TouchArcade.ru

Most of us here have been anticipating NimbleBit's Tiny Tower [Free] since the developers first announced it. Their last take on the freemium model was the extremely successful Pocket Frogs [Free], a game that I still pull out a few times a week.

So the big day has come – does Tiny Tower live up to the hype? Yes, with one suitably tiny caveat: this isn't the second coming of Sim Tower. Let's just get that out of the way up front, because the early screenshots gave some people that impression. That aside, yes, Tiny Tower is a fantastic, adorable successor to the Pocket Frog empire and it's just as hard to put down.

Here's how it works. Upon starting the game, you're greeted by a fresh new tower and a simple lobby. Working through the tutorial, you build your first residential floor and your first production floor, move in your first Bitizen and give them a job. The Bitizen gets to work creating items to sell, bringing in coins. Spend those coins on building more floors and eventually your tower will reach up into the sky.

Each floor has three items to stock, and each one is on a different timer. When an item's stock sells out, its your job to tell your Bitizens to order more, a task that takes anywhere from a minute to a few hours depending on the item. When that timer fills up, you also need to order them to put the item up for sale again. When you're overseeing a few production floors, this means checking in occasionally. When you've got a 40 story tower, on the other hand, this production cycle will quickly take over your life—if you let it.

The game uses local notifications to let you know when the first item is available to restock after closing the app. This is a great way to stay on top of your towers' needs early on, but with enough production floors it might just make you crazy. I turned notifications off pretty quickly, and discovered something cool—unlike most of these "appointment gaming" types, I can peek into my tower at any time and find something to do. There's always something ready to stock, or someone waiting to ride the elevator. So Tiny Tower fits perfectly into any little gaps of time you have for it. And with no spoilage mechanic, the only thing to lose by ignoring it is the coins you could have been earning in the meantime.

If this all sounds like a lot of managing timers and pushing buttons, you'll be happy to know there's a bit more to it. The Bitizens are really the heart and soul of Tiny Tower. Their comings and goings will occupy a lot of your attention. For starters, they each have their own set of talents. There are five categories of production floor, and individual Bitizens are stronger working at some and weaker at others. They also have their own little dreams. Bitizens working in their dream jobs are better than their counterparts, and you get a tidy bonus for putting them there. Want to see what they're thinking? Hit up Bitbook, a virtual social network for your virtual workers that's filled with quips and little hints.

You're also in control of their literal comings and goings, because you control your tower's elevator. Ferrying Bitizens to their destination nets you tips, both in coins and Bux, the game's premium currency. Occasionally, VIPs show up to add a bit of strategy to the game. They have special abilities, and where you drop them off can make a big difference to your production.

For the creative types, you can customize your tower to the nines. You can't pick which floors are built, just which categories you're creating, but you can move your floors around and paint them to match any color scheme you can imagine. You can also dress up your Bitizens with a palette and outfit randomizer. It took a bit of persistence, but I've got all my employees dressed smartly in per-floor uniforms. The adorable pixel art makes this extra satisfying.

The premium aspects of the game are more than fair. You can buy Tower Bux with real money, but you can also earn them as tips or as bonuses for fully stocking a production floor. A Where's Waldo-style mini-game also awards them. You can exchange them for coins or as timesavers to build a floor faster, finish stocking it, upgrade your elevator or move in a Bitizen. If you're really keen to get ahead, purchasing Bux will help. But if you just play regularly you'll always have lots to do and plenty of chances to expand. Nothing is locked out for players who don't want to pay.

Other than a nitpick or two (it would be nice to toggle the elevator-style music off and keep the sound on, for instance), my only real concern is the lack of social integration. These games are always better with friends (many of whom you can find in our forums), but the only thing you can really do with your buddies in Tiny Tower is compete with them on the Game Center leaderboard and for achievements, and look at their towers. Maybe we'll see more social options in the future, like something to exchange with friends or something to do in their towers.

But enough talk. Tiny Tower is another great, free game from the guys at NimbleBit, and you should definitely check it out. Just try not to get too caught up in the lives of your little Bitizens – it's important to put the game down once in a while.

Note: Tiny Tower won't be available in the US App Store until 11:00 PM Eastern. If you're east of the good ol' US of A and it's the 23rd in your area, it should be available now.

[source]

If you watch a lot of the Discovery Channel, you've likely caught several episodes of "How It's Made." If you're lucky, you might even have seen episodes of apple juice and orange juice. While these might be accurate depictions of how juice is made in the real world, on your iPhone, things are substantially different.

Enter Juice Belts, yet another ultra-casual puzzle game with a three star fruit rating system, physics-based gameplay that centralizes around a drawing mechanic, and tons of gizmos to use to complete your goal. This might sound like a bad thing, but I assure you it's not. What sets Juice Belts apart is that you're actually drawing conveyor belts, and through a stupidly simple interface are able to build these oddly elaborate contraptions to transport fruit from its box to the juicer.

Like all of these types of games, things start out simple to teach players how the mechanics work. At its most basic, you use your finger to draw a conveyor belt to stretch around an engine and a gear. From there, you tap the fruit box to dump the fruit out, and if you did everything right they'll be transported to the juicer. Of course things don't stay that easy, and it doesn't take long before you're employing fans, elaborate gear setups, motors that can be toggled on and off, electrical fields that vaporize your fruit, and more.

Overall, Juice Belts has a real Incredible Machine [$2.99] vibe to it, but instead of focusing on the placement of tons of different objects, priority shifts to drawing conveyor belts to properly connect existing objects in the game world. You can interact with some objects, but from an interface perspective, everything stays remarkably simple. This allows the player to focus on coming up with intelligent solutions instead of delving through various menus and finding pixel-perfect placement for a number of gizmos.

Games that utilize a drawing mechanic for an input method always seem to work incredibly well on iOS devices, and Juice Belts is no different. 80 surprisingly varied levels are included, as well as Game Center support and a bit of replay value through the golden fruit grading system. I've been having a great time with Juice Belts, and I highly recommend giving it a try if you've got room on your device for yet another fantastic physics puzzler.

[source]

Ben Cousins, the former general manager at EA Easy Studios who oversaw the creation of Battlefield Play 4 Free, has landed a new job in a similar field. It’s been revealed that Cousins is now working with ngmoco and forming a new studio in Sweden focused on delivering F2P games on mobile platforms.

Chock it up to “studio infancy” syndrome, but ngmoco isn’t divulging any specifics on what Cousins will be cooking up. We’re simply being told that he’ll lead the studio and drop games on Mobage courtesy of DeNA, the Japanese studio who bought ngmoco for an obscene amount of money earlier last year.

“The games industry is at an inflection point,” Cousins said in a statement. “These platforms are bringing hundreds of millions of new gamers into the fold, and at the same time existing core gamers are discovering the innovation, immersion and connectivity they bring. I’m excited to participate in helping shape what we believe is the future of games.”

It’s easy enough to speculate that Cousins will be making more core gamer-focused F2P games, which seems like a smart move considering the growth in this sector. We’ve got all sorts of “core” F2P games — League of Legends is a leading example — and it seems as though they’re continuing to fair well post-release.

It bears noting that Cousins was also a creative lead at EA DICE, so he’s got some decent ‘core’ game experience under his belt, namely with (proper) Battlefield games.

If anything, dude is going to be making F2P games. That much is plain. I just wonder if we’ll see more bullets instead of farms from ngmoco Sweden.

[source]

There's so many games coming out tonight that I don't even want to waste time on a witty introduction to this post. It's like this is the Wednesday before the Christmas App Store freeze, this is a veritable stampede of games. Anyway, the way this works is a little like this: Developers can set their release dates on the App Store for a specific date in the future. Since the App Store is a worldwide market, things are released in the various regions as it becomes that date in said region. New Zealand's proximity to the International Date Line makes them first, followed by Australia and eastern Asia, then slowly the rest of the world. All of these games should be available in the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern time!

Without further ado-

1-bit Ninja, $1.99 – Forum Thread – We've been looking forward to this game since we first heard about it. 1-bit Ninja combines old-school platforming with a slick 3D gimmick where you can rotate the camera to see what appears to be a 2D plane in 3D, potentially revealing secret platforms. I've been lucky enough to spend some time with a pre-release copy of the game, and it's awesome. You can't move backwards though, which takes a little getting used to.

BackStab, $6.99 – Forum Thread – What do you get when you combine Pirates of the Caribbean and Assassin's Creed? Well, you're looking at it! I spent some time with BackStab at E3, and while the pirate universe definitely seemed cool, it was a little weird to be doing missions that were fairly obviously lifted directly out of Assassin's Creed. Regardless, it's being released as a universal app, which is something I can totally get behind.

Battleship for iPad, $2.99 – Forum Thread – Another game we saw at E3. This is a technically competent port of Battleship, but it boggles my mind why EA releases games like this without online multiplayer. I mean really, with how successful Words With Friends has been, imagine how much more successful similar push-based online multiplayer would be with a recognizable IP behind it.

Circus City, Free – Forum Thread – Have you grown tired of building farms, tending livestock, and other similar tasks? Well, Glu hopes running a circus is something that will entice you into Circus City a try.

Continuity 2: The Continuation, 99¢ – Forum Thread – This game looks really slick, as they've combined platforming and sliding puzzle games into one. It's universal too, making the whole thing even more appealing.

D.A.R.K., 99¢ – Forum Thread – I got a super-early look at this game back at PAX East, and while it looked awesome then, it looks so much cooler now. D.A.R.K. is an action-oriented Sci-Fi RPG with tons of enemies, upgrades, and content to blast through.

Don't Fall Off, 99¢ – Forum Thread – This game puts you in charge of helping Rollie stay on his little paper boat floating down a river. For whatever reason, Rollie can't get wet, making his choice to travel by water extremely questionable.

Fish Odyssey, 99¢ – Forum Thread – I can't help but be pedantic with this game's title. Clearly it's called Fish Odyssey, but it seems the majority of the animals you're helping jump over waves by tapping are actually mammals. I suppose Mammal Odyssey doesn't have that great of a ring to it.

Hills of Glory: WWII, 99¢ – Forum Thread – I'm not sure describing this as a "castle defense" game is the most accurate, but it seems to fit. You defend your base from an onslaught of enemies using various military weaponry. Sure, your base isn't technically a castle, but it's similar.

Ionocraft Racing, $1.99 / HD – Forum Thread – This steampunky version of Wipeout features 13 tracks, upgrades, online leaderboards, and everything else you could ask of a steampunk version of Wipeout.

Kona's Crate, $2.99 / HD – Forum Thread – The above trailer makes this game look like a ton of fun, but I can't get over how weird it is to make a crate the main character that you have control of in this game. Regardless, there's over 60 levels for you to fly your crate through, online leaderboards, and all kinds of other goodies.

Lamebo VS Zombies, 99¢ – Forum Thread – Developers are really reaching these days to come up with things that haven't already been done before in the world of zombie games. This one in particular attempts to differentiate itself by having you control a, uh, sheep. Despite the weird premise, the art style of the game looks fantastic and I'm always a sucker for games with tons of upgrades to unlock.

Monkey Island Tales HD, $6.99 – Forum Thread – Currently, Monkey Island Tales HD Episode 1 [$6.99] is available on the App Store, and Telltale is wasting no time releasing the others. Here's iTunes links for the rest of the series coming tonight:

• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5

Powerslide Penguin, 99¢ / Universal HD – Forum Thread – This penguin-flinging game looks cool in the trailer, but it's another one of those mega-confusing split non-HD and HD releases like Red Ball 3. The HD version is universal, but the non-HD version doesn't include Retina Display graphics, so if you want those, you'll need to spring for the HD version.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, $1.99 – Forum Thread – This Mario Kart-esque game seemingly has it all. Tons of recognizable characters, universal compatibility, online multiplayer, and a reasonable price. I'm surprised!

Sunshine Cruise Lines, Free – Forum Thread – This free to play game has a fairly interesting premise that involves customizing your own cruise ship. There's also functionality in game to actually go on cruises, visit various ports, and all kinds of other cruise-related things. I admit, I'm intrigued.

Tiny Tower, Free – Forum Thread – NimbleBit fans have been waiting for this game forever, and it's finally here. They've applied the same free to play style of gameplay from Pocket Frogs where paying for anything truly does feel optional. It's a ton of fun, I had a blast with beta versions of the game and have been building my tower since I got my hands on the final version of the game last week. Don't miss Tiny Tower.

Trenches: Generals for iPad, 99¢ – Forum Thread – The Trenches series of games have been stupidly popular on the App Store, and now Thunder Game Works is bringing it to the iPad. The start of the show seems to be the single device multiplayer, seen above, which looks like a ton of fun.

Watch Out Danger Ahead, 99¢ / Lite – Forum Thread – This super-minimal platformer puts you in control of a simple ball. I'm digging the simple art style. Make sure you check out the above trailer.

War Grimoire HD, $2.99 – Judging by screenshots, this tower defense game has some crazy awesome art in it. 60 kinds of weapons (towers?) are included, as well as 30 different environments. The graphics look fantastic, and it's even got an entirely original soundtrack.

[source]

Japanese mobile company DeNA has announced two new games for the Japanese market via its new-fangled social platform called “Mobage.” The names of the games should ring a bell: Infinity Blade X and Professor Layton Royale.

Professor Layton Royale is the product of an actual partnership with Level-5, the original creators of the series. Yet, I don’t think it’d be wise to expect Royale to be a full-fledged entry in the Nintendo DS franchise — it’s a crossover between Layton and Kaito Royale.

In a press conference the other afternoon, it was announced that users would be tasked with taking on the role of detective, as well as a thief and a citizen. That doesn’t sound too Layton-y to me, at least, but I suppose we’ll see for sure later this fall when it hits.

Infinity Blade X, on the other hand, is the Infinity Blade [$5.99 / HD] we all know and love — minus the whole “free to play” part. In a nutshell, on Mobage virtual items will serve as the way the game makes money; there will be no initial cost. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you won't be able to earn extravagant weapons and armor with in-game gold. You'll just be forced to buy them.

DeNA seeks to be a world leader in the mobile / social realm and it’s making huge strides by being aggressive and creative in the space. These two games are just the latest in a string of other moves that has made Mobage enticing in the East has us scratching our chins in the West.

[Via Pocket Gamer]

[source]

Heads up: Tower Defense: Lost Earth [$.99] for iPod Touch and iPhone is 66 percent off for a “limited time.” So, until… whenever, you can grab it for 99 cents, which is a few dollars shy of its regular price of $2.99. The HD version of the game for iPad remains $4.99.

Lost Earth is a fantastic tower defense game — and it should be considering that it’s the only tower defense game that can carry the name “tower defense.” In our review, we laud its kitchen sink approach to level design and compliment its other strengths at length.

I’ve been picking at the game since its release while doing my thing on the elliptical at the gym. My big takeaway is that the campaign possesses a good mix of new concepts and smart tweaks on the few-and-far-between revisited elements. It's almost like the StarCraft II of tower defense games in this regard — you're constantly being given a new object to play with or new approaches to tackle. Sure, I’ve got some qualms with the enemy balance on some levels (Vulcan, I hate you), but overall it’s a solid TD experience.

Hopefully, we’ll see the HD price plummet at some point in the future — it’s definitely the superior version of the game courtesy the enhanced screen real estate.

[source]

The name Spiderweb Software is a bit misleading, after all, it's mostly the work of one man, Jeff Vogel, who has for almost twenty years given us some of the most intricate RPGs on PC and Mac. Until now, at least, these were often an inclusive, old-schooler affair. But Avadon: The Black Fortress HD [$9.99] is one of the first to be easily approachable — it's also the first to hit the iPad.

You'd be forgiven if you've glanced at screenshots and balked at the idea of playing Avadon, it's not a pretty game. Visually, it falls somewhere in the '90s, pre-CD-ROM drive, which is to say it's an isometric RPG akin to something like Baldur's Gate, Ultima or even Fallout. It's filled with old-fashioned tilesets, hardly animated sprites and a locked camera that doesn't allow you to zoom nor rotate. While I'm getting things out of the way, I should probably also mention there is no musical score. The sound, when it does exist is hardly worth paying attention to and the amount of modern day polish slathered on here lays somewhere between murky and non-existent.

But none of that has anything to do with what makes Avadon a good game, because it's good based solely on the actual game, not the flair.

Avadon isn't as hardcore of an RPG as it might look on first glance and it's also considerably more approachable than Vogel's earlier games. You start the game by picking one of four pre-built classes and typing in a name. No complex stat sheets, no guessing what abilities you'll need and what you won't. You'll meet other adventurers along your journey who will join your party. You'll level up through your adventure, but it's done mostly through a small skill tree, not a vast collection of unknown abilities leading to more unknown abilities.

Combat is turn-based and works well, provided you enjoy turn-based combat. If you don't, consider this an ample warning. Depending on the difficulty level you chose, you'll need to concentrate on your strategy in different ways. There is, quiet literally, something for everyone here. A complete RPG-virgin can pick it up and walk through the game with little trouble on Casual, but the higher levels should provide adequate challenge for players of all backgrounds. Naturally, you'll pick up loot, outfit your team with different equipment and change around your stats. For the most part, this is all relatively self-explanatory, although the menus don't make things easy if you're swapping items between party members.

It's the story that really matters here more than anything else, it's what's going to keep you going through the night. That story bends to your will and your actions and like the best RPGs, you're not always aware of it when it's happening. The core of the narrative comes from you enlisting as a Hand to the Pact, a high-horse power created by a group of nations bent on protecting the good of itself and its people from a fortress called Avadon. This doesn't just mean they protect the borders, it also means they'll burn down villages, kill helpless creatures and lock people into prisons.

As with most of Vogel's games, the writing in Avadon is well done and sprinkled with enough wit and humor that you don't feel oppressed by the seriousness of it all. Within a few hours you'll have a good grasp on the Avadon's structure, the religions, your fellow fighters and a number of the NPC groups. You'll also start getting the sneaking suspicion the Pact and Avadon aren't all they're cracked up to be.

As you play through the game's 20-30 hour campaign, you'll start to notice how your actions are affecting the larger story, from minor quips in dialogue or descriptions to fully-fledged moments that couldn't have existed had you not done something earlier. The dialogue options aren’t the color-coded morally simple choices of modern RPGs, nearly every time you need to respond to a situation it will sit somewhere on a gray scale between good and evil and you'll never know for sure if you're making the right choice. The plotline is basically linear, save for a fair share of side quests, but you still feel like you're having an affect on the world, for better or worse.

The translation to iPad is relatively fluid. I had a few crashes and memory errors while playing, but nothing that set me back too much. The touch screen works well for this type game, although you'll occasionally accidently move your characters around when you mean to fight because you'll tap on the wrong part of the grid. The item screen, as mentioned earlier, is a bit unwieldy with a touch screen and requires an excessive number of taps to get to business, but you'll get used to it. If you've played Spiderweb's RPGs before, you'll know what to expect, but Avadon is considerably more linear and less open than much of its previous work. That's not a bad thing in this case; it's a good entry point into a deeper RPG for iPad players and a great throwback to people who've been playing for a long time. It's streamlined, yes, but not to the point where you feel like you have no control. You still have to read signs to get directions, take note of what people say and remember (in your head, not in an objective screen) where you're going and why you're going there.

Avadon: The Black Fortress HD might take a little while to sink in, but if you get enmeshed in the narrative and the world, it's hard to walk away from it. It's been a long while since I accidently stayed up all night with a game, but Avadon managed to do that without even bothering with fancy visuals or voiced dialogue. It's not going to be a game for everybody, but if you're weary of spending the completely fair price of $10 on the iPad version, I'd suggest checking out the demo for the PC or Mac versions. The experience is similar, although the iPad version will occasionally run into some frame rate drops and has a lower resolution. If you're a fan of '90s RPGs and have been craving something that doesn't hold your hand or guide you along on the iPad, this is the perfect game for you.

[source]

The Hexog are coming, and it's up to you, as the ARC pilot, to stop them. You'll need to bring your best Bust-A-Move skills to the table if the Hexog threat is to be eliminated, and the universe of Current [$0.99] is to be saved.

While some action match games let you play calmly, Current demands nothing less than your best reflexes. The Hexog breed, you see. Let them get a foothold, and they'll spread swiftly. The green ones grow exponentially, each one spawning into every surrounding hex. The red ones fill straight lines. The blue ones… well, let's not talk about the blue ones.

To fight them, you need take your ship to their systems and yank them out of the sky. Firing them back at a matching Hexogs will destroy both, and take out others around them. You have a limited number of shots per level, so make them count. Each of Current's 56 levels is a struggle as you fight to swiftly defeat the multiplying hordes before you run out of ammunition.

In the first sets of levels, your only weapon is your shot. But eventually, you discover the game's namesake "current," a force you can use to arm yourself against the Hexog. You unlock weapons that use their multiplying powers against them, blowing them to bits when they breed and forcing them to infect each other. This is war, and it isn't always pretty. Well, actually, it is quite pretty, with all those wireframe Hexog exploding all over the grid.

The whole thing happens to the beat of an original techno soundtrack – make sure to wander into the music menu and play with the different songs. They take Current from a pretty interesting Puzzle Bobble clone to something really cool. The beat of the music rules everything – the Hexog breed to the beat and you slaughter them to it as well. It gets downright hypnotic at times, when you get in the zone and polish them off with style.

Other times it's a little more frustrating, but a recent update addressed that problem. Now not only can you switch between three difficulty levels, you can also toggle the game to a turn-based mode at any time. The Hexog will only breed once per each of your shots in this mode, avoiding the utter chaos of the original action. Things can still get completely out of control if you're not careful, but it's all a little more strategic and a little less reflexive.

If you can't get enough of Current, you can replay on higher difficulty modes or try to get three stars on each level. The levels are procedurally generated, so it shouldn't be the same experience twice. Game Center Leaderboards seem like an obvious addition, and hopefully they'll show up in an update some day. It sounds like there are more levels, game modes and songs in the works, so there should be plenty of opportunities to destroy the Hexog yet to come. Good thing, too – I just love to watch them disappear.

[source]

Have a Snake-shaped hole in your app collection? Longing for light cycles? Check out Hard Lines [$0.99], by Spilt Milk Studios. It's the perfect mix of point-gobbling and line-racing arcade action in one little package.

The basic gameplay is simple and familiar. You take control of Lionel, a line that can take only 90 degree turns. You've got a choice of controls, with Tappy's on screen buttons, Swipey's swipes to turn, and Turny, which divides the screen into two tapping zones (yes, the game presents its controls with those rather tongue-in-cheek names). If you crash your line into itself, another line or a wall, it's toast. Your goal, as in Snake, is to survive and earn as many points as you can in the process.

Don't write this off as just another knockoff. Hard Lines takes the formula further with six great game modes. Yes, you can play Snake mode, where your line grows ever longer as you gobble up glowy things. Or you can play Survival mode, which is a light cycle battle that pits you against a couple opponent lines. Deadline gives you three minutes to pull in the highest score possible, while Gauntlet sends an endless supply of enemy lines at you. There's also Pinata, where the lines you kill explode into piles of point-bearing glowy things, and Time Attack, which requires you to keep earning points to keep going.

What you get out of all that variety is a high-score race that doesn't get dull. Hit a plateau in one mode and you can move to the next. Unfortunately the leaderboards are currently only OpenFeint, not Game Center, but Spilt Milk Studios plans to address that in an upcoming update. They'll also be adding Retina support and tweaking the difficulty to get players right into the action. You can keep tabs on their plans in our forums.

What Hard Lines is missing in those features, it makes up for with charm and humor. The lines are chatty little things, always ready with quips to entertain you or to lament their deaths. On a long enough timeline these might get old, but so far the developer has been adding more quips to keep them fresh. The graphics and sound have a retro-stylish appeal that brings to mind the games Hard Lines owes its existence to. Oh, and make sure not to miss the vocal theme in the tutorial – it's really something to hear.

I expect that the lack of Game Center support will be a deal-breaker for many of our readers. If you can let that go, there's a great arcade gaming waiting for you in Hard Lines. I'll be waiting for you on the leaderboards if you decide to jump in.

[source]

When I originally played the outstanding game Osmos [$2.99/HD], the unhurried gameplay and soothing music lulled me into a calmer state.  People have made similar comments about the relaxing effects of Zenbound 2 [$2.99] and Spirits [$2.99/HD]. It's been a while since another game had this effect on me, but Wisp: Eira's Tale [$2.99/Lite] by Triolith Entertainment seems to exert a calming influence. There's no timer or score, just a little glowing fairy (wisp) named Eira who's lost in the forest and needs your help to return home.

The controls are tilt-and-touch. Tilting your device moves Eira left or right. Tapping and holding the screen causes her to float upwards. Using these controls, you can search each level to discover three blue crystals and an exit portal. This is one of those games where you're constantly doing little taps and tilt adjustments to tweak your character's floating direction and speed. And there's nasty things to avoid. Apparently, an ancient creature named Fafnir is bleeding and his black blood is corrupting the forest with evil and monsters, which Eira mustn't touch. She has no weapon, so avoidance is her main strategy.

There are three elemental shrines which assist your journey, by providing temporary abilities based on earth, fire and ice. If you discover an 'Earth shrine' it lets you carry rocks to crush stone barriers, although they make Eira's movements slow and heavy. 'Fire shrines' allow you carry flames, to burn cobwebs that block your path. While 'Frost shrines' let you freeze any evil "corruption" , making it icy and passable, but if you fly into a wall while holding frost, Eira will shatter to pieces. Fortunately, plenty of save-stones are available, which save your position within the level, as a re-spawn point.

The game includes 3 worlds to complete, with 10 levels per world (30 levels in total).  There are 15 achievements via Game Center. The first world is fairly straightforward as enemies move predictably in fixed paths. In the second world, new more aggressive and intelligent creatures are introduced that actually pursue you. One of the best features is the wind effect, which carries you quickly around the level on a gust of air.

I haven't unlocked the third world yet. The developers advise that additional levels are planned, but a decision hasn't been made regarding pricing. Given that only 30 levels are provided initially and there's no incentive to replay levels for better scores or time, I wouldn't be surprised if the additional levels are eventually provided as free upgrades to boost the overall gameplay duration. Time will tell.

The graphics are beautiful, especially the images of a forest in mist, which forms a suitably ethereal backdrop for this fantasy game. The main menu includes a button to toggle between high and low quality graphics, if performance is an issue, although the high quality mode ran smoothly on the iPad 1. The 2.5d graphics are accompanied by nordic folk music and ambient bird and insect noises, which one might associate with an earlier age of faeries. My only complaint about the graphics is that if you introduce three "worlds", they should each appear distinctive, whereas the first two worlds (at least) share common graphics.

In our forums, the developers describe Wisp as "an ambient nordic-inspired puzzle adventure which emphasizes exploration and navigation rather than intense action".  That's a pretty good description, but don't expect "puzzles" in the form of brain teasers to solve – the puzzles they refer to relate to searching the level, avoiding danger and opening doorways, not solving brain-teasers. Also, although the title "Eira's Tale" implies a storyline about Eira's forest adventure, there's no cut-scenes or elaboration on the background story by the mid-way point.

Many modern games are characterized by frantic gameplay, bullets, killing, and explosions; but Wisp: Eira's Tale is intentionally the opposite. At least initially, as it does ramp up in difficulty as you progress. At $2.99 for a universal app and with a brand new lite version to try, this game is suitable for those who enjoy chillaxing with a graphically-appealing game, with tilt controls and no emphasis on score or best times. If that sounds like you, then Wisp: Eira's Tale is worth checking out.

[source]