In Game Dev Story, you can develop games! Game Dev Story by Kairosoft is a game management simulation game. You are the manager of a game company, and have 20 years to turn a no-name company into the largest corporation in the world. This game tests your ability to make right decisions at the right moment. Instructions are told through dialogue by your secretary, allowing smooth and continuous gameplay. Even if you don’t remember everything, you still have the help section as reference.

You start out in a small room with 2 employees. Initially, you have 2 job options: ‘New Game’ or ‘Contract’. As the name suggests, ‘New Game’ lets you develop a game. You can choose the game platform, genre, type, and direction. Additional types of platform, genre, and type can be unlocked as your company grows. Game direction sets whether you want to focus on speed, quality, or research. At first, you may need to do contract jobs to rack up some capital. As the company becomes more famous and gets more fans, your secretary will let you move to a larger room with more employee slots.

A game has 5 attributes: fun, creativity, graphics, sound, and bug. The attributes affect magazine reviews and game sales. Points for attributes are earned by employees while developing games. They each have their own attributes: program, scenario, graphics, and sound. Generally, employees with higher attributes will contribute more points towards the game.

Game Dev Story tries to create a realistic industry market by introducing several factors. New consoles are announced after a period of time, and old consoles are removed from the market. This means that to get the most sales from your fans, you need to invest money into getting different platform licenses. Your fans will also change every few years, with older fans replaced by younger fans. It is important to keep the number of fans as high as you can. Kairosoft did a great job with a realistic world, but one mistake they made was including blackouts. Blackouts, or equipment failure will severely decrease game points while in development, but nowadays backups are used to prevent those sorts of things. 

While developing, you will earn research points. Research points can be used towards training and leveling up employees as well as using items. To create a console within your own company, you need a hardware engineer. The only way to get a hardware engineer is by getting an employee’s level to level 5 on 7 different types of profession. Research points can also boost your game quality.

If a game gets a review score of 32 or higher, the game will be put in the Hall of Fame. Then, you can start creating sequels. Occasionally you will receive a fan letter, which will tell you if a sequel will sell well.

Graphics and sounds are decent; it’s nothing high-end but gets the job done. The game doesn’t make use of retina display, but the text is still easy to read. The soundtrack doesn’t have much variety when changing offices, but isn’t out of place. You can’t change the design of your games and consoles, which was a little disappointing. In addition, this game requires a lot of patience. You can only watch the screen as your workers code, and there isn’t much action involved. The price of $3.99 can deter many from trying this game. If you are a fan of action or real-time strategy games, this might not be the best fit for you. Game Dev Story won’t bore you in 10 minutes, but perhaps after a few hours. Still, you will most likely devote hours to beat all of your competitors if it is your kind of game.

More information on Game Dev Story is available on their official website. The iOS version can be downloaded at the App Store for the iPhone for $3.99. The Android version can be downloaded at the Play Store for $2.50.

When I played the first level in Cavorite by Cascadia Games, I thought this would be a simple puzzle game with some levels. However, after playing a few more levels, I was deeply drawn into the world “inside the moon”. Dr. Cavor is trapped inside the moon, and player mission is to lead him back to Earth. Equipped only with his genius mind and his invention: the anti-gravity spray, ‘Cavorite‘, Dr. Cavor must pass through many challenging and dangerous levels.  This game is a ingenious game that fuses puzzles, platforms, and action.

In every level, you must safely reach the tunnel exit. The controls are very simple. You can move left or right, jump, or use the ‘Cavorite‘ spray. The levels are simple as well. The entire level is displayed on the screen, so there are no screen scrolling. There are 3 worlds you can play in: you start in the “Deep Caverns”, then discover the “Lava Tunnels”, and then come out to the “Lunar Foundry”. Each world has 21 levels, totaling to 63 levels with mixed difficulty. The developer did a good job by creating tutorial pop-ups in early levels to teach players of the objective.

The amount of time spent in each level determines how many stars you get. The time is somehow divided into gold, silver, and bronze intervals, but it never told me what time I had to beat to get the gold star. It would have been less frustrating if I knew I had to complete a level under 15 seconds. The timer while playing is very ambiguous as well. I couldn’t tell how many seconds have elapsed just by looking at that small clock.

Are you stuck? In puzzle games, it is inevitable that you can’t solve several levels even after many tries. Don’t worry, this game allows skipping levels. After trying for several times, the game will allow you to go to the next level without getting any stars. This was helpful to me, because I was able to refine my skills and re-play the same level.

This game mixes an adventure aspect through the plan of building a spaceship to escape from the moon. In each level, you have the opportunity to get one ’part’ of the rocket. Although this is not required to advance to next levels, it is required to reach the ending and earn the last achievement. This encouraged players to beat the game by forcing players to plan how they are going to retrieve the parts, as they are sometimes hard to reach.

In addition, this game requires action through boss battles. In the last level of each world, your goal is to defeat the boss, whether it is through smashing blocks on them or plunging them into the hot lava.

The retro 16-bit graphics and sound were matching to the game. The soundtrack is worth listening to while playing. The great graphics coupled with smooth control interface makes this game worth its price of $1.99. This app is designed for everyone to be able to enjoy puzzle games. If you have not played puzzle games before, I highly suggest you try this out.

For more information on Cavorite visit their official website. The iOS version can be found at the App Store, universal for the iPhone and iPad for $1.99.

PipeRoll 2 Ages is a pipe puzzle game. Similar to the Oil Tycoon series, you rotate pipes to get liquid to flow to the destination. At first, you may think a puzzle game will be boring, but this game is a little different from others because  you will be frantically touching the screen to achieve 3 stars on every level.

The level menu borrows its design from Angry Birds. There are 20 levels in each ‘age’: stone age, ancient ages, middle ages,the golden age of the Western, and the USA of the ‘20s. Pipes in different ages have different themes, and different liquids are introduced in each age. For example, you start out at the stone age with water and lava, but in the ancient ages and middle ages, you need to connect wine and ‘magic’ liquid as well. When you finish a level by completing the path for liquid, you will receive stars based on the time taken. Each level usually has a timer of 1 to 2 minutes in order to achieve 3 stars.

The instructions were very clear and were very user-friendly. I knew exactly what to do after reading for 5 seconds. The game will tell you more as you progress throughout the levels so you are not overloaded with all the information at once.

This game is interesting because you need to make a closed path for liquid to flow to the destination. That means if a pipe is leaking water, you can’t clear the level. Although it certainly is frustrating to find where the pipe is open, this adds challenge to the game. You don’t need to use all of the pipes, just don’t leave any leaks!

I didn’t like that zoom wasn’t available. Some people might prefer thicker pipes so that they know which pipe they are rotating. The later levels will become very big, and you will have to visualize where the pipes are, since they won’t all fit in the screen. With zoom, you can plan better to get better scores, and you won’t make mistakes by tapping on the wrong pipe. Another bad element in the game is that the timer starts right after the level is loaded. From the menu screen, it took me 7 seconds to load the level. Unless the level loads immediately, I would like a start button to show up.

With 100 levels and newly added challenge mode, you can’t complain for a price of $0.99. The developers are even promising more ages in the future, so you won’t run out of levels for a while. The casual graphics and simple gameplay make this game available to everybody. If you’ve never played a puzzle game before, I strongly suggest getting this app.

The Ancient Aztec Empire used to have a game called “Stones of Montezuma”. It was forgotten until it was discovered in a temple of Xochipilli, the God of all games. In this game, you will be training your skills to achieve the Master of the Stones. The goal is to shoot a stone with matching designs. Colliding two stones with the same design will cause it to ‘explode’ and disappear, and different stones will just bounce off each other. You must finish the level without losing all of you life, indicated at the top of the screen with the number of white ‘chance stones’. Games like Frozen Bubble and Snood have a similar concept.

You might need a little time to get used to the controls. Once you touch the screen, you can drag left or right to move the stone. Dragging up or down will adjust the launching speed of the stone. The moment you lift your fingers, the stone will be launched. I didn’t like that I couldn’t let my finger go until I launched the stone. In later levels, I often had to wait for more than 15 seconds before launching it. In Montezuma Stones, you can only fire your stone straight, so you will have to aim very carefully. Also, this game is different from others in that the stones will be in constant motion on screen, which adds another challenge for the player. If another stone is between you and the target, you will have to wait for the path to clear.

In addition to normal stones, there are ‘special stones’ that will help (and harm) you. Special stones can be activated by hitting it with any stone. The effects are temporary, and a timer bar will show up on the top telling you how much time you have left until the ability expires.

This game has excellent graphics that utilize the Retina display. However, the game lacks good soundtracks. Its physics and sound effects realistically imitate billiard balls. However, I don’t see variation in the BGM, and it gets boring to listen to. Because I can’t listen to my own music while the game is open, it is a little disappointing.

Nevertheless, this game is nicely polished and well worth its price of $0.99. With 80 levels, you will definitely get hours of fun out of this seemingly simple game. The Oak Team, the developers, made a great game that can be enjoyed by everyone.

Reviewed Device: iPod Touch 4G

Want to see how well you can dodge cars? In Lane Splitter, you drive a bike and try to evade as many cars as possible. The app icon catches your eye, but at first glance the game seems very simple. However, it turned out to be very addicting and plenty of fun.

This game is very easy to pick up, and relatively simple to start off. It’s a tilting game, so it really tests your reaction time. The game starts at a slow cruising speed. There are three lanes that cars will appear from, and you must avoid contact at all costs. At first, the cars come to you one at a time. As the game progresses, the speed drastically increases. Even people who are not used to tilting their phones and/or tablets will have the opportunity to both have fun and improve their scores.

One challenging element that this game incorporated was moving cars. Usually, when people think of driving games, they think of driving through a bunch of cars that don’t move relative to their initial position. In Lane Splitter, each car acts realistically and changes lanes. It is not as easy to predict where to go; you must act in real-time.

Lane Splitter adds fun to its simple game concept by introducing abilities. The character above, for example, drives at full throttle. There are 7 characters in this game, and each character has a different abilitiy that will aid you in the game.

While playing, you will see coins on the road; pick them up! Coins will help you unlock more characters as well as upgrade and purchase items such as helmets and magnets. Helmets will give you a second chance in a game, allowing you to survive one crash. Magnets will attract nearby coins, making it easier for you to get them. Of course, if you don’t want to spend hours trying to unlock everything, you can get coins through in-app purchases. However, everything can be unlocked normally, so no worries.

For $0.99, this game is definitely worth the price. The game has decent sound effects, especially when you crash or use an ability. It is designed for both casual and hardcore players along with the fun coin collecting. It’s universal on both iPhones and iPads, so I definitely suggest getting this game! (Although I would rather not have to tilt an iPad)

Reviewed Device: iPod Touch 4G

Pioneer Lands is a time/resource management game with the West as its theme. Collect resources and materials, sell them to buy other things, and complete the objective within the given time limit. With 99 levels, you won’t get bored too quickly.

The biggest problem in this game is the lack of a help menu. The only way to refresh your memory on how to play is to go back to earlier levels and play them again. I prefer to read a set of instructions to learn, and I was disappointed that the game didn’t even have a simple help menu.

Another thing I didn’t like about this app was that it took me 28 seconds to get from home screen to the app start menu, EXCLUDING loading time. The app plays a 28-second animation every time you load this up. With multitasking, this might not happen every time, but I’m sure not all of us are patient enough to wait half a minute just to get to the start screen. If there is a way to skip this animation, or not play it after the first time, it will definitely attract more attention.

A minor concern is that the game doesn’t have a ‘free play’ mode- you can only play the 99 levels and play them again. Each level can be completed in 7 minutes or less. 100 levels means less than 12 hours of play. Once you complete all levels, I don’t really see a reason to play them again; especially if you’ve been doing the same thing for 99 times. Of course, not everyone will spend 12 hours and complete all levels. But a ‘quick play’ mode would surely be nice.

Completing levels will earn you stars you can use to upgrade your farm. Although this will not have any effect on gameplay, it is amusing to see your farm grow as you play.

There are levels, very challenging to get all 99 achievements, unique implementation of achievements/secondary mission. But there is no free game mode, repetitive action, can’t skip intro movie, $2.99 is a little too costly.

Overall, this game can be improved greatly. All of the cons can be fixed without major updates. The game’s graphics and animation are above average. Pioneer Lands is already a good strategy game, but it’s not really worth $2.99 as of now. Significant updates from Nevosoft will be required to attract more players.

Reviewed Device: iPod Touch 4G

Phoenix Defense Force is a defense game where you are supposed to defend your planet from alien invasions. Aliens will drop bombs on your planet with a counter. When the counter reaches 0, it will explode. The goal in this game is to get rid of the bomb before it explodes. You can control spaceships to pick them up and transport it to a nearby warp gate that will teleport the bomb somewhere far away.

In the title, there are Campaign and Survival modes available. However, they are both the same. The Campaign mode does not have any story or explain anything. The game also fails to explain what the objective is, or what you have to do. You will have to learn everything by playing the game, although the game concept is pretty straightforward by looking at spaceships moving around a planet.

It was hard to plot a detailed route of each spaceship, and went to a random direction once they reached the end of the plotted route. That was inconvenient for me, because I was expecting the ships to keep going forward in the same direction as the end of the route.

One enjoyable aspect is the upgrades system. You earn a point for every bomb you successfully transport, and you can spend them for better defense. The bombs have different color, and you need to transport them to warp gates with matching color. Green points can be used to upgrade your ship such as making them move faster. It can also be used to call in more ships. Blue and red points enable you to place turrets on your planet, which will shoot down enemy ships, preventing bombs from being placed.

The game is only interesting for the first 15 minutes. Different colored warp gates are the only thing that becomes available as you play the game. Besides that, the number of enemies is the only thing that changes. Same gameplay, same boring strategy. Of course, this game is priced at $0.99, so you can’t expect much out of it. However, adding a few levels and a story system in addition to including instructions will make this game much better. Plus, there are many other games with the same price that are way better than this game.

Reviewed Device: iPod Touch 4G

Do you want to control traffic? Do you want to cause traffic accidents as well? Do you want to see cars and buildings blow up? Then Traffic Panic 3D is the right game to buy. You control traffic of an intersection during rush hour. Either let the cars advance with green light or stop them with red light if cars are coming from the side. Don’t let the cars crash into each other! BUT, you also need to be careful: if cars take too long to pass the intersection, you have now created a traffic jam! Which means the game is over.

The scoring system in Traffic Panic 3D is unique. You get normal points for getting cars across the intersection. Then, when you crash, the system calculates how much damage you caused, and you get extra credits, which can be used to unlock more car types and buildings, helping you cause more expensive crashes.

One thing I noticed is that I can only control the traffic going vertically. The cars that go horizontal just move on their own, and it was truly a ‘panic’ trying to avoid both hitting cars and creating a traffic jam. I agree that this makes the game really simple yet really challenging and addicting. However, adding a second light for players to control may be interesting.

Another complaint is that the only help this game gives you is the help dialogue in your first game. So if you ever forget how to play this, tough luck. Although it’s not hard at all to start playing without instructions.

This game is only $0.99, and I strongly encourage buying this app. Traffic Panic 3D will help you pass time as well as test your reflex and timing skills.

Reviewed on: iPod Touch 3G, iPod Touch 4G

I came across an interesting space RPG: Galactic Phantasy. It looked similar to the Galaxy on Fire games by FISHLABS, so I decided to try it out.

In Galactic Phantasy, you initially own a frigate with small fighting capability. Fighting enemies, trading items and completing transport missions will reward you with money and resources necessary to build new ships, such as Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships, and even Battle Cruisers. There are many parts you can choose from to outfit your ship, helping your ship become stronger, faster, and more efficient when warping.

Just by looking at the menu, you will know the game has high quality graphics.

There are 3 types of missions: In a mercenary mission, you can fight enemy fleets and get money. In a robbing mission, you do the same thing but get raw materials required for building ships. In a smuggling mission, you transport resources from one starport to another to get money. The game heavily limits what the player can do, because the missions are the only way you can fight ships.

The combat system is limiting as well. It is also very boring. Once you get into battle, you can either fire your weapons, activate a shield, or recharge your energy. The enemy AI is also simple; they will attack you once you get in range, and immediately use a shield when you try to fire.

The description claims a “3D universe”, but the battle is truly 2D: you can only choose to get close to an enemy ship or get away from it. It does not consider other ships’ locations, so you will definitely get attacked while you are trying to retreat.
The story is very short, but it will take a long time to complete it because you need to grind your way up to a good ship that won’t get destroyed in 1 hit.

When you try to move from one planet to another, all you can do is go to the galaxy map and choose a destination. Everything is in auto-pilot, which is great at first but gets boring when you try to make a long jump- you don’t want to stare at a 5-second animation repeat over 10 times.