This has to be one of the most addictive arcade style games to come out on the iPhone recently. This stylish 8bit platformer game is rather unique. You are a cave explorer whose got to collect little artifacts and then rush out of the tunnel before a large black Pacman like bad guy eats you. You have a little rope cable that you can hook onto the ceiling and swing a long with. This is extremely similar to the Ninja Rope from Worms.

Main site – iTunes – Light version

Clockwords
Normally I like to post three links for flash games. But today I found one so addictive that you won’t even need another game to play. The basic point of the game is to shoot spiders with words. You are assigned a little over 20 letters, these letters are placed in front of you, if you use these letters they will do a specific amount of damage. The ammount of damage is specified by a little dot under the letter (max 4 dots). This is amazingly addictive, it’s like a weird cross of Scrabble, and tower defense. Word games definitely have to be unique and engaging to make me interested and I have been playing this one for several hours now. I strongly recommend you play it.

This dude has been producing video games for years. What makes him special is the look of his games as well as the quality and volume of them.

For someone who makes games for free, ten games is a lot!

Titanion – A shmup where you also have a “capture beam” so you can turn enemies into teammates and increase firepower.

Mu-Cade – Sort of a hybrid worm game where you have to knock enemies off of a rectangular grid, every enemy you knock off grows your tail.

Gunroar – Is like a cross of Astroids and Space invaders. You complete levels as soon as you have destroyed all the enemies, fasted paced action.

Torus Trooper – This is my favorite of all of his games. Its a tunnel shooter, and it’s absolutely insane! You fly very fast avoiding and shooting ships that appear.

Tumiki Fighters – Another shoot em up, but it’s got a great twist. Once you destroy an enemy, their ship pieces are attached to your ship for bonuses and powerups. This game was so good that there was a version developed for Wii called Blast Works.

PARSEC47 – A standard SHMUP with basic features. Plays nicely.

A7Xpg – Another simple SHMUP.

rRootage – Another favorite of mine. Still a SHMUP but lots of dodging bullets and nice graphics.

Noiz2sa – Another SHMUP with creative graphics. Nothing special really.

Wok – Never played this. Looks weird, love his description of the game – “Oddly attractive ball tossing game, Wok.”

So those are all of his games available for download on the PC. Check out is website if you’re interested in more games.

There are many shoot em up’s available for the iPhone right now. Since it’s one of my favorite game genres, I thought I would make a post about them.


Tyrian ($1.99)

This is a port of a popular SHMUP release on DOS way back in 1995. It’s a port for the iPhone. This game has all the classic stylings of an awesome shoot em up, it’s got smooth gameplay and all that. The biggest letdown for me are the subpar controls. There are two ways to control it and they require the use of the touch screen, this blocks a bit of what you are trying to shoot at. The game is loaded with content, and at a $1.99 its worth it.



Abigale ($1.99)

This one is a weirder shooter. You control a girl (?) on some surfboard like thing and you’ve got a big ball attached to you that goes around you. If you collect enough gem-like things you can click on your ball and it will circle you, destroying anything that comes close to you. The controls are nice, the game is well designed but unfortunately the first few levels are a little boring.



Glandarius Wing Strike ($4.99)

Wow, five dollars? I don’t remember paying that much… sigh. Well it’s a decent game, but there is a serious lack of features. You shoot by clicking the screen and you have this secondary weapon that shoots randomly or something. It should be made note that this game is the perfect example of how to do correct shmup controls on the iphone. Beyond that I’m having trouble recommending this game, too bad because it’s pretty good too.

This is extraordinarily relaxing

Trevor van Matter

So I never said I was going to post links every day

Palindromes Plus – Oh man this one is fun, and I’m not much of a word puzzle fan. Unshuffle the words by clicking on two letters and they will swap positions. Arrange letters to make the word according to the definition above. Also available, Palindromes.

Circle the cat – Yes, click on the little circles and make sure the cat doesn’t get away. Not easy but very fun to play and extremely simple. You can almost call this a non-game its so simple.

Red Remover – Ahh my favorite, Flash physics games. Remove all the red blocks and try not to make them fall.

Bonus: I love traffic – Simple traffic management game. Click the lights to change them and try not to cause accidents.

Man this game is underrated. There are a few pinball games out there, but the one which does it for me is The Deep.

This game is so very well polished for the Iphone. The controls are very simple, you click and drag to launch the ball, and tap either sides of the screen to move your paddles. Everything is rendered in 3D making the game look very nice. As for many pinball games you often feel that you are playing a video game rather then pinball, in this case the physics are perfectly accurate to normal pinball which makes for great gameplay. The sounds aren’t anything to call home about but they do the job very well.

Check out the gameplay and shots after the vid:

Gameprom also plans to release a new pinball game “Jungle Style” shortly.
I suggest you pick up The Deep, as for a dollar, this is top value!

Man I am excited for this one! This is definitely the news of the day right here.

Official tweet

Heres another perfect example of how to make a simple game very exciting – Canabalt.

This game was developed for the awesome Experimental Gameplay project. The flash version of the game was developed in about 60 hours which is outstanding for a game of this quality. What’s even more amazing is that the graphics and gameplay are actually under 100KB in size, the largest file the game has to load is the music track (3MB).

Two things make this game unique, first is the lack of colour in the game as it’s black and white (more like a navy blue-ish color).

Secondly the sheer simplicity of only clicking one button to jump, and no other controls.

You control a small character apparently planning some sort of escape. You must jump rooftop to rooftop and avoid hitting buildings or you’ll fall and lose. The game is fairly intense as when you jump or land the screen shakes. There are plenty of wonderful touches to the graphics which make the game feel quite polished.

Best of all you can play it online for free or take it with you on your iPhone. It’s too bad the game is priced at $2.99 as even for me that sounds a little high for such a simple game. In contrast, Doodle Jump is .99 cents, though the concept is much different, the gameplay is quite similar.

Main site – iTunes

Sometimes I think certain games don’t get enough credit; Gravulous is one of them.

The premise of Gravulous is like interstellar pool meets planetary physics. The goal of the game is to launch planets into space while avoiding the large black hole at the bottom of the screen. You have to destroy planets by hitting them 3 times. When a planet is launched into space, it will grow until one of its sides either reaches the edge of the screen or another planet. To get high scores you have to destroy planets while not filling the screen up. It’s a bit of a balance and its not the easiest game out there, but the premise is very simple and thats what I like about it.