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The story behind Little Acorns [99¢] is simple yet adorable. You’re the highly fashionable patriarch of an industrious squirrel clan and one day, you and your family unit return home to the scene of a crime. For reasons unknown, a giggly, malevolent trope of woodland critters have made off with your stash of acorns. Can you guess what happens next? If you said that this is where you run, swing, slide and generally platform your way to the return of your stolen goods, you would be absolutely right. Personally, however, I would have just cut my losses and moved my family to an environment not infested with insects twice as big as my kids, but that’s just me.

Though hardly the most original platformer to have hit the App Store, Little Acorns is almost surprisingly well done. The virtual controls are easy to grasp and beautifully responsive. Mid-flight adjustments? Not a problem. Your buck-toothed protagonist will happily comply. The levels are also rather well done and highly varied. Short enough to fit into those ‘I have five minutes before my date arrives and I have nothing better to do’ moments, and a vast majority of the levels aren’t too difficult.

Fortunately, however, there’s a decent amount of replay value. After collecting every acorn in the stage, you’ll have the chance to pick up five fruits in order to unlock a new cosmetic item for your squirrel. Prefer something even more challenging? Try doing all that within the speed run time limit. Have we mentioned that some stages will also have you trying to corral a number of rambunctious and highly mobile squirrel kids? Because there’s that, too.

What I like most about Little Acorns, however, is the pacing. Team Pesky has this bit down to an art form. Whenever the gameplay starts feeling remotely repetitive, something new is thrown at you. At times, this ’something new’ can be as simple as a new enemy and at others, as complex as a new gameplay mechanic. But no matter how you cut it, Little Acorns is excellent at keeping the experience pine-fresh. (To be fair, this sort of peters out towards the latter chapters, but Team Pesky did an excellent job with this for most of the game.)

Of course, it helps that the aesthetics are more than just modestly palatable. Backed by a funky, toe-tapping soundtrack, Little Acorns has the look and feel of a Saturday morning cartoon. There is no violent content here. When you stumble into enemies, you get momentarily poisoned and have your speed reduced. If you make the mistake of tumbling into a ravine, you’re treated to a picture of your bushy-tailed family looking rather sad. That’s about it. Little Acorns is about as child-safe as any application can get.

Overall, Little Acorns is what you might call a safe bet. While not the kind of game that will eat away hours of your time before you realize what’s going on or the sort that would be branded as revolutionary, Little Acorns is the sort of title you’ll find yourself constantly going back to, the kind of game that fits too easily into a spare five minutes. In short, pick it up if you have an appetite for well-executed and adorable 2D platformers.

TouchArcade Rating:

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So this is pretty weird. Last week, the classic Japanese role playing game from Atlus, Shin Megami Tensei [$13.99], appeared in the App Store.

Originally released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the game was re-released for the PlayStation and the Game Boy Advance about a decade later, but the game has never been released outside of Japan (though unofficial English-translated versions do exist around the web). The original Shin Megami Tensei has spawned tons of sequels and spinoffs, and the entire series has an extremely dedicated following.

Now, when I first saw Shin Megami Tensei in the App Store, I was almost certain it wasn’t a sanctioned port. In this line of business, unauthorized ports or ripoffs of popular games appear fairly often, especially as of late it seems.

The iOS version of Shin Megami Tensei definitely did not look legit. It had an atrocious virtual control overlay that took up more than half the screen, and the app description sounded like it had been carefully reworded from the Wikipedia entry on the game.

Oh, and the entire game was still in Japanese only. Let me repeat that: the game is entirely in Japanese with no English whatsoever.

So based on that, and given the fairly hefty price tag, I was ready to write Shin Megami Tensei off as just another unauthorized cash grab. Except, upon further snooping, it’s not.

It’s published by Index Corporation, the Japanese company that bought Atlus several years back. A tweet from Atlus Japan’s Twitter account confirms that they are officially behind this iOS version. It appears to be a bare-bones emulated port of the 2003 Game Boy Advance version, with no special care put into translating it to iOS. But hey, it’s Shin Megami Tensei on your iPhone, I guess.

If you know Japanese and can deal with a no-frills port, then this is likely your dream come true. For anybody else, this is probably just a frustrating example of what could have been. A proper, English-translated port of Shin Megami Tensei that has been carefully crafted for the iOS platform would make a lot of people happy, and although I don’t think it’s likely, I’m holding out hope that Atlus is considering something like that for the future.

For now, if you are down to drop $14 just so you can carry around the original Shin Megami Tensei in your pocket, then I won’t judge you.

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In this week’s episode of the TouchArcade Show, Eli Hodapp brings the heat when I note my recent PlayStation Vita purchase. Later, we dig into the usual — the latest, hottest and best in iOS. Topics include WrestleFest and Midway Arcade, the new IGF controversy, how Apple is responding to clones, and the disappearance of Battlefield: Aftershock.

If you’d like to give us a listen, you can do so via the links below. If you dig us and want to grab our episodes without having to find these posts, consider subscribing to us on iTunes or Zune. These services automatically give you the latest shows. No fuss, no mess. Well, usually.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-040.mp3, 47.7MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• WrestleFest [$2.99 / Lite / HD / Lite HD]
• Rush City [$.99]
• Midway Arcade [$.99]
• Little Acorns [$.99]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• Meowch! [$.99 / Lite]

FRONT PAGE

• EA Pulls Broken ‘Battlefield’ Title
• ‘Pokemon Yellow’ Hits The App Store
• The App Store Could Use A Yelp-Like Review System

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What’s this? Rovio Mobile has something else new up its sleeves? In a recent interview with AllThingsD, Rovio CEO Mikael Hed shared a lot of “stay calm, don’t panic” thoughts on Rovio and how heavily tied its success is to Angry Birds, noting that Rovio’s fingers are in more than just video game jars. He also revealed that his company is in production on a yet-to-be-revealed game set to hit in the next couple of months. AllThingsD says this title is a “non-Angry Birds-themed game,” which leaves a lot of room for interpretation as to how Angry Birds-less this new title could be.

If this is a new IP… boy, does Rovio have some shoes to fill. Angry Birds is on stores shelves and clothing racks, as well as pretty much on anything with a chip in it. You can’t help but to think that, unless this game somehow exceeds the popularity of Angry Birds, it’ll be considered anything other than a failure. We can think of worse problems, though. Like hammer toe. Bet that’s the pits.

[via RoyalePost]

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Crescent Moon Games made a massive splash on the App Store with the original release of Ravensword [$2.99]. Originally released in late 2009, there was absolutely nothing else like it on the App Store. We thought it was great in our review, although, I’m not entirely sure how well Ravensword has aged since then. If you’re looking for open-world RPG style gameplay, Aralon [$6.99] is probably the better game to get.

Anyway, there have been rumblings about Ravensword 2 basically since the release of Ravensword. Apparently, the game is still in the works, and they hope to have it see the light of day this year. Crescent Moon’s Josh Presseisen dumped some rough renders into the thread just now. They’re not textured, but this is obviously a work in progress:

For more details, check out the thread in our forums, which was actually originally created in early 2010.

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Considering how prevalent Match-3 puzzlers are on iOS, I’m surprised I haven’t really encountered one before themed after tropical birds and fruit juice. Yet, that’s exactly what we have with Blockolicious [$0.99 / HD], a color matching title from the minds of Hibernum Creations and Chilingo. Offering frenetic time-based gameplay, Blockolicious’ fun gameplay elements are overshadowed mainly by its lack of gameplay modes and questionable use of IAP currency.

Players are given two minutes to match one of three different colored blocks on the field. Successfully matching three or more generates a ‘Juice Block.’ Matching three or more adjacent juice blocks of the same color creates a juice bomb. Tap on the juice bomb to destroy all blocks of that specific color, substantially changing the playing field and opening up new combinations. However, juice blocks only have a shelf life of 5 seconds, which can only be extended if you create a juice block of any color next to existing juice blocks. The goal of each play through is to simply score as many points as possible by creating and chaining juice blocks and bombs. Players are awarded with coins at the end of each play through.

While the game play (like most Match-3s) is pretty simplistic, I give Blockolicious credit for providing a sense of urgency with its time limit. It forces you to think both fast and smart in order to get the most out of your juice and score the most points. The juice mechanic itself does a decent job of adding complexity while still maintaining the standard approachability of match-3s. Also, it’s a pretty cool feeling when you get in the ‘zone’ and start making juice bombs left and right, cascading in what feels like a never-ending amount of block destruction.

In addition to the standard gameplay, you have the option of selecting three power-ups that you can take into a play through. Each power-up corresponds to a block color, and you fill up their respective meters by matching blocks of the corresponding color. Power-ups range from removing all blocks in a row to adding a score multiplier to even extending the total time of your play through (by far the most useful). Players also have the option of spending coins to pre-fill power-ups before you start a game. While the power-ups provide a nice twist, I found them mostly ancillary and chose to focus more on creating juice blocks (time extension power-up notwithstanding).

While three power-ups are available at the onset, the other three are locked behind a coin wall (including the aforementioned time extender). And, as expected, there are plenty of options to purchase extra coins via IAP. Normally, I’m all for having a system in place where subsequent upgrades are unlocked with gameplay, but using a coin currency that can be easily spent on other things within the game in this manner feels far more like a freemium/paywall tactic than an actual reward system.

Granted, you can and will earn coins after every play through. In addition, you are rewarded with decent sums after unlocking each achievement. However, those rewards can only be earned once, and earning coins by simply playing is really slow going. Considering it took me about 3 hours of play to earn enough coins to purchase the most expensive power-up (and that was with the large amount of coins you get when you play for the first time), folks will be playing this game for a long time in order to unlock all three extra power-ups (or will bite the bullet and purchase coins).

While Blockolicious clearly lets you know that updates are coming, I’m still disappointed with the inclusion of only one mode. I would have liked having at least a few more modes with different time intervals, or preferably a freeplay/marathon mode. We know for sure that the latter is coming soon, but you should know up front that as of now, you’re only getting the two minute survival mode and nothing else.

Even though Blockolicious ends up light on the content, it’s still a decent little Match-3 game with enough interesting gameplay elements to stand on its own. The visuals, music and overall presentation also do a good job complementing the core gameplay and making the game stand out. It’s hardly revolutionary, but it’s worth a look for fans of the genre.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Last week we learned that a superstar lineup of indie developers led by Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman are developing a game based on The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire, an upcoming movie adaptation of the popular book series. Not a lot was known about the game at that time, but Adam did reveal that even though it will feature a running character it isn’t simply a re-skinned Canabalt, and will focus more around marksmanship and strategy. He also made it sound like the movie’s studio, Lionsgate, was pretty open to giving the team the freedom to create the kind of game that they want to make, which can be rare when dealing with licensed properties.

In a recent interview over at Joystiq, Adam goes into a few more details on what kind of game The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire will be, as well as some of the thought that went into shaping its development. Saltsman talks about his main motivation behind the game being “to just pretend I am making a movie tie-in game for the Super Nintendo, only actually fun to play” which is an amusing dig at the glut of terrible movie tie-in games released during the 16-bit era. You can totally get that vibe from the pixelized movie poster-style teaser art for Girl on Fire (click for full size):

Saltsman goes on to explain that the game sticks close to the source material of the movie and books, and that series author Suzanne Collins even contributed some guidance and ideas herself. While the game takes place in the Hunger Games universe, it will apparently deal with new events than what can be found in the books or movie. Since the core idea behind the iOS title has been to make a “teaser game” that leads into the movie, the events of the game will take place before the actual Hunger Games arena event in the story. The developers are also drawing inspiration from the female main character, such as “the heroine’s talent for archery, her tendency to go for long walks in a sort of forbidden forest area, and her brains-over-brawn approach to solving problems.”

The full interview is a great read, and provides additional insight on how the team approached making a game using a hugely popular IP. Make sure to check it out at the link below. The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire on iOS is slated to hit at the same time as the movie’s release on March 23rd.

[Via Joystiq]

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There’s nothing like a freak ice storm to make me crave a tropical vacation. Warm, sandy beaches, gentle ukulele music, streaming sunlight, being fired from a slingshot in an attempt to rescue a captured princess—there’s really no substitute. I guess the closest I’m going to get for now is playing Brave Beak [Free], a tropical adventure with an island soundtrack that just might help me forget that I’m a hollow shell of a person waiting for the barren landscape to crack and bring even a glimpse of the glorious spring that is to come.

In Brave Beak, you control a cranky little parrot on a mission. You must direct him through a tropical paradise knocking down obstacles, freeing prisoners, collecting treasure and gobbling up fish, rainbows and even bits of the moon to keep his energy up and save a captured princess. I’m not sure why the bird is so very, very cranky (perhaps the pressure of being a parrot forced to fly through space itself and rescue a princess single-wingedly got to him), but during the course of the game a lot of valuable island real estate is damaged, ships are sunk, and (in a move sure to…ruffle a few feathers) local wildlife get unceremoniously slapped out of the way.

At first glance, Brave Beak kind of looks like an Angry Birds/Tiny Wings hybrid. You’re fired from a slingshot, knock down precariously stacked structures, and tap the screen to keep your bird aloft. When playing, however, it doesn’t feel like either of those games. In a way, it feels almost like a Super Mario game, right down to the coin collecting aspect…if Mario was, uh, actually a bird, flew around instead of jumped, and ate fish all day long.

The controls are incredibly simple. Tap the screen to send your bird higher through the clouds, let go to plummet towards the ground. The higher you fly, the more energy you use, and if you run out completely you fall unceremoniously to the ground and the level is over. You can replenish your energy throughout the level by eating fish, coconuts, rainbows (yes, really) and more. Additionally, you can make your energy last longer through the judicious use of elements the game gives you, such as kites, ramps, and hammocks to catapult you further through the levels while giving your wings a rest.

In a page out of Jetpack Joyride’s book, each level has a set of objectives that you must complete in order to move on. These objectives range from “collect x amount of x” to subtle introductions to game mechanics such as “taste the rainbow,” alerting you to ways of better playing the game without boring, obtrusive tutorials. And since it’s unlikely that you’ll complete each objective your first run (flight?) through a level, the replay value is high, with minimum frustrations.

In addition to the story-progressing objectives, there are other challenges you can undertake too. Each level has five gold coins to collect, and there are various items with different properties to help extend gameplay, add points, and otherwise enhance the game. There’s a feature that enables you to send messages in bottles to other friends playing the game, which they pick up during the course of their own adventures. It’s kind of a fun way to interact with friends over the game (on top of the standard “I’m pwning u on the leaderboards” way), and it’s these touches that kept me replaying levels despite having already beaten them.

Overall, the game quality is so high and the gameplay so fun that it was well worth the download for me. Now, if only future updates could somehow make one of those fruity drinks with all the umbrellas appear next to me (preferably in a coconut bowl with a Krazy Straw), it would be pretty much near perfection.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Cut the Rope made some waves the other week with a crazy list of new licensing partners that’ll see the physics-based puzzler morphed into all sorts of physical toys. Not to be left out on a slice of that action, Halfbrick has announced its own list of new partners that will see to the production of a billion and one different Fruit Ninja [$.99 / HD] things, like plush toys, card and board games, key chains, underwear, phone cases, and fruit snacks “starting this week through 2012 and beyond.”  Yes, underwear.

This is an impressive line-up of stuff being produced by an equally impressive list of consumer products companies including Mattel, Jazwares, Nanco, and Hybrid. We’re especially stoked about the prospect of Fruit Ninja 2013 calendars. We never remember what day it is unless a piece of fruit is there to remind us.

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Ticket To Ride Pocket [$1.99] has received a little more loving by way of content today. In a fresh update, Days of Wonder has dropped 1910 as an expansion for $.99. 1910 adds three modes, all of which seem to offer unique ways to engage with the classic board game. Classic mode rewards players with the largest number of tickets. Mega mode expands destinations from 35 to 69. And Cities keeps it simple by only offering a few cities to work with.

Days of Wonder is doing a crazy good job with its mobile ports, which is proving to be an awesome thing for the board game’s sales, too. We’d supplement our digital Ticket to Ride addiction with a slice of physical like a lot of other people, too, but we’re not that into cleaning up after ourselves. You don’t even want to know what our tower looks like. Seriously. We’d shock the Hoarders TV crew.

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