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Big Blue Bubble’s Fling a Thing [99¢] is one of those simplistic games with an almost indescribable appeal. Its core mechanic is so refined and entertaining and its constituent parts exist in such a strong harmony that you can’t escape re-visiting it. Fling a Thing is great because of the sum of its parts – the sound direction, the presentation, the action, and even the level progression system live to serve each other and it makes for a good time over and over again.

Fling a Thing is what happens when a studio takes the Doodle Jump formula and gives it structure, and then swaps the alien for an insect that has a suction-cup for a mouth. In the game, you control a sticky-mouthed "Thing" that adheres to glass panes. By grabbing its tail, you gain the power to fling the Thing in an arc. Sometimes you’ll need to attach to other bits of glass, but more often you’ll be flinging to bubbles, which act as a puzzle device.

What makes this mechanic pop is the approach to the puzzle design. Bubble puzzles are all free-form and not available in bits and bobs of UI. The number of “flings” you get at the start of the experience is all you’ll get until you’re out. As you progress, you’ll get shots at earning more flings via power-ups, but not enough to entitle you to horse around.

In a larger sense, Fling a Thing is a game about attrition and patience, and that’s a smart way to design a puzzle-light experience. You could go ballistic and waste flings on clearing four bubbles, but wouldn’t it be better to wait to fling until they line up, the game asks? You never know how much further up you could go, it teases.

Sometimes its fun to be a game manager as well an active participant. If you want to be critical and reserve what you can, you’ll be rewarded. If you want to just fling around, there’s simple entertainment to be with that, too. Big Blue Bubble nails the two approaches and seamlessly integrates them together.

The progression components back up the idea of infinite-ish play, as the game offers up various unlockables including different Things to play with, different level themes, and modifiers for the power-ups you’ll encounter in exchange for stars, which are the game’s currency. You can buy stars for a real-world price or gather them as they spawn randomly. You’ll need a lot to purchase stuff, so be prepared.

All the pieces of Fling a Thing fit together well. The fling mechanic and your strange avatar are held up by the otherworldly look of the visual direction while also propping up the bubble puzzle mechanics, and the design direction is bolstered by a rich progression system that keeps rewards coming with continued effort. One issue really sticks for me: it's hard to fire your Thing with any sort of accuracy when its lands in a corner.

The mark of a strong mobile game is often how much you go back to it and everything in Fling a Thing beckons more play. Fling a Thing is a sharply put together a package, assembled with a care to simple refinement that we often see in the indie space. Give it a spin if you need something fast and fun. You’ll dig it.

UPDATE: We've been informed that the ads, which we originally criticized, were a mistake. They are being removed.

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When it comes to the crowded Tower Defense genre, a game truly needs to take an innovative (or extremely well-produced) approach in order to make its mark. Unfortunately, Tiny Defense [$0.99] doesn’t really satisfy this lofty goal. Sure, Tiny Defense manages to take the core gameplay of Plants vs Zombies and offer a twist on the traditional formula (as well as a vastly different setting), but it just doesn’t offer any sort of gameplay  experience that can’t be found in better games in the genre.

As mentioned above, Tiny Defense closely mimics tower defense gameplay made popular by Plants vs Zombies – gamers place various attacking and support units on the right side of the screen in order to defend against baddies coming in from the left. If any enemies get to the other side, you lose a life. Lose enough lives, and the game is over. Tiny Defense differs somewhat in its theme and perspective. Instead of plants, you control a variety of robotic units that are defended against evil (and usually much bigger) robots. Also, instead of the gameplay arena taking place from a top-down perspective, Tiny Defense has a purely 2D perspective.

This change in perspective means that Tiny Defense features a bit more specialized units than other Tower Defense games, as you now have to deal with air units as well as ground units. It’s not a particularly big change to the gameplay, but having to ensure proper unit compatibility for both ground and air does require a bit more strategy than normally expected. In addition, I appreciate the inclusion of both air units that attack ground targets and vice versa, as the extra variety certainly increases the amount of variety in terms of strategic placement (and selection) of units. This extra twist is certainly one of the high points for Tiny Defense.

Another thing Tiny Defense does well is its availability of content. There are a ton of robots to unlock, as well as a large amount of stages and mini-games to play through. It’s also all available up-front without any annoying IAP. One complaint I had was with the general length of each stage – I just thought they were too short. Overall, however, Tiny Defense should not disappoint as far as getting your money’s worth is concerned.

Unfortunately, Tiny Defense doesn’t offer much else in the way of innovative or even particularly well-done gameplay. Even with the changes mentioned above, you will definitely get a Plants vs Zombies vibe from the moment you place your first crystal-producing (think: Sunflower) support robot. Everything from the robot selection screen at the start of each stage to the mini-games to even the in-game “store” that has you buying new units and various power-ups just feels rehashed.

Even more disappointing, the parts of Tiny Defense that don’t give you that sensation of déjà vu just seem to lack any personality. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the story, much less about my individual units. Being able to create that sort of personal attachment goes a long way towards enjoying a game such as this, and I just wasn’t feeling it from Tiny Defense.

It may seem unfair to compare Tiny Defense to one of the ‘giants’ of the Tower Defense genre, but when your game elicits the same sort of general gameplay feel, it can’t be helped. Simply put, Tiny Defense is an average tower defense game with small twists on the gameplay that don’t particularly propel it above mediocrity.  If you’re a fan of games like Plants vs Zombies and you’re looking to try anything with a remotely similar gameplay experience, then Tiny Defense will certainly satisfy that urge. However, if you’re looking for the next hit Tower Defense game, you won’t find it here.

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Earlier this month we brought news of Elite Systems' initiative to expand on their ongoing retro rebirth efforts and bring a host of classics of old to iOS — those that originated on platforms beyond the ZX Spectrum, which was their initial source platform. Studio co-founder Steve Wilcox was kind enough to provide us with builds of the first wave of titles that will soon arrive in the Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games to share with our readers.

The first Elite Collection titles that will arrive in the App Store are Datasoft's 1987 magical platformer Black Magic, Image Works' lovely 1992 release First Samurai, and the frantic 1992 space shooter Enforcer from Manfred Trenz. Every one of these titles is very well implemented in iOS and is among the top tier of games to be found on the 8-bit platforms of decades past.

Let's have a look.

Black Magic

The evil wizard Zahgrim has turned good Aganar to stone. Being a ghastly sort of wizard, Zahgrim has removed his six eyes and placed them in different locations across the land so they may view the destruction being wrought in his name. Your task is to recover each eye and place them, one by one, into the empty sockets of the Blind Statue. Hordes of monters roaming the land make this a challenge, but you've got your arrows and magic to aid you, and a bit of help from a somewhat fiendish troll.

In researching Black Magic for this post, I found a great many fond recollections gamers shared of hours spent chasing down the six eyes of Zahgrim. The title is very well loved and secured an 8.2 user rating from Lemon64.

Enforcer

Enforcer: Fullmetal Megablaster is an excellent side-scrolling space shooter released for the Commodore 64 in 1992. That it is, indeed, excellent should come as no surprise, given that it was written by Mafred Trenz, the developer behind the Turrican series, the C64 version of R-Type, and The Great Giana Sisters. Enforcer features some of the best graphics ever to grace the C64's screen and the on-screen action is furious and maddeningly difficult.

The game features six levels through a range of space and cave backdrops, with an boss waiting at the end of each. It is a very well-received title that has secured an 8.3 user rating on Lemon64.

First Samurai

First Samurai, released for the Commodore 64 in 1992, puts you in the shoes of the first samurai in history. You start out as a hermit travelling through an ancient land, but with enough food — and sake — you will grow stronger and stronger, gaining power and eventually becoming a samurai. That is, if the daunting enemy creatures don't do you in first, which they probably will.

First Samurai is, without question, one of the five best looking C64 titles I've ever encountered and features very nice platform combat action. Elite's iOS version features glass-smooth sprite animation and brings a truly worthwhile platformer to our favorite mobile game devices. First Samurai got an 8.3 user ranking at Lemon64.

The Elite Collection titles detailed here will be available in both standard (iPhone, iPod touch) and HD (iPad) versions that are playable in both portrait and landscape orientations. (All videos in this post are of the iPad HD versions of the games.) Each title features the latest implementation of Elite's iDaptive control system, which allows highly customized placement of both virtual joystick and virtual key controls on the game screen, as illustrated in the embedded videos. I am in hopes that Elite will consider the addition of iCade support for all of these titles, to allow for an even more authentic retro game experience.

Elite has gathered quite a collection with which to launch their new retro effort, and I must confess it's been rather painless labor running through these titles in preparation for this post. For the retro fans out there, each of these titles is a no-brainer buy — obviously — but, as I am one who appreciates the simpler formulas of old, I must urge even those without a nostalgic bent to have a close look at the provided videos and consider giving these titles a shake.

My crotchety old self is often of the mind that "they don't make 'em like they used to," when it comes to games I really want to spend time with. This initial Elite offering is a rather good representation of "the best they ever made 'em." And there's much more of this ilk on the way from the studio. It's a pretty great time to be a (retro) iOS gamer.

We will let readers know when the first three Elite Collection titles go live in the App Store this weekend and will keep the news coming on future titles in the collection, as we hear it.

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Yesterday we posted a great video on rapid prototyping in Unity, and among other comments came confusion as to why we're focusing on Unity lately. This, my friends, is why. Aside from having a real cool company culture, Unity is powering some downright incredible iOS titles recently, and it's only getting better. Anyway, Bladeslinger was announced mere moments ago, and the trailer has sent my monocle blasting off into space:

Watch that trailer. Seriously, just watch it. Then watch it again, make sure you're viewing it in HD, and kick it into full screen. If Luma Arcade is to be believed, this is what it will look like on current-gen devices.

So what do we know about the game? Not a whole lot just yet, aside from a vague description and a bullet list of features. It's a third person "action brawler" where players will be pitted against multiple enemies (at once, apparently) in both ranged and close quarters combat. It's set in a dystopian future, which always is a great setting for a game, and comes packed with "intuitive touch controls" designed exclusively for touch-based devices. There's said to be an engaging storyline that will play out through "hours of unique gameplay," and there's even talk of high replay ability.

As far as release dates are concerned, Luma Arcade is sticking with the delightfully vague "Q4 2011", which hopefully will give me time to track down my monocle so it can blow right off my face again the next time they tease some more details on the game.

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When a new "jumping game" appears on the App Store, it's sometimes difficult to feel excited because there's just so many of them, and they usually all feel the same. But, despite the genre being thrashed to death, it appears there's still room for a little creativity. Com2uS have recently released Escape the Ape [99c], which while definitely fitting nicely inside of the vertical jumper mold, mixes things up a bit by requiring you to draw your own platforms to jump on in real time.

Here's the story: Jo-Jo the curious chimpanzee tried to snatch a precious jewel, which was clutched in the hands of a giant gorilla statue. Unfortunately for Jo-Jo, the statue came to life and wasn't impressed with the little furry kleptomaniac. The thieving monkey fled upwards, into the trees, with the agitated ape in hot pursuit. …And that's where you step in.

To help Jo-Jo escape the ape, you draw lines on the screen, which instantly become trampolines, bouncing the mischievous monkey higher.  There's nothing for Jo-Jo to land on, just the trampolines which you draw. If you can predict where the monkey will fall and draw a line in the right spot, you'll do well, bouncing him increasingly higher. The trampolines can be drawn on an angle, to bounce Jo-Jo sideways, so he can collect items such as jewels and bananas, or avoid obstacles.

If you fail to draw a trampoline for the monkey, or draw it in the wrong place, he'll fall back down into the arms of the chasing ape, ending your game. This means you have to swipe a trampoline every couple of seconds, because each bounce only takes Jo-Jo a little way up the screen, after which your trampoline disappears and he falls back down.

The "chase" aspect of this game adds excitement, as the trees start shaking and dropping leaves when the ape draws closer. Eventually, the ape's head and arms appear at the bottom of the screen. This is the time to draw some quick trampolines, or if you've gathered enough yellow bananas you can tap the full glass of fresh banana juice to perform a bigger life-saving bounce, to get ahead and gain some breathing room.  Oh, and if Jo-Jo collects an unripe green banana, his banana juice supply is depleted.

Another way to get ahead of the ape, is to perform a combo-jump. This is achieved by doing three "cool" jumps in a row, which seems to be awarded if Jo-Jo bounces perfectly in the middle of the trampoline without hitting any obstacles (although I'm not 100% certain of this, as it doesn't always seem to work and isn't explained). When a super combo-jump is executed, Jo-Jo flies upwards in a burst of stars, with his fist in front, like Superman.

Branches occasionally jut out, which slow your momentum on the way up, but if you land on top of a branch it bends and catapults the monkey higher. Or, Jo-Jo can grab hold of a red helium balloon, to float upwards. During the balloon ride, tilt controls are used to maneuver left or right, while collecting additional balloons prolongs the ride.

You can tell how high you are during the game, as birds periodically display signs stating the altitude. As you get higher, the background view changes and new obstacles appear. There's cobwebs which ensnare you like a cocoon, requiring some quick left-right swiping to break free before the ape catches you. And there's lamps, which – for some unexplained reason – make you grow in size, turning little Jo-Jo temporarily into an over-grown pixelated monkey who fills the screen and grabs all the jewels quite easily.

The jewels you've gathered can be used to buy items in the store. This includes stronger banana drinks which give more lift, trampolines which look thicker and give more bounce and the "Midas Touch" which increases the likelihood of a jewel appearing. The first upgrades for these items are quite affordable, but it will take quite a few games and jewels to upgrade these items to level 3. Although, of course, you can optionally use IAP to purchase jewels online.

Your final score is the number of meters climbed. Com2Us use their own online hub for leader-boards, requiring you to sign-up at their website, so there's no Game Center connectivity provided, but 30 achievements are available in-game.

Escape the Ape has been interesting to play over the past couple of days, and the game trailer (above) is quite amusing, so I've definitely got my 99 cents worth of entertainment, but the novelty of swiping trampolines every couple of seconds is wearing off, especially given the large gaps between upgrades. Although, admittedly, I'm still curious about what happens to Jo-Jo and the Gorilla at the top, assuming there is a top to get to, of course.

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Just a smidge over a year ago, Epic announced that the Unreal Engine would be hitting iOS. We've seen a great game or two developed in the UDK since (Infinity Blade [$5.99] being the obvious example), but most studios outside of Epic seem to still be feeling the engine out. Those cautious, early days might finally be coming to an end, thanks in part to Gyro13 [$5.99].

This game is sexy, pulling out most of the bells and whistles we've come to expect from the Unreal Engine. Textures, lighting and shadows are all top notch. But we've seen that before, and slick visuals don't make the game. Luckily, Gyro13 follows through with outstanding gameplay, an original soundtrack and even a hint of a story.

You play a pilot of a gyrocopter, tasked with rescuing people in a mine that's filling with deadly gas. In each of the game's 24 levels you're told how many miners there are to save and how long you have to save them before the gas overtakes you. You can survive it, but your cargo hold is unprotected and your passengers will die.

Speed is of the essence, but so is safety. Your ship is fragile, so a few slight bumps against the wall will blow you apart. Thanks to a complicated set of controls, avoiding the walls and obstacles can be a serious challenge. Your ship moves on a central axis, controlled by an on-screen slider. Slide to the right to tip your nose down and left to raise it up. That covers the steering, and a separate button controls thrust. You can also tap the screen to pulse certain obstacles in front of your ship. It's complicated, but that difficulty is fundamental to the game's success. It takes quite a while to get the hang of it, but practice enough and it'll click. When it does, Gyro13 comes together beautifully.

Rescuing the trapped miners takes skill. The mines they're trapped in are filled with all kinds of old equipment, explosives, wind tunnels and poisonous gas clouds. And those are just the early obstacles. The time limit is generous in most levels, but only if you can get through cleanly. Crash your ship and you'll be sent back to the last checkpoint, but with 5 more seconds on your total time. As time gets tighter and tighter, landing on those platforms to pick up the miners becomes an exercise in cost/benefit analysis. Is it worth it to save the miner who's so badly injured he can only crawl slowly to the ship? It might cost the lives of the other eight miners in your hold, and you might not save him either. Could you make the hard call?

It's an elegant experience, one made even better by the accompanying soundtrack. Tense techno beats increase the anxiety of the last moments of breathable air slipping away. A few other bits and pieces help Gyro13 stand out, including unlockable skins for your ship. Each level's introduction is voiced, too — and while the voice acting isn't top of the line, I've certainly heard (much) worse.

Gyro13 isn't the most ambitious title we've seen built on UDK, but it is one of the best so far. I only have one major complaint: you can't see how much time you have left in a level, so if you've forgotten your time limit some of the hard choices become moot. Otherwise there's little left out — even the currently-absent Game Center support is planned for the first update.

Still, this is a challenging title, and it's one that requires players to commit to an unusual control scheme. I grew to love those controls, but if you're worried they're not your style you can always get a few more opinions in our discussion thread. For the daring, though, there are miners to be rescued, and it looks like you're the only one who can do the job.

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So, Amazon let the cat out of the bag this morning and announced its low-cost and full-color seven inch tablet, Kindle Fire (and a less relevant-to-our-interests new touch-centric Kindle). Fire is an Android-powered device, though you wouldn't recognize that fact from its UI alone. It’ll hook into Amazon's cloud, be able to stream Amazon movies from its download service and, just like the Kindle, connect with Amazon’s rich e-books store, but the one thing that really caught our attention was, of course, the promise of games.

At the press event held today, Amazon’s demo Kindle Fire had a pre-loaded icon for Angry Birds, heavily suggesting that Rovio Mobile’s property will debut with yet another tablet computer this year. After the event, Amazon opened up its Kindle Fire advertisement page, displaying Angry Birds Rio, Plants vs. Zombies, Cut the Rope, Doodle Jump, and even Peggle on the device. That page states that every app that touches the device will be “Amazon tested on Kindle Fire for the best experience possible.” The Fire has a 16-million color display, a resolution of 169 pixels per inch, and it runs on a dual-core CPU. No camera or 3G, though.

Fire will hit this November 15 at $199 — a price that, if the device turns out to be good, gives potential owners a legitimate low-cost option to play Android games. This is an opportunity we haven’t really seen yet from an actual company with chops in the tablet space (excluding the HP Touchpad ridiculousness), so we’ll definitely keep our eyes on Fire as it grows and hopefully becomes the iOS-y platform that Amazon wants it to be. Also, it plays Angry Birds, guys! Whoo!

[Via Gizmodo, Engadget]

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When Madfinger Games said that Shadowgun [$7.99] was going to be available on the 28th, I think most of us assumed that they meant at 11:00 PM Eastern like most iPhone games with planned release times. If you were planning on spending the day jealously cursing New Zealanders who have been able to get their hands on the game nearly a day before you, I've got a better plan: Just go download it now.

While we prepare our review, the best place to head is our forums where initial impressions and comments are rolling in. It seems the main criticism is lack of multiplayer, but Madfinger says they have "a lot of plans" for it. Some have even already beaten the game, and are reporting back that completing Shadowgun's single player campaign on medium takes around 5-6 hours.

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There’s a grotesquely misshapen tiger that haunts my dreams. His butt is where his head should be. He implores me to make him whole again, but the more I try to help the more horrific he becomes. I move his parts around in a fevered panic to no avail, unwillingly transforming him from proud feline predator into a twisted terror that would give even H.P. Lovecraft pause.

He is the tiger that was on the plastic sliding puzzle I had when I was 5 years old. When I finally did get that poor beast into his god-given form again, it was as if I had exorcised a demon. It felt like the laying on of hands. Much more pleasant and significantly less nightmarish was my recent experience with MixZle [$.99]. No pictures, no waylaid arses, just a simple but challenging physics puzzler with a sliding panel mechanic.

The game is a series of challenges (ala Angry Birds or Cut the Rope) where you must drop a ball from the top of the screen and ensure that it goes through a hoop elsewhere on the screen. Drop too many without getting one through and you must restart the level. It’s as stripped down a conceit as you’re likely to find.

Don’t let that throw you off, however. There’s plenty of depth and variety here, due to the aforementioned sliding puzzle mechanic. Every level is a series of panels with one square missing. The others will either be blank or contain structures that you can position to divert the course of the ball towards the net. Early levels will be a breeze, as the correct positions for most tiles are quickly apparent.

The challenge steadily ramps as new structures come into play, which ensures that MixZle is fresh throughout. Rudimentary planks and ramps give way to fans, pneumatic launchers, and more. Additional difficulty is slowly mixed in, in the form of fixed tiles that you must work around, cranks which can rotate tiles, and other constraints. Also, not every tile with a structure on it will be necessary to solving some puzzles; it’s a clever twist that keeps your mind working.

The developer clearly has a mind and a passion for puzzle design. The game has over 100 levels, so value-per-dollar hounds will find no complaints in the content category here. A score is assigned based on the number of ball drops and tile movements it takes to complete each level, meaning perfectionists will find lots of replayability looking for that optimal solution.

On the minus side, the need to restart a level after x number of drops kills the will to be creative with your problem-solving. There’s already a point system that will tell me if I made a mess of things or took an embarrassing number of moves, so having the panels reset to their beginning positions is an unnecessary fail state. Not to mention I had some cool moments of emergent gameplay where I had fun setting up panels and just playing with the physics, and it always seemed that the level would reset right when I had the board the way I wanted it.

Lack of character is this game’s biggest drawback. It’s a smart game, but it doesn’t seem to really have a sense of play to it. The art is clean and the music is chilled out and conducive to puzzling; there’s just nothing in the presentation to get very excited about. With such well done level design, it’s a shame to have the vanilla assets and sounds turn me off to extended play. In short bursts, however, the game shines as a bite-sized brain teaser.

There’s much to like about MixZle, and at a buck for a heaping biggie-sized helping of levels, the value proposition cannot be denied. It’s not going to set the world on fire, but it’s a smartly executed twist on a well-worn genre. Pick it up, and you’ll find yourself stashing it in the corner of your screen and snacking on it periodically, like trail mix on a road trip. It’s a great palette cleanser between games, and if you’re like me, you may find yourself redeeming some of the dark shames of your childhood ineptitude.

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