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Ayo: A Rain Tale is a platformer adventure across sub-saharan Africa, for iOS and Android
Platformers is a genre that has had its fair share of engaging and varied releases on mobile, from Leo’s Fortune to ports such as Inside. Ayo: A Rain Tale is another entry to comsider, bringing a narrative-driven design and a unique cultural perpsective to iOS and Android. As the titular Ayo, you must endure a daily journey through the harsh landscapes of sub-saharan Africa to bring clean water back to your village, a journey that pits Ayo against increasingly deadly hazards as the game progresses. From sandstorms to dangerous wildlife, your path is fraught with peril, and puzzle platforming challenges. Sun and sand may be early threats, but soon stages become complicated, ta…
PlatformerCloud returns in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia, available now
The Dissidia series transports the famous characters of Final Fantasy into a multidimensional spin-off, where gods form new worlds and fight endless wars. The first entry on the mobile platform, Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia was launched last year in Japan. Now, publisher Square Enix is releasing it for Western players too, so you can join in the JRPG fun. The game drops you in the battered greaves of a weary warrior, recuperating in Opera Omnia. This world was forged by two gods to offer champions across the universe a break from war. Sadly, monsters have breached the place through dimensional tears. Now, you, along with other famous characters from the Final Fantasy franchise, mus…
Rearrange a charming sci-fi adventure in Alike Studio's new puzzle game Bring You Home, out now on iOS
The autorunner is often a game of reaction and reflexes, timing your actions in sync with the character's forward movement. But Alike's newest iOS game Bring You Home turns the forward progress of the autorunner on its head, by tying it not to reflexes but to the cause and effect of an adventure game. Another cute and whimiscal sci-fi adventure, with a similar colorful aesthetic as its predecessor Love You To Bits, this game puts in the shoes of Polo, on a quest to rescue your kidnapped alien pet as you leap between portals in pursuit. But beween portals lies each stage of odd extraterrestial vignettes and other silly characters and interactions, that often end in your demise. Rewind, try…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Good Fences
Good Fences is an unasssuming little gem of a puzzler for iOS and Android, the kind you might not give a thought at a glance due to its simple aesthetic and mechanic that are hard to get across in screenshots. This geometric brain-teaser takes a very simple concept and wrings over a hundred challenges of shape placing and rotating out of that central mechanic. Take a look at that screenshot below, that is Good Fences at its simplest. Every stage presents you with a shape, and it's your job to surround it with copies of that same shape. It's such a basic seed of a puzzle concept, where even a less-complex shape can prove to be a tricky prospect to surround due to how corners and sides might…
Gunslugs 3: Rogue Tactics promises slower but still hectic side-scrolling action on iOS and Android
The Gunslugs series has offered some of the most hectic 2D action on mobile, packing tons of bullets and explosions into a small slice of run-n-gun chaos. While the second game ratcheted the speed to be more frenetic levels, the third game looks to slow the action down a tad...and adding some extra tactical elements to the explosion-heavy gameplay. After choosing from a pool of characters - each with unique perks that range from faster movement to a minigun as a secondary weapon - Gunslugs 3 unleashes you in larger levels that combine vertical combat through towers with hectic evasion as you travel between towers. Weapons found throughout stages can alter your loadout with pla…
iOS and Android releases are likely for dual stick shooter roguelite Tesla Vs Lovecraft
10tons‘ mobile library is one of fast and furious shooters, from the alien-splattering Crimsonland to the recent Jydge, and the developers revealed they have plans to bring their newest game, Tesla Vs Lovecraft, to mobile as well. As one might infer from the title, the game is a battle of high tech scientific weaponry against hordes of eldritch horrors; with Tesla’s arsenal of energy and lightning guns, you must annihilate Lovecraft’s monsters across gothic cemeteries and victorian streets. Powerful perks that multiple bullets or bounce them off surfaces augment your rifles, shotguns, and other guns, but your most powerful weapon is the limited-use Tesla-Mech. This hulki…
Track and field gets a ballistic twist in Run Gun Sports, releasing on iOS this week
Sprinting a 50m dash may prove a tad challenging when you have guns for feet, in Run Gun Sports, the wacky sports game headed to the App Store on February 1st. Reminiscent of other sports hybrids like Wrestle Jump or QWOP, Run Gun Sports combines classic track-and-field events - hurdes, long jumps, and more - with the physics-based twist of being robot with bullet-firing legs. Recoil is your means of acceleration and balancing, forcing you to time your shots to modulate movement and rotations. Ranging from shotguns to flamethrowers, your arsenal of leg guns each have their own effects to master as you compete for high scores across dozens of events and daily challenges. Run Gun Sports w…
Unique metroidvania Dandara is headed to iOS and Android on February 6th
Dandara takes the classic platforming of the metroidvania and turns it on its head, literally. This gravity-twisting entry to the genre is slated to release in early February, bringing rapid-fire action and wall-hopping acrobatics to mobile. As ths titular warrior, awakened in time of need, you must fight against the forces oppressing the people of Salt; that‘s no task when that enemy consists of powerful bosses across various regions. Slingshotting from walls to floor to ceiling lets you evade traps and attacks with precision, while your upgradable arsenal arms you with different projectiles and means to reach previously-inaccessible areas. From bullet hell waves of bullets and foe…
Colourful action-strategy game Super Senso launches in Europe and Latin America
It’s not often you’ll get to witness armoured tanks, hungry dinosaurs, and ghoulish zombies go head-to-head on the same battlefield. But having already launched its turn-based zaniness elsewhere early last year, Super Senso now finally offers European and Latin American players the ability to enjoy its strategic mech-battling action. Available on both iOS and Android devices, Super Senso tasks players to build up their ideal defence squad which can consist of troops inspired by both fantasy and the future. Whether you want to take hold of giant mechs, tentacled aliens, or any of the 30 other available troop types on offer, each vary in movement ability, attack strength, and de…
Slime Pizza takes a gloopy approach to iOS platforming
Being a collaboration between Nitrome and Neutronized, you might have certain expectations for Slime Pizza: a colorful and charming artstyle, simple yet challenging gameplay, short bite-sized gauntlets. And you would be right; this new iOS game features all of those in its particularly gooey take on the mobile platformer. As an amorphous delivery boy for the titular pizza service, it’s your job to hop and cling across rooms to recover the slices scattered by a crash landing. Doing so is as simple as dragging on the screen to slingshot in a wobbly arc, sticking to the surfaces you touch. As you travel from room to room and planet to planet, collecting pizza becomes increasingly chall…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Ending
Aaron Steed's Ending is a minimalist roguelike stripped of all the fluff and filler, exposing a challenging game of life and death decisions and strategic planning, where one wrong move can destroy you. Inspired by chess and board games, Ending casts you as a lowly @ sign, in a maze of dangerous ruthless enemies. Each symbol moves in a specific way or has a special purpose, from moving two spaces in a turn to only being able to attack from a certain direction or firing projectiles. When you move, they move, and one hit is enough to destroy you...or for you to end them. There in lies Ending's strategic gameplay: it's a game where every move must be considered, where you need to think five…
Thumper: Pocket Edition unleashes its unique brand of rhythm violence upon the App Store
iOS is no stranger to music games, from Cytus to Dropchord, but Thumper is unlike any of them. A weird, unrelenting, and lightning-fast entry to the genre, the game has made its way to mobile, currently available on the App Store. From the first section of its nine levels to its last hellish stage, Thumper: Pocket Edition hurls you into a kaleidoscopic tempest, your chrome beetle racing along twisting tracks and claustrophobic tunnels as eldritch beings of light and metal twist and unfurl within the void. Imagine those classic inputs of a Guitar Hero or Rock Band - tap and hold to the beat at the right time - and you can grasp Thumper: thump down on markers, turn and grind against t…
Four Last Things blends Renaissance art and absurdist humor on iOS and Android this week
Kickstarted back in 2016, Four Last Things promises Monty Python-esque humor and a point-n-click romp through the landscapes of classic Renaissance paintings, when it arrives on the App Store and Google Play this Thursday. A loophole sets your bumbling outsider on a quest to fulfill the seven deadly sins in order to gain absolution, leading you through the works of artists like Bosch and Bruegel to chat and interact in true adventure game fashion. Zany sight gags and dialogue, along with animated figures bring these paintings to life, as you collect items, talk with characters, and solve silly yet logical puzzles to assist (or meddle with) poets and blacksmiths, from quaint towns to…
Infinite West tests your turn-based gunslinging skills on iOS
Clint Eastwood and others made being a gunslinger look easy in dozens of westerns, but surviving the ever-increasing onslaughts of Infinite West is anything but. Available now om iOS, this high-score chasing strategy game transforms Wild West gun battles into Hoplite-inspired chess, with a board game touch. Each level, your blade and gun wielding hero figurine must face a growing army of bandits, dodging their knives and bullets while getting into position to eliminate them all. Limited health and ammo means every move counts, and much like the mobile roguelike Hoplite, you can see the attack range of every enemy, so surival becomes a careful game of placement and weaving between dangerou…
Dieselpunk mechs and alt-history WW1 collide in digital board game Scythe, headed to iOS this year
Based on the popular artwork and world of Jakub Rozalski, Scythe is a digital board game adaptation, revolving around the clash of towering iron machines and nations in an alternate 1920s, and it’s coming to iPad some time in 2018. Set in a Europe where damaged nations and fallen leaders adapt to this incredible new technology, you wage asymmetrical war against other countries, conquering terrorities, gathering recruits and supplies, and activating powering mechs to turn the tide of battles. Each faction brings their own unique abilities, starting stats, and objectives to the board, while narrative choices let you mold your nation and leader through how you treat your c…
