★★★★✩ (iTMS)
(I’m posting this to iphone-reviews instead of Overooped because it’s an iPhone game review, although it mentions my own game and quite a bit biased. If anyone feels this is inappropriate I’ll just move the post to my own blog.)
Hexy is an abstract, tile- and turn-based strategy game with variable board size, for the iPhone. With all those similarities to a certain other game, I had to give it a try. And you know what? Hexy is everything I ever wanted Overload to be.
It follows iPhone interface guidelines, while customizing them to go with the game’s theme AND look stunningly beautiful. It has a conceptual theme going (bee hive; with the complimentary joke that any nerd will appreciate), but without going all the way there; it’s not a yellow-orange cartoon bee hive that one might expect from a flash or j2me game, but rather just enough subtle cues (sounds, names of things) to take it far enough while keeping the graphical design simple, unique and beautiful.
There’s a tutorial on first play that’s succinct and nicely done like everything else. There’s just no excuse for not having one in my game…
There’s local versus AI play, and local two player gaming, that’s simple enough. Further, though, there’s wifi play, and match-making online multiplayer. I haven’t seen that much, which is why I’m so anxious to get it into my own game as well. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be that many online players in Europe; the match maker didn’t find anyone for me to play with so I didn’t get to judge that experience. In Overload, I hope to make that situation better with push notification game invitation, friend lists and an in-game community, but that’s a very big step.
Most importantly though, is that Hexy is both challenging, allows for complex strategy, and a great deal of fun, while keeping games short enough for a play when waiting in queue with your phone; in short, the perfect mobile casual game. So get it! ~~nevyn
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
Glypha is an old Joust clone, originally for the classic black-and-white Macs. It’s basically the same as Joust but simpler, with another theme and slightly different physics. John Calhoun’s retro classic has now been ported over to the iPhone by Kent Sutherland, and it works really, really well on this platform. The game loads quick and starts quick, no tedious loading screens, tutorials or annoying popups, and it’s fast-paced and short-gamed, just what you want on a phone.
The downsides are no multiplayer, and slightly difficult controls. The screen is divided into three segments for the three buttons (left, right, flap wings), and on-screen non-tactile buttons with fast-paced action means you’re dead if you slip outside the button zones and miss a tap. Not much to do about that until we get haptic feedback, though.
It’s free AND fun, so you have no excuse; go get it. ~~nevyn
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
Seahorse Software’s Pyramid Solitaire is a game that is definitely easy to learn but tough to master. Within a few games strategies will start popping into your head as to how to rack up the most amount of pairs of cards that add to 13.
Pyramid Solitaire is easy but once you dive into the settings the game’s luck and chance elements will start to show their ugly heads as losing comes much easier.
The lite version has considerably less options than the $3 version. The paid version allows users to select from single or double pyramids, overlap matching, the number of re-deals and more.
Pyramid Solitaire is a fun pyramid solitaire game for the iPhone. It’s sturdily built and fun. If card games are your thing, this one comes highly recommended!
★★★✩✩ (iTMS)
Seahorse Software presents BlackJack Run, a refreshing take on BlackJack, to the iPhone.
The objective of BlackJack run is to rack up as many points in consecutive rounds by getting 21 (or as close as you can get) in each of the five rows. Each round is timed, giving players 30 seconds to try to hit Blackjack or 21.
In each round players must meet the minimum point amount of 95 to move on which is not hard to do if players get the right cards.
Blackjack Run features leader boards and the ability to make the game harder if players feel that they’re dominating the game. After a while though the cards will catch up and players’ fire will be lost, causing them to start over.
BlackJack Run comes in two versions, the full version and the lite version. The full version is a little pricey for what you get at $4.99. The free version has all of the fun of the full version without the ability to make the game harder as well as limited access to the leader boards.
Allover, BlackJack Run is an addictive and fun game. It’s a great new take on Blackjack that hasn’t yet been explored on the iPhone. BlackJack Run is stable and plays well. Not a must-have like other games reviewed here but definitely a worthy pick up for a card game-lover’s iPhone
★★★★★ (iTMS)
On top of coffee tables everywhere sat the vehicular puzzle game Rush Hour, a game centered around freeing the red car from the surrounding traffic jam. Blocked takes that lovable game and transports it to the iPhone in the form of Blocked.
This game is fantastically addictive. It will keep players guessing through all 100 levels.
The learning curve in Blocked is perfect. There isn’t that one standout level in the middle of the Medium difficulty that’s absolutely impossible like in other puzzle games. Easy is just that, so is medium and hard. Every level seems to fit in exactly with the difficulty setting that looms over the puzzle.
If there was a list of iPhone games that were must-haves, Blocked would make the top five games in that list.
Hopefully future updates will bring more levels but for now, and for only $0.99, you would be crazy not to have this game on your iPhone.
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
Remember a few years ago when those weirdly shaped sticks with a few buttons and a thing to pull were all over TV? Chances are you or someone you knew had a Bop It and chances are one of you, at one point or another, got angry and threw that awkward piece of plastic across the room with fury and rage coursing through your veins.
Snazoo isn’t awkward or infuriating, it’s actually pretty fun and surprisingly easier to pick up than that stupid hunk of un-funness that MTV and Nickelodeon used to market.
Maybe it’s because I’m good at it that I’ve never once wanted to chuck my iPhone across the room, maybe it’s because the Kieffer Brothers made this thing well. I couldn’t tell you but I can’t put it down.
The premise is simple: follow directions. When the light is green, obey the game. If the light is red, don’t do a thing. Pretty soon you’ll be fully emersed with the tempo speeding up and your iPhone barking directions at you faster and faster until you slip up and have to start all over.
Snazoo comes with two modes, Play and Friend Play, three different beats and four different voices to tell you what to do. And for $0.99, Snazoo is a concentration game to come back to over and over again.
Disclaimer: Tumblr iPhone App Reviews is not responsible for anything that may happen to your phone after purchasing this app (ie throwing, breaking, cracking the glass, damaged relationships, or sadness)
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
I review a lot of word games for the iPhone because in terms of mobile games they have long lives. I’m also a huge fan of them which makes them a pleasure to explore and review.
Lexic is one of those pleasures. It’s an iPhone gem, a must-have word game.
It comes with two different modes, Cascade and Blackout, which put different spins on clearing letters from the screen.
Cascade is a timed game. Spell the most amount of words with two or more letters in the allotted time and shoot for a high score.
Blackout is an elimination-based game type with no time limit. When a word is created, the letters go away. Tilting the iPhone shifts letters from the left side of the screen to the right allowing for the consolidation of letters when gaps start to appear as the letters go.
Both games are incredibly fun and a joy to come back to again and again.
The only thing missing is the ability to unlock new tile sets. Lexic comes with 12 different looks for the tiles but the ability to unlock more feels missing. Achievements would also be a worthy addition to Lexic. If you spell an eight letter word, you should get something more than a bunch of points, maybe a new tile set or something.
Lexic costs $1.99 and is an absolute steal. It’s a superb iPhone game that is fun to pick up for two minutes or two hours. Buy this game.
★★★✩✩ (iTMS)
It’s almost Valentine’s Day and you haven’t bought a card, why not make one on your iPhone with Create A Valentine?
Create A Valentine is a simple, free app that lets users create a Valentine’s Day message and save it using different frames and backgrounds. The messages save to the iPhone’s Photo Album for quick and easy emailing to friends and loved ones.
Create A Valentine is simple and easy to use and while it won’t warm Mom’s heart like sending an actual card, it’s not a bad backup plan.
★★★✩✩ (iTMS)
Tapinoma’s Easycontact iPhone app lets users select a contact from their address book and quickly creates a business card complete with their name, picture, email and phone number (all depending on what’s stored as that contact’s information). Easycontact also allows for you to send that to other Easycontact users through email, Wi-Fi and audio linking.
The interface is smooth but confusing. If you want to create a card for yourself, you have to add yourself as a contact and fill out all of the information that you’ll never need again outside of Easycontact.
I’m a college student so I can’t judge this application as fairly as I would like because I have no use for it and no one to use it with. I suppose if you have to send your contact information to someone, then Easycontact would be an efficient way to do it but for me text messages do just fine.
★★★✩✩ (iTMS)
MetaCreature Games’ Juggler is fun and simple. A section of the bottom of separated so you can touch the falling juggling balls and send them back up into the air. Just don’t let one fall!
The game is straight-forward, fun and easy to pick up. The settings allow you to select to juggle anywhere from three to ten balls with your choice of three designs. Juggler also supports a leaderboard system so you can compete with fellow jugglers around the world.
Juggler comes in free and paid versions ($0.99) with no real difference other than the appearance of ads in the former. It’s a solid pickup.
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
As a photographer I love interesting iPhone camera applications. The one major flaw in the built-in Camera application is the small button you have to press to take the picture. Why not just tap the screen to close the shutter? That’s where Rogobete Christian’s Fast Tap Camera comes in.
Fast Tap Camera is a a simple application that lets photographers press anywhere on the iPhone’s screen to capture a moment. It also comes with a 3X mode, giving users the chance to take three shots before saving them to their camera roll.
The application works only a little slower than the built-in Camera application and, from my experiences, there is little reason to choose Camera over Fast Tap Camera.
For only $0.99 you can purchase a missing piece of the iPhone. It adds a well-needed, overlooked feature of the original Camera application. Fast Tap Camera is an application that every iPhone user should have, tired of the pesky shutter button or not.
★★★✩✩ (iTMS)
 (Photo Courtesy: Takayuki Fukatsu)
Japanese developer Takayuki Fukatsu brings an interesting new camera app to the iPhone. QuadCamera, as the name suggests, takes four pictures in succession and creates one image out of the four.
It’s a fun toy but nothing too practical. The created image is a 320 by 480 pixel, the same as the regular camera outputs with each photo being a quarter of the whole image.
The only problem I had with QuadCamera was that without the sound on there’s no way to tell that it’s taking more than one picture. With the sound on however, you can hear four shutters as the pictures are quickly taken.
QuadCamera puts a nice effect on the output picture making for images you won’t find on every iPhone’s camera album. Playing around with the settings allow for other dimensions other than 2x2 and the ability to take black and white QuadPhotos.
For $1.99 you’ll get a fun camera toy that puts a new spin on iPhone photography. While it’s nothing too practical, it does what a fish-eye lens does for a real camera: ads fun with limited functionality
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
 (Photo Courtesy: 99 Games)
For any fan of Boggle or Scrabble, WordsWorth is an iPhone-gaming must. The objective is to connect as many letters as possible to form words of three letters or longer. Certain letters are worth points while some aren’t worth anything; some tiles give a blank for use in any word or bonus points for incorporation.
Buzzwords appear at the bottom and offer large rewards if you can finagle your letters in order to spell them. Timed tiles threaten to end your game if you don’t clear them within the time allotted. In addition, you can scramble and shuffle letters, racking up the points as the game’s difficulty increases.
As a fan of Boggle when I was younger and Scrabble now, when 99 Games sent me WordsWorth I was eager to play. Since then I’ve found myself wasting hours away playing their addictive game.
For $1.99, WordsWorth is well worth it’s price tag. It will give fans or word games hours of enjoyment as well as, in the later levels, a significant mental challenge.
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
For the musician on the go, FourTrack is a great way to lay down ideas or even record a demo in spaces that usually prove to be inopportune.
Sonoma Wire Works’ FourTrack is intuitive and easy to use. Touch a track to select it then slide the recording arm to start recording. As new tracks are in use, the older ones that have already been used play underneath so you can hear their whole song as you lay down new sounds.
Panning tracks so they play in the right, left or center is as easy as sliding left or right on the controller and skipping to any section of the song is as simple as touching different places on the black progress bar at the bottom. Once you’re done recording, transferring is a breeze as well through Sonoma’s built-in Wi-Fi sync.
FourTrack’s one area where users could become confused is when they want to create a new song or sync to their computer. Touching the name of the song at the bottom of FourTrack’s main window brings up a space to rename the track and some information but due to poor design on Sonoma’s part, the bottom of the menu overpowers the top making the song list button hard to find at first glance. Once at the song list though users can create, delete or sync songs.
FourTrack is the go-to application on the iPhone for easy recording. At $9.99, it’s a bit on the pricey side but if you’ve ever found yourself in a hotel room with a great idea wishing there was a way to lay it down on wax, FourTrack is the app for you.
★★★★✩ (iTMS)
ngmoco lands another hit with Dr. Awesome (on sale for $.99 for a limited time). The premise of the game is to tilt the iPhone and maneuver your cutter destroying parts of the cell in an attempt to eliminate the virus plaguing the victim.
The game is simple and fun, using the names from your contacts list as the patients who need saving. This small addition definitely adds a sense of urgency or apathy when approaching patients. Though we’d all like to think as doctors that we’ll save everybody, sometimes that person just comes along that can’t be saved.
Dr. Awesome is a blast to pick up for a minute or an hour and is a cheap, welcomed addition to any respective iPhone game collection.
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