League of Evil 2 is a very colourful platform game that moves fast and responds well to the touch controls (left/right – jump/attack). The 5 levels offered in this Lite version offer just a enough taster of what to expect and fans of the genre will be all over this like a mad scientist in a morgue. Go on and give the Lite version a test run.

League of Evil 2 Lite, 1.0 – Developer: Ravenous Games (9+) – Price: FREE

Rogue Town

It seems like there’s an endless runner released daily on the App Store (oh look, there’s another one below) but that’s not to say they’re all bad. Rogue Town is a 2D Endless Runner with a spin on the formula.
You’re running or rather the horse you’re saddled on is running and with either swipe or touch controls you must jump, duck or shoot your way to glory. I really enjoy blasting an oncoming enemy with the shotgun but you die a little bit abruptly when you don’t manage to shoot the attacker in time. In fact there isn’t a death sequence, you simply disappear and a newspaper clipping appears. How about a blood wipe or smoother transition. Also while I’m on the subject of the attackers, if you don’t play with the audio on you don’t get a visual prompt that the attacker is about to appear. Is this a big deal? Not really, as you still have a second or two to react but some gamers might find it annoying. Becomes the game is dressed in tritone, black, white and red it can be a little difficult to judge when to duck or jump as the obstacles are harder to differentiate.

Overall quite a fun game but let down by a slight drop in the animation (frame rate) and not quite as polished as many of the other games out there.

Rogue Town, 1.0 – Developer: Xim Technologies, LLC (4+) – Price: FREE with ads and IAPs.

Chicken Break

So here we are again, an endless runner with a difference. This time you’re a chicken escaping from a prison compound, there are obstacles (aren’t there always) but instead of the typical one-touch controls, you’re required to touch the designated hit zone when the trap approaches. This is where the game falls short, instead of having the jump or duck buttons on screen all the time they appear pretty much on the centre of the screen, what? Also, CGMatic having included heat seeking missiles which need to be swiped to be destroyed, but oh wait avoid the bombs which randomly appear along the way – sounds a bit like Fruit Ninja eh? There’s nothing wrong in taking influences from other games but unfortunately this game isn’t slick or fluid enough for my liking, save that 69p and invest in Jetpack Joyride or Off The Leash.

Overall a colourful game with strong cartoon graphics but the controls don’t gel with the swiping, jumping and ducking.

Chicken Break, 1.0 – Developer: CGMatic Co., Ltd (9+) – Price: 69p.

Sky Gnomes is a free fall racing game with gorgeous stylistic visuals, you play as a Gnome (obviously) living high in the sky and you live for racing. In fact on the release of the game – which was a few weeks back – that’s when the tournament kicked off and since then it’s been a daily affair. Foursaken have been really smart and setup leaderboards for the 4 various cups you can race in, they only last for 24 hours and then the leaderboard is wiped clean and the next tournament begins.

Sky Gnomes, 1.0
Developer: Foursaken Media (4+)
Price: 69p

You play as the bad guy, some sort of Dungeon overlord who needs to protect his treasure from the army of heroes challenging to beat your traps and defences.

I know what you’re thinking while reading this and looking around the page, this isn’t a full review, and yes you’re correct, but if you enjoy defence games and like the look of the official trailer with 1985’s Gauntlet style inspired graphics, then Tiny Heroes is worthy of space on your device. It’s free, colourful and challenging, shame it’s not a Universal app so I can enjoy it on the iPad.

Tiny Heroes, 1.0
Developer: Simutronics Corp. (9+)
Price: FREE

AZ: Where did the inspiration come from for Off The Leash, your latest release ?

BPS: Most of our games begin life the same way – we develop an initial prototype and refine that until we are happy that’s it worth progressing further into a full game. With the Off the Leash prototype, as soon as we had it playable on a device, it was clear that the controls could be perfectly suited to this style of game, and so from there we’re sat down and designed all sorts of possibilities for the game. We ended up with going with dogs getting chased by the police for the storyline – it was different enough to stand out, and seemed to fit the game perfectly.

That’s all folks. If you don’t already own a Big Pixel title then there’s a varied selection to choose from. We highly recommend all of them, especially Meow Meow Happy Fight, Piyo Blocks and Off The Leash.

So what does Off The Leash offer? Well for starters, it’s free with fun playful graphics, very easy to get into and altogether highly enjoyable. As you would expect the controls are as simple as you can possibly get – tilt the device to move, and that’s it. You can play it single-handed and use your other hand to hold on while you navigate the commute. After launching the game for the first time you get a quick intro to the story; Dogs are banned and your a dog, so it’s time to put your paws to the floor and run from police. The action takes place from above in a park like environment with your dog constantly running forward (up-to the top of the screen). You need to avoid the bushes and ponds which slow you down and collect food and coins to help you advance and reach that all important best distance and score. There are various power-ups dotted along the way which vastly help you as you would expect. But a couple of features which BPS have added to spice the genre up a little, are the countdown timer, bonus levels and different types of dog to control/play as. These additional features are not found in most ‘endless runner’ games but they do offer more lastability and they bridge the gap with platform and action titles. Alongside all these extras are mini missions for your dog, completion allows for rewards which enable you to advance your character further and help not to have to rely on the in-app purchases.

Update: Oh yeah, one game play feature I forgot to mention; Dotted along the way are other dogs which you can try to collect/rescue who then join up behind you and run with you. As your pack size increases it becomes easier to collect coins etc.

Overall, Off The Leash is very easy to get into with a level of polish we’ve come to expect from Big Pixel Studios. It’s fun, cute and very playable.

Off The Leash, 1.0
Developer: Big Pixel Studios (4+)
Price: FREE

Score: AppZilla currently ranked in the top 5% for distance and score on GameCenter.

Once downloaded and fired up, the tutorial level presented itself and I went straight in. Now I have to be honest and say my initial feeling was the game didn’t live up-to the hype of the trailer and any of the aforementioned TD games. It wasn’t lacking in colour or polish, but then neither are the Sentinel games, so why should I play this I thought? But my job here is to review and look at it objectively, if I had never played a TD game before I would have been amazed at the gorgeous graphics, the story and the audio which sounds like the bastard child of the Prodigy and John Williams (Star Wars), in fact the whole package was pretty promising. But on the other hand, not anything original.

The game mechanics follow that of most TD games – protect and defend your base from the onslaught of the enemy by strategically setting up towers (weapons). Each type of tower have certain strengths and weakness and you need to work out the effectiveness against different enemies. Now after playing Spice Invaders for about half an hour, I realised I may have been a bit unfair in my first judgement, the developers had ’spiced’ things up a little (sorry) with the multiplayer option. Finally I could pit myself and my defences against random strangers and friends (on Crystal, Chillingo’s network). It helps to get a bit of practice in 1 player mode first before jumping in, as well upgrading your towers and levelling up you character (pirate), as when I first went in, I was pitted against 3 other players all of which seemed to have better weapons, and as a result I was soon out of the game.

I haven’t managed to unlock the co-op option in multiplayer yet, so currently my battles consist of fighting 1-3 other players depending on how many people are online, but that’s more than enough to keep me occupied for now. Essentially it’s the same game as 1 player, defend your base from the enemy waves, although now there are potentially 3 sets of enemies to defend and destroy. Tactics play a huge part, especially a battle with the full 4 players as you can channel the enemies to other player’s base in the hope that they die first. If you survive the 14 or so waves or alternatively destroy all the other players first you are victorious and are awarded experience points and ‘spice‘ which acts as the in-game currency.

This brings me neatly along to the in-app payments. The game is free of course and you can play along fairly well without buying spice from the Spicery: 50sp for 69p to 1800sp for 13.99. However, to fast track your success or at least to equip yourself quickly with the best towers/weapons, purchasing spice is a luxury if you can afford it. You might also want to pay the £1.99 to remove the ads (yep I’m afraid so) and get a healthy portion of spice as well. However, the ads don’t appear too frequently and when they do, it’s only for a few seconds before you can skip it, personally it’s not a problem. All this said, I don’t agree with astronomical IAPs such as the £13.99 charge, there should be a cap of about a five or six for games like this, or the publishers should just charge £1.99 for the game but this is another discussion and about the freemium model and IAPs.

Overall, a great looking game, especially on the iPad with well composed sounds and a good game engine which makes Spice Invaders enjoyable and very playable. The IAP’s purchases could do with an overhaul to make this closer to a 5-star game but the multiplayer option definitely makes this a game worth investigating.

For those of you interested in the art and development of Spice Invaders, I recommend reading the On-5 blog.

Spice Invaders, 1.02
Developer: Chillingo Ltd © On–5 (9+)
Price: FREE

Spice Invaders, 1.02
Developer: Chillingo Ltd © On–5 (9+)
Price: FREE

There’s a new Chief of Police in town, and he’s put a ban on dogs, ordering them all to be captured! It’s your task to outrun those pesky cops and evade capture, whilst trying to rescue as many of your doggy pals as you can. Along the way you’ll need to eat food, collect coins, complete missions, and do all you can to avoid capture!

You’ll begin playing as Steve the Golden Retriever, collecting coins as you go which can later be spent on various items in the store. Unlock new dogs, collect custom clothing, unleash super power-ups, and call on the mysterious Big Dog for help!

KEY FEATURES
• Simple one-handed tilt-based controls
• 7 different dogs to unlock and customise
• Unlock additional bonus levels, power-ups, and Big Dog attacks by completing missions
• 90 unique missions
• Stunning HD graphics
• Game Center + OpenFeint leaderboards and achievements to compete with your friends
• Easy to learn but difficult to master, you’ll be coming back again and again!

Off The Leash, 1.0
Developer: Big Pixel Studios (4+)
Price: FREE

Score: Currently ranked, Distance – 1968m / Score 361300

The monsters appear from the right of the screen and you must destroy them before they reach the left egde of the screen by tapping on the blocks overhead to release them. The blocks appear attached to a chain which is constantly moving, similar to a conveyor belt. Thankfully, you are able to control the speed of the chain by tilting the device. To keep things interesting there are different monsters, some land based and some that can fly, so you have to keep on eye on them, while at the same time solving mini puzzles as each level is categorised into one of 3 battle modes: ‘Build the Wall’, Collect Blocks and Survive. These are all self explanatory from their titles, so I want go into them, but this really does make for a fun and interesting game.

Before dipping into the action, you need to first get past the fairly extensive tutorial, this might prove a slight barrier for causal gamers who want to jump in and start playing within a matter of seconds. I’m not sure if there is away to avoid this but I do hope people give it a try, as it has the potential to be as popular as Angry Birds. There are a few other niggles holding it back that, one of which is the menu screen, it’s slightly confusing. I understand that using the ‘chain’ as the graphical interface leads to the menu structure used but I think this could be simplified. Also, the icons could be slightly more polished, in fact the entire game could do with a slight graphical makeover to bring it up a notch and make it a superb game.

Be warned Blocks Hurt! is very challenging, it took me a couple of hours to complete the first scenario, however, this is a refreshing change as I think some casual games are becoming too easy. I’m hoping a future update will bring another scenario.

The audio is a bit hit and miss, but have no fear you can modify the options in the audio settings. The voice over is very humorous and the general sfx sounds good, so I leave these on, unfortunately the music can be a little distracting and the audio for the chain does get a bit grating, so I leave these unchecked. None of this effects the game play – it’s only a minor point.

Blocks Hurt! is a must have for fans of tower defence and matching blocks. Overall a fun, original game that is worth every penny.

Blocks Hurt!, 1.0
Developer: Luca Giusti. (9+)
Price: 69p