World Domination? There’s an App for That.
Ever wanted to claim cities, attack countries, build up a massive army and make advances in tech all from your iPhone? Well now you can, this weekend marked the release for Civilization Revolution for the iPhone. I have played the 360 version and I have to say it was really the first strategy game I ever played! It caused me to fall in love with the genre. It appears that everything is in tack from the console versions minus the graphics. There is a paid version which is avaible for $5 and a lite-version for free. In the lite-version, you can choose from 3 countries and play up to the Middle Era. So what are you waiting for, go conquer the world!
Eliss (iPhone)
I had first heard about Eliss from a friend suggesting it to everyone but I was still a little skeptical after seeing some screenshots of the game. From the screens it seemed too complicated and I wasn’t really even sure what the game was about. I even late saw a video of it and wasn’t sure what was going on.
As with most iPhone games I just decided to get it on a whim. I wasn’t sure if I would even like it but I trusted the people who suggested it so I went ahead and purchased it for the wonderful price of $2.99.
The main concepts of Eliss are actually very simple. It may look intimidating but it’s really not. The object is to combine the circles that randomly appear with each other to make bigger circles. Once a circle is big enough you drag it into a “pod” that also appears at random. The pod then disappears. Each level has a specific amount of times you are to do this and once you do that amount the level ends and you move on to the next. The second concept in the game is splitting the circles to make them smaller. There will be smaller pods that appear so you must split the large circles by using two fingers and dragging them apart.
The way you die in this game is when you let the different colored circles touch each other. The longer they touch the more your life goes down. In the later levels there is a lot going on on the screen so it can be very hard to keep the circles from touching. I even found myself holding my iPhone in ways I didn’t know where possible just so that I could use four fingers.
I’m currently on the 10th level and there is 25 levels total. One last thing I want to mention is the art-style of Eliss. It’s very plain and simple but this plain and simple look is what makes Eliss so appealing.
Overall I love Eliss and I highly recommend it. Don’t be intimidated, you will get the hang of it no later than 5 minutes in.
Check out the video below for the first 3 levels of Eliss:
Chocolate Shop Frenzy
In Chocolate Shop Frenzy you play a girl who is looking for a job. She stumbles upon an ad in the newspaper for a chocolate shop and decides to try it out. This girl then has to take on the tasks of running a chocolate shop for a year. CSF is a time management game similar to Diner Dash but with a lot more depth.
In the beginning you basically just serve the customers chocolate in three different shapes of boxes: square, circle, or triangle. Later on in the game you have the option of playing the Recipe Lab mode to help you unlock different stuff in the game like new machines, new chocolate shapes, candy for unhappy customers, a hot chocolate machine to give you a boost, a paper machine to wrap the boxes in nice paper, and a coloring machine to color the chocolates. The Recipe Lab mode mini game is similar to Hexic in that you have to connect three shapes. This mini game comes up about every three days but you can access the Recipe Lab mode separately from the main menu to work on unlocking new things at any time. As you move further in the game your machines will update. They will get bigger so you can produce more chocolates at a time and produce them faster.
Each level brings a different kind of customer. Some of the customers are regular people, some are grandmas, others are police men. Each character has a different rule. For example police men are always on call so they could leave at any second, business men are impatient but will leave good tips and so on.
There are too many features to list here which is why Chocolate Shop Frenzy is such an awesome game. It has beautiful graphics (much better than Diner Dash) and runs perfectly. If you like Diner Dash or any other game similar to that then you will love Chocolate Shop Frenzy.
Chocolate Shop Frenzy is published by Digital Chocolate. The full game is $4.99 but there is a free version available in the app store for you to give it a try.
iPhone Game Review Meltdown – Vol. 1
Hiqup – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/10/10/hiqup/
Fieldrunners – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/10/10/fieldrunners-3/
The Stone of Destiny – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/10/02/the-stone-of-destiny-2/
Garden Marbles – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/09/23/garden-marbles-3/
Blue Skies – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/09/12/blue-skies-2/
Blocked – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/09/11/blocked/
Billy Frontier – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/09/02/billy-frontier-2/
Sudoku Unlimited – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/08/12/sudoku-unlimited/
Bug Bounce – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/08/08/bug-bounce-2/
Sol Free Solitaire – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/08/08/sol-free/
Dizzy Bee – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/08/04/dizzy-bee/
Super Monkey Ball – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/07/27/super-monkey-ball-2/
Chopper – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/07/27/chopper/
Crash Nitro Kart 3D – http://everydaygamers.com/2008/07/27/crash-nitro-kart-3d/
Zombie Mansion
I always get really excited when I hear about developers that are working on an FPS for the iPhone. The problem is that I am usually disappointed with the final product. I wouldn’t call Zombie Mansion a disappointment but it isn’t exactly what I was hoping it would be.
With all of the great made-for-iphone games out there it seems like first person shooters still have to find their place on the iPhone. Zombie Mansion does a great job of showing that it is possible to run a relatively smooth FPS on the iPhone. The problem with Zombie Mansion is more about the polish than the gameplay. Zombie Mansion in my opinion is very generic. The music and graphics give me that 90′s low-budget PC shooter feel. It’s also not as zombified as I had hoped it would be. Zombie Mansion is more mummies, skeletons, wizards, and knights than it is zombies.
I was also turned off by the weapon you are given. This weapon just happens to be a magical wand that kinda looks like a large stogy. I was hoping more for some kind of gun than a stick. I can see some people out there really enjoying Zombie Mansion but me being spoiled with all the great console FPS’s this game isn’t really worth my time. I give Source IT Software credit for bringing an FPS to the iPhone but I am still yearning for one that doesn’t just play great but also looks like it came out this century. Bring Zombie Mansion down to $1.99 and I might call it worth the price.
Blue Defense!
In Blue Defense you control a laser cannon on an unknown planet. This cannon rotates on the axis of the planet. When you begin the game the planet is located at the bottom of the screen. The cannon’s laser runs at a continual stream so all you have to do is tilt the iPhone in the direction you want to stream to go. Red objects will then fly towards to planet and you must destroy them before they reach the planet.
As you move on in Blue Defense the location of the planet will change. Sometimes it will be located at the bottom of a vertically positioned screen, other times at the bottom of a horizontally positioned screen, and in the later levels it’s positioned in the center of your screen for full 360 degree tilting. These position changes really break up the gameplay in a great way.
Overall Blue Defense really utilizes the iPhone’s control scheme and fluid controls are the most important thing for a shooter. At $0.99 Blue Defense is a steal.
Peggle
A few weeks ago I decided to download Steam. I had heard a lot of good things about it and wanted to finally give it a try. But this post isn’t about Steam (we’ll save that for a later post), it’s about Peggle, a game that I downloaded very quickly and conveniently through Steam. I had heard about Peggle from the guys on 1UP Yours and they said that it was pretty addictive. Other than that I hadn’t heard much about it. Turns out Peggle is a full-fledged Pop Cap game which you can download to your computer too. I decided to download it in hopes that it would be a replacement game for my wife’s addiction to Zuma. In the end we both ended up getting addicted to it. Maybe it’s the cheesy characters (groundhogs and unicorns). Basically the game has you shooting a little shiny ball at pegs that make the ball bounce and hit other pegs. After that ball falls down to the bottom those pegs disappear. In each level there is so many orange pegs that you must make disappear and you only have so many tries to make it happen. Each level is also arranged very differently. Along the way you will be given opportunities to obtain different types of power-ups by hitting certain pegs. All-in-all Peggle is highly addictive and I will be sure to buy the full version soon. I suggest you give it a try right now.