Archive for January 10th, 2012
5th Cell’s New iOS Game Is ‘Roo Roo Run’
Scribblenauts [$.99] developer isn’t one-and-done with iPhone and iPad. This Thursday, actually, will see the release of its second game, a “micro-platformer” called Roo Roo Run. It looks remarkably 5th Cell, and according to , it certainly sounds like a game we’ll definitely be getting into.
In a nutshell, Roo Roo Run is an extremely cutesy and heavily instance-based runner — think, Canabalt [$.99] but with levels and a kangaroo. The experience is sliced and diced into a series of 420 individual levels that are, also, divided cleanly into chapters that all introduce new obstacles or other new elements, like, items. Each week 5th Cell plans to push 10 more additional levels to the game without the need to update.
One really interesting thing that popped up during the Joystiq interview about Roo Roo Run was the subject of its inspiration. The initial idea came from Space is Key, an insanely awesome flash game that you’ve got to play .
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‘Cave Story’ Studio Releases ‘Azarashi’
, the one-man studio responsible for giving us the original , last Friday released its first iPhone and iPod touch game, Azarashi [$.99]. It’s as minimal as it is pure in focus; in it, you attempt to catch three seal keychains before they fall to the ground, and at the end of the round you are scored on your speed. Hit too early and you kill a delightful little seal, but do it just fast enough and you’ll earn more keychains to catch after all three rounds are over.
This is a really mini mini-game, so be aware of that before you download. If anything, it’s a brilliant display of Studio Pixel’s art, sound design, and edge. We’ve got some screens for those of you who don’t want to take the plunge just yet:
Cave Story is brilliant, by the way, and are still free. If you’ve got some extra computer time today, we highly suggest you give it a look.
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‘Puzzling Penguins 2′ Review – Pushin’ the Penguins Around
Bryan Mitchell is the the developer of the popular Geared [$2.99 / HD] and Geared 2 [$2.99] games, which have reportedly been played by over 12 million people. He’s partnered-up with an old school buddy Joshua Greenspan, who released Puzzling Penguins [Free] in 2009. Together, they’ve released a sequel, named quite appropriately: Puzzling Penguins 2 [99¢].
If you’re familiar with the original game, this latest release features more of the “move-the-penguin-to-the-water” type puzzle-solving, but the graphics and music have improved, with the most obvious changes being a new isometric view of the playing area and the inclusion of snow-coated scenery in the background.
The goal of Puzzling Penguins 2 is to swipe your penguin around a frozen 8×8 pond, collecting three golden stars before reaching a chilly water-hole. The catch is that once you swipe a penguin, it keeps moving in that direction until either hitting an obstacle, or reaching the edge of the frozen pond. The challenge is to work out how to use the various obstacles to reach the water hole. Your overall Game Center score for each level is based on the number of stars collected, time taken and number of moves required to solve the level.
There’s currently 3 worlds to play (63 levels in total), which are unlocked by collecting enough stars. The levels in the first world are all pretty obvious, so they’re easy to 3-star in your first attempt without requiring much brain activity. But just when you start thinking you’re super intelligent, the puzzles in the second world suddenly become more challenging, forcing you to actually stop, think and strategize.
New game elements are introduced regularly like blocks that can be repositioned by swiping, ‘bomb stars’ which trigger explosions and ‘fire stars’ for melting the water hole when it freezes over. Most interestingly some levels feature more than one penguin from the colony for you to swipe. This makes things trickier as your penguins must work together, using each other as barriers so they stop moving at the right spots to clear the level.
Puzzling Penguins 2 is a pleasant game to play and a definite improvement on the original, especially in terms of presentation. On the down-side, it’s not universal and there’s no native iPad version, so it will only run in 2x mode. Also, although the three “worlds” each add new gameplay elements, they all use exactly the same snowy setting and music, so they don’t really feel like different “worlds” so much as just more levels. It would also be interesting if they threw a hungry polar bear into the mix.
However, the most important thing in any puzzle game are the puzzles themselves, and in that regard the game is well-designed with difficulty levels which increase as you progress. Of course, if you’re not certain about this game, you can grab the original Puzzling Penguins for Free and if you enjoy that, you’ll definitely enjoy this updated and prettier sequel as well.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Call of Duty Elite App Launches Tomorrow
Call of Duty Elite for mobile, the companion to the , is coming to iOS tomorrow and Android next week, . And it’ll bring a few interesting control options with it. Inside the app, you’ll be able to check your stats and other players’ stats, hit up after action reports, scope map information, track your challenge progress, and modify your loadouts all without ever having to look at your console.
While that’s a ton of cool support, fans will inevitably be noting what’s missing. In a conversation with , Beachhead Studios Chacko Sonny said Beachhead learned a a few things about Elite’s stunningly bad launch, so it won’t be tossing out features until it knows they’re “at the level” fans actually want.
Speaking to the MacRumors about future features, Sonny said:
“We view this as the foundation. We want to hear from the community: how do they use this? What parts do they like? What parts aren’t as useful? We want to drive additional development going forward from people who play the game every single day. That’s going to help us deliver a better set of iterated features going forward, and for the forthcoming tablet version as well.”
During the rocky launch, we’ve all kinda gave up on Elite. The release of the mobile app definitely gives us reason to give it another shot, so we will. Tomorrow!
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