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In mid-December, Mountain Sheep quietly dropped their one-on-one arcade hockey title Ice Rage [99¢] into the App Store. We thought it was a pretty fun little game in our review, but Ice Rage was so severely lacking in content it was kind of hard to know what to make of it. Since its initial release, the developers have been addressing this problem with a decent stream of updates.

A week after its launch an update added the Bike Baron as a playable character, and then an update in January added another new character as well as a fun single-player tournament mode with a simplistic stat upgrading system. Then earlier this month, yet some more new characters were added to the playable roster.

Slowly but surely, Ice Rage was getting fleshed out, and today a brand new update has been released that continues that progression. In fact, it’s probably the biggest Ice Rage update yet. A new skater, the big Swedish bruiser Svensson, has been added to the roster, and he looks ready to party. Also, each of the characters have been given their own individual “weight” in the game, giving them a more distinctive feel from each other as opposed to just feeling like different skins of the same player.

What I think is the biggest addition in this update to Ice Rage is iCade support. For such an arcade-y arcade game, mashing away at a physical joystick and buttons can only add to the experience. If they could at some point figure out a way to get multiplayer between two iCades to be a thing then I would be in miniature arcade heaven.

iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners also get treated to anti-aliasing courtesy of the latest update, as well as enlarged touch zones during multiplayer and huge memory optimizations. The core gameplay in Ice Rage is so much fun that I’m really hoping Mountain Sheep keep on making the overall game more robust. But for a dollar, even as a simple arcade experience, Ice Rage is a blast so be sure to give the latest update a spin.

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It begins with something out of a fairy tale. A little girl, Lumi, arrives at her grandfather’s house, but the door is locked, all the lights are out and her grandfather is missing. And it looks like something out of a storybook, with the environment expertly built out of paper and cardboard. But Lume [$1.99 / HD] gives us a tale for the modern era, a story of conservation and do-it-yourself ingenuity.

State of Play Games launched Lume on PC nearly a year ago, and now the game makes the move to iOS. The porting process has introduced a few frustrations, but for the most part this lovely little puzzle adventure has made the journey intact. Be warned, though—it’s a bite-sized experience, with less than an hour’s content at most. That span is charming, with a handful of intricate puzzles to work through. You’ll have to decide for yourself if that’s enough to make it worthwhile. It was just enough for me.

Lumi isn’t one to let a little thing like a power outage get in her way. She’s a resourceful heroine, and players are invited to be adventurous with her. The game plays like a classic point-and-click adventure, but on the small scale, across only seven screens. Tapping around moves Lumi to new places, investigates the environment, picks up tools and opens up puzzles. All of this tapping is done in the name of bringing back the light.

Tapping is also the biggest issue with this iOS port. While the PC version marks interactive areas by changing the cursor to a hand, there’s no such indication here. You’ll never know quite where to tap, and some of the interactive bits are small enough you might pass them by. This is one area where the game’s small stature is an advantage—it won’t take that much patience to find everything. There are two other hitches: the game ought to be locked to landscape orientation, as it’s not really possible to play in the tiny screen in portrait mode, and it ought not rely on manual saving. Replaying previously solved puzzles is terribly dull, so save often.

As Lumi works towards powering up the lights, she runs into several locks that bar her way, and each can be opened by solving a puzzle. The puzzles are clever, and each is unique. One is based on music, another involves rotating panels, and a couple more require cracking codes. They feel – they really do – like the sort of thing an eccentric grandfather might leave a curious granddaughter to challenge her. By opening locks, you’re not breaking into his private rooms, you’re proving that his faith in Lumi (and beyond it, State of Play’s faith in you) is well-placed.

I’ve mentioned that the game is gorgeous, and here’s why: the entire set is handcrafted. Movable elements, like Lumi and the puzzle screens, are animated separately, but everything else has been built with paper and cardboard and then filmed. This gives Lume a dreamlike quality, with deep vignetting and the sorts of pans and filmic scene transitions rarely seen in games. The soundtrack is just as beautiful, and deserves to be heard through headphones.

All of this builds up into a feeling of sincerity rarely encountered in games. There is no hint of irony in Lume’s message, and that makes it hard to disagree: self-sufficiency is admirable, and why shouldn’t it be? The game encourages conservation, but not by shaming or frightening its audience. Instead, it looks to make us proud of doing our best by the world and ourselves. It’s a nice feeling, to be honest, and it adds to the game’s already considerable charm. Lume may not be a lengthy experience, but it is most definitely a rewarding one. State of Play is working toward Part 2 now, and I, for one, can’t wait.

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There are a few things I look for in a tower defense game. A good variety of towers, a mix of unit types to keep things fresh and level layouts that force me to be creative are all necessities, but those all come standard. It’s the little spark of something extra that makes a title standout in this otherwise rigid genre.

Elf Defense [$2.99 / Lite] has so many extras that it’s hard to know where to start. Ridiculously adorable style? Check. Special units you can pull out as trump cards? Sure thing. Items you can useto go after the creeps directly? Uh-huh. There’s even an overarching upgrade system so you can control how powerful and effective your towers are. Just one catch—most of these things are tied into a premium currency system. Drat. They were so close, too.

You can ostensibly manage everything with only the holy leaves you earn while you play. You get some for the creeps you kill and some for each level you complete. At first it’s only enough to keep you limping along with a few items here and there, maybe a mercenary or two down the road. Later you’ll earn leaves at a faster clip. It just never feels fast enough to truly take advantage of all the cool things you could get your hands on if you just shelled out money for more.

Still, there’s quite a lot to enjoy with just the initial purchase. Elf Defense has thirty levels, with two tiers of difficulty, followed by a slew of similar “crazy” levels for veteran players. The levels are set across three themes—forest, desert and arctic—with around 100 different enemies. That’s not to say there’s a ton of variety, though. The level layouts vary but stick within close thematic parameters, and the enemies only come in a few broad categories: ground, air, and bosses, with fast versions of each.

All the extras keep Elf Defense’s formula from stalling out early. The game is actually pretty hard, so it makes a lot of sense to save up to unlock a mercenary like Coldy Bear, with his triggered ability to slow down all the enemies on screen, or the poison spewing Peaker. Similarly, using one of your few shovels to clear the right blocked square might mean the difference between surviving a level or failing. With strict cooldowns on pretty much everything, unlimited resources can’t offer that much of an advantage.

The towers are all pretty great too, even beyond the fact that they start out as little plants and eventually grow into Elven Valkyries. All the classic tower archetypes are covered, and they all feel worthy of their niches. I’m particularly fond of the electrical tower, which shoots out huge bolts of lightning that arc between units. Upgrade it in-game and it gets crazy powerful while targetting more units at once. Spend leaves to research it between levels and its base power and range will increase further. This is true for all the towers, but none are quite as cool as a pink elf that shoots electricity from her head.

Leveling and shopping give players a broad selection of ways to spend leaves, but even without them you can customize the gameplay experience to taste. If the game moves too slow, run it at double speed. Fast waves will flit by so quickly they’ll skip frames. If even normal speed is too fast to keep on top of placement and upgrades, pause the game—you’ll still be in control. This might occasionally make the game too simple, but usually it’s a lifesaver. Even on Easy, you’ll need to plan your strategies carefully—especially if you want to earn the highest leaf rewards.

There is one other way to collect leaves: earn achievements. Each has a reward ranging from 100 to 1500 leaves, enough to keep you in shovels or bombs for quite some time. Sadly these aren’t tied to Game Center, which only tracks a single leaderboard for total score.

I’d recommend Elf Defense on looks alone (those square-headed elves have won my heart), but there’s a good game beneath the glitz as well. It’s just a bit frustrating that its approach to in-game currency is so mercenary, because the game would be more fun with more freedom. Still, if you’re looking for a hefty tower defense title and you’ve got an appetite for darling designs, you ought to check this out. If you do, stop by and share your thoughts in our discussion thread.

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It’s been over six months since Final Fantasy Tactics [$15.99] hit the iOS scene, and while the port largely survived the move to the iPhone we noted some issues that kept the game back from a universal recommendation. Even worse, the iPad version that we thought was on the horizon disappeared from the radar, leaving the small screen as the only avenue for playing the game for quite some time (iPad 2x mode notwithstanding). Now with Final Fantasy Tactics for iPad [$17.99] here, we can finally see if that half a year waiting period was worth it. While the port certainly improves in a variety of different areas (mainly due to the increased screen space), it’s still far from perfect.

For folks new to Final Fantasy Tactics, I recommend that you read our original review of the iPhone version (along with the recommendation to just check around the internet for the multitude of views on this classic). For everyone else, this is the same War of the Lions version found on the iPhone/iPod touch and Sony PSP (except for the multiplayer in the PSP version). It’s still the same, extremely deep strategy RPG that has kept its appeal even over a decade later.

One of our primary issues with the iPhone version of Final Fantasy Tactics dealt with an inherent limitation of the device. Specifically, the screen just felt too small for the amount of information displayed. Thankfully, the iPad version rectifies some of those concerns. The text is a lot less blurry (something that had been fixed in an update to the iPhone version since our original review), the added buttons and menus feel more spaced out, and the game just plays more comfortably in long gaming sessions. Unfortunately, the larger screen size also leads to a clearer view of just how pixelated most of the visuals are. However, I doubt most veterans of FFT are going to care about pixelated sprites.

Gameplay slowdown, another nagging issue that detracted from the iPhone experience (and has been somewhat addressed in recent updates) has improved in the iPad port. Strangely enough, not all abilities/spells seem to benefit from the additional quickness. For example, jump into the prologue and you’ll see that Agrias’ Holy Sword abilities (as well as Summoner spells later on) are greatly sped up. However, Squire Fundaments, as well as some black mage spells, still seem to suffer from noticeable slowdown. This inconsistency seems to exist across a variety of abilities, although the slowdown seems to affect far less abilities than previously. It’s important to note that despite the speed improvements, there’s still a disappointing lack of smoothness which continues to detract from the experience.

Gamers holding out hope that Final Fantasy Tactics for iPad features a revamping of controls are in for a disappointment. The touch controls, along with the general interface, continue to be a mixed-bag. The larger screen space of the iPad means things are generally easier to read and navigate, but there are still too many button presses, confirmation windows, and virtual buttons to be considered streamlined. Still, with enough playtime to get used to the controls I found the iPad version to be far preferable than the cramped iPhone/iPod touch screen.

Other elements, like sound quality and music, make the transition to the iPad with little change. MIDI effects still continue to occasionally sound odd, most likely due to the porting process. The music, meanwhile, is still one of the strongest suits of Final Fantasy Tactics, and remains one of my favorite gaming soundtracks to date.

When all is said and done, the iPad port of Final Fantasy Tactics can be summed up in two statements. First, this iPad port, while long overdue, is superior to the iPhone version (primarily due to larger screen) and should be considered the preferred iOS experience (assuming you have an iPad 2). Second, while the iPad version makes improvements, it still doesn’t match the feel of the original PSX version, which has yet to be duplicated on any platform.

For previous fans that haven’t checked Final Fantasy Tactics on iOS yet, your enjoyment will be based on how well you can check your nostalgia and overlook the nuances of porting. For everyone else, it’s safe to say that you should try this classic turn-based RPG any way you can, iOS or otherwise.

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Paladin Studios, who have previously released the quirky skydiving-esque game Jimmy Pataya [99¢] on iOS, have announced that their next project will be a pinball action game hybrid called Momonga Pinball Adventures. You play as Momo the momonga, which is an actual thing, an adorable Japanese flying squirrel to be exact. Momo is on a mission to rescue his momonga friends who have all been kidnapped by a group of evil owls that recently attacked their village. Momo is hurt in this attack as well, but is rescued by a panda who then gives him the training needed to defeat the leader of the evil owls, General Kuton.

Yes, a game where a Japanese flying squirrel is injured by a pack of evil owls and then nursed to health by a panda does sound pretty crazy, but probably not any crazier than a plumber traversing a magical Mushroom Kingdom to save his Princess love interest from a weird fire breathing dinosaur/dragon/turtle thing. The zaniness of the premise actually suits the colorful, cartoonish world of Momonga Pinball Adventures, which you can check out in the following trailer.

Bopping Momo around with flippers is about where the pinball influence ends, and Momonga will have a large focus on point collection and speed, as the developers note in the comments on their video. There will be structured levels to complete, boss fights, and fully animated characters that move the storyline along. This certainly isn’t the first game to take pinball mechanics and mash them together into something more, but it’s an idea that I’ve seen used to great effect to provide interesting and varied gameplay. I’m hoping for some more of that with Momonga Pinball Adventures, which is slated to hit the App Store sometime in Spring.

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Last month we reported that an iOS remake of Barbarian – The Ultimate Warrior, aka Death Sword, was in the works courtesy of developer Microids and publisher Anuman Interactive, and after a couple of false starts in the past week, the game does appear to officially be available in the App Store.

Renamed Barbarian – The Death Sword [$1.99/HD] for iOS, the game is a one-on-one fighting game that originally released in 1987 for the Commodore 64 and most of the other popular computers at the time. Gamers lauded the competitive gameplay of Barbarian in the burgeoning fighting game genre, but most of its widespread notoriety was due to some racy packaging and the ability to lop off your opponents head in a shower of blood during battle.

The iOS version of Barbarian is completely redone with 3D visuals, several new modes and unlockables, and cross-platform local multiplayer. I’ve spent a few minutes with the game on my iPhone, and although I never played the original, it seems like it might be kind of cool. It’s certainly got raciness and gore in spades, but I’m not so sure about the gameplay. It feels very basic and clunky, but it also feels like there might be some underlying depth to the whole thing that I have yet to figure out.

We’ll be spending much more time with Barbarian – The Death Sword in the coming days to adequately get a feel for it, and there’s currently a discussion of the game and further impressions in our forums.

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The story behind Little Acorns [99¢] is simple yet adorable. You’re the highly fashionable patriarch of an industrious squirrel clan and one day, you and your family unit return home to the scene of a crime. For reasons unknown, a giggly, malevolent trope of woodland critters have made off with your stash of acorns. Can you guess what happens next? If you said that this is where you run, swing, slide and generally platform your way to the return of your stolen goods, you would be absolutely right. Personally, however, I would have just cut my losses and moved my family to an environment not infested with insects twice as big as my kids, but that’s just me.

Though hardly the most original platformer to have hit the App Store, Little Acorns is almost surprisingly well done. The virtual controls are easy to grasp and beautifully responsive. Mid-flight adjustments? Not a problem. Your buck-toothed protagonist will happily comply. The levels are also rather well done and highly varied. Short enough to fit into those ‘I have five minutes before my date arrives and I have nothing better to do’ moments, and a vast majority of the levels aren’t too difficult.

Fortunately, however, there’s a decent amount of replay value. After collecting every acorn in the stage, you’ll have the chance to pick up five fruits in order to unlock a new cosmetic item for your squirrel. Prefer something even more challenging? Try doing all that within the speed run time limit. Have we mentioned that some stages will also have you trying to corral a number of rambunctious and highly mobile squirrel kids? Because there’s that, too.

What I like most about Little Acorns, however, is the pacing. Team Pesky has this bit down to an art form. Whenever the gameplay starts feeling remotely repetitive, something new is thrown at you. At times, this ’something new’ can be as simple as a new enemy and at others, as complex as a new gameplay mechanic. But no matter how you cut it, Little Acorns is excellent at keeping the experience pine-fresh. (To be fair, this sort of peters out towards the latter chapters, but Team Pesky did an excellent job with this for most of the game.)

Of course, it helps that the aesthetics are more than just modestly palatable. Backed by a funky, toe-tapping soundtrack, Little Acorns has the look and feel of a Saturday morning cartoon. There is no violent content here. When you stumble into enemies, you get momentarily poisoned and have your speed reduced. If you make the mistake of tumbling into a ravine, you’re treated to a picture of your bushy-tailed family looking rather sad. That’s about it. Little Acorns is about as child-safe as any application can get.

Overall, Little Acorns is what you might call a safe bet. While not the kind of game that will eat away hours of your time before you realize what’s going on or the sort that would be branded as revolutionary, Little Acorns is the sort of title you’ll find yourself constantly going back to, the kind of game that fits too easily into a spare five minutes. In short, pick it up if you have an appetite for well-executed and adorable 2D platformers.

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So this is pretty weird. Last week, the classic Japanese role playing game from Atlus, Shin Megami Tensei [$13.99], appeared in the App Store.

Originally released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the game was re-released for the PlayStation and the Game Boy Advance about a decade later, but the game has never been released outside of Japan (though unofficial English-translated versions do exist around the web). The original Shin Megami Tensei has spawned tons of sequels and spinoffs, and the entire series has an extremely dedicated following.

Now, when I first saw Shin Megami Tensei in the App Store, I was almost certain it wasn’t a sanctioned port. In this line of business, unauthorized ports or ripoffs of popular games appear fairly often, especially as of late it seems.

The iOS version of Shin Megami Tensei definitely did not look legit. It had an atrocious virtual control overlay that took up more than half the screen, and the app description sounded like it had been carefully reworded from the Wikipedia entry on the game.

Oh, and the entire game was still in Japanese only. Let me repeat that: the game is entirely in Japanese with no English whatsoever.

So based on that, and given the fairly hefty price tag, I was ready to write Shin Megami Tensei off as just another unauthorized cash grab. Except, upon further snooping, it’s not.

It’s published by Index Corporation, the Japanese company that bought Atlus several years back. A tweet from Atlus Japan’s Twitter account confirms that they are officially behind this iOS version. It appears to be a bare-bones emulated port of the 2003 Game Boy Advance version, with no special care put into translating it to iOS. But hey, it’s Shin Megami Tensei on your iPhone, I guess.

If you know Japanese and can deal with a no-frills port, then this is likely your dream come true. For anybody else, this is probably just a frustrating example of what could have been. A proper, English-translated port of Shin Megami Tensei that has been carefully crafted for the iOS platform would make a lot of people happy, and although I don’t think it’s likely, I’m holding out hope that Atlus is considering something like that for the future.

For now, if you are down to drop $14 just so you can carry around the original Shin Megami Tensei in your pocket, then I won’t judge you.

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In this week’s episode of the TouchArcade Show, Eli Hodapp brings the heat when I note my recent PlayStation Vita purchase. Later, we dig into the usual — the latest, hottest and best in iOS. Topics include WrestleFest and Midway Arcade, the new IGF controversy, how Apple is responding to clones, and the disappearance of Battlefield: Aftershock.

If you’d like to give us a listen, you can do so via the links below. If you dig us and want to grab our episodes without having to find these posts, consider subscribing to us on iTunes or Zune. These services automatically give you the latest shows. No fuss, no mess. Well, usually.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-040.mp3, 47.7MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• WrestleFest [$2.99 / Lite / HD / Lite HD]
• Rush City [$.99]
• Midway Arcade [$.99]
• Little Acorns [$.99]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• Meowch! [$.99 / Lite]

FRONT PAGE

• EA Pulls Broken ‘Battlefield’ Title
• ‘Pokemon Yellow’ Hits The App Store
• The App Store Could Use A Yelp-Like Review System

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What’s this? Rovio Mobile has something else new up its sleeves? In a recent interview with AllThingsD, Rovio CEO Mikael Hed shared a lot of “stay calm, don’t panic” thoughts on Rovio and how heavily tied its success is to Angry Birds, noting that Rovio’s fingers are in more than just video game jars. He also revealed that his company is in production on a yet-to-be-revealed game set to hit in the next couple of months. AllThingsD says this title is a “non-Angry Birds-themed game,” which leaves a lot of room for interpretation as to how Angry Birds-less this new title could be.

If this is a new IP… boy, does Rovio have some shoes to fill. Angry Birds is on stores shelves and clothing racks, as well as pretty much on anything with a chip in it. You can’t help but to think that, unless this game somehow exceeds the popularity of Angry Birds, it’ll be considered anything other than a failure. We can think of worse problems, though. Like hammer toe. Bet that’s the pits.

[via RoyalePost]

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