TouchArcade.ru

If you've found yourself excited by all the coverage of Galaxy on Fire 2 lately between the initial set of screenshots, the WWDC hands-on, the teaser trailer, and finally the full trailer, this is a freebie you won't want to miss. Galaxy on Fire 3D was released in early 2009, and includes over 20 hours of space shootin' and tradin' gameplay. It feels a little dated compared to more recent shooters, but that doesn't make the game any less fun to play through.

Galaxy on Fire 2 is scheduled for release this October, and while I doubt that playing through the first one will be at all required to enjoy the second… There's no reason not to give this game a try, especially while it's free.

[source]

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we reviewed Solomon's Boneyard from Raptisoft, the prequel to the excellent dual-stick dungeon crawler Solomon's Keep [99¢/Lite]. In the game you'll play as one of an assortment of different wizards and witches who are trying to prevent a young Solomon Dark from desecrating the local graveyard. You'll fight against endless waves of increasingly difficult undead enemies within the confines of the cemetery. Your character will earn experience and level up allowing for upgrading of your magical abilities, and a persistent monetary system lets you collect coins for use in an upgrade shop in-between play sessions.

We really liked Solomon's Boneyard when it came out earlier this month and found it well worth the one dollar price tag, but surprisingly the game has already dropped to free for a day. The following video gives you a good idea of what the gameplay is like in Solomon's Boneyard:

If you had been on the fence about buying Solomon's Boneyard before, there's no excuse not to give it a try during this temporary price drop. If you like the gameplay, then we can definitely recommend checking out Solomon's Keep as well, which has similar elements but a structured level progression and meatier story to go along with it. Be sure to check our full reviews for Solomon's Boneyard and Solomon's Keep, as well as our take on the Solomon's Keep 2.0 update. For the grand total of 99¢ you can grab two of the better dual-stick shooter experiences on the App Store. More information and impressions can be found in the Solomon's Boneyard thread in our forums.

[source]

The atmospheric zombie shooter Aftermath went free for today only. We reviewed the game back in March and really loved the creepy mood the game offers.

The mood of the game really is perfect. The lighting effects, 3d engine and sound come together to give Aftermath a great feel. Your character is controlled by two thumb pads, but not in the traditional dual-stick format. Left is movement while the right one lets you turn left/right. Meanwhile, firing at zombies is automatic when you point at them with your flashlight. While this may sound awkward, it works quite well and makes the game feel a bit more realistic and frantic as you must be facing your opponents to fire at them.

There's a lot to like about this one, and we highly recommend picking it up for free today.

[source]

Backflip Studios has released their latest free game to the App Store. The release of Buganoids follows their other summer launches including Tunnel Shoot, Graffiti Ball, and Ninjump. We profiled Backflip Studios' success in the App Store back at WWDC. As of this writing, they report that their games have seen over 48 million downloads with up to 2 million unique players playing each day.

For this latest App Store entry, Backflip enlisted the help of a developer we're very familiar with around here – Dan Bliss. Bliss' App Store career [iTunes link] has been pretty much exclusively dedicated to retro-inspired games, so his involvement made a lot of sense for Buganoids.

The developers accurately describe Buganoids as "Tempest" meets "Centipede" with a dash of "Gyruss" thrown in. The game is a circumferential shooter where your goal is to destroy the spawning bugs coming up from the planet. Your only ability is to shoot down — straight into the planet. So, in order to adjust your aim, you need to walk around the planet. If a bug makes its way to the surface, you're going to have to shoot form the opposite side to take it out. It's a pretty simply mechanic that offers a surprising amount of depth.

The game offers five different weapons across seven different globes and includes 3 levels of difficulty. Like all of Backflip's free games, they are ad-supported by offer the customer the ability to buy-out of the ads.

There's both an iPhone and iPad version of the game, and they are both free. So, no reason not to try it out.

[source]

Early last year Namco released Time Crisis Strike [$4.99], an iPhone version of their Time Crisis series that has been extremely popular in arcades and on home consoles for the past decade and a half. The game is an on-rails shooter that utilizes a unique (at the time) cover mechanic that allows you to lie in wait for the most opportune time to pop out and take shots at the enemy. The Time Crisis games are certainly fun, but the iPhone version lost much of the magic in its transition to the touch screen. What really makes Time Crisis enjoyable is actually aiming a light gun at the screen and reacting quickly to shoot at enemies while strategically taking cover when you needed to by stepping down on a pedal built into the arcade cabinet. Lacking these two key elements, Time Crisis Strike lost a lot of its appeal on the iPhone, which we explained in our review.

Earlier tonight, Namco released a sequel to the iPhone version titled Time Crisis 2nd Strike [$9.99]. After briefly checking out the game, it offers much of the same gameplay that was in the first. The graphics and framerate are much better this time around, but not Retina Display optimized. One really nice change is the option to disable tilting the device to duck and reload, instead using a button in either of the lower corners of the screen. Also, there are multiple weapons to use including a pistol, machine gun, shotgun and grenade launcher. This mixture of weapons is a welcome change and adds a bit of variety to the simplistic tap-to-shoot mechanic. There is a prologue level plus 3 episodes to play through, all tied together with some fairly decent cutscenes and story.

If you enjoyed the first Time Crisis Strike, then you should enjoy Time Crisis 2nd Strike as well. It's definitely an improvement over the original, although it still feels lacking compared to other platforms that feature physical guns and foot pedals to engage in the action. Impressions are being collected in our forums, and if you're interested in a new entry in the Time Crisis saga for your iPhone you can pick up Time Crisis 2nd Strike in the App Store right now.

[source]

Earlier this month we took a look at the upcoming bullet hell shooter Phoenix from Firi Games. Phoenix claims to be able to push hundreds of bullets onscreen at a time and still run smoothly even on the oldest of Apple iOS devices. Firi recently sent us a work in progress build of the game and after spending some time playing it seems they are well on their way to bringing another solid entry into the shmup genre on the App Store. The preview build we were given is missing some key elements like music, some sound effects, and graphical variety, but the core of the gameplay is in place and it's definitely a lot of fun.

Phoenix is a little bit different from other scrolling shooters in that there aren't set levels. Instead, the entire game is an endless randomly generated level with a difficulty that scales based on how well you are performing. Think of it as the Canabalt [$2.99] of shmups. Controls are of the relative touch variety, meaning you can touch anywhere on the screen to control your ship instead of it always following closely to your fingertip. Defeated enemies will drop upgrades to your main weapon, health packs that repair your ship, temporary shield powerups, and a super weapon of sorts called the Alpha Strike Attack which gives your ship incredibly strong firepower for a limited time.

I was a bit skeptical about the scaling difficulty in Phoenix at first, but in practice it actually seems to work as intended. When you are doing well the game throws bigger and more difficult enemies at you who will fire faster and spray more bullets in your direction. Scoring also scales with the difficulty, which can be seen with a tiny meter next to your score display. As you avoid damage, the meter increases and so do the points you earn for defeating enemies. Due to this, you score doesn't necessarily reflect on how long you survive in the game, but rather how efficiently you can avoid damage. Scores are tracked by an in-game global and regional leaderboard.

So far Phoenix has nailed the groundwork for an interesting take on the bullet hell shmup. Controls work well, and I was easily able to narrowly dodge the multitude of bullets being fired at me while simultaneously dishing out my own offensive onslaught. Visually Phoenix is looking very nice as well, although having only one scrolling background image got a little old. I'm told that this is something being worked on and there should be some more variety in locations in the final release. The leaderboards are also being tweaked, as right now they are somewhat basic and allow multiple entries per user which really clutters things up for such a high score focused game. Phoenix seems really well suited for something like Game Center, but it remains to be seen if the developer has any plans to implement this.

All in all I'm really impressed with what I've played of Phoenix at this point, and if Firi Games can polish up some of the rough edges in the game shooter fans can look forward to some bullet hell action no matter which iOS device they own. Firi had been shooting for a September release, so barring any unforeseen issues cropping up we should be seeing Phoenix arrive in the coming weeks. In the meantime you can follow along with the discussion for Phoenix in our forums, and we'll take a closer look at the game when it hits the App Store.

[source]

Gameloft recently released another episode of their series of podcasts, which like most of their podcasts includes some new tidbits about upcoming games. It also includes quite a bit of Real Golf 2011 [$6.99], so if you're not interested in that feel free to skip to about 2:30 in the video.

Last week we posted about Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus, and this podcast includes a brief clip of the incredibly corny trailer along with some additional details. Aside from refining the original controls, they're also packing in a gyro control option. There are going to be 3 playable characters across 12 battlefields and players will have access to 15 different weapons which can be tweaked with various accessories. They're also calling it the "most complete multiplayer FPS on the App Store."

In addition, Gameloft also teased an upcoming developer diary of Dungeon Hunter 2 and revealed a new space shooter called Star Battalion which looks a lot like the upcoming Galaxy on Fire 2 by Fish Labs. One incredibly intriguing component of Star Battalion is the inclusion of online coop gameplay, since really, coop play makes everything more fun.

We'll keep an eye out for more information on these games, but historically by the time Gameloft starts showing games off like this, their release isn't too far off.

[source]

Back in April, a fantastic little title hit the App Store called Solomon's Keep [99¢/Lite]. It was a dual-stick dungeon crawler that had you ascending through randomized dungeon floors filled with swarms of baddies as you leveled up your wizard collecting loot and gaining new abilities. We really enjoyed Solomon's Keep in our review, and the game got even better with an excellent 2.0 update. Now, developer Raptisoft (who also gave us the currently free platformer Hoggy [Link]) has created an endless survival version of Solomon's Keep titled Solomon's Boneyard [99¢]. The game uses the familiar mechanics of Solomon's Keep but offers a different enough experience that warrants a look even if you already own the original.

Solomon's Boneyard takes place 23 years before the events of Solomon's Keep. An adolescent Solomon Dark is learning the ways of dark magic and disturbing the graves at a local graveyard, and it's up to a group of newly graduated wizards to put a stop to him. You'll start the game by choosing from one of seven characters (three of which are unlockable) who each have their own unique set of abilities. There's a wizard with a focus on lightning attacks, one focused in fire, one who deals with ice, and so forth. You can also choose to purchase some helpful items from a shop prior to entering the boneyard, like additional potions or abilities to help you on your quest. Fans of Solomon's Keep will recognize these items and offensive abilities as they are essentially the same here.

Once you've chosen your character and geared up, you'll head to the graveyard where you catch Solomon digging up graves. He then sends his undead minions after you, and you'll fight off the endless waves of increasingly difficult enemies while trying to last as long as possible. The same enemies you face in Solomon's Keep are here too, including various skeletons, zombies, and bouncing flaming demons. Defeating these enemies gives you experience, and each time you level up you'll be able to choose from three available upgrades to your weapons or abilities. Additionally, special items can be dropped by the enemies that can give you an instant upgrade or other special attribute. The main goal in Solomon's Boneyard is to defeat as many enemies as possible in a given game, but the gold you collect from them is persistent and can be used to buy items from the shop for use in subsequent playthroughs.

Solomon's Boneyard is also a very attractive game. There is only the one graveyard map, but it's fairly large with obstacles to deal with like open graves and headstones. A neat dynamic lighting effect similar to Helsing's Fire [99¢] is used that casts real-time shadows from the gravestones and enemies in the game, giving the whole graveyard a dark and foreboding feel. Each of the wizard characters also have their own unique look, with different colors and styles of clothing as well as different body types and genders. It's a nice bit of variation compared to the single wizard character from Solomon's Keep, and owners of 3rd generation devices or higher will notice a higher graphical fidelity due to anti-aliasing.

Solomon's Boneyard doesn't claim to be anything but what it is, an endless survival-style version of Solomon's Keep. The seven different characters are fun to play with, and each game doesn't usually last more than 15 or 20 minutes compared to the hour or so it takes to get through Solomon's Keep. There's also a nice high score dynamic, as upon dying in a game your score is based on total number of kills, character level reached, and the amount of time you lasted during that run. These are tracked through OpenFeint with a separate leaderboard for each character, as well as a number of interesting achievements to unlock. If you enjoyed Solomon's Keep, then you should also enjoy the distilled gameplay experience offered in Solomon's Boneyard. Impressions in our forums are overwhelmingly positive, and if you like dual-stick survival shooters in general this is one you shouldn't miss.

[source]

A couple weeks ago Cave's second bullet hell shooter joined Espgaluda II [$8.99 / Free] on the App Store. Dodonpachi Resurrection [$8.99 / Free] is a very different beast, as we mentioned in our review, so it's really hard to say which is the better game. Both are definitely worth trying if you're even remotely curious in the bullet hell genre, as Cave did an absolutely fantastic job porting both games to the iPhone.

Much like Espgaluda II, Dodonpachi Resurrection only runs on 3rd generation hardware and newer. First and second generation iPod touch owners, as well as iPhone 3G and older iPhones won't be capable of running either the free or pair versions of the game. If you do own a compatible device, you should really give Dodonpachi Resurrection Lite a try. The controls work great, the scoring system (explained in our review) is incredible, and playing either of Cave's games really just make you want their entire lineup available on the App Store.

[source]