Another vampire themed adventure game here for you folks – Vampire Origins from IceHill Games and published by Chillingo is set to be released in the app store real soon.

Here is the description from Chillingo:

Vampire Origins is a hot new 3D shooter, an isometric adventure title coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The game pits Dracula’s arch-rival Van Helsing against legions of underworld creatures. If you fancy Gothic adventures paired with intense fighting, Vampire Origins will boil the blood in your veins.

If you’ve ever played Diablo, you’ll feel right at home with Vampire Origins. A simple battle system ditches complex inventory and weaponry in favor of a point-and-click approach of attacking creatures by tapping them. It may sound boring on paper, but the fast-paced action balances things out. Fast, very agile enemies leave you little time to ponder your next move or marvel Gothic architecture. Although Vampire Origins is an adventure, with some puzzles and lots of exploration, action and killing enemies come before everything else.

And here is a gameplay video:

Looks like a solid game that is action packed. We can’t wait to hear more about it. Here are some 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

Rolando is a puzzle adventure game developed by HandCircus and published by ngmoco:).

The Game

Reflecting light off of a rotating platform is quite a pain.

Rolando is a fun puzzle/adventure game that uses the accelerometer and touch screen features of the iPhone and iPod Touch. You control most Rolandos by tilting the device to make them move from around. You use the touch screen for menu navigation, interacting with objects in the game like elevators and hinges, and selecting Rolandos. You can also make the Rolandos jump by flicking your finger up on the screen. Occasionally, some Rolando commandos will be under your control, these spiky ball stick to surfaces and jump to other surfaces on your command. You learn the basics through tutorial levels, but the basics do take quite some time to get down.

Your goal is to get a certain number of Rolandos through a door. Sometimes, this can be simple, but at times it is actually much harder than it seems. For each stage there are medals for beating the stage within the time limit and collecting all the gems. This is great because it gives the perfect challenge for each stage and increases replay value. Though you don’t get a medal, it is fun to try to do all of them in one go. One of the best features of Rolando is iSave, essentially an anti-rage-quitting tool that will save your spot should you leave the game, for any reason.

You can change gravity, on some stages, by rotating the device on it’s sides.

My biggest complaint of Rolando is that it has been done before. If you haven’t played LocoRoco, let me get you up to speed. It looks, feels, and plays exactly like Rolando, minus the iPhone/iPod Touch features. The features added for the iPhone/iPod platform does make, obviously in my opinion, Rolando a better game, but it bothers me that they are so similar, like HandCircus and ngmoco:) were not trying to make an original game.

Graphics

Rolando’s graphics are acceptable. The game is very charming in every sense, such as the pop-up book level selector, the colors, and the Rolando’s themselves, just to name a few. Everything is nicely colored or not colored, like the enemies. It has a good feel about it. I hate to say describe a game like this, but the graphics can best be summed up as cute.

The pop-up level selector is one of many little things that make it charming.

Sound

Like the graphics, Rolando’s sound effects are just as good. There isn’t a whole lot of detail to go into about them, but it is definitely a game to have the sound up all the way, or under 80% of maximum volume if your using headphones. Safety first! The music, though hard to describe, works in perfect harmony with the rest of the game. Once again, I do have to advise playing this game with the sound on.

Additional Comments

Rolando is one game that is hard to put down. Once you get going, it always seems to be, “one more medal” or, “one more stage.” The game is dangerously addicting at best. There is plenty of content through the many stages, both bonus and regular, the medals, and just playing the game to play it. Even if you have played the LocoRoco series, Rolando is still a game worth picking up.

Conclusion

Rolando is the perfect game for anyone looking to get a game for his or her iPhone or iPod Touch. The game is full of content and is just plain addicting. It is quite sad to know that ngmoco:) was planning taking Rolando off the App Store when Rolando 2 came out, but don’t fret, it is still there. With a $5.99 USD price tag, I can easily say it is worth every penny. If you get done with this and are itching for more, be sure to check out Rolando 2 or the LocoRoco games.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Rolando is a good puzzle adventure game that will please anyone who plays it. It has the perfect balance of difficulty, so it will not turn anyone off from it. Rolando is one of the games that should be bought by anyone who has an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Screenshots

Spy Bot Chronicles is an adventure-platformer created by Canadian indie devs IUGO Media Entertainment, part of the Toy Bot franchise.

The Game

Meet Cowboy Bot and General E. Leebot

Spy Bot Chronicles places you in the metal boots of one Spy Bot, buddies with Toy Bot, whom you may have previously met in Toy Bot Diaries, some sort of cowboy Bot, and General E. Leebot. During one of your space escapades, a fella by the name of Thief Bot comes and kidnaps your homefry, Toy Bot, and flies off into hiding in his fortress. You, as the intrepid Spy Bot, are tasked with the job of getting your bumbling fool of a friend back and hopefully steal some of Thief Bot’s phat lewtz. So you jump straight into some side-scrolling, platform-jumping action that you control with two on-screen arrows with a jump button. In addition, you will gain the ability to shoot lasers from your antenna, double jump, and an ability to hack into electronic mainframes scattered throughout the worlds.

The emphasis of Spy Bot Chronicles isn’t on the story, which plays a subtle role in the game, but more on the increasing difficulty of the platforming action as you progress throughout the different levels. Different enemies will be introduced as you take Spy Bot from level to level, but you will only encounter about six or seven different enemies in total throughout the game. There are four zones in Spy Bot Chronicles, with about five-ish levels per zone, as well as some hidden levels that you unlock by finding the hidden terminal in a level and having the correct amount of cogs collected. Sometimes those terminals with the numbers on it don’t unlock hidden levels but instead give you collectibles, which are pretty much just for bragging rights and replayability of the game.

A gift? For me?

Hacking plays a rather large role in Spy Bot Chronicles, activating otherwise inert objects and having them move or spin or boost you to other places, as well as opening doors. At the end of each zone, there is a castle level that has you testing all of your abilities and knowledge gained from that zone, ending it off with a spinning puzzle where you must match the spinning objects with the objects on the outer ring, as pictured. There is only one boss match at the castles, and that occurs in the fourth zone, otherwise known as Thief Bot’s fortress of solitude. Of course, I’m not going to tell you how to beat him, but it was fun discovering how! Spy Bot Chronicles is a way fun platformer from start to finish.

Graphics

Look at all them pretty zones.

Spy Bot Chronicles is a very well polished game in both gameplay and graphics, the art style is similar to that of Toy Bot, most important bots will be floating spheres with un-attached hands and feet, decked out in some very cool accessories. They have a great bouncing animation while idle that gives them a bit more life, and Spy Bot himself has some very smooth animations. The few enemies that are present in Spy Bot Chronicles are also well animated, but there isn’t much else to say about them because of how few there are.

Sound

Every zone has a different theme, like the forest theme of the first zone, the underground cavern of the second zone, the lava theme of the third zone, and the industrial theme for the fourth and final zone. Spy Bot Chronicles has a soundtrack that fits the theme of each zone pretty darn well, and I am quite amazed at the level of quality behind the sound of the game. Definitely impressive.

And hey, if you don’t want to listen to the great soundtrack, you can start your iPod right from the options, it will shuffle all of your songs for you too!

Additional Comments

If I could complain about anything in the game, it would be about the controls and length of the game. The controls at times were a bit sticky, at times Spy Bot would seem to have a mind of his own and just wander off in a direction where my arrow key would get stuck. Negligible, but when you’re in a fight against two robots chucking bombs at you, you really need to have the most control over your character! Also, the length of the game felt a bit short, I literally finished it in less than two hours, but judging by the Toy Bot series, this will be an episodic type of game. I have no quarrels with that, and I am definitely looking forward to any future updates this franchise may have.

Conclusion

Spy Bot Chronicles is a fantastic game that is well polished, very fun, and has an impressive soundtrack. It may be a short game, but it is one of those games you just can’t put down until you’re done. Loved it from start to finish.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Spy Bot Chronicles is a very well-polished game from IUGO Media Entertainment that is along the same vein as their Toy Bot series, a wonderful side-scrolling action platformer that fun, simple to play, and challenging. One of the best platformers for the iPhone thus far, definitely check it out.

Screenshots

ShapeShape is a cute and nifty little action adventure game made by inXile Entertainment.

The Game

Fly, freedom square, fly!

ShapeShape places you square in the shoes of … well, a square, a square that has lost his family and is searching for them by rolling and floating around through various levels. You make the little fella move around by tapping the screen, and your touch will cause him to repel away from you, which is rather insulting if you think about it, but it does get the job done. You can collect stars as you travel through the level, which will give you additional points. To gain an even greater amount of points, you can also attempt to get one of many bonuses: Time, Flight, First Try, All Stars, and Pain-Free. Time, First Try, and All Stars bonuses are pretty self explanatory. Flight essentially means that you get through the entire level without touching the ground once, and Pain-Free means you didn’t cause your cute little square buddy to come crashing into the ground.

I made you, circles, I made you.

In addition to the single player campaign, you can create your own level set in the fantastic level editor included in the game, share that level set online, and play with the level sets that other people have created. This aspect of the game essentially gives it an unlimited depth, as you can play a huge number of custom level sets available online and compete against other people for highs cores on their level sets. Another nifty feature was the “Race” feature that I didn’t really get to try, but you can connect with someone else playing ShapeShape via Bluetooth, and have a race on who can finish a level fastest.

Graphics

The graphics of ShapeShape are very simple and clean, they aren’t very impressive but they do get the job done. I would also like to add that the expressions of the squares are very cute, and that scored extra points from me.

Sound

This is going to hurt.

ShapeShape has a great upbeat soundtrack in the menus, but it fades away when you start playing the game. The actual sound effects in the game are very upbeat themselves for completion of levels and rather downbeat for running into spikes and other bad things. Obvious, I know, but when a game has sound effects that fit the outcome of your actions, then it gives off a very polished feel.

Additional Comments

The touch controls in ShapeShape are very intuitive, but at times they do feel a little difficult to use. In addition, it would have also been nice to have multi-touch controls for increased speed and accuracy.

Conclusion

ShapeShape is a fun and cute game that has you searching for a little square’s lost family by navigating through a multitude of levels without dying. You will have a lot of fun playing through the single player levels but the real fun comes in when you play all the levels made by other players online, giving the game a huge amount of depth.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
ShapeShape is a cute little action adventure game that has a huge amount of depth, where you can create, share, and play level sets online, competing with others for high scores. Great title for the iPhone, definitely worth checking out.

Screenshots