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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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Like any studio, PikPok has a usability team that monitors the development of a new title and watches out for any potential pitfalls. It’s a thankless job since we tend to not moan whenever a game feels intuitive or a layer of UI makes sense. We also don’t get to meet these dudes very often, which is what makes the new usability editorial on the studio’s web site notable. In it, we’re introduced to an integral piece of PikPok’s internal testing pit, Hadley Bellam.

Bellam is allowed to be involved from the start of a new game, which undoubtedly helps the entire usability testing process. Here’s a snippet of what Hadley has to say about what he does in early production:

“Outside of UI considerations, early usability is usually focused on input methods and camera/orientation, which are closely related. Whether the game uses landscape or portrait orientation will affect how the user interacts with the device. We need to consider left and right handed players as well as players who play with their finger(s) or thumb(s).”

“Will the game require users to play with multitouch or will it be playable using only one digit? Will input work as well on tablets as it will on phones? These are accessibility questions we aim to answer early to ensure playing the game is not uncomfortable for users. You may notice many PikPok games can be played with a single digit, thumb or finger, on either hand.”

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, definitely go give the blog a visit. It’s a fun read that gives you a small sense of why PikPok is able to churn out solid game after solid game.

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Last year at E3, we got our first taste of F5 Games’ upcoming Pocket Heroes, and we were definitely intrigued by what we saw. Pocket Heroes looks to take a party-based adventure RPG and give it the asynchronous multiplayer treatment. In fact, it’s strictly online-only, with each player controlling a party member in the game and taking turns making moves asynchronously, with push notifications letting everybody know when it’s time for them to go.

It’s been described as Words With Friends meets turn-based RPG, and is probably best understood by watching the trailer below.

So, as you can see from that video, Pocket Heroes is a really cool idea. Since we first saw the game at E3 last June, F5 has been continuing to toil away at the project, and we got another chance to see where it was at during GDC last month. It had come a long way since E3, and actually looked very close to finished.

Earlier this week, the game’s publisher Ayopa Games posted the official game page for Pocket Heroes along with an official release date and pricing info. We can expect to get our hands on Pocket Heroes May 11th for the reasonable price of $1.99. Sweet! You can also see some brand spanking new promo art for the game and learn more about the different classes by visiting our forums, and we’ll definitely have more on Pocket Heroes as it nears its release next month.

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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.

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We told you back in February that the newly-formed development studio Ninth Ninja in connection with Pom Pom Games was busy porting the popular PC title Mutant Storm to the iOS platform. Mutant Storm, in case you didn’t know, is a Robotron-esque arcade shooter that originally released for PC and Mac but is probably more widely known for its enhanced re-release as an Xbox Live Arcade title back in 2005 under the name Mutant Storm Reloaded.

While Mutant Storm coming to the App Store is exciting enough in and of itself, yesterday we learned via Twitter that Crescent Moon Games has jumped on board to publish the title. Also revealed is that Mutant Storm is running at 60 frames per second on the new iPad, and digging into the game’s forum thread developer Ninth Ninja goes into even more detail stating that it runs at 60fps on the iPad 2 and a respectable 30fps on the original iPad.

Considering how many crazy graphical effects can get going in Mutant Storm, that’s pretty darn good, and for new iPad owners the iOS version of the game will use the high resolution assets from the PC game to take advantage of the Retina Display screen. You can actually see comparison shots of the game at normal iPad resolution on the left and the Retina Display resolution of the new iPad on the right.

Mutant Storm for iOS is in the final stages of development, so it shouldn’t be much longer before the final version hits. Hit up the forums for some discussion and keep your eyes on this space for any more news related to the impending release of Mutant Storm on the App Store.

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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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Here’s an interesting rumor: Apple has worked on a controller for its devices, according to a couple of lines in Anandtech’s iPad review. Here they are in all their glory:

I know of an internal Apple project to bring a physical controller to market, but whether or not it will ever see the light of day remains to be seen. As smartphones and tablets come close to equalling the performance of current game consoles, I feel like the controller problem must be addressed.

Play with us for a second and consider this: what would the easiest way to stop all the fracturing inside of fracturing going on in the third-party controller space? If Apple was to do something with a peripheral, we wouldn’t be writing a story every week about a brand new controller that has its own proprietary code that studios’ need to plug into their software. Everyone would just automatically support Apple’s New Thing, and there would be no other viable market.

But, that’s just reading tea leaves inside of tea leaves. Also, there’s a billion ways to read into this, if it’s even accurate, which we doubt, since a controller compromises that vision of iPad and iPhone. These things were meant to be used with our fingers, not with styluses or controllers or other peripherals.

Then again, who knows. Maybe this will be a “one more thing” at a keynote.

[via MacRumors, via AnandTech]

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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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