Be Excellent To Each Other

Bad Piggies is free.

Sid Meier's Pirates is 69p.

Never played it before and it's pretty enjoyable.

I do like this Bad Piggies. It's, fortunately, fack all like Angry Birds but is a rather ace Build-Your-Own motor/plane/airship etc from rudimentary blocks and gears and, er, stuff.

Anyone tried Earn to Die?
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/earn-to-die/id554937499?mt=8

Bizarrely compelling scrolling driving game, sharing similarities with Extreme Road Trip. Twist: you're in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland (ZOMG quelle surprise) and you have to tool up your vehicle using cash earned in each round, as you bounce along the landscape smashing through zombies.

I'm on day 80 so far, onto the third location. Sure I'm not doing terribly well, but keep finding myself drawn back to the game in between thrashings at the hands of Mr C on the thoroughly excellent Letterpress (get it if you've not). https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/letterpress-word-game/id526619424?mt=8

I'm not sure why I'm enjoying Earn to Die so much, because in terms of gameplay, I often feel I'm doing little more than holding down the accelerate button (though the necessary addition of a boost mount changes things up a little). But compelling it is. It has a pleasing cartoon aesthetic and zombies run along and hang onto your car like fleshy flies, which makes me feel better about driving through Catford in real life.

fans of Super Hexagon could do worse than try the utterly lovely Pivvot

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/pivvot/id664416929?mt=8

It's less of the relentless mind-mash that Super Hexagon is, but shares similar dynamics. And looks like it's been designed especially for iOS7, if you like that kind of thing (which you probably don't). Three thumbs up!

TWO QUID!?

I like the Brain Training rip off Luminosity. It's free and good. It also tries to make you buy a years subscription to the web based version for £60. Hilarious. Just play the phone games each day.

I miss having anything as good as Brain Training on the phone.

ahem, £1.99. Which admittedly is a bit toppy, so worth waiting for a drop. But it's still only the cost of a ginsters pastie from a petrol station, half a pint of mild in That London etc.

My grandmother has played Brain Training every single day since she got her DS with the exception of when she went in for her last hip op and was too scared that someone would pinch it, and then she got people to take it in for a couple of hours so she could play

I'm sure it was free last week.

Did I miss a memo? Is that a lot of money now? Maybe I'm confused because I can't seem to buy lunch at Subway for less than £4.

It's all relative. The cost is infinitely higher than it was: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/09/toda ... o-and-more

Sure, it's all relative to everything else I buy, which suggests £2 isn't a lot of money. That's less than a pint, less than a coffee, less than two Cokes. It's not nothing but it's not a lot either.

I'm comparing it to its own cost.

Where do you buy your cokes, by the way?

That wasn't actual outrage at the cost, y'know. In actual fact, I purchased it although I'm not overly keen on it to be honest. Nice stylings, music and effects, but it hasn't got that 'one more go-ness' that I got from Super Hexagon. Might be the music is too relaxed whereas I'd prefer some thumping techno ( or whatever) to get the glands secreting when I'm playing one of these types of games.

£2 is a premium price for an iOS game anyhoo.

Apart from all the £5 games.

And the £10 ones. It's still a premium price notwithstanding higher prices.

Ignoring the toy throwing over the tiny price of the game, (especially as I got it for free at launch) I'll give it a mini-review.

Just played it on my commute this morning and completed Voyage mode (and so unlocked extreme-voyage).

It's a great concept, with great visuals ruined by a terrible game design choice. Basically you have to rotate (pivot - geddit?) your dot around as it heads down a track to avoid oncoming obstacles.

There are 20 odd levels. Every other level is a mix of all the obstacles to date and you have to avoid them. So far so good. But then every inbetween level is a new obstacle repeated 10 or so times.

It basically trains you in how to avoid the new obstacle then adds it to the mix.

On paper sounds like great design. And it's a brilliant way to teach the game, but a terrible way to play the game.

I finished Voyage in one sitting and started expert mode assuming that Voyage was basically a tutorial. But, nope, expert plays exactly the same way.

Haven't played endless mode. Which may save it.But I'm doubtfull.

I feel you might be doing Subway wrong.

I agree with Dr Lave. Perhaps Voyage should have been tucked away somewhere as Training Mode.

And yet for someone with spazzy hands like me, it took me several days to get through Voyage, and I can't get past about 40 seconds on Endless, so it's pitched quite correctly for me.

I'm happy for my review to be flawed if it turns out I'm amazing.

But I find that doubtful.

Played Super Hexagon Russell? May that have helped me?

Indeed I have, I'm sure you can see my woeful score on the Gamecenter leaderboard.

Completed in one sitting? I'm definitely in the Mr Russell camp (Camp Russell?) of spazzy hands. Still pootering along in Voyage, not seen expert yet. Perhaps the Voyage setting should have been named Divot instead.

This is weird, normally I hug the other end of the bell curve.

It took about 25mins to complete voyage and I died maybe once or twice per level on average. The way it taught you really clicked with me.

I think a case can be made that the moment you make a tutorial you've failed at game design. There's a brilliant core of a game here and they blew it.

It's like if Super Hexagon let you practise each individual pattern. Yeah I would be better at it, but I would be having less fun.

Dungeon Master has had a big old update so that (a) it's playable and (b) the original Atari ST/Amiga graphics are back! Yay! Awesome! Delight! D-lite! Groove is in the heart! Groove machine! Rise of the machines! Rise of the robots! Transformers are robots! In disguise! Unicorn! -Cron! Autocorrect! Whatever!

Just began a second run through HOME and watched a VHS tape. The sound effects are just spec-tac-u-lar. Well, that might be a bit much, but they are absolutely perfect in this game.

If you get the dire 12 Days of Xmas from the AppStore, you'll get the sublime Rayman-something-something today. FOR FREE.

It looks just like, well, every other version ever released and has the ace music and sound FX! Yay! Get it. Get it now.

The last time I gave a Full Lave Gold Standard Recommendation to a game on iOS was Super Hexagon. Which is, as we all know, a perfect game.

After 45 mins with 'Threes!' I'm pretty certain I've another FLGSR.

It. Is. Phenomenal.

If your a maths geek, then one of the ways, maths is amazing, is that it just exists and rather than being invented, it's discovered.
Tetris, feels like it was discovered. Because it is perfect. Threes! feels the same way. I don't think I can give it higher praise than that. I expect it to be cloned forever. I feel it could have been around forever.

But on top of that it has been polished to a shine, and has preposterously good music (by the guy who scored Mass Effect, strangely)

Launch sale is £1.49, you must purchase it.

P.S. I got halfway through this post and had another game.

Gameplay example:

Oh. That's fun.

987 on my first go.

Charming tutorial style.

3,192 second go.

Yes. This will get played a lot.

And the music is fabulous.

Question: is there a leaderboard?

Yep. Gamecenter.
An my best is only 2664.

That better be beginners luck!

3400ish!

Oooh, I like this, I think my highest score at the moment is in the 2,000s

Malc

Follow CraigGrannell on Twitter if you don't already, he recommends stuff like this all the time.

See also Device 6.

1008, which I was happy about!

Nonsense! I am just awesome!

The fact that my next eight games produced a high score of 1,008 is neither here nor there!

Wowsers. Game centre indicates Mr Russ scored over 9000!

Try pushing the highest number into a corner and keeping it there.

Wow. After reading Russell's tip my next score was 7935!

Russell is a god of this game.

High praise indeed!

I just got lucky though. I'll be down the leaderboard by tomorrow

I am now about Lave's score, I've found what works for me is trying to maximise the number of tiles merging, as well as thinking about colour tile is coming in next.

I am Strangeuni on Game Center if anyone is interested in adding me.

Malc

I rarely think about it much. I just enjoy moving them around.

The most annoying thing is getting a pretty certain feeling about six moves from 'death' that the end is nigh, and not being able to prevent it.

It's certainly a strange story, and I don't quite think we've heard all of it yet, but a voluntary/forced removal from the app store is certainly intriguing.

What's worse is that a load of copycat clones have flooded the market since its removal. One of them charges 69p per 3 lives.

Whatever you may think of Flappy Bird as a game, at least it was entirely free, and the ads were not intrusive.

It looked fairly monotonously boring from a gameplay video I saw, but hardly hateworthy.

It is - it's barely a game at all. But for about a week I couldn't stop playing it. I retired it once I got the platinum medal as otherwise I don't think I would have stopped.