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Red Alert: Canabalt is now .99¢ instead of its usual $2.99. This marks the second time that Semi-Secret has lowered the price of its atmospheric and perfectly executed runner since its launch in 2009, which is why we’re thinking you might be interested in jumping on this deal while it lasts. We’ll probably be rocking iPhone 5s and iPad 4s by the time we see another price drop, but that’s just our conjecture.

There is a reason for today’s sale. A bunch of indie developers are banding together in a fun little promotion called Because We May. Its goal is to pull attention to numerous price drops for several games across multiple platforms, including iOS. Canabalt is one of the games in the promotion, and it’s one of the first to shoot down in price. Yay, for us!

We’ll have a lot more on Because We May tomorrow, as a lot more of the promotion’s games will see big price drops. For now, just enjoy Canabalt. You won’t regret grabbing it.

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Back at GDC in March, Devolver Digital held somewhat of an “open call” for indie developers to pitch them their game ideas for possible publishing deals. They served beer and talked with various developers while being toured around San Francisco on an enormous bus. That’s right, they held their meetings on a moving bus. It was a really interesting departure from the typical dry business pitches that take place at conferences, and the Penny Arcade Report has a fantastic write up of the event from when they tagged along for a few of the bus interviews.

One of the games that was pitched and was picked up by Devolver while they were there is Cube Roots’ Dungeon Hearts, a fast-paced matching game dressed with the trappings of a classic JRPG battle system. In the game, colored coins scroll across the bottom of the screen almost like note charts in Rock Band. You can shuffle coins around to make matches, and the color of coin that you match determines which character in your party of 4 will attack the enemy. This continues in a “boss rush” series of battles as the difficulty steadily increases.

It’s a bit more nuanced than that, actually, and to really understand the gameplay in Dungeon Hearts check out this lengthy video the developer posted back in March which describes the mechanics in the game.

We’ve seen some really successful uses of the “mash a puzzle game together with RPG elements” formula, like Puzzle Quest 2 [ $4.99 ], Dungeon Raid [$2.99 / Free ], King Cashing [$1.99 / Free ], and many more. From the early looks at Dungeon Hearts it appears this might just be another winning combination. Unfortunately, Devolver Digital is pegging the release window for “early 2013”, which seems much too far off for my liking. However, a new video should be hitting in the next several weeks to tide us over, and in the meantime you can feast on the screens below from a more recent version of the game or drop by our forums for some discussion of this quirky upcoming title.

Also, be sure to check out Penny Arcade Report’s follow-up article on Dungeon Hearts where they talk to both Devolver Digital and Cube Roots about their experience landing a publishing deal on a moving vehicle.

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How do you feel about endangered species? Does your heart ache for the poor creatures that, through no fault of their own, are being driven to extinction? If so, you might want to join up with Adult Swim and PikPok’s Extinction Squad [ $0.99 ], the bloodiest game about conservation I’ve ever seen.

As the story goes, the surprisingly well-preserved Chuck Darwin, father of evolution, has found a lost colony of dodos. Seems like a miracle, but then the terrible truth is revealed: the scent of dodos causes other animals to jump to their deaths. Animals are killing themselves by the thousands, so Chuck pulls together his extinction squad to save ‘em. Running back and forth with a jump net, the squad bounces the suicidal animals to safety, earning points, coins and the occasional surprise in the process.

All you need to do is swipe your finger back and forth along the bottom of the screen, directing the squad back and forth. You need to position them under falling animals, beneath coins and powerups, and away from falling bombs—a single encounter with a bomb means game over. Adventure mode is all about survival, and Countdown mode is a time trial, but both just ask you to swipe back and forth, nothing more. This makes for a very simple game, but it isn’t the sort of simple that gets boring quickl. PikPok is pretty great at making crazy-fun simple games, the kind that Adult Swim likes to publish, and Extinction Squad is no exception.

There’s the absurdity, for one. You travel around the world with these adorably designed and well-animated people and animals. Every animal you miss splatters into bloody chunks on the ground. Sometimes you juggle pandas, and sometimes you need to bounce a whale. Simply put, this game is over-the-top in all the best ways. With bright colors everywhere and a ton of Australianisms, the whole game commits to a level of absurdity that most developers can’t match.

Then there’s the compulsion. Every time you play, you’re not only saving animals (fun in and of itself) and working on high scores, you’re also collecting. As in Jetpack Joyride [ Free ], there are coins to collect and tokens for the post-game lucky spin. Also familiar is the selection of three meta-goals you’re faced with each time you play, like reaching certain scores in a single streak or saving all the animals that fall within a certain span of time. These elements give players a lot of reasons to just keep playing, with that one last turn turning into a dozen.

The coins you collect can go toward upgrading your powerups and unlocking new, higher-scoring areas. As the game normally plays, you need to save 30 animals in one area without dying, then 40 in the next, then 45 in the one after that, and so on. When you go through all the available areas the game loops but the goal keeps rising. Having access to the later areas means higher overall scores, though the game takes just as long to get obscenely difficult.

A word about IAP in Extinction Squad before we continue: yes, you can absolutely do everything without ever spending an additional dime. With lucky spins and occasional coin powerups and the awards you get from completing goals, you’ll unlock all the areas pretty quickly. If you buy coins, however, you’ll be able to unlock them more quickly, level up your powerups sooner, and—most damningly—extend your plays further. You can pay coins to continue after dying, and that coin value increases each time you use it in a single run. Pay the toll and you can pick up from the start of the current stage with your score intact. So yes, IAP can give you an advantage on the leaderboards, a sad addition to an otherwise excellent game.

If you’re not fussed about IAP, there is so much to love here. Skill can play a huge part in your success, with bonuses for accuracy and with the serious reflexes needed to dodge bombs as the game goes on. There are random events that add a lot of variety, and stats to keep track of just how good you are at saving animals. And the game just oozes character.

Everything considered, Extinction Squad is a ridiculously fun diversion, a great way to while away the minutes. I wouldn’t put too much effort into climbing the leaderboards, knowing that someone with deeper pockets could easily outmatch me with less skill, but just for fun? Sure, I’m happy to give this game my time. If fun, charm and character are all that matter to you, then you should definitely pick it up. And bounce by our discussion thread to let us know what you think when you do.

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Punch Hero’s [ Free ] moment of brilliance occurs when it has you against the ropes. You’ll come to a point during the game’s eighteen-bout arcade mode where progression seems well-nigh impossible. Down to a trickle of health, you will think about throwing the towel in, taking an uppercut to the chin so you can earn some gold and turn the thing off.

But you won’t. Instead, you weave under a vicious right hook and in cinematic slow motion land your own devastating punch. Your opponent is dazed. Jab, jab, jab. Right in his big, stupid face. He comes to, and, mad as hell, throws an uppercut. You weave under it and this time, in similarly cinematic slow motion you throw a left hook. The knockout punch. “Oh my God,” you’ll probably say while your cats look on in shame.

This game’s comeback KO is one of the most gratifying skill-oriented moments the iOS platform has to offer. It is akin to the feeling one gets when cracking a thousand on Super Crate Box’s [ $1.99 ] Construction Yard, or killing your first Big Purple Freak in ZiGGURAT [ $0.99 ]. And while the skill ceilings of those games look down upon Punch Hero’s from high above, high-fiving each other in the Exosphere of Amazing, it does not matter one bit. That moment makes you feel as if you are awesome, thus, you are awesome.

It’s a glimpse of the boxing game the App Store deserves. A glimpse because for that highest of highs, it is a ridiculously vertiginous ascent from the usual grind the game tries so hard to put the player through. Remember the aforementioned “eighteen-bout arcade mode?” If you want to see that through without succumbing to in-app purchases, you are going to have to replay most those fights again and again, ad infinitum.

Despite vague aesthetic similarities and a similar, mostly innocent (more on this later) propensity for racial stereotyping, Punch Hero is nothing like Punch-Out!! Whereas Punch-Out!! is a timing-based puzzle game, Punch Hero is, hey, a boxing game.

Opponents have no patterns as far as I can tell, so you are left with the game’s very simple tap-and-swipe controls, along with the knowledge that the next opponent you face is going to hit harder and have a larger pool of health. Which would be fine if all it took to trudge your way to the top was your wits and reflexes, but it’s not.

No matter your skill, you are going to get hit so hard, will face opponents so resilient, that you will need to upgrade your skills and gear using the gold doled out to you at the end of a match, or via IAP. Most items that actually buff your stats are nearly unattainable without spending actual money, while attribute upgrades the average player will need to complete the arcade mode take dozens upon dozens of monotonous hours grinding out gold to acquire. Or, you know, you could just buy them.

When microtransactions and in-app purchases became the monetization method of choice for many social and mobile developers, the worry was that “pay-to-win” would become the norm. Punch Hero utilizes a “pay-to-compete” system so unfair as to require an unfun punishment should the player not want to spend actual money.

A bit of a non-controversy occurred when another outlet’s reviewer noticed that, among all of the cultural stereotypes presented in Punch Hero, the African American fighters were portrayed most offensively. The writer’s casual description of the “full-lipped, wide-eyed ‘Sambo’ look” even fails to mention that the standard “black male” face is also called “Full Lips” in the game’s shop.

Punch Hero developer Johnny Oh, who seems like a really sweet guy, replied to the review, asking for feedback on how to change the black fighters to make them less offensive. It was an honest response to the kind of inadvertent racism that really can only be replied to with a sigh and a shake of the head. It’s a product of cultural detachment, rather than anything mean-spirited. By contrast, Punch Hero’s invisible paywall feels terribly mean-spirited.

It’s an unfortunate decision that’s marred what is otherwise a pretty good game of boxing. Groundwork for iteration, then, rather than something I’d recommend this go-round. That’s fine. As for me, I think I’ll go ahead and delete the game from my phone, hanging onto the memory of that one wonderful high.

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As much as we may not want to admit it, a game’s style goes a long way—especially in a market as crowded as the App Store. With so many games from so many developers, the right icon and the right visual presentation are often the be all and end all of standing out from the pack. And while those of us who love games know that graphics don’t make for a good game, it’s hard to ignore the allure of stylish games.

That’s why I jumped on Brandnew Boy [ $3.99 ], the latest action RPG from Oozoo. Sporting the Unreal Engine and a beautiful cel-shaded art style rich in color, the game is instantly stunning—especially in motion, where the smooth framerate and fast action prove to make an already-attractive game even more gorgeous. Much of the attention the game has received is because of its presentation.

Thankfully, unlike some pretty-yet-disappointing games out there, Brandnew Boy manages to delight in terms of gameplay, as well. It’s certainly not the best action RPG on the platform, but its unique combat controls and hearty adventure make it worth a spot on your home screen.

The game puts you into the shoes of a mysterious man known only as the “Rookie” as he finds himself lost in a strange, egg-filled world. Through a set of bite-sized standalone missions and countless objective-tweaked variants, you’ll come to learn more about Rookie and his quest, the world around him, and the creatures within it. During your adventure, you’ll venture forth to fight increasingly-tough battles and increasingly-gigantic bosses.

It’s the game’s take on combat and not its story, though, that makes it worth checking out. Through some intuitive touch controls and the introduction of a simple timing mechanic, combat in Brandnew Boy is transformed from the standard “hammer buttons to attack” into something a little more elegant and entertaining.

To initiate an attack on an enemy, you tap on it. To continue to attack, you can continue to tap. It’s simple, straightforward, and effective. Where things get interesting, though, is in the game’s combo system. As long as you can maintain steady attacks within a brief window, you will maintain a combo that makes you increasingly powerful. To do so, though, you need to time your attacks with a small timer bar. Pressing too soon or too late in succession, or failing to dodge an enemy attack with a swipe in the desired direction, will lead to your combo being broken.

In practice, combat starts to feel like a strange hybrid of Batman: Arkham Asylum. There’s a certain rhythm and candor to Brandnew Boy’s combat; Rookie’s graceful jumping and twirling between enemies and across the battlefield in a single combo seamlessly will be startlingly familiar if you’ve played the Dark Knight’s recent console outings.

Stringing long combos together is and stays incredibly satisfying throughout, and it evolves as you add more skills to your arsenal which allow you to prolong your combos even further. All told, combat is fast, fluid, and fun—especially when combined with the game’s focus bonus “time trial” medals, which push you to finish levels as fast as possible while maintaining a high combo and doing no damage.

Filling out the roster of requisite action RPG features is a complete upgrade system for the game’s main character and a summon system of sorts. Skills and equipment can be purchased and upgraded with a fairly straightforward if not uninspired progressions system, and you can earn the ability to summon unique pets by defeating the game’s handful of bosses.

Sadly, for all the framework wrapped around the game’s combat system, Brandnew Boy does come off as a bit of a one-note tune. Combat itself is satisfying, but it also lacks variety or depth in the long run, and the game’s story and progression systems do little to stave off fatigue should you play the game for hours on end.

Should the developers infuse the game’s core combat with a little more variety and flesh out the game’s other systems (skill trees for character development and more gear), a sequel to Brandnew Boy could find its place at the top of “best iOS RPGs” in short order. That said, the game you can buy today is a solid one in its own right, even if only for its unique, rhythmic combat.

Color me curious about what this developer does next.

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Today Retro Dreamer, developers of such titles as the awesome arcade shooter Velocispider [$1.99 / Free ] and the adorable Sneezies [$0.99 / Free / $2.99 (HD)], have announced a new game is on the horizon. In a post over on the Retro Dreamer website, the company has divulged that this latest title will be called Duckers, and then they went on to explain… well, absolutely nothing actually.

Yes that’s right, they’re giving us the old tease treatment. But on the bright side there is the promo art attached to this very post which is both extremely cute as well as intriguing. What’s in that jar? Did it crash land to Earth? Why does that duck have flight goggles on? Can ducks even fly?

In the end we’re left with nothing but questions, however, Retro Dreamer states that Duckers is just about ready to go and should be hitting within a month’s time, possibly even by the end of May if everything goes absolutely perfectly. Until then they’ll be pushing out all sorts of new promotional stuff over the next few weeks for the impending Duckers launch, including a trailer that should hit sometime this week, so stick around to find out more about this mysterious title soon.

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When we first found out about Kotomon [ $2.99 ] recently, I was excited for the possibilities especially considering that some of the developers at Monstars consisted of folks from Q Entertainment (Lumines, Rez). Unfortunately, reputation alone is not enough to carry this simple music platformer with iffy controls.

Kotomon follows the adventures of a cute red monster of the same name as he searches the world for other monsters. Gameplay is divided into levels and has you navigating Kotomon and his companions across the terrain, battling monsters of various strengths until you reach a campfire, signifying the end of the level. A three-star system grades your completion with points awarded for faster completion, combos, and the amount of food your companion eat (littered across each level).

As you progress, Kotomon will meet new monsters (which are hatched by finding eggs), each with their own abilities and attributes. While the help menu provides small blurbs in each monster, i still found it a but vague for trying to figure out the differences of some of them. Regardless there’s enough there for strategy in later levels when you have the choice of choosing who to bring with you in a level.

The platforming itself is enjoyable for being a simplistic title. Levels are usually divided into battle royales with tons of combat or terrain based missions with obstacles that can block or kill your companions. There’s an interesting dynamic of keeping tabs of your companions while simultaneously using them as weapons of destruction. The difficulty also cranks up in the latter half of the game for gamers that enjoy a challenge.

One of Kotomon’s features is a dynamic soundtrack affected by the actions of your Kotomon. For example, launch a monster at some baddies and the beat picks up temporarily for each enemy dispatched. Extras notes are also added when taking on more powerful bosses.

Other than those little nuances, I didn’t really find anything particularly special about the music features. True, watching the enemies and your monsters dance to the beats of the song is quite adorable, but it’s hardly game-changing. If anything, the emphasis on a dynamic soundtrack means that you’ll be hearing a lot of simple tunes until you get into the thick of the action.

By far, the biggest issue I encountered with Kotomon dealt with its frustrating control scheme. Kotomon utilizes a floating, non-static virtual joystick for movement, which means that movement is always relative and can lead to the joystick sliding all over the screen. Compounding the problems are the shooting mechanics, which are solely based on the direction of your character and just feels unintuitive. For me, this lead to a lot of misplaced shots primarily due to the controls which range from frustrating to level-ending (especially with levels that contain lava which can instantly kill your companions).

The control issue feels amplified when you start to get to later levels with enemies that actively seek you out. Since aiming is based on the direction of Kotomon, you’ll find yourself in a constant predicament of running away while trying to turn around to launch a shot before turning back to avoid dying.

Other facets of Kotomon simply felt average. The visuals were a mix of cell-shade for the characters coupled with bland backdrops and a heavy dose of particle effects. Meanwhile, content felt a bit light once you get past the star ranking system.

Maybe it’s just a case of irrational expectations, but I was a bit disappointed in the overall package of Kotomon. It feels less like a music/rhythm adventure and more of a simplified platformer with frustrating controls and little in terms of variety. The cute monsters and somewhat catchy music are sure to appeal to some but folks looking for the next great platformer may want to pass.

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When you truly adore a game, sequels can be a scary thing. Sure, it’s more of what you love—but what if they mess it up? What if they abandon all the things you love for the sake of novelty? Well, Defender Chronicles [$1.99 / $2.99 / $4.99 (HD)] fans, let us put your fears to rest. We’ve had a chance to spend some time with Defender Chronicles II, and it seems to have everything the original had to offer. And every little bit of it is bigger, better, and sexier.

I spent the summer of 2009 consumed by the original. I had a brand new 3GS and pages of games, but Defender Chronicles – Legend of the Desert King was the one that devoured my time. Its mix of vertical tower defense and RPG conventions was completely irrestistable, and Gimka Entertainment and Menara Games propped it up with massive updates that added to its already substantial content. Defender Chronicles II is looking like it will contain that same potential for time investment, so you might want to clear your schedule in advance.

This game is leagues beyond its predecessor in terms of visual appeal, and that’s an achievement—as we pointed out way back in our review, Defender Chronicles was a looker in its time. But now every unit is more detailed and every animation is more fluid. And crisp—Retina support is in for iPhone, though apparently not for iPad. The game lives up to the rose-colored vision you may have of the original, but it’s much more refined, more up-to-date.

The gameplay has been similarly preserved. You’ll still spend your time turning flags into guilds and upgrading them through tiers of units, archers to rangers, squires to cavaliers. Strategy seems more important than ever before, with enemy units that take advantage of every potential weakness in your defense. Height and range are the biggest considerations as you scroll around massive, multi-tiered 2D maps. There are quite a few of those this time around, and they hit an almost Escher-esque level of complexity pretty quickly.

There isn’t much that’s changed outright, really. Voice actor George Ledoux returns to impress us with his Sean Connery impression, though he also pulls off an impressive lizardman. Heroes Melwen and the General return, but this time they’re accompanied by two new friends: Lovell and Elwyn, an archer and priest. The brand-new story of the heroes and their defence of Athelia against the Orcs and Forsaken is told through gorgeous comic-book cutscenes once more.

From our brief time with the game, it really seems like you’re going to be able to put in a ludicrous numbers of hours. There’s so much here for the player that wants to go deep, with heroes to level up and customize, hundreds of artifacts to locate and five difficulty levels and game modes to work through. The difficulty curve also feels a bit steeper, so if you’re already familiar with the game you shouldn’t be underwhelmed. If you’re feeling particularly cocky, you’ll be able to challenge yourself with a huge list of Game Center achievements and leaderboards.

Ultimately, it seems like Defender Chronicles II will be the perfect sort of sequel. It updates already excellent gameplay for a new generation of devices, and brings in all sorts of improvements in the process. It’s hard to imagine any Defender Chronicles fans being disappointed, and folks that are new to the series should be in for a treat. We’ll be taking a closer look at the game over the next couple weeks, and we’ll be back with our review after it hits the App Store on May 24th. In the meantime, the developers are posting regular previews in our discussion thread, so take a peek if your appetite isn’t already whetted enough.

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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.

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