It’s Father’s Day tomorrow! I hope you remembered to do something nice for your dad or at least give him a call if he’s still alive. And if you’ve grown apart, it would be as good a time as any to get over your differences before he dies. Alternatively, be exactly like your father was, make a whiny face like he did for three movies, and jump down a shaft.
This weekend I found out Grand Prix Story hit Android, Imaginary Range is now on Android, there’s a couple of iPhone games, and Gameloft is holding a Father’s Day sale on a bunch of their iOS games.
Weekend highlights:
Grand Prix Story (Android, $4.96)
A new game by Kairosoft (Game Dev Story, Hot Springs Story) came out and it’s on Android first? Shocking! Actually it’s not that shocking, because the Story games were never tailored to any specific mobile platform by design. Because I don’t have an Android phone — or any phone that is worth a damn for that matter — I couldn’t check this out myself and it also passed under my radar.
It looks great though, and this time around you’re managing your own racing team with some deeper options and harder gameplay. I’ve heard a few people say they couldn’t get it to run on their older Android phone though, so it might be a good idea to search around a bit to see if there are known issues with this game and your phone model.
Skipping Stone (iPhone, $0.99)
Not to be confused with Skipping Stones or Stone Skipper (yes really), Skipping Stone is a pretty simple yet colorful rhythm game. You’re some kind of creature thing who has to skip on the water by tapping at the right moment. It sounded stupid to me, but I gave it a try nonetheless and it’s not bad actually.
There’s not a whole lot to it, although you get multipliers for doing three properly timed skips in a row and there are random bonuses to grab that give you a range of different effects and items. It’s not a game you’ll be playing for any long stretches of time, but it is one of those games that are great to just pass a few minutes while you wait for something.
The clean art style and the frantic music turn what could’ve been a really boring mechanic into a frantic timed tap fest. If you’re in the market for a simple game that doesn’t get old fast, but that you can keep playing on and off where it suits you, Skipping Stone is pretty decent.
UltraDeep (iPhone, $0.99)
Another one of those tilt control jump/fall games, this time with doodle graphics. I’m terrible at tilt controls and quite frankly I hate them, so this was not a game for me. If you don’t mind tilt controls though, it’s pretty decent.
You collect diamonds on your path to the bottom, which fill up a bar that lets you blow through platforms and hazards in super hero mode. You can also use the diamonds to upgrade things like a longer super power bar to save up more diamonds, duration, other characters, and items to save your life. You can also configure the tilt sensitivity which is a huge plus.
The game does do a good job at providing incentives to keep on playing it through an in-game locator for your high score and through the upgrades, so if you dig this type of game it’s worth a shot.
Imaginary Range (Android, free)
We’ve talked about Imaginary Range in a previous Weekend Mobile roundup, but it’s finally on Android now. If you don’t know what it is, it’s Square Enix’s mix of an interactive comic book with minigames that combine to tell a very Japanese story. It’s great, free, and an innovative mix of elements that work well on the phone platform. Grab it!
Army of Darkness Defense (iPhone, free right now)
I wasn’t really impressed when I played this game for a few minutes to do the Free App of the Day post, but after having given it some more time I have to say this is not a bad game. It’s still a simple game where you move left and right and shoot automatically, or chainsaw skeletons automatically if they get up close.
With the gold you collect you can upgrade your units, castle defenses and Ash himself. There’s also only one level, which is pretty lame. But despite this not being a proper Evil Dead game, it’s worth giving it a try. Some supporting characters from Army of Darkness make an appearance as powerful heroes, all the different types of enemies are here, and it’s addictive to keep playing it and upgrading your stuff.
It should be said though, that if you just use Ash to keep the skeletons and Deadites at bay while you save up resources to upgrade the Smithy to the maximum level — who generates resources to upgrade himself or buy units in a level — every level is a cakewalk. You can just upgrade Ash to protect the Necronomicon long enough to get to that max Smithy level, after which your income flow is so high that you can just keep pooping out new units to easily win a level.
It’s by no means the Evil Dead game we’ve been waiting for, but it pays tribute to a lot of aspects of the classic third movie and they did with the material what they could for this type of game. It’s also free at the moment, so there’s that.
Free games and deals:
First some more freebies I found. Burn the Rope (iPhone) is not as good as Burn it All by a long shot, but it’s a kind of fun tilt control game where you rotate your device to make a flame burn upwards and burn some rope. I got tired of turning my iPod around all the time, but some of you might dig it.
Scene It: Movies 2 (iPhone) is the movie trivia stuff you’d expect. It’s not great or as good as the console games, but it can help pass the time when you are watching a boring movie.
Gameloft deals (via Touch Arcade), all games are $0.99:
- Eternal Legacy (iPhone, iPad) — 3rd person action RPG
- Fast Five: The Movie: The Official Game (iPhone, iPad) — Split/Second
- Fishing Kings (iPhone) — Sega Bass Fishing
- Gangstar: Miami Vindication (iPhone, iPad) — GTA Vice City
- NFL 2011 (iPhone, iPad) — American Football
- Order & Chaos Online (iPhone & iPad) — World of Warcraft lite
- Real Soccer (iPhone, iPad) — Football
- Spider-Man: Total Mayhem (iPhone, iPad)
Weekly news roundup:
- Angry Birds passed 250 million downloads and Rovio is working on new games.
- Buzz devs are working on iPhone and Kinect games.
- VisionBalls tech uses the iPad camera to do hands-free gaming.
Notable updates:
Bumpy Road (iPhone & iPad, $2.99 — universal app)
A new update for Bumpy Road adds a new Sunday Trip Deluxe mode, which includes speed and brake “gizmos.” I’m still loving Bumpy Road even though I can’t seem to really get good at it, and it looks like they’ll keep on updating this to keep the gameplay fresh. If the “higher than $1” price put you off before, perhaps that will convince you to try it out.
That’s it for this weekend. If you know of a ridiculous or cool new Android or iOS game, hit me up on Twitter or send us an email. Or post it in the comments!
