Topia

GAMEPLAY AND CONTROLS

Topia starts with a short tutorial on how to build your first sandbox world. In the tutorial you learn that you can move your finger across the world to spin it and pinch to zoom in and out. If you are editing your world, you must use two fingers to move the world. This can be an issue at times. I found that often the world would become difficult to move, move in the wrong direction or I would accidentally place animals or change the land when trying to use the two finger movement.

By opening the menu you can view all of your building options, such as raise, lower, or smooth land, increase or decrease the brush size (affects the area of land you are raising, lowering or smoothing), and a variety of animals to place in the world (some are peaceful, while others are predators).

When you are ready to play, it is easiest to select a preset world first. When you feel like you have a hang of it and want to be a bit more adventurous select “My Levels” and select “Edit.” In the “Edit” screen you can increase or decrease the “Seed” level, “Chaos” level, “AntiChaos” level, “Smooths” level and change the time of day. Time of day is self explanatory, but the other options are never explained. You are playing a guessing game until you hit “Generate.” Once you are happy with your world you can save it and play in the sandbox.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

My favorite part of Topia is the graphics. Crescent Moon Games did an amazing job on the details, especially the water effects and the various “time of day” sky effects. You can tell the detail between a large snow capped mountain and land covered in sand, and while the animals are cartoon-like, it gets the job done since they are so tiny on your screen.

There is not much sound in the game aside from a music track, which really sets the world-building mood, and some sound effects for the water and land forming.

PROS

• Gorgeous graphics, especially the sky and water effects.
• Simple sandbox fun. Even with the limited options you have, your world is still different every time you create one.

CONS

• Two finger world movement does not work properly.
• Needs more options, such as volcanoes, waterfalls, and being able to name a world you create.
• Explain world creation options.

Crescent Moon Games already stated that a future update will include more games modes, challenges and online sharing. The game has a lot of potential. With a few minor fixes and additions, Topia can be a top notch world builder on iOS.

Download Topia and begin building your world here.

The post Topia Game Review appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Oh Hi! Octopi! combines retro nostalgia with cute animal characters. With an interesting puzzle design, although Oh Hi! Octopi! sounds like a fun, casual game for any iOS gamer. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

GAMEPLAY AND CONTROLS

Oh Hi! Octopi! is a basic platform puzzle game with a few new mechanics. Waves of octopi will appear and walk slowly around the board. Use your character to hit the octopi with the hammer to stun them, and change their colors, then “smash” the button in the center to create a balloon. The balloon will destroy stunned octopi in groups of at least two matching colors. After clearing one level, you move to the next round, which is the same, but with more octopi. Sounds simple, right?

It is not as simple as it sounds. After going through a tutorial that is too short. Oh Hi! Octopi! suffers a lot from having bad controls. While the developer, kode80, had the players’ best interests in mind, the one-button to control everything only creates for a frustrating experience. You control everything by tapping the screen; everything from moving, hitting the hammer and jumping. This makes your character move around erratically on the screen and when you want to do accomplish one thing, you cannot because your character is moving around wildly. For example, if you want to hit the button that creates the balloon, your character moves around too much for you to efficiently release the balloon.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

The sound and music of the game, while reminiscent of retro gaming, is very repetitive and you will likely be muting the music after a few minutes of play.

The retro-style graphics and cute octopi of Oh Hi! Octopi! instantly draw you in. It is a shame that the trouble with the rough controls outweighs the charm of the graphics. Also, the scenery and octopi never change, which can get dull quickly.

PROS

• Good retro graphics
• Interesting match-making puzzle idea

CONS

• Music that quickly becomes bothersome
• Too short tutorial
• Very bad controls that create a lot of problems for the player

I wish I could say I enjoyed Oh Hi! Octopi!, but the game is very close to being unplayable due to the poor controls. If Oh Hi! Octopi! had differing controls for some abilities, the character may be less erratic and I may have been able to experience more of the puzzle aspect of the game. This game had the potential to be a refreshing take on a reto-style puzzle game, but it has simply failed to deliver on multiple levels.

Download Oh Hi! Octopi! for $.99 here.

The post App Review: Oh Hi! Octopi! appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Years ago I used to play a game called Osu; a very popular music game where the player clicked bubbles to the music as directed by the game.  Cytus, is very much like Osu in that it has much of the same music genres and an almost identical gameplay.  Cytus also sports a very simplistic design and a wonderful soundtrack, which is what got me interested.

Gameplay and Controls

Cytus is played by tapping colorful bubbles in rhythm with the music playing.  There are bubbles the player must simply tap, bubbles that have to be held down, and bubbles that have to be dragged a certain direction on the screen.  A black bar moves up and down the screen and goes through the bubbles. When the bar hits the center of the bubble, the player is supposed to tap that bubble.  Most of the hits that gave me a “perfect”  were spot on,  but the difference between perfect and good is quite large as well as the difference between good and bad.  A miss, is where the player misses the bubble entirely.  This rarely happened to me since I had honed my skills previously with Osu.

Game play gets progressively difficult through the twenty eight levels.  Each level has an easy mode and a hard mode,  of course easy mode is very easy in the beginning.  On the other hand some of the later songs on hard mode are carpal tunnel inducing.  The game play is very simple and fun and it works well.

Graphics

Cytus has extremely simplistic graphics along with the gameplay.  There is beauty in the simplicity though,  everything works together with no lag or outstanding problems.  The backgrounds could use some work though.  Thy are very faint and simply show a picture rather than a moving animation, like those of Dance Dance Revolution.

Extras

I knew Cytus was going to have me playing for a while when I tapped on the main menu screen; the music was fantastic.  And this is where Cytus outshines other rhythm based games. The variety is excellent.  There is a multitude of genres packed into the game:  J-pop, J rock, synth pop, Techno and Trance are all heard in this audio feast.  Each song sounds completely different from the others.  The selection is nice too,  28 different songs, which is far more than most music games in the app store.

Each song took me multiple tries to beat it with a good score.  Cytus has quite a bit of replayability.  The developers at Rayark have promised to release a new pack of ten songs with every 100,000 downloads as well, meaning Cytus could potentially have over one hundred songs in good time.

Overall

Pros

• simple yet excellent game play
• responsive controls
• fantastic music selection

Cons

• Graphics and interface could be enhanced
• Backgrounds are not especially detailed, a bit bland

Cytus is an excellent music and rhythm game,  it is easily in my top five for music games found in the app store.  The variety of music genres and super simple gameplay really make this an excellent buy.  While the graphics are not the best, the game play and song selection more than make up for it.  Cytus is a fantastic music game despite its minor flaws.

Download Cytus here from iTunes.

The post App Review: Cytus for iOS appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Combine the love of gaming with live streaming and you have Twitch.tv. Twitch allows gamers of all levels to join for free and stream themselves playing their favorite games for free. The website gets hundreds of thousands of views per day from people watching and helping their friends to professional gamers playing in national tournaments. Twitch.tv nearly holds a monopoly in the category of video game live streaming.

A logical step for Twitch.tv was to make an iPhone app. You cannot stream games from your phone using the app, but you can watch your favorite streams. When you open the app you are met with a list of the streams you are following and the games with the highest number of streamers at that time. You can use the search bar to search for a streamer or game, or you can browse all the games. Push notifications also inform you when a streamer you follow goes live. The Twitch.tv app also includes the ability to sync the app with an Apple TV to watch it on a big screen.

PROS

• The Twitch.tv app allows you to stream in Wi-Fi or in 3G. Stream anywhere your phone has service? That is a great feature for the app. Viewers are not restricted by service when their favorite streamer or game goes live.
• View any capable stream in high definition. If the streamer you are watching is capable of streaming in HD, your iPhone will automatically set to the highest available resolution.
• Chat with other fans. While watching a stream, the chat room scrolls below the video. If you are logged in to your Twitch.tv account, you can participate in the chat.

CONS

• Most streams freeze or do not load at all. A lot of times you are forced to close the Twitch.tv app and reopen in attempt to correct the problem. I found that a lot of non-partnered streamers (the gamers that stream for free and are not partnered with Twitch) do not open. The video remains black.
• Video quality changes frequently, despite having exceptional service. Regardless of viewing in Wi-Fi or 3G service, quality will drop from high to low. The quality change often reverts the stream back five to ten seconds, which causes major delays. Sometimes, the video quality change can cause the Twitch app to crash.
• The app has no replay option. If you miss a stream, you can watch the backlog of videos from the streamer’s channel on your home computer. That option is not available in the mobile app.

Overall, the idea of the Twitch.tv app is sound. Currently, as of version 2.1.1, too many issues exist with the app. While it is a free app, I find myself getting too frustrated with the freezing, crashing, and low quality streams. I would much rather wait until I can view a stream on my home computer. The Twitch.tv app would benefit from having the replay option and an option to manually control the quality of a video. At the very least, once the crashing and freezing issues are fixed, many more people will enjoy watching video games being played live where ever they are.

Download the Twitch.tv app here.

The post App Review: Twitch.tv appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Dan Nosowitz of Gizmodo couldn’t help himself after the It’s Only Rock and Roll Event hosted by Apple earlier this week. During that event, Steve Jobs officially unveiled the iPod nano 5G, saying that the new MP3 player is on sale right away.

Going through Dan’s review, we learn that the screen goes from the 2.0-inches on the 4G nano to the 2.2-inches on the 5G nano. The resolution, as a result, gets a bump from 240×320 to 240×375. That’s not quite a 16:9 wide aspect ratio, but it is a widescreen nonetheless. The screen is also noticeably brighter and sharper than its predecessor. To make room for the bigger screen, the click wheel had to get a little smaller.

The embedded VGA camera will only do video (no stills), but it does come with a series of built-in effects and filters, including heat vision, tunnel vision, and security cam vision. The video quality is actually quite good, comparable to some of the standard-def pocket camcorders out there. It doesn’t do HD, but it does VGA at 30fps quite well. Just make sure your finger isn’t blocking the lens.

Other highlights include the new FM radio, a built-in speaker, pedometer, and a microphone with voice recorder. All in all, Dan says that the iPod nano 5G is a seriously good player and the inclusion of the “surprisingly good” camera is a huge bonus. That said, you have to realize that a 16GB nano is the same price as an 8GB iPod touch, so would you prefer to have a smaller form factor and a camera or would you want a touchscreen and the App Store?

Source: Gizmodo

The post Review of Camera-Equipped Apple iPod nano 5G appeared first on Mobile Magazine.