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Dragons Odyssey Frane [ $11.99 ] has the distinction of being the only game that makes me want to reach out and pinch its metaphorical cheek. Not only is it kinda adorable, it’s also all sorts of loveable. Like the fawning, mud-encrusted niece that is never short of questions about unicorns, Exe-Create’s port of their PC-based action-RPG title has a way of making you tilt your head and go “D’awww”.

Actually, before we get any further, the whole ‘action-RPG’ bit needs to be clarified a bit. Those expecting an assembly of eccentric party members, a varied set of skills to manage and all of the other traditional tropes may be a touch disappointed. Dragons Odyssey Frane doesn’t actually have all that, per se. In some ways, the game bears more of a resemblance to a laid-back shoot ‘em up than anything else.

The protagonist, a tussled-haired boy by the name of Kunah, is in charge of all the melee stuff. With every tap of a button, he either swings a yoyo, flails with a dagger or beats on things with an element-driven punch. Those with a preference for ranged attack will have to rely on his loud female companion Riel. She’s the one who inunduates enemies with glowing projectiles every time you hit yet another button.

What’s interesting about all this is the fact that hitting the melee button will cause Kunah to lock onto targets within the screen, thereafter allowing Riel’s attacks with greater ease. Riel, while a separate character that can go into ‘Rage’ mood (when she loses it, she will, quite literally, bounce Kunah across the screen and clear it of enemies that way) if you permit her to be smacked around too many times, neither has a health bar nor real equipment slots of her own. The only customization you’re allowed with her (from what I’ve seen, at any rate) is the ability to change her attack.

Combat follows a similar theme. While there are a fair number of enemies that will just barrel dumbly into you, others will, well, shoot relatively blindly at you. The bosses have slightly more variety. From a trio of sisters to a monstrous, mirage-inducing sand worm, they’ll have you ducking away, chasing weak spots, dodging projectiles and flinging attacks of your own.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Dragons Odyssey Frane is considerably more story-driven than most of its brethren in the App Store. The gist of the tale is this: you play as a responsible, mildly perverted boy called Kunah. When his angelic mentor Escude goes missing, he and his friend Riel (both of whom are actually dragons) gain permission from God (Yes, with the capital G and beard and all) to go look for her. Once accorded that sacred duty, they descend onto the mortal plane and begin their quest. Pedestrian as it all sounds, it’s actually rather amusing.

For one, Kunah and Riel actually act their age. More often than not, they stumble and they stammer and they speak out of turn. Many of the denizens of the game treat them the way anyone would treat a precocious child. The God portrayed here is also far from dignified. In one memorable instance, he actually disguises himself as a rather… conspicuous piece of wooden furniture in an attempt to surprise our protagonists.

Unapologetically goofy, Dragons Odyssey Frane is filled with silliness. There are star-crossed feline lovers, a military man with a retinue of giant hamster-like things, and familiar stereotypes played to perfection. For those in search of a serious plot line, Dragons Odyssey Frane will not be your game. For those willing to accommodate its many eccentricities, though, this charming piece has a lot to offer.

Aside from the main storyline (things generally follow the usual ‘get quest, investigate dungeon, defeat big boss’ format), you’ll also be able to engage in more domestic duties. Unlike most RPG protagonists, our dynamic duo are not homeless itinerants. In the beginning, Kunah will actually build the two of them a rather cozy-looking abode and it is within the confines of their home that you will be able to tinker about in a makeshift workshop and mess about a kitchen.

While not particularly deep (it generally consists of combining two items together), the crafting system is oddly satisfying. I have a nagging suspicion that there’s no wrong way to do things here. If bread and rice can produce ‘bread sushi’ as opposed to a virtual eye-roll from the game, anything is possible.

(A nifty detail: people will slowly assemble a village around your heroes’ residence as time passes by. Eventually, you’ll be able to purchase rare equipment, plant vegetables and take part in a few random quests.)

While hardly cutting-edge, the visuals in Dragons Odyssey Frane are rather endearing. I’m not the biggest fan of their character portraits but the sprite work and the tiny, animated details (the game features one of the most attractive d-pads I’ve ever seen) are all things I can get behind. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the grating, cringe-inducing voice acting. By the end of the first spoken line, I had turned it off in mortification.

Aside from those small issues though, Dragons Odyssey Frane is rather hard to dislike. The characters and the world will slowly grow on you. Combat is brief and brutal, yet satisfying. Personally, I haven’t tried courting any of the characters just yet (it looks like it’s possible but I couldn’t bring myself to even ponder the idea given how young the protagonists look) but the option is present for those interested in such things. If you’re willing to put up with occasional stereotypes, loads of silliness and the relatively high price tag, I can’t recommend it enough for a weekend change of pace.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Late last week The New York Times published an op-ed debate titled, “Hip, or About to Break a Hip,” a discussion about whether 45 year-old skaters are “embarrassing and risky or inspiring and life-affirming?” Opinions ranged from “inspiring and life-affirming,” to “… do something productive: become an ultimate fighter, get your G.E.D., date an 18-year old.” Um, wow, guys.

Appropriate then is the release of Brisbane-based IV Motion’s Penny Time [$0.99 / Free ], which flies in the face of that rather unnecessary conversation. Shorn of the skating genre’s mechanical trappings, the game is allowed to focus on the sport’s anarchistic roots. Its reply, “Who gives a #$%*?”

Penny Time announces its care-free absurdity with a series of vignettes that see the player character using a Penny skateboard, crashed like a meteorite from the heavens, to freeze time and subsequently summon some spirit animals in the form of a pig, dodo and porpoise. Right. So, the player is off on his or her quest to skate through a series of time-frozen environments with the aid of the aforementioned Ghost Dodo.

Play is similar to rhythm runners like Tomena Sanner [ $1.99 ] and Bit.Trip Runner. The player proceeds left to right, clearing obstacles by swiping when rolling over a series of white (up), blue (left) and yellow (down) targets. Levels consist of three sections: a standard area where one acquires points based on timing of swipes, a multiplier section, and then a “cash-in” portion where the player is given the opportunity to bank their multiplied points, or take them on into the next area and risk bailing and losing the combo.

Touch controls are a little dodgy. There are a handful of times each run where I go flipping over a guardrail or a child or something because the game’s missed my inputs. This is sometimes exacerbated not only by how unforgiving the game can be (I’ve often hit my trick on the periphery of a target only to tumble into a sad pile), but by the minimalism of the flat, untextured 3D models. It borders on gorgeous abstraction in the vein of a Katamari Damacy, but the environments are so busy it’s often difficult to tell exactly what’s ahead. Case in point, during a particularly funny intro I held the iPhone up for my girlfriend, sitting behind me on the couch, who responded, “I can’t see… it just looks like a bunch of shapes.” Indeed.

That in mind, I’m not sure that it’s going to have much of a following among the leaderboard junkies. But, in addition to Game Center leaderboards, the game has a bevy of character and board customization options, along with the requisite Facebook and Twitter support, 84 achievements and a fantastic OST.

A rhythm game lives or dies by the quality of its tunes, and electronic artist and fellow Brisbanite Hunz has crafted a score among the best on the platform. A warm, varied slice of electronica, it’s up there with the Groove Coaster [ $2.99 ] and Beat Sneak Bandit [ $2.99 ] soundtracks, well worth the dollar the game costs. It’s a trump card that staves off mediocrity in what is otherwise an “okay” game, an intelligent pairing that propelled me along on my quest to count the black cats littering the next area. Note: this game has its share of black cats.

With a smart few stylistic choices, IV Motion have made a fine if sometimes frustrating little game, worth the low price of entry. Like the skateboard brand it advertises, it is “designed and built to look good, perform well, and exceed your expectations.” A little rougher around the edges maybe, but a ridiculous, ageless thing that can be enjoyed by anyone. And that’s okay.

TouchArcade Rating:

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In January of last year, Liv Games’ debut title Legendary Wars [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD)] really redefined the side-scrolling castle defense genre. It had a huge cast of interesting heroes and enemies, a fantastic art style, tons of humorous dialogue, and a huge single-player campaign to play through. But what really made it stand out was how it used so many different iterations of the strategy defense formula, making it feel like many different games in one and a fresh experience throughout.

Exactly a year to the day after the release of Legendary Wars, Liv Games put out its pseudo-sequel Monster Wars [ Free ], which we really liked in our review. It took basically everything from the first game but re-imagined it from the bad guys’ perspective, letting you play with the monsters as the protagonists. Also, it dumped heaps of new content, improved visuals, and lots of new odds and ends that made it an even better overall experience.

Today, you can grab Monster Wars for free for a limited time. In addition, Liv Games has sent over some details of what to expect of the next new 1.2 update which will be hitting soon, along with a teaser image of some of the new tier 4 armor:

-11 New AWESOME Tier 4 Monster Armors! Each with a more powerful special designed to destroy heroes!
-Monster Arena! 12 New Challenges and 2 new bosses!
-NEW LEVEL featuring the Unisis boss (Pegasus Unicorn)
-New Sky Angel boss in 6-2 and Arena.
-New ‘Hero” Difficulty designed for Tier 4 Monsters.
-New Fear status that causes heroes to get scared, miss and run away!
-11 New Tier 4 Achievements and 1 new Leaderboard.

Definitely don’t miss the chance to grab Monster Wars while free, and if you like the game and find yourself curious about what it’s like for the heroes in the game, then definitely check out Legendary Wars at some point too.

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London-based design studio ustwo created a heck of a game in Whale Trail, but it’s failing as a commercial entity. It’ll never hit the App Store top 10. The face of its bubbly and wide-eyed mascot, Willow, will never grace products like panties or fruit snacks. And at its current pace, it’ll be awhile before it generates a decent profit.

The studio has huge expectations that aren’t being met, and just based on trends, it’s clear that Whale Trail will continue not meeting them. It’s a failure in this life. But will it be one in its next? Again, ustwo is spending money on Whale Trail, giving it a second wind via creative mouth-to-mouth. It’s retooling and redesigning the oddball flying game as a free-to-play title in a high-bandwidth effort to attract the casual audience that the original version failed to reach, but managed to brush.

The hope is that this model, alongside some fresh content, will finally put the game over the top and onto hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of phones and tablets across the world. It’s a crazy plan. Crazy, however, is kinda its project lead’s thing.

On Conversion, Failure, And Journeys

I’ve been speaking with ustwo co-founder Mills about the upcoming transformation. Mills is like a bizarro Clint Eastwood. In the face of adversity he has the same grit and air of determination, but instead of a cowboy hat and a killer squint Mills rocks a long, flowing red wig and eyeglasses with thick, black frames. When he talks to you, even via e-mail, you feel his warmth, energy, and passion. He’s funny, too, and you see a lot of his brand of humor in his game. As we talk, he refuses to call the original Whale Trail a failure despite being able to produce evidence indicating as much. Instead, he calls it a “succailure” and the process of making it a F2P title a “journey.”

“Whale Trail was our first proper game release,” Mills tells TouchArcade. “Full heart, full passion. The launch was a success for our studio, showering loads of eyeballs on us but something didn’t quite click. Although we were hitting 12,000 downloads a day at launch, it tailed off pretty quick.”

In fact, Whale Trail has just hit over 188,000 total sales, and it shifts around 250 units a day across Android and iPhone and iPad. These kind of numbers would be enough for a lot of studios, but ustwo spent oodles of cash on the game. It needed Whale Trail to be up there with the Angry Birds and Fruit Ninjas and the Cut the Ropes of the world.

How those titles manage to stay up top is a matter of debate. Mills doesn’t believe that featuring, reviews, or exposure brings in new downloads. He thinks that word of mouth is now driving sales. As evidence, he notes that the game’s trailers still get around 500 new views a day and the music video for the theme used in the game drives interest, too. Riding on a wave of featuring, however, Whale Trail managed to light up the charts for a short period. Mills shot us the following handy chart, for those of you into the numbers:

Learning about why the game didn’t keep selling at its initial, breakneck pace is an important component of its upcoming transformation. Mills is soaking up everything he can. He frequently frames this entire ordeal as a learning experience.

“We went back to the drawing board and dove deep into the blue waters to understand why Whale Trail wasn’t quite able to take off. We had made a wonderful experience but there wasn’t enough ‘replay’ value in the current game. The new challenge levels added in iteration release two and three helped, but we needed more. Much more,” he adds.

The new version of the game is, indeed, functionally different. As you collect bubbles and travel, you’ll collect an in-game currency called Krill. With Krill, you can buy new powers, “useable treats,” costumes for Willow and its five new playable friends. If you want this stuff without the grind, you can buy Krill straight-up.

“The game is so much better. Players are now in full control of their destiny and each play rewards them. This was missing before,” he says.

If you’ve already purchased Whale Trail, Mills says you’ll receive a “BIG” bag of Krill when you update to the new version. Additionally, you’ll receive a message designed to make you feel “special.” Mills worries about how the current install base is going to react to this massive change, since the regular version will essentially die after this update. Perhaps that’s why this message to fans will be “like finding a bag of money in your house that you can use to pimp it right up 50 style” or “like finding a bag of candy that is so sweet, yet so sticky.”

When I bring up failure, Mills says I have a point, but he describes the experience so far as a “journey.” His studio has had opportunities to sell off the IP or actually make money, but ustwo as a whole is more interested in learning at this point.

“You can look at it as a failure, but I see it as journey,” Mills says. “Each iteration of Whale Trail has created a new buzz and has engaged the players more. It’s been a big lesson for me especially in regards to releasing something I wanted and releasing something that the majority of players want. We were very successful at creating buzz, we were very open about the whole experience and the story of Whale Trail will now be told via Penguin,” he tells us. He means the publishing company, not an actual penguin.

“We had two Whale Trail acquisition offers for the game as it currently stands now, but we were not interested in money. We were interested in better understanding what we could do to make the game better. I couldn’t walk away from it now, knowing it was not the game we wanted it to be. The game we have since built and are testing now with players is the game we should have released back then but didn’t realize it at the time.”

Even though the Whale Trail flopped, Mills notes some positives. It gave his studio new business opportunities, a higher-profile in the development community, and a lot of good will. These things, however, aren’t going to make new Whale Trail sail. A balance of IAP and fun mechanics are the only thing that’ll save it.

“I want to know more about free-to-play,” Mills says. “We are not being aggressive with the monetization potential. Players need never spend, but the joy they feel should allow the game to be pretty viral. We get a small social virility through Twitter right now, but the potential at the higher numbers is unreal. I guess the plan is for Willow to find some real Whales!”

We’ll have to see if the new version of Whale Trail hits the heights that Mills thinks it can reach. Regardless if it does or not, it’s going to be hard to call this iteration a failure. To Mills, success is all about what you do as you try to succeed.

“We didn’t set out to make something generic. Success is about crafting something you believe in and telling that story, granted it may never be a smash hit as the very concept of a little fat flying whale called Willow who lives in a psychedelic land is too far out for many to stomach, but we made something we are so proud of.”

We’ll have hands-on impressions in the near future.

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For as many App Store games that I eyeball on a daily basis, I admit that something that has a lot of visual pop or a very distinct style will always catch my eye. Looks don’t always equal quality though, and I’ve been wooed by many an attractive looking title only to be disappointed when the gameplay didn’t quite follow through.

This is not the case with My Little Hero [ $0.99 ]. There are many titles out there that feel like iPhone games, but My Little Hero is not one of them. It has that shine that is evocative of games on a larger scale, and you’ll notice it from the title screen onward. It drops you into the role of a brave young boy whose friend Pinky (note: Pinky is your favorite stuffed rabbit) is kidnapped by the Boogeyman and spirited away into your bedroom closet. What will you do to save him? Why, don a cape and a helmet and follow him in there, of course.

Gameplay is viewed from a 3/4 top down perspective and will remind you of Zelda in under a minute. It’s not just the whimsy of the style, but the layouts of the worlds and the movements of the enemies as well. As you search for Pinky, you’ll navigate you way through forests, swamps, deserts and eventually make it to the Boogeyman’s nest. Each of these areas is open world, although there is a clear path you can follow through each of them if you’re not in an exploring mood. The worlds have plenty of little sub-destinations on a cutely drawn world map, so it will take you some time to plow your way through while stabbing things with your wooden sword.

When you kill enemies (which are all cute, by the way), you’ll be rewarded with buttons, which can be saved to buy things later such as lollipops that will restore you to full health. Later down the line, you’ll score items as well, such a a trusty flashlight. My favorite part of exploring these worlds was saving my game, as I did so by approaching a little white nightstand that looks just like the one in my bedroom and pulling the light on the bedside lamp. It’s the kind of touch that makes you go “awwww” – and this game is chock full of them.

It’s hard to complain about much in My Little Hero, as it really stands out in the genre, but there was one thing I didn’t like and that was the absence of music in the levels. As adorable as the game is, I found myself imagining a silly soundtrack to go with it, and I felt its absence. The sound effects in the levels are great and just what you expect to go with the overall tone, but I think I would have enjoyed my journey more if I could habe bopped along to some tunes.

The other small detriment I noticed was that the level design felt a bit repetitive after a while. To counter this somewhat I tried playing it in bite-sized sessions so I didn’t burn out too much. It’s not poorly designed, mind you, but when something looks this standout, you expect it to come through that way on all levels, and I think I could have fallen madly in love with it if it provided a little more variety.

That being said, My Little Hero is still a fantastic game, and I had a great time playing it. What it’s missing in variety it makes up for with heaps of charm, and for the amount of content you get, it’s worth way more than a buck. The developers also promise more levels in the future, so eventually you’ll have even more worlds to conquer. If you even remotely loved Costume Quest or similar action adventure games, you won’t want to pass on My Little Hero.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Season finales are undeniably difficult to pull off: they need to pull the disparate plots of the story together in a way that feels satisfying but not hackneyed, while still maintaining a sense of self-contained narrative. A serialized game like Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space carries the added weight of presenting us with the highest expression of the puzzles and mechanics its introduced thus far.

I’ve come to realize that the second half of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space — say, starting with “Night of the Raving Dead,” [$4.99] and continuing through the finale, “What’s New Beelzebub?” [$4.99] — are funnier and generally better than the first two episodes. This is largely because the last three episodes are more tightly connected, with each cliffhanger transitioning smoothly into the next episode. They feel cohesive, and that makes me feel invested.

But it’s also because, in contrast to the procedural feel of the first two entries in the series “Ice Station Santa” and “Moai Better Blues,” these latter episodes are a perfect fit for the point-and-click adventure genre.

“Beelzebub”’s only narrative blunder comes during the series’ antagonists’ big reveal, which is funny enough on its own, but is probably much better if you’ve played Sam & Max Save the World as well. (This is a recurring problem for Beyond Time and Space as a whole, especially since Save the World isn’t available on the App Store.) Every thing else in “Beelzebub”  – every piece of dialogue, every joke, every plot twist, every fan-service callback — feels earned, not only because it has the rest of the series supporting it, but also because the audience has had to work for it.

Steve Purcell’s writing doesn’t waste time with exposition or lengthy explanations, and players who haven’t been paying attention since “Ice Station Santa” probably won’t make sense of each villain’s plans or of the haphazard and absurd sequence of events that lead up to “Beelzebub.” The jokes, the dialogue, and even the over-arching plot of the series come tumbling out, rapid-fire, and only the quick-witted and observant will get much out of it. Beyond Time and Space hedges its bets, of course: even if you miss something ostensibly important, the games are light-hearted and silly enough to keep moving forward. Nevertheless, Sam & Max hews to point-and-click mechanics that prize attentiveness and lateral thinking, and “Beelzebub,” more than any other episode in the series provides a narrative structure and presentation to match.

Beyond Time and Space is at its best deconstructing horror tropes and, while I liked the time travel puzzles from “Chariots of the Dogs [$4.99],” “Beelzebub” and “Raving Dead” have the best settings and ambiance. The finale tasks the Freelance Police with scrambling between the well-worn block near their office, caught in the middle of the apocalypse, and a snarky, tongue-in-cheek version of Fortune 500 Hell. It’s clever and atmospheric, and it drives the games most interesting puzzles, which involve attempting to disrupt Hell’s operations long enough to free some damned souls.

“Beelzebub”’s narrative hook literalizes an abstract idea like the afterlife and reduces it to another explorable screen to interact with. In other words, there’s no difference between Hell and the “real” world for Sam and Max, in the same way that there’s no difference between 1967 and 2008, or between being alive and being a zombie. It’s right there in the title: Beyond Time and Space. Without intellectualizing too much, that’s a pretty sophisticated concept, but Sam & Max is charming and self-aware enough to keep it in check. Purcell doesn’t let metaphysics get in the way of Max’ fart humor, and the result is a series that allows for outlandish puzzles and silly in-game logic without sacrificing pithy dialogue or character interaction. It’s also why, for example, one of “Beelzebub”’s puzzles can call for the death of Jimmy Two-Teeth’s entire family, and no one really has to feel bad about it.

There’s a lot to admire about the way “Beelzebub” illuminates and caps off the various narrative and thematic threads running through a five-game series, but its puzzles generally lack punch, an unfortunate side-effect of following the preternaturally clever “Chariots of the Dogs.” Over the course of Beyond Time and Space, the best puzzles have challenged our perception of the game world, mutating and iterating on inventory-based puzzle design with portals, zombies, and time travel. “Beelzebub” has a few standout puzzles, including a fourth-wall-breaking language trick, but is generally less ambitious in its design than previous titles.

Telltale is, as a rule, well-versed in designing accessible, intuitive puzzle games and “Beelzebub” is generally no exception, despite featuring a few textbook examples of adventure game pratfalls: guess-what-the-developer-is-thinking crops up once or twice, as do scenarios that require thorough, exhaustive clicking and hunting instead of puzzle-solving. “Beelzebub”’s occasional clunkiness is somewhat mitigated by a retroactive appreciation of the funny in-game logic, but that’s to substitute for the thrill that accompanies solving Sam & Max‘ best puzzles.

While “Beelzebub” lacks the unified theme of “Chariots of the Dogs,” it’s no slouch. A few missteps aside, the puzzles — while of the traditional match-this-item-with-this-NPC sort — are clever and well-realized, even if they tend to be a little on the nose. It’s still one of the best in the series, funnier than “Moai Better Blues” and with clearer puzzle design than “Raving Dead.” If you haven’t played any of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, now’s a good time to start: “What’s New Beelzebub” is a fine capstone to a great series.

TouchArcade Rating:

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In an age where game studios are talking to behavioral psychologists and hiring retention experts and monetization specialists in a rush to juice the most out of free-to-player gamers, there’s at least one studio developing free-to-play games that doesn’t care about metrics, compulsion loops, and user acquisition. Game business never informs game design at NimbleBit. Fun is first, the mechanics of free-to-play are secondary.

Pocket Planes is the next big thing from the two-man studio, and it’s philosophically linked with its other titles. Without shaking a virtual change cup in your face, Pocket Planes gives you a vibrant and customizable world and ownership over it as you ferry a fleet of planes from one airport to the next. Designers David and Ian Marsh believe that these components will be enough to organically drive the free-to-play aspect. No business trickery is required.

The Art Of Good Free-To-Play

“[Our] philosophy is to consider monetization as little as possible during the design of the game,” Ian tells TouchArcade. “The in-game currencies are balanced to be a natural part of the game without the option to even purchase more during design and beta,” he points out. “Adding IAP and deciding how much to charge is always one of the last things we do before launch. We take care to make sure that everything in the game is accessible and achievable without every purchasing IAP.”

Ian and David proved that this approach works with Tiny Tower. The game made money even though monetization aspects weren’t a focal point. The game also did well with critics, earning all sorts of amazing reviews and even a Game of the Year nod in 2011 from the editorial team at Apple. Millions of people played Tiny Tower, too.

Pocket Planes is still deeply in beta, but I’m as hopelessly … hooked on it as I was Tiny Tower. Every ten or so minutes I pick up my phone and plan more flights. When I’m not playing, I spend time thinking about new planes and creative ways to expand my cash and transport flow. Should I grind in my current selection of airports until I can buy New York’s airport? Or should I keep expanding with much smaller airports to broaden my empire, and slowly build up the necessary resources to acquire international hubs? What if I converted all my fleet to four-seat airplanes? How much could I earn then?

These are the questions running through my head, in part because the simulation aspect of the experience is so good. But I’m also just straight-up invested in the world that I’m creating, and I want to keep making it bigger and better. There are so many small, yet beautiful touches in Pocket Planes that drive my mania. I can name all my planes and customize each of my pilots. My passengers post their thoughts on an in-app Facebook client called “BitBook.” I can buy any airport that I can afford, and I can also upgrade it to make it bigger and better. I can build my planes and when I watch them fly, I can collect the game’s two currencies randomly floating in the air. Pocket Planes also knows when I’m flying. The day and night cycle is synced to the real world. When I receive a Push notification, my phone emits a soft airplane cabin ding.

These are the aspects that David and Ian believe drive users to spend. These are the things it spends all of its time developing. There is no conversation about loops or feedback. The duo spend their time making games with character, real progression, and meaningful stuff. Their games have a soul.

“I’m not sure if there is some kind of secret sauce, but we definitely focus a lot of time on adding lots of things to our simulation games that make them feel like a functional little world inside,” David tells us. “I think the stronger the feeling that there is a buzzing simulation going on inside the game, the more fun it is to influence it and use your actions to mould and direct it.”

“I agree with Dave completely,” Ian says. “The more detail and emotion you put into these little worlds the more immersed players become and the more they enjoy spending time with it.”

“I think the customization has a lot to do with it as well,” he continues. “That isn’t just a plane flying in the game, it is your plane that you named yourself and spent time finding the perfect paint job for. In Tiny Tower, it isn’t just a generic bakery, it’s Brad’s Bread with interior decoration of his choosing and hand picked employees that took work for him to recruit.”

David explains that Tiny Tower and the feedback blowing up NimbleBit’s inbox is actively informing the development of Pocket Planes. Users are lauding their game design ideals and are actually thanking David and Ian for making a fun game first.

“I think we definitely are trying to strike the same balance and attitude in all our future free-to-play games because it resonates with players and matches the type of games we prefer to play ourselves,” David says. “The other thing we have learned from Tiny Tower and also Pocket Frogs is that the more we can stimulate players imaginations the better. The kind of fan art and fan communities that have grown around those games is amazing and that is a target we are always aiming for.”

Pocket Planes is shaping up to be a tremendous game and my praise is coming at a time when more and more new free-to-play games continue to feel like skinner boxes instead of fun things to play with. Ian and David are doing important work here, proving that free-to-play doesn’t need to inform fundamental game design.

“Even without spending a dime, players become heavily invested in these worlds because of their character and charm — not some carefully crafted compulsion loop. That is what keeps them coming back,” Ian says.

Fun doesn’t need to cost a penny, and that’s what NimbleBit strives to make a reality with each release.

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Does the idea of yet another farming game sound exciting to you whatsoever? Your answer would likely be a resounding no, unless you’ve seen that there are still plenty of seeds to plant with Tractor Trails [ $0.99 ], the farming game that is not only fun and exciting but plays more like a puzzle game rather than the next FarmVille [ Free ] clone.

You see, Red is a tractor that needs to plant seeds on his maze-like farm so he can grow fruit trees. Your (and Red’s) goal is to earn a three star rating at the end of the level by planting as many trees as possible (filling the entire board if you can), collecting the groundhog, and doing it all in the fastest amount of time you can. Earning stars allows you to unlock more level sets, with five in all. Controlling Red is incredibly easy, only requiring that you swipe where he needs to go on the farm so he can plant trees and collect the groundhog along the way.

While controlling Red may be easy, the challenge does ramp up quickly meaning you’ll need to learn fast to stay ahead. The initial levels are pretty much on auto-pilot with little or no chance for error, while more advanced levels will all but require plenty of plotting ahead to make sure you’re going to be able to plant as many trees as possible. In fact, a stage not too far into the game left me puzzled for more than fifteen minutes before coming up with a working solution.

The real challenge in each stage is trying to determine where exactly to send Red without screwing up. Sending him down the wrong path means you have to start over, so planning ahead is best when coming up with solutions. Combine that with the time bonus that’s riding on each stage, and you’re in for a brain buster if you’re not in the correct mindset. The more you play though, the more the mechanics begin to click, and you’ll find yourself having fun without too much trouble. On top of that, the payoff of finishing each stage is satisfying, rewarding you with much-needed stars and achievements for completing stages as efficiently as possible.

Spicing up the gameplay in Tractor Trails are the power-ups you can purchase with the corn you collect (or purchase through IAP). You can buy upgrades such as a queuing system, which is a bit of a saving grace to the gameplay (which can be a bit slow once you get the hang of it). Other power-ups include undo and speed upgrades. These don’t do as much to change the gameplay but can help out if you’re finding some stages a bit too challenging. The problem (albeit minor) with these upgrades lies in the pricing system, as you will have to continually purchase most of these items over and over again with increasing prices after each purchase.

Each set of levels does appear to have its own distinct theme, with its own color scheme to go with it. For instance, the first set of levels has a distinct shade of green, meant to represent a sunny, summer style. In the second set, you’ll be seeing a lot of brown as the theme is meant to represent autumn. After spending a good amount of time in each level set, your eyes will welcome the change of scenery each time it happens. The graphical tone seems to borrow a bit from Triple Town [ Free ] but there was never a vibe of ripping off, although the similarities are clear.

Where Tractor Trails really nails the fun factor is in its simplistic, yet rewarding gameplay. A game that you can pick-up and play for a few minutes or up to a few hours is still rare, so it’s nice to see that Tractor Trails stays as fun as it should long after you’ve started.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Aby Escape [ Free ] is the newest freemium title from BulkyPix and Pixel Ratio, and a 3D spin on the iphone’s popular runner genre. Instead of dashing full speed to the left or right sidescroller style, the game plants the camera just behind Aby’s back and leaves it to you to guide the terrified raccoon down paths cluttered with rocks, cars, animal herds, beer-bellied hicks who lie in wait until you approach, and other obstacles.

To keep your unstoppable force from running smack-dab into immovable objects, you tilt your phone to weave side to side, swipe your thumb up the screen to jump, and swipe downwards to drop to your knees and pull off a Catwoman-in-Arkham-City slide, minus revealing cleavage. (Yeah, I know. Can’t have it all, though.) The core gameplay idea is reminiscent of Temple Run [ Free ], but Aby Escape does a nice job at iterating on the formula with some new ideas and some variety.

The game features two game modes: Story, and Unlimited. In Unlimited, your goal is to stay alive for as long as possible. You accomplish that feat by weaving in and out of danger to pick up shoes that keep your perpetually draining energy meter topped off. Aby gradually picks up speed the longer you survive, making extended play an exercise requiring absolute focus and twitch reflexes. Besides shoes, you can grab coins with which to purchase power-ups, characters, new Unlimited levels, and other unlockables.

And that’s where the trouble begins. The first time you load up Aby Escape, only one Unlimited level, Greystone Park, is available. Two other Unlimited stages are available from the in-game store, but at a cost of more than 3000 coins each. Want to try Story mode? That’ll run you 7500. You can unlock these modes in one of two ways: grind Greystone Park and pinch your pennies for hours on end, or shell out real money for IAP coin bundles.

The unbalanced economy pervades in other ways. Besides new stages, the shop also sells items like speed boosts that blast you forward and render you impervious to harm. The problem is, every item carries an exorbitant price tag. Each item can be upgraded up to five times. The first upgrade for each item costs 400, the next 1200, then 3000, and so on. Handy, but a major cut into your savings when you’re stuck with only one level to play. Playable characters and different types of feet like hairy Hobbit toes go for between 2000 to more than 4000, but don’t alter the game in any way; they’re purely for aesthetics. I hate to harp on this point, but with only one level to play, I simply considered all other purchases a waste until I’d invested in at least one change of scenery to spice up my time with the game.

Unlimited levels feature challenges that reward you with coins, but some of them just don’t make “cents.” Buy two upgrades at 400 coins apiece, get 50 coins back for completing the challenge. Uh, no thanks. I bought an IAP item that gives me two coins for every one I picked up, but that only increased my income from a drip-drop to a steady trickle. Eventually I shelled out five bucks for 20,000 coins—not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I had to. It was either that or more grinding. I unlocked the last two Unlimited levels before diving into Story, a sprawl of levels spread across Greystone Park and two new areas, the same ones you’ll play in Unlimited if/when you fork over the coins.

Story tasks you with racking up a high score by staying alive as long as possible and collecting every pair of shoes on each stage. Running into obstacles knocks points off your score and sets you back at a checkpoint. Most checkpoints set you so far back that you’ll have forgotten earlier terrain in your effort to remember what to do in the area that tripped you up, which amounts to a lot of frustrating memorization and trial and error.

Technical issues also abound. The frame rate chugs sporadically, spelling certain death in trap-heavy regions. Also, since you spend the game running forward into the distance, terrain you pass slides backwards as you run along but some of it slides too slowly, clogging the screen and blocking your view of the next hurdles. More seriously, though, was a store calculation error—I had more than the 400 coins I needed for an upgrade, but the transaction somehow took my wallet down to -97, which shouldn’t even be allowed to happen—and a crash bug that dumped me back to the home screen every time I tried to load an Unlimited level.

With so many strikes against it, what could possibly convince you to help Aby Escape? Because I’ll be darned if it isn’t fun. Grinding grew monotonous only because, really, who wants to look at the same environment over and over in any game? Actually <em>playing</em> the game is quite enjoyable. There’s a feeling of satisfaction and skill in any runner game that comes from guiding your scurrying lemming over, under, and around obstacles, marveling at your response time, dexterity, and lasting for as long as possible before inevitably slamming into something that reduces your bones to a fine powder.

Collecting coins, shoes, and power-ups requires near dead-on collision to register, but aside from the somewhat sluggish tilt-controlled weaving that doesn’t always keep up with the game’s gradually accelerating pace, the controls usually responded sharply enough that I felt encouraged to veer into danger and risk another visit to the Retry screen if it meant snatching an out-of-the-way coin placed in front of a trap. The game also plays fair by giving you a chance to shoulder past obstacles like cars and rocks unless you strike them dead on, which made me even more willing to dash in front of dangerous objects and grab goodies.

Three strong redeeming qualities ultimately saved Aby Escape from outright deletion. It’s fun, it’s deep (you’ve still got all the challenges and your personal records to break even after you’ve opened everything up), and it’s free. If this were a paid game, I’d knock a star off the grade, and fairly. The game really should offer activities from the get go or at least mark down the fee for additional content, but what is there provides loads of entertainment.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Any gamer who has been at it for as many years as myself certainly has a shortlist of particular standout favorites that set themselves apart for one reason or another, having indelibly left their mark upon his or her twitchy gamer brain. One such game that can be found on my list / burned into my brain is the Apple II title Wings of Fury, written by Steve Waldo and published by Broderbund in 1987. It’s a side-scrolling, carrier based aerial shooter set in the Pacific during World War II. The mission of the game is to use your Hellcat’s canons, bombs, rockets, and torpedoes to wipe out island installations, enemy ships, and defend your carrier against aerial attacks. It’s a lot of fun and is particularly challenging due to the somewhat realistic flight mechanics and the need to delicately land on the carrier to refuel / rearm.

Others out there who, reading this, fondly recall Wings of Fury (it also made it to the Amiga [video], C64, DOS, etc.) will be pleased to know that a rather well-done iOS remake has been put together by Korean studio Idea Spoon Games and released into the App Store.

Wings of Valor [App Store] is an iPhone title that pretty much captures the experience of the original — it looks like it’s all there, with simple, clean graphics. Of course, for a game like this, the onscreen analog stick is no match for the real-world, analog Apple II joystick with which I piloted my Hellcat in decades past, but the Wings of Valor controls work well enough.

In a chat this afternoon, author JY Kim of Idea Spoon explained that he is a huge fan of the original game and, lamenting the lack of App Store titles of the particular sort, decided seven months ago to bring the game, himself. Kim is a one-man operation and, as such, has rolled everything on his own, including the 2000 images that were drawn to bring the game together, the physics and particle system, and the camera / zoom system. He takes particular pride in the last, which he felt needed to be close to perfect in order to make the game work. He plans to soon bring improved visuals, better dogfight AI, and iPad support to the title.

Folks in our forums are having a pretty good time with Wings of Valor, so far.

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