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TouchArcade has gone a round with Bar Oasis before, back in 2010 when the first installment came out. However, I was completely unfamiliar with the game when I got word of Bar Oasis 1.5 [Free], which promises to bridge the gap between the first game and the sequel. I wasn’t sure what the difference was exactly until I read the fine print: the second game will give you access to tons of extra content, so we’re just getting a taste here. But the taste I got left me ready for much, more more.

For those of you who never played the first game in the series, Bar Oasis 1.5 offers an experience much like that of the Phoenix Wright series and other text-heavy games. In reality, it resembles a visual novel more than the Phoenix Wright series does, so if you don’t like lots of dialogue, don’t download this one. However, if witty banter and great mini-games appeal to you, you’re going to adore this. It also feels a bit like playing a really good anime, which is the ticket straight to my heart with no stops inbetween.

In Bar Oasis 1.5, you play the role of an attractive girl named Carla who loses her job and finds herself at Bar Oasis much by accident. Despite your relative lack of experience, you quickly find out from the head bartender that the guy they usually count on (Vincent, from the first game) has gone running off to China after some elusive woman. And so, they’re desperate for help. You get drafted into his old spot, with lots of characters waiting to get to know you as you learn how to be a great bartender.

Bar Oasis 1.5 has two main modes: story and making drinks. The game utilizes motion, so you will actually tilt the phone to pour and shake it when you use the mixer. One of my only complaints about the game was trying to master the timing (but I think that’s part of the point). Sometimes it seems like timing is the key, as there is a timer in the top right corner that tells you how well you are doing.

It says “Pro” if you’re fast enough, and will eventually tick down to “Amateur” if you take way too long. Making the mix drinks also means memorizing the backbar and where things are, which will come naturally after you’ve made enough preliminary drinks. The game is very smart about this as you serve a whole lot of bottled beer and whisky shots before you get down to more varied orders.

One really cool thing about the game is that all the drink recipes are accurate, so as you unlock them all, you’re also getting a handy recipe app to make cocktails with in the process. It’s when you notice little details like that that you start to realize how clever this game’s entire concept really is. You also have a drink making mode available right from the menu, so you can access the recipes easily and also practice making the drinks. This comes in really handy if you are struggling with getting the drinks right in story mode.

Bar Oasis 1.5 is easily the best title I’ve played on my phone in ages, but that’s also a matter of personal taste. I’m a huge fan of innovative concepts, and in a sea of physics puzzlers, you really notice when something swims to the forefront. The character development is clearly the focus of this game, and it’s nicely balanced with the drink making mechanic.

There are only 20 drinks available in this limited free teaser version, but the developers promise 100 in the upcoming Bar Oasis 2. Frankly, I would have come back just to spend more time with the characters, but I’ll take more drinks to learn as a backup excuse. Don’t miss this one. It might be free, but I’d have easily paid for a title as interesting as this and am eagerly looking forward to Bar Oasis 2.

TouchArcade Rating:

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While dwindling on consoles, RPGs of all shapes and sizes are flourishing on mobile devices. There have been some truly creative and unique RPGs released in the past few years, and perhaps none is capable of tugging at your heartstrings and pushing you to fight just one more battle than Game Stew Studio’s new iOS game, Tower of Fortune (ToF) [ $0.99 ].

Like Puzzle Quest and Sword & Poker before it, ToF infuses a basic role-playing game with mechanics drawn from a completely different genre entirely—in this case, slot machines.

The premise of ToF is pretty simple. You’re a hero. You’ve a lady to rescue. You need to gather coin, get loot, and defeat evil incarnate. A “game of the year”-winning story, this is not, but the simple framework provides enough context to the game to make it work.

Before you even get to the gameplay, though, you’ll be hard-pressed to ignore ToF’s eye-catching retro art style and ear-pleasing chip tunes. Both the game’s quirky, NES-era visuals and strong selection of catchy music make the game visually and aurally simplistic and yet undeniably charming, like the greatest Gameboy games of yore.

Presentation is all well and good, of course, but how does the game actually play? Surprisingly well. ToF succeeds in blending the requisite RPG features with the mechanics of a slot machine, albeit with only one truly noteworthy quirk.

Currency is central to ToF, and it’s what powers all of the game’s subsequent systems. To progress through the game’s world, you’ll need coin. To battle, you’ll need to spend (and potentially lose) coin. To upgrade your hero, you’ll need coin. To heal after battle, you’ll need coin. To buy items… you get the point.

There are two ways to earn coin in the game: through fairly nonintrusive microtransactions or by fighting monsters. Given that the combat is the star of the show, most will be content to get their hands dirty and earn money the hard way, and it’s not hard to do so willingly as prices aren’t as exorbitant as they are in similar games.

This is where the game’s slot system comes into play. When you enter combat, you’ll be greeted with a simple one-line, three-reel slot machine. The reels are filled with icons that represent doing damage, taking damage, gaining XP, and gaining coin. Whatever icon appears on the left-most reel determines what happens during the turn, and the more like icons matched, the more significant the effect. In addition, the effect is multiplied by repeat matches, so if you get XP one spin and XP again the next, you’ll get an XP bonus.

One more level of both gambling and depth is added to the battle system by way of a simple “Bet” button. Prior to a spin, you can bet your coin to enhance the effects of the spin. Every effect is doubled after a bet, so you’ll be crossing your fingers in hopes of avoiding taking damage icons and screaming in joy when you hit a full three-match of XP or coin. This becomes critical as bad guys get harder and have more health.

I’m not much of a gambler, and random elements in games tend to annoy me to no end—here’s looking at you, Crisis Core. But after hours of playing, I’ve found that ToF manages a fine balance between feeling cheated and feeling lucky, and hard battles are nail-biters as a result. As you begin to fight more difficult monsters, the high wrought by a good string of luck and the stomach-sinking disappointment wrought by a bad one make the game quite compelling.

In practice, the system works surprisingly well. This is largely thanks to the game’s simple loot and upgrade systems, which allow you to upgrade your character periodically with simple items and stat boosts, you can do a decent amount to prepare for battle and tip the tide in your favor.

If there are any complaints to be had, they would revolve around the game’s sense of progression. Progression is a critical component of any RPG: it’s what keeps the genre’s fans playing, even when everything else—from storyline to graphics and beyond—may falter. ToF struggles a little bit in this regard, as progression is too random and too fleeting to feel rewarding in the long run.

Moving through the game from area to area requires paying escalating “unlock” fees. This means that you’ll need to amass a substantial purse. This in-and-of-itself wouldn’t be that bad, but when combined with the game’s rougelike treatment of death, you can find yourself frustrated.

Should you die, you’ll lose all the equipment, levels, and upgrades you earned as you play—you keep only your unspent coin. As a result, some may beat the game in a day while others could theoretically play it indefinitely and never see the end.  This near-complete randomness makes it hard to feel any sustained, substantial, and satisfying feelings of progression.

In spite of this issue, though, the game never stops being fun to play. The game’s ability to produce such a wide spectrum of emotional highs and lows is no small feat for a game, and additional elements, like the game’s fun mini-quest system that introduces small objectives that reward XP when completed, do wonders at keeping things fresh.

Ultimately, Tower Of Fortune may not have the progression elements, compelling story, or depth of its meatier RPG brethren, but it has all the stats, levels, loot, triumph, and tragedy a RPG fan needs for on-the-go gaming.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Zombie games are still a big deal and it continues to blow my mind that this is the case. What hasn’t been done in a zombie game? Think about it. We’ve shot zombies and we’ve cut zombies. We’ve set zombies on fire. We’ve run over zombies and cured zombies and beat zombies with baseball bats. We’ve even participated as part of the horde in games like Valve’s Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. Over the last few years, there’s not much we haven’t done to or with zombies across multiple genres, including puzzle and even tower defense. This thought has crossed my mind several times: what can a brand new zombie game even offer outside of a slight twist on what we’ve done before?

And then Brainsss [$2.99] shambles along and shatters this idea in my head that zombie games are lame because there’s just nothing left to do in them that we haven’t done trillions of times in a billion different games. Brainsss offers something new in the space, and its core action is rich enough for me to give it a solid recommendation, despite cooling on this zombie … craze we’re still in.

Brainsss is a top-down strategy game where you control a horde of zombies on quests to assimilate people into your horde. In order to do this, you’ll need to treat the ever-growing horde like a fleet, splitting it up into pieces so you can trap victims spread across the game’s myriad of labyrinthine levels, which are often brimming with helpless survivors who are ready to bolt the second they see snarling beasts approaching. As you convert more people, you’ll be able to meaningfully split your horde into even more groups.

There are a few change of pace design elements that compliment the strategy. The “RAGE” meter in particular is hip. As you do damage, you’ll be able to enter into a berserk mode that ramps up your horde’s speed and intensity. On the other hand, the mission design is sharp, too. In one level, you might be stopping survivors from feeling to a helicopter. In others, you’re chomping on scientists who were incredibly fleet of foot before running into your horde. Another neat twist: Brainnsss also rocks NPCs that can harm your horde, like police officers and backyard pugilists that you have to disarm in specific ways.

Brainsss biggest problem is probably its habit of skewing casual. You’re not going to feel like you’re the smartest undead general ever while trapping dudes. The controls can be a bit spotty as well. To split your horde, you need to “paint” over part of it, and then point to a new location in the level. Grabbing a specific amount can be a hassle if your horde is bunched tightly. Otherwise, the point-and-paint controls are bliss: this is a game that feels like and operates like a game designed for iPad and iPhone.

If you’re still into zombie games, or just need to check another thing you’ve done with zombies off of your mental checklist, feel free to check this out. Brainnsss strategy and action feel pretty unique in a space that’s been done to undeath, and they probably really pop outside of this vacuum. I can dig it, at least.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Do you like tacos? How about star fields, spaceships, and throwback games that trade polygons for pixels and full orchestras for beeps and bleeps that hearken back to the glory days of the Atari 2600? Developer Taco Graveyard serves up generous helpings of those elements and more (even the space tacos) in Omegapixel [ Free ], a fast and furious action game that throws in a fair bit of puzzle solving to keep you on your toes.

The first time you load a mission, Omegapixel might remind you a lot of Geometry Wars [ $0.99 ]. Using a virtual stick, you control a small space rig that zips around the cosmos and battles enemy ships. Unlike Geometry Wars, though, you barrel into enemies kamikaze-style instead of blasting them with lasers. While you’re floating like a butterfly and stinging like a battering ram with thrusters, enemies pour onto the screen in greater and greater numbers.

Enemy ships come in several varieties—some that make a beeline for you, others that converge on the pixel. On one stage, I flew around smashing into red ships that targeted the Omegapixel while blue pyramids followed my space vessel in tireless pursuit. Suddenly a vertical yellow line came sliding across the screen like a barcode scanner laser. If the line touched the pixel, I lost a life. Ignoring the red destroyers and blue pyramids for the moment, I flew to the far side of the yellow wall and tapped the lower right corner of the screen, which instantly swaps your location with the Omegapixel’s and vice versa. Teleporting put the pixel safely on the far side of the wall, but right in range of the red ships I’d let live to deal with the wall.

The key to victory lies in shielding the pixel from its enemies, while using it to shield you from yours. To get rid of the blue pyramids that zero in on my ship’s location, I had to lure them into the pixel’s fiery maw by either putting the pixel in between me and them, or waiting for them to draw close enough to touch before teleporting, which dumped the pixel right where I’d been drifting a second before. Easier said than done, especially with bouncers knocking the pixel every which way, red ships spiraling toward it, new purple walls that harmed me instead of the pixel sliding into view, and asteroids that, while harmless, distract you by stealing your attention away from real threats.

It’s stressful, but the kind of stress that leaves your senses crackling from adrenaline. Cobbling together a plan and pulling it off in a matter of moments never failed to invite a thrill of accomplishment. The game almost becomes more of a twitchy puzzler on later levels, forcing you to remain aware of the pixel’s location at all times and pull each enemy type from your memory log the moment it comes into view so you can react to the new threat appropriately.

As you play, you’ll collect credits you can use to deck out your ship: explosive teleports, extra armor plating, defense mechanisms for the Omegapixel, a line of energy that flares between you and the pixel when you teleport, incinerating anything it touches. You can earn credits the old-fashioned way by clearing Story and Arcade missions, picking up credit packs that randomly appear during play, or just drop real money on IAP credit packs and splurge on upgrades.

Like all games that control with virtual sticks, Omegapixel’s controls suffers from minor virtual-stick touchiness, but my fried reflexes cost me more missions than occasionally spot controls. Other than said spottiness and grating music (the sound effects are the right kind of bleepy retro, but the soundtrack, which you can disable, sounds like an 8-bit game that froze right in the middle of a high chord) Omegapixel is a ton of fun, and especially shouldn’t be missed at its current price of free.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Contre Jour [99¢] and its Universal HD brother, Contre Jour HD [$2.99], has always been a looker, but it’s now even more impressive on new iPad. Thanks to a late (but welcome) retina update, the HD version puzzle game is fully embracing Apple’s new high pixel density screen. As you’ll see below, this version is sharper and crisper and cleaner than it ever has been, which is saying something since it looked great pre-update anyway.

No update for a puzzle game is complete without new levels. A brand new jungle-themed chapter has been added to both versions of the game, ushering in some twists on the game’s pre-existing moveable tentacle and platform mechanics. Also, a new “bonus” ending has been added for those who can collect the game’s (now) 300 lights. Sounds like you’ve got some work to do, guys.

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Ah. Werewolves. One of the three components in the holy Hollywood trinity of monsters. They ordinarily come in two flavors: loud, ravenous and incapable of anything but wanton violence… or dark-eyed eye candy. The transmogrification-happy lupine of MacGuffin’s Curse [$3.99 / Free ], however, is neither of those.

Indie development studio Brawsome has MacGuffin’s Curse billed as a ‘comedy puzzle-adventure’, an appropriate description if there ever was one. Operating from a top-down perspective, MacGuffin’s Curse is rife with all the switch-flipping, block-moving, barrier-removing goodness that is standard of the genre and the silliness of a Terry Pratchett novel. Here, you play as the charming Lucas MacGuffin, a red-haired thief who dwells in a considerable destitution with his young child and elderly mother. He has something to say about pretty much anything and everyone, a peculiarity that may either have you rolling your eyes within the first ten minutes or chuckling away in appreciation. Take your pick. Either is applicable.

The game opens with Lucas on his latest heist. In order to pay the rent, you’re going to have to retrieve a certain amulet from the extremely lightly-guarded depths of the local museum. As you might have guessed already, one thing leads to another and you eventually find yourself bound to the cursed jewelry and gifted with the ability to transform into a powerful, red-maned werewolf whenever you choose to. No, I don’t know how this really is a curse either.

This, of course, is one of the game’s primary gimmicks. Each of your two forms has a different set of abilities and limitations. As a human, you’re capable of doing delicate things like operating doors and squeezing through windows. As a werewolf, you’ll be able to manhandle safes, blocks, enormous battery packs and dig for buried treasure. Most, if not all, of the puzzles will require you to make use of your dual set of talents.

Speaking of the puzzles, let me reassure those who have played through the lite version of one thing: they do get harder. While the game’s collection of mind-benders don’t really deviate from the standard ‘push this block here, activate that switch there’ formula, there is enough variety in the mix to keep you playing (even if you have to do it in chunks). I’m especially fond of one of the earlier ‘boss’ battles. Instead of doing the standard werewolf act where you charge headlong into your enemies and rip their hearts out, MacGuffin’s Curse will have you maneuvering from room to room as you attempt to close the distance by circumnavigating your enemy’s attempt to stall you.

Though best played by those who enjoy the idea of a combat-free Zelda, MacGuffin’s Curse is still something I would recommend to those who don’t. Well, if you enjoy the whole comedic narrative thing, at any rate. It’s true that MacGuffin’s Curse tries just a little too hard (it doesn’t so much nudge you in the ribs as it does grind them into a paste with its hypothetical elbow) but it does have heart. You see it in the details – in the way the comments change depending on the kind of skin you’re wearing, in the over-the-top characters, in how the game lets you slowly build up a half-decent apartment for Lucas’s family and the details of the setting. There’s a fair amount of side quests for you to indulge in as well, something that helps flesh out the Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere-esque undertones of the world that Brawsome constructed.

The only thing that I didn’t really like about McGuffin’s Curse is, perhaps, the controls. In order to move, you touch a finger on the screen and drag it in the direction you want Lucas to go. In order to push or pull blocks, you’ll have to use two fingers instead. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this and, for the most part, it works out decently well. Nonetheless, because of positioning, you sometimes find your fingertips blocking out vision, a phenomenon that makes me pine a little for a virtual d-pad.

Is MacGuffin’s Curse worth purchasing? Yes. Definitely. It may not extract the ‘Oh, god! This is ingenious!’ sort of reaction with its puzzles, but the relentless humor, intriguing setting, adequately-designed puzzles and faint Tim Burton vibe will make it a delicious addition to anyone’s collection of crate-puzzles.

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Trilobyte’s The 7th Guest [ Free ] was among the first full motion video-centric PC games released following the dawn of the CD-ROM drive era. I had a horrifically underpowered Mac at the time that just barely stuttered through the game, but doing so is a gaming memory I’ll never forget. Gameplay focuses around exploring the dark and mysterious puzzle-packed mansion of Henry Stauf. I don’t want to spoil too much of it, since the whole experience is so much better if you manage to go into it fresh.

If you’re already familiar with the game, you can check out our review where I get into some additional nitty gritty details. But, really, you should just skip all that noise and download the game anyway- Especially while it’s free. As an additional bonus, The 7th Guest [ Free ] is also free on the Mac App Store. If you get stuck in either version of the game, give the Book of Secrets [ Free ] a look.

In our original review of T7G, we were a little bummed that the notoriously difficult microscope puzzle was nowhere to be found. The good news is Trilobyte later released this puzzle as a standalone game called The 7th Guest: Infection [ Free (HD)] which is also free as part of this promotion. We posted some more details about Infection here.

Go go go! Grab these games now!

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“Chariots of the Dogs,” [$4.99] the fourth episode in the Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space series is easily the best one so far. The Sam & Max series has always been tightly written and designed, but “Chariots” does two things remarkably well: it matches its narrative hook to its mechanics, and it ties the entire series together.

If nothing else, “Chariots” is remarkable for the way it brings almost all of the big questions from the first three episodes and ties them together: the Bosco and Stinky subplots are advanced, and previously off-screen bit roles come forward as major players in the series. This feels satisfying and rewarding for longtime devotees, and Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space’s episodic structure lends itself to weaving these disparate narrative threads together. Even the intro sequence feels tighter and more cinematic, suggesting a series that is maturing with each episode.

Episodes one, two, and three were generally self-contained, but “Chariots” provides the most solid narrative link in the series thus far: it picks up the immediate aftermath of “Night of the Raving Dead” [$4.99]and ends on a cliffhanger that propels the story into episode five [$4.99]

The Sam & Max series has always been, at its heart, based on inventory items, but Beyond Time and Space seems dedicated to refining and twisting that formula as much as possible: “Moai Better Blues” [$4.99] used portals to great effect; the previously mentioned “Raving Dead” included several dialogue trees and ambient aural puzzles. Without spoiling anything, “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses on time travel.

Incidentally, the time travel mechanic was first introduced in episode one, “Ice Station Santa,” [$4.99] when Sam and Max have to appease the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. (The Ghost of Christmas Future section actually foreshadows the end of “Chariots,” if you’re paying attention.)

The beauty of “Chariots” isn’t just that it’s an adventure game with a time-travel story; the time travel conceit shapes and informs every puzzle, becoming the tentpole mechanic in its own right. A lazier game would use time travel as a plot device and build a standard inventory game around it. “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses not just on matching certain items with certain solutions, but in exploring their effects through time. Like its predecessors, “Chariots” does a good job matching its story hooks with its mechanics, which makes each relatively short episode feel distinctive and full-featured.

The logic employed in “Chariots” is relatively straightforward: the Freelance Police can move forward in time to gather clues, which in turn allows them to travel backward in time to affect the future. There’s a nice gameplay loop there, and the game as a whole feels holistic and natural, each puzzle mechanic and story arc syncing perfectly.

It’s no surprise, then, that “Chariots” feels intuitive and fun throughout. Making its players feel smart has always been one of Sam & Max’s strong suits, but every episode until now has had puzzles that feel arbitrary or unfair. Generally speaking, the broad strokes of each puzzle or story arc are easy to grasp in “Chariots,” even if the step-by-step puzzle solution requires some tinkering and mental elasticity. For my money, this installment strikes the right balance of deductive reasoning and old-fashioned observation.

This is, I’m assuming, another of episodic game development’s bounties — after four games (not counting Sam & Max Save the World, the previous series of episodic Telltale games), it’s no surprise to find the writers and developers zeroing in on smart, intuitive puzzle design.

“Chariots of the Dogs”  is smoothly and tightly paced, and nothing feels misplaced or kludged together. It’s a charming, warm, and funny game, and it’s the best episode in an increasingly good series.

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Rogue was a little before my time, and it took a while to see the appeal. Games with permadeath sound like an exercise in extreme frustration, even balanced out by tantalizingly random loot and procedurally generated worlds. In the past few years I’ve come around on the subject of roguelikes, though. It’s nice to have RPGs and skill-based games meet up, and they’re the best way to enjoy a complete game in a short time.

The latter is what I enjoy most about them, so it grates on me that so many of the best roguelikes take hours to complete. Wouldn’t it be nice if more of them embraced their strengths and provided seriously compact experiences? Not that there’s not room for the long-form, but how I’d love to have more games out there like Zaga 33 [$0.99]. It’s quick, compact and challenging in equal parts—nothing wasted, nothing left out.

It’s odd to see a game so well-suited to iOS arriving as a port from desktop, but that’s where we find ourselves. Developer Michael Brough has embraced all the best things about the roguelike in Zaga 33, and has done so with bite-sized chunks that fit perfectly into the world of mobile gaming. Got 15 minutes to kill? That’s enough to work your way through the whole game if you have the skills to pull it off. Of course, you don’t stop there. It’ll take more than a few of those short sessions to work your way up to that level, and more than a few afterwards to max out your high score.

Stranded on the, err, rogue planet Zaga 33, your hero, the humble “@,” must travel into its depths to destroy the alien cortex. You’re virtually unarmed, extremely vulnerable, and facing down 25 levels of hostile aliens. Zaga 33 strips out all but the absolute necessities of the genre. You won’t level up your little @, and you get nothing for your kills. Each time you hit an alien you take down one of its two hit points. Each time an alien hits you, you take one damage out of a maximum of nine.

That means hunting is counterproductive, so each time you enter a new screen you’ll need to weigh your possibilities. Do you head for one of the potentially useful artifacts? Doing so might draw an alien’s attention. You can fight one off easily enough, and you’ll recover one hit point when you reach the next room. But if there are two in your way, or three, you might find yourself in dire straits.

Add to that dilemma another layer of concern: you’re never sure what the artifacts will be until you use them. The artifacts’ symbols are shuffled with every new game you start, so a starburst symbol might be a healing item one playthrough and a nuke the next. Is it worth it to fight through a sea of hostile aliens for what might just be a teleportation spell? It’s a tough call. Knowing that the number of items you have at the end effects your final score—well that just makes it tougher.

You’re not left with only unknowns, at least. Zaga 33 tells you exactly how each alien will behave. Goblins move toward you, snarks move between you and the exit, and so on. This is information you’ll need in order to survive, and it turns each level into something of a puzzle. You can’t always reach the exit without getting hit, but it’s always worth trying.

Zaga 33 isn’t for everyone. The controls aren’t perfect, which can sometimes lead to mistakes. The game’s distinctly retro aesthetic will be a turn-off for some. And I can sympathize with the feeling that roguelikes can be a bit pointless. I enjoy the repetition, the fight to improve my score in a pretty randomly generated experience, but there’s no shame in preferring persistance.

If a retro-style roguelike sounds right up your alley, on the other hand, Zaga 33 is a must-buy. It’s tiny, but that just means you can try often and learn from your mistakes. I don’t usually expect to get much from a game in 15 minutes, but Zaga 33 makes every second count. Try the free desktop version if you’re on the fence—if it captures you like it’s captured me, you’ll be happy to put down a bit of change to take it on the go.

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