Thursday, April 25, 2013

Dungeon Hearts (iOS)

Devolver Digital (of Serious Sam & Hotline Miami) has recently released Dungeon Hearts - a twist on the match three genre. You play a band of heros that stand in the oncoming wake of the "fatestream" - four lines on which little gems slide towards them. By matching these gems, mixing and linking them horizontally and vertically, you create combos and damage and kill of monsters in your way. After every battle you get a chance to play a mini puzzle on the fatestream to level up your characters, and then they get skills etc. The monsters have gems too and when these reach your heroes they take damage or other bad things happen, blindness, freezing, the usual. The whole thing looks like Guitar Hero mixed with Bejeweled mixed with Hero's Academy - which is good, the lack of actual violence and the colourful gameplay makes is possible to play infront of my little daughter (who loves to watch her daddy play on the iPad)

I bought this to support Devolver, since I loved Hotline Miami, but I'm already having a ton of fun with this face-paced puzzler. Another positive : only 1 in-app-purchase and that's to unlock the soundtrack right away (which must unlock eventually if you play well) - which shows some respect for the people that bought this game, there's no IAP for costumes or character upgrades or different skills...and it makes a big difference - gold farming here would really bring down the quality of the experience.





Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Skulls of the Shogun (XBLA)


Played the demo for 'Skulls of the Shogun' on Xbox Live Arcade and was very surprised how good this game seems.The art-style is really good in some places but in other places it reminded me of a mobile game - maybe it was the combination of the font and some colour choices. If you aren't bothered by that though, you've found yourself a hilarious turn-based strategy game, with good strategy and a fun premise. Protect your General as he moves up the mountain of the afterlife. The background is more interactive then you'd think and you'll need to navigate the terrain to gain the upper hand - I was surprised when I first found out that you could bump enemies right off the cliff. The background was more interactive than I thought.

I do think though, that this would be a great fit on a tablet, and I hope to see it on my ipad at some point.

Update : I actually read now that this game is available on Windows Phones and Tablets, and can sync in between them all....pretty cool....too bad no one actually uses the Surface.