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I love word games, but they have a bit of a PR problem: the vast, vast majority are glorified takes on the word search with a new hook here and a novel mechanic there. And y’know, I don’t really mind—give me a reason to frantically form words and I’m usually happy. Letterbox [$1.99] is a pretty good reason. It’s a game in the word-search mold, bringing in 3D block stacking for its special touch.

Word hunting in 3D is entertaining on its own, but Letterbox goes a step further. Finding words is a means to an end—the real goal is to use those words with a variety of special blocks to tear your tower down. It becomes a game as much about destruction as it is about creating words.

Though ShockPanda is keen to call the game “Jenga meets Boggle” in its marketing material, the Jenga comparison is a bit loose. There is no fear of collapse, here, no tottering physics. Instead, you carve away at your cube with each word you make, letters disappearing and leaving gaps behind.

It’s easy to create precarious outcroppings of letters that become utterly useless. But with a little careful planning, you can carve away their supports and let them tumble down. In Jenga this would be a failure—here it’s a necessity. Once reunited with the bulk of your letters, those left over Ws and Ks that were so useless on their own become powerful tools.

The more awkward letters of the alphabet are marked as orange blocks rather than white, and each one is destructive in its own way. Sometimes they’ll clear a tunnel straight through your tower, other times they’ll clear all the blocks that surround them. That’s great, because your ultimate goal is to clear away 100 percent of the blocks on screen. It’s a high bar to reach, but it’s a lot of fun to try.

There are other special blocks to help you strategize. Some rotate whole rows or columns. Another merges nearby blocks into a single mega-block. I have a love/hate relationship with the one that drops down a new layer of letters. It slows down your climb toward 100 percent, but it may be the only thing to do if you can’t find a word in what you have. And, of course, wild card blocks are always a treat.

Letterbox comes complete with three game modes. In Clear Mode, every word you play drops more letters on the pile. In Panic Mode, they’re added every few seconds. Chill Mode gives you only the letters you start with. They’re minor iterations on the original concept, but they switch the game up just enough to keep it from getting stale too quickly.

Though the fundamentals are solid, Letterbox flubs some of the details. The camera is reined in too tightly, so you can’t always see the letters on top of the tower or deeper inside it well enough to tap them. The interface is uncomfortably reminiscent of SpellTower [$1.99] at times. The soundtrack borders on grating—it’s full of well-executed electropop by Yung Sir, but vocal tracks don’t mesh well with extended play sessions.

It’s fun to destroy your way though each tower of letters, compelling enough to keep an eye on Game Center to see if you can come up with the best word or the highest clear percentage. But ultimately Letterbox is one more play on traditional word game mechanics, and it isn’t quite cool enough to overcome the creeping sense of familiarity. If you’ve been looking for a new word game to pass the time, check it out and let us know what you think. If it would take something really special to convince you to drop one more word game onto the pile, this isn’t the game to get you there.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Since he started making games for iOS, indie developer Jeff Minter of Llamasoft has really been cranking them out. The guy has been making games — and, rather unique games, I might add — for over 30 years, but I don’t believe he’s ever dished out one after another faster than he’s doing for Apple’s platform. And that’s really good news for iOS gamers because all of his iOS titles are rather well done and worth playing. His latest title, Five A Day [link], which just landed in the App Store, comes close on the heels of Gridrunner for iOS, his excellent remake of his original 1982 VIC-20 game and one of the best shooters on the platform.

When we first reported that Minter was developing for iOS, about two and a half years ago, we mentioned a Time Pilot-style game that he was working on, set to be his first iOS release. Well, time passed, Minotaur Rescue arrived, and we never saw anything else about that supposed first iOS release. That is to say, not until now.

Five A Day is a shooter (with bananas), but it’s equally an ethereal experience of sorts. It’s a kind of spacey, zen sort of thing. It’s a little hard to describe, so I’ll let the author.

…it should’ve just progressed into a good old banana-oriented shooter as originally intended but by accident it sort of went all New Age and ambient. While still actually retaining the characteristic of actually being any good, of course. It didn’t just turn into a useless ageing hippy of a game that lies around smoking weed and listening to Steve Hillage and burbling on about auras and crystals without ever doing anything useful. Redolent it may be of joss sticks and wind chimes but it’s still jolly good fun and will kick your arse quite handily on the higher levels, just you wait and see.

But what turned the game all auras and wind chimes? Apparently, it’s largely due to the in-game audio which, Minter indicates, lead the way in shaping the game during its development.

It started relatively slowly at first, with just fluffy clouds and the addition of a rainbow trail behind the spaceship. Then I needed some audio and headed out to a site called Freesound, where you can download snippets of stuff and use them in your projects. You can search by keyword so I put in “Space”, and that was it, game was doomed from that point on. All manner of floaty synth sustains, whale noises, chimes and gongs, page after page of them. Once I started putting one or two of them into the game, the game more or less began to shape itself. By the time I got to the first shower of bananas and enumeration of the first end of level bonus the audio was already heading firmly in the direction of “epic New Age”, and that’s how it ended up.

So, there it is. Every Minter game I can think of is rather “out there,” but this one is just a little moreso, perhaps (if you can imagine it).

We’ve got the vibe covered, now for the gameplay. Five A Day puts you in control of a craft soaring through the clouds, forever shooting. The sky is full of baddies that resemble familiar, pixellated villains of video games’ past. Some of these baddies are in possession of fruit. You want the fruit, and you need to destroy said baddies to collect it. There are also rainbow-bejumpered minotaurs floating about. Collecting either of these places them in tow and increases your shield power (which enemy fire drains) and, in the case of the latter, results in a Death Blossom-style weapons discharge that is bad for those around you.

As you progress, other elements come into play as well, such as bosses, sky-mines, homing missiles, and the like. A goal of the game is to finish each round with at least one piece of fruit in tow, as five such completions in a row result in a bonus life for your having been the healthy lad and getting your five-a-day (of fruits and veggies). And the whole thing is set not to a frantic, pumping audio beat-track, but to the whispers and tinkles of a holistic astral massage parlor. It’s an interesting — and fairly odd — scenario.

Your ship can be controlled via touch, by drawing circles anywhere on the screen in indication of how you want to maneuver, as well as via tilt-control. As with most iOS Llamasoft titles, the iCade control unit is also supported. Our gameplay video demonstrates iCade and touch controls. Being a universal app, Five A Day plays nice with both iPhone and iPad.

I’ve been having a lot of fun over the past few days with Five A Day, as I have with every one of Minter’s iOS releases. (The guy’s catalog is outstanding and should be investigated by everyone reading this.) That said, the overall feel and pacing of the game — a bit more relaxed than the typical shooter out there — combined with the ethereal audio stylings deliver an experience that might come across as a bit of an oddity to the typical gamer as compared to most of his other iOS releases, or certainly most other shooters out there. I would recommend Five A Day to any like-minded gamer, but it’s definitely a different sort of shooter experience.

TouchArcade Rating:

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If there’s one thing that can be said about Square Enix, it’s that they’re excellent at the whole production values thing. Chaos Rings II [$17.99/HD] is absolutely stunning. From the gorgeous musical score to the voice acting to the vibrant landscapes, there is a lot to savor in Square Enix’s latest turn-based RPG. However, that’s not really surprising. We are talking about Square Enix, after all. How often have they published a new game that does not make you whistle gently under your breath? The real question is, ‘Is Chaos Rings II more than a pretty face?’

The plot here works something like this: an apocalyptic force is threatening Earth with impending doom and there is only one person in the universe capable of stopping it. Can you guess who that is? Yup, that’s you. Sort of. In Chaos Rings II, you’ll play as Darwin, a rather effeminate-looking chap that had been unwittingly pushed into the role of the Nominator. As the Nominator, his job is to sacrifice the Pillars (a bunch of people that were forcibly drafted for the dubious honor), harvest their spiritual energies, complete something called the Rite of Resealing and seal away the Destroyer in order to save the world.

Here’s where it gets problematic for poor Darwin. To begin with, he wasn’t supposed to be the Nominator. Due to a freak turn of circumstances, he acquired the position after he unwittingly killed the original candidate. To make matters worst, he sort of murdered the poor bastard in front of the Pillars. Under normal circumstances, this probably wouldn’t have gone over so badly. After all, one predestined murderer is the same as the other, right? Obviously, that wasn’t the case here. You see, the Pillars in the Rite of Resealing are always composed of those who have some form of attachment to the Nominator. As you can imagine, this makes things a little bit awkward. Not only do you have to murder innocent people, you’ll have to murder some innocent folk that had ties to the dude you unintentionally axed.

(In spite of the religious undertones to the game, the eventual evolution of the plot will probably grab a smirk from any atheists in the audience.)

Intriguing as this all sounds, however, there’s a slight problem. While the Japanese voice acting is rather superb (my best friend, who is Japanese, assured me that the voice acting is also supported by decent lines), the localization is not. Technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s no rampant Engrish, no glaring grammatical errors, no spelling mistakes that may evoke a heartfelt palm to the face. Nonetheless, that doesn’t change the fact the English text feels … lackluster. The dialogue’s also anachronistic in places. Words like “gotta” and “c’mon” pop up from time to time to rattle your sense of immersion. As such, I can’t help but feel as though the full potential of the plot was never realized. Something had to have been lost in the translation. Still, it could have been much, much worse.

Gameplay-wise, those who have any experience with the original game or, JRPGs in general, will probably find themselves in familiar waters. For the most part, the game operates in a fairly linear fashion. You’ll be given a task and told to advance to a certain location. You must then make your way through an assortment of random encounters before achieving your goal. From there, you’ll have to go back to the central hub and begin the process anew. There isn’t much else to do. You get a certain amount of freedom in determining the sequencing of events but that’s pretty much it. There is no open world exploration. There are no mini games to engage in. What saves Chaos Rings II from being completely linear are the side quests that you eventually acquire from the corpulent, cat-like Piu Piu (he’s the only merchant available to you and your party) and and his scantily-clad cutouts.

A lot of your time will be spent moving through the exquisitely presented remnants of your world. Along the way, you’ll stumble across equipment, items and, of course, random encounters. You’ll also get to move through ’shortcuts’ in the world. Once you dive through a portal, you’ll find yourself in this odd little realm that would probably not look amiss in a cyberpunk setting somewhere. Here, you’ll also be called upon to partake in some incredibly light puzzle-solving. Each of the accompanying characters have a special ability that will allow the party to access a part of the world that cannot otherwise be reached. For example, Li Hua is capable of punching through barriers while Connor can shoot at distant targets. Needless to say, once you’ve sacrificed somebody (yup, you’re going to have to kill those people), you’ll lose permanent access to those unique skills.

While it doesn’t deviate too far from the standard formula (you’ll be able to attack, cast magic, defend yourself, occasionally escape from combat and utilize items amongst other things), combat in Chaos Rings II is actually rather entertaining. There are plenty of variables to juggle and even more to worry about. To begin with, you’re going to spend a lot of time deciding if you would rather have your characters acting separately or together. If you choose the ‘Pair’ option, you’ll have access to stronger attacks but will also open your party members up to damage that they would have not taken otherwise. Acting ’solo’, on the other hand, will provide you with more control but less of a punch.

It gets even more complex than that, of course. Technically speaking, combat in Chaos Rings II is turn-based but the reality is that things are also highly dependent on speed. This can be a serious problem if your opponent is armed with some truly devastating moves. If they have the opportunity to assault you before you can defend yourself, you can expect to see the ‘Game Over’ screen faster than you can enunciate your favorite obscenity. Additionally, there’s also a layer of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ that you will have to factor in. Depending on what forces are currently in play on the battle field, attacks and defenses may increase or decrease accordingly.

On top of that, there is also the Break Gauge and the Charge Gauge. The former was inherited from the original game. It’s a pretty nifty mechanic that monitors the flow of the battle. When it is marked even, neither parties will receive bonuses. However, when it sways in favor of you or your opponent, the Break Gauge will cause the beneficiaries to increase in potency. As for the Charge Gauge, it functions something like the Limit Break mechanic in the Final Fantasy games. Once it has filled up to a certain extent, you’ll gain access to your ‘Awake’ and ‘Advent’ powers. The latter will allow you to summon a massive being known as, well, an Advent that is associated with the Human Sophia (that thing you get after you’ve defeated the creature born from a dead Pillar) you currently have equipped.

Speaking of Sophias, those form another interesting component in the game. While Pillars are the only ones capable of bestowing the command of a monstrous critter upon you, you can also acquire Sophias from the game’s menagerie of enemies. Each ‘Monster’ Sophia will grant your characters certain atributes and skills. Once you’ve unlocked the right recipes, you’ll be able to acquire even more abilities by combining Sophias in a certain way, something that adds considerable depth to your character customization.

On a more shallow note, I’m going to take a moment to once again remark on the fact that Chaos Rings II looks pretty darn sweet. It is, by far, the prettiest game in the franchise yet. Compared to its predecessors, the resolution in Chaos Rings II is so much higher, the backgrounds more lavishly detailed. Even the characters themselves look more refined. That said, I’m really mostly in love with the little things in the game, things like cherry blossom petals suspended in the air and waterfalls trapped mid-motion.

As for the music, I’ve nothing but good things to say about it. I would buy the soundtrack if the Malaysian App Store would let me do so but I can’t so I’ll settle for assuring you that it’s something that would deserve a spot on most playlists unless, of course, you have an aversion towards soaring vocals and epic-sounding melodies.

In many ways, Chaos Rings II is the quintessential JRPG. You will spend a lot of time grinding. You will be gently but firmly led along the story’s path to its inevitable end. You will see all of the familiar JRPG tropes. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but your decision in regards to whether or not you actually want to purchase the game is going to be dependent on this. For all of its flaws, Chaos Rings II has done more than ample justice to the formula. It’s refined, it’s meaty, and it’s definitely worth the high price of entry.

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Kairosoft really got gamers fired up when they released Game Dev Story in Fall of 2010, a sim where you took the reins over building your own game company from the ground up. Then, they realized we liked the formula, and a flurry of other “stories” followed. Pocket League Story. Venture Towns. Grand Prix Story. Mega Mall Story. It was fair to say that most of these games had a lot in common: build a business or town from the ground up. And while I admit I was a major fan, I don’t know that I would have sprung for another title in this series if there wasn’t a little spice thrown in to change things up a bit.

Luckily, Kairosoft also realized we felt that way, and Epic Astro Story [$3.99] is the result. If you take the building sim thing and mix it with some Star Trek and a dash of Phantasy Star for good measure, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect here. Just in case you’ve never played a Kairosoft title before, they give you the reins on building something and managing its growth, much like SimCity.

In Epic Astro Story, you attempt to colonize a planet. The new stuff comes in the form of away missions, which are totally hilarious and buff up the gameplay in a way I really enjoyed. As a solid Trek nerd, I was extremely amused to discover my first residents were “James Turk” and “Jean Vicard.” Later you’ll be joined by Wes Smasher (which cracks me up every single time he says something), Bones Mc Gee, and many more great riffs on the classic Star Trek universe.

The away missions are handled very smartly by a little bar across the bottom of the screen, which takes up very little real estate but makes you feel involved with what is going on. As the team encounters question marks, they will experience events, which can be good (finding money) or bad (finding monsters). If you do find monsters, you’ll go into a battle mode. You can actually get a peek at your enemies and their hot points before you start a battle, and it allows you to equip your team accordingly and choose their placement on the field before a battle. Once it starts, it’s all automatic, but the battles are quick and a great way to earn both money and research points.

If you thought you had a lot to manage in previous Kairosoft games, you have even more now. In addition to building on your land, positioning landscaping for maximum benefit, and keeping an eye on your residents, you’ll also choose when the away team explores new territory and invite people from other planets to come live on yours. Tourists will fly in and out of your Space Port and attempt to make peace with your people. You’ll meet aliens in ships. It’s a lot to manage, but it doesn’t feel over the top or stressful.

On the whole, I think Kairosoft has done a good job dressing up the basic formula. It’s still fun, and the fighting is a welcome addition. I admit I would like to see the company do something completely different in the future, but as far as this goes, it’s my favorite title of theirs yet. Mixing elements of the core simulation gameplay from previous Kairosoft games has worked out extremely well for Epic Astro Story, and if you’ve found yourself enjoying their other titles then this one should be no exception.

However, I’m still waiting for Spock to show up. I pray they changed his name to Glock.

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I am undoubtedly a cat person. Although I only own one, I have some close friends that own six, and going over to their house is always like a peek into some magical wonderland I wish I lived in. Suffice to say that any game featuring cats is bound to catch my eye, so when a colleague poked me and said, “There’s a new puzzler called Kitten Sanctuary [$1.99/Lite], and you need it!”, I figured I could be in for something good.

At a peek, it looked like a cute match three puzzler, but after spending some time with the game, you get to see that while the game is simple, it’s really got quite a bit more to it than your average match three game.

Rather than go with the bare bones approach that many iOS puzzlers seem to favor, developers Clockwork Pixels decided to go with a different type of experience, and I really like it. Of course, the heart of Kitten Sanctuary is still a match three. But imagine that cloaked in something like a Nintendogs lite, and you’ll start to get an idea of what to expect here.

In story mode, Kitten Sanctuary brings you to “Kitten Island,” where you must progress through a series of levels to rescue 50 kittens that have been kidnapped by aliens. In each level, you’ll play the match three game to accomplish this rescue. However, the items you match are actually resources, which you will amass on the left side of the board. The goal is to rescue each kitty by making matches over a set of red background tiles, clearing them in the process. Once you’ve cleared the entire pattern of red background tiles the level is cleared, and you can bring your furry friend back to the sanctuary.

You’ll visit your secret kitten hideaway at the end of each level, and when you do, you’ll meet the cat you just rescued and learn something about him or her. This is where the game really shows off its charm. With not only a description of each cat’s background but a funny likes and dislikes list, you really feel like you are building a little family.

The sanctuaries create some depth to the game, and can be a lot of fun to interact with. You can get toys to play with your cats to keep them happy, and you will often find as you complete puzzle levels that an event has happened in the sanctuary, like the cats have colds or need general cheering up. You can check their mood points at anytime by tapping each cat. If they seem down, you can play with them by buying toys from the shop to keep them stimulated.

This would have been an ideal place to throw in IAP, but the game opts to let you earn money in-game instead by matching coins during the puzzle levels. I don’t mind paying for some in-game items from time to time, but I certainly appreciated it here that I didn’t have to spend any real world money to keep my cat family happy.

In addition to toys, you can also earn enough money to add decor to the sanctuary if you have enough. Secret bonus gifts are also available for a higher price, should you want to do some saving.

As far as modes go, you can adjust Kitten Sanctuary to be as easy or as hard as you like. In Easy mode, there is no timer and matching multiple tiles will win you powerups in the puzzle levels. In Normal, you are timed, and in Tricky mode, you have more red tiles than usual to match, but a longer time limit. If you don’t find enough to challenge you there, you can also aim to earn all seven trophies, some of which are very challenging.

Kitten Sanctuary is a very sweet game, but beyond that it’s well-crafted, and the attention to detail shows. For $1.99, it’s simply packed with things to do and feels anything but bare bones, and there’s even a lite version to give you a taste of what you’re getting. It’s a breath of fresh air for a matching game, especially if you want something with a little more to it (but that is also fun to play). The only downside I can think of is if you don’t like cats. Luckily, there’s a dog version for PC, so you’re covered either way.

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PlayGround States logo, as it appears on Facebook.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” Double Fine founder Tim Schafer told fans via a live stream that celebrated the closing moments of Double Fine Adventure’s success on Kickstarter. The project generated over three million dollars worth of donations in a month. Double Fine had asked for $400,000. It wasn’t just amazing. It was magical.

Not every studio sees this kind of outcome. Lead artist and the brains behind Playground State, Barry Collins, is walking us through what his studio looks like, and what has happened to his game, after his project failed to receive funding.

Playground State was founded two years ago by Barry and his brother Brad to explore and express the ideas that Barry has had floating around in his head since childhood. If you look closely at its web site, you’ll notice that there’s no physical address. It’s just a collective “willing people” across the globe coming together to build a series of sci-fi titles called Knights. A PC title called Knights: Spiral Islands was to be the first.

Spiral Island became a known project thanks to Kickstarter and a warm reception by PC enthusiast web site Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which featured it in an editorial in February 2011. Spiral Island is described as an episodic online action-adventure game in which you, as a knight in the game’s sci-fi universe, battle evil across the cosmos. Its hook, outside of its UDK visuals, is its lack of boundaries: in one mission, you’ll be hacking and shooting Vikings, in others space bees, mushroom zombies, robots, and large crabs.

Concept art of a playable Knight. You'll see other Knights in the upcoming preview game.

It has the look and feel of something incredible, especially if it were to be expanded as planned. Spiral Island was pitched to potential donors as game design in motion, as it would have seamlessly integrated new scenarios and enemies in a constant steam.

For whatever reason, it didn’t receive sufficient support. The Kickstarter effort ended with a thud later that April. Playground was looking for $10,000. A hair over $1,500 was pledged across 36 serial donators. One pledger, for example, has backed 48 other projects.

It’s easy to see this as a knockout shot, but to Barry, it’s just a glancing blow, and now the team is looking to iOS and its vast audience to continue.

“The lack of funds was frustrating, but it didn’t really kill our ambitions or desire to make this work,” Barry tells TouchArcade. In the ultimate show of confidence, the studio grew. It picked up an artist, a musician, a sound designer, and a couple of programmers following the failed attempt at funding.

That Playground is reacting in the exact opposite way you’d expect isn’t lost on Barry, and he explains that the reason is tied into how deeply his core team believes in what the studio is trying to accomplish.

“It’s our baby,” Barry tell us. “Amazingly, after maybe an hour or two of rambling with the various team members, they all irrevocably become hooked on the concept and what it has to offer, and slowly but surely begin to own it. Right now we have a team of guys all on the same page and all excited about the small steps as much as the bigger one that will come later — Knights as a whole.”

The crab monster we originally fell in love with, but now fewer polygons for mobile.

While the team grew, so did Knights. It’s now more than a game: it’s a series of mobile titles based in the same universe that spans multiple platforms and genres. Barry has an idea for several projects, some of which are in early stages of development. The most important is an Epic Citadel-like preview title, built specifically for iOS to show off what his team can do.

But even though the team is growing and excited about the games Barry wants to make, it has a horrible issue: it’s hemorrhaging programmers. It can’t keep one on staff, and this is putting a kink in the size and scope of the Knights games Barry wants to make. Barry says they’re in a spiral of simplification, as no one has the expertise to implement complex content into builds. The lack of a revenue stream is undoubtedly one of the culprits here. It’s also the reason why it’s bothering with a showcase project in the first place, and opening its doors for outsourcing work.

“This constant tug of war is what pushed us to our current goals of producing a very basic, free to download visual demo — a means of walking around a crazy environment full of eye candy and talking to basic scripted actors within the world. This will lay the ground work for follow-up episodes to come afterwords,” Barry tells us.

That Knights is blowing up, too, isn’t lost on Barry. He says this game has two goals: to nab exposure and be a launching board. Barry believes it’ll generate new ideas for future Knights games, and argues that the scope in this game is much more manageable than the one he put out there with Spiral Island.

This is how Playground wants to tackle on-screen FPS controls.

Another game is another iPhone and iPad-specific title called Knights: Arena. This is also a victim of the rotunda of programmers cycling through the studio. It’s an FPS that revolves solely around online play: team deathmatch, capture the flag, and so on. Barry, with a lengthy Internet sigh capping off what he tells us about Arena, says the studio’s goal is to establish a revenue stream as quickly as possible. It needs to hire at least one, dedicated programmer. “But that in itself is a Catch 22,” he says. “Need a programmer to make revenue, need revenue to get a programmer.”

Playground State’s ability to keep its legs churning in the mud seems unreal, but it’s a human reaction. With a teeth-gnashing kind of pride, Barry plans to continue marching on beyond his studio’s funding failure. He doesn’t just want to make games — he wants to see his dreams realized.

“I don’t quite know how we managed to grow in quality, strength, and numbers. Faith in Knights among the team is stronger than ever today, despite everything,” he tells us.

“Knights is one of many projects I dream of making. So this is the blood, sweat, tears part of paving the way to eventually being able to produce these with a real budget and fully paid team. This is it. This is what I love. It’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

That’s why Barry is up for using Kickstarter again. He has at least two in the works right now. One is for an extensive indie bundle that features developers in the Vancouver area. The other is for Knights: Arena or a single-player variant of that idea, which he wants to launch “at the same time that we launch the free demo, so people can see or play it and discover it that way.”

Barry talks about Knights: Spiral Island in his Kickstarter promo.

Spiral Island’s crowd-funding failure didn’t come without costs in terms of people and revenue. There were lessons learned, though. The first was scalability. “No need to come out of the gate with a massive universe to embark on hundreds of small stories in other universes. A single story is good enough, or if finances and or programming get in the way, as we are discovering, there are still options,” he tells us.

“We did not go into this expecting it to be quick and easy, and it has not been quick or easy either,” he says.

And let’s say these Kickstarters don’t pan out? Barry isn’t worried. “We will keep pushing along until we are earning revenue on our own, find the right investment deal or get the attention of a publisher that wants to work with us.”

“But no matter what, this project will see the light of day, and as a series of mobile games to start.”

Towards the end of our Barry conversation, we pressed “pause” so we could ask what makes him so idealistic. His vision for these Knights games still seems almost too ambitious considering the lack of funding. The risk of what will happen if these ideas die could be monumental to the studio’s future and Barry. These games are the realization of his dreams, after all.

Honu are a species you'll be able to talk to in a preview. Here's one in a warrior outfit.

“Knights in general is an extremely ambitious concept,” he says. “It started big and the scope of the games we want to tell based in this setting have been cut back for the sake of getting something to market sooner. “

“The concept of Knights being so grand just means we always have room to grow. We realize that we may only ever produce the Knights preview or only ever get as far as Knights: Arena because there’s a real possibility that Knights is lame and we are all crazy people working away on an idea nobody else likes. “

“For me this would just be a continuation of exactly what I have done for 11 years, which is to just hire myself out to whatever studio wants to pay me, and doing so in mass with others is old hat. The grind of tracking down clients and deadlines, milestones, massive delays in payment and so on… it’s all a part of the job. But, Knights, to me, is a way out of this, to finally get all the ideas my brother and I have been brewing up for decades. It’s time we produce things we want rather than the things that pay the bills.”

Barry says that he likes to focus on what could happen with some success. He could hire programmers, no more lost time on contract projects, and the people he’s surrounded by could be supported.

“I just really hope people want to play a game about the Knights — the ultimate saviors of all things, the definition of heroic. Not a bad bone in their bodies, watching them take on any bad guy we can dream up and throw at them, across all history in any universe and time. I really want to play that game.”

When a Kickstarter fails, it’s not necessarily a catalyst for disaster. Barry is idealistic, and maybe too ambitious, but he’s not a quitter. He’ll keep creating. The success of Double Fine was magical, but the intensity of at least one man who didn’t win big is special, too.

While Barry’s story stands on its own, we are covering something larger here. This is part one of a two-part series of articles. In the next, we’ll introduce you to three more studios who haven’t had the greatest experience on Kickstarter. We’ll also discuss why we don’t normally cover games on the service and why we’re not certain of the long-term viability of crowd-funding sources like Kickstarter.

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In a day of iOS gaming news that just doesn’t stop, let’s add this to the dog pile: Word just hit the streets that Max Payne will be arriving on the App Store on April 12th. Details are vague right now aside from mention of “renovated graphics”, Social Club functionality, and the ability to customize the controls.

My calendar is telling me that April 12th is next week, so, I’m expecting Rockstar to tease out some more details on Max Payne in the not too distant future.

[via The Verge]

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So, what’s Chair Entertainment been up to, you wonder? Well, at least part of the studio has been busy designing and implementing Infinity Blade 2’s [$6.99] long-awaited, and awesome-sounding, ClashMobs feature. IGN Wireless just posted a short hands-on piece that details its functionality and otherwise shows off the new-look element.

From what we’re gathering, the early promise of ClashMob has been realized: in it, you and thousands of others take turns beating the crap out of one really big monster in an epic attempt to gather exclusive loot. The challenges come in the form of skirmishes, and seem like they’ll have a mini-game sort of feel to them. One type skirmish has you doing the most damage to a monster that you possibly can within 30 seconds, for example.

IGN details some of its social hooks:

The more connected friends you have participating in ClashMobs, the better benefits you’ll be eligible for. Bonuses like additional combat time, bonus victory cash and extra ClashMob attempts will be awarded to players with more MyMob members.

ClashMobs are due out as part of a larger update next week. Expect new equipment, new monsters, a new gem interface, and “a gem forge” feature. Check out IGN for more info because, man, this sounds like the greatest thing ever.

[via IGN]

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How refreshing it is to play a game with a down-to-earth plot? Even the most grounded of games usually bear their fair share of swords and sorcery or bombastic battles. Super Lemonade Factory [$1.99] goes a different route, telling a simple story from one particular moment in time. Lisolet and Andre are newly married in the days after World War II. Andre is set to take up his father’s lemonade factory, but first he and Lisolet must tour the premises, meeting the workers and learning about the challenges they face.

It might sound a little dry, but the tale accompanies a clever platformer designed to play on the strengths and weaknesses of its stars. Andre is blessed with physical strength and can break through boxes that bar the couple’s path. Lisolet is agile; she can double jump and reach places Andre can’t, often giving him a foot up with a crate from a higher perch. Isn’t it lovely to see a marriage with partners that complement each other so well?

The journey through the factory is surprisingly perilous—you’d think it had been designed as a deathtrap. Often, either Andre or Lisolet will need rescuing right from the start. You’ll have to direct the other across a pit of spikes, perhaps, over floating platforms and around the surprisingly deadly people of the factory. Once one has saved the other, they can travel together—Andre is happy to give Lisolet a piggyback so you needn’t cover the same ground twice. From there it’s usually a hop, skip and a jump to the level’s exit.

A detour may be necessary on the way. Though it seems like the sort of thing aimed at completionists, you’ll want to collect each level’s bottle cap. These are occasionally well hidden and usually hard to reach, but behind them sits half the game’s content. Collect all the caps in a given area and you’ll unlock the hardcore version of that area, where platforms are smaller and faster and spikes are everywhere. Brushing against a spike is deadly, and Andre and Lisolet only have two lives to work with if you can’t find any bags of sugar to replenish them.

Controlling the couple is simple, with on-screen controls for walking, jumping and dashing. These are responsive and rarely get in the way, but they suffer the usual flaw of being a little too easily mis-tapped. You can swap between Andre and Lisolet with a horizontal swipe; a vertical swipe puts Lisolet on Andre’s back.

Lisolet is blessed with one more ability: a way with words. She can speak with any of the factory’s denizens. The foreman, the chef – these workers open up about their hopes and dreams, both for the company and for themselves. A food inspector waxes poetic on the need for cleanliness, and a General blusters about the misfortune that could befall a company that chose not to meet military requests for supplies.

These bits of flavor are woven into the metagame: Game Center achievements are awarded for speaking with all employees, and your progress is marked on the level select screen. But more than that, the dialogue is rather charming. The foreman is a burgeoning Bolshevik who loves to muse on the meaning of labor; Andre will share stories from his past. Much of it hits a bit heavy-handed, but it’s always a pleasant diversion—you’ll also find the occasional pop-culture reference if you’re paying attention.

In the end, the gameplay suffers for its simplicity. The most puzzling levels aren’t more complicated than pushing a couple boxes in the right order before jumping, and there are only so many spikes one can add to a level before it gets silly. If there’s more to be done with the formula, though, we may yet see it done. The developers offer a system for level creation and plan to add the best of the user-created content to the game. On top of 72 already entertaining levels, that sounds pretty good.

And hey, if you haven’t noticed, Super Lemonade Factory is a looker. If you’re into pixel art, you won’t be disappointed—both the style and the animation are fantastic. On top of that the chiptune soundtrack is pretty great, if a tad overly-aggressive for the content.

So while the game isn’t flawless, it’s still an easy recommendation. There are kinks to be worked out, but they don’t detract much from the good stuff: a solid, fun puzzle platformer with great ideas and outstanding presentation. And, frankly, how often do we get to play a game with such a delightfully low-key premise? For that, Super Lemonade Factory most certainly deserves a look. Still, it’s unlikely to push platformer fans, so know that going in. You might not find a challenge, but you’ll find a lot of charm.

TouchArcade Rating:

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