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Depending on how much you relish your DotA (If the acronym made you raise a puzzled eyebrow, don’t worry. We’ll get into all that shortly), you may either find Plants War [Free] an unexpected treat or a moderately competent RTS. It could go either way. Best described as a heavily diluted, single-player version of the world’s favorite Warcraft III mod, Plants War will have you leading Dryad Forest’s local vegetation in a struggle against some encroaching… animals? Global warming definitely screwed up the environment here.

Gameplay-wise, Plants War – Gamevil’s latest freemium title – works something like this. Before you begin each stage, you’ll be asked to elect an upgradable hero (the first you get for free, the others you’ll have to earn through extensive grinding or buy as an in-app purchase). After that, you’ll be at liberty to select the troops you want to deploy in the upcoming onslaught. Yet again, only the first one comes free.

To unlock the other units, you’re going to have to amass a fortune in gold or green leaves. A fair warning, however – the number of horticultural soldiers that you can utilize is limited by the number of slots and plants points you have available. In order to exceed the quota, you’re going to have to (you guessed it!) make a few choice purchases.

Once you’re done with all those decisions, the action begins. The objective here is to blow up the enemy’s base before they can do the same to yours. At regular intervals, both bases will spawn pre-determined units that will barrel towards their opponent with all the suicidal fortitude you would expect of NPC shock troopers. Needless to say, death is their only inhibition. Though you’re significantly more powerful than the ground troops, you’re not omnipotent. In order to succeed in your mission, you’re going to have to make efficient usage of your unsuspecting meat shields.

You will also have to make full usage of the four different skills available to the Leafy that you’re using. Initially, you’re only going to be able to invest a point in one skill. However, as you gain in level (acquire the last hit on an enemy to gain the maximum amount of experience points possible), you will be able to pour more points into your skills. Alternatively, you can choose to increase your mana pool. The choice is yours. Anything goes so long as it ensures certain victory.

(For those of you who do play DotA, Plants War can be summed up as ‘Middle-lane only DotA with no river, items or neutral camps.’)

And that’s pretty much the whole game in a nutshell. It doesn’t get more complex than that. However, the details are what make Plants War work. Each stage will impose a new challenge to your talent for picking the most suitable troops. Are you facing off against highly aggressive mice with a penchant for gnawing through shrubbery? Be sure to bring along a Tree Protector and a grim-faced Potato Blower. Are you up against some sturdy bears? Try some Seed Shooters.

Though certain combinations work better than others, it’s not impossible to be creative with things. As you progress through the game, you’re also going to have to battle with a variety of enemy heroes, each more difficult than the last. While you can bring a different hero to the conflict (assuming you’ve already purchased them, of course), you can also attempt to make do with the first Leafy you use. How do you bait a fast-moving tiger into being mounted onto a wall? Can you kite a hard-hitting bear around in circles while slowly pepper spraying him into submission? Once again, it’s entirely up to your own discretion.

The controls in Plants War are responsive and extremely simple to learn. To move, you tap on the screen. To attack, you tap on the screen. To use an ability, you – you get the picture. In order to zoom in and zoom out, you’re going to have to alternately pinch and unpinch the screen. My only complaint here is the fact that targeting can be extremely difficult at times when the hero is clumped up with their troops.

With three levels of difficulty associated with each stage, twenty-four achievements to unlock, a multitude of rewards to collect and a menagerie of units to discover, there’s not much to dislike about this stream-lined little title. Unfortunately, there’s also not much to it. Once you’ve beaten the first few levels, things can grow rather repetitive. You can only do so much with the same set of faces. If you want new minions to abuse, you’re going to have to either spend an inordinate amount of time grinding for gold coins or cough up the greens.

All said and done, however, it isn’t too bad given the non-existent price of admission. The problem here is whether or not you like this style of play. If you enjoy this sort of experience, you will probably lose occasional hours to the game. If not, you will probably lose interest after the first three games. It’s all rather binary.

TouchArcade Rating:

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It was just this past Friday that we took an in-depth look at Digital Tales’ Battleloot Adventure, a new action-focused RPG, and really enjoyed what we saw in our preview copy. The game had been submitted to Apple and we were hopeful that the final version of the game would be available sometime this week. Well, the Apple approval gods must have been shining down on Digital Tales, as literally the very next day Battleloot Adventure [99¢/HD] appeared in the App Store.

Our preview of Battleloot Adventure should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect based on our limited time with the game, but we’ll definitely be curious to see how the experience holds up through the entire game. We’ll be putting Battleloot Adventure through the ringer to test out that very thing, but all signs seem to point to a quality offering with a stellar art style and presentation, wonderfully simple combat mechanics, and the usual character leveling elements that come with an RPG. You can grab Battleloot Adventure from the links below, or check in on our forums for even more impressions.

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On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, we return to our respective caves in order to deliver you the hottest and best in iOS… but not before we discuss the fun we had at GDC 2012. When the train gets on the tracks a little later, we bust out some good and, hey, maybe even thoughtful conversations about Mass Effect: Infiltrator, the Dark Meadow drama, and the new iPad.

Listening is easy: just click on one of the links below. If you’d like to subscribe so you can get our latest shows the second they hit the Internet, you can totally do so via iTunes and Zune Marketplace. This is, by far, the best way to listen to us.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-043.mp3, 37.3MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Mass Effect Infiltrator [$6.99]
• Super Lemonade Factory [$.99]
• Final Freeway 2R [$.99]
• Azkend 2 [$2.99 / UHD]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• iCatch Cats [$.99]

FRONT PAGE

• ‘Dark Meadow’ To Remain Paid App, F2P Version Now Happening
• New iPad Benchmarks Points To Double Performance
• Double Fine Adventure Funding Drive Closes

Fireball SE, $0.99 Smooth controls, explosive action, and thrilling escapes. Fireball Special Edition is an intense object-avoidance game from Radiangames, creator of the award-winning Super Crossfire. Dodge huge swarms of enemies across 3 modes and 18 unique stages. Use Meltdown mode to slow down the action and create your own near-death experiences.

Fireball Special Edition, for iPhone and iPad, is available right now in the App Store for a special introductory price of $.99 through March 22 and for $1.99 after that.

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In another world during another time, roving bands of mercenaries die with staffs and swords clutched in grimy, blood-stained hands on epic quests to seek out fame, fortune, glory and honor. Also, tax relief — precious, precious tax relief. Kameloot’s king has pumped up the tax on gold to unbelievable levels, but he’s offering a way for cities to opt-out. It’s called the “Grand Gossip Notoriety Prize,” and the competition in the kingdom is getting stiff as heroes of all shapes and sizes, as well as bandits, monsters, and other various bump-in-the-night stuff, vie for the break.

It’s this not-so-subtle lighthearted edge that gives Digital Tales‘ Battleloot Adventures its legs. It has all the usual tropes, including the classes, items, and structure, of a 16-bit era RPG, but it put a lot of weight behind them. It knows that swords, zombies, wolves, claymores, and magic are as tired as the M4 is becoming, so it focuses on the fun inherent in playing a fantasy game instead. Things like loot, combat mechanics, and art design are what it leverages.

This easygoing attitude is sinuous, as it winds and curves and penetrates into basically every aspect of the experience. The world of Kameloot feels playful; cities and castles are bubbly and inviting, while backdrops are sketchy and bright. Even the weapons and armor and the characters of this world reject straight lines and sober tones. Everything is goofy — even if that thing is trying to squash your head into bite-sized pieces. Check out that screen and you’ll see what I mean.

Having your head squashed is an unfortunate side effect of not taking battle seriously, by the way. At its core, this is a strategy RPG that, like others in the genre, isn’t afraid to be punitive when you make a bad choice. Damage in combat is largely dictated by a rock, paper, scissors style of balancing. Pit rock against paper and you’ll feel a bump or two a couple of turns down the line, guaranteed.

Parties consist of three fantasy warriors, each of which has a specific color and class. Battles are fought in instanced zones freely picked from the world map. Generally, you’ll be fighting against three or four others. Some battles have multiple phases, and there aren’t stat refreshes between them.

Digital Tales subscribes to the Keep It Simple philosophy. Tap on an enemy to attack. Touch a UI element to activate an item or special power. Tap on yourself to defend. It’s a miraculously simple setup, but that doesn’t make the strategy simple. What looks to be this game’s greatest accomplishment is how much has been streamlined into the background. Stats like strength and dexterity still guide a character’s abilities and there’s some degree of dice-rolling when it comes to negative spells, but you never really have to interact with this stuff. There’s also a lot of automation in battle. Healers, for example, automatically heal at a turn’s start, while rogues automatically throw accuracy decreasing potions.

“We wanted to move away from the typical, number-crunching world of core RPGs and reach for players who would still enjoy the pleasure of managing their party of adventurers without worrying about hit chance percent or armor coefficients,” Digital Tales’ Andrea De Siena says. “We tried to make combat more about choices than maths by streamlining such elements as stats, damages and special skills.”

“We wanted to entice both casual gamers and RPG aficionados alike with a simple yet strategic combat system, where you’re free to focus on what you like most: if you’re a newbie, you will easily jump in but you won’t be able to simply button-bash your way to the top; if you’re a seasoned RPG veteran, you will enjoy some well-deserved gameplay depth, mastering the edge system, energy management and talent and equipment choices.”

“Do you think that’s an ambitious mission statement? It probably is, but we’re not afraid: we have robot chickens, pumpkin-men and sheep-bombarding gryphons under our belt,” it jokes. I’ve seen a robot chicken and I can confirm that it is glorious.

Defending has an interesting price: it lowers an energy bar. Energy guides the action-y components. With energy, for example, you can attack enemies with several party members at the same time. Energy usage also closely ties into the “star” system. If you pull off a big combination attack, you’ll be rewarded with a star that can then, in turn, be used to activate big-time class-specific abilities.

The combat doesn’t feel as fluid as Digital would like. It’s still turn-based, so there’s a degree of sluggishness inherent with this kind of design. But battle does operate rather without any hassle on your end. The fighting in general, actually, seems as sweet as a chocolate, and it keeps me playing more so than the loot component, which in most RPGs that stress gear and new items like this one does, always ends up providing the actual fuel. It’s nice to see combat take the front stage for once.

Speaking of loot, expect to get plenty along the way. As you level up, more and more items that match your level unlock. Winning fights earns you coins, and you can spend this change buying these unlocked items. Special “guild” missions unlock new items as well. Rich swathes of UI and tons of equipment, like rings, swords, armor, and shields, as well as hates, should keep the collector busy. This is also tied to an IAP system, but I get the impression that it’s just there for people who don’t care for grinding.

Most of the world navigation is just cut-and-dried, task-focused stuff. Find an open zone, jump into battle, and then repeat. Later in the game, after a hefty tutorial, you get introduced to a more political component: guilds. When with a guild, you get certain bonuses, and you can freely switch between them as the story unfolds and the fights get nastier and nastier. In my short time with the game, I didn’t get to experience this as much as I’d like. I’ll be stoked to see it in action when the retail version hits.

In all, actually, there seems to be a lot to like here. Most fantasy games get so into themselves, so muddled in their own goop, that it can be hard to see what separates them from the rest of the pack. Battleloot is different. It wears everything on its gleeful, not doubt dapper, sleeves. It’s funny, it’s cute, it has a lot of depth to offer, and above all, it appears to be fun.

My total time has been short, so expect some additional coverage down the line. You can keep an eye on the game’s progress via this message board thread, or hey, give it a try yourself next week if the Apple approval process goes well.

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One of the best and brightest, and unreleased, games we saw at GDC now has two clones on the App Store, according to the game’s creator. A false version of IGF-nominated student project, One and One Story, popped up earlier this afternoon to an appropriate amount of Twitter backlash. Its source code presumably draws from the Flash version of the game.

One and One Story’s actual creator, Mattia Traverso, has since contacted Apple and filed a DMCA complaint. “Yep, but these are clones,” Traverso said on Twitter. “They are other games. This is my game, without even a single change!”

When Traverso showed us the legitimate iOS version at GDC, it was very much a work in progress. He was in the process of tightening the controls and figuring out if he wanted to go with a different visual style that featured actual characters instead of silhouettes. Obviously, we don’t advise that you download this version.

One and One Story, by the way, looks to be a gripping platformer, as it tries to combine the Limbo look with Braid-like puzzles. The premise revolves around the relationship of the game’s two protagonists, and you need to control both interchangeably in a multitude of fascinating ways.

We look forward to digging in when it’s actually released.

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Way back in October of 2010, Goodhustle Studios released Beast Boxing 3D [99¢/Lite], a first-person arcade style boxing game that we thoroughly enjoyed in our review. It utilized pretty simple boxing mechanics, but had intuitive controls and a fantastic art style. The campaign was a bit short, but this was rectified pretty well through an update the following December that added two additional characters and a survival style Endless Mode.

There hasn’t been much activity with Beast Boxing 3D since then, but a brand new update has just been released that addresses two of the biggest requests from users since the game came out: high resolution visuals and Universal iPad support. A lot of the artwork in Beast Boxing is hand drawn, so there isn’t a lot of impact on the Retina Display or the iPad screen, though it does look much cleaner. However, it makes a big difference in the text as well as the actual 3D character models, both of which are razor sharp now.

Check out the comparison screens of the non-HD visuals on the left and the updated screens on the right (click for full size):

There are some other minor fixes in this latest update too, like improved UI elements and issues related to Game Center achievements unlocking. Also, the characters themselves have been given additional sound effects and animations, giving them all a bit more distinction to their personalities.

Beast Boxing 3D has remained one of my favorite games since it came out, and I’m really happy to see such nice improvements so far beyond release. If you hadn’t checked it out before, the lite version has received the same Universal and HD treatment so you can see what you’re getting into without risk. If you like the lite, the full version is currently on sale for 99¢.

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iOS fighting game fans know that The King of Fighters-i [$6.99], SNK Playmore’s longtime rival to the Street Fighter series, is one of the best fighting games on the App Store. We absolutely loved it when it released last July, and the following September saw a new update that sweetened the pot with 6 new characters and a new Challenge Mode.

We haven’t really heard much from the game since then, but yesterday a new update hit for King of Fighters-i that was pretty confusing. The update text listed all of the “new” characters that were already a part of last September’s update, and it didn’t really sound like there was actually anything new being added.

As it turns out, there was some sort of glitch with the update and if you download it and sync it to your device, you’ll actually LOSE those 6 additional characters as well as any of the items or data that you’ve accumulated. Since some of that stuff can be really time consuming to unlock, this can be pretty devastating if you’ve invested heavily in The King of Fighters-i.

SNK Playmore is aware of the problem, and warns in the app description not to update your game until they figure out what the heck is going on. It sounds like they actually DO have some new content planned, and they guess it should be about a week before they figure out what happened and come out with a fix for The King of Fighters-i. We’ll keep our eye out for that but in the meantime hold off on updating your game so you don’t end up losing your data.

[Thanks Ben]

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New iPads are popping up all over Asia, and aside from a variety of unboxing and comparison videos, it seems that the first set of GLBenchmark 2.1 [$4.99] results have come in.

MacRumors explains:

Benchmarking the graphics performance of the new iPad also showed significant improvement over the iPad 2, with benchmarking tests boosting performance from 90 frames per second (fps) to 140 fps in the GLBenchmark 2.1.1 Egypt offscreen test and from 146 fps to 250 fps in the GLBenchmark 2.1.1 Pro offscreen test. Similar data had previously been uploaded to GLBenchmark’s site, although its authenticity has not been confirmed.

If these results turn out to be true, the new iPad could be a absolute beast in the gaming department. Ever since the announcement of the new iPad, our community has been justifiably worried about the graphical performance. I really hope these benchmarks are real, because, wow.

Keep in mind, like most benchmarks, take these alleged results with a grain of salt. We’ll have to wait to get our iPads on Friday to see how the actual real-world on-screen performance actually is.

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Lightopus [$2.99] by BulkyPix and Appxplore is an arcade-style title with an emphasis on beautiful environments, item collection, and indirect combat. More importantly, Lightopus does a great job succeeding on all these fronts, particularly in the visuals department.  This success allows players to overlook an otherwise shallow narrative to focus more on basic gameplay.

As the only adult lightopus left, your goal is to enter the abyss and rescue the remaining younglings of your race, also known as bulbies. Gameplay is divided into zones, and each zone has a minimum amount of bulbies that must be collected before moving on. You are free to collect more bulbies to increase your score, but the longer you stay in a zone, the more aggressive the baddies seem to become. Each zone also has optional stars which boost your total score for the zone. Collect enough of them and you can also travel to a special zone with unique battles in which you are on the offense.

While the collection gameplay of Lightopus is engaging enough, the combat serves as the star of the show. Your lightopus can’t attack anything head on, but the bulbies you collect form an army that continually follows you and attacks anything in its path. Combat becomes a perpetual dance of dodging enemies charging at you, and indirectly maneuvering your bulbies until they’re in the path of the baddies.

The more your bulbies attack, however, the more you of them you lose, forcing you to balance combat with collection (especially when you encounter bosses that love to quickly kill your poor bulbies). Various obstacles also alter the path of your followers, adding to the strategy of maneuvering. Power-ups are also available to strengthen the bulbies in different ways.

The combat may sound relatively simplistic, but Lightopus does a great job of transforming it into a mesmerizing play of quick movements and strategic planning. The framerate is very smooth, and the path AI of the bulbies just feels realistic. Gamers control the lightopus’ (and thus, bulbies) direction via virtual joystick or tap mechanics. Both work well-enough, although the controls weren’t as tight as I’d like. Still, I find it interesting how well-done combat works, considering that the majority of conflict can be avoided if desired.

Environment-wise, while the abyss may be cruel, it is also a beautiful.  The visuals in Lightopus are a stunning mix of neon colors and constantly moving backdrops that do a great job transporting you into a different world. Graphical flourishes on your lightopus and bulbies are a treat and add to the action. The same goes for the music which features tranquil compositions that can quickly turn dark when you encounter a boss enemy. Every feature adds to a superb overall presentation that just works.

Despite the gameplay and presentation, one area that Lightopus lacks is in its story. Besides the app description and a few cutscenes, there’s very little in terms of narrative. Of course, this hardly affects the actual gameplay, but it does turn Lightopus into more of an arcade-inspired score chaser than a game with an emphasis on plot. I would have liked to see more of a story-mode myself, as I think it would have done the rest of the game more justice.

Still, while the lack of a story may turn some folks off, it may not be that important. The more I played, the more I realized that Lightopus isn’t a game of destinations; it’s a game about journeys. Each play through is a new and somewhat unique adventure through this beautiful world. While some games offer the greatest satisfaction from completing it, others (like this one) are simply a joy to simply play. That’s not to say that I still would have preferred more narrative, but I believe it plays a secondary role to the journey. Regardless, check out Lightopus now, and I hope you enjoy that journey.

TouchArcade Rating:

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