With so many iPhone games coming out seemingly daily, I think it would be cool to have one thread in the Games forum to talk about the ones that bubble to the top. Single game threads are hard to get started for this device and even harder to maintain longer than a day or two.
People can post lists of stuff they like or don’t like and help others find stuff that’s cool. It’s a real jungle inside the App Store!
With that out of the way, for 72 hours from the 14th, this slot car game called Slotz Racer is 99 cents and it’s pretty dang cool.
You race with up to four people on one iPhone, can create your own tracks and the “sim” is pretty decent. I like it!
iphone games I enjoy:
Katamari (post patch)
Centipede
Maze finger
Amature Surgeon
Field Runners
Bejeweled 2
iShoot
iphone games I didn’t enjoy:
Bike or Die 2
Saturday Night Feaver
Pacman
Topple
And thats all I’ve played
What I’ve enjoyed so far:
Jewel Quest 2: match-3 gameplay, goal is to change the playboard squares by having a mach on them, handles the “no-match” better than Bejeweled.
Sally’s Salon: yeah, it’s a girly scenario, but it’s a solid, fast-paced logistics game in the vein of Diner Dash. 50 levels and I ended up wishing it was longer. Never could figure out some of the power-ups, though.
Pretty good:
Scrabble: exactly what you’d expect. AI opponent is tough and far more familiar with the Official Scrabble Dictionary than you.
Booty Blocks: starts off like a lame Tetris/Meteos clone, gets better if you level it up to the challenging stuff.
Solebon: very competent solitaire.
Diner Dash: pretty much unchanged from every other version.
Problematic:
Moto Chaser: motorcylcle racing, but the tilt control is all over the place.
Yahtzee Adventures: main game forces you to play opponents that get too hard after the first couple of levels, I stalled out and played other things. Lacks my favorite variation: Triple Yahtzee.
De Blob: I just don’t like top-down gameplay.
Chocolate Shop Frenzy: another logistics game, but the play style is more along the lines of Cake Mania’s assembly than Diner Dash or Sally’s Salon’s service & throughput. Also has serious game logic issues, combos of the same action (like collecting cash) are required for high scoring, but the next action won’t be triggered until you collect the cash. Ex: you serve two customers, they leave money, you don’t collect it hoping for more customers to rack up the multiplier, but they won’t spawn unless you collect the cash. You’ll stare at the cash until the entire day’s clock runs and you lose. About the nicest art I’ve seen in the genre, though.
Katamari Damacy: all the complaints about slowdown and control are valid, but it’s Katamari, so I bought it.
Not worth the time:
Space Monkey: rotate the monkey to intercept things and avoid hazards. A yawner even for free.
300 Bowl: meh, Flick bowling was much better.
Fuzzle: match-3+ by sliding pieces with your finger, difficulty ramps up way too fast to be enjoyable.
Cube Runner is a cool free game where you pilot a ship through a field of cubes. It starts easy with some randomly placed cubes but eventually they turn into canyon pathways that are pretty cool to navigate. It gets tough pretty quickly at that point and it’s one life and done.
The tilt controls are well done, though.
Puzzle Quest Its better now but it still is not perfect. There is a little slow down here and there but for the most part it is everything I could ask for. Yeah its just Puzzle Quest but it is still a lot of fun.
SimCity Its Simcity and its awesome. Very impressive how they managed to get it all done.
A few that I have really liked:
Edge: A 3d platformer where the main character is a cube. Works very well and reminds me of Rez in its music & presentation.
The Plataeu: Great puzzle game for playing when you only have a few minutes. The game consists of a series of orbs connected by lines on a 2d plane. You move the orbs around to ‘untangle’ them - make it so no lines cross. The game has a good difficulty progression, and can be pretty tricky at times. There’s a free Lite version available to check it out.
Soul Trapper: Interacitve audiobook/choose your own adventure. It’s decent, but suffers from a lack of inter-chapter save. The voice acting is a little cheesy at times. I liked it enough to watch what this company puts out next.
Tap Defense: (FREE) - Solid tower defense game, although some of the pay ones have better presentation.
Orions - Pretty cool fantasy card game that is a tad bit similar to Magic. Was awesome on the PPC side but is still awesome on the iPhone side of things.
Rolando: Sort of like Loco Roco for the iPhone, except I like it better.
Rogue: Yep. It’s Rogue. It’s free. I play this more than any other game on my iPhone.
Dr. Awesome: This is a clever and fun game where you treat people from your contact list.
Galcon is fun.
The Holdem Poker game is pretty good too.
Scrabble. TapDefense (although the bastards added commercials to it) and Katamari are my 3 faves
Besiegement is my favorite iphone game - it has the most features of the tower defense games on the iphone (trophies, a mission mode, both build your own maze a-la desktop tower defense and pre-made mazes). The graphics aren’t as good as Field Runners, my other favorite, but it’s superior in all other ways plus the developer is working on a patch with better graphics.
Labyrinth LE - a great simulator of a metal sphere in a wooden maze. Tried a real-life labyrinth puzzle and I realized I liked the virtual one better, since there are no rough spots in the maze.
Dizzy Bee & Dizzy Bee 2 - awesome physics-based tilting games. Very polished. These games should receive more love from the public, given how fun they are & how much thought went into the gameplay, the controls and UI.
HoldEm - Apple’s poker game. Not the best poker play, but the animations are fun. For instance, the players have tells. Takes up a shitload of space due to all the player animations.
THTouch - cheap, and so worth it. This one’s underpriced. Great hold 'em game (for the price). UI’s a little under-documented, but once you learn it it’s very sleek & fast.
BubbleWrap - my 3 year old loves it
Overpriced:
Monkey Ball - you’d think the accelerometer controls would be perfect, but they’re a bit wonky.
Wurdle is pretty awesome. It’s a standard Boggle-type game, but very fun and is only $1.99. I also play a lot of Bejeweled and Tetris.
Here’s some of mine:
Rolando - Beautiful and charming platform puzzle game, excellent graphics and controls and a good soundtrack. The only caveat is that it will probably undergo a price drop soon (probably when ngmoco releases it’s next game)
Dr. Awesome - Probably my favorite ipod game so far. Essentially Qix with motion controls but it wraps it in an entertaining setting and uses your contact list as patients. Only 99 cents too.
iShoot - I just got done playing a session of this. This is a clone of Scorched Earth and probably the only one I’ve ever played that even comes close to Wendell Hicken’s classic. It’s not perfect but the developer seems intent on updating it (having the top game and making a zillion dollars this month probably will help). $2.99 but worth it.
Burning Monkey Casino - Blackjack, Poker, Slots and a bunch of other games each with a ton of options in an excellent interface. An amazing bargain at 99 cents.
Wow… this looks really promising.
I love Burning Monkey Casino. Thanks for pointing it out.
The relationship between which finger is touching and which arm is grabbing looks a little strange, but if it quickly becomes second nature, then yeah, that looks awesome.