Turret wars is an action-strategy game from ClickGamer and Sector3.

Having grown up playing a whole lot of Worms games I’m extremely familiar with the turn-based action-strategy genre.  Those games felt great while they were kept in their 2D confines, but as soon as the series made the jump into the third dimension things began to fall apart.  Having that extra direction to worry about in a game that requires such precise aiming presents a whole new set of challenges and problems.  Turret Wars looks to adopt and simplify this same concept, but ends up falling flat.

The A.I. opponents really want you dead

You’ll take control of a stationary turret placed randomly on the map with enemy turrets equally scattered around.  From here you survey the map, find an enemy you want to destroy, take aim, fire, and miss.  You will almost always miss your first few shots because the enemies are all so far away that most of the time you need to look at the tiny little mini-map to make sure that you’re actually pointing in the general direction of something.  Here we see the game’s first major flaw: turrets can’t move.  Since your enemies will never budge and the wind never changes force or direction, once you’ve managed to actually correct your aim so that you hit your target you’ll just hit the fire button over and over until they’re dead. This also works against you since as soon as one of the enemies decides to target you you’ve basically lost.  This is made even more frustrating by the fact that when up against more than one A.I. opponent they will almost always prefer to fire at you than at each other, giving you the impression that the game hates you so very much.  To make matters worse, there are occasionally planes that will fly by and drop bombs on you; bombs that you can’t avoid since you’re rooted in place.  They do give you the ability to try and shoot down the bombers but since they move in real-time, even while you play the game in turn based mode, most of the time they will pass by while it isn’t even your turn.  There are also a bunch of power-ups scattered around the maps, but none of them are really worth wasting a few turns trying to hit.

You can't tell from this screenshot, but the game freezes on this loading screen pretty often

There’s also a real-time mode that essentially removes all of the strategy from the game and replaces it with a mad scramble to aim and mash on the fire button but it really isn’t any more fun to play.  You can choose between four different turret types, each with their own special abilities, however only two of them really stand out.  One of these is a turret whose shot can be nudged left or right while in the air, making it significantly easier to hit your target.  The other turret of note is so overpowered that it breaks the game; after firing your shot you can self-destruct it in mid-air and take the shot over again after correcting your aim, as many times as you need in a single turn.  To counter this, your shots deal slightly less damage, but when you never miss a shot this barely makes a difference since you’ll destroy most enemies before they can even hit you.  There are also several different maps in the game, but aside from one stand-out the majority of them just seem like re-textured versions of the same geometry.

The game is also plagued by numerous bugs.  I’ve already mentioned that the stiff A.I. almost always targets you, but that’s really only the tip of the iceberg.  Around a third of the games that you try to play will end with the game locking up or crashing before it can finish loading. Another problem is that the random placement of turrets means that often there’s one turret that either can’t be hit or can’t hit anyone.

Rings is the only map that really stands out visually

Most of the textures in the game feel flat and bland.  The models are surprisingly well detailed, but this inconsistency with the texture quality gives most things a really strange unbalanced look.  There are a few cool effects like the way your camera follows your shot through the air, however the camera snaps back at the moment of impact so you don’t actually get to see any damage.  There are also some occasional graphics glitches, the most prominent of which is texture clipping on the planes.  Another problem is that your HUD is always so cluttered that attempting to see things in front of you can feel far difficult than it should be.

There’s really only one audio track in the game that loops over and over with a techno beat that suits the style of the game pretty well but it’s such a short piece that it ends up getting repetitive pretty quickly.  You’re also given the option to listen to your own music which I’m sure most people will prefer to use.  Aside from the music the only sounds you’ll hear are some passable explosions and the game’s female announcer whose robotic voice just sounds and pronounces words like a Microsoft Sam, so overall nothing really stands out.

Turn the volume up? To hear what?

Turret Wars really isn’t a good game.  It took a bad concept and somehow managed to make it worse.  While you are given quite a few options to change things up a bit and most of the bugs could eventually be ironed out with a patch, there are just so many poor design choices that it’s almost impossible to enjoy the final package.  This is a game that’s not worth playing no matter how inexpensive it is.

Score

MustTap Score: Broken Tap

Straight up busted! You won't get anything good out of this one.

Bottom Line
Certain aspects of the game might sound fun, but you're better off avoiding this one altogether.

Screenshots

Bust-A-Move is a great adaptation of the arcade classic from TAITO Corporation.

Well this looks familiar.

Have you ever played Bust-A-Move? If your answer was anything but a resounding “Yes!” then shame on you. Bust-A-Move is one of my favourite “shoot-a-bubble-to-pop-other-bubbles” games from back in the day – so much so that I even created the genre of “shoot-a-bubble-to-pop-other-bubbles” in order to describe it.

Well, for the sake of posterity, I will explain it for those who do not know: in Bust-A-Move (or Puzzle Bobble as it is known in North America), you are in control of Bub, a strange lizard creature who shows a strange affection toward brightly-coloured orbs that he then slings upward towards other orbs that are just as brightly-coloured. Bub’s one real objective? Eliminate those orbs that he is so fond of by making sure that orbs of the same colour are touching in groups of three or more.

I'm here to save... that?

Now that is out of the way, we can discuss Bust-A-Move for the iPhone. What’s different from regular Bust-A-Move? Well, let’s start with the controls. You have two options for firing your lovable orbs: drag and shoot, or point and shoot. Drag and shoot has you tapping and holding the firing machine, moving your finger away from said machine while simultaneously aiming, and letting it fly. Point and shoot is even more self-explanatory: tap where you want the orb to go and press the shiny red button to fire it off. Pretty easy, and caters to different styles of play.

The actual objective of the game is that some of your friends are stuck in various worlds for some odd reason, and you have to go through each world and clear out all of the stages contained within – each stage having three rounds that you must clear. Really straight-forward and simple story. Of course, if you’re playing Bust-A-Move for its story, you might want to consider putting your iPhone down and taking a nice long walk.

You also have three game modes: Story mode (as described above), Challenge mode, and VS. mode.

The graphics of Bust-A-Move are very faithful to the original while keeping the quality high enough to be enjoyable for the iPhone. They are very plain and simple with very well drawn and animated sprites and environments. No real complaints on my end – I can’t even make a joke about it!

Like the rest of the game, the sounds are simple and very fitting for Bust-A-Move, the sounds that the original had – bubbles firing off, orbs hitting each other, orbs bouncing off sides – are all the same or touched up for better quality. There is also a nice and subtle soundtrack that is very nice and cheery and fits the environments presented in the game.

Clear!

Overall, Bust-A-Move is a great throwback to the original – the graphics, sound, and gameplay are all very familiar while doing enough to ensure that they all stay crisp and fresh. I’ve sunk a good amount of hours (and so have my friends!) playing Bust-A-Move and we’ve had a blast.

In addition, Taito recently released a great update that adds a store where you can purchase two new game modes: Puzzle mode and Co-op mode. I haven’t really had a chance to try either of them out, but if they are anything like what we currently have in the original game, I’m sure they are amazing.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Bust-A-Move is a very faithful adaptation of the original with its own bit of flavour. Fans of the original and puzzle-lovers will spend hours and hours with this - and you will not be disappointed.

Screenshots

Trak4 is a puzzle game by independent developer Keith Kolmos.

The Game

Here’s a hint, hope this helps!

Puzzle games are a genre especially rife for exploitation on Apple’s OS. Since many such games require no more than a few simple click controls to operate, puzzle games are developed on what’s probably a daily basis. This is no different from the PC, on which you’ve probably seen your parents or other casual gamers clicking away at one among literally millions of mind bending Flash puzzles. Trak4 is one such game: it sacrifices gameplay depth for a nearly nonexistent learning curve.

Puzzles may seem tricky at first.

You’re greeted with the entirety of the gameplay from the get-go, and your objective is simple: manipulate on-screen puzzle pieces to match a pattern flashed to you before the round. Each piece can only be rotated in four ways (no dragging pieces around like an actual puzzle) so you’re really only matching the colors. You’re given some time to complete the “puzzle,” and you’re flashed bits and pieces of the original pattern to help you out in case you get stuck. A round ends when you successfully orient the pieces and click a button telling the game that you’re done.

There’s not much beyond what I have just described, so it should be pretty easy for the reader to tell whether he/she will enjoy the core gameplay. As you successfully match patterns, your score increases, but this isn’t an ambitious enough game to include online leaderboards of any kind.

Solving the puzzles is only satisfying enough.

Graphics

While fancy graphics may be a little beyond the scope of a simple puzzle game, I’m not too impressed by the overall design: menus look very hastily put together and there aren’t any animations to speak of. Seeing the puzzle pieces actually rotate would have added a lot. Popcap games in particular feature great animations despite often having gameplay as simple as Trak4.

Sound

Honestly, you’re better off using the “play your own music” feature of the game, because the game sounds are unimpressive. You have a few sound effects for certain events such as starting a new game or solving a puzzle, then you have one sound for every time you switch a puzzle piece. As you can imagine, this gets very repetitive very quickly.

Conclusion

Trak4 is as straightforward as puzzle games get, and its gameplay can be summarized in a screenshot or in two sentences. More casual gamers might find it a nice and quick distraction, but personally, this really should be a free game.

Score

MustTap Score: Rusty Tap

It works, but I still wouldn't drink from it.

Bottom Line
Trak4 is a puzzle game that will confuse no one except those wondering why you have to give up a dollar to play it.

Screenshots

Sushi Mayhem is a cooking themed puzzle game with a twist from Brain Stain Entertainment.

The Game

Do you like match-3 puzzle games?  Do you like Diner Dash?  Sushi Mayhem sure hopes you do since it’s essentially a mixture of those two basic concepts and it works terrifically.  You play as the young apprentice sushi-maker tasked with mastering all of your grandfather’s sushi recipes so that you can take over the shop when he retires.

Drunken Customers = Happy Customers

The actual gameplay is pretty simple.  You slide ingredients bejewelled-style to try and match up 3 or more of the same type.  Matching 3 only grants you one of that particular ingredient, and you get a bonus ingredient for each additional one in the line.  As you play, customers will begin to line up at the top of the screen and place their various orders.  At the bottom you then select the ingredients that you need for whatever recipe the clients want and hit the big combine button.  The longer it takes you to fill the orders the angrier your clients get, meaning less tips for you.  Thankfully whenever you make your sushi the game will automatically hand it to the angriest customer which is one less thing to worry about for you.  Some customers will occasionally order two servings and it’s very important to realize that they will only pay when their whole order has been filled, meaning that if they leave angrily with only one sushi missing you’ve lost valuable ingredients.  To counter this you are given one bottle of Sake each day that you can give to an angry client to instantly restore all of their happiness.  This really helps you out in a tight spot and unused bottles carry over to the next day.

You’ll get only get a few seconds to prepare before customers start arriving

Each day you will be taught a new sushi recipe and given a sales goal that you have to reach before closing time.  There are 30 different sushi recipes to learn in the game, but to prevent the memorization from getting tedious your restaurant functions on a “daily specials” sort of scheme.  You’ll never really have to remember too many recipes at once and the number and difficulty of the recipes will slowly increase over the course of the game, keeping things pretty challenging and fun throughout. 

There are a few minor flaws in the gameplay that I should point out.  Occasionally you may find that you are severely lacking of a certain type of ingredient and there is absolutely none of it even on the board.  When this happens with the more recipe specific ingredients like tuna or crab it adds a level of challenge, forcing you to analyze your customers wants and use what you have intelligently.  The problem is that this sometimes happens with rice, which is an ingredient for literally everything, forcing you to watch as all of your customers slowly get angry and leave.  The other problem i had was the ending.  After mastering every recipe and earning the ownership of the restaurant the game abruptly ends, giving you your total score and then shipping you back to the main menu where if you want to continue playing you’ll have to start from scratch.  It would have been nice for the developers to include some sort of way to continue with all of the recipes unlocked and random recipes each day.

Graphics

Fun Fact: All the recipes in the game can be used to make real sushi!

The game has a really great cartoonish art-style to it with lots of bright colors and really well drawn sprites.  Each of the different ingredients has a unique shape and color making it easy to quickly spot what you’re looking for in the puzzle.  There are a few places where the images seem like the were drawn slightly smaller than the screen’s resolution and stretched, causing a bit of pixelization, but it’s nothing serious and it doesn’t detract from the fun of the gameplay at all.

Sound

Wait! Don’t leave yet! Your food is almost ready!

Loading up the game for the first time I was exited to hear some absolutely terrific menu music.  The cheery oriental tone seemed to fit the graphical style perfectly.  Now imagine my disappointment when I started my first game and the music cut out completely, leaving nothing but background silence and some occasional blip sound effects.  I agree that most players will probably choose to listen to their own music while playing anyways, but the problem here is that for some bizarre reason the game does everything in its power to stop you from listening to your own music.  You have to select the song beforehand, start a game and then hit play on your music.  On top of that, as soon as you try to enter any sort of menu, be it the game’s pause menu or the music control menu, the music cuts out again.  I found myself bringing up the menu to adjust my volume, having the music stop, closing it and then reopening it to hit play again.  Once you’ve gotten the hang of how to get your music into the game it becomes a bit less frustrating, but still it would have been great for developer Brain Stain Entertainment to better incorporate user’s music into their game.

Conclusion

Sushi Mayhem may not be a perfect puzzle game, but it really comes close.  The gameplay is extremely fun and can be very challenging without becoming tedious, and it has a great art-style that just fits.  It has a few unfortunate sound problems, and some continuation of the main game would be great, but all-in all this is a terrific puzzle game that should not be missed.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Sushi Mayhem is fun and challenging, looks great, and is great for a quick game to play. Unfortunately, once the game is done, it's done! And it's hard to listen to your own music.

Screenshots

TriColor is a match-3 puzzle game developed by MobiRate and published by ClickGamer.

Gameplay

Let’s face it, just about everyone in the world has played at least a few hours of Tetris, and at least one kind of puzzle game that challenged you to match 3 of the same colored shapes.  There may be hundreds of different versions of each available, but no matter how many different ones we play the mechanics have never really evolved that much.  This is where TriColor comes along.  The developers over at MobiRate decided to go the Reese’s cups way and got their match-3 game all up in their Tetris, with a result that works surprisingly well.

Gravity doesn’t work this way!!!

The premise is quite simple, colored blocks fall in small groups of 1 to 3 arranged in various Tetris-style shapes and you must rotate and place them to try and line up 3 in a row horizontally vertically or diagonally.  Just like its great grandfather Tetris, there is no physics system in play here, meaning that if one block from the falling piece comes to rest somewhere the entire thing stops as well, even if the block that touched formed a line.  The result is pieces that just sort of hang there in mid air confusingly and force you to try and navigate your pieces around and under them.  This effect gets even weirder if you can manage to eliminate some blocks underneath a floating one since it will drop down by the number of blocks removed from under it, but still keep the same floating distance.  While this can be pretty annoying for the first few games, I found that after a short time I was becoming accustomed to it and able to place my blocks to minimize floatage, so i guess you could say that this is just part of the game’s learning curve.  You can also set off chain reactions and rack up score multipliers by either lining up two sets of 3 at once or having falling blocks line up with 3 other blocks when they land, but more often than not this will be pure luck.

You are given two different methods of controlling the game, either with the on-screen buttons or by using your finger to drag the piece.  Let me establish this right here: You should not under any circumstances even attempt to play the game any other way than with the buttons.  The problem with the sliding controls is that they are too imprecise for a game like this.

Thank you TriColor, I do feel good!

More often than not I found myself dropping a piece when I tried to move it to the side, or moving it to the side and then dropping immediately if my finger slid down just a tiny bit, resulting in a few too many ragequits (which the home button is all too good at).  The button controls work excellently however, you have buttons at the bottom for left and right movement, tap the board to rotate and hit another button to drop.  Playing it this way feels exactly like playing classic Tetris and really helps you get a handle on the game.

Graphics

This game has a very simple look to it.  As I said earlier, you have basic tetris style block arrangements and as far as the pieces go that’s pretty much all there is to it.  Whenever you line up three or more blocks there’s a little lightning animation before your blocks explode.  You’ll also get some encouraging words of “GOOD” and “EXCELLENT” to give you a little pat on the back when you set off bigger chain reactions.  The addition of 3 different theme packs to choose from is a nice touch but it one of them is just a recolored version of the other and doesn’t actually change any shapes.  All in all, the graphics get the job done but won’t really blow your mind.

Different styles and the ability to make custom soundracks add some depth to the game

Sound

Much like the graphics, the sound design in this game is quite simple.  As you play TriColor you’ll be treated to a cheery little background tune that really fits with the style of the game.  The other sound effects are all similarly cheery, but are not at all obtrusive if you want to listen to your own music.  Speaking of your own music, TriColor has a really great “make your own play-list” feature built in.  It’s really easy to quickly choose a few songs for the game to cycle through while you play, and since that’s what almost everyone wants to do it’s great that the tools are built right in.

Conclusion

Overall TriColor might have a few strange design choices like the lack of gravity, but it really is a pretty good puzzle game, and at only $0.99 you can’t really complain.  I would definitely recommend this to anyone who’s a fan of Tetris or match-3 games and wants to try something new.

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
A pretty original mixture of two very familiar concepts that despite its few flaws is definitely worth playing

Screenshots

Gold Keeper is a simple new arcade game which is guaranteed to steal a few minutes of your time, so long as your gold doesn’t get stolen first. Developed by iDiwo Team.

The Game

Gold Keeper is designed as an arcade style beat’em up that puts you in the shoes, er, hooves of a demon looking to keep his gold from the greedy hands of the local human village. Sounds backwards, doesn’t it? In this case it’s not, and that’s part of the charm of the game, but we’ll get to that later.

Don’t think you want to be standing there, little buddy.

After putting an emulated joystick and single button in the corners of your horizontal iPhone, the game begins. The entirety of the game takes place in a single square room with holes in each corner, and your gold in the middle. Your demon is free to roam wherever he pleases, and your single button executes his basic attack. From the corners of the screen, two types of villagers will enter: armored and unarmored. The unarmored villagers go straight for the gold and then attempt to leave from the hole they came in, and the armored villagers are in it for your blood. The object of the game is to kill the villagers before they can leave with any of your gold, or before they kill you themselves. Your health is dictated by a single bar on the left end of the screen, and another bar, your special attack gauge, is on the right. The latter is done by pressing a large orange button next to the special attack gauge once it fills up, and when performed your demon will unleash a single-hit kill move to all enemies in a certain radius of you. Villagers will occasionally drop one of two items which are only meant to refill those two meters. That’s it. Sounds simple enough, right? Well it should, because this game isn’t meant to be complicated – just mindless arcadey fun.

As the game progresses, things will gradually get more difficult. More villagers will spawn at a time, and every minute or so a message will appear stating that villagers have gotten stronger. By this, they mean that they’ll either be hitting you harder or be able to take more hits than before. This increase in difficulty is offset by the fact that your demon gets powered up over time, as well. After a few minutes he is equipped with a hammer – giving him more reach and more power – and a few minutes after that is given a hatchet. The hatchet is the final weapon you receive, and certainly makes killing villagers that much more bloody and satisfying. However, from that point on the difficulty will rise exponentially, as you aren’t given anymore power-ups to balance the rising power of the villagers.

As a game with such little depth, it’s apparent that it’s only goal is to supply the player with short time wasting sessions, and I can proudly say that the game achieves this gloriously. While you won’t come away from this gameplay reflecting on how great it was, it will certainly distract you from that short-but-smelly bus ride or final stretch of Philosophy 101.

Graphics

Oh snap, owned.

Gold Keeper goes the extra mile in terms of one dollar games and provides you with fully 3D polygonal visuals. This is a nice surprise, and the overall experience benefits greatly from it. Simple arcade games can suffer if what you’re looking at isn’t visually appealing. Fortunately, this isn’t the case with Gold Keeper. It’s color palette may not pack a punch (the colors you’ll be seeing are mostly gray and red), the art is inspired, and the visuals and movement are smooth. Blood spews from every villager you murder, and the special attack actually comes with a nice explosion effect. The terrain of the cave has a great texture that stands out and gives great realism to the otherwise comical demon endeavor. Another nice surprise was in the animation work of the demon. Even though he only has one basic attack, the developers put in multiple animations for this attack (each with their own range and hitbox properties) so that the game was just a little less repetitive. Little additions like this are much appreciated, as it shows that even though the price of the game is dirt cheap, there was some love and effort put into it that makes it feel like a more expensive one.

Sound

A single track fills up the game’s soundtrack, and while it’s not a stand-out piece of orchestral work, it’s simple, and works well with the tone and style of the gameplay. The ability to listen to your own music while slicing villagers for minutes on end would’ve been nice, but this feature unfortunately isn’t available (I still wait for the day that this becomes a common feature…grr). Sound effects do the job: slicing a villager with a hatchet sounds like slicing a villager with a hatchet. Unfortunately, the game’s biggest downfall is in the voice of the demon. I’ll keep this simple: I don’t want to hear my character reciting a famous Joker line from The Dark Knight every time I kill someone. There’s a lot of killing going on in this game, and hearing those words repeated over and over again almost made me turn my entire phone off. Fortunately, we have the option to turn just the sound effects or music off if we desire, so this drawback can be remedied at a cost.

Additional Comments

Simplicity never means perfection, and Gold Keeper is no different. The game does suffer from some frustrating flaws that give the game difficulty that I don’t believe was intended by the developers. One example of this is the fact that the player must always keep a keen eye on his health bar, as it’s very difficult to tell when your demon actually receives damage. There is no consistent sound or visual cue that represents health depletion aside from the meter itself, and this often left me surprised at how far down my health was without even being aware of it. The second and more concrete example is the useless special attack. The special attack is meant to work as a means of clearing large amounts of enemies that are close to you for tactical or desperate means, but it doesn’t work for either because the attack takes about 10 seconds to come out. All the while, the enemies that are close to you are hacking away at your health, and even if you manage to kill them before you die, you’ll be lucky to recover even a fraction of that from a health drop. On the bright side, if you manage to hold your own and believe you’ve accomplished a great feat, the game does offer worldwide leaderboards, so if you’re looking to turn this game into more than what it’s meant to be, you’ll at least be able to show off your talents.

Conclusion

Minor flaws aside, Gold Keeper is a pleasant (or should I say devilish) game which holds firm it’s arcade principles and uses them to deliver a solid experience that will easily kill time…and villagers. iPhone games are already in the thousands, and out of those thousands, it’s simple, casual games like Gold Keeper that show the virtues of mobile gaming. For your 99 cents, you could do a lot worse.

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
Gold Keeper is a devilish game that has a light-hearted charm. It's simple arcade gameplay is executed well enough to justify the price. Pick it up if you want to kill ten minutes with something new.

Screenshots

geoDefense is a tower defense game developed by Critical Thought Games.

The Game

The Vortex tower can blow up to kill almost everything with its Rainbow of Doom.

geoDefense is another tower defense game for the iPhone and iPod. By now, most people are aware of the concept behind tower defence, but just in case: You build towers to kill enemies, known as creeps, before they get to the end point. There are two different types of tower defense games: the ones that let you block creeps and create paths for them to navigate, and those that have pre-designed paths for the creeps. geoDefense falls in the latter category. The gameplay of geoDefense consists of you placing and upgrading towers. It controls well, but in reality it is hard to screw gameplay that simple up. Each of the stages consists of a different path that is diverse enough to not feel like it was copied and pasted with a little change.

Though the game may seem simple and easy, geoDefense requires much strategy to win. Placement is key in the game. For each tower you want maximum exposure to the creeps. Sometimes this means putting a laser tower at the end of a lane or a blaster tower as close to as many lanes as possible. After getting a good placement strategy down, you need to get a good balance of upgrading towers and buying new ones. It doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but each level will, most of the time, challenge you to learn how to beat it. Unfortunately, this results in a focus on trial and error gameplay. This can be overlooked, but in geoDefense, it takes away from the gameplay experience.

Graphics

The graphics in geoDefense feel like they are pulled straight from Geometry Wars. Everything from the grid background to the different types of creeps. When the creeps die, they explode into a brilliant firework display full of colors. This is a good trade off from the simple puff of smoke, or nothing at all, that other games use. Though the graphics are simplistic, they are very well done.

Sound

geoDefense does not have too much sound diversity in the game. There is the basic menu sounds, the various shooting sounds, the creep death sound, and the countdown sounds. The sound isn’t bad, but like the graphics, they are very simplistic. The nice part is that you can listen to you songs while you play the game, and you do not have to worry about the soundtrack going while you do so.

Failure IS an option in geoDefense.

Additional Comments

Chances are that if you are a tower defense fan, you have played this game before. For the newcomers to this genre, it is easy to recommend this as an entry level game to play. It isn’t perfect, but it will give a better idea for what good tower defense games are than most that are out on the iPhone and iPod.

Conclusion

geoDefense is the best fixed course tower defense game I have played for the iPhone so far. This being said, its competition does not give much of a fight. [Editor's Note: Star Defense could give it a run for its money.] Sometimes the game gets old, but it is a very good tower defense game nonetheless. This game should be on your Application list, if not on your device, if you are a fan of TD or strategy games.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
geoDefense is a solid tower defense game for the iPhone and iPod Touch that can occasionally become boring and old, but with bright and colourful graphics, is definitely one of the better tower defense games available.

Screenshots

Jules Verne’s Return to Mystery Island is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Microids and published by Chillingo.

The Game

Return to Facepalm Island

You wake up face down on the beach, sand in your nostrils and the taste of sea water in your mouth. Wait a minute, this isn’t Gilligan’s Island. Of course not, you’re smack dab in the middle of Jules Verne’s Return to Mystery Island for the iPhone/iPod Touch, and you are taking control of Mina, a sailor who finds herself stranded on an island somewhere, and she is hungry. Really. You start the game off by scrounging up materials you find on the beach so you can regain the strength to move some logs that are blocking your path into another area. To do so, you have to gather up the materials to make a fire, some food, and a strong stomach because all you can really find are some assorted seafood and a dead porcupine.

I know, I’ve made the game sound utterly thrilling, but there is a certain level of depth evident in Return to Mystery Island. You will find so many items that it just becomes an encumbrance to be holding them all, but many of them do combine with one another or interact with the environment in some way. For example, in the beginning of the game, you find a metal plaque. Must have been some useless award that was given out, because clearly you don’t care what it was used for, as you combine it with a rock and sharpen it into a knife. You can then take this knife and cut down a vine near the logs blocking your path for some thin rope, or on the grass to get some wheat grain, or on those monkeys throwing rocks at you for a free meal. Okay, I was just joking on the last one, please don’t send PETA after me.

Oh great, I’ve got crabs.

One of my real gripes about Return to Mystery Island is the inventory. Sure, you have multiple pages of inventory space available to you, but if you need to combine items on separate pages together, you’re going to have to place it into your hand slot, scroll over to the desired page, and drop it onto the item. Fortunately, they have a combo bar above the items themselves, making it so you only have to fumble with the pages once!

Graphics

Return to Mystery Island has wonderful graphics that are beautifully rendered on the iPhone. On my iPhone 3GS, looking around in this wonderful scenery was smooth as butter and I could not complain. The environments are very lush, colourful, and the animations are all very smooth. The graphics are the strongest aspect of Return to Mystery Island and they definitely do not disappoint. There are also some drawn portions of the game, such as story cut-scenes or when you combine two items successfully, which are great additions.

Sound

Sideshow Bob would be proud.

The musical sound track of Return to Mystery Island is wonderful – a subtly oriental feeling about it that fits the environment perfectly. If I were to complain about anything at all, it is that it loops quite a bit, and after a long session of trying to wrack your brain on what to do next, it can get annoying. The sound effects are great, delivering a very crisp and distinct sound.

Conclusion

Jules Verne’s Return to Mystery Island is a wonderful point-and-click adventure game that has wonderful graphics, great sound, and deep and challenging gameplay that will keep you playing for hours. Fans of the genre and fans of Jules Verne novels should definitely check it out.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Jules Verne’s Return to Mystery Island is a very faithful and well done adaptation of the game onto the iPhone and iPod Touch, very nifty little point-and-click adventure game that sports beautiful graphics and music. A thinker, a challenge, and if you’re into these games or a fan of the series, you should consider buying it.

Screenshots

Cube Runner is an action game written by Andy Qua.

The Game

Avoid the colored blocks at all costs. Because! They’re blocks!

As an older game in the iPhone’s ever-expanding library, Cube Runner is one among a wave of many that use the phone’s tilt functionality, a feature undoubtedly included with games in mind. Nowadays, “tilt games” are far from ubiquitous, and this fact would lead one to assume that customers have gotten over the idea of rocking their devices back and forth to play. Cube Runner, however, is far from gimmicky and is a solid example of a good tilt game.

Basically, you are in control of a ship or an airplane or something else that an arrow might represent. Yes, the game’s graphics are simplistic enough that your in-game avatar is all but an arrow. Your task is to guide this arrow ship through a zone of obstacles, which happen to all be squares. Your ship/arrow/aircraft moves at a constant rate while your tilting turns you left and right, allowing you to weave back and forth through the squares. Each “level pack” consists of a semi-organized placement of squares along the “track,” and the game ships with three: easy, medium, and hard.

Seems like I have crashed into a wall and disintegrated. Oh well.

There is an intended learning curve to the game, especially to someone new to the idea of tilt games. A new player will undoubtedly die at least the first few times through, and the fact that you have to repeat from the beginning every time can be a source of frustration. The controls are fair, but rely on the often imprecise accelerometer. As such, it’s hard to say whether anyone can adjust to the gameplay.

Graphics

“Minimalist” and “industrial” are putting it one way, but I prefer to call it lazy. The graphics consist of box, box, box, box box, box, and your space ship. Or rather, your triangle. Meanwhile, I appreciate that the game maintains a high frame rate, but boxes spawn into your view way too close. While this particular flaw might be a design decision to keep the difficulty up, would it really have hurt to add a few textures here and there?

Sound

The game has one musical track that plays for the duration of your current life, with no sound effects to distract you other than the one when you crash into a box and die (how would there be any? you’re just navigating through textureless squares, after all). I’m a fan of music in games, especially music that befits the game, and so I actually like the track in Cube Runner, if only for its techno influences that match the game’s visual style.

Conclusion

Cube Runner is a fun little game, and while I wouldn’t quite call it addictive, gamers will surely feel the need to fine tune their tilt skills a bit more every time. I would probably like to see a game with a higher budget with Cube Runner’s gameplay, but for the very reasonable price of $0, I don’t think you can go wrong. If there’s one feature that I would have included, it would have been online leaderboards – I need to show people how far I made it on Hard!

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
Cube Runner is a nice and simple tilt game with which to pass the time on train rides, but gamers expecting anything more should look elsewhere.

Screenshots

Hover Poker is a multi-player poker game developed by Jormy Games and published by Clickgamer.

The Game

You’re sitting at the poker table, you take a look at your cards and decide that you could definitely take the hand. You raise $100, take a breath, and look around. Your opponents are analyzing your every facial expression and your every gesture for any sign that you are bluffing. You pretend to nervously look away and your opponent immediately jumps on the chance to call your raise. Perfect, you’ve got them right where you want them, so you decide to take a sip of your soda and check the time. You’ve been playing Hover Poker this entire time! Your opponent? Your buddy, sitting right next to you.

You really are surrounded by your opponents, but they are more than likely your friends, as Hover Poker lets you essentially play multi-player poker with the same device, passing it around for different turns. All cards are hidden, and when it is your turn you simply touch and hold on the two peek buttons to take a look at your hand. There is a peek counter, which is a great touch, so should the counter not be zero when it is your turn and the device is passed to you, go ahead and punch whomever just passed it to you in the arm – they looked at your cards! All the usual rules of poker apply, small and big blinds pay their antes automatically, best hand wins, and you can fold, call, or raise.

The user interface could definitely use some improvement. When you wish to check, you are forced to hit the “Call” button, which logically makes sense but should definitely change to a “Check” button as to not confuse others. In addition, when raising your bet, you are given the choice between the more and less button which works in increments of $10, or the slider which lets you increase your bet much quicker but inaccurately. Lastly, going all-in is quite annoying when you have a larger amount of chips on hand, would suggest an “All-In” button that would make it much easier!

Graphics

The graphics behind Hover Poker are nothing special, they are clear and they work, cannot really complain about it because I wouldn’t expect poker to have extraordinary graphics.

Sound

The verbal cues that the in-game announcer gives you are very helpful in letting you know what the actions of the previous players have been and whose turn it is. There is no other music present in Hover Poker, but that is to be expected.

Conclusion

Hover Poker delivers everything that a multiplayer, one device, portable poker game advertises: quick and simple games of poker that can be played up to six people. There really isn’t much more to it other than that, and a single player mode or an online multiplayer mode would be great additions.

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
Hover Poker delivers exactly as advertised: a quick and portable way to play poker with your friends, but not much more. The user interface could use some improvements and a single player and online mode would be great additions. Worth taking a look at for poker fans.

Screenshots