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Hero Academy [Free] is now a Universal app. Last week, Robot Entertainment spilled the beans on the update, confirming its existence and detailing one of the more exciting additions: a new team called “the Tribe.” It also announced the inclusion of a new game board and two new mechanics that accompany its arrival: barbed crystals and Resist boost squares. Lead designer Marcin Szymanski breaks down why these are important to the game on its blog:

Barbed Crystals are quite a departure from our board designs, giving the units responsible for our victory condition a way to fire at the enemy! We actually started off with some passive boosts for crystals on this board, such as innate damage reflection, but the active ability easily won out in playtesting. And, the new Resist boost premium square complements the Defense boosts that is already in place on other boards. On paper, it is a small change, but it actually changes various match-ups quite significantly.

This update isn’t without the usual glut of fixes and balancing tweaks. Robot has laid out everything on its blog, so if you’re into the nitty-gritty, go check it out. Also, take note that this version of the game now has an “undo” mechanic. Starting now, you can undo a single action with a tap of the AP wheel. Neat!

Hero Academy, by the way, is a fantastic turn-based strategy game. If you haven’t picked it up alongside most of the known world, you should. Our review is available for your reading pleasure here.

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When you’re playing Coco Loco, [$0.99] it’s important to remember that you’re rescuing your marshmallow brethren from chocolate guardians. You’re absolutely not rescuing your eggs from pigs. Sure, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably Angry Birds, but Twiitch deserves credit: this particular physics puzzler with slingshot mechanics is actually pretty great.

Some of Coco Loco’s levels could be pulled straight out of similar games—let’s just say there isn’t much difference between an egg-shaped mallow and an egg-shaped bird. But those structural similarities surround cunning levels designed for more than brute-force thinking. The formula takes another sharp turn with terribly entertaining liquid dynamics. It plays like a brand new game, even if it doesn’t look much like one.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the Marshies were enjoying a simple dip in the hot chocolate springs when the cocoa guardians took them prisoner. Now it’s up to you to get revenge, rescue your pals, and free them from their, err, celebrity-costumed captivity. That sort of quirkiness gives Coco Loco a fresh angle to build on, and it extends through every bit of the game’s visual design.

From there it’s a matter of differentiating itself through gameplay. The liquids make up a big part of that: the Marshies can be freed by being swept up in cocoa, and the chocolate guardians can be melted away similarly. Many levels will see you redirecting cocoa, breaking through dams and barriers and generally splashing around.

Lest I give the impression this is just a damp Angry Birds (probably an obvious mashup in this post-Where’s My Water world), I should emphasize that the level design in Coco Loco is very, very good. Rarely are you left to smash down a structure with however many projectiles you feel like using. Instead, you’re often given exactly what you’ll need to solve a puzzle, one with moving parts, flowing liquid and tight corridors to aim your way through.

The tools you’re given are a good mix of familiar and new. You’ve got your standard Marshie, the one that knocks over the things it hits. Another one explodes on your command. But there’s also one that expands into a gelatinous wall on demand, and another that shoots cocoa out of a cannon, amongst others. Combined, they can pull of some excellent tricks.

You have to be creative when using them, as much as you need to be precise. Most of Coco Loco’s 75 levels are set up for specific solutions: toss this dude at that spot to clear the way for the next guy to knock over the cocoa just so, and the whole thing comes together. Or take each of your Marshies and land them in just the right places all over the screen. You’ll need to use your brain more often than you will your pixel-hunting skills.

I just wish the same creativity that’s been brought to bear on the level design had bumped into the rest of the game at some point. We have the three star rating system, “Fluffy,” the IAP that finishes any level for you, extra points for having Marshies left over, and that’s just scratching the surface. Coco Loco is strong enough to stand on its own, and hanging a lantern on its similarities to Angry Birds does it no favors.

Just don’t let that stop you from checking it out. Coco Loco isn’t a strikingly original game, even without the checklist of familiar interface elements, but it is one of the most thoroughly solid and entertaining physics puzzle games I’ve played in some time. Taken in a vacuum, it could have blown me away. In the context of the rest of the App Store, it’s still a heck of a lot of fun. Don’t just give it a look, give it a play and you might be impressed.

TouchArcade Rating:

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I’ve made no attempt at hiding my love affair with the Azkend series of puzzle games. The original Azkend [$2.99 / $4.99 (HD)] was (and still is) one of my favorite puzzle games of all time. It had a great difficulty curve, a constant stream of unlockables to keep you interested, and did a fabulous job at dangling the next unlockable in front of you to endlessly keep you playing one more game. Oh, and the chain-forming matching mechanic is pretty sweet too. Not too long ago, Azkend 2 [$2.99 / $3.99 ] hit, and I was ready to shout out my window and tell the world how incredible it was… That is, until I got a little deeper into the game.

As Nissa explains in our review, the sequel features everything we loved about the original Azkend, and provides some great first impressions. Then the difficulty curve ramps up, and the game introduces more types of tiles. It’s at this point that Azkend 2 turns into the best part of any LMFAO song, which, in a puzzle game, is not a good thing. In other words, you’d reach a point where there were just too many types of tiles, leaving no available matches, forcing the game to re-shuffle the tiles. Sometimes you’d even get multiple re-shuffles in a row.

Well, an update hit earlier today which seems to totally fix this. The puzzles are now rebalanced in a way that you’re not hunting for the single match before the board reshuffles. If you were (understandably) holding off on the game after reading our review, it’s safe to pick up now. Or, if you were like me, and just shelved the game after getting frustrated, snag the update and give it another shot.

They’ve made some other tweaks and bug fixes too, including doing some logging to potentially further improve game balancing as well as adjusting the colors of some tiles to make them more distinct. The one down side of this update is that I’m pretty sure that Azkend 2 is now going to completely suck up my free time this evening.

I’m OK with that, I think.

NOTE: Right now I’m only seeing this update for the universal HD version, but it’d make sense that the iPhone-only version should be following very shortly.

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Assuming my math is correct and the curators of the Wikipedia listing are on the ball, including the various compilations there have been 23 different Deer Hunter titles. When you reach ten entries in a series, you’ve got to really start thinking outside the box to come up with new things to keep the lineage fresh. When you hit 20, you’ve got to get really crazy, and when you hit 24 (again, assuming the Wikipedians are doing their job) you apparently have to implement X-Ray mode.

Check it out in the trailer:

As far as I can tell, the killer new feature of the “Reloaded” game is the ability to flip down your X-Ray specs and aim directly for the brain, heart, or lungs of your prey. Hunting games have always been sort of borderline when it comes to grotesque brutality, especially in recent installments as point systems have been implemented, rewarding the player for a flawless stream of headshots fired upon a group of deer wandering through the woods, but this… This is something else. It almost seems over the line, even for this hardcore veteran of the worst shock sites the Internet has to offer.

Deer Hunter Reloaded should be available soon as a free to play title, featuring sixteen upgradeable weapons ranging from rifles to shotguns and even handguns for your brain-blasting pleasure. You’ll also be able to tweak out your avatar with all sorts of different hunter swag.

What do you guys think about this? X-Ray mode seems a little over the top, right? Or am I just being uncharacteristically sensitive about this?

[via Pocket Gamer]

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There are some games that try to impress by offering a well-rounded gameplay experience. Others meanwhile try to latch onto one or two key elements and hope that it’s enough to make up for other potential shortfalls. Violet Storm [$0.99 / HD] squarely falls into the second camp. While the dual-stick shooter impresses somewhat with its take on weapons and visual overstimulation, it may not be enough to overcome the otherwise generic gameplay and presentation.

As a dual-stick shooter, Violet Storm plays it safe with its gameplay offerings. Players have a choice of three different single-player modes: Sniper Mode, which is a timed run scored by accuracy, Speed Havoc, which challenges gamers to destroy a set amount of enemies as fast as possible, and Campaign.

Campaign is the most complete mode and pits you against a never-ending onslaught of enemies separated by timed waves. Survive a wave and you’re given a break (as well as a score bonus) before bigger and more difficult enemies come at you. There isn’t an artificial barrier around the playing field (like Geometry Wars, for example) so players are free to move in any direction for as long as possible. However, enemies will continually spawn near you and blindly running in one direction is a sure-fire way to get cornered and lose health.

As you battle enemy ships, you are rewarded with an occasional power-up (invincibility, damage boost, bombs) as well as weapon upgrades. The weapon upgrades are one area Violet Storm attempts to differentiate itself from other shooters. Weapons are relatively simple at the onset, but quickly build up to ridiculous multi-tracking lasers of various spreads and homing missiles (all being shot simultaneously no less). Last longer, and you even get to play with lighting. While Violet Storm obviously isn’t the first game to pioneer ridiculous weapons, I was impressed with the showcase nonetheless.

Keep in mind all these weapons lead to a dazzling display of visual elements and intensity, which is another area Violet Storm looks to improve upon. It really is a sight to behold when you combine lasers and missiles, along with the large influx of simultaneous weapons and their projectiles on the screen at the same time. In fact, the visuals may be a little too intense, as later levels definitely border on ‘bullet-hell’ extremes (without the precision, unfortunately). Disappointingly, Violet Storm occasionally doesn’t handle all the graphics well, as I encountered some slow-down across all current generation devices during the more hectic scenes.

Notice I didn’t say the game differentiates itself via graphical style; Violet Storm looks very much like a Geometry Wars clone in most ways besides the sheer amount of graphical elements and the weapons. Granted, the game still looks great on most iOS devices, including the new iPad. Oddly enough, while Violet Storm is a universal app, gamers looking for iPad retina assets will need to pick up Violet Storms HD, which is an iPad only app.

Once you get past the weapons and visuals, Violet Storm falters somewhat. The music becomes repetitive rather quickly and ends up detracting. Also, while Sniper Mode and Speed Havoc are nice twists on the standard gameplay, there’s little in terms of actual variety, (save for three difficulty levels) to keep you coming back. The game experience just feels as if it was designed simply to showcase the crazy visuals.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call Violet Storm a one-trick pony, but in terms of bringing things to the genre it’s pretty close. The over-the-top weapons and graphical effects look great, but even those aren’t implemented perfectly. Regardless, outside of those features you’re still left with a competent arcade dual-stick shooter. However, considering the wealth of choices already on the app store, anyone other than fans of the genre may end up deciding to pass on this one.

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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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Late last year Wild Chords [ Free (HD)] knocked my socks off. In a nutshell, it’s an edu-tainment game that utilizes the microphone on the iPad to pick up the chords being played on a guitar. It works great, too. I was more than a little surprised that in a few hours of playing the game I went from never having touched a guitar before to actually being able to play a few (admittedly very basic) tunes.

Piano Dust Buster [ Free (HD)] seems to accomplish the same thing, with two significant differences: Obviously, per the name, the focus is on the piano instead of the guitar. Additionally, the game features a virtual keyboard of sorts, so unlike Wild Chords where you need a guitar to play, you don’t really need a piano to jump into Piano Dust Buster.

I think these music-centric edu-tainment games are seriously just fantastic, and really wish they would’ve been around when I was a kid. I couldn’t even guess how much money my poor parents dumped into sending me to piano lessons when all I wanted to do was slam my head (and heinously under leveled party) against Gurgu Volcano in Final Fantasy. Had there been some piano gamification to be found in the 80’s, well, I could be a world famous concert pianist right now.

Piano Dust Buster is free, and I’m really curious to hear back from anyone out there with young kids and a piano to see how they take to the game.

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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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