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Crashing into things and making them explode almost never gets old, and that’s exactly what Bravo Games was banking on when it released Crash Mayhem [ Free ]. Luckily, this game lives up to its name and is just as fun as it may sound.

The thing about Crash Mayhem that immediately sucks you in is the lure of making as big of a crash as possible, racking up repair bills just as high as you can in the process. If this concept sounds familiar, that’s because the Burnout series was basically built on this same premise, even up to the iOS release of Burnout Crash [ $4.99 ].

Let’s preface this by saying that Burnout Crash is a pretty good addition to the Burnout series, and only debuted about a month ago on the App Store. The control style in Crash Mayhem is similar, the camera view is similar, the drivers are still incredibly stupid, and the scoring system is basically the same, too. Now that you know that, you should also know that Mayhem might even improve on Burnout’s formula a bit.

Besides the obvious advantage of Crash Mayhem being free, you can complete other goals that aren’t just blowing up everything in sight, causing catastrophic damage in the process. Instead, this non-stop action is broken up by objectives you’ll find across the game’s open world. Being able to actually explore around a world is quite a nice refresher after spending so much time strictly making things explode.

As previously mentioned, Crash Mayhem is indeed free and as with most free games, it does have some sort of in-app purchase for you to buy if you wish. This game’s pricing scheme is an example of IAP done right because you’ll only have to buy it if you don’t want ads or if you want some extra levels. As it is, the base free game gives you fifteen levels that you unlock as you play, with five more included with purchase.

The ads are persistent throughout the game, not just in menus and such, so if a banner blocking part of the screen will drive you crazy then forking over the 99¢ IAP to remove them will probably be high on your list of things to do. Still, having a game with as much content as Crash Mayhem available for free to try before you buy is a welcome thing.

The visuals in the game tend to be a bit drab and lacking in punch, but are satisfying enough to not be too much of a bother. Variety would have helped out a bit in this area, as you play in the same open world throughout every stage of the game. For the audio, the main theme playing on the main menu is very catchy, and the sound effects do just fine and capture the action happening on screen well.

Game Center integration is a definite advantage that Crash Mayhem has over Burnout, as you won’t have to sign up for another silly account (Origin) just to share your high scores with your friends. Being Universal also helps, so that you can compare with your friends regardless of iOS device.

While it may be easy to say Crash Mayhem is a simple copy-and-paste job of the Burnout series by looking at screenshots, you’d be entirely wrong. Crash Mayhem is certainly derivative of Burnout (and especially Crash), but adds its own flavor and features that make it stand out on its own. With a price tag of free, you’d probably be doing yourself a disservice by passing this one up.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Punch Hero’s [ Free ] moment of brilliance occurs when it has you against the ropes. You’ll come to a point during the game’s eighteen-bout arcade mode where progression seems well-nigh impossible. Down to a trickle of health, you will think about throwing the towel in, taking an uppercut to the chin so you can earn some gold and turn the thing off.

But you won’t. Instead, you weave under a vicious right hook and in cinematic slow motion land your own devastating punch. Your opponent is dazed. Jab, jab, jab. Right in his big, stupid face. He comes to, and, mad as hell, throws an uppercut. You weave under it and this time, in similarly cinematic slow motion you throw a left hook. The knockout punch. “Oh my God,” you’ll probably say while your cats look on in shame.

This game’s comeback KO is one of the most gratifying skill-oriented moments the iOS platform has to offer. It is akin to the feeling one gets when cracking a thousand on Super Crate Box’s [ $1.99 ] Construction Yard, or killing your first Big Purple Freak in ZiGGURAT [ $0.99 ]. And while the skill ceilings of those games look down upon Punch Hero’s from high above, high-fiving each other in the Exosphere of Amazing, it does not matter one bit. That moment makes you feel as if you are awesome, thus, you are awesome.

It’s a glimpse of the boxing game the App Store deserves. A glimpse because for that highest of highs, it is a ridiculously vertiginous ascent from the usual grind the game tries so hard to put the player through. Remember the aforementioned “eighteen-bout arcade mode?” If you want to see that through without succumbing to in-app purchases, you are going to have to replay most those fights again and again, ad infinitum.

Despite vague aesthetic similarities and a similar, mostly innocent (more on this later) propensity for racial stereotyping, Punch Hero is nothing like Punch-Out!! Whereas Punch-Out!! is a timing-based puzzle game, Punch Hero is, hey, a boxing game.

Opponents have no patterns as far as I can tell, so you are left with the game’s very simple tap-and-swipe controls, along with the knowledge that the next opponent you face is going to hit harder and have a larger pool of health. Which would be fine if all it took to trudge your way to the top was your wits and reflexes, but it’s not.

No matter your skill, you are going to get hit so hard, will face opponents so resilient, that you will need to upgrade your skills and gear using the gold doled out to you at the end of a match, or via IAP. Most items that actually buff your stats are nearly unattainable without spending actual money, while attribute upgrades the average player will need to complete the arcade mode take dozens upon dozens of monotonous hours grinding out gold to acquire. Or, you know, you could just buy them.

When microtransactions and in-app purchases became the monetization method of choice for many social and mobile developers, the worry was that “pay-to-win” would become the norm. Punch Hero utilizes a “pay-to-compete” system so unfair as to require an unfun punishment should the player not want to spend actual money.

A bit of a non-controversy occurred when another outlet’s reviewer noticed that, among all of the cultural stereotypes presented in Punch Hero, the African American fighters were portrayed most offensively. The writer’s casual description of the “full-lipped, wide-eyed ‘Sambo’ look” even fails to mention that the standard “black male” face is also called “Full Lips” in the game’s shop.

Punch Hero developer Johnny Oh, who seems like a really sweet guy, replied to the review, asking for feedback on how to change the black fighters to make them less offensive. It was an honest response to the kind of inadvertent racism that really can only be replied to with a sigh and a shake of the head. It’s a product of cultural detachment, rather than anything mean-spirited. By contrast, Punch Hero’s invisible paywall feels terribly mean-spirited.

It’s an unfortunate decision that’s marred what is otherwise a pretty good game of boxing. Groundwork for iteration, then, rather than something I’d recommend this go-round. That’s fine. As for me, I think I’ll go ahead and delete the game from my phone, hanging onto the memory of that one wonderful high.

TouchArcade Rating:

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After seeing Monster Shooter: The Lost Levels [ $2.99 ] for the first time, you might be wondering why another dual stick shooter is necessary on iOS, considering the hundreds of others already available. The answer isn’t always an easy one, but let’s just say that Monster Shooter shows why we shouldn’t just be writing off the genre altogether.

Monster Shooter tells the story of alien battles from one planet to another, all with the ultimate goal of saving a kitten with a runny nose. These naughty aliens want to wreak havoc and torture the poor kitty, and are even traveling anywhere in the galaxy as to not be captured.

As the kitty rescuer, you travel from planet to planet in a level-based format, and are shooting down enemies in a dual stick style shooter. The controls of a shooter are of the upmost importance, and they work well in this game especially with the multiple options available. If you’re finding the aiming to be a difficult affair, you can turn on the auto aim option and then you’ll only have to tap when you want to shoot, rather than where. Having the option of a fixed d-pad is also a nice touch, meaning you can play in whatever way suits your style best.

One of the most polarizing topics of discussion on our forums is the game’s option to pay for additional upgrades and weapons through in-app purchases. As you play each level, you will consistently pick-up in-game cash that you can spend on these items anyway, and fortunately there seems to be enough cash in each level to purchase the items during the natural progression of play, making the actual buying of cash through IAP feel largely optional.

The upgrades and power-ups available in the shop amp up the gameplay in glorious fashion too, providing you with nukes, grenades, or stim-packs that could make all the difference when you’re caught in a tough situation. You can even buy a few select items while in the heat of battle, if you didn’t prepare well enough.

Even more interesting than the power-ups you can buy are the abilities you can only earn by leveling up, which range from a higher fire rate, more damage, or more cash dropped by enemies. These abilities are fantastic and can help out greatly while playing, but the way of unlocking them could use some work. The problem is that you can only unlock them while playing the game, meaning you have to stop mid-level, potentially costing you precious health or combo momentum.

Where Monster Shooter: The Lost Levels differentiates itself from other shooters on iOS is in its tight control, and cartoonish graphical style. The animation is fluid, and each planet has a distinct look to keep things fresh. Being on both iPad and iPhone as a universal app also helps, as the larger screen of an iPad lends itself well for keeping track of enemies, and a larger d-pad area for better control.

Packing in over 60 levels across 3 distinct planets, Monster Shooter is likely to hold on to your attention for quite a while. This is not even including the endless survival mode, which could potentially last you forever. Adding even more to the longevity are the in-game side missions (of Jetpack Joyride [ Free ] fame) that you can complete along your path of destruction. Game Center achievements and leaderboards should be standard fare by now, and are included.

Exploding alien faces with an awesome new weapon you just purchased almost never gets old, meaning you’ll probably keep playing Monster Shooter: The Lost Levels for hours on end. Packing in a huge amount of content and little in the way of problems means that you should probably grab this one on your next iOS shopping spree.

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One of the world’s best CCGs on mobile, Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer [$.99], is now better looking and it’s packing more content. In a recent update, developer Incinerator Studios added retina support for iPad, as well as three new IAP card packs — Return of the Fallen, Storm of Souls, and an aptly named promotional pack called Promo Pack 1. It has also dropped in an “in-app purchase” manager, which allows you to restore, as well as buy, cards from within the app.

If this sounds good, go ahead and update Ascension. You’ll notice some new tweaks, too: fast-app switching is now supported and a new 28-day online game timer round out what is sounding like a pretty sweet update for the game’s most dedicated fans. It’s nice when this happens, right?

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I have to admit I’m behind on children’s cinema. I totally haven’t seen Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon. Though they’re clearly from the same world, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t follow the same plot as PikPok’s DreamWorks Dragons: TapDragonDrop [ $1.99 ], which is about kids riding dragons to herd sheep. But really, that seems like an innovative solution to a common problem, no?

Though it takes a few levels to reveal its workings, DreamWorks Dragons is a game of logic puzzles. You’re given a few tools, things a dragon could reasonably be expected to do, like roaring, picking up rocks, smashing things and burning stuff. With them, you need to run through a series of levels about herding sheep into their pens. But the stakes are high: each step needs to be completed in the right order or you’ll end up withcharbroiled sheep on your hands. Mmm, mutton.

Once you’ve unlocked all of your dragon’s abilities, they line up in icons down the left side of the screen. This dragon is well-trained; just drag an icon for an action to the spot you want it to be performed and Toothless will handle it. He’ll fly there and act out your command, be it burning trees, crushing statues, or lifting and dropping rocks. The only thing he can’t do is carry the sheep for you, which is fair enough. I mean, would you let a dragon carry you around?

The game is balanced for a younger audience, of course, so it might take a while before it starts to pose a serious challenge. But while the difficulty curve is shallow, DreamWorks Dragons eventually gets pretty great. The sheep are incredibly vulnerable, and later levels are designed to take full advantage of that. A single mistake means you’ll probably roast a sheep, or drop it off a cliff, or feed it to a shark. No one wants that—or at least they wouldn’t if the animations weren’t so fantastic. I definitely killed sheep in every way possible just to, um, watch them die.

Morbid curiosity aside, killing sheep is not just a bad thing to do; it will also hurt your level rank. Each level has a three star rating to aim for, with one star awarded for completing the level, one star for saving all the sheep, and one star for doing it all within a set number of actions. At first it’s hard not to get three stars. But things pick up by around the midway point of the game.

Some of the later levels get pretty ridiculous, in fact, with drawbridges, catapults, gates and such to manage on top of the usual cliffs and rocks and bridges and hay. There are forty levels in the main game, with twenty more available via an in-app purchase. That second pack gives you the Deadly Nadder to control, which can use its tail spines to create ladders for sheep. This ability is nearly as silly as it looks, but it adds a new challenge into the mix.

Each group of 20 levels also has 9 hidden treasures to be found. Frustrated? Go treasure hunting, since it usually means burning down every stand of trees in your path. You’ll also unlock a bonus level for each set of three treasures you find. Once you’re through those, there’s one more way to play: most of the Game Center achievements revolve around “losing” sheep in a variety of horrifying ways.

If you’re not in the target audience, DreamWorks Dragons probably won’t blow you away. It takes a bit too long to get into and ultimately lacks in variety. But every aspect of the game has been built with PikPok’s trademark care. It’s hard to turn down gorgeous animation and well-crafted levels. If you’re a fan of How To Train Your Dragon, this game is definitely worth a download. If you’re not, you’ll still find a solid set of logic puzzles within. Given how awful movie tie-ins tend to be, DreamWorks Dragons deserves to be recognized. It’s definitely one of the good ones, so check it out—then swing by our discussion thread to share your thoughts.

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It seems like the thing to do nowadays is release a mobile companion app for your big time AAA console release. Whether it’s the Call of Duty Elite app [ Free ], the Mass Effect 3 Datapad [ Free ], or the Dragon Shout app for Skyrim [ Free ], each offer a way to assist or otherwise immerse yourself further into a console or PC game using the second screen of your mobile device. It’s like the digital revolution of the strategy guide.

The newest of these companion apps is the Prototype 2 Official Sidekick [ Free ], which hit the App Store right around the time of the console game late last month. Prototype 2 is an open-world action game that received fair to positive reviews when it released.

The iOS companion app focuses mostly on allowing you to explore that large open world and aid you with finding all of the game’s collectibles. It will track your collection progress and you can filter out the specific parts of the world you’re interested in by zone or item type. Besides the maps and tracking, the app also contains additional in-depth information about the mutations in the game and how to get them.

The Prototype 2 Official Sidekick is free to download and lets you check out the map and features for the Yellow Zone in the console game. For a $1.99 in-app purchase you can unlock both of the additional Red and Green zones in the app. I haven’t given Prototype 2 a spin yet myself, but if it’s a game that you’re currently enjoying you might as well check out at least the free portion of the Prototype 2 Official Sidekick app.

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Late last week Capcom surprised everybody by announcing an iOS port of their classic arcade fighter Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 [ $2.99 ]. In all honesty, I suspect this was a cleverly timed release to casually tie in with ‘The Avengers’ movie coming out next week, but whatever the motivation I’m not complaining. Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is one of the most beloved fighting games in history, and prior to the downloadable rerelease on XBL and PSN in 2009 it could be kind of a difficult game to play unless you owned the Dreamcast or the somewhat rare PS2 or Xbox versions.

With that said it’s fairly mind blowing then that today you can download the entire original game onto a device that fits snugly in your pocket (or to your iPad if you’d rather, since the game is Universal, though it’s extra snug trying to jam that in your pocket). The iOS version of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is really cool for what it is, basically a cheap nostalgic trip, but it’s plagued with several major problems that drag the experience down, making it feel more like a novelty rather than another solid iOS fighter.

The major sticking points in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are that it’s difficult to control compared to the other top iOS fighters, the 12 year old visuals have not aged gracefully, and the overall performance leaves a lot to be desired. However, the virtual control setup that Capcom has come up with for the game is pretty clever, and just having a classic like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 in my pocket is worth putting up with its shortcomings. It’s just a shame because with a little more care I think this port could have been a whole lot better.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 features a whopping 56 playable characters, 28 from the Marvel camp and 28 from Capcom. Only 24 are available from the start, with the rest being unlocked from an in-game store using coins earned through play, or for performing certain tasks like completing the arcade mode with different characters.

In the XBL and PSN versions of the game, all characters are unlocked from the start, but I far prefer having to unlock them on my own as it gives you a sense of progress and some goals to shoot for while playing. However, if you’re dying to download the iOS version and bust out some local Bluetooth multiplayer with a buddy (sadly there is no online) right out of the gate, then you might find it annoying to have to spend significant time earning enough coins to unlock your favorite characters. Surprisingly, there is no sort of in-app purchase option to unlock everything.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is all about 3-on-3 tag team matches where characters can be swapped in and out at will, there’s a crazy emphasis on battles in the air, and the combos and special moves are all outrageous and over the top. Unfortunately, the iOS version runs so sluggishly that much of those fun moments are turned to frustration. The framerate can be a bit choppy and the virtual controls don’t seem to respond as well as even other Capcom fighters available on the App Store. This makes pulling off elaborate combos and air battling nearly impossible.

Despite the controls being sometimes unreliable, the default controls that Capcom implemented to simplify the experience are pretty nifty. There’s just a single button each for punch and kick, then there is a special button for controlling teammates and another for special moves. Besides just tapping these special buttons, each one can also be flicked in 4 different directions in order to perform additional moves. For example you can simply tap the special move button to shoot out a hadoken (fireball), but if you flick it to the side instead you can instantly launch into a shoryuken (dragon punch).

It’s a really cool idea and when it works well it’s brilliant, but for some reason much of the time it feels like the special buttons don’t respond to many of your flicks. There is the option to go with the original arcade game controls, which means no flicking for special moves, and I found that this option is much more reliable but does require more work on your part.

The visuals in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are also a pretty big letdown. I expect a 12 year old game to look dated, but for some reason the iOS version looks worse than any previous version. Sprites are noticeably jagged and pixelated, something that is accentuated on the iPad’s bigger screen. On the bright side, the fully 3D animated backgrounds are intact here and actually look quite good, especially when you consider the boring static backgrounds used in Street Fighter IV Volt on iOS.

So, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 has a lot of issues, but nothing that renders the game completely unplayable. The controls work well enough but are far from as good as other iOS fighters, and definitely not good enough to fully pull off some of the game’s more complicated techniques. If you’re a fan of the game on other platforms and can accept the problems it has on iOS for the sake of having it in your pocket, then I think it’s definitely worth the $3 price of admission (or $5 when the intro sale ends). Personally, I’m having a ton of fun playing through the game again, even with the inherent frustrations.

If you don’t have any particular affinity for the original game but are just looking for a new iOS fighter, then Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is a tougher sell. The controls are passable, but nowhere near the likes of Street Fighter IV Volt [ $6.99 ], King of Fighters-i [ $6.99 ], or SoulCalibur [ $11.99 ] on iOS. It’s frustrating because those examples prove that Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 could have been such a better port, and it may be in the future after some updating, but if nostalgia isn’t playing a big role in your desire for having this game on iPhone then I’d suggest waiting to see how things shake out down the line.

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Eerily similar to getting Samsunged, iPad-owning Tetris fans got EA’d today. iPhone Tetris fans will know this song and dance all too well, as EA pulled it on them late last year. In a nutshell, the Tetris for iPad that you may know, love, and already own now ceases to exist. EA pulled it off the App Store to make room for the “new and improved” Tetris for iPad.

What’s new with this version of the game? A whole hell of a lot of in-app purchase, extending as far as monthly and yearly memberships to the T-Club, which will get you a 15% bonus on top of the lines and T-Coins (the game’s consumable currency) that you earn by playing. Oh, EA’s Origin has also been shoehorned in.

The sad part is that the Retina-ready graphics in this new Tetris look great on the new iPad, and the addition of the “one touch” control method make the game a lot more fun to play. But, again, much like the iPhone version, it makes absolutely no sense why this couldn’t have been an update to the existing game that everyone already paid anywhere between 99¢ and $7.99 for.

It’s really hard to get behind EA as a developer or publisher on the App Store when they’re more than willing to pull these kind of hijinks. It’s one thing to submit new users to a bevy of IAP options, but by pulling the old game from the store entirely, if you lose the original Tetris .ipa file for any number of reasons, getting the game again is going to set you back the full purchase price.

So, if you’ve got the original Tetris for iPad, make sure you keep it backed up in a safe place.

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Into the whole Chthulu mythos but not that interested in obscenely lengthy, difficult board games? Then this is the perfect time to hop in to Elder Sign: Omens [$3.99 / HD]. The dice game made its original transition to iOS with only one Ancient One, Azazoth. As we mentioned in our review, Azazoth has a habit of devouring the lives and sanity of every team of investigators you bring in until you happen on a great team and some good luck.

This week’s long-awaited update brings in two new Ancient Ones. The rather unimpressive-sounding Yig is included, and Cthulhu is available as an in-app purchase. Yig gives players a better starting point. He’s much less malevolent than Azazoth, both easier to seal away and quicker to wake. He also brings with him a few monsters and adventures that are a little less likely to leave your investigators inconsolable, mindless wrecks, or, you know, dead.

For those already adept at putting down Azazoth, you might want to do it again: you’ll unlock a new investigator that should add a little more variety to your playthroughs. Then you can grab the Call of Cthulhu campaign for a much bigger challenge.

The new campaign takes you back through the museum, but this time with a new goal: discovering the intent of some mysterious intruders (they probably want to raise Cthulhu, just sayin’). Once you do that, it’s off to the Pacific Rim to search for the lost city of R’lyeh and prevent the rising of Cthulhu. You do this by collecting extra investigation tokens, so you’ll have to balance succeeding at adventures and hoarding your tokens.

There are 30 new adventures to be had in the Call of Cthulhu campaign, each more horrifying than the last, no doubt. There are also four new investigators that you can use in any of the campaigns, and a fifth that’s unlocked when you complete Cthulhu. That’s a lot of new ways to play, whether it’s solo or pass-and-play with friends. And as usual, this update brings with it all sorts of fixes and tweaks that should smooth out the cultist-hunting experience, like skippable scene transitions and lowered memory requirements.

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This is a promo image for Solipskier, which was used when Mikengreg revealed the game to people.

When a game developer creates an awesome game, we expect its next release to be just as good. This works both ways. Greg Wohlwend and Michael Boxleiter of Mikengreg fame have told me what it feels like to have to work on something new with the expectation of past success in the background. It isn’t just noise — it’s having an effect on the development on its new title, Gasketball. From ideas to coding, the shadow of the success of an arcade skiing game called Solipskier [$.99] looms. It makes decisions harder. It ramps up the scope and quality. It’s making the stakes higher at a time when the studio is looking to do something totally different.

We discussed two kinds of pressure: external and internal. Mike and Greg said that they don’t feel any external heat as they build Gasketball. Solipskier got into a lot of hands, but that hasn’t given the studio the kind ravenous base that other great independent developers, like Team Meat of Super Meat Boy fame, enjoy. There aren’t throngs of people  expecting mastery in the follow-up from Mikengreg, in other words, so the bar feels low.

The pressure comes from inside, they expressed. Solipskier’s sales were the best Mikengreg has ever experienced, and the studio desperately wants Gasketball to outperform it in revenue, quality, and audience. Success is mutating their goals, as if the magic of Solipskier could ever be repeated.

“We really want our next game to seem like a step up, which is not actually very different from our early development days, every game we’ve made has been more interesting, more polished and more successful than the last,” Mike told us in an e-mail exchange. “The difference, now, is that we are trying to succeed in terms of a million players willing to pay us, which sets the quality bar dauntingly high for a two-man outfit.”

Gasketball's logo and the placeholder image for the game's web site.

Greg keeps asking himself if it’s even possible to have another Solipskier, and that seems like a fair question to ask. Its development, from idea to prototyping to final release, happened in brilliant flashes of creativity. Gasketball, on the other hand, hasn’t had that sort of conceptual magic. The conceit took longer to come along, and the studio had to throw out a lot of stuff in order to find this game.

“We had to resolve to getting down in the muck and doing the hard work of prototyping, testing, and scrapping everything for yet another prototype that felt like it had promise,” Greg told us. “For a game to really strike all the chords for us it has to be pretty specific.” Solipkier was initially designed as a Flash game. A lot of its systems and mechanics are designed around that platform. Gasketball is a departure, so it took longer to design as the studio learned new tricks.

The idea for Solipskier came from a brainstorming session that revolved around parallax scrolling. Speed and parallax seemed to gel well, so Mike and Greg started prototyping. In a blog post, the duo described the idea for the landscape painting component came as a watershed, “oh my god” moment. With wide-eyes, they went to work. In the end, the Mikengreg created an exhilarating skiing game unlike any other. Instead of focusing on tricks, jumps, and speed, Solipskier leverages style and the emotion that bursts from your chest when you feel like your acceleration is spiraling out of control.

Version ".01" of Solipskier

This wasn’t the duo’s first rodeo. Solipskier was created first and foremost as a flash game, just like Mike’s other titles as a part of Intuition Games. It was, however, the first game of either developer to grab major mainstream appeal. Mike tells me that he realized that this was a truly special project after publishers had entered into a bidding war for the game. An iOS version wasn’t in the picture at the time, but the reality of Flash development changed the tone of the porting conversation going forward.

“We were always looking for the next step out of the Flash world and into a more sustainable market that allowed for us to make larger, more fully formed games,” Greg told us. “The Flash market is great and gave us a way to become better developers while getting paid for it; however, it wasn’t a sustainable business.”

Mike and Greg were working “crazy hours,” and fretting over paychecks when they developed for Flash. Living by the seats of their pants did have its moments. “It was exciting in some ways for sure, but it couldn’t last,” Greg said. “We were lucky to have such success with Solipskier, as it’s allowing us to fully commit to iOS and downloadable titles in future.”

Within the first two months, the iOS version of Solipskier made a little over $70,000, while the sponsored Flash version generated $15,000. On Metacritic, it’s sitting at a 79 average across five positive reviews. Greg tells us that this success “changed the scope” of what it could do with its next game. The duo continued to pay themselves the same amount of money, but Solipskier gave them consistency and the ability to screw up.

Version "0.5." Can you spot the differences!?

“Since Solipskier, we’ve made six or so fairly polished prototypes and scrapped all of them,” Greg tells us. “We could have taken any one of those further but we’d rather call it a failure early and often than find ourselves with a less than stellar finished game that never found that magic we always look for.”

Solipskier’s success and design are weighing heavily on Mike’s mind as he executes concepts on Gasketball. He second guesses a lot and he’s finding it hard to accept praise from friends. “We’ve always seen the flaws in our work first and foremost, but even worse on this project I see things that aren’t there.” Mike elaborated: “My brain is constantly convinced that there are more features I need to discover before the game will be good, but they’re always just out of reach or vision. Every time I implement an idea and it doesn’t make the game instantly better I feel a crush of defeat. I feel a bit like I’m going crazy.”

They’re not alone in this, though.

The Other Guys

Other studios go through the similar issues. Some deliver greatness quickly. After Chair Entertainment released a brilliant Meteroid-style game called Shadow Complex on XBLA, it was able to stoke a similar sort of fanfare and praise with the launch of Infinity Blade. After Simogo released Bumpy Road, it followed it up with an equally charming rhythm and stealth game called Beat Sneak Bandit.

Some studios deliver late. Mobigame released its puzzle game Edge a couple of years ago to insane levels of acclaim and drama. The app was pulled because of a bogus trademark violation just as it was hitting critical mass, and the studio had to fight for the game to get back onto the App Store. Its follow-up, Cross Fingers, released 11 months after Edge. Mobigame’s David Papazian tells us that Cross Fingers is picking up steam. Edge has since been re-released.

Edge on MacOS

“We were very happy with this second game because it is really innovative and completely unique on the App Store. While I am writing, I can see that Cross Fingers is 5th in the Top Free in the US App Store with more than 8 million downloads. However, the game works a lot better now than it did at the start, because we evolved with the market. We added more levels and in-app purchases. Also, the fans are not the same as Edge fans, a lot of women and men from any ages love Cross Fingers, when Edge is more for gamers.”

Papazian says Edge, and its awards, gave his studio legs. The popularity led him to meeting a lot of people, and gave him a good “in” when introducing his work to press. His studio’s pressure was internal, too.

“But you have some pressure, you must do it again and you polish the new game as much as you can, maybe too much. Luckily we did it again, but we did not receive any awards and Apple never featured Cross Fingers on the US store. We had to fight for this success, by updating the game until it finally worked.”

Tiger Styles grabbed a lot of attention with its puzzle game Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. While working on the follow-up, a Metroid-style game called Waking Mars, Tiger Styles’ David Kalina said he felt a subconscious kind of pressure to one-up Spider. It’s a similar feeling that Mike and Greg feel as they create Gasketball. “When you make a game that gets game of the year nods,” Kalina told us, “there is definitely this feeling that EVERY game needs to live up to that standard, which is sort of an impossible bar to try and meet every time out.”

Waking Mars is more about exploration than anything else.

The development of Spider had a sense of urgency to it. He needed the game to succeed so his studio could exist. With Waking Mars, Kalina said that urgency was replaced with the desire to blow everything up in its second game, which again, is something Mikengreg is similarly struggling with. “When you start approaching game development that way, the cost of everything goes up, and the more you spend, the more risky it is to fail,” he admitted.

Waking Mars, in the end, will keep his studio alive. However, Kalina said he wouldn’t pour so much time and so many resources into Tiger Style’s next game. Kalina wants to be able to fail and experiment and do bold things.

“I’d like to release two or three games in the next year and have them all be surprising in some way, and if they don’t happen to set the world on fire, we can be cool with that because we’re at least trying to push in new directions,” Kalina told us. “The worst thing we could do now is to say ‘we have to do something just like Spider or Waking Mars BUT BIGGER…’ If we go down that path, you may never hear from us again!”

On Gasketball

Gasketball has a chance to be stellar. It’s a basketball game that has its users matching their opponents’ last shots. It’s like a digital version of HORSE, except rendered on a fantastical 2D plane that lets you freely move the hoop and shot placement around. It also has special balls and barriers that you can set up to make your shot more Byzantine and advanced. There’s a plan in place to continually update the game as it lives on the App Store.

Surprisingly, nothing mechanically in Solipskier informed Gasketball’s creative direction, Mike and Greg said. In fact, Greg argued that there wasn’t one to begin with. He said Mike came up with the idea for a playful and fun basketball game that was “a bit more skill-based than just a slingshot or pre-mapped trajectory control scheme” game. Moving in a new direction entirely, Gasketball eschews the stark contrasts of Solipskier in favor of a more playful and fun art direction.

Mike walking people through their first look at Gasketball.

Our expectations got the best of us when we first saw Gasketball. It’s just not the game you envision this studio doing at first glance. Solipkier was speedy and sharp, and it had a very specific and awesome rhythm, tone, and style. You’d figure the next game from this studio would incorporate some of these elements. This game is exceedingly friendlier in look and behavior. It’s also more thoughtful and maybe even a shade or two less impressive from a conceptual standpoint.

The stakes are just higher now. But there’s also another reason this project is especially different for the studio. Like with Mobigames and Cross Fingers, Mikengreg see Gasketball as an opportunity to grab an entirely new audience.

“We’re both getting older and want to do more with our lives than spend a hundred hours a week in a dark office,” Mike tells us. “When you start working independently you tend to hold your breath and accept sacrifices to your happiness in the short term for long term gains and we’ve yet to really succeed in a way that really gives us the security to let go and look to the future.  It can get very nerve wracking to think that you only have one shot at releasing each game, and every time you fail to reach your goals you get one step closer to having to quit trying.”

It’s a strange world right now for Mikengreg, as the studio struggles with the success of Solipskier and thinks about a studio-wide transition. But it’s confident about Gasketball and its eventual quality. We are are, too. We’ve seen the game in action, watched the videos, and have even fiddled with a build. The title threw us off at first, sure, but now that we’re comfortable with the fact that Mikengreg are switching focus, we’ve been able to move past our expectations. It’s figuring out a way to do that, too.

[source]