Fight Critters and Collect Heroes in Match Land
May 01, 2017 by RSS Feed
Match Land (Free) by Race Cat is a match-three RPG with a twist that is rather refreshing for the genre. If you enjoyed other games such as Hero Emblems, Spellfall, Puzzle Quest, and Block Legend, then you will love what Match Land has to offer.
Even though my time is consumed by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch and trading card games lately, I still make time for my daily quick iOS gaming sessions in between everything else. While there are many genres of games on iOS, I still have my preferences, which mostly include puzzles and RPGs, so when you combine the two, I’m a total sucker for it. I’ve gone through my fair share of match-three RPGs on the App Store, but I can’t help but be drawn to them whenever a new one comes out. So when the news of Match Land hit my inbox last week, I had to check the game out for myself. Despite a few annoyances with the freemium approach, Match Land is definitely one that hard to put down, especially if you’re a big collector.
The visuals in Match Land are rather cute with a pixel art style that will remind you of the glorious days of 16-bit gaming. Even though the game features a pixelated aesthetic, there are more modern designs incorporated as well, which is mostly shown throughout the level selection and other menu screens. The pixel art still manages to pack in a lot of finer details though, such as textures, shading, and all heroes and enemy sprites have unique appearances that make it easy to stand apart from each other. The colors in Match Land are bright and vibrant, so it’s definitely eye-catching from a single glance. All animations are smooth and fluid, so I had no issues with lag on my iPhone 7. There’s also a rather whimsical soundtrack and fun sound effects that just make the overall experience enjoyable. I think Race Cat did an excellent job with Match Land’s visual and audio design.
In Match Land, players will discover that it’s a match-three RPG that is not like traditional games. Instead, the focus in Match Land is on collecting, since you will be opening up fantasy food shops and need monster part ingredients to serve up to customers. To do this though, you need a team of heroes that are brave enough to venture forth and fight the critters needed for tasty dishes that villagers are clamoring for. As you serve up things like blob soup, mushy buns, viper oils, and more, you’ll be able to accrue valuable gold coins for upgrading heroes and even the “evo” items that are required to evolve your heroes into more powerful versions. The game has five stages that have about five chapters in each, so there is plenty of content to go through. Each level has multiple waves of enemies for you to battle with, including boss waves, and you must clear all of the waves in order for it to be complete. Players can earn up to three stars on a level, depending on how many turns they managed to finish in (the less the better).
The biggest difference between Match Land and other match-three RPGs is how each turn is handled. As you’d expect, enemies will feature numbers on them, which indicate how many turns you have until that particular foe is able to attack you. However, when you swap adjacent pieces to make a match, it starts a fast countdown timer — make another match quickly to reset that countdown, and repeat the process until you can’t make any more matches or the timer runs out — all matches made in this duration counts as one turn. The countdown goes pretty fast though, which is one of my minor annoyances, so you have to plan out your moves ahead of time for combos if you want to dish out more damage, and make sure you don’t make a mistake in swaps, because it can cost you.
The controls in Match Land are simple and intuitive, and if you’ve played other similar games, then it will feel natural. Like other similar titles, you can only swap adjacent pieces to make matches of at least three or more. You can have up to five heroes in your critter-catching team, and each of them may be a different color. To get a hero to attack and deal damage to monsters, you have to match tiles that are their color. Depending on how big your matches are, the more damage your heroes will be able to do, and if you can rack up multiple matches in one turn (before the timer runs out), you get combos and multipliers that increase the damage dealt. This is important because you’ll want to get as many combos as possible to deal the most damage, which is the only way to get through on harder stages. Additionally, each match will slowly fill up the gauge above your hero’s portrait — once the bar is full, you’ll be able to tap on their image to activate their special ability, which are powerful attacks that you can use directly on foes. The controls in Match Land are easy to understand, but are tricky to master because of the timer mechanic.
Usually, each level has three waves to fight through, but sometimes that can be more. Also, since Match Land is a freemium game, each fight takes up some stamina, with later levels costing more. You get various rewards for completing each level though, which can include gold coins, experience, spices, hero tokens, hero figurines, and even gems (premium currency) on boss stages. The levels that you managed to get three stars on can be “quick looted” for a stamina cost, which means that you can just collect the rewards on it again without having to play the level. You can upgrade your hero’s power by having enough tokens (usually three at a time) and coins, or evolve them with the evos that you can gather from your food shops. The figurines are for heroes that you have to unlock, and you need to collect a certain number of them before they become available, though they’re much stronger than the heroes you start out with, so it’s worth the time and effort if you enjoy the game.
Another way to get loot in Match Land is to collect keys, which you can get as rewards from some levels. You need three keys to unlock one chest, which usually gives you a nice bounty of goodies, including figurines and tokens. There are also “magical” chests that you can spend gems on instead to get even rarer figurines and more items and coins, but it will cost you a pretty penny if you don’t want to grind it out.
Despite the obvious push for free-to-play elements (high difficulty level after a while), I’ve been enjoying Match Land and have been playing it every day for the past week or so. I do wish that there was a way to get unlimited stamina, because I would love it if I could just play the game for as long as I want, rather than having to wait around after I’m out of energy and use up all of my refills by watching some ads. Though this would mess with the quick loot feature for 3-star levels, but honestly, I wouldn’t mind replaying stages to get the loot again if that means no silly stamina restrictions.
I recommend giving Match Land a try if you are into match-three RPGs and want something that is a bit different from the norm and much more challenging. You can find Match Land on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for free. There are in-app purchases.
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Decipher Opposite Word Pairs in Antitype
April 28, 2017 by RSS Feed
Antitype ($1.99) by BorderLeap, LLC is another brain teaser word game that will be sure to make you think about opposites. If you enjoyed other unique word games such as TypeShift, BAIKOH, and Word², then you will love what Antitype brings to the genre.
As a writer, I think it’s safe to say that I love word games. I have come to realize that I am just much more of a word person than I am a numbers gal, but I’m completely fine with that. Throughout the past several years, I believe that I’ve gone through my fair share of word games, from the Scrabble and Boggle clones to more unique ones, such as Letterpress, BAIKOH, and SpellTower. Despite the fact that most word games have the same concept, I can’t help but jump on the opportunity of a new title, because I’m an addict. When the news of Antitype hit my inbox, and seeing how it was from BorderLeap (makers of Alpha Omega and other words games), I knew I had to get my hands on it. And if you’re like me and want a word game that stands out from the crowded marketplace, then you will like Antitype.
Visually, Antitype is about as minimal as you can get. The game has an incredibly simple and clean look, and everything is flat so it fits in well with the modern design aesthetic these days. Despite the simplicity, Antitype is still visually appealing because of its use of bright and vibrant colors that compliment each other rather nicely, and the white and black spaces for the words provide sharp contrast. Animations are subtle but buttery smooth and fluid, and there are some fantastic clicking sound effects that are downright fun to hear. Like their other word games, BorderLeap has done it again with the minimalistic design of Antitype.
In Antitype, there is only one game mode, but there are over 300 puzzles included with the initial download, so you do get a good amount of content for your buck. Another interesting thing about Antitype is the fact that each puzzle can be uniquely shuffled on every attempt so that there is always a different solution. Regardless of how the puzzles are shuffled around each time, the goal remains the same: decipher each pair of words that are opposites of each other with a common theme between them. While it sounds easy enough, the unique gameplay mechanic makes things a bit more challenging than they appear on the surface.
Each puzzle will consist of two rows (of varying length) of letter tiles that are stacked on top of each other. A number in the corner of each tile indicates the number of times that the tile can be changed. When you tap on a tile, it will change the letters that are around it, but not change the tile you selected. With this in mind, you have to plan your moves wisely and carefully, because after a tile changes enough times, it becomes locked. When all tiles are locked, you’ll have to tap on the restart button and try again. The hint for each pair of words is revealed at the beginning of a level, but you can tap anywhere around the tiles to see the hint again if needed.
Revealing the hint also brings up the buttons to go back or forward one level (if able) or go back to the very beginning of the game or where you last left off. You also can see your progress in the game with the “level # of 325” message at the bottom of the screen. A medal icon at the top of the pause/hint screen takes you to the leaderboards, where you can see how you stack up against other people from all over the world. The leaderboards are based on how many puzzles you’ve managed to solve so far, and with the unique shuffling for each attempt, this means that no one has an unfair advantage (plus there’s no in-app purchases). And for those who have multiple iOS devices, don’t worry — your game progress will go with you, no matter what device you’re using, thanks to the iCloud game save syncing.
As a fan of word games of all kinds, I am enjoying Antitype so far. The game is unlike most other word games I’ve tried in recent memory, and I love the simplicity of the visual and audio design. It can definitely be challenging on some levels because of the shifting mechanic, but I like the fact that there will always be a different solution on each attempt, because it keeps things fresh and interesting, and no one gets an unfair advantage over another. This is a perfect game to play for both quick and longer game sessions.
I highly recommend Antitype to anyone who likes word games and brain teaser puzzles. You can find Antitype on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for $1.99. There are no in-app purchases.
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Legend of Abhimanyu Is a Visually Stunning RPG for iPhone
April 28, 2017 by RSS Feed
Source link:http://www.theiphoneappreview.com/2017/04/legend-of-abhimanyu-iphone-game/
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BAIKOH is Not Your Grandma’s Word Game
April 27, 2017 by RSS Feed
BAIKOH (Free) by Mum Not Proud is a word game that tests out your vocabulary as well as your speed. If you enjoyed word games like Spelltower and Highrise Heroes, then you will love what BAIKOH has to offer. Think of Spelltower combined with the personality traits of GLaDOS, and you’ll end up with something like BAIKOH.
As someone who writes for a living, I can definitely say that I’m a word person rather than a numbers type of gal. With that said, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I do love my fair share of word games, though I’m far from being the best linguist out there (I mostly lost my Words with Friends matches). Still, I enjoy word games and will continue to play them, even if it’s just to improve my own lexicon. When I heard of BAIKOH a few weeks ago, I was intrigued because not only was it a word game, but it did things differently by penalizing you for mistakes, which not all games in the genre do. Naturally, I had to check out BAIKOH for myself and after spending some time with the game, I can say I’m not disappointed.
Visually, BAIKOH features a beautiful minimalistic aesthetic that will be appealing to anyone. The game makes use of a flat design that seems to be all the rage these days, and the rounded square and circle letter tiles look fantastic as they fall and stack up on the screen. BAIKOH uses a stylish sans serif typeface that is easy to read and goes well with the modernized appearance of the overall game. The different types of special tiles have their own unique appearances as well, but it’s pretty easy to tell what they do for the most part. The colors in BAIKOH are pleasing to the eyes, as it is composed of subtle dark backgrounds and soft pastels and vibrant hues for the tiles so there is a nice bit of contrast. The subtle animations in BAIKOH are smooth and fluid, with no lag on my iPhone 7. The game also has a rather upbeat and quirky soundtrack in the background that is delightful to listen to, and the sound effects are a nice touch as well. Overall, I believe that Mum Not Proud really knocked it out of the park with the visual and audio design of BAIKOH, because it’s the first thing I fell in love with when I saw the game.
BAIKOH, like most word games, will have a few different ways for you to play. At the moment, BAIKOH just has a Solo Campaign with two different modes available: Solo and Zen. The two are almost the same, except for the fact that Zen does not allow players to use badges, traps, or bet baikoins. Regardless of which mode you go with, the goal of the game is simple: spell words out with the tiles on the screen (vowels are circle tiles and consonants are squares for easy reference) as fast as you can, since more tiles are constantly dropping in from the top of the screen. While shorter words are best for being quick, you do get more points for longer words, so just keep that in mind. Another thing to watch out for is the fact that if you misspell a word three times, then a row of tiles will drop down with an “X” on them, meaning that they can’t be used for a few seconds. On top of that, there will be other challenges, such as frozen tiles, bombs, giant angry blocks that take up a 3×3 space on the screen, and much more. While things don’t sound too bad, once you unlock more obstacles by playing the game, things can get pretty hectic and challenging.
Controls in BAIKOH are simple and straightforward. To spell out words, just tap on the tiles you want to use in the correct order. Tapping on a selected tile will deselect it, and if you change your mind about a word, just tap on the “X” button at the bottom (where the word is) to just deselect all tiles at once. To submit a word, just swipe horizontally anywhere on the screen. If the word is valid, it goes through without a hitch; if it’s misspelled, you’ll get some visual and haptic feedback so you are clearly made aware that a penalty is coming soon (three strikes and you’re out). If you took any badges with you, they can be activated by tapping on the badge along the bottom section of the screen. As you spell out and submit words, more tiles fall from the top, and it’ll always be a constant stream, so you’ll have to stay on your toes in BAIKOH.
As I mentioned, the game gets harder the more you play. This is because eventually you will level up, and this unlocks “badges” for players to use in the Solo or online battle. The badges are power-ups that you can take with you into the round, though they do cost you some baikoins to do so. You start off with one badge slot, but more can be unlocked through in-app purchases. Baikoins can be earned by completing rounds, and you get more depending on how high your score is. New traps are also introduced as you level up too, so there is a lot of reason to keep coming back to BAIKOH.
The only negative about BAIKOH to me is the fact that it’s a free game with in-app purchases. Fortunately, the game can be played and enjoyed thoroughly without ever having to drop a dime, but I personally would have preferred to pay upfront for the game and not have to use up coins each time I want to take a badge with me into a round. There are also ads, but only if you want to get a continue or more coins after a round, so it isn’t too bad. I still love the design of BAIKOH, the music is outstanding, and the controls are fairly intuitive. I do hope to see more modes added for the single player in the future though, as I feel that it can get a bit repetitive after a while with just the regular and zen modes only. On the upside though, online versus mode will be added in a few months, where two people can go head-to-head, so that’s something I’m eager to try out once it’s available.
I recommend giving BAIKOH a try if you’re into word games at all and want something a bit more hectic, challenging, and just downright fun. You can find BAIKOH on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for free. There are in-app purchases for Baikoins, themes, and more.
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Blast As Many Aliens as You Can in Get Me Outta Here
April 25, 2017 by RSS Feed
Get Me Outta Here (Free) by Crescent Moon Games and The Rossman Bros. is an action-packed arena shooter that is full of aliens, cool weapons, weaponized cows, and hilarious dialogue. If you enjoy games like Soul Knight, Meganoid, and The Binding of Isaac, then you will probably like Get Me Outta Here.
When I’m under a bit of stress or just upset about something, I usually end up taking out my frustrations in the form of video games. While I prefer to relax and unwind after a long day, sometimes I just need to shoot and blow things up instead, because it’s much more satisfying sometimes. This is why I enjoy playing arcade shooter games, or duking it out in an arena-style battle and going for high scores. So when I heard of Get Me Outta Here, I was definitely intrigued, because I’m a fan of both Crescent Moon Games and arcade shooter games. Get Me Outta Here is a pretty solid release, but it does come with a few flaws as well.
Visually, Get Me Outta Here has a stunning retro aesthetic that will make any old-school gamer feel at home. The game features an awesome 16-bit pixelated look and feel to it that takes me back to the days of the SNES and Sega Genesis. And even with the pixel art style, the game manages to pack in plenty of finer details, from the textures of creatures and the alien spaceship to the various lighting and shading effects. Get Me Outta Here also features the classic dark background for the most part, which means that the vibrant neon hues of aliens and their technological weapons are nicely contrasted and easy to spot in a single glance. Animations are fairly smooth and fluid, so I did not have an issue with lag or choppiness when it came to movement. The game also has a rather heavy chiptune soundtrack and the sound effects are fun to hear. There is also voiced dialogue (though not much dialogue in total), so when you see the text on the screen, it’s also being read aloud, which just makes everything that much more ridiculous. Overall, the developers did an excellent job with Get Me Outta Here’s visual and audio design.
At its core, Get Me Outta Here is an arcade arena shooter where the goal is to chase after as high of a score as possible. This means that there is one main mode (bonus modes have to be unlocked via in-app purchase), but the game does provide players with various modifiers that they can choose to change their game in the beginning. The modifiers involve how much damage you take, how much health bosses have, and how many enemies spawn. For newbies, or a chance to get used to the game, it’s recommended to go with the easy mode modifications, though it does mean a lower score overall (less points, smaller boss bonus, and less opportunities for combos). If you want to go with the standard, just leave the modifiers in the middle option. If you want a real challenge, then go for the harder mods, which only reward you with more points and better scores.
Before you start a run, you are able to choose one of several different alien guns at your disposal. Each one has a different range, shot type, and charge attack. You can get a small demo of how each gun works when you tap on the “i” button. The game will give you a score on each gun (out of five stars), which depends entirely on your performance. This means that there is actually a reason to go back and try different play styles, especially if you’re a perfectionist.
Another thing that you find out as you start the game is that you pretty much only have two and a half minutes to kill as many aliens as you can before you can be rescued, and around the minute and 30 seconds mark is usually when a boss shows up. If you can kill the boss, then more time is added to the clock. Since you’re fighting against aliens and a clock, there is no time to waste in this game. As mentioned earlier, if you can keep up a good kill streak going, then that means a combo and more points for you at the end. There is also a power-up item at the top that you can collect for a boost (different each time), and the spawn points of every enemy will be different on each attempt, so at least that keeps things interesting.
The controls are the part that I found to be a mixed bag. In the bottom left corner is a virtual D-Pad for you to move horizontally, as well as up and down ladders. If you swipe horizontally in the right side of the screen, you’ll be able to perform an evasive dodge roll move that can help you avoid enemy attacks. Swiping up on the right side of the screen lets you do a jump, and you can swipe down to drop down platforms. To shoot your gun, just tap-and-hold in the bottom right corner, and a double tap lets you use the charge attack for your chosen gun.
The problem with the controls is that since it’s a D-Pad, you can’t exactly shoot diagonally, which I found to be annoying. To get enemies that are above you or coming at you at an angle, you’ll have to try to jump and shoot, or just be right underneath them. Another thing I noticed is that the D-Pad touch zone is a bit smaller than I’d like, so it would be better if you could at least change the size or positioning of it to better suit your needs. On the plus side, it does follow your touch, so if you tend to move your thumb while playing, it goes where your thumb is, so at least it does that. And while the swipe controls are implemented well, I think the methods for moving and attacking feel a bit clunky, and has led to my untimely death on numerous occasions. Hopefully the controls can be better optimized in a future update.
As mentioned earlier, the game provides one mode in the initial download. However, if you’re craving more, there is a $4.99 in-app purchase that gives you bonus modes (Endless Enemies, Endless Bosses, or Father Battle) and removes ads (you have to watch ads if you want to use different gun types and don’t have the IAP). There is also another $9.99 in-app purchase that provides everything that the lower tier IAP provides, but it also comes with exclusive weapon skins, but these are entirely cosmetic, and the higher tier upgrade is just to show support for the developers. However, neither one is required, as the game can be played and enjoyed for free, just with some ads.
I wanted to like Get Me Outta Here more, but at the moment, the game is a bit frustrating for me to play with the current touch controls. If the controls were better, then this would definitely be a game that I would enjoy coming back to over and over again. Still, if you think you can deal with the controls better than I did, and like a heavy retro aesthetic, then this game would be a good fit if you’re in the mood for action-packed arena shooters. The music was alright for the first few runs, but it does get a bit repetitive after a while, but unfortunately there is no way to turn the music or sound off. I hope to see that changed in an update as well, because it would be nice to just listen to my own music while playing sometimes.
If you are looking for a retro arena-based arcade shooter that has some humor thrown into the mix, then you should check out Get Me Outta Here. Just be warned about the controls, as they need to be better streamlined.
Get Me Outta Here is available on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for free. There is a $4.99 in-app purchase for bonus content and ad removal, while the $9.99 in-app purchase includes the previous tier but with exclusive skins.
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