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A lot of studios are turning to the casual market to expand their base and diversify portfolios speckled in viscera and splatters of crimson. League of Evil studio Ravenous Games is doing just that with its side-scrolling puzzle game Burger Cat. The result is unique: Ravenous is undoubtedly delivering something that feels like a Ravenous joint, but it’s appropriate for our little ones and game-challenged family members.

It accomplishes this by removing the barrier of entry, while maintaining the vibe and the high-level production we expect from a Ravenous product. In the game, you play as a cat on a quest to find hamburgers. Functionally, this adventures boils down to a bunch of instanced quests where you, as a maestro of landscaping, have to alter the 2D world the cat inhabits in order to get him to a burger. The movement is automatic, but your ability to add and remove blocks of land or introduce an item that changes the way the cat interacts with its world is manual.

For example, in the game’s first level, you’ll need to add a block of land to the corner of a hill so the cat can scramble up the hill as if it were a stairway. In the next, you actually build a similar stairway with three blocks of land, two of which will need to be stacked on top of each other. As the game progresses, you’ll get much more imaginative items: a mouse that re-directs the cat’s attention, a spring that rockets the cat into the air, a pick-axe that removes pieces of the environment, and so on. Actual obstacles that add repercussions, like spinning cogs with blades, are added steadily. The items you’ll receive have a hard cap in each level, and I had the most fun really playing with what I could do with the least amount of stuff, though creating conga lines of items has its simple pleasures, too. In fact, Burger Cat seems to encourage experimentation, as it often gives you way too much.

It’s a different game from the folks who made League of Evil, but it feels similar from a production standpoint. The art is bright and bubbly like the new visuals in League of Evil 2, and the animation work is on par. Music, on the other hand, is exceedingly epic. It almost rewards you before you do anything. Excuse me, but I want my Ode To Joy when I get my hamburger, and not before.

If this looks familiar by the way, it’s because it existed on Flash before. Burger Cat is a new-look port of a WobblyWare title you can play for free right now. In this shot of the original below, take note of how smooth this new iteration looks: no more grids, a less clumsy UI, and less mess in general.

“We updated the graphics to be more cartoony and made some design changes to make another one of our polished iOS releases,” Ravenous told TouchArcade. “The game just felt more suited to touch screen controls and has a lot of potential with the casual market.” And it does play exceedingly better. This game is a breeze to control with your fingers. I’ve zero complaints with what I’ve played so far.

And that’s the thing: we haven’t seen everything Burger Cat has to offer, so stay tuned as we obtain a final build and deliver our final thoughts. My gut says, though, that this is something we’ll be pretty happy with, even though we’re not its market. Look for this to hit April 12 across iPhone and iPad.

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As more and more third-party controllers enter the mobile market, the wicked small base that wants something physical in their hands as they play games becomes steadily more fractured. It’s through this lens that we view the latest controller to catch our all-seeing eye, the Bladepad. It’s an NES-like controller with an admittedly cool hook: it’s thin, slide-out design theoretically makes it possible for you to carry around the phone with the controller firmly attached. Other products, including ION’s upcoming PSP-alike shell, obviously don’t embrace portability like this does.

How it works is explained on its web site:

Bladepad’s case fits around your phone and a razor-thin gamepad slides out from beneath the case. The gamepad can also be removed from the case for enhanced mobility and convenience.

No word on when this will be released, or if it’s even actually in some sort of production phase. The page does mention that the company behind Bladepad is actively looking for developers to support the device, so get ready for some weird splintering or a lackluster show of support upon release.

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It’s really tricky covering anything that happens on April Fool’s Day, so take this news with the caveat that tomorrow it’s entirely possible that Team Meat could just reveal that they were trolling. Anyway, what makes me think this might actually be real is that it fits in with recent news. First that Team Meat would “probably” be making an iPhone game then via a tweet-storm later mentioned that a Super Meat Boy prototype was in the works.

According to Team Meat, they’ve just started working on the game, and they’re sure a lot will change in the development. However, they’ve clarified that this isn’t a port, and instead is a total feature-length touch-controlled total remake specifically designed for touch-based devices. It doesn’t sound like they’ll use any virtual controls, and Super Meat Boy: The Game will be “a brand new game with new art, new sound, everything.”

I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

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It’s really tricky covering anything that happens on April Fool’s Day, so take this news with the caveat that tomorrow it’s entirely possible that Team Meat could just reveal that they were trolling. Anyway, what makes me think this might actually be real is that it fits in with recent news. First that Team Meat would “probably” be making an iPhone game then via a tweet-storm later mentioned that a Super Meat Boy prototype was in the works.

According to Team Meat, they’ve just started working on the game, and they’re sure a lot will change in the development. However, they’ve clarified that this isn’t a port, and instead is a total feature-length touch-controlled total remake specifically designed for touch-based devices. It doesn’t sound like they’ll use any virtual controls, and Super Meat Boy: The Game will be “a brand new game with new art, new sound, everything.”

I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

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This week on The TouchArcade Show, we have to force ourselves out of discussions about WrestleMania and other stupid junk in order to bring you the latest, hottest, and best in iOS. At the top, we dive into several new releases: Hunters 2, Ow My Balls XL, and Motoheroz take center stage. Later, we discuss what Baldur’s Gate for iPad means to us, and we even dabble on the ever interesting subject of why AAA publishers don’t seem to care about the App Store, and why we don’t bug them about it.

There’s much, much more, so feel free to listen if we’ve tickled your interest. You can do so via the handy-dandy links just below, or hey, subscribe to us on iTunes or Zune. We’ll love you forever if you do the latter.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-045.mp3, 42.7MB

… And here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Hunters 2 [$4.99]
• Ow My Balls XL [Free]
• Motoheroz [$.99 / HD]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• Kitten Sanctuary [$.99 / Lite]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER REDUX

• Drop a Cat [ Free ]

FRONT PAGE

• Sega To Release ‘PSO’ On iOS… Kinda
• Rovio Gobbles Up Futuremark Games Studio
• ‘Baldur’s Gate for iPad’ Hitting Every iPad and Maybe iPhone, Too
• ‘Dark Meadow’ Free-To-Play Finally Hits

This week’s episode Was Sponsored By Stamp Art Fever.

Stamp Art Fever, Free Stamp Art Fever by independent developer Francesco Chessari is a unique strategy game in the App Store. In the game, you are an art-stamp collector, building your virtual stamp collection by searching over 700 exclusively-designed stamps.

In Stamp Art Fever your objective is to acquire and collect artistic stamps, build up and manage your collection gallery, and trade and compete against other players from all over the world for the most valuable collection. It is not a game just for stamp lovers – if you have a collector mindset and you love art and management games, Stamp Art Fever will strike an immediate chord with you.

Stamp Art Fever for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad is available now in the App Store for FREE.

IMPORTANT EDITORIAL NOTE: Eli will be going to Medieval Times on Saturday, not Sunday. We are sorry for any confusion this mix up may have caused.

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The App Store is a great place to find seedy Minecraft apps. It’s also the best place to find the official Minecraft companion app. Studio 57Digital LLC’s Minecraft Explorer [$.99 / Free] now has the support of Mojang, which makes it a much more stomach-able buy. You can do a lot of awesome stuff with this, by the way, as it functions like an Internet wiki. From the app, you can browse all of the game’s item, enchantment, and crafting recipes, favorite items and server listings, view enemy information, and even watch videos.

… And now you can do more. Specifically, with this latest update, you can now share your character skins and design new ones. It’s also considerably less buggy, if the long list of fixes is to be believed.

Mojang managing director Carl Manneh drew our all-seeing eye to the product earlier today and it’s proving to be a cool tool. We’re thinking that it’ll be doubly useful for the impending Xbox Live Arcade version of the game, since dual-fisting a laptop and an Xbox 360 controller can be pretty rough. Check it out.

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In a universe in which ninja tournaments aren’t just an elaborate excuse to stage a gory multidimensional melee, there’s an adorable little ninja on his way to castle Shimawa on a hill. Hatted and garbed in his finest eentsy weentsy blacks, this little ninja is on his way to the 200th annual ninja tournament. He doesn’t know it until he gets on the stage, but he’s not skilled enough to win, at all.

And thus little ninja’s failure becomes the premise of another game on mobile platforms that revolves around fruit. And while 8-bit Ninja might roll in one of the most dry and tired design elements in today’s market, it does have something to share: simple fun.

At its core, this is a 2D side-scrolling avoidance game. You’ll control little ninja as he dodges an infinite amount of fruit being fired at him from an upset crowd. The more fruit you dodge, the higher your point value at the end of your session. The game ends when a piece of watermelon, cantaloupe, an orange, or a pineapple hits you as you glide from left to right in the cutesy, though strangely not 8-bit, playing area. I doubt that users will ever receive an emotional rise from any of this, but the action model does a decent job of engaging me. Its immediately accessible and blunt, like an everyday simple pleasure.

If this sounds like something you’ve played before, it is. I asked developer DogByte where the idea for 8-bit Ninja came from, and unsurprisingly, it’s a product of its time. DogByte loves Falling Balls and Fruit Ninja and wanted to construct something that took elements from both, but iterated in important, though non-surface, areas.

And that’s the thing about 8-bit Ninja: it does have some interesting points of design buried within its cutesy art direction and simplistic play. For one, you’ll never walk into the game carrying tools that directly interact with enemy fruit. Little ninja can, however, pick up and utilize random items that spawn on the map. Weaponry, like blades or shurikens, act like timed but stationary turrets of fruit-slicing fury. Picking up these items up is a clear choice, and one that adds a light tactical flair to the game’s action. And then there’s the progression system, which is as sweet as chocolate.

“The game features multiple unlockable characters each with unique special powers to unleash, multiple arenas with unique extras and a lot of power-ups,” DogByte tells us. But that’s selling the progression a little short. As you play, you’ll earn EXP for your character, which seems to ramp up his speed and his special ability, which in the case of little ninja, is a shield. There are two other characters to unlock down the line, each of which boasts different abilities.

Also, you’ll collect two forms of in-game currency: gems and eggs. Gems can be used to level up those randomly spawned items so they last longer and have greater effects as you play. You can also buy a nifty one-use hat that acts as armor. Eggs, on the other hand, can be used to buy new characters with new abilities, new levels, or even gems. These constituent parts all feed into each other harmoniously, and really bolster that best-in-class one-more-play kind of tone, similar to, strangely, Call of Duty’s You’ll spend a senseless amount of time powering up my guy and abilities, all in the name of superior stats. This kind of stuff gets in your head in a satisfying way.

Gems and eggs also feed into the game’s free-to-play model, but this title’s brand of functionality appears to be inoffensive. Instead of annoying or nagging, it treats the user as a premium-level consumer from the get-go. The pre-release build of 8-bit Ninja has never made me feel like I need to dip into my wallet to enjoy the progression system and what it offers. Eggs and gems rain freely, though at the cost of ad support. Ads were off in the build I played.

8-bit Ninja might be simple, and the name might be a hair deceiving considering that this plainly isn’t an 8-bit game, but this is definitely something you’ll want to check out later this April when it hits iOS and Android for the price of free.

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Simon Oliver of Rolando fame is coming back to mobile with a new Okabu game, The Guardian is reporting. Oliver released the original Okabu on PS3 back in 2011. It took a slugging from critics for its overly dry and simplistic design, but Oliver and his studio Handcircus Games has since been working on a free-to-play take in preparation for a release this year across iOS and Android. He didn’t comment on what this one will do differently.

He did, however, describe the original Okabu as a first step. He and his studio built a universe, and they’ll continue to work within it. “We wanted to retain ownership of the IP so we could build something that we knew would work across different platforms,” Oliver said. “That’s been our focus since October, working on a prototype for a new free-to-play game set in the Okabu universe, for iOS and Android,” he continued, hopefully with a flourish.

A screen of the PS3 version of the game.

The entire interview, by the way, is a fascinating read. Oliver has been around since the beginning of the App Store and, with help from Rolando, he became one of the first App Store success stories. The Guardian quizzed him about all sorts of currents topics, including the Triple Town controversy, IP ownership, and the new and more vibrant App Store landscape. His answers carry a different weight.

[via The Guardian]

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The third episode of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space was originally released in 2008, on the cusp of the videogame industry’s zombie renaissance. Four years and three Dead Risings later the iOS port of “Night of the Raving Dead” [$4.99] may feel — to steal a quote from the game’s antagonist, the vampire Jurgen — “played, yo.” Still, Steve Purcell’s brand of silly humor gives “Raving Dead” life, even for those tired of zombies and vampires.

This season of episodic Sam & Max games comes into its own in “Raving Dead,” particularly if players have been keeping up since the first episode ”Ice Station Santa” : we can start to see how the central town and its inhabitants are changing over time. We now have access to Sybil’s shop, but Bosco’s Inconvenience has been shuttered since he went missing in the second episode, ”Moai Better Blues” ; Flint Paper takes a more active role in “Raving Dead,” and Sam and Max have all but stopped giving Stinky the benefit of the doubt in the mysterious death of her grandfather. This is one of the strengths of episodic gaming, and it’s nice to see Telltale Games’ writing come to fruition.

This type of self-referential writings has its limits, though. In-jokes that refer to players’ previous exploits feel natural to players keeping up with the series, but the second quarter of “Raving Dead” can be jarring for those who, like me, didn’t play Sam & Max Save the World. Not that “Raving Dead” is a literary giant, but there are a few levels of nuance in Sam and Max’ relationship with Jurgen that you’ll miss if you didn’t play the “Situation: Comedy” episode from that series, which isn’t currently available on the App Store. And this wouldn’t even be so bad if this plot point didn’t directly inform at least two of the puzzles in the first half of the game.

Nevertheless, “Raving Dead” features the strongest writing and characterization to date — I’ll never forget the way Jurgen hooks his thumbs into his nipple rings while he relaxes.

Whereas as “Ice Station Santa” and “Moai Better Blues” tend to meander along until a plot twist at the end, “Raving Dead” establishes Jurgen as the antagonist fairly early in the game, and most of the puzzles revolve around him. This gives Purcell room to stretch out and give the game a little more nuance, and I’d even argue that he re-imagines and modernizes the social commentary George Romero wrote into seminal zombie movies like Night of the Living Dead, from where this episode borrows its title. Sam & Max isn’t subtle stuff, by any means, but there are some threads of maturity to be found, not to mention that “Raving Dead” has a relatively bleak ending — I won’t spoil anything here, but it does seem heavy-handed for the series.

This episode is pretty clearly demarcated into two halves, the first of which is probably the most mechanically and thematically interesting of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space to date. Unfortunately, that praise comes with a caveat: the first half of the game is murky in its goals, and you’ll likely stumble into the puzzle solutions instead of tactfully divining them. There are a few puzzles in particular that, even after having solved them, don’t seem to have much in-game logic behind them — brute force experimentation isn’t as satisfying as actual problem-solving.

The problem is that “Raving Dead” is narratively strict, often times depending on the player to trigger specific events to push the story forward. In older Sam & Max episodes, players generally had a handful of puzzles to solve at a time, giving them a reason to explore different areas, interact with different characters, and gradually amass the knowledge and items they need to move forward. “Raving Dead” is stingier with its progress, meaning that you’ll need to solve each puzzle in turn before you can move on.

The upshot is that the interplay between Sam, Max, and Jurgen is really neat once you figure it out. Dialogue hints have always been a big part of Sam & Max, but “Raving Dead” is almost impossible to figure out without taking the time to think about Jurgen’s character and motivations. (Again, having played “Situation: Comedy” helps.) Thankfully, the same general idea repeats itself a few times in a row — once you know what makes Jurgen tick and how his castle functions, the game starts to pick up steam in terms of narrative progress and player engagement.

The second half of “Raving Dead” is more straightforward and consists of traditional item management puzzles. The game does a good job of feeding players items, which keeps the game moving forward and pixel-hunting to a minimum. The final boss fight, too, is a return to form after some lackluster fisticuffs against Mr. Spatula in “Moai.”

“Raving Dead” ends on a somewhat dour note, but I can’t help be excited at the midpoint of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space: different plot threads are coming together and the designers at Telltale consistently and effectively iterate on the mechanics and structure of the point-and-click adventure. “Raving Dead” is easily stronger than “Moai Better Blues” and more interesting than, if not executed as well as “Ice Station Santa.” Here’s hoping the last two episodes keep up the good work.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Swordigo [$1.99] shouldn’t be as refreshing as it is. We were playing through better hack and slash adventures twenty years ago. But the genre has stumbled en route to the App Store, and we’ve been left waiting for a classic of the mobile era. Swordigo might just be the one.

Touch Foo is building a reputation for impressive games. Soosiz [$1.99 / HD], the studio’s first release won our hearts with a combination of novel design and great controls. Swordigo has all the things you’d expect from a good hack-n-slash: boss battles, sword combat, spell slinging, character upgrades and a ton of exploration. We’ve seen it all before. So why is it so utterly satisfying?

Scarcity is part of the reason. But Touch Foo has done more than create a game in an under-represented niche. It’s done an outstanding job of building it in the process.

From the controls to the upgrade mechanics, nearly everything in Swordigo works better than you might expect. On-screen directional controls are so often awkward, but they’re flawless here. In the eight hours I spent with the game I only bungled one or two jumps with my hand out of place, a better than reasonable margin of error. And that eight hours of content? That’s just for the main game. If you’re inclined to hunt down every last treasure chest (and earn the related Game Center achievement), expect to put in more time.

The art might be a problem for some. I’ve never been comfortable with Touch Foo’s style. The critters and character design in Soosiz grated on me, and the transition to 2.5D hasn’t helped. The environments are decent if repetitive, but it would be generous to say the character models have the detail of a Playmobil figure. You might be inclined to skip the game because of that. Don’t. The hero looks better as the game goes on, and you won’t notice the look when you’re knee deep in rock-solid gameplay.

You also shouldn’t look to this game for an original story—Swordigo goes well beyond nodding to Link and his crew. I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing—it’s a charming homage, and it’s also unobtrusive. Touch Foo clearly spent its time elsewhere, designing an impressive platforming experience and a fun set of customizable upgrades. Some of the latter can be bought with the not-rupees dropped by enemies and unsuspecting bushes. Others are found tucked away in secret treasure chests.

Early on, there isn’t much to do. You’ll have a sword and a jump button and can only do so much with the combination. But your toolbox expands as the game’s four spells are introduced. Three can be used against enemies, and all four let you interact with the environment in new ways. You can shoot switches with your magic bolts or blow up hidden walls with bombs. Boss fights take advantage of those abilities, and there are unique challenges in nearly every new area. Because of this, Swordigo stays novel for its entire length, never relying on familiar tactics for long.

If a challenge can be defeated using spells or objects from the environment, the game plays beautifully. Sword combat, on the other hand, is a bit stiff. Your attacks run in a pattern, and you’ll often need an overhead swing at just the moment you slash forward. Enemies seem designed to exploit that weakness in the most frustrating ways, firing just over your sword’s reach or swooping down and hitting you in the face. Thankfully death is rarely a problem—falling takes you back to the last ledge with a sliver of health lost, while anything more permanent drops you at the most recent checkpoint. You can also teleport between checkpoints, so it’s trivial to take a trip back to town to shop or heal.

So while there are frustrations and a handful of small bugs, they’re blips in a solid eight hours of entertainment. Whether it ends up as a hidden gem or a genuine hit, Swordigo will have earned its place in any number of hearts. Touch Foo may be treading familiar ground, but it does so with great skill. If you’re up for a good old fashioned adventure, this is where you want to be. You might also want to be in our forums—it’s dangerous to go alone.

TouchArcade Rating:

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