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We’ve had our eye on Tweet Land [$1.99] from Why Ideas ever since we spotted it as a curious Kickstarter project back in April of last year. The project was more than sufficiently funded, and last month we were treated to a new trailer and news that Tweet Land would be hitting at the end of January. As expected, earlier this week the game finally went live in the App Store.

Tweet Land was intriguing due to its unique real-time usage of tweets drawn from Twitter that would trigger elements into the game. It reaches out into the vast ocean of Twitter and utilizes special keywords from real tweets to create things in the game. It’s a fantastic idea in theory, and Why Ideas did pull it off on a functional level just as they had promised. However, despite being really innovative, Tweet Land doesn’t hold up as well in the gameplay department, and there were a couple of unintended side effects of using live tweets that left a sour taste in my mouth.

First, let’s talk about the kind of gameplay that’s in Tweet Land. You control a car heading down the highway (Route 140 no less) and you must make it to the finish line while dodging tweet-driven hazards and other traffic on the road. You can veer into the other cars from the side to knock them off the road and score some points, and ramming multiple cars off the road at once will multiply the points you earn. If you hit cars from behind or run into road hazards, you lose a bit of life, which is represented by the visual damage on your car.

I really like Tweet Land’s retro style, and there is a lot of humor and personality in its pixel art visuals (though it’s kind of blurry on my iPhone 4S). But things start to fall apart when you actually start playing. The controls are very slippery, and it’s hard to be precise when trying to properly ram other cars or avoid hitting hazards. With practice you can get used to it, but it’s still really annoying when you’re trying to quickly react to something and the controls don’t afford you the kind of finesse that you need to get it done.

I think when you have games that are built on top of a very simple core gameplay concept, you have to get all the little details right. That’s why games like Jetpack Joyride or Angry Birds are often imitated but rarely duplicated. as they get the feel of the controls and the movement in the game so right. If you’re going to be doing the same action over and over again, you want that action to be fun. While Tweet Land has its share of fun moments, something about it just feels off, like it’s missing something but I can’t pinpoint what.

The game is broken into two environments with 12 levels each, with a spot for a third environment that’s said to be coming soon. With each new level, new tweet-driven elements are introduced and added to the current ones, so as you keep going the variety of things that can happen increases quite a bit. An example of a hazard would be if someone tweets the word “meteor” then a meteor will fly in from off screen and you’ll have to use the position of its shadow in order to avoid being crushed. There are helpful things that can be triggered in the game too, like health packs or a temporary spread shot for your vehicle.

One problem with the progression in Tweet Land is that it gets rather hard rather quickly, and if you get stuck on a level there’s no moving forward until you beat it. This got pretty frustrating since many of the times that I died it felt like it wasn’t actually my fault. When elements are brought in from Twitter, they are accompanied by a label with the Twitter handle of whoever tweeted that keyword. This is neat, but leads to an incredibly cluttered and distracting screen, especially when there are multiple things happening at once. Coupled with the floaty controls and the speed at which things are zooming by, and the odds are stacked against you.

Arrows indicate where things will be coming in from off screen, but they’re hard to notice amongst the busyness on the screen and often aren’t very helpful. Add in the fact that there’s usually a ton of traffic on the road with you, and making it to the finish line intact can require a healthy dose of luck just as much as skill. The levels tend to be a bit longish, and nothing is worse than seeing your cheap demise when you’re within a stone’s throw of the finish. The more I failed a level over and over, the less I felt compelled to go back and conquer it.

However, my biggest issue with Tweet Land is something that I didn’t really expect: the tweets that the game draws from can be much too somber for what is supposed to be a fun and lighthearted game. For example, if someone tweets about a “car crash” then cars will zoom in from offscreen and wreck into some of the other traffic on the road. When your run ends, you have the option of looking at a list of all the tweets that were used to bring things into the game.

To my horror, I found that in this particular instance “car crash” was pulled from a huge retweet campaign trying to raise money for a girl who had lost her parents in a car crash in Florida. I know Tweet Land has no way of telling the difference, but I couldn’t help but feel crass for playing a game that was fueled by somebody else’s tragedy. With some of the other keywords used in the game – like tsunami, terrorist, and death – I have no doubt that encountering a downer situation like that will occur often.

While I do still think the idea behind Tweet Land is incredibly clever, I just find the game too fundamentally flawed to be enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong, I want to like it and I did find myself having fun with the game at times, but those fun times are quickly diminished when you realize your game is possibly being powered by the tragic tweets of strangers. Beyond that, the gameplay is too average to warrant dealing with cheap deaths and an unpredictable difficulty.

With some tweaks to the controls and interface, and perhaps some sort of filter for what kind of keywords are utilized, then Tweet Land could end up being something pretty special. It feels like it’s just a couple notches off of being something great, and I hope it gets there someday. As it is now, though, it’s hard to recommend the game except to those who might be curious to check out its novel use of Twitter or are prepared to deal with its shortcomings.

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Normally, I would say “another day, another Chillingo physics puzzle game” as the developer pumps out these high quality iOS titles like it’s nothing, but then I had to take a moment to stop. After all, Home Sheep Home 2 [$0.99] is not just any puzzler, it’s a puzzler starring Shaun the Sheep from the Wallace & Gromit series, and if you have no idea what that is get off this website right now and go find out. It’s that good, and I don’t throw such idle threats around lightly.

The first Home Sheep Home title came out in May and earned a BAFTA award (see review here). Not too shabby since it started out as a free Flash game. Like the first game, Home Sheep Home 2 challenges the player to take charge of the three sheep Shaun, Timmy and Shirley and make their way through a series of levels. Fans of the original game that felt it needed more levels should be delighted that there are 40 in total to be explored here, so you should get more time out of it this go round.

Nothing about the format or controls has changed since the first game: Captivating, simple art with a hand-drawn vibe creates a homey kind of feeling. You control the three sheep and can swap between them with a touch of your finger on each character, or their icons up at the top right corner of the screen. A jump button on the bottom right and the rest of your menu on the top left round it all out, and the placement works well — nothing feels cluttered or in the way.

By figuring out how to get all three of your sheep to the sign at the end, you complete each level. There are collectible items such as socks along the way, which can affect your score, and you’ll also have a time and a star ranking at the end. Each level is quick to play in general, but you may find yourself wanting to go back and give it another go to try to improve your scoring.

Of course, the play is physics-based, so expect to be moving boxes and doing other such things to solve puzzles. The sheep can all jump over one another and even stack (although I do not recommend putting Shirley anywhere but the bottom on that one as she’s a bit large), and the puzzles are a bit more advanced than what the first game offered.

After you’ve plowed through all the levels available, you also earn the chance to check out bonus levels which present a bit more challenge. Each separate area has five of these, and I certainly found they took more effort to figure out, although they never reached maddening levels of difficulty.

It looks like many of you really looked forward to this title on the forums, and I can say that it’s taken all the concepts from the first game and made them bigger and better, and it doesn’t disappoint in its execution. While I did not encounter them personally, it’s worth noting that other players did report crashes on the iTunes shop page, but that fixes are already on the way.

Whether you wait for that to pick it up or take your chances, either way, this is a solid buy and one that will keep you smiling at your phone or iPad for hours. And as an extra touch, this is a Universal build — cheers for that!

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You’d think from the buzz that the gamification of daily life was a new thing. That we need expensive devices and fancy apps to build rewards into the tasks and chores that otherwise fail to motivate us. But as anyone who’s spent time bagging groceries knows, you can turn anything into a game if you try. Bagging groceries is like Tetris – and your goal is to fit everything into place just perfectly that the bag is full, the eggs are unbroken, and you can still lift the thing into your car.

Bag It! [$0.99 / Universal HD] puts those life skills to good use. Turns out bagging groceries is actually so much fun. Seriously. This little gem almost slipped by us, but I’m sure glad it didn’t. In Bag It! you’re tasked with bagging up a friendly collection of grocery items, like Sir Eggward and Sunshine the juice carton. Like their real counterparts, they have weight to them, and fragility. A carton of eggs is easily crushed, a watermelon less easily so.

In the early levels of Bag It! you take items off a conveyer belt and stack them into a brown paper bag. You can drag the items around and tap to rotate them, fitting them together like pieces of a puzzle. You’ll have to take care not to stack too much on an item — weight accumulates, and one burrito too far will leave you with spilt milk to cry about. As you complete each level, you’re ranked on a three-star scale. Sometimes this scale ranks you on your speed, other times it’s on the fullness of your bag or the number of items you can pack. The stars are required to unlock later levels.

There are also medals to earn, two for each level. These increase the challenge of the levels and often require a re-visitation or two. You might need to complete the level under a certain time, or with every item upright. But the best are the ones that give you a hint, like “Crusty Rivals,” and leave you to discover which items will create that combo when placed together.

The medals are used to unlock new game modes, and that’s where things start to get really fun. Udder Mayhem will engage those with an appetite for destruction, bringing in new 16 levels. Forget about carefully balancing your bag — these levels are about crushing everything with abandon. Fresh Squeeze takes the opposite track, with 16 levels that won’t let you break a single item.

There are also three endless modes to play that mix things up even further. Ultimate Bagger lets you bag to your heart’s content, filling bag after bag until you something gets crushed. Endless rampage gives you extra time on the clock for extreme acts of destruction. Power Surge mode is something completely different — items that go too far on the conveyer belt are destroyed, costing you time. It’s also the hardest to unlock at 75 medals, so only dedicated baggers will see it.

Not only do these modes offer a lot of variety, the unlocking mechanism encourages players to try new things, learn new combinations and do the best they can. It offers such a sense of accomplishment that I didn’t even notice the lack of Game Center integration. But if that’s a dealbreaker for you, never fear — Hidden Variable Studios says it’s coming soon.

It’s rare to find a puzzle game that feels so fresh but also so obvious. I’ve never played a game about bagging groceries before, but why not? It should be mandatory training for everyone who moves out on their own, never mind the folks who work at grocers. I have a quibble with the controls — it can be hard to rotate an item and move it to a new area at the same time — but otherwise it’s hard to complain about Bag It! It turns something that ought to be a chore into an absolute blast, and it does so with a huge, rich game. So check it out, and visit our discussion thread to share your impressions.

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If you don’t own an iPad 2 and you’re about to skim past this post, let me interrupt you for a second. You can play most of Rebuild [$2.99] right now for free, as the Flash game Rebuild 2. And you really should. While the iPad 2 version comes with a few extra bells and whistles and plays gorgeously on a touch screen, this is a game that everyone should play whether they have the newest, shiniest gadget or not. Just be prepared to lose a few hours of your life to it when you do.

I don’t wave around non-words like “unputdownable” often, but Rebuild deserves it. Though it’s not an especially deep strategy game, it has the perfect mix of exploration, danger and difficulty to hook anyone for at least an hour or two, and maybe much longer. And yes, yes, we’re up to our necks in zombie games, but this is a zombie/strategy/city builder and that’s not something you see every day.

So here’s the premise: you are the leader of a tiny outpost of survivors in the midst of a city overrun by zombies. Your few city blocks aren’t enough to sustain your people for long, so you need to branch out. But danger lurks all around. Throughout the game you can explore the blocks around you, rescue survivors, scavenge for food and supplies, and reclaim land – all while defending against waves and hordes of zombies.

But first you need to establish your scenario. You can build a character, male or female, with an odd but broad selection of faces, hair styles and accessories. You can name your town and pick a piece of starting equipment. And then you can define the difficulty. Your town can range from small to huge, which establishes the length of the game. The difficulty ranges from very easy to impossible, and those are pretty accurate descriptions.

So you set out with your merry band on your few small squares of land. Each turn you can send your fellows out on missions. You might scout a nearby block. Following that, you might send a few guys to clear out the zombies so you can claim it as part of your town. Rebuild is a numbers game — stack enough of one stat against an appropriate challenge and you will be guaranteed to overcome it. The game will even inform you of your odds.

But there are several stats to balance, and things become more complex as your city grows. And while it might seem like a good idea to keep everyone busy, you never know when Zed will attack. If your city is undefended, an attack might leave you with fewer survivors and more dead.

As you progress through the game you have to strike a balance between recruiting enough survivors to keep progressing, having enough housing to keep them, and finding or growing enough food to stave off starvation. Random events happen at the end of most turns, and they might make things easier or more difficult. As leader, you’ll often be called on to make difficult choices.

These choices often tie in to the multiple available endings, and they’re often intriguing. Do you act in self-interest or work for the good of the group? Do you let religion take hold, or attempt to stamp it out? And ultimately, once you’ve found a way to survive do you take it or do you keep going, trying to find something better?

These decisions feed into your final score. You’re ranked on how long it took you win (or lose), how much you did with your time in zombie land, how difficult your game was and how many endings you found in one go. It’s a great way to inspire players to keep trying for all the endings, keep playing, keep exploring. Be warned, however, that there’s no way to track your success. There are no leaderboards, local or otherwise, so you won’t have the chance to compare your progress through different runs. It’s a serious oversight, but one of very few.

Otherwise, Rebuild is a treat. It comes with charming art, although its character portraits border on the surreal. The soundtrack is creepy and ambient, a perfect accompaniment to the bleak world the game inhabits. It’s good enough that it makes me forget how tired I am of zombies. Rebuild probably won’t satisfy fans of intensely deep strategy, but for anyone interested in a few hours of light strategy fun, it’s quite the catch. Check it out, and share your thoughts in our discussion thread.

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Making opera and ballet seem fun and accessible must be an uphill battle. There’s no shortage of people with preconceptions about the arts, and most of those preconceptions are about how opera houses may be great places to take a nap. But if The Show Must Go On [$0.99] is any indication, the Royal Opera House has what it takes to make opera interesting to any crowd — or at least, to put it into the hands of those that can.

In this case, that’s Hide & Seek and Big Pixel Studios. They’ve come together to make a sweet and compelling mini-game compilation about the life backstage at the opera house.

Apparently, life backstage at the opera house is crazy. As stage manager, your job is to put out every (proverbial) fire that crops up, and they are everywhere. The performers can’t dress themselves without your help, the sets are falling apart, the music has gone flying, the props are all mixed up and the lights are just barely running. It’s all you can do to keep the whole thing from falling apart.

So off you run, from department to department, saving the day. Each department has its own mini-game. Managing costumes takes a good memory and good reflexes — you’re shown costumes, and then you lead the corresponding performer around the room, dodging falling clothes until you find the pieces you need, then repeating. Props are pure memory. You’re shown the dollies they ought to be on, and once you’ve memorized them you’re put on a timer to place them correctly. More and more props are added as you progress.

Preparing the sets requires a neat little stacking game with elements of physics puzzles, especially as they grow more difficult and your stacks grow ever more precarious. Managing music is a bit like Canabalt – you race over rooftops collecting music, dodging chimneys and trying not to fall down any holes. And the lights… managing the lights is a difficult task. You can see the paths your performers will take across the stage, and its your job to light their way without wasting any precious power. It requires precise timing and no small amount of multitasking.

These mini-games are wrapped in an absolutely darling opera simulation. There are four shows in Performance mode — The Marriage of Figaro, Swan Lake, Carmen and The Nutcracker — and each has its own little tale of disaster to cope with. At the end of each you’re treated to a short performance of the show, which succeeds or fails relative to your success in the mini-games. I have to admit that while I wanted to see the shows succeed, there was a (large) part of me that wanted to play again just to see how badly they could fail.

Once you work your way through the performances, you can pay to unlock Score Attack modes for each of the mini-games. The costume score attack mode is included, but the other four are a dollar a piece. I do have a small quibble with this, as the app description really doesn’t make the need for these purchases clear, but I bit the bullet so you don’t have to. It’s fun to play endless versions of the mini-games, but the real charm is in the aforementioned Performance mode.

Another question stands out, though: why so little music? The included songs are provided by EMI, but there are only a few of them. Given that the one of the purposes of this game has to be to raise awareness for the Royal Opera House (and to sell a few albums to boot), shouldn’t it be brimming with music? This is a missed opportunity, and it smells a bit like a licensing snafu from here.

Otherwise, The Show Must Go On is thoroughly impressive. The art is cute and welcoming and the games are fun, with quite a range of difficulty levels. The music that is included is, of course, great. There’s even a broad selection of Game Center/OpenFeint achievements and leaderboards to extend your playtime. I’m not sure it will create any new opera fans, but it certainly shows that there’s more to opera than meets the eye, especially when you approach it with a light heart and good cheer.

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Blosics [99¢ / HD] is a casual object-flinging game like Angry Birds, but this is no clone, as it feels fresh and unique with plenty of different features to unlock. FDG Entertainment, the makers of Cover Orange [99¢ / HD],  advise that the online version of Blosics has been experienced by over 40 million players, which is quite a lot of people, but personally I prefer to play my games on iOS devices. Thankfully, that is now possible with the arrival of Blosics in the App Store.

The idea is to throw balls at unfriendly colored blocks, which are often stacked into piles or structures. The grumpy blocks have little faces which are always frowning as they mutter comments like:  “Yada yada” , “Nom nom nom”, “Watch it!”, “Hey!” and my personal favorite quote: “Blurgh!” No wonder people throw balls at them.

Initially, you’ve got one type of ball to swipe at the moody blocks, but by completing levels and earning stars (or just making a quick in-app purchase), you can unlock up to 13 power-balls with special abilities, like bigger balls, heavier balls or multi-balls. There are spiked balls, attract balls, and even psychic balls for you to fling around (please note that any innuendo around my regular use of the word “balls” in this review is mostly unintentional).

Whereas Angry Birds gives you pigs to catapult in a set order, Blosics lets you choose which type of ball to toss each turn …but there’s a catch: Throwing balls costs you points, with more powerful balls costing more points. So the aim is to get rid of all the blocks using the fewest and cheapest balls possible, to achieve good scores and three stars. Game Center leaderboards (’Highest score’ and ‘Most stars’) are provided, along with forty achievements.

As you’re playing the level, the screen displays how many of the three stars you’ve achieved on that level so far, plus how many more points are required to obtain the next star. You don’t necessarily need to get all the blocks to obtain three stars and if you’re stuck on a tricky level, you can return to it later once you’ve unlocked more powerful balls to take another crack.

Blosics is a strategic game, in a few ways. First, you need to choose a target, because some colors of block are heavier and worth more points. Next, you need to find a weak-spot to target, as this is a physics-based game where objects fall, collide, roll and float, and the ghost of your last shot is shown to assist with aiming. Then, you need to determine which ball to use: One expensive powerful ball may clear the level, but two well-placed cheaper balls could score more points. And finally, you set the power of the shot and throw!

There are two control schemes available: My preference was “Classic” (tap, swipe back further for more power and release) or “Alternate” (drag the ball around to get up speed, then release it in the right direction, like having a tennis-ball on a string). A handy “restart level” button is provided for quick repeats when you mess up.

The controls are really easy to use, although it’s not easy to do precise softer shots (especially with the multi-ball) as the controls seem optimized for harder more direct shots. Also, the ball selection button opens another screen, which isn’t too intrusive, but seems unnecessary for such a common action. It would be better to manage the ball selection process right on the main game screen.

There are four nicely varied episodes to complete, with 120 levels in total. The game opens in the ‘World of Balls’ (which doesn’t sound like a particularly appealing place to live), followed by underwater, underground and outer-space episodes, with each level having themed music.  In the underwater levels things move slowly and water currents can drag the blocks and your balls across the screen, or into a whirlpool. In space, the gravity varies and things move even more slowly.

Many players will breeze happily through the early levels, but once you’re a couple of episodes in, some levels require more thought to three-star. Blosics reveals new features throughout the game, from the start right through to the last episode, so we’re looking forward to trying all the unlocked items on the promised “coming soon” levels.

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When it was initially released for DSiWare last year, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge [Free / $2.99 IAP], was an underappreciated gem on a service that most people didn’t bother using. Now, thankfully, the game might find a little more grounding with the wider release on iOS, but as we’ve seen time and time again, platformers are a difficult sale on touchscreens, and Shantae, despite its pedigree, will have to keep up.

The game is a sequel to the Shantae, which was released for the Gameboy Color well into the rein of the Gameboy Advance. It follows the story of the belly-dancing, hair-whipping Shantae, as she seeks out her arch nemesis, Risky Boots, in order to get a magical lamp.

As a game, Shantae takes most of its cues from Castlevania and Metroid, meaning it’s essentially a large, open-world 2D platformer, where gaining certain transformational powers will unlock new areas. You’ll be able to turn into a monkey to scale walls, an elephant to pound rocks or a mermaid to swim underwater. As you discover new powers, you’ll be backtracking and searching out new nooks and crannies to explore. On top of those powers, you’ll also get magic spells, which are purchasable in the main hub town, and performance enhancers, which enable you to attack faster, stronger and more.

Most interesting is its introduction of a somewhat three dimensional plane, where each smaller 2D area has several levels to it — like a stack of papers with levels drawn on them — you’ll bounce forward and backward through each section. It’s too bad they’re not used more throughout as it’s truly the most interesting addition to the genre.

It’s all rather clever and the level design keeps up, which is a good thing, because in general, most Metroidvania games we’ve seen so far have been lacking in their ambition. Unfortunately, you won’t find guides of where to go and the maps in the game are terrible and unhelpful — Shantae is all about exploring and figuring things out for yourself. This is frustrating at points, especially when you’re at a loss for where to go next, but the reward for finding your own way often makes up for it, even if it does make it so you never feel like your properly progressing. Despite its clear influences, it’s not derivative of either of the above games, and mostly forges its own path while maintaining the feeling of a good homage.

Most frustrating is the lack of a quicksave option, and the fact the game has a tenuous relationship with multitasking, working seemingly at random, doesn’t help. I’ve complained about this before with iOS games and you can call me weak for doing so, but when playing on a mobile device, I’d like a quicksave option for when I need to put it down for a moment — even if it’s just one slot, a bookmark to come back to but not exploit. There’s also an option for iCloud saving, but it doesn’t appear to be working at the moment, but thankfully, the IAP of the full game has no problems transferring from device to device.

Visually, the game is hit or miss. It’s weird to say, but the game actually looks better on the lower-resolution DSi screen, because the pixel matching feels more natural. On retina display, the it looks a bit muddy and it isn’t helped by the hideous bright-blue border around everything. It looks even worse on an iPad, like a blown-out tiny image. Despite itself, it still manages to be passable on the quality of the animation alone. WayForward has a way with 2D platformers that few developers can imitate and even through the pixels don’t look quite right, the game itself never feels gaudy or horrible and you’ll quickly get used to it. I don’t think they needed to invest in making everything a higher resolution, but I feel like the emulation of the pixels could have been a little more clear, especially considering the border around the game screen and characters are all converted up.

The sound too, is worth mentioning. Jack Kaufman’s soundtrack is like something pulled straight out Aladdin, with a chip-tuned, Middle-Eastern vibe pushing you along the whole way. The game was created to look and sound in the vein of SNES and Genesis classics and it succeeds in nearly every way.

Unfortunately, it’s still a platformer on iOS and the virtual controls will never have the tuned accuracy of a physical stick. It does feel like the game was loosened up a bit from its DSi counterpart to correct this, although since Nintendo doesn’t allow for downloading older games onto a different device, I can’t redownload the DSiWare version to confirm this. It’s certainly a bit easier than most of the games that inspired it, which is nice considering the controls aren’t as precise as they need to be. For what it’s worth, the virtual stick works as well as it can, but can’t be customized or moved, so if your hands don’t conform to where they’re at, you’re out of luck.

If you don’t have a DSi or 3DS, or you just don’t want to plop down $12 to play on those systems, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge is a solid port, but marred with the same problems we’ve come to expect on iOS. It’s certainly one of the better virtual control schemes and you’ll only occasionally find problems with it, especially when required to jump and attack, but overall, it retains the engaging gameplay from the original.

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A few weeks back, we brought you the news that SEGA was bringing arcade title Brick People [$1.99 / HD] both across the ocean and onto the small screen. Before arriving on iOS devices, the brick-folk were limited to arcade cabinets in Japan. You'd gather up physical bricks to place against the screen, and tiny dudes would climb up and over them to collect fruit. I'm sorry I've never had a chance to try it out — it sounds like great fun.

Some of that fun may have been lost in translation when the game moved to iOS. The physical bricks and arcade constraints seem like they would have made the single-player content much more engaging than it is in its current state. It's much better if you can go head to head, but with only Bluetooth connectivity and, in the HD version, single-device multiplayer, you may be hard pressed to find an opponent.

The problem with Brick People's single-player mode is that it isn't very challenging. This makes sense for a game where you need to split your attention between the screen and a bin of bricks, but it's much less taxing to drag those bricks from one part of the screen to another. All you need to do is stack them below your brick people, preferably in piles that will let them climb to the icons floating above their heads. Build a tower that reaches the fruit or numbers or water drops on the screen and the little guys will handle the rest. There's a smidge of strategy — different colors of brick people have three different abilities to manage — but the AI is rudimentary and you can't really go deep.

You're on a timer, with only 150 seconds to complete as many levels as you can. There are twenty or so, interspersed with Brick Monster challenges. The brick monsters require you to stack bricks into specific shapes, something that is never difficult. The time left on completing those levels gets added to your total, keeping you going a bit further, but eventually the clock will tick down. Fear not! When that happens, you'll be offered a nearly consequence-free continue. No matter how many times you've already failed. See the problem?

Whether you perform well or limp your way across the finish line, your score will be totaled when you complete all of Brick People's levels. You'll be ranked on the Game Center leaderboards, the only bit of competition you'll encounter. There are achievements too, but most of them involve playing the game a certain number of times on each of the three difficulty modes. This isn't really "replay value" as I understand it.

The multiplayer fares much better. At the start of the game both opponents are given randomly selected special abilities that can be activated by collecting brick monster symbols in their individual playing fields. It's a race to the finish, so it can be tough to decide between collecting more fruit or messing up your rival. The first player to win three rounds takes it all, so matches are satisfyingly lengthy. It's the most fun when you can see your opponent across an iPad (though I ran into a few bugs with the multitouch implementation), but the Bluetooth play isn't bad either.

Unless you're just dying to play Brick People with someone you're sharing a room with, though, multiplayer doesn't really make up for a lackluster single-player experience. It's cool that SEGA has tried to share a unique arcade experience with the rest of us, but it seems that this is one of those "you had to be there" things. On iOS, Brick People doesn't feel unique, it just feels dull, the sort of dull that adorable art and wackiness can't fix.

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Metro Games’ Pixel Ranger [$.99] is a deliciously offbeat vertical shooter that executes on its old-school SCUMM-like art direction and its jokey It Came From Outer Space vibe well, but it’s an otherwise forgettable game on a mechanical level. A crippling jump mechanic that feels out of place, a horrific control scheme, and poor checkpointing hamstring the action and combine for a storm of constant frustration. Pixel Ranger looks good, is hilarious when it intends to be, and it has a lot of potential, but it falls flat in the face of its issues.

Like most of its breed, Pixel Ranger combines tons of overhead enemy archetypes and power-ups into an increasingly feverish orgy of upwards-based shooting and pixelated vomit. Its angle is that shooting should be methodical: ammunition is a finite resource and in order to get more, you’ll need to take out enemies and gather up what they spill onto the ground.

Bullets pass through enemies and ammunition counts stack from level to level, which puts the emphasis of the action on multi-kills. Pixel Ranger does a good job incentivizing the multi-kills specifically with rewards, but power-ups in particular provide the heaviest relief and the most tactical opportunities. They’re pretty powerful in general — a great touch.

The balance being struck between the ammunition and kill count goes haywire when you’re asked to start running around and handling ground-based opponents. Basic side-to-side movement is tilt-based while shooting and jumping are handled with touches to the screen. When the action gets hot, you’ll need to jump, tilt, and shoot at the same time, meaning you need Twister two fingers on the screen and tilt your phone to and fro simultaneously. It’s hard to do with any sort of panache and often impossible depending on where you are when ground enemies emerge.

Jumping in particular just feels like an afterthought. It doesn’t jive with the core action, and in the worst cases, just gets in the way of it. When you have to stop and consider jumps over environmental or enemy obstacles, you take your eyes off of the prize.

The lack of checkpointing stacks on the finger frustration. If Pixel Ranger wants to punish you for not having the finger dexterity and muscle memory of a Rubik’s Cube enthusiast, fine, but the price of not being god-like is a total restart of an entire chapter. The pixel count you have in a previous level carries over to the next, so it’s easy to see why you can’t just “reload” a level, but this fact doesn’t negate the pain of having to start over.

The glaringly awesome part of Pixel Ranger, which at times override whatever bitterness I feel when I think about the game as a whole, is its art and sound direction. It reminds me of zoomed out Version 1 Maniac Mansion. The cowboy avatar has that blockiness and feature set of Mansion’s characters and the color selection utilized in the intro scene had me re-calling some weird, totally unrelated experiences. The cutesy “aliens stole my lady and I’m also a cowboy” contrivance somehow works and brings a flavor that informs everything in the title thematically well, including even the (hilarious) power-ups.

Excluding the wonky jumping mechanic, I like all of the ideas in Pixel Ranger. Its look and style, its enemies, its attrition-based vertical shooting, and its power-ups are strong parts of a whole that, unfortunately, doesn’t feel cohesive. This is the kind of game that sort of flat-lines itself over the haul and that’s unfortunate. Granted, it’s not terrible, but it’s not a great game, either. We suggest that if you’re into its style and methodology, to go ahead and give it a try, but just be wary that it has its share of faults.

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