Sokoban is a genre you probably haven’t heard of, but have played many times. The original was a Japanese puzzle that involved moving boxes around a room. Without planning several moves in advance you can easily box yourself in. Robo-E is a spin on this classic puzzle with a Sci-Fi theme; you control a garbage collecting robot that has become confused and needs your Sokoban skills to get his job done!
Although I'm a fan of casual games, there does come a point where a casual title can be just a little... too casual. Drop It!, with a total game time as short as a few seconds and as long as you can keep the main gameplay going (around a minute or so in my case), runs very close to this boundary but redeems itself with several physics options, a dash of strategy and a little genuine excitement.
Arctica has got me sussed. Throw in 3D action with plenty of particle physics and a sci-fi theme and I'm basically putty in its hands. In this case detailing a review of the latest particle experience, SpeedFest. If you're into seat-of-the-pants action games then I think you too will love it. Read on for a wealth of screenshots and a video that will give you a great idea of the gameplay on offer.
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Tower defence games are a regular addition to my review tray – so much so that I’m becoming a connoisseur of the genre. This is no doubt why Save The City was assigned to me. In this most miniature of militaristic marches, you are tasked with saving your city from a stream of tanks and alien spacecraft. Does it add anything new to the genre or have we seen it all before?
Cricket remains, I contend, a sport that's extremely tricky to simulate in any enjoyable way on a phone screen. The sport timings, complexity, atmosphere - you name it - are all just... wrong. Which hasn't stopped a number of publishers writing a cricket game anyway and Ashes Cricket is, like the others I've tried, ultimately doomed to disappoint. Here's my full review.
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Sideways scrolling platform games aren’t as popular as they used to be. To maintain interest in a genre, developers need to come up with unique twists that will keep gamers coming back for more. Failing that, a good movie tie-in never hurts. Fortunately, GameLoft has managed to do both with The Adventures of Tintin.
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I get a lot of Tower Defence games across my desk. It’s amazing how many variations on a simple genre you can have. Then again, it’s not a simple genre – Tower Defence combines strategy with resource management, or at least it should. With Elemental War you have to pitch the power of the elements against endless hordes of enemies. Is the gameplay more than elementary though?
What do you get if you cross Breakout with Doom? No, really. Breakfest provides all the gameplay of the famous ball and block games, complete with every power up option you've ever seen, in full animated texture mapped 3D, with explosions and other visual effects. And, yes, you even get to fire missiles at various points. All that's missing are the monsters...
How can one pass up a game billed as "Exciting, intuitive and simple gameplay based on revolutionary worm-physics"? Come again? "Worm physics"? Oh yes, Finnish company 10tons has taken the basic game structure of the famous Angry Birds, created by their country mates Rovio, and applied it to their own physics-based game, based on the way caterpillars 'swing' around their environment (allegedly), swinging end over end. Is it as polished as Angry Birds? A resounding yes. Is it as much fun to play? That depends on your gaming preference and time available.
When classifying a game, you don’t often find something that qualifies as a physics simulation and a platformer. Sonic the Hedgehog is perhaps the only exception. Duster on Symbian^3 appears to be trying to achieve the same classification. While it works on paper, read on to find out what sort of gameplay is on offer.
