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Saving Yello [99¢] from Tactile Entertainment and published by Dreamfab is a new physics-based puzzler about a pet goldfish named ‘Yello’.  Poor Yello has been plucked from his bowl and dumped on the floor by his young 7-year old owner who doesn’t appreciate that fish are actually water-based creatures. Yello needs your help to return to his fishbowl, within a limited number of turns, but along the way he wants to destroy some of his owners toys as revenge. Since its release, this quality game has immediately shot into the top-40 on the US App Store.

You can fling Yello across the level, back towards his bowl, by stretching his tail to determine the trajectory and power, then releasing.  If you pull his tail back far enough, his little tongue pokes out, he gasps and his eyes go bloodshot from being stretched. Assuming you aim successfully, Yello eventually plops back into his glass bowl and swims around happily (and you score a star and the next level is unlocked).  If you don’t reach the bowl within the allocated turns, or send  Yello into an out-of-bounds area, the level is over and the poor fish starts crying.

But, getting Yello back in the bowl is only part of the challenge. If you want to earn the other two stars for the level, you’ll need to destroy his owner’s toys by crashing into them, to achieve the displayed score thresholds. If you destroy three-of-a-kind items, such as three teddy bears or cars, you’ll receive bonus points for a “toy-combo”. Destroying five items in one turn increases the score multiplier. Once you score enough points to earn three stars – and importantly, still reach the fish-bowl – Yello celebrates by jumping up and down in his bowl, happily saying “Wheeeee!”

Saving Yello is definitely going for the “cute fish” factor, giving Yello a variety of animated expressions.  If you throw him directly at a wall, just before impact he says “uh-oh!” in a cute little voice. And people lap that stuff up, just like the happily soaring bird in Tiny Wings [99¢]. But, just because he’s cute doesn’t stop this game from roughing him up. The unlucky fish is dropped on the floor, set on fire, encased in ice, exploded by dynamite, impaled with pins and blasted by bombs. Metal objects land on him with a heavy CLANG! And some levels feature: fish hooks!

This may sound like fish torture, but these items actually help Yello.  He can burn wooden obstacles when he’s on fire or freeze and shatter metallic barriers whilst frozen. He can grab dynamite in his mouth as he flies through the air, which explodes when he lands (charring his face black). The fire, ice and explosions can all trigger chain reactions, toppling or destroying entire structures for increased points.

Being impaled with pins helps him stick to walls, and when obstacles fall on his head you can tap to clear them away for extra points. And Yello is such a hard-core fish that he jumps onto fish-hooks and uses them to swing to higher platforms.  Can you beat that, Nemo!?

There’s currently 40 levels provided within three settings (Play room, living room and kitchen), with more levels promised soon. Each setting is unlocked by gaining enough stars from prior levels. In-App Purchases are available to unlock all levels but this is not necessary. There’s supposed to be leaderboards for each setting and overall, plus achievements in Game Center / OpenFeint, but Game Center  wasn’t working in the initial release. Strangely, there’s also more achievements listed in OpenFeint than in Game Center.  The developers advise a fix has been submitted to Apple.

One weakness of the game is the dynamic camera work, which automatically frames the camera around the fishes position. The game lets you pan or zoom-out to see the whole level, which is great, but after a second, the camera disregards the users preference and automatically re-centers back on the fish. This forces you to aim blindly or from memory of what’s off-screen. More of the level is shown when you pull Yello’s tail, however the ability to see the whole level while playing  (and a more accessible restart button) would really enhance the gameplay.

Saving Yello successfully wraps quality graphics and sound, interesting gameplay, varied power-ups, decent game physics and a cute fish into this entertaining fish-flinging game. This can be played casually, simply reaching the fish-bowl to open the next level, or you can 3-star the levels for more of a challenge. What’s next? Well, having survived three rooms in the house, the developers are still deciding which hazardous settings to drop Yello in next. That fish needs a new owner!

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Even though King of Dragon Pass [$9.99] is one of the nichiest (is that a word?) niche titles that has been released lately, I just can’t get enough of it. It’s been over two months since our review, and I’m still working towards ascending to the position of king. I love how different each play through is, too. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve needed to reboot my tribe, but each time I’ve taken a different approach and was met with a substantially different outcome.

The one exception to this is the duck people. They’re always jerks, and a few weeks ago I started a “relentlessly murder all ducks” policy that has been met with moderate success. KoDP players know what I’m talking about. Show no mercy.

Anyway, the one thing that I mentioned in our review that I really wish the game had was universal compatibility. These massive text-based games I want to be playing kicked back with my iPad, not hunched over my phone. In a recent blog post, the developers confirmed that the original game will in fact become universal in a future update. (Previously, they were undecided on a universal update or a separate HD version.) Unsurprisingly, the iPad version of the game is going to feature much less scrolling, and better yet, the crazy art that accompanies so much of the game won’t be obscured by so much text like it is on the iPhone.

No word on release yet, as the same post mentions that the update hasn’t been through any kind of QA yet, but it’s still reassuring to know that it’s in the pipeline and that it will be universal. Seriously though, check out our review if you haven’t. King of Dragon Pass most certainly isn’t a game for everyone, but if it hooks you, it won’t let go.

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Chair’s Infinity Blade [$2.99] hit the App Store late last year and was met with nearly flawless critical reception. We couldn’t help but give it five stars in our review, saying “It doesn’t get much more ‘must-have’ than this.” We then went on to name-drop Infinity Blade all over our Best iPhone Games category, listing it highly in every buyer’s guide, and every other opportunity we could think of to tell people to download it.

At the iPhone 4S press event, Chair announced Infinity Blade 2, and I’m not sure it’s possible for another iOS title (aside from a potential Infinity Blade 3) to have this much pre-launch hype. It’s well deserved, too. The original was fantastic, and really, all Chair would have needed to do is phone in a sequel with new monsters, new equipment, and maybe even a new setting and we all would have been happy. Instead, what they’ve done, it take nearly every element of the original and turned it up to eleven.

One of the few criticisms people had of Infinity Blade was the oddly cyclical nature of the game, which wasn’t held up by any more than a vague shell of a story involving your entire bloodline serving the single purpose of throwing themselves at the God King. Penny Arcade nailed it in a comic, and Infinity Blade was a much better experience if you didn’t focus on just how silly it was that you decided to take up the sword after your father, grand father, great grandfather, great great grandfather and however many “greats” you needed to add to get back to the original knight who foolishly decided to make this your family’s purpose.

Infinity Blade 2 feels like it has an actual story, and this time it’s told through actual voiceovers. It picks up where the first left off, and you’ve got the God King’s Infinity Blade in your hands, and are off to find “The Worker of Secrets” now that every deathless in the world is interested in taking the Infinity Blade from you. The initial hook involves searching for Saydhi, an information dealer. Thankfully, Saydhi seems to love duels, and offers up prizes for winning. I won’t spoil more than that (and this hardly counts as spoilers since it all transpires in the first cut scene) but the way things branch out from there is substantially more interesting than the original even though you’ll be doing a similar series of loops through the game.

Combat, the main draw of Infinity Blade seems to be greatly improved. Chair must have either tweaked the combat animations themselves, how the swipe input is handled, or both as it feels like you have an even more direct control link to your character. This shines even further in the new combat options which become available, allowing you to trade your shield to either dual wield or carry a massive two handed weapon.

The three fighting styles feel substantially different, and help greatly in making the game feel not quite as repetitive. With two weapons in hand, you attack much faster and blocking with your shield is replaced with being able to duck. Two handed weapons are much slower, and your defensive abilities are swapped with blocking using the actual weapon itself. It’s really cool how it all works out.

The item store is back, and just like the first game you’ll be trading your gold for gear at regular intervals. A new gem system allows for higher levels of customization though, and it won’t take long before your equipped set of gear has all sorts of slots that you can socket gems into which can do basic things like boost stats all the way up to imbuing your items with various magical properties. If coming across gold in battles is a problem, Infinity Blade 2 offers a similar IAP purchase system to buy more gold if you want. Although, like the original, there’s really no reason to and buying gold to get the best items seems to just remove any drive to actually play the game since equipment upgrades play such a big role.

Outside of fights, the gameplay is nearly identical with a world you can explore in an on-rails fashion, panning the camera around and tapping to move to the next location. Hidden items are back, encouraging you to stop to look around on every screen so you don’t miss anything. You’ll want to, too, because Infinity Blade 2 looks gorgeous. While you might be rewarded with items for doing it, you’ll also be taking in the scenery just to marvel at the graphics your iPhone is capable of pumping out.

The rest of the game can easily be summed up with, “It’s Infinity Blade, but more.” There are more enemy types to fight, more visual effects, more flexibility, more customization, and they managed to do all this while removing how repetitive the original felt after blasting through the game a few times. It’s everything I wanted in a sequel, and I can’t wait for it to be released.

Infinity Blade 2 will be available on December 1st as a universal app for $6.99. We’ll have a full review then, so stay tuned.

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Recently, we mentioned that Space Tripper [$3.99] – the iOS version of Astro Tripper – has finally been released by True Axis the makers of the popular game: Jet Car Stunts [$1.99 / Free]. After being released on various other platforms over the past decade, it’s finally our turn for an iOS port of this top-down arena-based shoot’em-up, which features a main campaign plus score attack and challenge modes to unlock.

Although I’m happy to recommend this game now, my initial impressions were less favorable. You see, Space Tripper offers tilt controls as the only option for movement, but strangely, it appears no auto-calibration occurs at the start of the game, so the craft was unresponsive to tilts and left sitting like a lame duck. However, after discovering the tilt calibration and tilt-sensitivity options and testing a few different configurations, the craft became very responsive, ducking and weaving around enemies.

The decision to implement only tilt controls will immediately put some players off, but it actually works rather well (after you play with the settings). The developers conducted some trials with touch-based controls early on in their development process, but decided that touch controls obscured the action and weren’t responsive enough.

Tilting moves your craft, while tapping the left side of the screen changes weapon and tapping the right side flips the craft around, to face the opposite way. When you flip direction, the craft also slides back a little, which is a subtle movement, but it’s often life-saving when you spin to face an enemy that’s too close. This game requires careful approaches rather than always rushing in, however there’s also time limits for each level, so you need to keep attacking.

The weapons shoot left or right, so you need to move alongside an enemy to attack, but there’s no fire button as your selected weapon fires automatically, non-stop. Your ship is equipped with two weapons: red and blue. The blue lazer fires a direct forwards-facing beam, while the red weapon fires a three pronged blast, covering a wider range. When you collect a red or blue power-up, the weapon of that color is leveled-up, so you could potentially have a very strong red weapon, but a weak blue one, or vice versa.  These level-ups are definitely worth grabbing, as the extra fire-power is helpful for destroying enemies, but importantly, it also looks cool.

Whereas many shoot’em-ups are set in a rectangular play-field, Star Tripper uses various different shaped arenas, with 3D features like ramps which you can jump off. You can’t fly beyond the arena, but your enemies can enter from outside, shooting at you even before you can get to them. To keep track of their position, you constantly refer to a handy radar, which shows the position of all enemies on the level. The green enemy blips on the radar turn red when they become aggressive and accelerate towards you, which helps prioritize your targets.

There are four unique worlds, each with their own graphics, enemies and objective. Sometimes it’s all about shooting down enemies, but other times you’re destroying generators or knocking down pillars (while also blasting enemies!). The enemies are nicely varied, including tanks, helicopters, heat-seeking missile turrets and even swarms of insects, fizz wheels and killer-worms.  Plus there are big boss fights to reward your efforts. Like a massive yellow spider that crawls and jumps, a big fat tank or a massive one-eyed sea creature. You need to find and exploit each bosses weak-spots to take it out.

When your three ships are destroyed, you’re presented with two options – either stop playing and record your score, or continue playing but forfeit your score from the high-score rankings.  At first, this seemed like a great feature, as it allows less competent players to continue their game without being forced to restart from the very beginning. However, the continue option only gives one additional life at a time – which is sometimes lost within 30 seconds. This forces you to frequently re-choose continue. It would be better if “continue” granted another set of three lives.

There’s three levels of difficulty: Normal, Hard and Hardest. Although one member of our discussion forums joked the levels should be named: “Hard, Yeah right  and LOLWUT”.  Fortunately, there’s some cheats built into the game (as described in the App Store game description). The cheat menu offers unlimited lives and/or invulnerability and the ability to skip levels. The unlimited lives option is great, as it’s still a challenge to complete the levels, but you can keep re-trying and your weapon power-up’s don’t reset when you die. As soon as you enable a cheat, all leaderboards, achievements, game mode unlocking and progress saving are disabled until game over, or you quit. This means legit players can still aim for ranks on the Game Center or OpenFeint leaderboards, without worrying about competing against “cheats”.

Star Tripper is a fast-paced, nice-looking and challenging game which will appeal to any hard-core shoot-em-up fans, but anyone can progress through the levels to try the boss fights thanks to the “continue” option and cheat modes. It’s taken several years for this game to reach our iOS devices, so perhaps we’ll end up seeing Space Tripper 2, sometime around 2018!

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I think it’s fair to say by now that KlickTock is a master of creating tiny slices of gaming. Three of the four iOS games the developer has produced have been delightfully tiny experiences that squeak in under two minutes — Super Search 60 [Free / $0.99], Doodle Find [Free / $0.99] and now ZONR [Free] all clock in at 60-90 seconds per play session. But while the older two are both simple (if charming) hidden object games, ZONR is something more interesting. It’s also free, and (spoiler alert) by the end of this review I’ll be telling you to download it, so you might as well get a head start.

Here’s how you play ZONR: You look at a square made of pieces that bear a passing resemblance to tetriminos. You decide in a split second which of those pieces is the largest. You tap it, and then you do it over again with a new square. You keep doing that for 90 seconds, and you’re scored along the way. Dead simple, but when you tie in this game’s bright, cheery art and a soundtrack by Disasterpeace, you’ve got something special in your hands.

I’m a new fan of Disasterpeace, having just fallen in love with a few of his songs from the upcoming non-iOS title Fez. But you might also recognize his work from the soundtracks of Puzzle Agent, Drawn to Life, or Bonk: Brink of Extinction. He’s fantastic at conveying moods with retro-sounding chiptunes, and in ZONR, that mood is abject happiness.

As you play ZONR, the sounds play back with cheery notes that fit beautifully with the music. So each time you correctly choose the largest piece, you’re rewarded, and each time you miss you’re punished with a discordant note. The screen shakes, flashing red, and worse – your multiplier falls. This is one of those arcade games, the ones that let you build up incredible scores by playing perfectly, but that will grab that score back as soon as you make a mistake.

Precision isn’t enough, though. As you play, that 90 second time limit counts down. So you’re pressed to find the biggest piece over and over as the pieces get smaller and smaller, and you need to do it perfectly and quickly. It’s a challenge.

And that challenge is fun to rise to, frankly. As you improve, you earn Game Center achievements, but more importantly you unlock new skins. Not only do the skins change up the look of the game, they also raise the difficulty. It can be challenging to trust your spatial judgement when you’ve got the standard bright, colorful art to work with. But change everything to black and white or different shades of blue and things get much harder.

There are eight skins to unlock in various ways. Some are rewards for high scores, some for earning high enough combos, and some for playing enough games. You can flick through them by swiping around the menu screen. One can be bought for $0.99, and that purchase also rids the game of its single banner ad, which is otherwise present whenever you’re not playing. Another is unlocked if you have Doodle Find on your system (which is a darling game on its own, and well worth a free download).

Ultimately, ZONR is a simple game. It’s a fun way to test your reaction speed, and it does a great job of motivating players to keep pushing their high scores forward. But the slick interface, colorful art and cheerful soundtrack boost it beyond the confines of its gameplay, making it a great choice to pull out whenever you have a good 90 seconds to kill. If you like it, share your thoughts in our discussion thread — and swing by Bandcamp, where you can grab the soundtrack at any price you’d like to pay.

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Whizzers [99¢] by Demonual Studios is an endless-running game, whereas Whizzer (without an “S”) is an old restroom-locating application from 2009. This review is for the game, not the toilet finder.  Although if you’re busting and need some entertainment, you may decide to get both.

The goal of Whizzers is to reach the end of each side-scrolling level, by running, climbing, jumping and dropping. That sounds pretty standard and reasonably easy, until you realize the platforms you’re standing on are actually sinking into molten hot lava. The lava eventually floods the platforms, leaving you with fewer and fewer things to stand on, or perhaps nothing to stand on. Therefore, it’s advisable to run for your life and to seek higher ground.

This game mixes the platforming and endless-running genres, as you run and jump across multiple levels of dis-jointed platforms, choosing your own pathway. But, there are other options available: Teleportation portals will beam you nearby, which could provide a handy short-cut, but might take you backwards costing precious time. There’s power orbs for speed, quick rocket flights, and bubbles to float you up to higher levels. These items all appear frequently, so there’s always something to aim for next.

Some platforms are covered in sticky oil which slows you down, slippery ice which is difficult to jump from, scorching lava pools which deplete your health or spikes to impale yourself on. There’s also monsters to jump on before they eat you and crushers to avoid. But if you can successfully navigate through all these obstacles and reach the end of the level, hot gusts of wind will lift you up and carry you off to the next “land”.

My favorite feature of Whizzers is that occasionally a little arrow appears, advising that a kidnapper is nearby.  This creates a little dilemma: You could wait for the kidnapper if it’s behind you, but this may result in the lava catching up with you and burning you to death, so it’s a gamble. Once you reach the kidnapper, the captive whizzer is rescued – and is unlocked as a playable character. This provides a little chasing game within the levels, which is made trickier by the fact you can’t move to the left.

You can also collect twelve little flying companions, named “Followers”, who fly alongside your whizzer, providing you with special abilities, like increased running, shield, jumping and/or climbing abilities. You choose which unlocked follower to accompany you at the start of the game.  You can also find little fairies, which heal you, give points and temporarily stop the lava from rising.

At the start of each game, you can customize your own whizzer character, by choosing it’s gender, shape, color and masks. But you have to unlock the items by reaching certain levels first, or via In-App Purchases (IAP). A handful of the whizzer customization items can only be obtained via IAP, but this doesn’t affect the actual gameplay. You might end up with a whizzer with an elaborate mask, or wearing a paint bucket on his head.

The controls seem a little complicated when first explained, as they double-up. The left side of the screen is used for both braking or dropping, while the right side does jumps, double jumps and climbing. However, most of the time you’re only pressing or holding the right side of the screen to jump or climb, with only an occasional need to tap the left side of the screen, so it’s actually a very easy and responsive game to play.

A multiplayer mode is provided via Game Center. You can race up to three other online players across a randomly generated (procedural) level, to the finish-line. There’s no combat during this race, but you’re sharing the same track, so it also becomes a race to collect and use items, such as the bubbles or health-boosting fairy’s.  Unfortunately, there’s not many people playing online, so it can be difficult to get a random match-up. In fact, I wasn’t able to make a random match successfully despite multiple attempts on different days. Perhaps the developer should add an AI opponent to race against instead.

Whizzers is a well-designed game with plenty going on in the levels and 21 achievements to complete. The rising lava works well as a “ticking clock” and encourages you to keep moving, to avoid incineration. The multiple layers of platform provide a depth that’s missing from many other single-layer running games. It’s just a shame more people aren’t playing the multiplayer mode, although that’s a problem faced by many good, but lesser known games. The single player mode is worth the dollar though, and if you manage to get some multiplayer action consider it a bonus!

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Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 (and the upcoming Windows Phone 8 ) have always been incredibly interesting platforms to watch for those of us into smartphone gaming. Just like Web OS, I really don’t see Microsoft building up enough steam to become a serious competitor to either iOS or Android. However, also like Web OS, Windows Phone 7 and 8 are home to a whole host of cool features that I (likely somewhat foolishly) have my fingers crossed in hopes that they eventually dribble down into iOS somehow. Specifically, the way Windows Phone 7 integrates Facebook is really slick, and I promise if you spend some time with one of the devices you’ll find yourself saying, “Huh, that’s neat” several times. Adding Nokia hardware to the mix only makes things more interesting, although, again, we’ll have to wait and see how the market reacts.

Sadly, one potential nail in Windows Phone 7’s gaming coffin is the complete lack of Unity support. In a recent interview with Develop, Unity CEO David Helgason explained that Unity won’t be making its way to Windows Phone 7 due to the closed nature of the platform, although support for Windows Phone 8 is being looked at. Windows Phone apps and games need to be either be based on XNA or Silverlight, and getting Unity on the devices would require an exemption to this rule, which Microsoft has decided against.

Just like Web OS, Windows Phone has seemed to be a promising candidate in turning this two horse smartphone OS race into a three horse one, but I’m not sure that’s possible without Unity, as the engine has become a major player in mobile gaming. When you look at the best games of the Android marketplaces, they’re almost all utilizing Unity. Take those away, and, well, you’ve got the Windows Phone Market.

I could get up on my soap box here and go on about how competition breeds innovation and all that jazz, but I think we’re all well aware of that. In today’s market, third party apps are vital to the success of any mobile OS, and it’s sad to see Microsoft taking this approach with Unity. Windows Phone owning gamers are losing out, as are developers that have existing Unity projects that could be quickly and easily ported to the platform- Especially since quick and easy porting is among the greatest strengths of Unity.

[Develop via Pocket Gamer]

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Surely you’ve heard of Words With Friends by now, haven’t you? I figure, if my mom plays it, that’s a pretty good benchmark for the entire world knowing about a video game. Well, if you haven’t, here’s the gist- Words With Friends is basically the game of Scrabble with a social cross-platform twist. Utilizing the magic of asynchronous multiplayer and push alerts, you can play games of Scrabble with friends across the world. Cooler yet, it doesn’t matter if your friends have Android phones or are even playing the Facebook version of the game… It just works.

It’s casual and simple enough that you could play with your grandma, while being classic enough that it’s fun for even the most hardcore types who enjoy playing word games with their friends and family. Seriously, I can’t say enough good things about Words With Friends.

I can say one bad thing though, in that the advertisements that power the free version can get a little obnoxious at times, especially if you have a hatred for interstitial ads… Which is exactly where today’s sale comes in. For a limited time, you can get the ad-free version of Words With Friends for 99¢. I can almost promise you’ll get more than 99¢ worth of entertainment out of this game, but, if you’re a cautious App Store customer you can always try the free version first. All of your games will transfer over if and when you decide to spring for the paid version.

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Flick Home Run [99¢] from Infinity Pocket has been camped out as the #2 paid application on the American App Store for a few days and hit #1 for top grossing iPhone apps, yet it’s barely been mentioned in our forums, which is rather unusual for a top-ranking game. We decided to investigate why this baseball game’s so popular. That was a few days ago …and I’m still playing it.

Rather than displaying a batter, bowler, bases and fielders, like a regular baseball game, Flick Home Run focuses entirely on smacking home runs, as the name suggests. There’s no awkward floating virtual bat displayed either, because your finger acts as the bat and your swipe is the swing. When you place your finger on the pitch button, a ball is bowled by an unseen pitcher from the right side of the screen. You flick your finger at the ball, timing it right to smack it as far as possible.

If the ball flies out of the park and into the parking lot, smashing into some parked cars or a neighboring building, that’s a good result and the crowd will cheer. But to do this requires quick responses and accurate flicking, because the ball travels further if you flick it right in the center. This game has caused some extreme flicks, right off the iPod screen and into the air (once, into the wall) which almost feels like swinging a bat.

There are twelve different ball types, but you never know which you’re facing until the last moment. As the pitch approaches, the ball type is suddenly revealed. It could be a regular baseball, a fast ball, a fast drop or notorious curving s-ball.  There’s even ninja balls. Some balls are heavier, so cant be hit as far, while others act as score multipliers. Points are awarded for distance and hitting balloons or stars, which brings in a small luck factor. These points are converted to experience points (100 points = 1 XP), for leveling-up your power, accuracy and/or the number of delivery-type reveals available, to see what’s coming next.

The five game modes are: Minor challenge, major challenge, multiplayer, moonstar mode and practice, with each mode having a separate Game Center leader-board. Practice mode lets you choose which ball types to receive and then keeps a tally of your successful hits.

The aim of minor challenge mode is to complete 15 different steps (objectives) in the same game. Each step requires you to successfully hit a certain number of balls. Each time you face a pitch, miss the ball, or don’t clear the minimum distance, your life bar decreases and the game ends once your life bar is empty. However, making big hits and scoring points will recover valuable life points.

The furthest distance allowed in the minor challenge is 1000 ft and the ball stops just after reaching that point. There should really be no barrier imposed, because it’s wrong to tell a batter he can only hit the ball a certain distance. Also, if the current pitch depletes the last of your life bar, a drum-roll plays and it’s game over no matter how hard you hit it.  The player should be given that last chance to strike the ball well and save themselves. Instead when the drum sounds, there’s almost no point swinging, because your game’s already over.

Major mode is unlocked by completing minor mode, although it’s exactly the same park setting, just with harder difficulty and some new balls. However, you can hit the ball further here, as the 1000 ft limit is extended. Major mode is presented as a separate game mode, but really it’s more of the same; just harder.

Multiplayer mode lets you compete with a friend (or a random match-up) via Game Center. This 2-player online mode has both players racing to full a points meter with big hits. You can’t see each other playing, but the opponents progress bar is visible.

Moonstar mode is like a mini-game. You’re given nine balls to hit into as many stars as possible, by bouncing the ball of various moons in the sky.Because of this, you won’t perform well at this game until your power attributes are upgraded enough to reach all the stars, which requires a lot of grinding or optional IAP upgrades.

Flick Home Run is a simple concept which is well-executed by Infinity Pocket. It’s already provided days of  entertainment, which is a dollar well spent. With so many excellent  games available, I’m a little surprised this is in the very top rankings, but this baseball interpretation is certainly worth buying.

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In early September, RedLynx brought us the sequel to 2009’s innovative line-drawing racer DrawRace [$2.99] with the Chillingo published DrawRace 2 [99¢/HD]. This new entry in the series brought an extra level of sophistication with its realistic visuals and physics system, but kept the unique line-drawing aspect that made the original such a standout title.

You can read all about this in our review of DrawRace 2, but if you’ve still had reservations about if this unique type of game was for you or not, then today you have another alternative. RedLynx and Chillingo have just released DrawRace 2 Free Multiplayer [Free/HD] as a way to let you take the game for a test drive before deciding if it’s your cup of tea.

As the name implies, DrawRace 2 Free Multiplayer focuses on the hot seat local multiplayer mode found in the full game. Two players can square off on the same device by each taking their turn drawing their race lines, then when the action starts, each player has their own turbo button situated in one corner of the screen. It’s a fun way to get other people in on playing even when you only have one device around. Following a link inside the game which leads to a Facebook “Like” page will unlock the ability to play with 3 or 4 players in this hot seat mode as well.

If you’re not really the social type, but just want to give DrawRace 2 a try, then that’s not a problem. You can simply play the hot seat mode by yourself, taking the turn for all the players yourself. It’s actually a pretty nice way to practice while giving yourself multiple tries to draw the perfect run. At the very least, it gives you a hands-on experience with the unique line-drawing mechanic, which is one of those things that’s hard to explain but easy to pick up on when you’re actually trying it yourself.

The free version offers 3 different course to try and 3 different vehicles. If you like the gameplay, the full version of DrawRace 2 offers a ton of campaign content to play through, as well as both local and online multiplayer modes, plus many more vehicles and tracks. If you’ve been sitting on the fence with DrawRace 2, definitely give the free multiplayer version a try to see what you’ve been missing out on.

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