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As much as we may not want to admit it, a game’s style goes a long way—especially in a market as crowded as the App Store. With so many games from so many developers, the right icon and the right visual presentation are often the be all and end all of standing out from the pack. And while those of us who love games know that graphics don’t make for a good game, it’s hard to ignore the allure of stylish games.

That’s why I jumped on Brandnew Boy [ $3.99 ], the latest action RPG from Oozoo. Sporting the Unreal Engine and a beautiful cel-shaded art style rich in color, the game is instantly stunning—especially in motion, where the smooth framerate and fast action prove to make an already-attractive game even more gorgeous. Much of the attention the game has received is because of its presentation.

Thankfully, unlike some pretty-yet-disappointing games out there, Brandnew Boy manages to delight in terms of gameplay, as well. It’s certainly not the best action RPG on the platform, but its unique combat controls and hearty adventure make it worth a spot on your home screen.

The game puts you into the shoes of a mysterious man known only as the “Rookie” as he finds himself lost in a strange, egg-filled world. Through a set of bite-sized standalone missions and countless objective-tweaked variants, you’ll come to learn more about Rookie and his quest, the world around him, and the creatures within it. During your adventure, you’ll venture forth to fight increasingly-tough battles and increasingly-gigantic bosses.

It’s the game’s take on combat and not its story, though, that makes it worth checking out. Through some intuitive touch controls and the introduction of a simple timing mechanic, combat in Brandnew Boy is transformed from the standard “hammer buttons to attack” into something a little more elegant and entertaining.

To initiate an attack on an enemy, you tap on it. To continue to attack, you can continue to tap. It’s simple, straightforward, and effective. Where things get interesting, though, is in the game’s combo system. As long as you can maintain steady attacks within a brief window, you will maintain a combo that makes you increasingly powerful. To do so, though, you need to time your attacks with a small timer bar. Pressing too soon or too late in succession, or failing to dodge an enemy attack with a swipe in the desired direction, will lead to your combo being broken.

In practice, combat starts to feel like a strange hybrid of Batman: Arkham Asylum. There’s a certain rhythm and candor to Brandnew Boy’s combat; Rookie’s graceful jumping and twirling between enemies and across the battlefield in a single combo seamlessly will be startlingly familiar if you’ve played the Dark Knight’s recent console outings.

Stringing long combos together is and stays incredibly satisfying throughout, and it evolves as you add more skills to your arsenal which allow you to prolong your combos even further. All told, combat is fast, fluid, and fun—especially when combined with the game’s focus bonus “time trial” medals, which push you to finish levels as fast as possible while maintaining a high combo and doing no damage.

Filling out the roster of requisite action RPG features is a complete upgrade system for the game’s main character and a summon system of sorts. Skills and equipment can be purchased and upgraded with a fairly straightforward if not uninspired progressions system, and you can earn the ability to summon unique pets by defeating the game’s handful of bosses.

Sadly, for all the framework wrapped around the game’s combat system, Brandnew Boy does come off as a bit of a one-note tune. Combat itself is satisfying, but it also lacks variety or depth in the long run, and the game’s story and progression systems do little to stave off fatigue should you play the game for hours on end.

Should the developers infuse the game’s core combat with a little more variety and flesh out the game’s other systems (skill trees for character development and more gear), a sequel to Brandnew Boy could find its place at the top of “best iOS RPGs” in short order. That said, the game you can buy today is a solid one in its own right, even if only for its unique, rhythmic combat.

Color me curious about what this developer does next.

TouchArcade Rating:

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The iOS platform is hardly lacking for games that allow you to send living things to their inevitable death, and Gratuitous Space Battles [ $9.99 (HD)] satisfies the tactical itch with a capital T, while managing to bring some big eye candy and a light sense of humor to compensate you for all your hours spent constructing.

When you first launch the app, you’re driven towards a fairly anemic tutorial, which hardly deserves the name. A game like GSB has a lot of meat, layered on top of more meat, with a crust of meat at the center – a simple text-driven tutorial cannot even begin to prepare you for how many numbers there are to be crunched, how many configurations possible, and how many men are ready to die in your service. Inexperienced strategy gamers are going to be overwhelmed with the complexity, and while the tutorial does a competent job of getting you into the cockpit of the starter-ships, it does little to prepare you for the amount of ship-building you’ll be doing.

Ultimately, that’s what this game is about – building. Unlike a traditional tower defense game, you don’t fight off waves of enemies while upgrading in-between. Instead, you’re given a “historical” battle to participate in, and are given all of the enemy troops’ positions, ship-types, etc. Once you initiate the battle, your control of the fight is over – the ships will play out the battle based on a configuration of orders and equipment that you assigned beforehand, and your job becomes that of a silent watcher. Your real goal, and where the game completely shines, is to build and outfit your ships, and arrange them tactically to obliterate the alien host.

Most of the time spent with the game is spent customizing out your various ship-types with gear from a pool of upgrades that you’ve unlocked using the “honor” that you’ve won from battles. In a twist on standard tower defense games, you’re not only rewarded for winning, you’re rewarded for winning with honor. What this means is that while anyone can swing in with a massive Cruiser army and obliterate the alien force, the payout will leave much to be desired. More honor is paid out to the cautious commander, and the fewer ships you field and win with, the more honor you’ll earn to spend on unlocking upgrades, new hulls, and alien races to play as.

Visually, the game is beautiful, filled with detailed backdrops rich with stars, nebula, and distant worlds. Ships are highly detailed and beautiful to look at, and the constant hail of missiles, plasma beams, and scrambled clusters of fighters ensure that the game never gets boring to watch. Thundering music and the sounds of combat are decent, if a little drawn out over the length of the fight.

Being a port of a game that was designed for PC, GSB comes with touch controls that are generic but passable with nothing that really stands out. Pinch-to-zoom works on the combat map, but frustratingly caps out at a maximum zoom that feels too small – especially given the enormous size of the maps. Tapping on the various statistics during the building phase yields crucial information about each, but trying to pinpoint the miniature numbers can prove to be frustrating for the more sausage-fingered couch-commander.

Small touches add a sense of extra value to the game, such as the top panel during combat which plays out messages being sent by your crew, ranging from the tragic to the wry. It’s an unnecessary addition but a fun one, and injects a bit of humor to an otherwise dark and brooding atmosphere. Survival mode brings the endless-wave fun of traditional tower defense, but without the ability to upgrade on the fly. The result is a test for how well you’ve outfitted your fleet, and the only reward is bragging rights to your friends. A fairly in-depth (though extremely text-dense) manual is also included, to flesh out any areas of curiosity a new player might have.

Players who crave a little more direct control over their operatic space-genocide may find themselves bored or underwhelmed, but for the true tactician, there’s a lot to love here. While the $9.99 asking price may seem a bit steep, this is the sort of game that could have easily gone the route of IAP currency, and didn’t. Ten bucks is practically a steal for the tactical war game fan, though a lite version for the unsure to try out would be a really good idea. Additionally, the lack of ability to try matching your fleet against a friend’s fleet isn’t game-breaking, but it would be nice to try your hand against Game Center friends.

Overall, Gratuitous Space Battles is worth obsessing over if you love numbers, tactics, collecting and crafting. It is easy to get lost for hours in the menus within menus, outfitting and saving custom ships, and learning what works and what doesn’t work through trial and error battles against the alien horde. It’s a worthy addition to an already-stellar list of deeply tactical games on iOS, and is well worth a look for strategy fans.

TouchArcade Rating:

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When we first found out about Kotomon [ $2.99 ] recently, I was excited for the possibilities especially considering that some of the developers at Monstars consisted of folks from Q Entertainment (Lumines, Rez). Unfortunately, reputation alone is not enough to carry this simple music platformer with iffy controls.

Kotomon follows the adventures of a cute red monster of the same name as he searches the world for other monsters. Gameplay is divided into levels and has you navigating Kotomon and his companions across the terrain, battling monsters of various strengths until you reach a campfire, signifying the end of the level. A three-star system grades your completion with points awarded for faster completion, combos, and the amount of food your companion eat (littered across each level).

As you progress, Kotomon will meet new monsters (which are hatched by finding eggs), each with their own abilities and attributes. While the help menu provides small blurbs in each monster, i still found it a but vague for trying to figure out the differences of some of them. Regardless there’s enough there for strategy in later levels when you have the choice of choosing who to bring with you in a level.

The platforming itself is enjoyable for being a simplistic title. Levels are usually divided into battle royales with tons of combat or terrain based missions with obstacles that can block or kill your companions. There’s an interesting dynamic of keeping tabs of your companions while simultaneously using them as weapons of destruction. The difficulty also cranks up in the latter half of the game for gamers that enjoy a challenge.

One of Kotomon’s features is a dynamic soundtrack affected by the actions of your Kotomon. For example, launch a monster at some baddies and the beat picks up temporarily for each enemy dispatched. Extras notes are also added when taking on more powerful bosses.

Other than those little nuances, I didn’t really find anything particularly special about the music features. True, watching the enemies and your monsters dance to the beats of the song is quite adorable, but it’s hardly game-changing. If anything, the emphasis on a dynamic soundtrack means that you’ll be hearing a lot of simple tunes until you get into the thick of the action.

By far, the biggest issue I encountered with Kotomon dealt with its frustrating control scheme. Kotomon utilizes a floating, non-static virtual joystick for movement, which means that movement is always relative and can lead to the joystick sliding all over the screen. Compounding the problems are the shooting mechanics, which are solely based on the direction of your character and just feels unintuitive. For me, this lead to a lot of misplaced shots primarily due to the controls which range from frustrating to level-ending (especially with levels that contain lava which can instantly kill your companions).

The control issue feels amplified when you start to get to later levels with enemies that actively seek you out. Since aiming is based on the direction of Kotomon, you’ll find yourself in a constant predicament of running away while trying to turn around to launch a shot before turning back to avoid dying.

Other facets of Kotomon simply felt average. The visuals were a mix of cell-shade for the characters coupled with bland backdrops and a heavy dose of particle effects. Meanwhile, content felt a bit light once you get past the star ranking system.

Maybe it’s just a case of irrational expectations, but I was a bit disappointed in the overall package of Kotomon. It feels less like a music/rhythm adventure and more of a simplified platformer with frustrating controls and little in terms of variety. The cute monsters and somewhat catchy music are sure to appeal to some but folks looking for the next great platformer may want to pass.

TouchArcade Rating:

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There’s an overabundance of cute things on the App Store, as anyone who takes time to prowl it knows. Whether or not something will be equally as fun as it is cute is always a mystery, but in this case, Pinch Peeps [ $0.99 ] has managed to pull off that oh-so-desirable perfect balance between sickeningly adorable and fun to play.

The retro gamer in me loves when games are pared down to the absolute basics, and that is the case with Pinch Peeps. There is one gameplay mechanic, which you’ll simply repeat for the whole of the game: pinching your fingers together. In each of the two modes (Timed and Endless), you’ll be faced with the challenge of matching pairs of cutely-shaped blobs with eyes (called “peeps”) to rack up points.

In the case of Timed mode, you’ll have one minute to get matching. There are bonuses for matching quickly and for matching enough in a row, and since this mode is timed you’ll want to make sure you match as fast as your fingers can fly. You’ll also notice that a “perfect” pinch earns you more points. Also, matching clusters of peeps earns you far more than matching those lone singles, so make sure you prioritize those dudes.

Timed mode makes for a good quick game, but in my opinion Endless is far more challenging and fun. In this mode, you have three hearts that symbolize your lifespan, and every time you miss a match or hit an obstacles, you lose one of them. You will also see more bombs in this mode, which you need to flick apart instead of together to keep them from exploding. Obstacles come in the form of thin bars that change in shape and move around your screen. These are truly difficult to avoid when they get rolling, so you’ll want to be a master level flicker by then.

As you complete each section of Endless, you see a big peep surrounded by little peeps you’ll have to touch in a certain order to get a bonus. If you do so successfully, you’ll make it to the next round, which promises to be harder than the one before it.

Pinch Peeps is worlds different than Everplay’s last title, Spellsword [ $0.99 ], but it has that same quality feel to it. I can’t help but be reminded of past arcade titles that have the same simplicity and instant gameplay hook (Doodle Jump [$0.99 / Free / $2.99 (HD)], anyone?). By giving the player a single mission and simply allowing them to hone it well by repetition, you have the chance of making something great. But that one thing you have to do over and over has to be really fun.

Colorful graphics and great music accompany the solid gameplay to make this one a winner. It’s hooked up to Game Center as well, so you’ll have a nice handful of achievements to shoot for (some of them quite challenging). If you’ve been craving that simple arcade experience, Pinch Peeps is the way to go. Plus, there’s just something I can’t resist about the way they giggle when you match them together. All they want to do is be together, you know?

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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Late last week The New York Times published an op-ed debate titled, “Hip, or About to Break a Hip,” a discussion about whether 45 year-old skaters are “embarrassing and risky or inspiring and life-affirming?” Opinions ranged from “inspiring and life-affirming,” to “… do something productive: become an ultimate fighter, get your G.E.D., date an 18-year old.” Um, wow, guys.

Appropriate then is the release of Brisbane-based IV Motion’s Penny Time [$0.99 / Free ], which flies in the face of that rather unnecessary conversation. Shorn of the skating genre’s mechanical trappings, the game is allowed to focus on the sport’s anarchistic roots. Its reply, “Who gives a #$%*?”

Penny Time announces its care-free absurdity with a series of vignettes that see the player character using a Penny skateboard, crashed like a meteorite from the heavens, to freeze time and subsequently summon some spirit animals in the form of a pig, dodo and porpoise. Right. So, the player is off on his or her quest to skate through a series of time-frozen environments with the aid of the aforementioned Ghost Dodo.

Play is similar to rhythm runners like Tomena Sanner [ $1.99 ] and Bit.Trip Runner. The player proceeds left to right, clearing obstacles by swiping when rolling over a series of white (up), blue (left) and yellow (down) targets. Levels consist of three sections: a standard area where one acquires points based on timing of swipes, a multiplier section, and then a “cash-in” portion where the player is given the opportunity to bank their multiplied points, or take them on into the next area and risk bailing and losing the combo.

Touch controls are a little dodgy. There are a handful of times each run where I go flipping over a guardrail or a child or something because the game’s missed my inputs. This is sometimes exacerbated not only by how unforgiving the game can be (I’ve often hit my trick on the periphery of a target only to tumble into a sad pile), but by the minimalism of the flat, untextured 3D models. It borders on gorgeous abstraction in the vein of a Katamari Damacy, but the environments are so busy it’s often difficult to tell exactly what’s ahead. Case in point, during a particularly funny intro I held the iPhone up for my girlfriend, sitting behind me on the couch, who responded, “I can’t see… it just looks like a bunch of shapes.” Indeed.

That in mind, I’m not sure that it’s going to have much of a following among the leaderboard junkies. But, in addition to Game Center leaderboards, the game has a bevy of character and board customization options, along with the requisite Facebook and Twitter support, 84 achievements and a fantastic OST.

A rhythm game lives or dies by the quality of its tunes, and electronic artist and fellow Brisbanite Hunz has crafted a score among the best on the platform. A warm, varied slice of electronica, it’s up there with the Groove Coaster [ $2.99 ] and Beat Sneak Bandit [ $2.99 ] soundtracks, well worth the dollar the game costs. It’s a trump card that staves off mediocrity in what is otherwise an “okay” game, an intelligent pairing that propelled me along on my quest to count the black cats littering the next area. Note: this game has its share of black cats.

With a smart few stylistic choices, IV Motion have made a fine if sometimes frustrating little game, worth the low price of entry. Like the skateboard brand it advertises, it is “designed and built to look good, perform well, and exceed your expectations.” A little rougher around the edges maybe, but a ridiculous, ageless thing that can be enjoyed by anyone. And that’s okay.

TouchArcade Rating:

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In January of last year, Liv Games’ debut title Legendary Wars [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD)] really redefined the side-scrolling castle defense genre. It had a huge cast of interesting heroes and enemies, a fantastic art style, tons of humorous dialogue, and a huge single-player campaign to play through. But what really made it stand out was how it used so many different iterations of the strategy defense formula, making it feel like many different games in one and a fresh experience throughout.

Exactly a year to the day after the release of Legendary Wars, Liv Games put out its pseudo-sequel Monster Wars [ Free ], which we really liked in our review. It took basically everything from the first game but re-imagined it from the bad guys’ perspective, letting you play with the monsters as the protagonists. Also, it dumped heaps of new content, improved visuals, and lots of new odds and ends that made it an even better overall experience.

Today, you can grab Monster Wars for free for a limited time. In addition, Liv Games has sent over some details of what to expect of the next new 1.2 update which will be hitting soon, along with a teaser image of some of the new tier 4 armor:

-11 New AWESOME Tier 4 Monster Armors! Each with a more powerful special designed to destroy heroes!
-Monster Arena! 12 New Challenges and 2 new bosses!
-NEW LEVEL featuring the Unisis boss (Pegasus Unicorn)
-New Sky Angel boss in 6-2 and Arena.
-New ‘Hero” Difficulty designed for Tier 4 Monsters.
-New Fear status that causes heroes to get scared, miss and run away!
-11 New Tier 4 Achievements and 1 new Leaderboard.

Definitely don’t miss the chance to grab Monster Wars while free, and if you like the game and find yourself curious about what it’s like for the heroes in the game, then definitely check out Legendary Wars at some point too.

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London-based design studio ustwo created a heck of a game in Whale Trail, but it’s failing as a commercial entity. It’ll never hit the App Store top 10. The face of its bubbly and wide-eyed mascot, Willow, will never grace products like panties or fruit snacks. And at its current pace, it’ll be awhile before it generates a decent profit.

The studio has huge expectations that aren’t being met, and just based on trends, it’s clear that Whale Trail will continue not meeting them. It’s a failure in this life. But will it be one in its next? Again, ustwo is spending money on Whale Trail, giving it a second wind via creative mouth-to-mouth. It’s retooling and redesigning the oddball flying game as a free-to-play title in a high-bandwidth effort to attract the casual audience that the original version failed to reach, but managed to brush.

The hope is that this model, alongside some fresh content, will finally put the game over the top and onto hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of phones and tablets across the world. It’s a crazy plan. Crazy, however, is kinda its project lead’s thing.

On Conversion, Failure, And Journeys

I’ve been speaking with ustwo co-founder Mills about the upcoming transformation. Mills is like a bizarro Clint Eastwood. In the face of adversity he has the same grit and air of determination, but instead of a cowboy hat and a killer squint Mills rocks a long, flowing red wig and eyeglasses with thick, black frames. When he talks to you, even via e-mail, you feel his warmth, energy, and passion. He’s funny, too, and you see a lot of his brand of humor in his game. As we talk, he refuses to call the original Whale Trail a failure despite being able to produce evidence indicating as much. Instead, he calls it a “succailure” and the process of making it a F2P title a “journey.”

“Whale Trail was our first proper game release,” Mills tells TouchArcade. “Full heart, full passion. The launch was a success for our studio, showering loads of eyeballs on us but something didn’t quite click. Although we were hitting 12,000 downloads a day at launch, it tailed off pretty quick.”

In fact, Whale Trail has just hit over 188,000 total sales, and it shifts around 250 units a day across Android and iPhone and iPad. These kind of numbers would be enough for a lot of studios, but ustwo spent oodles of cash on the game. It needed Whale Trail to be up there with the Angry Birds and Fruit Ninjas and the Cut the Ropes of the world.

How those titles manage to stay up top is a matter of debate. Mills doesn’t believe that featuring, reviews, or exposure brings in new downloads. He thinks that word of mouth is now driving sales. As evidence, he notes that the game’s trailers still get around 500 new views a day and the music video for the theme used in the game drives interest, too. Riding on a wave of featuring, however, Whale Trail managed to light up the charts for a short period. Mills shot us the following handy chart, for those of you into the numbers:

Learning about why the game didn’t keep selling at its initial, breakneck pace is an important component of its upcoming transformation. Mills is soaking up everything he can. He frequently frames this entire ordeal as a learning experience.

“We went back to the drawing board and dove deep into the blue waters to understand why Whale Trail wasn’t quite able to take off. We had made a wonderful experience but there wasn’t enough ‘replay’ value in the current game. The new challenge levels added in iteration release two and three helped, but we needed more. Much more,” he adds.

The new version of the game is, indeed, functionally different. As you collect bubbles and travel, you’ll collect an in-game currency called Krill. With Krill, you can buy new powers, “useable treats,” costumes for Willow and its five new playable friends. If you want this stuff without the grind, you can buy Krill straight-up.

“The game is so much better. Players are now in full control of their destiny and each play rewards them. This was missing before,” he says.

If you’ve already purchased Whale Trail, Mills says you’ll receive a “BIG” bag of Krill when you update to the new version. Additionally, you’ll receive a message designed to make you feel “special.” Mills worries about how the current install base is going to react to this massive change, since the regular version will essentially die after this update. Perhaps that’s why this message to fans will be “like finding a bag of money in your house that you can use to pimp it right up 50 style” or “like finding a bag of candy that is so sweet, yet so sticky.”

When I bring up failure, Mills says I have a point, but he describes the experience so far as a “journey.” His studio has had opportunities to sell off the IP or actually make money, but ustwo as a whole is more interested in learning at this point.

“You can look at it as a failure, but I see it as journey,” Mills says. “Each iteration of Whale Trail has created a new buzz and has engaged the players more. It’s been a big lesson for me especially in regards to releasing something I wanted and releasing something that the majority of players want. We were very successful at creating buzz, we were very open about the whole experience and the story of Whale Trail will now be told via Penguin,” he tells us. He means the publishing company, not an actual penguin.

“We had two Whale Trail acquisition offers for the game as it currently stands now, but we were not interested in money. We were interested in better understanding what we could do to make the game better. I couldn’t walk away from it now, knowing it was not the game we wanted it to be. The game we have since built and are testing now with players is the game we should have released back then but didn’t realize it at the time.”

Even though the Whale Trail flopped, Mills notes some positives. It gave his studio new business opportunities, a higher-profile in the development community, and a lot of good will. These things, however, aren’t going to make new Whale Trail sail. A balance of IAP and fun mechanics are the only thing that’ll save it.

“I want to know more about free-to-play,” Mills says. “We are not being aggressive with the monetization potential. Players need never spend, but the joy they feel should allow the game to be pretty viral. We get a small social virility through Twitter right now, but the potential at the higher numbers is unreal. I guess the plan is for Willow to find some real Whales!”

We’ll have to see if the new version of Whale Trail hits the heights that Mills thinks it can reach. Regardless if it does or not, it’s going to be hard to call this iteration a failure. To Mills, success is all about what you do as you try to succeed.

“We didn’t set out to make something generic. Success is about crafting something you believe in and telling that story, granted it may never be a smash hit as the very concept of a little fat flying whale called Willow who lives in a psychedelic land is too far out for many to stomach, but we made something we are so proud of.”

We’ll have hands-on impressions in the near future.

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When you truly adore a game, sequels can be a scary thing. Sure, it’s more of what you love—but what if they mess it up? What if they abandon all the things you love for the sake of novelty? Well, Defender Chronicles [$1.99 / $2.99 / $4.99 (HD)] fans, let us put your fears to rest. We’ve had a chance to spend some time with Defender Chronicles II, and it seems to have everything the original had to offer. And every little bit of it is bigger, better, and sexier.

I spent the summer of 2009 consumed by the original. I had a brand new 3GS and pages of games, but Defender Chronicles – Legend of the Desert King was the one that devoured my time. Its mix of vertical tower defense and RPG conventions was completely irrestistable, and Gimka Entertainment and Menara Games propped it up with massive updates that added to its already substantial content. Defender Chronicles II is looking like it will contain that same potential for time investment, so you might want to clear your schedule in advance.

This game is leagues beyond its predecessor in terms of visual appeal, and that’s an achievement—as we pointed out way back in our review, Defender Chronicles was a looker in its time. But now every unit is more detailed and every animation is more fluid. And crisp—Retina support is in for iPhone, though apparently not for iPad. The game lives up to the rose-colored vision you may have of the original, but it’s much more refined, more up-to-date.

The gameplay has been similarly preserved. You’ll still spend your time turning flags into guilds and upgrading them through tiers of units, archers to rangers, squires to cavaliers. Strategy seems more important than ever before, with enemy units that take advantage of every potential weakness in your defense. Height and range are the biggest considerations as you scroll around massive, multi-tiered 2D maps. There are quite a few of those this time around, and they hit an almost Escher-esque level of complexity pretty quickly.

There isn’t much that’s changed outright, really. Voice actor George Ledoux returns to impress us with his Sean Connery impression, though he also pulls off an impressive lizardman. Heroes Melwen and the General return, but this time they’re accompanied by two new friends: Lovell and Elwyn, an archer and priest. The brand-new story of the heroes and their defence of Athelia against the Orcs and Forsaken is told through gorgeous comic-book cutscenes once more.

From our brief time with the game, it really seems like you’re going to be able to put in a ludicrous numbers of hours. There’s so much here for the player that wants to go deep, with heroes to level up and customize, hundreds of artifacts to locate and five difficulty levels and game modes to work through. The difficulty curve also feels a bit steeper, so if you’re already familiar with the game you shouldn’t be underwhelmed. If you’re feeling particularly cocky, you’ll be able to challenge yourself with a huge list of Game Center achievements and leaderboards.

Ultimately, it seems like Defender Chronicles II will be the perfect sort of sequel. It updates already excellent gameplay for a new generation of devices, and brings in all sorts of improvements in the process. It’s hard to imagine any Defender Chronicles fans being disappointed, and folks that are new to the series should be in for a treat. We’ll be taking a closer look at the game over the next couple weeks, and we’ll be back with our review after it hits the App Store on May 24th. In the meantime, the developers are posting regular previews in our discussion thread, so take a peek if your appetite isn’t already whetted enough.

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