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I love the App Store. On a single platform, I can draw from a well of my favorite classics like Doom [ $4.99 ], and try out thousands games like N.O.V.A. 3 [ $6.99 ] that take their inspiration from popular console and PC games but offer an experience tailor-made for tablets and smartphones. But what I enjoy most about the App Store is the chance to drop a buck or two on quirky titles you don’t see on any other platform. Take Rocket Fox [ Free ], for example, a new puzzle/platformer game starring a fox named Guy who loves fireworks. He loves them so much that he’s not content to admire them from afar like your average Fourth-of-July party-goer. No, Guy likes to hop aboard rockets before they blast off and ride them skyward. Of course, what goes up must come down, and that’s where you come in.

Each level begins with Guy slipping inside a large flower while a counter ticks down from three. Once the clock strikes zero, the camera flips to an overhead view, the flower bursts open, and Guy, mounted on a rocket, shoots up to the clouds. Seconds later, his rocket blows apart in a torrent of colors, and Guy begins to freefall. From here, you tilt your iPhone to guide Guy away from the hard earth and watery depths, and toward trampoline-like flower pads. Flower pads come in different colors and designs that denote their functions. Red flowers give you a slight boost, blue ones throw you up even higher, and yellow pads give a breathtaking view of surrounding topography. Flowers can only be used once before withering away, leaving you to find the next one by the time Guy starts hurtling back down once again.

Because flower pads sit on lands of different heights and distances, you have to choose which flower pads to land on and in which order. Do you use a yellow pad first, which will send you soaring high and afford a breathtaking view of the sprawling topography? Or should you leave it and bop around the red pads first, since those ones won’t lend enough momentum to cross the water to the other isle where more flowers await? Other levels ask you to fly high enough to drop through flower rings, find and land on a level-winning finale flower, use flower rockets that fire off explosives on impact, and more.

The appearance of rocket flowers brought about a distinct and pleasant shift in Rocket Fox’s pace. Rocket flowers don’t shoot arbitrarily; an arrow blinking in one corner reveals which direction the rocket will fly when you land. Rockets destroy the first flower they come into contact with, but they also cause closed flowers to blossom into new launching pads. Figuring out which flowers to clear away so rockets wouldn’t blast them into charred petals en route to closed pads I needed to crack open, coupled with making split-second decisions during brief airborne periods and the addition of new elements like rockets that send you shooting forward, shifted the game’s pace from soporific to an intense brainteaser that rewards quick thinking and skill.

Upping the tension and satisfaction of a good plan coming to fruition are a few risk-reward factors thrown into the mix on each level. Players are graded according to factors such as the time they took to finish a level. As you grow in skill, you’ll find yourself tempted to make use of the dive button in the lower-right corner of the screen. With a touch, Guy stiffens like an arrow and streaks toward the ground headfirst, giving you no further chance to alter his direction but shaving several seconds off your record once you grow comfortable enough to use it from great heights. That, and it just reeks of style.

Another temptation comes in the form of Fox Fire, colored flames that spit out of flower pads each time you collide with one, swirling around Guy like leaves caught up in a gust of wind. You can tap flames to collect them, then use them to buy items that slow your descent, increase your buoyancy, and grant you a second chance should you accidentally take a nosedive into earth or sea. But, each item lasts only a single turn. Whether you win on your next turn or slip up and have to try again, you lose your power-ups. More importantly, collecting flames means tearing your eyes away from pressing concerns like landing on flowers instead of carving fox-shaped holes in the ground.

Fortunately, flames don’t disappear, so you can wait until you have more airtime than usual (say, after hitting a yellow pad) to frantically claw at your screen then give your attention back to Guy’s disagreements with gravity. And, although items do help, I never once felt like I needed one, even on the more trying stages. The only significant mark against Rocket Fox is that most levels must be solved in a particular way. Perform one move out of order and you’ll likely run out of flower pads and end up back at the retry screen. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the game takes several seconds to load between attempts, then makes you sit through Guy’s three-second launch countdown, totaling to almost ten seconds of downtime between each gaffe. You’re bound to play later levels many, many times before completing them, so keeping relevant data loaded in memory to expedite attempts would have been welcome.

Don’t think twice about tagging along with Guy as he journeys to and from the stars in a journey crafted from charming storybook graphics and a unique twist on puzzle games that only a platform as diverse as the App Store can provide. Rocket Fox is free with a single $1.99 unlock, but by the time you hit that pay wall you’ll know for sure whether or want you go the rest of the way. I think you will.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Dragons Odyssey Frane [ $11.99 ] has the distinction of being the only game that makes me want to reach out and pinch its metaphorical cheek. Not only is it kinda adorable, it’s also all sorts of loveable. Like the fawning, mud-encrusted niece that is never short of questions about unicorns, Exe-Create’s port of their PC-based action-RPG title has a way of making you tilt your head and go “D’awww”.

Actually, before we get any further, the whole ‘action-RPG’ bit needs to be clarified a bit. Those expecting an assembly of eccentric party members, a varied set of skills to manage and all of the other traditional tropes may be a touch disappointed. Dragons Odyssey Frane doesn’t actually have all that, per se. In some ways, the game bears more of a resemblance to a laid-back shoot ‘em up than anything else.

The protagonist, a tussled-haired boy by the name of Kunah, is in charge of all the melee stuff. With every tap of a button, he either swings a yoyo, flails with a dagger or beats on things with an element-driven punch. Those with a preference for ranged attack will have to rely on his loud female companion Riel. She’s the one who inunduates enemies with glowing projectiles every time you hit yet another button.

What’s interesting about all this is the fact that hitting the melee button will cause Kunah to lock onto targets within the screen, thereafter allowing Riel’s attacks with greater ease. Riel, while a separate character that can go into ‘Rage’ mood (when she loses it, she will, quite literally, bounce Kunah across the screen and clear it of enemies that way) if you permit her to be smacked around too many times, neither has a health bar nor real equipment slots of her own. The only customization you’re allowed with her (from what I’ve seen, at any rate) is the ability to change her attack.

Combat follows a similar theme. While there are a fair number of enemies that will just barrel dumbly into you, others will, well, shoot relatively blindly at you. The bosses have slightly more variety. From a trio of sisters to a monstrous, mirage-inducing sand worm, they’ll have you ducking away, chasing weak spots, dodging projectiles and flinging attacks of your own.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Dragons Odyssey Frane is considerably more story-driven than most of its brethren in the App Store. The gist of the tale is this: you play as a responsible, mildly perverted boy called Kunah. When his angelic mentor Escude goes missing, he and his friend Riel (both of whom are actually dragons) gain permission from God (Yes, with the capital G and beard and all) to go look for her. Once accorded that sacred duty, they descend onto the mortal plane and begin their quest. Pedestrian as it all sounds, it’s actually rather amusing.

For one, Kunah and Riel actually act their age. More often than not, they stumble and they stammer and they speak out of turn. Many of the denizens of the game treat them the way anyone would treat a precocious child. The God portrayed here is also far from dignified. In one memorable instance, he actually disguises himself as a rather… conspicuous piece of wooden furniture in an attempt to surprise our protagonists.

Unapologetically goofy, Dragons Odyssey Frane is filled with silliness. There are star-crossed feline lovers, a military man with a retinue of giant hamster-like things, and familiar stereotypes played to perfection. For those in search of a serious plot line, Dragons Odyssey Frane will not be your game. For those willing to accommodate its many eccentricities, though, this charming piece has a lot to offer.

Aside from the main storyline (things generally follow the usual ‘get quest, investigate dungeon, defeat big boss’ format), you’ll also be able to engage in more domestic duties. Unlike most RPG protagonists, our dynamic duo are not homeless itinerants. In the beginning, Kunah will actually build the two of them a rather cozy-looking abode and it is within the confines of their home that you will be able to tinker about in a makeshift workshop and mess about a kitchen.

While not particularly deep (it generally consists of combining two items together), the crafting system is oddly satisfying. I have a nagging suspicion that there’s no wrong way to do things here. If bread and rice can produce ‘bread sushi’ as opposed to a virtual eye-roll from the game, anything is possible.

(A nifty detail: people will slowly assemble a village around your heroes’ residence as time passes by. Eventually, you’ll be able to purchase rare equipment, plant vegetables and take part in a few random quests.)

While hardly cutting-edge, the visuals in Dragons Odyssey Frane are rather endearing. I’m not the biggest fan of their character portraits but the sprite work and the tiny, animated details (the game features one of the most attractive d-pads I’ve ever seen) are all things I can get behind. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the grating, cringe-inducing voice acting. By the end of the first spoken line, I had turned it off in mortification.

Aside from those small issues though, Dragons Odyssey Frane is rather hard to dislike. The characters and the world will slowly grow on you. Combat is brief and brutal, yet satisfying. Personally, I haven’t tried courting any of the characters just yet (it looks like it’s possible but I couldn’t bring myself to even ponder the idea given how young the protagonists look) but the option is present for those interested in such things. If you’re willing to put up with occasional stereotypes, loads of silliness and the relatively high price tag, I can’t recommend it enough for a weekend change of pace.

TouchArcade Rating:

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If there were ever a genre in need of reinvention, it’s the marble shooter. As a genre it’s been around for nearly 15 years now, and the two big names, Luxor and Zuma, are pretty much indistinguishable. Swap ancient Egypt for the Inca Empire and you’ve pretty much got the same game. PopCap stepped things up recently with Zuma’s Revenge [$1.99 / $4.99 ], which added boss fights and made a few alterations to the formula. But Luxor Evolved [ $0.99 ], MumboJumbo’s answer to Zuma’s evolution, is feeling like the genre’s next frontier.

It shouldn’t be mind blowing that Luxor Evolved looks different from its predecessors, but it sort of is. Between a new setting in space and wild geometric art it hardly looks like the same game at all, making this the genre’s first serious face lift since 2003. Of course, it is the same game—it’s still about matching and destroying strings of colored marbles, and it even has Luxor’s usual ancient Egyptian theme. But this time it’s space Egypt, and space Egypt has a few new tricks.

Like the last two Luxor titles, you control a ball launcher that moves along the bottom of the screen. Strings of colored marbles follow complicated tracks toward your (space) pyramid, which is unusually prone to death by colored marble. You stop them by launching other colored marbles into the strings to match three or more of the same color. With the help of a little aim assistance, this can all be managed on a touch screen as easily as it ever was with a mouse.

Luxor Evolved has a ton going on at any given moment. Not only are you matching marbles, you’re grabbing the treasures and heart pieces that explode out of them. Treasures are tallied to unlock secret levels, and heart pieces add up into extra lives when you’ve collected a few. You also need to rock your score if you want to level up, because the better you do the more powerups you get.

The powerups are my favorite feature of Luxor Evolved. Every point you earn goes to filling up a progress bar after each level. Whenever it hits its limit something new unlocks. This might be a brand new powerup—and they can do a ton of things, like blow up marbles, paint them in a single color, reverse their path and so on—or it might be an upgrade to an existing powerup. They have a lot of room to grow.

The extra-nice thing about the way the progress is measured is that doing poorly on a boss level means unlocking a huge pile of things. The bosses are complicated. Taking inspiration from bullet hell shooters, they protect their weak points with huge streams of marbles. You have to clear away enough of them to reach the weapons, and then the central ring of marbles. The only problem is that they keep coming back. If you manage to shoot your way through everything you expose the core, and one more shot will destroy it.

This can all be a little challenging, especially if, like me, you aim poorly when it counts. But there’s a bonus: if you really struggle and take a long time on a boss, you’ll pick up a ton of extra treasures and hearts and points. When you finally succeed you’ll be well rewarded with a pile of upgrades and unlocks. If one of them is a secret level, you’re in for an even better reward: they’re built as homages to classic games like Pac-Man and Marble Madness.

And let’s not downplay the new aesthetic. With its intentionally retro stylings, it looks like nothing we’ve seen from any of the big marble shooters before. That new style extends to every part of the game, right down to the interface, and a collection of techno tracks really rounds out the package. For the choosy, Luxor Evolved includes a selection of aim assist options and control tweaks—all of them variations on drag and tap controls. There are multiple difficulty modes to play through, too, and the usual assortment of achievements and leaderboards.

It’s not all good, though. The game currently doesn’t work for anyone who isn’t on iOS 5 (a patch is in the works), and even there I ran into a few bad crashes. One took a good chunk of progress with it. There’s also a popup for MumboJumbo’s other games on load, so heads up to the ad averse. I’m not the biggest fan of the series of aggressive price drops that have occurred since launch either, seeing the game drop from $6.99 to 99¢ incrementally over just the first several days, but at least that means those of you hopping on now will get a great deal.

Honestly, this game surprised me. Marble shooters have a real been-there, done-that vibe for me. I love them, but how many times can you play the same game with a new name? Luxor Evolved isn’t a full reimagining, but it’s different enough to feel exciting again, and it’s hooked me thoroughly. The issues are worth being aware of, but if you’re on iOS 5 and you hop on now you should be just fine. And really, classic marble-shooting gameplay in a fresh new package? That’s an evolution I can get behind.

TouchArcade Rating:

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A couple of weeks back we told you about Galcon [$1.99 / Free ] creator Phil Hassey’s latest project titled Dynamite Jack. You play as a captured Space Marine who is forced to work in a dangerous place known as Anathema Mines. Of course, being a bad ass you decide that working for “the man” against your will just isn’t for you, so you set out to escape from the depths of the mine.

In a recent blog post, Phil noted that a fellow developer suggested that the deaths in Dynamite Jack lacked a certain impact. So drawing inspiration from the awesome death sequences for Roget Wilco from the classic Space Quest series, Dynamite Jack now features plenty of awesome ways to die, as you can see in this new video.

Since death comes often during the course of playing Dynamite Jack, there will be an option to turn off the death animations if they grow tiresome, but they’ll be on by default. Part of the leaderboard tracking will include how many times you bite the dust as well. Dynamite Jack is scheduled for release on Mac and PC May 10th, and will be coming to the iPad within a couple of months after, hopefully around July 1st if all goes according to plan.

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On paper, Radiant Defense [Free] doesn’t stack up when compared to other tower defense titles. It shouldn’t be as good as it is. I mean, it only has ten levels, and its free-to-play model gives you just a handful of towers to work with unless you want to pay more. But Hexage is full of surprises, and this free tower defense game is certainly one of them. It might not work on paper, but it sure works in practice.

All too often, freemium titles either lock all the fun behind a paywall or let you skip right over the gameplay if you put down your money. Radiant Defense does neither. I can’t say for sure that you can get through all ten levels without making a purchase. I couldn’t, because Radiant Defense is crazy hard. Buying any (or all) of the four optional tower packs gives you more room to strategize, but it just barely makes the game easier. Paid or free, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.

Radiant Defense offers a mix between static path defense and the ability to create complex mazes. Players are often handed a few loose modules between waves. These can be used to build walls. Sometimes this is advantageous—drawing enemies out along long, winding paths is a good way to make sure they die well before reaching their goal. Other times it’s suicidal. Some enemies regenerate, so luring them away from your carefully crafted kill zone just means they’ll continue on, fresh and ready for more.

The tower selection adapts to any situation the game throws at you. You start out with the ability to build or research ballistic weapons for pure damage, energy weapons to take out shields, and the other usual suspects—towers that slow or weaken the enemies, and powerful area-of-effect towers. The purchasable packs add variety, with mines and blades to bar passage, weapons of mass destruction, and a few things that are just plain odd. Each has its own cost and drawbacks, though, making for a decently balanced experience no matter how many (or few) packs you own.

That balance falls on the side of intensely challenging throughout. Radiant Defense is unforgiving, with brutally long levels (making up for their limited selection) and increasingly aggressive waves. The game never lets up—every time you think you might have a handle on all the tricks you’ll need, it throws even more enemies at you in even more aggressive combinations. It can be aggravating, but it makes winning all the sweeter.

Not every part of the challenge is as sweet, unfortunately. The worst bit is dealing with frustrating tower AI. Towers will happily shoot the first thing that crosses their paths, blithely ignoring targets that are about to hit the goal. This behavior is consistent, so you can plan for it. It might even be intentional—it certainly gives players a reason not to use tight corridors to their advantage each and every time. But as difficulty goes, this isn’t the fun sort. It can leave you floundering moments after you’re sure you have everything under control.

There are concessions to this frustration, though. Each wave can be restarted as many times as you need without penalty, so you’re free to experiment with the best possible moves you can make with the resources you have. Anything you do before beginning the wave will stick, though, and while you can sell back unused towers at cost, upgrades can’t really be reversed. Your strategy may hinge on what seems like a simple decision: whether to spend your cash in the lull between waves or save it for the madness in the midst of combat. The latter is easier to revert but much harder to pull off.

That sort of decision-making drives the strategy of Radiant Defense. It’s rarely just a matter of this tower or that tower. Instead you’re balancing upgrades, positioning, and pathing, all while you decide if you should meet the current threat with force or save up for an unknown future.

If you’re comfortable with difficult games, Radiant Defense is easily worth the download. It’s a nice little package—decent art and music wrapped around generally excellent gameplay—and the price is more than right. It’s refreshing to find a game that respects your intelligence, money, and time. All the better that it’s good fun, too. Take a look, and stop by our discussion thread to share your thoughts.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Chillingo’s penchant for publishing dual-stick shooters returns with the release of Lock ‘n’ Load [ $0.99 ], a content-rich title developed by GameLab that hits all the right notes for the genre. While a lot of that content is initially locked away a bit tighter than I’d like, the gameplay, visual-style and presentation make up for that setback, leading to a game well worth checking out for the dual-stick shooter crowd.

Lock ‘n’ Load puts you in the role of a hockey-mask wearing protagonist taking on an evil magic-wielding girl whose minions trampled his garden bed. As you can imagine, the tone of the game is very tongue-in-cheek and does a great job making fun of itself. While the story obviously takes a backseat to the gameplay, I still enjoyed it more than most other dual-stick shooters, including the twist at the completion of the main campaign. Still, what’s more important is content, and Lock ‘n’ Load certainly has a lot of enemies to throw at you.

You’ll be taking on those hordes of minions with your choice of three weapons (you’ll have to unlock two of them) through mostly standard DSS gameplay. I say mostly because Lock ‘n’ Load does a great job spicing up the gameplay with good plot pacing and a variety of mini games. You’ll do collection quests, first-person carnival shooting – even a Space Invaders-inspired stint. Of course, there’s also a ton of opportunities to simply mow down the mobs. A second, harder difficulty is also available, along with a second unlockable campaign (and challenge missions) that focuses more on gameplay than story.

Visually, Lock ‘n’ Load looks impressive with a wide variety of backdrops and character models. I was particularly impressed with the assortment of environments used across the campaign, each with their own graphical effects. In addition, the game runs at a good frame rate and looked exceptionally nice on my iPhone 4S. Relatedly, I thought Lock ‘n’ Load did a great job with its auditory aspects, with the music setting the mood appropriately and decent voiceovers accompanying the story cutscenes and combat. It did get a little annoying hearing your character repeat the same catchphrases over and over but in general I thought the voiceovers did much more good than harm.

One of my few complaints about Lock ‘n’ Load is the way it handles unlocks with its in-game currency. Every upgrade and unlockable requires cash, which can be randomly dropped by enemies while playing the campaign or purchased en masse via IAP. As is becoming custom, while you can earn a decent amount of cash through a campaign run it won’t be nearly enough to unlock all the content.

Unfortunately, I think the amount of cash dropped in-game should definitely be adjusted. I ran through the entire campaign (with several restarts on some missions) and didn’t even earn nearly enough cash to unlock the first tier of upgrades. When you include all the challenge levels, skins, and second story mode, players will end up having to rerun through completed levels many times before they can earn enough cash to unlock everything.

On top of all that, unlocks don’t appear to transfer between iOS devices (unless you have the all-encompassing ‘premium pass’) meaning that simply spending a few bucks on cash to unlock extras isn’t going to cut it if you want to play on multiple devices. Also worth mentioning is a crash bug that’s affected some users. An update with a fix is already submitted, and in the meantime if this is affecting you turning on Airplane mode should work as a temporary fix.

Even if you have an adverse reaction to IAP, Lock ‘n’ Load still offers a decent amount of content with more that can be eventually unlocked (even if it takes a long time). When you combine that with the excellent visual style and content diversity, Lock ‘n’ Load becomes a highly recommended game. While we’ve had our share of good dual stick shooters, it’s rare to find one as well-rounded and content-rich (even if you have to unlock a lot of it). Gamers remotely interested in dual stick shooters owe it to themselves to check out this title.

TouchArcade Rating:

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GDC starts… Tomorrow! Most of the TouchArcade crew is already causing trouble in San Francisco, while a few of us (myself included) are still airborne and working via the wonders of in-flight WiFi. Anyway, just as a heads-up this week should be pretty crazy with a constant stream of posts as we meet with the 80 different game developers we have scheduled meetings with.

If you have a meeting with us, please be sure to bring assets for your game with you. WiFi and cellular service in San Francisco seem to be equally unreliable, so we’re asking everyone to load some screenshots and any video you can come up with on some sort of USB storage device. USB flash drive, portable hard drive, whatever! As long as we can pull data off of it, we’re good to go.

If you don’t have a meeting with us, unfortunately our schedule is totally slammed and I can’t squeeze anyone else in regardless of how many times (and how creatively) you try to contact me about it! Please be sure to come to our party though. It’s at the same place we hold it every year, but a day earlier.

Here are the details:

• WHEN: Tuesday March 6th, 7:00 PM until they kick us out.
• WHERE: Bin 55 in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis at 55 4th St.
• WHY: Because there’s way more cool people we want to meet than we have meeting time slots for!

Bring your industry-relevant business card and/or a GDC pass to flash and we’ll trade you for a fancy tyvek bracelet to turn on the free beer. I’m thinking our party is going to be crazier than usual this year judging by how quickly our meeting schedule got booked up, so, don’t miss it.

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Depending on how you look at it, my weekend was either a complete success or a disastrous waste. Asides from my daily ablutions, I’ve done nothing but sit on my derriere and play Capcom’s Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective [Free]. It’s true. I’m not ashamed.

I would be ashamed if this was a cheap rip-off stemming from some copycat’s attempt to cash in on a popular indie title somewhere but Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective isn’t that sort of game. If you had to liken it to a gender-unspecific trophy spouse, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective would be a 6′2″ Scandinavian model with a degree in rocket science and a part-time job as a professional comedian. You won’t be ashamed to be caught with this one.

The only problem here is that not everyone likes a talker. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective’s only real flaw (which is also, paradoxically enough, its strongest quality) is the fact that it is extremely heavy on the narrative. More than half of your time in the game will be spent reading. Sorry guys. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective doesn’t come with a voice pack either. If you’re the sort who thinks that actions are louder than words, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is probably not for you. (I still recommend giving it a whirl, though.) As for everyone else, why are you still here? Get the game already!

What? No? Fine. I see those raised eyebrows and I’ll raise you with a more thorough explanation. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is the long-anticipated port of an adventure game Capcom developed for the Nintendo DS. The titular character in this eccentric little delight is, as you might have guessed already, sort of dead. Sissel is also sort of awesome for an amnesiac red-suited ghost with a bad haircut.

Unlike most of the recently deceased, he has to navigate between the Land of the Living and the Ghost World. Sissel can also traverse telephone lines, perform minor feats of telekinesis, communicate with certain living beings (we’ll get to that in a bit), and go back four minutes in time to avert untimely deaths. (Sadly, that’s only applicable for everyone but himself.)

Incidentally, you’ll find yourself using that last power a fair bit. The supporting cast is somewhat uniquely skilled at dying repeatedly. At least, one of them is.

Meet Lynne. She’s a somewhat bombastic little redhead of a detective, the sole witness to your murder and – according to the helpful desk lamp (yes, a literal desk lamp) you meet in the introductory sequence – the key to deciphering the circumstances behind your posthumous condition. Needless to say, you will spend a lot of time rescuing her only to watch her barrel headlong into yet another humorous tragedy.

Along the way, you will also meet the rest of the highly memorable crew. From an unbelievably adorable if loud-mouthed Pomeranian (To quote our very own Mr. Nicholson, “Just wait until you meet the dog, man!”) to a shotgun-wielding assassin (His name is Nearsighted Jeego. He never misses his target if they’re in range.) to a slow-witted prison guard who dances when distressed, every entity you encounter in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is, uh, unique, to say the least. The development team definitely went all the way with the character design here.

(For those of you curious about how well Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective survived the transition to the iOS, I’m happy to say it looks pixel-perfect. While I’ve never played the original, I’ve seen the videos and if the videos are any indication of how things were, well, Capcom did you proud.)

Humor-wise, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is about as off-kilter as the menagerie that populates it. Facepalm-inducing moments are in abundance. The actual plotline, on the other hand, is deeper than what the initial twenty minutes might implicate. How so? I can’t tell you. Games like Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective are kinda like Fight Club. You don’t talk about Fight Club. You don’t talk about games like this either. At least, not in the context of the plotline, the actual dialogue and whatnot. Not unless you want to peel away some of the magic. The only thing you’re getting out of me on this front is the assurance that when the bleaker moments of the game hit, they will hit hard.

Of course, a good story’s not much without decent gameplay. Though marketed as an adventure game, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective feels more like a puzzler sequestered away in a visual novel. When you’re not otherwise thumbing through conversations, you’ll be in what the game calls ‘Trick Time’.

To make this a little easier to understand, we’re going to use an example here. Let’s say you’re inside a flag and you have to make your way across the room to get something. In order to accomplish this, you’re going to have press the ‘Ghost’ button, switch to the Ghost World, and then draw a line from the flag to, say, a pitcher of water. Sissel will then do the rest. Interacting with objects is just as easy. For example, if you’re inside a candle and the words ‘burn brighter’ are present on your side bar, all you need to do is switch to the Land of the Living and hit the ‘Trick’ button. Once again, Sissel will take it from there.

The puzzles themselves are a lot more complex and likely to leave you going, ‘Wait. So, how am I supposed to use two suits of armor, a set of curtains, a globe and a framed-up sword?’. To complicate matters even further, there is often a time limit associated with these puzzles. Luckily for you (and everyone else in the predicament), Sissel can rewind time as many times as he likes, something that makes Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective nicely balanced between the realms of ‘forgiving’ and ‘why would you do this to me?’.

While we’re on the topic, here’s my only other infinitesimally tiny issue with the game. It’s too linear. I know, I know. This isn’t some sprawling, open-world sandbox of an action-RPG. However, they’ve done such a superb job at developing the environments that I kind of want to spend some time away from the main storyline. Ahem. If you haven’t guessed it already, I think Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is the bee’s knees and with the first two chapters available for free you should definitely give it a shot. Following that, you shouldn’t have too difficult a time parting with the cash to unlock the rest of the game.

TouchArcade Rating:

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It’s not often I can be completely sucked into a world on the tiny screen of my iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, it happens, but in the back of my mind I always know that there are dozens of other games waiting for me at the press of the Home button, all ready to feed my ADD-riddled gaming habits at a moment’s notice. It’s like I can never fully forget all the cool stuff my iPhone is capable of long enough to get lost in a game for any great length of time.

That certainly isn’t the case with The Hacker [99¢], though, a story-driven faux hacking game from developer Angry Bugs. When I fire it up, my iPhone is transformed into a Glider OS-equipped computer that becomes my gateway into an international tour de hacking which leads me to uncover a devious plot involving my former employer. It’s far from the first game to let you take on the glorified role of a top level hacker, but it executes the idea incredibly well and offers a fantastic level of immersion with a fairly compelling story.

The Hacker starts with you trying to log into the Glider Operating System on your computer, an OS you helped develop as an employee of Glider Corp. You’re notified on the screen that several things failed to install properly, but you finally boot to the desktop. When you try to connect to the ‘net, you’re denied, and then contacted via email by someone who claims to be a former coworker. He is one of a handful of developers, including yourself, who worked on Glider OS and were unceremoniously fired shortly before it was set to launch.

He informs you that he’s discovered a trojan in the Glider OS and suspects that Glider Corp is up to something shady, and since you have experience with the software he recruits you to join him and several other ex-employees in hacking into Glider Corp’s system and getting to the bottom of things. From there you’ll go on to experience several twists and turns as you dig in and discover just what Glider Corp is up to.

The coolest thing about The Hacker is that it hardly ever breaks character in terms of presentation. It tries to simulate a computer you might find from the late 80s with a green monochrome screen and very basic graphics, and it does it very well. There’s rarely a time when navigating through the game that you don’t feel like you’re actually operating a computer (minus the fact that everything is touch enabled, of course). This level of detail is very cool for people who remember when computers looked like that, but a younger generation might not appreciate such a low-fidelity presentation.

The Glider Corp system is spread across 8 servers around the globe, and the way you “hack” in into each one is by completing various types of mini-games. These are mostly just logic puzzles disguised as computer-y things.

For example, one type has you moving little nanomachine bugs onto trigger pads placed on a circuit board in order to “open the ports” into a server. The catch is that all the bugs move at the same time, and you’ll need to use objects on the board to get each one into the proper position to have them all be on their respective pads at the same time. A couple of the hacking games use similar mechanics to the classic Pipe Dream, like creating a path out of sections that will lead power to a set of dead nodes. Outside of the server mini-games, another bit of hacking lies in “decrypting” emails by completing a slightly altered version of a lights out game.

The mini-games aren’t necessarily anything groundbreaking, but they are really fun and can be quite challenging. It makes you feel like you’re doing real work by putting your brain to use and then being rewarded with an unlocked server and a new part of the story. I won’t spoil too much, but there is definitely more beyond the 8th server including some very cool secrets and surprises.

If you finish the initial 8 servers and still want more you can choose from 3 new areas to buy as in-app purchases for 99¢ each. These 3 areas each have 5 new servers to hack into, and completing each area will lead to some periphery story bits and additional secrets. There’s also Game Center achievements and leaderboards for every area as well as an overall leaderboard.

Doing pretty much any kind of hacking will earn you experience, which acts as an in-game currency. You can pay a bit of XP to pass a mini-game if it’s giving you trouble, or buy an assortment of sweet backgrounds for your virtual desktop that feature ASCII artwork. These definitely bring a nostalgic tear to my eye. But the coolest thing you can spend XP on is unlocking arcade games from the G.A.M.E. portal on your desktop. These playable games include takes on familiar genres like snake, brick breakers, shmups, cave flyers, and dodging games. There’s even a hidden platformer game in there too (but you’ll need to find it yourself).

There aren’t too many things that I didn’t like about The Hacker, but there were a couple of issues that stuck out. There are a ton of spelling mistakes throughout the game, which on the one hand feels a bit sloppy but on the other sort of fits perfectly with a game based around communicating with people over the internet. Our grammar has certainly suffered since the rise of the internet age.

The other problem I encountered was an inconsistent difficulty. The mini-games appropriately get more complex as the game progresses, but at several points no matter where I was in the campaign I ran into puzzles that stumped me for a frustrating amount of time. Then, after finally figuring out the solution, the very next puzzle or two I would beat in a matter of seconds. It could be that’s just how my own particular brain handled certain challenges, but to me the difficulty curve felt kind of choppy.

While at its core The Hacker isn’t much more than a collection of mini-games, the fantastic presentation and little details really pull you in. The story might be a bit cliché, but the way it’s gradually revealed to you as you access each new server compels you to keep hacking away to learn what happens next. Plus, the mini-games and accompanying arcade games are really pretty fun on their own, and can be played over again as many times as you want just for kicks or to earn some extra XP.

Above all else though, The Hacker does a great job at making you feel like a bad ass international hacker, which is what it should really all be about anyway.

TouchArcade Rating:

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So I made all kinds of resolutions for the New Year. Yes I am aware of how dumb that sounds, and I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, resolutions never work, you have to make gradual lifestyle changes” or “You make the same resolutions every year” or “Why would anyone need to resolve to not get arrested outside Jeff Goldblum’s apartment?” etc. etc. But hey, it’s my life and my dreams, OK?!

Besides, one of my resolutions, the one striving to reintroduce simplicity in my life, led me to discover a really charming puzzle game for your perusal. That game is Blockwick [Free] by Kieffer Bros. It’s my new favorite puzzle game, and it may just become yours, too.

Yes, that sounds like a big claim, but once you pick up Blockwick, you’ll understand. It’s beautifully, almost maddeningly, simple. There are no real instructions or explanations, just buttons. As you start out, the game directs you to connect the colored blocks in each puzzle until they touch, which completes the level. As you progress, there are different-sized obstacles to slide around and out of the path of the colored blocks. Simple, right?

Right! But also so, so wrong…because the puzzles in Blockwick get insane. I can’t tell you how many times I’d start a new puzzle and immediately think that it was impossible, only to work my way through it and feel like a super genius. And it’s strange how liberating working through the puzzles feels. Over time, I’ve grown accustomed to looking things up when I can’t quite figure out a puzzle in a game.

I’ll also usually make multiple saves so I always have a shot at a do-over in case I make a wrong decision. Blockwick offers none of that security. If I don’t understand a puzzle or get hopelessly lost, I just start it over. The weird thing? I’m totally OK with that, as the game makes starting over minimally frustrating.

Since it’s a free game, there are the inevitable in-app purchases. However, they’re not annoying or overpriced. The game gives you the first sixty levels for free; each additional set of sixty levels costs $.99 each (for a total of 240 puzzles). If you’re prodigiously gifted at figuring out puzzles, you may be disappointed, since the sixty levels you’re given for free are the least challenging.

The game also makes you work through the puzzles in order, which I was OK with. If you’re not down with that (or get stuck on one puzzle and are therefore unable to continue), you can buy the “Master Key” for $.99 which enables you to work through the puzzles in any order.

Even if you don’t make a single in-app purchase, Blockwick gives you more content for free than many paid games I’ve tried. The only downside is that the colored blocks look like gummy candies, therefore leading me to directly violate my resolution of “Stop eating the commercial-sized box of Mike and Ike’s before you pass out in a diabetic coma.” Um, there’s always next year, right?

TouchArcade Rating:

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