and addictive gameplay. Unfortunately the idea of catapulting became a bit overdone with little thought given to evolving the physics simulation design. Aggro Cubes is a game-changer in this regard as it uses a novel physics-based game concept of forcing stacked red cubes to fall by collapsing structures.

Sinister City: Vampire Adventure is a hidden-object/puzzle game. I played the iPhone version. The introduction to the game is a man holding a candelabra telling you that he’s just finished his movie, “Count Dracula’s Treasure” and this is about the young couple, John and Nina. In a slight twist on the usual setup for these games, Nina is the one that’s missing, and you’re playing John. These games are usually, in my experience, aimed at the casual female gamer, so you usually play a female character.

I am not a huge fan of Tetris. It never made any sense to me. I mean, how interesting is it to make lines of four? Usually, I lose interest in the game after about five or so minutes of play. I would rather sit down and play a puzzle game focusing on climbing a tower than matching. This makes it all the more surprising that I like Tetris on my iPod Touch.

Lost Souls: Enchanted Paintings is a missing child story with fantasy/magical elements. You’ve just moved into a new house with your young son. He loves this mysterious painting and wants it in his room. In the middle of the night you find him missing, and his picture is in the frame of that mysterious painting now.

Tales from the Dragon Mountain: The Strix is a hidden-object game. You are Mina Lockheart. Your beloved grandmother has died and left a mystery behind for you. You’ll solve this mystery through a combination of puzzles and hidden-object challenges.

Enter the intriguing crime-solving game in which you play as Claire Denali, a former industrial spy. The Agiliste is a game in which the player is tasked in solving crime cases within a point-and-click interface intertwined with fight scenes and beautifully rendered 3-D videos that tell the story as it progresses.

Phoenix Bird is a fun single-player 3-D flying game in which you guide a giant Phoenix across many beautiful locations across the world while completing various challenges like flying through circles and collecting diamonds along the marked way. The game takes advantages of iPhones accelerometer-based controls that results in intuitive controls, fun gameplay and smooth rendering.

Bigfoot: Hidden Giant is a hidden-object/puzzle game for the iPhone (at least that’s the version I tried).

Monster Chase Lite is a memory game for ages 4 to 9, based on a board game of the same name. Basically you’re in a kid’s bedroom and there are 10 (or 12) locations where different toys are hidden. You tap the outlined hiding place to reveal the toy in a given spot. As the game progresses, monsters come out. Each monster has one particular toy that it’s afraid of. You have to scare away a total of 10 monsters without ever getting four monsters spawned at the same time.

I have really enjoyed Letters From Nowhere 2 on the iPhone. As a disclaimer, I never played an original Letters From Nowhere, so if this is a sequel, it stands alone quite nicely.

Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart is nominally a hidden-object/puzzle game, but so far it’s quite a bit deeper than the standard hidden-object game, especially on the iPhone platform. This plays more like something you’d expect on a PC — not a phone.

Masters of Mystery: Crime of Fashion is a hidden object/puzzle game wrapped in a police procedural. As the title would lead you to believe, it’s a murder set in the fashion industry. You will play the new detective at the department, Miss Chase. I was a little put off at first by the introduction and the very rude boss of our character, but things settled more into the groove as it moved along, and the new boss got less rude.

Have you ever been playing Rockband, Guitar Hero or any other beat game and suddenly had the need to play a zombie-filled survivor horror? Sometimes it can be tough to choose one over the other. But what if there was a game that merged the two game styles? A survival horror, zombie-bash AND a beat game? Well, 3G Studios Inc. has done just that. Like Dr. Frankenstein deep in his lab tucked away in the mountains, 3G Studios tinkered away at an idea. They took the best of both worlds, channeling copious amounts of brainwaves and high voltage into their secret project.

Crossworlds: The Flying City is a hidden-object game for the iPhone and iPad (and apparently the PC as well). Sadly, I don’t have an iPad and did not get to see that version. I was a little concerned up front about trying to do a hidden object game on a screen as small as an iPhone. These kinds of games can be challenging on a large monitor, so I approached with caution.

Jake Escapes HD is a single-player action adventure game in which the player assumes the role of Jake — the world’s greatest thief. After Jake and his accomplice Doc steal an alien artifact known as the G.R.A.I.L. from Area 51, every crime syndicate and secret agent on the planet is after them. The game’s goal is to have Jake climb buildings in every country and in the process dodge enemies, solve puzzles and defeat bosses that occupy the top floor of every structure.

Alien Defense Grid is an arcade game that holds the potential to become an instant classic. The gameplay can be defined as highly addictive due to its rather unique and engaging use of intuitive controls and clever game design.