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It’s not that Snoticles [$0.99] is a bad game. Not at all – it’s a competent puzzler across the board. It’s just that I’ve grown to expect a lot from games published by Adult Swim. Right or wrong, they blew us all out of the water with Monsters Ate My Condo [$0.99] and Bring Me Sandwiches!! [$0.99] Both have a frenetic sort of madness underlying them, one that seemed like it might just be a trend. The come down since then has been harsh.

Taken on its own merits Snoticles is certainly a solid title, minus a few recent weeks of crash-happy downtime between updates. There are five worlds of physics puzzles to be solved with the excretions of Zit, Dread, Spark and Snot, the titular snoticles. Each has its own abilities that are put to the test in solving puzzles defined by (generally) static blobs that must be destroyed.

Each snoticle has a set number of shots to destroy the on-screen blots. You must carefully aim and fire, sometimes destroying obstacles before you destroy the blots themselves. It’s not completely unfamiliar. But there are no carefully constructed towers to topple, no slingshot to pull. Just the usual things – shooting, a selection of special abilities, a three-star rating system and the goal of complete destruction.

Zit’s shots are the default from which every other shot is drawn. His follow an arc afflicted by gravity and bounce off surfaces. If they hit an Alpha Blot, all other blots around it die. Spark launches fireballs that are unaffected by gravity and fly straight through almost anything in their path. Dread’s shots blow up everything around the first surface they hit. Snot’s particularly grotesque shots cling and can be dropped with an extra tap.

The formula works, but it never gets all that interesting. Every level has more or less a single solution, and most of them are obvious. The only trick is to pull them off with the fewest shots possible. In practice this mostly winds up meaning you’ll retake the same shots in the same order and try not to miss. As the game progresses, more and more blots are shielded and can only be destroyed by one particular snoticle, which only serves to make the correct solution even more obvious.

There are elements that complicate matters – breakable surfaces, moving parts, tunnels and gravity wells and such. Only the last of those adds significant complexity, and that’s only really by making shots much harder to predict. It’s more frustrating than challenging.

There is satisfaction to be found stalking through the levels to hunt down every last blot, don’t get me wrong. It just doesn’t rise above a fairly straightforward premise. There’s an even-keeled wackiness there, but it just doesn’t have much on the outright insanity of some of Adult Swim’s other recent releases.

Here’s what it comes down to: Snoticles is a good game. It’s a fun physics puzzler that provides a mid-tier challenge. But there are so many similar games out there, and this one doesn’t do much at all to set itself apart. If the App Store hasn’t slaked your thirst for aimey-shooty physics games yet, you absolutely won’t go wrong with Snoticles. I just have to wonder if there’s anyone out there that still meets that description.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Absolutely nothing about the first five minutes of Darkness Rush: Saving Princess [$0.99] gave me any reason to think it would be a good game. There’s that mouthful of a title, for one thing. An absolutely incomprehensible story and translation didn’t help, and the Castlevania stylings and scantly clad ladies plastered everywhere just made me nervous. Even the tutorial was off-putting – I mean, seriously, how does it take that long to show us how to use a jump button?

It was a huge surprise when I realized two things: this game is an endless runner, and it’s really, really fun.

There are two caveats to lay out before we go any further. This game is poorly optimized even compared with standard Unreal Engine memory consumption. My freshly restarted 4S experiences unforgivably bad frame rate drops sometimes. Only the newest generations can run the game, and crashes are a big problem if you’re low on memory. Also, the game pushes its in-app purchases pretty hard for a paid title, but there’s only one thing that can’t be earned by playing. Prepare to put down an extra dollar if you want to unlock the under-dressed (but fantastic) Helena as a playable character.

Now to the fun. Darkness Rush follows a pretty typical formula for an endless runner. You run and jump as long as you can while collecting coins. Eventually gravity gets the better of you, and you die. Your score is uploaded to the Game Center leaderboards and then you do it all over again.

Yawn, right? But remember the awesome mission set up from Jetpack Joyride [Free]? You’ve got that to contend with here as well. Each time you play you work toward four different missions that change up whenever you earn one. Completing missions gives you experience, and leveling up earns you a new title to show off in multiplayer.

You can spend the coins you earn on equipment and power ups. Each time you start a new game you’re prompted to buy single-use powerups that give you extra lives or double your income, that sort of thing. They’re totally reasonably priced and can make the game much easier. Equipment is less reasonably priced, and could take hours to grind (or moments to buy with real cash). Here’s the thing, though: equipment isn’t just cosmetic – it can also increase your agility, mana, jump height and speed. Makes it a bit more worth the grind than Barry’s flowery lei, no?

Mana is where the real fun is, taking Darkness Rush from your standard running and jumping affair to something a lot more interesting. As with Stylish Sprint [$0.99], you can attack some of the obstacles in your way, and you can fly. Both those things cost mana, which regenerates very, very slowly. Run dry and you’re pretty much toast. But you also collect gems as you run, and once you have three you can transform into a wolf, bat or angel depending on your character. While you’re transformed you don’t use up mana. You can also take an extra hit, which knocks you back to your human form. Managing transformations adds a whole new level to the game, and it’s the key to getting a good score.

Then there’s multiplayer. It’s not currently a huge selling point, to be frank. Once you make it through the wait for a match (which varies wildly with the game’s relatively small user base) you’re dropped into a foot race against another player. If you die you get set back, so it’s mostly a challenge to see who can die less. Considering the lag and frame rate drops, this gets pretty hilariously bad.

But multiplayer is just icing on an otherwise excellent cake. The terrible translation is due to be fixed, and it sounds like there may be some optimizations coming down the line, too. I sure hope so. As endless runners go, this one is gorgeous, varied and tons of fun, so it deserves to be playable. And if you’re sitting there steaming that all the lovely gothic art has gone to waste as an endless runner, swing by our discussion thread. Rumor has it that LuckySheep will be moving on to something more Castlevania-like next. I can’t wait, but dear lord – let them hire an editor first.

TouchArcade Rating:

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No one can deny that the advent of Angry Birds made a permanent change to the way people saw iOS gaming. Since its debut in December 2009, the simple bird-launching game has made approximately 27 boatloads of money, and continues to rake it in with merchandise sales such as plushies and more. Naturally, other designers were bound to try to imitate the formula and appeal to the gamers who were hopelessly addicted to hurling birds at pigs. And with that, clones were born.

Snappy Dragons [99¢/Lite/HD/Lite HD] is an Angry Birds clone, through and through. But I have to clarify, because at this point in the post-Angry Birds landscape, there are many different categories of clones, so it’s essential to explain what exactly you’re getting into. Well, aside from throwing stuff at other stuff.

Snappy Dragons has a very simple premise, just like the game it’s inspired by: Evil wizards have kidnapped adorable baby dragons, and it’s up to you to save them. To do so, you’ll need to progress through a series of levels (80 in total across four different worlds) that present the basic challenge of taking out the wizards and saving the baby dragons. Luckily, you have a handful of fireballs at your disposal, so that helps your quest considerably. You also get to choose which dragon you play out of four, which has pretty much no effect on the actual game but hey, you look cool.

As you progress through the levels, new challenges will be introduced such as dragon cages which you can destroy for extra points. Controls are responsive when it comes to aiming your fireballs and trying to nail the perfect arc, and its still fun to make your way through the levels. It all feels familiar, which is probably because the formula is shamelessly copied from Angry Birds, but if you crave more of that gameplay, you will certainly enjoy making your way through Snappy Dragons.

There are also bonus levels sprinkled throughout the game too, which help to break up the level-by-level formula and let you go on a wizard-killing rampage. It’s strangely satisfying to never run out of fireballs, as they are limited in all the regular gameplay levels.

The game has a cheery feel and the art style is perky, with wide eyed dragon babies blinking innocently while they wait for you to save their lives. It’s nothing that you’ll rave to your friends about, but you will likely enjoy it in that way that a familiar thing can be rewarding (kind of like my shaming and horrible addiction to all Zuma games). It also has built in Facebook and Twitter support, so while you may not need to rave about how unique Snappy Dragons is, you can at least brag about your high scores to your friends. And since bragging seems to be a golden quality among most gamers, it’s sure to please those of you who enjoy doing so.

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I think one of the reasons people are drawn to certain formulas in gaming is because they flick some silent switch within them, and from then on, it’s forever in the on position. Clearly birds and physics are one of those irresistible combos, and for me, there’s something about zombies and anything that should not be a zombie that is like a drug I must get my hands on. In this case, it’s zombies and the elderly, apparently. Which is why I had to find out what was going on behind the clever and attractive look of a game with a name like Corpse Granny [$.99/HD].

I mentioned earlier that Corpse Granny was a nice looking title, and I feel like I have to repeat myself on that because this is an unusually good looking game. Like, if it was a girl and it walked past you at a party, you’d turn around to look again. But could you catch up with said girl and have a worthwhile conversation? Well, yes, you could, but how long the conversation would remain interesting for, I can’t say. Or let’s throw that metaphor out the window and say that we’ve seen some of this ground before.

Corpse Granny offers three worlds to explore and a total of 45 levels to make your way through. Each level is very simple: You’re presented with a puzzle which you’ll need to solve, and you’ll need to use the world’s items to do so. This mostly means cutting fireballs free and aiming them at unsuspecting zombies, but as the levels grow more complex, you’ll also use other obstacles such as boards, bombs and boulders to make sure you take out everything in your path to clear it.

As you progress, three different types of fireballs will be at your service: orange ones which are … well, basic fireballs, blue ones which you can tilt the phone to move, and green ones which you will inevitably hate because they will vanish after touching anything near it three times. As annoying as they are though, the green fireballs do add a level of complexity to solving these puzzles that I enjoyed, as I had to work harder to think through how I would complete each of these levels once they came into play.

The game dices up the formula a bit by tossing in some boss levels that allow you to actually go up against the decaying grandmother of the title, who moves around as you try to use your environment’s advantages to take her out. For an old lady, she’s pretty spry. Must do yoga or something.

A cool extra is that you can unlock levels players have created, and there’s also a little sign that gives it away that more content is coming later down the line, so if you’re a fan, you can look forward to more zombie bowling in the future.

The heart of Corpse Granny is trial and error, and it works as long as you like to play in bite -sized bits and puzzle your way through how to solve each level. This game is chock-full of personality, and it also uses OpenFeint to track scores and such so you can compete with your friends. The art style is really cute and reminds me a bit of the The Behemoth’s humorous take on character design, but it still has its own unique bend. I think personally I’m a bit burnt out on trial and error titles, but that doesn’t mean I can’t call something quality when I see it — and Corpse Granny certainly has it in spades.

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It’s becoming more and more difficult to get excited for social games these days, especially as everyone and their second cousin jumps on the free to play bandwagon, but the guys from Appy Entertainment just announced their next title, SpellCraft School of Magic utilizing some key words that almost never fail to pique my interest. According to Appy, the gameplay will a mixture between Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. I’m skeptical, but that’s one glorious combination.

Anyway, the game seems to revolve around tricking out your avatar while raising various magical plants which serve as the reagents for crafting spells which seems to involve a potion brewing mechanic of sorts. From there, you’ll explore the dungeons beneath your wizard school and battle monsters that take the form of cards. Defeating monsters results in gold and experience, and leveling up progresses the game through unlocking spells, new plants, and more.

Details aside from what I’ve already mentioned are few and far between at the moment, but I’m always willing to try out a new social game that at least sounds like it’s trying to do something to differentiate itself from your typical Farmville clone. Appy has had a good track record of releases, so I’m anxious to see how they take on the whole social game phenomenon taking the App Store by storm. If all goes as planned, SpellCraft should be available next month.

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Back in March, we published a quick preview of the rope-based puzzle game, "Rope Racket" after seeing it demonstrated at GDC and we promised to keep to you posted. Well, it's a few months later than expected, but it's finally been released under the new name: Rope Rescue [99¢/HD] , developed by Untame and published by Chillingo.

In this game, you control a colorful parrot, who must drag a length of rope around the screen, to free a baby parrot stuck inside a cage. But there's a catch. Before you can pull the cage door open, the rope must wrap around (or at least touch) every wheel on the level. You only have a certain amount of rope available, so the challenge is to identify the most efficient route to wrap your rope around the various gears with your finger.

The screen displays the amount of rope remaining and confirms how much rope you can use to score 1 – 3 feathers. Your score for each level is based on the time taken to free the bird and the amount of unused rope. If there's a better solution available, you probably won't be awarded the full three feathers. Scores are tracked using Chillingo's Crystal and Game Center, with a separate leaderboards for each chapter, plus 17 achievements.

There are a few obstacles to overcome along the way. Some of the wheels are moving, so you need to rope them when they're in a suitable position. Additionally, there are sharp flying knives which sever the rope, fire-cannons which shoot rope-burning fireballs, and evil vampire bats which chase you relentlessly around the screen (but are scared of the rope).

The first couple of worlds are full of variation and surprises as new elements are introduced, but then throughout the rest of the game the same components are re-used over and over. Fortunately the puzzle designs are good enough to keep things interesting and challenging. These puzzles will definitely get your brain working. I frequently scored one or two feathers on a level and then experimented with different approaches to earn the final feather by using less rope to free the bird.

There's five chapters in Rope Rescue, each with 12 levels. Beating a level unlocks the next level or chapter. Alternatively, you can use a feather to unlock ANY level. This is rather unusual as you can scroll straight to the final world and unlock the final level! This direct access to the later levels does remove some of the satisfaction of trying to reach that point yourself.

Some levels feature an "Amber" which contains a butterfly. Apparently an amber is "a pale yellow, sometimes reddish or brownish, fossil resin of vegetable origin". Who knew? Anyway, you can smash the amber with your rope to release a butterfly and score a bonus.  This doesn't have to be done as part of your rope's route through the level, you just smash the amber with the rope and then play the level afterwards. The butterflies you earn can be used to unlock levels or to see the solution for a level. Special bonus butterflies are also awarded with every 25 feathers collected, or via in-app purchases.

One aspect of the game felt a little creepy. If the flying knifes stab your parrot it shrieks, loudly. And when the rope burns, the flames travel like a fuse, straight back to your bird. It's an interesting effect, but again the bird yelps, which is unpleasant and loud. I've played plenty of games where creatures die, without even blinking, but  the way the knives are depicted sticking blade-first out of a rock, combined with the bird shrieking upon being stabbed, felt a little wrong for a casual puzzle game about saving little baby birds.

Other features include a bird sanctuary, for viewing the parrots you've rescued as they fly around, chirping happily about their freedom. And online challenges can be made with friends or random online players, via Crystal, to see who can score the best result on a particular level. These challenges are asynchronous, so you don't have to be online at the same time as the person being challenged. You start off with 1000 challenge points and there's a ranking specially for challenge scores.

Rope Rescue provides a decent challenge and caters for different skill levels. The best players will aim for three feather per level, while more casual players can just aim to complete levels. The other puzzle is trying to decide which version to download if you have an iPhone or iPod, since the Universal HD and non-HD versions are currently exactly the same low price. Answer: Get the HD version, unless you have limited storage space.

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Arcade Jumper [$1.99] by Black Hive Media is a retro side-scrolling platform game which feels like the old classic Mario. There's enemies to either shoot or jump on their heads, and the main character wears a red cap with red and blue clothes. Yup, that certainly sounds very Mario-esque, but fortunately there's plenty of innovation in this game too.

It's the 1980's and Eddy's brother Jimmy has been sucked into an arcade machine by 'Ghosty', the naughty child-abducting spirit with a friendly-sounding name. To save Jimmy, you need to complete 10 zones, each with three stages (30 stages in total).

Stages are completed by finding warp-tokens, then returning to the start of the stage to insert the token into the glowing arcade cabinet and warping to the next stage. There's a timer which counts down, so you need to keep moving. At the end of each zone (3 stages) you're confronted by the floating kidnapper, Ghostly, who must be chased down and then shot or jumped on before time runs out to complete the zone.

Along the way you collect fruit, like apples, bananas, oranges and cherries, coins (just like Mario) and invincibility stars. You'll also find tickets, which are used to buy game items or unlock playable characters. Sometimes these items are hidden inside crates which are revealed by head-butting into them, which is another mechanism borrowed from Mario.

If your health bar hits zero due to colliding with enemies, or you fall from the platforms, you immediately die and it's game over. Unfortunately, you're only given one life. And if you've finally managed to progress through a few zones, it doesn't matter – when you die, you'll still re-start from the very beginning, which despite the fun, can be frustrating after numerous restarts.

Each time you obtain 25,000 points you receive a "Continue" (maximum of 3), which is like a "life". This will help you progress further, but once they're used up, you still return to the very beginning in your next game. The worst part about dying is that there's six screens to pass through before restarting, followed by a slow "materializing" animation, which gets annoying, especially if you died within the first few seconds. An immediate restart should be available to avoid the frequent delays.

There's four characters to play, each with different weapon and jumping strengths. Initially only Eddie is unlocked, but once you unlock Destructoid (the robot) things become far more entertaining, as he can double jump which speeds up the whole experience. The best character, Mitch can double-jump and double-shoot.

Each time a stage starts, it's a surprise what the level will look like as Arcade Jumper cleverly displays different graphical themes (skins) for the backgrounds, levels and enemies. You might find yourself in a Mario-type level jumping on shelled creatures, in a space setting shooting at space invaders, in an urban environment capping thugs and dodging helicopters, or even facing shaggy pink 4-legged creatures wearing sunglasses and over-sized jewelry. Regardless of the level's appearance, the gameplay is the same in each theme, but it's quite nice to have this variety.

There's buttons for left, right, jump and shoot, which are responsive, although the player occasionally slides a little for no apparent reason. You can optionally unlock an alternate slider control using your tickets, which is an interesting idea, although after unlocking this I preferred the original controls. I also downloaded JoyPad [Free] to turn my iPod into a controller while playing on the iPad, which worked really well.

In addition to the main game mode, there's three mini-games you can play from the main menu to earn tickets. In 'Skeet Ball' you swipe a ball at targets. 'Pongchinko' involves dropping three balls down rows of pegs, hoping it lands in high scoring container at the bottom. While 'Space Frantic' appears to be a whack-a-mole variant, although there's no instructions. After each mini-game, tickets are dispensed based on your performance.

The tickets can be used to unlock "player assists" such as a flipper to rebound you back onto the platform if you fall or a helpful "cool space guy" who flys around you shooting enemies and is prepared to take a bullet for you, plus unlocking the three other characters.  If you can't be bothered collecting tickets from the platform levels and mini-games, you can optionally purchase tickets as an in-app purchase, although this really isn't necessary.

This game is universal, as it can be installed on any iOS devices. However, be warned: when it runs on the iPad, the game dimensions are about same size as the ipod, with the extra space being used to draw an arcade cabinet around the outside, like a large border.  The iPad version uses a fraction of the screen for actual gameplay.

Also, this game works on the iCade cabinet, which is becoming a selling point, however because the iPad version displays a cabinet on the screen you end up with:  The game surrounded by a picture of a cabinet, which is inside the actual iCade cabinet. Something about a cabinet within a cabinet just isn't ideal. This has been brought to the developer's attention.

Arcade Jumper is a fun game, especially once you've unlocked the double-jump. However, the restart delays are excessive and the constant returning to the beginning is wearing thin and may stop some players from seeing the  zones full of sloping and tilting platforms, asteroids and fireballs ….and probably other stuff I haven't seen yet, because of constantly returning to the beginning. Arcade Jumper has plenty of potential as some small tweaks could improve the player's experience dramatically, but as is it's still an interesting take on a Mario-like platformer that's worth having a look at.

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Poor Timmy is not having a good day. CB Labs’ The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run [99¢] starts off in the thick of Timmy’s misery: He’s a playground outcast in a cat costume whose only friend/probable true love, Kitty, gets snatched away and held prisoner in hulking bully Mitch’s tree house. Rather than accept this, however, Timmy puts his cat suit’s hood up and gets down to business—a rescue operation that spans 36 levels of 2D platforming awesomeness.

There’s a reason that some of our forum users compare Run Kitty Run to classics like Super Mario Bros. It shares a lot of elements, from the rescue angle to gathering coins. Probably the most important similarity, though, is the way you feel playing it. It’s challenging, sometimes frustrating, but often rewarding.

The story works because we’ve all felt like Timmy at some point. (Well, maybe not with the cat costume, but I’m not here to judge what you do in your free time.) It’s really refreshing for a platformer to have much of a story at all, much less a solid one like Run Kitty Run. The art style is also very nice, even if the levels can look a little repetitive at times. Since all the levels in a chapter share the same basic backdrop, you’re not going to notice much of a difference between, say, 1-1 and 1-9. However, it’s nice to look at, and it’s obvious that a lot of thought was put into the style and creative direction of the game.

As far as the gameplay itself goes, it’s a mixed (but mostly good!) bag. If you’re, um, not very good at platformers, you are going to find this game challenging to say the least. Most of these are good challenges like progressively more difficult jumps, timing, and techniques, with a compelling story and fun enemies to keep up the pace. Levels are short, which is good because the further you go, the more you are going to die. A lot. In like every conceivable way. Spike pit? Fireballs? Psychotic bunnies? Run Kitty Run has all that and more, baby.

Of course, it has its share of not-so-fun challenges, too. Like so many games, these challenges are mostly related to the way the controls handle. Run Kitty Run has a simple two-button floating setup; right thumb jumps, left thumb sends you forwards or backwards. Seems pretty basic, but it proved to be diabolically challenging as the game progressed. I often found that my pudgy thumbs were incapable of the finer aspects of platforming.

Sometimes it seemed like I had too much momentum from leaning forwards; other times I had none at all and poor Timmy plunged helpless into spike pit after spike pit. And of course, the more you progress, the more challenging the platforming gets, which sometimes made ledges just a little too precarious given the control scheme. As time went on I found I developed a bit of a rhythm and I stopped dying as much, but there were still plenty of moments where the controls failed me and I plummeted to my doom.

That said, the game is compelling enough that even the sometimes-imprecise controls can add to the overall sense of accomplishment when completing levels. With 36 levels and incentive to replay (you get stars and achievements based on how well you perform), it’s well worth the $.99. And besides, don’t you want to know whether or not Timmy gets the girl?

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Sprinkle [99¢] by Mediocre and Fabrication Games, is a water-squirting platform puzzler. The Swedish developers were pretty brave to take on this project as their debut release, as it's always challenging to represent water in a game, but they've really managed to pull it off. The water flows, splashes, pools up, makes waves, moves objects and surges, just as you'd expect it to. The water physics in this game look wonderful and are definitely the main attraction.

At the start of each level, a cute little red fire-truck arrives at the scene of a fire. You can adjust the height of the trucks crane by dragging it up or down, and you can also tilt the angle of the water cannon by swiping. Once the nozzle is aimed in the right direction, simply tap or hold the red button to squirt water. And the water does actually squirt. You can see the main stream of the flow with little bits shooting off, just like when you turned the hose on your family members as a kid. And it still feels good to squirt that H20!

This game is already being compared to Feed Me Oil [99c/ Review], which is also based on a liquid. However, the game-play of these two titles is actually completely different. In Feed me Oil, you're trying to pour thick black goop into a particular zone on the screen. Whereas in Sprinkle it doesn't matter where the water ends up, providing you put out the stubborn fires before your water supply runs out. And Sprinkle is set on one of Saturn's Moons, so there's little alien creatures inhabiting the levels.

There's four worlds provided at launch, with 46 levels in total. The key to unlocking the levels isn't speed as you might anticipate – instead, it's all about water conservation.  There's a little gauge at the bottom of the screen, which indicates how much of your water supply remains. The less water you use, the more blue water droplets you earn.

The blue droplets are used to unlock levels. If you obtain the maximum 5 droplets for all levels in a world, the next world is unlocked (which isn't made clear in the game). Or, if you can't be bothered with that, you can make optional in-app purchases for worlds 3 and 4, which also unlocks the earlier levels.  My main concern about this game was the number of levels, however I've been assured that additional levels are already planned for release soon.

Each level contains objects like blocks, ice and boulders to drag or hose into position, structures and mechanisms to manipulate with water and buttons to activate. The first world is pretty straightforward and can be solved by squirting water in the obvious directions, but then some puzzle elements are introduced to makes things more challenging. For example, you'll have to plan how to make your water reach each fire, because moving an object to drench one fire may unintentionally block the path to another. And just when you think all the fires are under control, a fireball might suddenly arrive from space, sparking brand new blazes.

Sprinkle has the cuteness factor turned up to high, with the fire-truck and little alien creatures looking adorable. The music deserves a mention too, for being catchy. And it's fun to squirt water through a small gap and have it erupt out the other side, like a geyser. Yup, splashing water around never gets old, so this new visually-appealing universal game will probably make a splash.

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Sometimes it seems as if there’s nothing more ubiquitous than a game of electronic Solitaire. Even a quick glance at the App Store will yield pages upon pages of Solitaire titles of every kind of variation, theme, and quality. With this much competition new players to the field are going to have to distinguish themselves in order to earn the attention of gamers looking for a Solitaire fix. Solitaire by Backflip [Free / HD], one of the latest entries in the overcrowded Solitaire field, doesn’t particularly offer anything that hasn’t already been seen in this sub-genre. However, what it does offer is a solid card experience with incentive to continue playing, provided you aren’t put off by the prevalence of in-game ads.

You won’t find a multitude of different types of Solitaire in this title. Rather, Solitaire by Backflip only has 1 and 3-card draw. In addition, you can either play with ‘Normal’ or ‘Vegas’ rules (the latter only allowing you to run through the whole deck only once before the game ends). Solitaire also has four different themes, two of which must be unlocked by collecting a certain amount of in-game coins that are earned by making successful card moves and completing a whole game. While the coin amounts for unlocking the themes did seem high, by my calculation you’d have to win approximately 10 games on normal rules in order to earn enough coins for a theme unlock, which seems fair enough to me. Of course, additional coins are available as IAP should you decide you don’t want to play the game.

In addition to unlocking themes, players can use the coins earned while playing Solitaire to unlock a wide variety of ‘prizes.’ The prizes earned are little more than random items from Backflip’s various other games and don’t affect the gameplay in Solitaire at all.  If you’re a fan of Backflip Studio’s other iOS titles, some of the objects you can buy may actually have some meaning for you. If not, at least there are plenty of items to work towards for the collectionists out there.

If unlocking themes and collection items isn’t your fancy, Solitaire by Backflip also allows you to spend coins on a variety of cheats to help in your quest for card-playing domination. Cheats range from taking a peek at the next card in the deck, to being able to move any stack to an empty space on the field. Personally, I don’t understand why anyone would want to cheat at a game of Solitaire, but it certainly does offer some diversity to the playing field.

The only glaring issue I have with Solitaire by Backflip is the frequency of ads throughout the game. Banner ads adorn the gameplay screen and the main menu, with an occasional full screen ad as well. It’s not so much that the ads necessarily detract from the actual gameplay, but just that the majority of them look ugly and out of place when contrasted with the crisp retina-display graphics of the actual game. Thankfully, an IAP exists to eliminate all ads.

It’s pretty obvious that Backflip Studios positioned Solitaire as a sort of free gateway to the rest of their titles. However, if you look past this, you’ll discover a game with well-done visuals and a system in place that at least keeps you coming back. The ad placement (and quality) definitely serves as distraction to the rest of the game, but they can easily be removed if you decide it’s worth playing for the long haul. Just don’t go into Solitaire expecting it to be anything more than it is, and you should have a decent time.

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