Bight Games just announced that their great puzzle game, Puzzlings, is available for free from the app store!

Here’s a gameplay video:

Grab it, check it out, and check out the other great games in the Bight Games catalogue!

Green Fingers is a fantastic puzzle game from No Monkeys.

Green Fingers is a devilishly simple game: you have five pots with dirt in them, and things fall from the sky and you must re-arrange them to fall in the correct pots. Sounds simple enough right?

It really is simple!

Well… it is! Let me explain it more thoroughly. To start a pot, you must put soil inside. Then you place it in front of the seed bag that you wish to seed it with. Once the pot is seeded, you are then given a sequence of ingredients needed to make it into a full flower: sunshine, water, pollination (Bees!), and whatever additional ingredients come later on.

I was more in awe by how simple the concept was but how well executed it was. Think about it: you’re growing flowers, possibly one of the more mundane tasks ever known to man, and yet with a simple twist of things dropping from the sky, suddenly you have a really addictive game on your hands. Don’t let the screenshots fool you, I can easily get past the level three failure I had, and you should, because the great variety of flowers and ingredients is something you really have to witness. Well, that and the intensity of having to move pots accurately and in a timely manner really keeps you going.

The art style of Green Fingers is another thing to witness – it’s a very polished game! The sprites are all well drawn, cute, and easy to differentiate from one another. I love the art style in Green Fingers, very cheery and friendly and warm, something that makes you actually want to grow these flowers – instead of stomping them into a pulp after you ruin a good run.

I really could say more about this game, but I don’t think I really need to – it’s a well polished game from a company that has a history of creative games (Well… Alphabetic, but that game is insane.) and I really look forward to seeing what they have in store for us in 2010. The bottom line: Green Fingers is an insanely fun game for $0.99, and I’ve been playing at least once or twice a week during my down time. Not only is there integration with OpenFeint (I can’t even crack the top 10) but there are detailed statistics of your playing, in addition to some very challenging Achievements. Seriously, five five-in-a-row combos in a game, they seem to want to drive me to madness.

Read 'em and weep, suckers!

Go get this game, it’s terrifyingly addictive. (There’s even a lite version! Check it out!)

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Terrifyingly addictive, with a high level of replayability through achievements and leaderboards, presented in a fantastic art style.

Screenshots

Just received word that IUGO Mobile Entertainment’s Implode! has had its update pushed out to the app store. Here’s the release:

IUGO’s hit demolition puzzler has gotten its 4th update approved on the App Store. The latest update includes:

✓ New requested bomb type: Delay Bombs
✓ 20 new buildings! 130 levels in total. WOW!
✓ Building height now shown with line and numerical height in feet

This brings Implode’s level count to 130 unique and varied levels with 3 difficulty levels and a grading system to add robust replayability. IUGO intends to bring users more updates in the future adding more content and level challenges.

And some 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

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

Pocket God is a sandbox-type game from the folks over at Bolt Creative, that puts the fate of six pygmies into your hands.

The Game

Pocket God throws you into the shoes of a mysterious, omnipresent character who controls the fate of six pygmies. You can grab them by the hair and lift them up, throw them into the water, flick them into the deep blue ocean, or zap them with lightning. Essentially, you can abuse them for whatever reason, and get achievement points for it! There are two islands that you can switch back and forth to, as well as a few other settings that I will leave up to you to discover. Discovery is one of the best aspects of Pocket God simply because there are a huge amount of activities and mini-games that will keep you entertained, and more are constantly being added.

I would love to delve into a little more detail about all of the activities that I have been able to do so far, but this review would be about 3 pages long with the amount that I can write about. For example, there is a shark that roams in the water in front of both of your islands, if you pick up a pygmy and dangle it over the water as a shark passes by, it will jump above the water line and snap at your pygmy. If you are feeling particularly kind, you can pull your pygmy up and out of the shark’s reach, or just dangle it there to feed the shark. At the same time, avoiding the pygmy’s toothy demise starts a mini game, counting the number of times you can consecutively avoid the shark’s bite, giving you achievements for every particular milestone that you reach.

Pocket God will keep you busy if you wish to reach all those higher end achievements because of their sheer difficulty (1000 shark dangles, really?!) Unfortunately, I really ran out of things to do somewhat quick, but because of the constant updates, I still keep playing Pocket God to get new achievements, so you really get all the bang for your buck.

Graphics

Pocket God has very cute and cartoony art style that doesn’t let you take the game too seriously, which is the right tone to take with this type of game. The sprites and environments are just the right amount of detail, but the animation is superb. There are a wide variety of animations that each pygmy has, which becomes strikingly clear when you set one on fire, douse it in water, and then have it go fishing, and eat that fish. And those are just three of the many different activities that they can do!

Sound

The soundtrack for Pocket God is great, it feels like a very tribal and tropical theme, once again, perfect for the game. It’s a very light hearted soundtrack that keeps the game very casual.

Additional Comments

Pocket God implements OpenFeint, the social gaming platform that allows you to chat with other Pocket God players, check the leaderboards, view your achievements and a whole other variety of social activities. The achievements are definitely what keep me playing, so their implementation was pretty vital in my enjoyment of the game.

Conclusion

Pocket God is one of those games that is unique, addictive, and fun. You will play for an hour or two per week, but because they keep pushing out great updates that add content to the game, you will be playing almost every week. You definitely have to get Pocket God, it’s way too fun abusing these little pygmies!

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Pocket God is one of the finest sandbox games for the iPhone that I have played and it is being constantly updated, so it keeps you coming back to find new ways to torture those pygmies.

Screenshots

From the labs of Hondune Games comes a great game that will give your weak brain the workout that it deserves: DownToZero, a game where you can either be a rapid-fire mathematician, or a methodical number cruncher, but to succeed you must be both.

The Game

The aim of DownToZero is essentially what the name implies: take a number, and find the numbers adjacent to it that will, when subtracted from the original number, bring it down to zero. It seems a bit difficult to grasp when explaining it with words, so the screenshot on the left should explain it much better than I ever could! The core of the game is then spun off into four different modes: Endless, One Minute Time Attack, Three Minute Time Attack, and Clear Mode.

The names of the modes are pretty self-explanatory, but it can never hurt to talk about them. In endless mode, there is no time limit and you are free to clear as many blocks as you can and the game ends when the blocks have filled the screen past the white line at the top of the screen. One minute and three minute time attack are essentially endless mode with a time limit, the more fast-paced of the four modes. Last but not least, clear mode has no time limit or blocks falling onto the screen, so it is much more methodical. You must plan all of your moves in advance in order to maximize the number of links you can make for the greatest score.

Overall, DownToZero is a really easy game to pick up and play, but it is quite a challenge to achieve a high score. You have to be a combination of fast-paced number cruncher and methodical strategist to really succeed at DownToZero, and it will work your brain over until it feels like it’s going to explode. Once you’ve picked your bits of brains off of your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen, go ahead and submit your score to the online leaderboards and see how you stack up against the rest of the world.

Graphics

DownToZero is not a graphics intensive game, and uses an 8-bit graphics theme that seems to work really well for it. There isn’t really much else to say about the graphics behind the game, because it really isn’t the important aspect. More importantly, the game feels polished and well put together.

Sound

DownToZero relies somewhat heavily on sound to give you a sense of urgency when linking combinations of blocks. It works quite effectively but I seem to notice a different pace once in a while with the beeping noise, but it may have just been in my head. There is no actual soundtrack to speak of, which would have been a nice addition, but definitely not necessary for such an intensive game that may have just been a distraction. Overall, the sound effects for DownToZero are more than adequate for the game itself.

Additional Comments

The seamless local and global leaderboard integration is a nice touch as it updates instantly as long as you have an internet connection. In addition, DownToZero defaults to letting your iPod continue playing in the background while you play the game, which is one of those essentials that casual games should really have. Lastly, when resuming your session, the save state is the exact state as when you quit, another nice touch.

Conclusion

DownToZero is a great casual game that gives your brain a much needed workout. I’m sure after a few weeks of playing this game, you will have nightmares about numbers falling down on you while you try to find which numbers can be brought down to zero. It can get addictive.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
An awesome game to give your brain a workout, perfect for breaks in between work or travelling on the public transit, definitely a game to check out.

Screenshots

Triazzle 3.0 by Dreamship Inc. for the iPhone is definitely a unique game: based off of the original Triazzle, a graphical matching puzzle in cardboard brain-teaser form. I played with Triazzle 3.0 for a couple of hours and I was impressed: a challenging puzzle game that was unlike the rest that used fantastic graphics and a beautiful soundtrack to accompany your gameplay. Let’s go a little more in-depth.

The Game

Triazzle 3.0 has several levels of difficulty for you to choose from: Kids, Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. There is also a “Surprise Me!” option for those who wish to take on a random difficulty. In addition, you are able to choose from playing with a grid of 9 triangles or 16 triangles, obviously the latter being the more difficult one.

Upon starting the game up for the first time, I accidentally nudged the Kids level, which doesn’t ask for confirmation as it jumps straight into the game. Unfortunately for me, I had not read the instructions, but I figured out the controls and objectives quickly: tap the piece to rotate, tap and drag to move it to the appropriate place, and just attempt to make everything fit into the board. After taking 20 minutes to solve the Kids level puzzle, I thought I could definitely do better than that, so I played it again at the Kids level. A grueling 30 minutes later, I was able to claim victory on that particular puzzle, but it had long claimed victory on my dignity.

Jokes aside, the learning curve for Triazzle isn’t that steep. You are given 9 or 16 triangles, and you’re supposed to make them fit, sounds easy enough! After a couple of play-throughs, working my way up the difficulties, I am proud to say I can do Level 2 with 16 triangles without too much trouble!

Clearly, Triazzle 3.0 is a very easy game to pick up and play whenever, but it is challenging enough to keep you coming back for more. The “pick up and play” ideology is further helped by the great feature of being able to pick up where you left off, a save state if you will. I thought this was a fantastic feature, so if you are interrupted by a phone call or text message, your game will be right where you left it off. One complaint though: I found that my pieces would be exactly where I left them off, but not in the correct orientation. A little issue, but an issue nonetheless.

Triazzle 3.0 has a huge potential for replayability. Each game is quick and easy, and every single game is a different experience while maintaining that same feeling of challenge and difficulty that you initially receive when starting to play the game.

Graphics

Triazzle uses various insects and amphibians as the puzzle pieces, and they are very well drawn. The real surprise was that when you match pieces together correctly, the little creature would come alive and become animated and start fluttering its wings or kicking its legs. I thought that was a nice little touch! In addition, there are a huge variety of background images that are used in the game, and it definitely added to the experience.

Despite the background images being gorgeous, some people may not appreciate their beauty while playing the game. That is why Triazzle came with a very welcome option to have “Simple Backgrounds” – simple, solid coloured backgrounds that let you see everything much easier.

Sound

Triazzle 3.0 has a beautiful soundtrack that is rare to find in an iPhone game. It has an original musical score composed by TV and film composer Billy White Acre, and he did a fantastic job. There isn’t too much to say here, I felt the sound track and sound effects fit the game perfectly and really let the jungle-theme shine through.

Additional Comments

Triazzle 3.0 is fantastic for casual gamers as there is no timer or limit on the number of moves available, but the option to add them in would be a nice touch for the more competitive gamers amongst us. Casual gamers would appreciate the great “Help” section to allow them to learn the game much faster, which was a great touch for newbies such as myself!

Also, Triazzle seems rather resource intensive because I had noticed a couple of slow downs during gameplay, but that might have just been isolated incidents. I only bring this up because I played on my iPhone 3GS, which is a speed demon! Please comment or email me if you run into any issues with slowdowns.

I thought that the Hint system was very clever, because it would show you what block goes into that particular place, but not how the block should be oriented to be correct. Not to mention, there is the “shake to solve” option where you can shake the iPhone and it will ask you if you wish to see the “Triazzle Gods” solve the puzzle, where the pieces become sentient and take over the world. Alright not really, but the animated puzzle solver was very cool to witness!

Conclusion

Triazzle 3.0 for the iPhone is one very challenging, but unique, graphical matching puzzle. The gameplay, graphics, and sound are all top notch, what is not to like?

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Very fun and challenging graphic matching puzzle game, great for casual gamers and has great potential for replayability.

Screenshots