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While dwindling on consoles, RPGs of all shapes and sizes are flourishing on mobile devices. There have been some truly creative and unique RPGs released in the past few years, and perhaps none is capable of tugging at your heartstrings and pushing you to fight just one more battle than Game Stew Studio’s new iOS game, Tower of Fortune (ToF) [ $0.99 ].

Like Puzzle Quest and Sword & Poker before it, ToF infuses a basic role-playing game with mechanics drawn from a completely different genre entirely—in this case, slot machines.

The premise of ToF is pretty simple. You’re a hero. You’ve a lady to rescue. You need to gather coin, get loot, and defeat evil incarnate. A “game of the year”-winning story, this is not, but the simple framework provides enough context to the game to make it work.

Before you even get to the gameplay, though, you’ll be hard-pressed to ignore ToF’s eye-catching retro art style and ear-pleasing chip tunes. Both the game’s quirky, NES-era visuals and strong selection of catchy music make the game visually and aurally simplistic and yet undeniably charming, like the greatest Gameboy games of yore.

Presentation is all well and good, of course, but how does the game actually play? Surprisingly well. ToF succeeds in blending the requisite RPG features with the mechanics of a slot machine, albeit with only one truly noteworthy quirk.

Currency is central to ToF, and it’s what powers all of the game’s subsequent systems. To progress through the game’s world, you’ll need coin. To battle, you’ll need to spend (and potentially lose) coin. To upgrade your hero, you’ll need coin. To heal after battle, you’ll need coin. To buy items… you get the point.

There are two ways to earn coin in the game: through fairly nonintrusive microtransactions or by fighting monsters. Given that the combat is the star of the show, most will be content to get their hands dirty and earn money the hard way, and it’s not hard to do so willingly as prices aren’t as exorbitant as they are in similar games.

This is where the game’s slot system comes into play. When you enter combat, you’ll be greeted with a simple one-line, three-reel slot machine. The reels are filled with icons that represent doing damage, taking damage, gaining XP, and gaining coin. Whatever icon appears on the left-most reel determines what happens during the turn, and the more like icons matched, the more significant the effect. In addition, the effect is multiplied by repeat matches, so if you get XP one spin and XP again the next, you’ll get an XP bonus.

One more level of both gambling and depth is added to the battle system by way of a simple “Bet” button. Prior to a spin, you can bet your coin to enhance the effects of the spin. Every effect is doubled after a bet, so you’ll be crossing your fingers in hopes of avoiding taking damage icons and screaming in joy when you hit a full three-match of XP or coin. This becomes critical as bad guys get harder and have more health.

I’m not much of a gambler, and random elements in games tend to annoy me to no end—here’s looking at you, Crisis Core. But after hours of playing, I’ve found that ToF manages a fine balance between feeling cheated and feeling lucky, and hard battles are nail-biters as a result. As you begin to fight more difficult monsters, the high wrought by a good string of luck and the stomach-sinking disappointment wrought by a bad one make the game quite compelling.

In practice, the system works surprisingly well. This is largely thanks to the game’s simple loot and upgrade systems, which allow you to upgrade your character periodically with simple items and stat boosts, you can do a decent amount to prepare for battle and tip the tide in your favor.

If there are any complaints to be had, they would revolve around the game’s sense of progression. Progression is a critical component of any RPG: it’s what keeps the genre’s fans playing, even when everything else—from storyline to graphics and beyond—may falter. ToF struggles a little bit in this regard, as progression is too random and too fleeting to feel rewarding in the long run.

Moving through the game from area to area requires paying escalating “unlock” fees. This means that you’ll need to amass a substantial purse. This in-and-of-itself wouldn’t be that bad, but when combined with the game’s rougelike treatment of death, you can find yourself frustrated.

Should you die, you’ll lose all the equipment, levels, and upgrades you earned as you play—you keep only your unspent coin. As a result, some may beat the game in a day while others could theoretically play it indefinitely and never see the end.  This near-complete randomness makes it hard to feel any sustained, substantial, and satisfying feelings of progression.

In spite of this issue, though, the game never stops being fun to play. The game’s ability to produce such a wide spectrum of emotional highs and lows is no small feat for a game, and additional elements, like the game’s fun mini-quest system that introduces small objectives that reward XP when completed, do wonders at keeping things fresh.

Ultimately, Tower Of Fortune may not have the progression elements, compelling story, or depth of its meatier RPG brethren, but it has all the stats, levels, loot, triumph, and tragedy a RPG fan needs for on-the-go gaming.

TouchArcade Rating:

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When Team Meat announced that they were actually making a Super Meat Boy game for iOS on April 1st, it was hard to know whether they were serious or just pulling a prank, given their past history with the App Store. However, at the end of April we got an update on what Super Meat Boy: The Game, a built from the ground up touch-based version of their super popular console platformer, would be all about, and it sounded like they were taking things pretty seriously.

This past Friday, Team Meat posted some new information on their blog about Super Meat Boy: The Game, as well as some insight into their disdain for the App Store. In a nutshell, they’re not fans of the trend of timer-based games that force you to wait out your perceived progress unless you’ll pony up real money in-game to speed up the process. Think Farmville, Smurf’s Village, and the like.

Because of that the team is making sure that Super Meat Boy: The Game will be something that actually respects the player’s time and ensures there’s a real sense of fulfillment for conquering its challenges. Those who have enjoyed the original Super Meat Boy know just what they’re talking about. I’m excited to see how they translate their brand of twitch-based gameplay to the touch screen.

Here’s a new screen of Super Meat Boy: The Game showing one of the level select screens.

Team Meat notes that just because this screen shows only 8 levels, Super Meat Boy: The Game isn’t going to be your typical bite-sized mobile game, and the amount of content in the iOS game will be comparable to the original Super Meat Boy, but in a different way. They tease they’ll be explaining just what they mean by that in the near future, and we’ll keep an eye out for any further Super Meat Boy: The Game news as work continues on the title.

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On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, we power through conversations about smart gyms and wearable heart monitors in order to bring the latest, greatest, and the best in iPhone and iPad. At the top of the show, we dive into oral reviews of a bunch of cool games, including Brainsss and King of Fighters 2012. Later, we ponder if the free-to-play market is about to collapse and dig into the realities of development in a market that only wants 99¢ stuff.

You can listen below via these handy-dandy links or, hey, you can subscribe to us on iTunes or Zune. The latter is the only way to get our stuff the very second it comes out and lord knows you want us immediately so do it!

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-050.mp3, 42.7MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Brainsss [$2.99]
• Flight Control Rocket [99¢]
• The King of Fighters-i 2012
• Tower of Fortune [99¢]
• DreamWorks Dragons: TapDragonDrop [$1.99]
• Junk Jack [$2.99]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• Cat Sliding [Free]

FRONT PAGE

• ‘Draw Something’ Is Losing Dudes Like Whoa
• Tiger Style Reveals Lifetime Sales Numbers
• Jason Citron Forming Games Studio

The original Soundtrack by Jim Guthrie (of Sword & Sworcery fame) for Indie Game: The Movie is available for pre-order now on Bandcamp and iTunes. The 24-track album featuring music from the award winning documentary chronicling the journeys of independent game developers by filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisa Pajot will be released in full on May 15th. It will also be available on double LP exclusively through Bandcamp. Pick up a pre-order copy of Indie Game: The Movie: The Soundtrack today on Bandcamp and iTunes.

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Zombie games are still a big deal and it continues to blow my mind that this is the case. What hasn’t been done in a zombie game? Think about it. We’ve shot zombies and we’ve cut zombies. We’ve set zombies on fire. We’ve run over zombies and cured zombies and beat zombies with baseball bats. We’ve even participated as part of the horde in games like Valve’s Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. Over the last few years, there’s not much we haven’t done to or with zombies across multiple genres, including puzzle and even tower defense. This thought has crossed my mind several times: what can a brand new zombie game even offer outside of a slight twist on what we’ve done before?

And then Brainsss [$2.99] shambles along and shatters this idea in my head that zombie games are lame because there’s just nothing left to do in them that we haven’t done trillions of times in a billion different games. Brainsss offers something new in the space, and its core action is rich enough for me to give it a solid recommendation, despite cooling on this zombie … craze we’re still in.

Brainsss is a top-down strategy game where you control a horde of zombies on quests to assimilate people into your horde. In order to do this, you’ll need to treat the ever-growing horde like a fleet, splitting it up into pieces so you can trap victims spread across the game’s myriad of labyrinthine levels, which are often brimming with helpless survivors who are ready to bolt the second they see snarling beasts approaching. As you convert more people, you’ll be able to meaningfully split your horde into even more groups.

There are a few change of pace design elements that compliment the strategy. The “RAGE” meter in particular is hip. As you do damage, you’ll be able to enter into a berserk mode that ramps up your horde’s speed and intensity. On the other hand, the mission design is sharp, too. In one level, you might be stopping survivors from feeling to a helicopter. In others, you’re chomping on scientists who were incredibly fleet of foot before running into your horde. Another neat twist: Brainnsss also rocks NPCs that can harm your horde, like police officers and backyard pugilists that you have to disarm in specific ways.

Brainsss biggest problem is probably its habit of skewing casual. You’re not going to feel like you’re the smartest undead general ever while trapping dudes. The controls can be a bit spotty as well. To split your horde, you need to “paint” over part of it, and then point to a new location in the level. Grabbing a specific amount can be a hassle if your horde is bunched tightly. Otherwise, the point-and-paint controls are bliss: this is a game that feels like and operates like a game designed for iPad and iPhone.

If you’re still into zombie games, or just need to check another thing you’ve done with zombies off of your mental checklist, feel free to check this out. Brainnsss strategy and action feel pretty unique in a space that’s been done to undeath, and they probably really pop outside of this vacuum. I can dig it, at least.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Do you like tacos? How about star fields, spaceships, and throwback games that trade polygons for pixels and full orchestras for beeps and bleeps that hearken back to the glory days of the Atari 2600? Developer Taco Graveyard serves up generous helpings of those elements and more (even the space tacos) in Omegapixel [ Free ], a fast and furious action game that throws in a fair bit of puzzle solving to keep you on your toes.

The first time you load a mission, Omegapixel might remind you a lot of Geometry Wars [ $0.99 ]. Using a virtual stick, you control a small space rig that zips around the cosmos and battles enemy ships. Unlike Geometry Wars, though, you barrel into enemies kamikaze-style instead of blasting them with lasers. While you’re floating like a butterfly and stinging like a battering ram with thrusters, enemies pour onto the screen in greater and greater numbers.

Enemy ships come in several varieties—some that make a beeline for you, others that converge on the pixel. On one stage, I flew around smashing into red ships that targeted the Omegapixel while blue pyramids followed my space vessel in tireless pursuit. Suddenly a vertical yellow line came sliding across the screen like a barcode scanner laser. If the line touched the pixel, I lost a life. Ignoring the red destroyers and blue pyramids for the moment, I flew to the far side of the yellow wall and tapped the lower right corner of the screen, which instantly swaps your location with the Omegapixel’s and vice versa. Teleporting put the pixel safely on the far side of the wall, but right in range of the red ships I’d let live to deal with the wall.

The key to victory lies in shielding the pixel from its enemies, while using it to shield you from yours. To get rid of the blue pyramids that zero in on my ship’s location, I had to lure them into the pixel’s fiery maw by either putting the pixel in between me and them, or waiting for them to draw close enough to touch before teleporting, which dumped the pixel right where I’d been drifting a second before. Easier said than done, especially with bouncers knocking the pixel every which way, red ships spiraling toward it, new purple walls that harmed me instead of the pixel sliding into view, and asteroids that, while harmless, distract you by stealing your attention away from real threats.

It’s stressful, but the kind of stress that leaves your senses crackling from adrenaline. Cobbling together a plan and pulling it off in a matter of moments never failed to invite a thrill of accomplishment. The game almost becomes more of a twitchy puzzler on later levels, forcing you to remain aware of the pixel’s location at all times and pull each enemy type from your memory log the moment it comes into view so you can react to the new threat appropriately.

As you play, you’ll collect credits you can use to deck out your ship: explosive teleports, extra armor plating, defense mechanisms for the Omegapixel, a line of energy that flares between you and the pixel when you teleport, incinerating anything it touches. You can earn credits the old-fashioned way by clearing Story and Arcade missions, picking up credit packs that randomly appear during play, or just drop real money on IAP credit packs and splurge on upgrades.

Like all games that control with virtual sticks, Omegapixel’s controls suffers from minor virtual-stick touchiness, but my fried reflexes cost me more missions than occasionally spot controls. Other than said spottiness and grating music (the sound effects are the right kind of bleepy retro, but the soundtrack, which you can disable, sounds like an 8-bit game that froze right in the middle of a high chord) Omegapixel is a ton of fun, and especially shouldn’t be missed at its current price of free.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Long-time TouchArcade readers might remember an upcoming title that we were really excited for called Galactic Keep: Dice Battles. The premise of the game was to take dice-based tabletop RPG mechanics and translate them into video game form on the iPhone, while keeping a heavy emphasis on the storytelling aspects of classic Dungeons & Dragons games.

We first learned of the game way back in July of 2009, and got to see a playable version in person at Pax East the following March. Since then however, as more than 2 years have gone by, things have been extremely quiet on the Galactic Keep front.

After successfully launching another of their long-awaited title called Skull Smashers [ $0.99 ] last month, developer Gilded Skull Games has once again jumped into Galactic Keep development. In fact, as they note in our forums, they made a decision to hit the reset button on the project since it was so badly outdated, and just start over from scratch.

It sounds like a crazy idea for a game that’s already been in development for years, but this way they can take everything they have learned thus far and build the game with newer hardware and features in mind, like Retina Display and Universal support. The screenshot above is the first glimpse of this revamped take on Galactic Keep.

No word on just how long Gilded Skull is expecting the rebooted project to take, but just knowing that Galactic Keep is still alive and kicking is sure to warm some hearts.

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Ah. Werewolves. One of the three components in the holy Hollywood trinity of monsters. They ordinarily come in two flavors: loud, ravenous and incapable of anything but wanton violence… or dark-eyed eye candy. The transmogrification-happy lupine of MacGuffin’s Curse [$3.99 / Free ], however, is neither of those.

Indie development studio Brawsome has MacGuffin’s Curse billed as a ‘comedy puzzle-adventure’, an appropriate description if there ever was one. Operating from a top-down perspective, MacGuffin’s Curse is rife with all the switch-flipping, block-moving, barrier-removing goodness that is standard of the genre and the silliness of a Terry Pratchett novel. Here, you play as the charming Lucas MacGuffin, a red-haired thief who dwells in a considerable destitution with his young child and elderly mother. He has something to say about pretty much anything and everyone, a peculiarity that may either have you rolling your eyes within the first ten minutes or chuckling away in appreciation. Take your pick. Either is applicable.

The game opens with Lucas on his latest heist. In order to pay the rent, you’re going to have to retrieve a certain amulet from the extremely lightly-guarded depths of the local museum. As you might have guessed already, one thing leads to another and you eventually find yourself bound to the cursed jewelry and gifted with the ability to transform into a powerful, red-maned werewolf whenever you choose to. No, I don’t know how this really is a curse either.

This, of course, is one of the game’s primary gimmicks. Each of your two forms has a different set of abilities and limitations. As a human, you’re capable of doing delicate things like operating doors and squeezing through windows. As a werewolf, you’ll be able to manhandle safes, blocks, enormous battery packs and dig for buried treasure. Most, if not all, of the puzzles will require you to make use of your dual set of talents.

Speaking of the puzzles, let me reassure those who have played through the lite version of one thing: they do get harder. While the game’s collection of mind-benders don’t really deviate from the standard ‘push this block here, activate that switch there’ formula, there is enough variety in the mix to keep you playing (even if you have to do it in chunks). I’m especially fond of one of the earlier ‘boss’ battles. Instead of doing the standard werewolf act where you charge headlong into your enemies and rip their hearts out, MacGuffin’s Curse will have you maneuvering from room to room as you attempt to close the distance by circumnavigating your enemy’s attempt to stall you.

Though best played by those who enjoy the idea of a combat-free Zelda, MacGuffin’s Curse is still something I would recommend to those who don’t. Well, if you enjoy the whole comedic narrative thing, at any rate. It’s true that MacGuffin’s Curse tries just a little too hard (it doesn’t so much nudge you in the ribs as it does grind them into a paste with its hypothetical elbow) but it does have heart. You see it in the details – in the way the comments change depending on the kind of skin you’re wearing, in the over-the-top characters, in how the game lets you slowly build up a half-decent apartment for Lucas’s family and the details of the setting. There’s a fair amount of side quests for you to indulge in as well, something that helps flesh out the Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere-esque undertones of the world that Brawsome constructed.

The only thing that I didn’t really like about McGuffin’s Curse is, perhaps, the controls. In order to move, you touch a finger on the screen and drag it in the direction you want Lucas to go. In order to push or pull blocks, you’ll have to use two fingers instead. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this and, for the most part, it works out decently well. Nonetheless, because of positioning, you sometimes find your fingertips blocking out vision, a phenomenon that makes me pine a little for a virtual d-pad.

Is MacGuffin’s Curse worth purchasing? Yes. Definitely. It may not extract the ‘Oh, god! This is ingenious!’ sort of reaction with its puzzles, but the relentless humor, intriguing setting, adequately-designed puzzles and faint Tim Burton vibe will make it a delicious addition to anyone’s collection of crate-puzzles.

TouchArcade Rating:

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“Chariots of the Dogs,” [$4.99] the fourth episode in the Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space series is easily the best one so far. The Sam & Max series has always been tightly written and designed, but “Chariots” does two things remarkably well: it matches its narrative hook to its mechanics, and it ties the entire series together.

If nothing else, “Chariots” is remarkable for the way it brings almost all of the big questions from the first three episodes and ties them together: the Bosco and Stinky subplots are advanced, and previously off-screen bit roles come forward as major players in the series. This feels satisfying and rewarding for longtime devotees, and Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space’s episodic structure lends itself to weaving these disparate narrative threads together. Even the intro sequence feels tighter and more cinematic, suggesting a series that is maturing with each episode.

Episodes one, two, and three were generally self-contained, but “Chariots” provides the most solid narrative link in the series thus far: it picks up the immediate aftermath of “Night of the Raving Dead” [$4.99]and ends on a cliffhanger that propels the story into episode five [$4.99]

The Sam & Max series has always been, at its heart, based on inventory items, but Beyond Time and Space seems dedicated to refining and twisting that formula as much as possible: “Moai Better Blues” [$4.99] used portals to great effect; the previously mentioned “Raving Dead” included several dialogue trees and ambient aural puzzles. Without spoiling anything, “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses on time travel.

Incidentally, the time travel mechanic was first introduced in episode one, “Ice Station Santa,” [$4.99] when Sam and Max have to appease the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. (The Ghost of Christmas Future section actually foreshadows the end of “Chariots,” if you’re paying attention.)

The beauty of “Chariots” isn’t just that it’s an adventure game with a time-travel story; the time travel conceit shapes and informs every puzzle, becoming the tentpole mechanic in its own right. A lazier game would use time travel as a plot device and build a standard inventory game around it. “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses not just on matching certain items with certain solutions, but in exploring their effects through time. Like its predecessors, “Chariots” does a good job matching its story hooks with its mechanics, which makes each relatively short episode feel distinctive and full-featured.

The logic employed in “Chariots” is relatively straightforward: the Freelance Police can move forward in time to gather clues, which in turn allows them to travel backward in time to affect the future. There’s a nice gameplay loop there, and the game as a whole feels holistic and natural, each puzzle mechanic and story arc syncing perfectly.

It’s no surprise, then, that “Chariots” feels intuitive and fun throughout. Making its players feel smart has always been one of Sam & Max’s strong suits, but every episode until now has had puzzles that feel arbitrary or unfair. Generally speaking, the broad strokes of each puzzle or story arc are easy to grasp in “Chariots,” even if the step-by-step puzzle solution requires some tinkering and mental elasticity. For my money, this installment strikes the right balance of deductive reasoning and old-fashioned observation.

This is, I’m assuming, another of episodic game development’s bounties — after four games (not counting Sam & Max Save the World, the previous series of episodic Telltale games), it’s no surprise to find the writers and developers zeroing in on smart, intuitive puzzle design.

“Chariots of the Dogs”  is smoothly and tightly paced, and nothing feels misplaced or kludged together. It’s a charming, warm, and funny game, and it’s the best episode in an increasingly good series.

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2009 was a weird time for the App Store. Free to play games were building steam on other platforms, but the way Apple originally structured the in app purchase mechanic prevented it from being used on anything but paid games and apps. This policy was reversed in mid-October, and only a few hours later ngmoco announced that their (then) upcoming online first person shooter Eliminate would be free.

The game was released a few weeks later, and we posted an extensive guide on it. In a nutshell, Eliminate was a four person first person shooter with a free to play twist. In order to earn credits to buy armor and weapon upgrades, players needed to use their energy supplies. Energy depleted as you played, and, obviously, an in-game store sold all the energy that players could ever need if they didn’t wait to wait to recharge.

Being among the first free to play games available, and actually being the first gamer-centric freemium game on the App Store, Eliminate seemed to spawn a massive community of players overnight. In fact, the Eliminate thread on our forums is still amongst the most popular TouchArcade threads of all time, running closely behind the Street Fighter IV Volt thread and the Pocket Frogs trading thread.

A TouchArcade reader sent a tip in over the weekend that not only had Eliminate been pulled from the App Store, but launching the game now results in the above popup. On May 25th, 2012, Eliminate is going offline. It’s sad to see not only this game, but also ngmoco as a company coming full circle. We’ve been covering ngmoco since their inception, as it seemed to many (myself included) that they were the most promising contender to be the premiere iOS-exclusive game developer.

In early 2010 the company then picked up some additional financial steam and bought Freeverse, which was yet another incredibly promising iOS developer that has since vanished. Later that year, Japanese social gaming giant rolled ngmoco up into their proverbial katamari at the potential price of $400m… Then things started to take a slide.

The Epic Wars series of games were the first projects to be shut down by ngmoco, leaving faithful players (who potentially invested heavily into the game) in the cold. News of games releases, or really, any activity from the company dried up until earlier this year we heard the company was hit with layoffs. Inside Mobile Games even suggested that they missed the financial targets of the $400m buyout, putting the bulk of that purchase price in jeopardy.

If nothing else, the shut down of Eliminate is yet another reminder that the money you spend on these server-centric free to play title is buying you things that only persist as long as the developers keep the game online. If you’ve dumped cash into Eliminate, be sure to get your money’s worth playing the game before it goes offline next month.

Thanks Payam!

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