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We’ve been following F5 Games’ upcoming social RPG Pocket Heroes since we first saw it back at last year’s E3. The idea behind Pocket Heroes is to let players around the world build up a party online and play through an RPG-style game, taking turns asynchronously. For simplicity’s sake it’s been described as Dungeons & Dragons meets Words With Friends, which sounds like an exciting proposition.

In early April we got an update on the progress of Pocket Heroes which pegged the release date as May 10th for a price of $1.99. Well, in a new post on the developer’s website we get a bit of a good news/bad news scenario. The bad news is that Pocket Heroes won’t be hitting its intended May 10th launch date, but on the bright side the team feels confident that they will still see a release sometime during May or shortly after.

The good news is that the extra time has gone into making some significant improvements to where Pocket Heroes was previously at. First off is a huge overhaul of the UI, including getting rid of the placeholder font seen in the game’s preview trailer, which was a point of contention from some. As you can see in the following screens, the new UI is much more visually appealing while also allowing you to do more. It will also change dynamically to display the pertinent information to whatever you’re currently focused on.

Also seen in the screens above is the new chat interface in Pocket Heroes. It drives me nuts when online multiplayer games – especially turn-based ones – don’t have some sort of chat functionality. In an RPG however, discussing situations and strategizing with your party members will likely be a crucial component of success, so it’s nice to see it being handled well here.

Besides the new chat and UI work, the team has also been endlessly tweaking, balancing, and fleshing out the many details in Pocket Heroes to make sure it’s the best it can be. They sound confident that the game will be launching in May, and we look forward to checking out the full version then. Be sure to hit up our forums for even more discussion on Pocket Heroes.

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A couple of weeks back we told you about Galcon [$1.99 / Free ] creator Phil Hassey’s latest project titled Dynamite Jack. You play as a captured Space Marine who is forced to work in a dangerous place known as Anathema Mines. Of course, being a bad ass you decide that working for “the man” against your will just isn’t for you, so you set out to escape from the depths of the mine.

In a recent blog post, Phil noted that a fellow developer suggested that the deaths in Dynamite Jack lacked a certain impact. So drawing inspiration from the awesome death sequences for Roget Wilco from the classic Space Quest series, Dynamite Jack now features plenty of awesome ways to die, as you can see in this new video.

Since death comes often during the course of playing Dynamite Jack, there will be an option to turn off the death animations if they grow tiresome, but they’ll be on by default. Part of the leaderboard tracking will include how many times you bite the dust as well. Dynamite Jack is scheduled for release on Mac and PC May 10th, and will be coming to the iPad within a couple of months after, hopefully around July 1st if all goes according to plan.

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A couple of months back, Tiger Style Games released Waking Mars [ $2.99 ], the follow-up to our 2009 Game of the Year Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [$0.99 / $0.99 (HD)], and we thought it was an incredibly unique and enjoyable experience in our review. About a month ago, Waking Mars was updated for the new iPad’s Retina Display, and we noted that the visual improvement really had a big impact on a game that is so much about creating a moody atmosphere.

But wow, as good as we thought the game looked after that last update it turned out to be just a partial Retina update and just a taste of what was to come. Today Tiger Style has released another new update which adds full Retina Display support for Waking Mars in addition to a set of new jetpack types for your character to zip around Martian caves with. Check out this screen from the new iPad, which Tiger Style has cropped in close in order to show off how much detail you can see.

In a blog post detailing this latest update, which is called the May Day Update by the way, Tiger Style notes that the iPad’s beefy hardware generates the 3.1 million onscreen pixels at 60 frames per second, and that all of their artwork had been drawn at an incredibly large scale to begin with so adding support for the new iPad resolution wasn’t terribly difficult. Screens don’t really do it justice though, you have to see Waking Mars running on a new iPad in person to fully appreciate just how gorgeous it is.

In addition to the update for Waking Mars, Tiger Style has also updated the iPad version of Spider with partial Retina Display support. Only select assets have been upgraded, but Spider is still one of the most beautiful games around. Also, all 3 of Tiger Style’s games are currently on sale for a limited time. Waking Mars is down to $2.99 from $4.99 in its first ever sale, and both the iPhone and iPad versions of Spider are just 99¢ each. Finally, you can grab the excellent soundtrack to Waking Mars for just a buck on its Bandcamp page, down from $5.

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2009 was a weird time for the App Store. Free to play games were building steam on other platforms, but the way Apple originally structured the in app purchase mechanic prevented it from being used on anything but paid games and apps. This policy was reversed in mid-October, and only a few hours later ngmoco announced that their (then) upcoming online first person shooter Eliminate would be free.

The game was released a few weeks later, and we posted an extensive guide on it. In a nutshell, Eliminate was a four person first person shooter with a free to play twist. In order to earn credits to buy armor and weapon upgrades, players needed to use their energy supplies. Energy depleted as you played, and, obviously, an in-game store sold all the energy that players could ever need if they didn’t wait to wait to recharge.

Being among the first free to play games available, and actually being the first gamer-centric freemium game on the App Store, Eliminate seemed to spawn a massive community of players overnight. In fact, the Eliminate thread on our forums is still amongst the most popular TouchArcade threads of all time, running closely behind the Street Fighter IV Volt thread and the Pocket Frogs trading thread.

A TouchArcade reader sent a tip in over the weekend that not only had Eliminate been pulled from the App Store, but launching the game now results in the above popup. On May 25th, 2012, Eliminate is going offline. It’s sad to see not only this game, but also ngmoco as a company coming full circle. We’ve been covering ngmoco since their inception, as it seemed to many (myself included) that they were the most promising contender to be the premiere iOS-exclusive game developer.

In early 2010 the company then picked up some additional financial steam and bought Freeverse, which was yet another incredibly promising iOS developer that has since vanished. Later that year, Japanese social gaming giant rolled ngmoco up into their proverbial katamari at the potential price of $400m… Then things started to take a slide.

The Epic Wars series of games were the first projects to be shut down by ngmoco, leaving faithful players (who potentially invested heavily into the game) in the cold. News of games releases, or really, any activity from the company dried up until earlier this year we heard the company was hit with layoffs. Inside Mobile Games even suggested that they missed the financial targets of the $400m buyout, putting the bulk of that purchase price in jeopardy.

If nothing else, the shut down of Eliminate is yet another reminder that the money you spend on these server-centric free to play title is buying you things that only persist as long as the developers keep the game online. If you’ve dumped cash into Eliminate, be sure to get your money’s worth playing the game before it goes offline next month.

Thanks Payam!

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If there’s anything that could completely wreck my plans and productivity, it would be a Super Crate Box [$1.99] RPG. I’d say a quick prayer of thanks to Vlambeer for not going forward with that idea, but it’s too late. FireFruitForge and Everplay Interactive have something against letting me work in peace, I guess, because Spellsword [$0.99] is that perfect storm of quick, one-more-try gameplay and RPG mechanics I can completely lose myself in.

Spellsword isn’t a clone of Super Crate Box (thankfully—Vlambeer really could use a break), but it has a similar starting point. It’s an arena game that’s designed around rapidly collecting weapon spawns to kill baddies. But where Super Crate Box focuses tightly on that mechanic to the exclusion of everything else, Spellsword takes a more expansive road. Along that road you’re going to find levelling, loot, and a lot of new ways to play.

As a result, it’s not quite as clean as Super Crate Box’s more minimalistic approach allows. It has a few problems, and things get sloppy from time to time. I’m not saying you shouldn’t play it, though. It’s crazy-fun, and you really shouldn’t miss out.

You start out as a quippy hero with a spellsword. It’s not worth much on its own, but it can be enhanced with cards that litter the arena. Each one powers up the sword in some way—with fire, ice or poison damage, for starters—and each one also sets off some sort of effect. The ice card sends out wheels of ice, the fire card launches fireballs, and the poison card poisons every enemy on screen. And that’s just the start.

So while you can certainly run around killing things with your sword, it’s dangerous. Better to collect every card you can, and lean on those one-time effects to do the killing for you. This is where the game feels most like Super Crate Box, dodging enemies to get to the next card and never stopping to rest. Still, the differences are pretty huge.

For one thing, enemies drop rupees. In fact, the whole game is pretty much built around the rupee economy. Play well to earn more rupees, which you can use to level up your cards, your sword, and even your rupee drop rate. You can also use them to buy gear that adds to those same skills. And before you ask, no—there isn’t any IAP.

Mission mode is another big difference. Each of the three current arenas come with 20 missions. These ask you to do a bunch of different things. You might need to survive some waves, kill some baddies or collect some cards. In exchange you’re given big payouts of rupees, new cards and the occasional piece of gear.

Endless mode is more familiar, with nonstop waves of baddies until you burn through all your hearts. There are three difficulty tiers of endless mode for each arena. In them you’ll grind rupees, and you’ll also find the leaderboard competition.

When it comes to the little things, Spellsword goes the distance. The look is great, very much like Terra Noctis [$0.99], FireFruitForge’s other big title. The sound is no slouch, but it doesn’t really stand out. Love it or hate it, the real flavor rests in the hero’s quips. There’s one for every mission, and nearly ever single one is a reference to a show, game, or movie. They run the gamut from modern and obvious to old and seriously obscure. Me, I find ‘em charming.

As I mentioned, there are also some problems. The controls aren’t great, and on iPad they’re worse. There’s already a fix incoming for that—along with adding new control types, it will let you reposition the iPad controls. There’s also some clumsiness in the arena design. It’s easy to get caught on edges, or mess up platforms. There are also ways to abuse positioning and let enemies wander off to their own deaths. These things aren’t remotely dealbreakers, but they can be irritating.

Overall, though, the game is outstanding. The RPG mechanics add a whole new layer of compulsion to an already inviting sort of game. It’s not easy to call it quits, especially when there’s one more level to earn, or one more piece of gear you can almost afford. Those things make it less of a pure skill game—you’ll need to put in a bit of a grind to cap out— but they also add a bit of strategy. There is real value in carefully choosing your gear and putting your rupees to good use when leveling.

With some elbow grease and a good once over, Spellsword could easily earn a permanent spot on my iPhone. It’s really that good. And Everplay Interactive seems dedicated to hitting those heights, if the developer’s comments in our discussion thread are anything to go by. I don’t see how you could possibly go wrong here. This a game that’s fun, full-featured and ridiculously cheap, with a developer that’s working hard to keep fixes and content coming. Looks like a winner from here.

TouchArcade Rating:

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The awesome match-3 city builder Triple Town [ Free ] from Spry Fox has received a bunch of updates since we first reviewed it this past January, including a juicy update late last month that added two brand new maps to play. One played much like a standard 6×6 grid game but with the added challenge of a body of water right in the middle that you’d need to work around, and the second new map was a smaller 5×5 grid that was devoid of the risk of bears or ninjas and played like a casual freeplay mode.

Today another new update has hit Triple Town adding yet another new map for owners of the game who have unlocked the unlimited play IAP. The game is free-to-play with a limited number of turns, which also regenerate slowly over time. You can purchase coin packs to buy additional turns with or you can pay a flat fee, currently $3.99, to unlock unlimited turns in the game.

I appreciate how the game tries to offer a lot for those who don’t want to pay any money, but I find the usage of consumable IAP kind of confusing, and I’d suggest treating the free game as a limited trial and if you like it then go for the one-time unlimited turn purchase rather than muck around with buying turns. This is especially true if future content updates are only going to come for those who have purchased that option.

Anyhoo, as for the new map it’s actually really great. It’s called Bear Attack and is a 5×6 grid that plays mostly like a normal game except for one huge change: there’s 50% more bears. This obviously requires a certain amount of new strategy to deal with but can also result in some huge scoring opportunities with trapping bears and converting them into churches. Like the 2 new maps before it, Bear Attack tweaks the core formula of Triple Town just right in order to offer a completely different take.

And speaking of tweaks, there’s also another round of tweaks and fixes in this latest update as well. If you have yet to try out Triple Town, definitely give the free download a try as it’s easily one of the most refreshing matching games to come along in a long time and it continues to improve with each new update.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TouchArcade Rating:

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The folks at Halfbrick had been teasing their much ballyhooed Gadget update for Jetpack Joyride [ Free ]for the past couple of months, and just last week it finally landed in the App Store. And it was awesome. However, Halfbrick must have still had some gas left in the tank after that massive update because over the weekend they released yet another update for Jetpack Joyride, this time adding support for the Retina Display of the new iPad. Check out some screens from the newest build (click to enlarge):

In addition to the graphics upgrade on the new iPad, the visuals have also been improved for the previous generation iPads as well as the iPhone 4. Loading times have also been improved across the board as well as a whole bunch of minor tweaks and fixes. I was really impressed with the Gadget update that hit for Jetpack Joyride last week, and with this latest Retina Display update the entire package has really been fully fleshed out.

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These days, endless runners need to go above and beyond in some aspect if they hope to rise above the competition and get some attention. Enter Escape from Age of Monsters [$0.99 / HD] an endless runner from Massive Joe Studios. Featuring a beautiful and unique art style, Escape certainly has our attention as a game worth checking out.

Escape puts you in the role of Gizzard, a man in possession of a mysterious pair of gloves who is to survive the monster invasion. With orphans in tow, you’ll guide Gizzard through buildings punching down walls and monsters, all while collecting floating items offering points, coins and a variety of power-ups (slowdown, speedup, e.t.c.). Miss a punch, and the monsters will take the orphans before eventually taking you down and ending the game. As expected, the longer you stay alive, the faster the obstacles come at you, until you eventually succumb to the monsters.

The first thing you’ll notice about Escape from Age of Monsters is its gorgeous visuals. The hand-drawn animated style is quite unique and simply looks stunning. Everything from the characters themselves to the backdrops to even the menus has an air of being meticulously detailed, and gives off the feeling that you’re playing in an animated cartoon. Amazingly, this feeling is amplified on the new iPad, as the retina-visuals on the large screen look quite fantastic. This sentiment is also carried over with the game’s music, which boasts a great metal soundtrack that fits the theme and sets the mood appropriately. This all leads to a very enjoyable playing experience, as Escape simply nails its presentation.

Gizzard’s gloves are the key to Escape’s gameplay. One glove is colored red while the other is blue. Tapping on the right side of the screen will launch a red punch while tapping on the left side launches the blue. Relatedly, every barrier and baddie you encounter will be colored red or blue. Thus, the game becomes an exercise in tapping the appropriate side of the screen that corresponds with the obstacle in front of you.

In addition to the simple survival objective, Escape features a mission system that tasks you with various objectives and rewards items that permanently increase the base score multiplier upon completion. This continues a recent trend in endless titles that provide score-enhancing awards vice older titles that tried to mostly preserve leaderboard parity regardless of how much you played. One minor complaint is the lack of iCloud support for your progress, although that is somewhat expected considering iPad and iPhone versions are separate. Regardless, it’s a good incentive program that encourages gamers to play for more than just leaderboard chasing (even if the rewards are simply to make said chasing easier).

While the controls are simple enough for an endless runner, there are a few miscues that prevent it from being flawless. For example, each successful punch has the opportunity to award double points, with three consecutive ‘perfect’ punches putting you in ‘Turbo Mode,’ where the score multiplayer jumps up even further and you get a temporary extra life (until the mode breaks).

However, the timing for the perfect punches seems a bit off. While continual practice alleviates this problem somewhat, you never seem to fully grasp the timing window. Another issue revolves around the swiping mechanism needed to collect the various items and power-ups littered on the level. I had multiple occasions where I’d swipe at the item several times and the collection wouldn’t register. Considering how hectic Escape gets in later buildings, this can get frustrating when you’re trying to balance item collection and wall breaking.

Despite the above issues, Escape from Age of Monsters is still a great endless runner. I’d argue that it warrants consideration simply from its visuals. Luckily, you won’t have to make that decision as Escape also offers a balanced gameplay experience to accompany those visuals. With that in mind, you’d be hard-pressed to pass up on this endless runner.

TouchArcade Rating:

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On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, we battle through conversations about muscle retention and HHH’s taste in order to bring you the latest and greatest in the world of iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. We get off to a running start by discussing the hottest real-time strategy game at the moment, Total War Battles, and then quickly dive into a flurry of oral reviews courtesy Mr. Hodapp. Later, we pan Kickstarter again, talk about Rovio Mobile’s weird IAP plans, and the themes of Minecraft.

If you’d like to listen this week’s episode, please do so via the handy-dandy links just below. If you’d rather get our podcasts the second they hit the Internet, consider subscribing to us on iTunes or Zune Marketplace.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-049.mp3, 41.9MB

Oh! And if you have interest in joining our Minecraft server, send us another e-mail, as we might end up opening our stuff to all. E-mail podcast@toucharcade.com. Thanks!

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Total War Battles [$6.99]
• SpellTower [$.99]
• Polymer [$.99]
• Escape from the Age of Monsters [$.99 / HD]
• Bubble Pig [$.99]
• Aby Escape [Free]
• Ballistic SE [$1.99]
• Ski Safari [$.99]
• Wormholes [Free]
• Bus Turbo Racing [$.99]
• Marvel Vs Capcom 2 [$2.99]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• catnapper [Free]

FRONT PAGE

• ‘Minecraft – Pocket Edition’ Now Supports Crafting
• Robert Bowling Announces His New Studio
• ‘Angry Birds Space’ / ‘Jetpack Joyride’ / ‘Sword & Sworcery’ / ‘Anomaly Warzone Earth’ Updates

Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD, $0.99 Aralon: Sword and Shadow by Crescent Moon Games is a huge open world action RPG. It has more than 30 hours of gameplay in a massive 3D world, the biggest landscape ever to grace a mobile device. A full night and day system, complex quests, crafting, swimming, fishing, pipe smoking, pick-pocketing, and much, much more. Play as an elf, troll, or human, pick various classes, and go on an epic journey through the Kingdoms of Aralon.

Aralon: Sword and Shadow is now available for the discounted price of 99 cents, over 80% off for a limited time only!

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