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Make Squares offers a clever twist on classic Tetris, available on iOS and Android
You know how to play Tetris: tetromino pieces falling from above, fitting them together to make rows, and so on. Make Squares takes those familiar pieces and delivers a unique variant that turns your understanding of the pieces and their relationship on its head. As you've probably guessed from the title, Make Squares tasks you with combining pieces into squares, and manipulating your growing central structure to catch falling tetrominoes. Most importantly, instead of rotating pieces, you rotate the larger structure, forcing you to consider orientation and how future pieces will dovetail with different sides. This change turns the familiar feeling of Tetris into a new spatial ch…
Make SquaresSandbox racer Off The Road receives a gameplay trailer ahead of its July release
The upcoming Off The Road looks to capture the big jumps and hill climbing of arcade offroad racing with a sandbox approach that lets you freely switch between various vehicles, in this unique racer game launching next month on iOS and Android. From speedboat to jeep to big rig to helicopter, Off The Road teases a number of different vehicles to control across its open maps, Moving between vehicles in first person, you can choose them at your leisure, simply racing freely over hills or testing your skills in challenges. Coins to collect and tricky missions like cargo hauls or narrow speedways snaking through mountaintops supplement Off The Road's sandbox design. Off The Road will b…
Paperbark promises an illustrated adventure following a sleepy wombat when it releases on June 21st
iOS has been home to more than a few relaxing, unorthodox adventure games, like the follktales of Burly Men At Sea and the text-based design of Pry. Paperbark looks to follow in those footsteps with charming story of a wombat in Australia. Guiding the stumbling gait of a cute wombat, Paperbark tasks you with exploring the underbrush and wilderness of Australia. Described as a "short story", this adventure presents its environments in an detailed watercolor aesthetic inspired by iconic landscape paintings, as you travel to new locations through the hazy summer heat. Complementing the natural journey is an interactive library detailing the Australian Bush, teaching players about the…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of May 28th
Here’s another weekly round-up of news, previews, and features from Pocket Gamer, 148Apps, and the rest of our sister sites. On our Youtube page, James Gilmour covers the puzzle adventure Faraway 3: Arctic Escape, a game reminiscent of the tactile brain-teasers such as The Room and The Witness. Concluding the Faraway trilogy, Faraway 3 is simpler than both aforementioned games but its switch-and-tile-manipulating puzzles are praised as being satisfying and fun to solve. Over on Pocket Gamer, Susan Arendt explores the tough decisions in the zombie apocalypse strategy game Rebuild 3, discussing how the game's systems blends the humanity and struggles of the members of…
World of Demons' gameplay trailer showcases stylish swordplay and painted monsters
Platinum Games revealed World of Demons last month, but this new trailer gives us a better idea of its touch-based gameplay and showes off its vibrant aesthetic more clearly. Perhaps most interestingly was the glimpse of the larger marco game of collecting minions in your "deck", to enhance and unleash in battle. Each minion brings their own style to combat; once you're on the open battlefields, players must wield magic attacks like rings of flame and slicing wind alongside special attacks that can hit multiple foes or strike for fierce damage. Fourteen minutes video of gameplay with developmer commentary is also available online (courtesy of IGN), providing a longer look at the ev…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Barrier X
Barrier X puts you in control of a vessel rocketing through an endless expanse at insane velocities, as white barriers appear with alarming speed. The ground beneath your craft turns orange as a visual warning of an upcoming barrier, giving you just enough of a warning to shift right or left and evade destruction by mere moments. It's breathless relentless action, as barriers fly past, barely a blur as you rocket onward. Survive for 15 seconds, and your reward is to go faster, an increase in speed. 30 seconds, and you unlock a new level, while 60 seconds masters that level, a true test of reflexes and reaction. Barrier's slick polished design and wonderful sense of speed would be enough t…
Battle otherworldly beasts in atmospheric action-platformer Feist
Feist probably might remind you of Limbo at a glance, with its shadowed aesthetic and woodland environments, but that's where the similarities end. Rather than puzzles, Feist is all about intense brawls with relentless creatures. You're a small fuzzy being, captured by a larger species but able to escape into the hostile wilderness. At every turn, new threats lurk - vicious stinging insects, towering mole-like beasts, swarming spiders - and the only things between you and death are your agility and quick reflexes. As you leap around charging monsters, branches and pine cones become your desperately improvised weapons, giving you just enough breathing room to outmanuever and decide your ne…
Hexologic offers a colorful new variant of Sudoku-style puzzles
Logical deductions are what you need to solve Hexologic's number-based puzzles. In its increasingly tricky challenges, you must fill in its hexagonal grids with the right numbers in the right places, a task harder than it sounds. Each stage in Hexologic is crafted from connected hexagons, with numbers at the ends of rows; you need to place dots within those hexagons so they add up to the numbers. The headscratching comes from the fact that dots can interact along multiple diagonals, so figuring how where to place the correct number of dots without messing up sums horizontally or vertically can become a test of planning steps ahead. Hexologic gradually introduces new mechanics through…
Dodge stellar obstacles in the upcoming arcade game Super Starfish
Space offers a gorgeous and dangerous gauntlet in Super Starfish, an arcade evasion game in development for iOS and Android. Controlling an agile cosmic fish, you must swim through the galaxy, dodging planets and other hazards along the way. The recently releases teaser trailer showcases a number of different obstacles you'll need to evade during Super Starfish's gameplay, from shifting planets to raining crystals. Later stages will feature more aggressive dangers, such as intermittent laser blasts that force you frantically weave around the incoming beams. Overcoming this reflex-testing challenges will reward you with various collectables, to unlock other celestial creatures to control…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of May 21st
Here’s another weekly round-up of news, previews, and features from Pocket Gamer, 148Apps, and the rest of our sister sites. On our Youtube page, James Gilmour reviews Zero/Sum, the comedic b-movie math game about finding the cure for cancer from math terrorists. The so-bad-it's-fun cutscenes, increasingly complex mechanics, and additional modes make Zero/Sum an enjoyable and well-designed puzzler that doesn't take itself seriously. Over on Pocket Gamer, reader comments provide an overview of the unique puzzler Homo Machina, praising its steampunk portrayal of the human body, surprisingly brain-teasing puzzles, and plethora of little details and animations. Finally on&nb…
One Deck Dungeon brings the dungeon-crawling card game to iPad and Android
Distilling the dice rolls and skills of tabletop RPG to its mechanical essentials, One Deck Dungeon is a new RPG, with board game elements, now available on iOS and Android. A digital version of the Kickstarted card game, One Deck Dungeon drops your hero - choosen from several classes - into a gauntlet of monsters and traps, with only your dice, skills, and items to survive. Choosing from four corridors per flor, where an armored skeleton or deadly spike pit might lurk, you use the values of your rolled dice to activate special perks against incoming danger. Each stat offers a corresponding colored dice, so the warrior might receive five dice to place in strength-paced abilities while an…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Dungeon of the Endless
Dungeon of the Endless starts out pretty badly for your team of bounty hunters, assassins, and criminals, as their prison transport vessel is destroyed by the mysterious alien force known as the Endless and the survivors find themselves in the subterranean corridors of an Endless complex. Otherworldly horrors lurk in the dark rooms and halls, waiting to attack your heroes in overwhelming waves. The exit is twelve floors up. Amplitude Studios' tower defense strategy roguelike is a desperatr and tense journey to the surface so far above. Each floor is a procedurally-generated maze, through which you guide your team room-by-room, preparing for whether you find much-needed resources, a mercha…
Explore the solar system and inhabit new worlds using real science in TerraGenesis
TerraGenesis has already sent over 1 million brave iOS explorers to new planets, and now the game is giving Android players the chance to join in the fun. TerraGenesis is an elegant space management game that’s based on real NASA data. Travel to distant planets and terraform them to create new intergalactic civilizations. You have the power to meld the solar system’s planets into habitats fit for living creatures. Use science and technology to ensure your world has sufficient air pressure and oxygen, while keeping the ecosystem and sea levels in check. Should you overcome all of these challenges, you might even get the chance to create your own organisms using genes and phyla.…
Terry Cavanagh's next game is the dice-based tactical roguelike Dicey Dungeon
If you're familiar with the name Terry Cavanagh, you probably know his games: the frantic arcade evasion of Super Hexagon, and the gravity-bending hard-as-nails platforming of VVVVVV. His next game, Dicey Dungeon, is leaving the reflex-testing action and precision platforming behind in favor of dice-centric turn-based roguelike. Choosing from a number of classes (currently three out of a planned six) like Warrior and Inventor, you move through each map, level-by-level, fighting enemies and gathering loot from chests. Each battle is a turn-based affair reminscent of the card battles of card-RPG hybrids, except with dice instead of hands. From your backpack, you equip up to six weapons and pi…
Kids is the artful new project teased by Double Fine and developer Playables
If the name Playables doesn't ring a bell, you might recognize some of the work of its members, mainly Plug & Play and the co-operative puzzler Drei. Much like those other themed projects and puzzlers, the recently-revealed Kids is an interactive piece of art, aiming to explore the psychology of crowds. Like the aforementioned Plug & Play, Kids will be a short experimental interactive project, using its stark aesthetic and design to delve into themes over twenty to thirty minutes. Not much has been revealed about how the mechanics will work to serve that purpose, but the game's premise describes its structure as moving "with and against crowds until everyone is gone." The cro…
