Archive for the ‘SIM’ tag
‘Cubemen’ Launching Next Week, Offers Cross Platform Multiplayer Over iOS, Mac, and Steam
Cubemen is a new strategic tower defense game that launched on Steam last week, and it will be launching on the Mac and iOS App Stores simultaneously next week. The coolest part about this? There is cross-platform multiplayer that let’s players duke it out online with each other no matter which of these versions they’re playing.
In addition to the multiplayer aspect, Cubemen just looks like a pretty sweet game anyway. It’s a sort-of tower defense game but with a much more fluid design than most due to the ability to move your defense units around at will. There’s a large single-player component that features 28 levels to play in 5 different modes. You can get a pretty good idea of what Cubemen is all about in the following trailer.
I really like the clean aesthetic in Cubemen, and its fluid unit management and multiple map elevations give it a unique twist on traditional tower defense-style games. The real draw though, I think, will be the cross-platform multiplayer on 22 different skirmish maps (you can play these solo against an AI, too). Cubemen will be iPad 2 or later only, and it will support the Retina Display of the newest iPad. You can right now for PC or Mac, and we’ll be diving in to Cubemen when it hits the App Store on March 29th.
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‘Dreamy Goat’ Review – I Wish I Had Dreams Like These
One of my favorite aspects about iOS gaming is being able to check out games that are so outlandish in design that they probably wouldn’t be made on any other platform. Dreamy Goat [$0.99] is one such game, telling the tale of Goat as he wanders from dream to dream eating random items and jumping on dream entities.
With trippy visuals and catchy tunes, Dreamy Goat is a short but intense experience for gamers willing to forego traditional gameplay for something different.
Let’s get one thing clear: Dreamy Goat is less of a game and more of a visual experience. Players can embark on seven different levels each with their own visual and auditory styles along with their own items for Goat to eat and jump on. Goat walks on his own through each level with your only control being a tap that causes him to jump as much as you want.
Each level is fixed in length, and when you’re finished you go on a wild ride on top of a space whale that eats stars while teleporting you to the next dream (I swear I’m not making this up). Players are free to simply play each level in succession, moving to the next for as long as you wish.
Dreamy Goat defaults to ‘Zen’ mode, which allows you to do whatever you want in each level without repercussion. Switching to ‘Sun’ mode turns on a scoring mechanic that forces the player to pay attention to collectibles, as the level will end if you don’t eat enough items. While Sun mode actually provides a goal and challenge to gamers, it really doesn’t add much to the actual gameplay.
For that matter, there’s very little in terms of any gameplay. There are no achievements, or leaderboards for the ‘Sun’ mode. There’s also no additional mechanics other than being able to make Goat (and the space whale) jump. This really shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone familiar with artistic games such as this, but deserves mentioning nonetheless.
Where Dreamy Goat is intriguing, however, is in its visual presentation. The graphics are simultaneously its most striking feature as well as the element that’s hardest to describe. Many portions of the graphics are simplistic hand-drawn pieces. Yet, all the visuals tie together and simply look and feel right together.
I don’t know if it’s the fact that everything is just so bizarre or if the developers have conjured up some magical spell of fascination involving goats. Regardless, when you combine the visuals with the musical scores (which range from serendipitous to heavy metal), it all just melds together into an interesting experience.
As many other similar games have shown, that sort of experience is only as much as the player makes of it. I also have no doubt that a lot of gamers will simply glance over this game for its lack of gameplay. However, the sheer psychedelic nature of the game is worth noting and at least struck a chord with me. If this sounds appealing, then I encourage you to partake in Dreamy Goat.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Angry Birds Space’ Review – The Final Frontier
Let’s wind the clocks back to 2009, as really, to appreciate what Angry Birds has become, I think we need to go back and appreciate what Angry Birds was. The App Store was a crazy place. The “gold rush” was still in full effect. Publishers like Chillingo were trying to stake as large of a claim as possible in this brave new world brought about by the impulse-powered instant gratification of downloading a 99¢ game and the exploding popularity of the iPhone.
Chillingo was incredibly successful in pooling together a library of games we called “AAA titles” at the time. iDracula [ $2.99 ] may look incredibly archaic by today’s standards, but back then, it was among the cream of the crop. In late May, Chillingo spun off a new brand called Clickgamer.com, which per the was intended to “carry casual games and software applications in the Apple App Store. This new brand will fully complement Chillingo’s existing catalogue of AAA innovative titles.”

Clickgamer.com’s aisle in the App Store was (and still is) an odd assortment of ultra-casual games and apps ranging from the SAT Vocabulary Builder [ $1.99 ] to sliding block puzzle games like Pic n’ Mix [ $0.99 ]. Reading between the lines of Chillingo’s own distinction between the AAA Chillingo and Clickgamer.com brands, it wasn’t difficult to see why Angry Birds [ $0.99 ] was relegated to the non-AAA Clickgamer.com brand when it launched, as the late-2009 1.0 version of the game really wasn’t anything that special. Or, as we mention in our original review which almost seems laughable now:
When you see a game with a name as nondescript as Angry Birds, it’s pretty hard to get excited. Even after playing through the first few levels, I was enjoying this game, but failing to see the real appeal.
The original release had a barebones array of birds, 63 levels, no leaderboards, no achievements, and no, really… anything else. Angry Birds wouldn’t even strike it big until months later in early 2010, when that the game had been downloaded over half a million times. Whether that sales surge was a result of Chillingo’s marketing prowess or creative consulting as a publisher or the product of Rovio’s hard work seems to be a matter of perspective, and the answer to that question depends more on who you ask. Regardless, Angry Birds has yet to let go of a position on the top ten iTunes sales charts.
The Angry Birds kingdom expanded into the Angry Birds empire with the self-published release of both Angry Birds Seasons [ $0.99 ] and Angry Birds Rio [ $0.99 ] over the next couple of years. Since then, Rovio has grown further yet, and now days it’s difficult to find a platform that doesn’t have Angry Birds on it as the brand has made its way to the browser, smart TV’s, and even feature phones being sold in emerging markets. Think about that. People in African countries rocking series 40 Nokia phones have Angry Birds.
Despite Rovio’s unprecedented levels of success, recently it has been hard to dispute the argument that the Angry Birds formula might be getting a little stale. I’ve always been excited to play through the levels added in new updates, but for a while now I’ve felt like I’m just going through the motions of figuring out the weak points in the pig defenses, launching a bird, collecting my three stars, and moving on. This lead to the inevitable question of what could Rovio do in a sequel to not only revitalize the brand to players who have grown bored, but also provide a big enough twist on gameplay to make it worth having a fourth installment in the series?
It turns out the answer was to head to space.
Angry Birds Space [$0.99 / $2.99 (HD)] is close enough to the rest of the Angry Birds family that anyone even vaguely familiar with the games will be able to hop right in. It features the same premise of flinging birds in a big slingshot into dastardly egg-stealing pigs, but this time, your shots are assisted by a dotted line coming off the front of the slingshot to make the aiming process a little more transparent. The boss battles from Rio even make an appearance.
It comes packed with the familiar family of birds, with some minor modifications. All of the birds got a cosmetic upgrade, with snazzy looking space outfits. More importantly, some of their functionality has changed. For instance, the new version of the yellow bird doesn’t just dash forward. Instead, tapping on the screen sends it homing in on that specific location, even allowing for complete trajectory changes in flight. The force exerted by the bomb bird seems to focus more on pushing things rather than destroying them, and a new freezing bird turns anything inside of its blast radius into ice, allowing for easy cleanup with blue birds.
The magic of Angry Birds Space comes from the physics tricks Rovio is able to pull off by leaning on the gravitational fields of the various planetoids that make up many of the levels. Birds shot into space fly straight as an arrow, as obviously, there isn’t any gravity to make them do anything differently. Gravity fields are indicated by faint blue halos, and completing each level (particularly with three stars) involves the intelligent mastery of both zero gravity as well as the (potentially) multiple gravitational pulls of the different planetoids that the pigs have set their forts up on.
This varying gravity system allows for some incredibly elaborate level design, including puzzle elements that would never have been possible with the “traditional” gravity model of previous Angry Birds titles. One early level that exhibits this in a particularly clever way involves the introduction of the bomb bird. Players are faced with a bunch of pigs hanging out and being smug on a gravity-rich planetoid.
There isn’t a clear shot to be had between the slingshot and the pigs themselves, as there are all sorts of asteroids littering the top half of the screen. Completing the level actually requires delicate use of the bomb birds to gently push the asteroids down into the gravity field, at which point they come smashing down on the pigs. Other levels involve shooting your birds to catch the rim of a gravity field, placing them in an orbit of sorts to slingshot around to hit an otherwise unreachable target.
The truly interesting thing that I’ve found is that this gravity mechanic has allowed for some incredibly creative ways to complete levels. The comparison may be a bit of a stretch, but in Scribblenauts Remix [ $0.99 ] the way to truly have fun in that game was to come up with the most absurd and imaginative solution to each puzzle. Sure, nearly every level can be solved by equipping yourself with some wings and a gun, but there’s just a certain sense of satisfaction to be had when you figured out how to somehow work Cthulhu into your solution. Similarly, while most levels in Angry Birds Space often have a fairly clear-cut solution, I’ve been having way more fun coming up with the most convoluted flight paths for my birds, with personal bonus points awarded for as many orbits as possible before expertly slamming whatever bird I fired into a pig.
Some other changes have been made to Angry Birds Space, namely, the addition of a new in-app purchase system. In previous games, the Mighty Eagle is a one time 99¢ purchase which allows you to skip one level every hour. The Mighty Eagle also adds an entirely new (although not necessarily immediately apparent) game mode where you can go back to previously completed levels and fire off the Mighty Eagle shooting for destroying everything on screen.
Unfortunately, now not only is the Mighty Eagle a consumable item, but it also doesn’t automatically skip a level. When you fire out the sardine can, the Mighty Eagle can totally miss, leaving whatever smug pigs are left on screen laughing at your failure. Additional Mighty Eagles are awarded in small quantities by just playing the game. Alternatively, 20 Mighty Eagle shots can be purchased for 99¢, with additional packs of Mighty Eagles ranging all the way up to 980 for $19.99.
Out the gate, Angry Birds Space comes loaded with two level packs: “Pig Bang” which serves as more of a tutorial for the new space-centric physics and “Cold Cuts” which introduces the new freezing bird. A third (very difficult) level pack entitled “Danger Zone” is available via a 99¢ unlock, and if you even find yourself vaguely enjoying the two included packs, the third one is basically required.
This raises the question of what is going to come of the future of Angry Birds updates, as the tea leaves of this IAP-unlocked level pack can be read in numerous ways. Angry Birds has been known by its seemingly never-ending stream of free content via updates, and I find it to be a little hard to believe that Rovio would put a stop to that with Angry Birds Space. My gut is telling me that future updates might follow a path of offering up a free pack and an optional ultra-difficult paid pack like “Danger Zone” for hardcore players… But, we’ll have to wait for the first update to land to know for sure.
If you’re playing on a new iPad, you’ll be happy to know that the HD variety of Angry Birds Space comes with crisp Retina Display-friendly graphics. Neither the HD or standard versions are universal, so, having the optimal Angry Birds Space experience requires some App Store double dipping if you want to play on both your iPhone and iPad. Sadly, there still doesn’t seem to be any way to sync progress between versions of the game, so, in that regard, there isn’t much point in buying it twice anyway.
Angry Birds is the unlikely candidate with meager beginnings that somehow managed to redefine both mobile gaming and the levels of financial success that are possible in the mobile space. The brand is known worldwide, and the series is enjoyed by everyone from hardcore gamers, to celebrities and athletes, to my own father who couldn’t possibly be more of a non-gamer. Angry Birds is the Super Mario Brothers of mobile devices, and Angry Birds Space is so successful in redefining the Angry Birds formula that everyone should give it a try.
Angry Birds Space, $0.99
Angry Birds Space HD, $2.99 (iPad Only)
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Nintendo DS Port ‘Touch Detective 2 1/2′ is Now Available
In August of last year, ported their quirky Nintendo DS adventure title Touch Detective [Free] to the iOS platform. The art style, presentation, and writing in Touch Detective were superb, but the difficult and illogical puzzles really marred the experience. As such, we thought it was just ok in our review.
One nice thing, however, was the business model of Touch Detective which gave you the entire 1st chapter of the game for free and let you buy the additional 3 chapters through IAP. The 1st chapter was worth a solid hour or two of gameplay too, more than enough time to determine for yourself if the game’s charm would outweigh its frustrating puzzles.
Today, Beeworks has released the 2007 sequel to the original game called Touch Detective 2 1/2 [Free] into the iOS App Store. It comes with 5 full chapters as opposed to the original’s 4, and there is an exclusive bonus episode for this version with 4 additional chapters centered around the character Funghi.
Touch Detective 2 1/2 uses a similar pay structure to the first game, too. You get a chapter and a half for free with the rest of the game broken up into 3 IAP chapter packs that run $3.99 each, or you can purchase them all at once for $8.99 and save a few bucks.
As a word of caution, the game isn’t compatible with the new iPad just yet. It’s not an iPad native game anyway, but if you were thinking of running it pixel doubled on the new iPad you’ll have to wait for a fix first, which is already in the works. Other than that, though, if you liked the series on the NDS or the first iOS release, there’s really no reason not to download the free chapters and give Touch Detective 2 1/2 a spin.
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‘Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy’ Review – Buckle Up
The little things matter in flight games. When you crank up an engine, you want the jet exhaust to grease up the screen. You want to hear the thick, thunderous crack of a sound barrier break. And you want to feel like the world is insignificant as you slice through the air at 1500 MPH while a song that vaguely sounds like the one from that weird Cruise flick pounds in the background. Namco Bandai’s Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy [$4.99] nails a lot of these little things, and while the premise sucks and it occasionally doesn’t look so great, few iOS games deliver as consistently as this one.
Backing up, Sky Gamblers is an arcade flight game that feels pretty similar to the Ace Combat series. It plays it loose with things like, say, physics and reality, but doesn’t try to pretend to be anything else other than an insanely fast-paced, action shooter in the air. It’s really good at leveraging these aspects, too: the sense of speed is fantastic and the maneuvering and shooting components feel blessedly fluid. These things define the experience.
A good chunk of Apple’s faithful should know this game already. It was one of the two titles given a substantial demo at the new iPad press event. As expected, it delivers on a visual level. The assets, and particularly the planes, are rendered with a healthy respect for the new iPad’s higher resolution screen, and most of the environments look alright, too. It also boasts a ton of atmospheric and effects touches that bolster the pace-pumping, action scenarios that dot its content landscape.
But while it nails a lot of the little things, it flubs a few, too. In particular, some of the texture work on ground details and buildings and infantry are straight up ugly, and don’t reflect the work put into the rest of the title. The tutorial in particular is a mess, and the voice acting isn’t so good, either.
The thing that it gets the most wrong is its own story. Told through a jumble of comic book-style entries as if it were a Max Payne, the premise is a mess of poorly constructed context and devices. From what I can gather, you play as a hotshot pilot who, suddenly, finds himself without an army to call home. After a canyon run, you meet up with a group of lovable mercenaries and then join up.
There’s just enough reason in its madness to justify the fact that you’re in a plane and charged with killing people — a lot of people, in fact, across a campaign that tries to feature every environment, objective, enemy type, and color in the Game Design Handbook.
In the first mission, for example, you’ll fly alongside a squad on a quest to kill enemy fighters across a field and over the top of a city. Later, in a dessert level, you’ll be asked to rip through enemy fighters while bombing ground infantry shortly before moving to a Bomb the Base objective. These layers and the sheer scale of each level hammer home the sheer speed your craft can go, and that adds a palpable thrill to each confrontation or traveling section. Dogfights on the other hand reinforce the gracefulness of flight, as you’ll need to spiral or otherwise dance away from lock-ons, circle for position, and hunt your prey airplane-style.
The latter is an important point: since Sky Gamblers doesn’t care about natural laws, there’s a distinct, teeth-rattling speed inherent in the combat design. Fights are all about how many bullets you can let loose while doing crazy stuff, like, say, flying upside down with the throttle all the way up. The same old flight game strategies still apply: you do want to get behind the enemy and execute successive passes, but the way you go about it in Sky Gamblers gives it an awesome edge. Everything just feels so fast; it’s bliss.
Flight games, strangely, have found a home on iOS. The controls seem to work, and this is no exception. The casual pro scheme in particular is great; the d-pad that controls the movement is robust and floats, and the pitch doesn’t get in the way. You can also use accelerometer controls, but those never clicked with me.
If the campaign doesn’t do it for you, then there’s a bounty of bonus modes and missions to check out. Team Deathmatch, Bomb the Base, and several survival modes are all ready to be played from the get-go. You can take these online, too, and the component seems, surprisingly, solid. I’ve yet to experience lag and the matchmaking is sharp.
If you have a new iPad, this is clearly one of THE games to get, as its boasting some of the best 3D, high resolution visuals at the moment. If you dig explode-y things and moving really fast, you’ll probably want to give this a look, too. Smart design bolsters both of these aspects. Check it out.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Coming Tonight: ‘Angry Birds Space’, ‘Hunters 2′, ‘rComplex’, ‘Swordigo’ and More
‘Canabalt’ For Two: It Could Happen
On the heels of the release of Canabalt across PSP, PS Vita, and PS3, Semi-Secret’s Adam Saltsman is asking fans if they are interested in a possible 2-player mode for the phone versions of the often celebrated endless runner. “Would y’all be interested in seeing a 2-player mode in Canabalt [$2.99] on iOS and Android,” he asked, simply, .
Speaking with us, Saltsman says that he’s trying to gauge if such an endeavor would be worth it. He wants Canabalt, which debuted in 2009, to stay relevant, but he also understands the risk involved with post-release feature additions, no matter how simple they are to implement. The time it would take to do this, for example, is time that could be spent on another of his fresher projects. He says that any input into this matter is invaluable. He also says that he has other ideas for content, and if this stuff takes minimal effort, it’ll probably be worth it.
For what it’s worth, we’re screaming “yes” to everything at our monitors right now.
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Hands-On With ‘The Hunger Games: Girl On Fire’
Work with me for a second. Forget that The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire has a connection to the Hunger Games fiction. Instead, let’s just look at is as if it is a normal, everyday product that isn’t being bankrolled by a major movie studio. Let’s do this because, even in this vacuum, it impresses. Provided the final build is as good as the one we’ve been paying, it’s the kind of game we’d recommend without pause: it’s conceptually solid, it has a fantastic look, and it brings some new ideas to a genre that’s hopelessly clotted.
You could argue that Girl on Fire is a spiritual successor to Canabalt [$2.99]. It’s an endless runner that revolves around a daring escape, but it boasts some key points of iteration that change up the play in strong ways. For one, Girl on Fire boasts a regenerating health system. If you take a hit, you lose your momentum, but not the game. As a result, you get get married to sessions, and the overall runner experience doesn’t feel as hollow as it usually does.
More interestingly, Girl on Fire allows you to act on blockades. When one of the game’s huge human-sized hornets buzz into the picture, you can shoot it. There’s also an avoidance mechanic, too, that allows you to jump between the jungle world’s upper and lower tiers. Choosing when to kill and when to jump is a cool tactical layer, which brings choice to conflict. Do you jump when a conga line of hornets fly hurdle towards you, or do you stand your ground and pluck them off? When they fire back at you with their purple balls of doom-y doom, do you jump and take care of them or do you just try to avoid the confrontation altogether?
Solid controls compliment this action. Swipe to move between planes, press to aim your projectile bow weapon and fire. It’s all sharp, simple, and responsive, just like the 16-bit games that the art style and tone of the game have been modeled around. Playing this is like step back into a portal where gaming was purer and simpler.
Semi-Secret’s Adam Saltsman is one of the big independent developers attached to this project, so that’s probably why we feel the connection to Canabalt so strongly. Even if we could stop ourselves from the comparison, we’d still be high on Girl on Fire after our hour or so with it. We’ll be taking a much longer look at the final build when it hits iPhone and iPad tomorrow, so stay tuned.
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‘Fireball SE’ Review – A Slick Single Stick Non-Shooter
In its brief time on iOS, has shown great skill at finding the spark of potential in games that are getting on in years. Late last year we looked at Super Crossfire [$0.99 / HD], a powered-up take on Space Invaders. Now we have Fireball SE [$0.99], a game partly inspired by Geometry Wars II and its Pacifism mode.
In Fireball SE, as in Pacifism, you fly around dodging huge waves of enemies in a top-down arena. Trouble is, you can’t shoot. Instead you lead your foes to their deaths, through bombs here, or gates in Geometry Wars. But where one was a tiny afterthought of an avoidance mode in a much bigger arcade game, here it’s been fleshed out with new rules, stages, achievements and scoring mechanics, and it’s so much better for it. It’s sort of like Tilt to Live [$2.99 / HD] without the tilt, but let’s put comparisons aside—this game is seriously fun on its own.
Fireball SE is broken down into three modes, but all three share the same fundamental mechanics. Using a truly responsive (and adjustable) virtual joystick, you pilot a fireball around the arena. Enemies spawn, starting in the corners and spreading out from there. Bombs appear. You skim by them to set them off on a short timer, or slam into them to blow them apart. If the action gets too fast, you can jam your other thumb down to activate Meltdown, which slows everything down for a few seconds while you get back in control.
The scoring is particularly intricate. Killing enemies is worth points, and killing them in combos is worth a lot more. It’s more than a linear increase, so it’s really worthwhile to string along as many enemies as you can before smashing through a bomb. When they die they drop sparks. Collecting those is worth points too, so you’ve gotta go back into your trail on a regular basis. Fireball rewards the daring.
Of course, you only have one life. Did I mention that? One little mistake and you’re dead. Waves mode counteracts this by letting you start from any wave you’ve reached, so hitting all eight isn’t obscenely hard. But your score will suffer—it carries over between waves you survive, and starts fresh when you do.
Survival and Countdown are two sides of another coin: Survival counts your time up, and Countdown counts it, uh, down. But Radiangames has done something interesting here. Both modes are split into five stages each, and each stage has a different feel. The speed is a little different, enemy spawn patterns vary, bombs appear more or less often. Part of this is about letting you find your groove, but another part is ripping you out of your comfort zone. The Game Center leaderboards for these modes track your total score across all five stages, so getting in a rut hurts.
Otherwise Fireball SE is comfortably familiar. There’s a good beat in the background and art that’s stylish in a very blue and orange sort of way. There’s a whack of achievements to earn. There’s even an easy mode that accounts for its lowered difficulty with similarly lowered scores. The package is nothing all that special, but what’s inside is quite cool.
In a time where we spend a lot of energy weeding out clones and lousy rip-offs, it’s great to see a game that lands on the good side of imitation. Fireball SE has a lot in common with other titles, but it builds on that foundation. We end up with a game that captures something fun that has been left fallow elsewhere, one that turns a small spark of inspiration into a solid, well-rounded new form. So give it some love, and swing by our to share what you’d like to see from it next.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Picnic Wars’ Review – A Crazy Castle Crusher That Ends Far Too Soon
I have to admit, I wasn’t sure what to think about Picnic Wars [$0.99 / HD], a castle crusher showcasing the epic feud between vegetables and fruits (which somehow takes place during a picnic). Yet, despite the absurd story, what follows is a decent take on the genre with a good amount of gameplay variety that unfortunately suffers from a lack of content.
In Picnic Wars, you take the role of either fruits or veggies as they seek to destroy the fortresses of the other. You accomplish this by flinging various units at the castles, causing as much mayhem and destruction as possible. Truthfully, I have no idea what picnics have to do with the story, but seeing how zany the concept is I didn’t bother thinking about it.
Gameplay is a bit more complicated than simply tossing fruits or veggies at the opposition. Players take control of up to five different launchers on an isometric grid by moving them up and down the grid to aim. Each launcher can also be upgraded, with some units being more effective when fired from a certain launcher. Meanwhile, the opposition is throwing utensils at your launchers which can damage and eventually destroy your weapons. Combine this with a countdown on each mission, and gameplay in Picnic Wars becomes a bit more fast-paced than other similar games.
However, before you can throw your units, they must first be grown with seeds. Each unit takes a certain amount of seeds and time to grow depending on its strength. In addition, you start with a limited amount of seeds but can obtain more by aiming your allies at scattered seed bags located within the enemy castle. Plant projectiles have lots of different strengths and attributes, such as the garlic that turns into a group of mini garlic grenades to the cabbage that acts as a delayed grenade. Players are scored based on speed, item collection, and total destruction.
I thought Picnic Wars did a good job creating a fun, varied gamplay foundation. There are a ton of different fruits and veggies to grow, and almost all of them are viable through the majority of the campaign. I also really enjoyed the isometric view which provides a bit of strategy as to where you want to launch seeing as how you may not be able to see some enemies until you take out certain sections. Controls, however, can be a pain as the same isometric view also leads to situations where you have to move some launchers just to tap on others, wasting precious time.
A hard mode is also available, which allows you to play through all the levels again with different units. Hard mode also increases the likelihood of catapult destruction and also removes the targeting sights, making it a bit tougher to accurately aim your shots. I personally loved hard mode, as it provided the perfect amount of difficulty that was missing from the easy mode.
Visually, Picnic Wars boasts a colorful, cartoony style that works well for the content. The game looks great on retina-iPhones, but not so much on the new iPad yet. The music also reflects the quirky feel of the game, although I wasn’t a fan of most of the sound effects (too annoying for my tastes). Strangely enough, the game also had load times between levels that, while not excessive, were still long enough for me to notice.
While Picnic Wars touts a total of 64 levels, in reality you’re getting two campaigns of the same 32-levels with the only difference being that you play as fruits in one campaign and veggies in the other. Each campaign has its share of different units, but the actual maps are the same, offering little in variety to players that have already completed one of the campaigns. Considering how swiftly you can get through the ‘easy’ campaign, you’ll be hurting for more rather quickly.
I’m a bit disappointed at how little there actually is. When you take into account the decent gameplay mechanics and visuals, Picnic Wars ends up feeling like wasted potential. If you’re willing to check it out I have no doubt that it should provide some enjoyment. However, be advised that enjoyment will be short-lived.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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