This week’s Android games offering includes welcome clones, indie hits, quirky hybrids and polished 3D iPhone conversions. All competitively prices, and all well worth checking out. Read on to find out more.
Happy Vikings
The team behind Happy Vikings, HandyGames, is one of the most experienced developers in the mobile games business. It makes a living from taking established genres and giving them a good twist. In this case, it’s combined the classic 2D platformer with the classic match three puzzler. Separately, neither of these elements is particularly exciting, but when they’re combined with this much skill and attention to detail, the result is something else entirely. Shunting treasure around in Happy Vikings is excellent fun, and the game benefits from the customary HandyGames production values too.
Jenga
The popular game of stacking (and then picking apart) blocks doesn’t on the face of it make for a particularly enthralling video game premise. After all, much of Jenga’s appeal lies in its tactile nature – something that simply can’t be replicated accurately on a glassy touchscreen. Somehow, though, Jenga works. One explanation for this could be that it’s made by NaturalMotion, which proved with its Backbreaker games that it knows how to create weighty 3D engines. So it proves with Jenga – delicately removing blocks has rarely been this much fun.
Icarus-X
Icarus-X offers nothing particularly original with its vertical scrolling shoot ‘em up action, but it succeeds through being a supremely well executed example of the genre. A large part of the appeal is its stunning 3D backdrops, which rush past at a fantastic rate, lending the hectic action an added sense of urgency. Naturally, there are plenty of enemy waves to negotiate, improbably large bosses to defeat and satisfyingly meaty power-ups to collect en route to full twitch-gaming mastery. Only the most determined gamers should apply.
Robo Surf
There seem to be an inordinate number of polished endless runners on iPhone, so it’s good to see Android starting to build up a good selection of its own. Robo Surf is the first of two such games in this week’s round-up, placing you in control of a surfing robot (obviously). Pressing the screen makes the wave you’re surfing on push you up, while releasing lets you drop. You must use this simple mechanic to doge sharks and gulls, occasionally busting through the enemy waves with the odd power-up. Simple, polished and oh-so-moreish.
Tiny Bee
Much of what we said about Robo Surf applies to Tiny Bee, though this game adopts a slightly different mechanic. If you’ve played or heard about the smash hit Tiny Wings on iPhone, then you’ll have the measure of this barely-disguised clone. Of course, as there’s no sign of Tiny Wings on Android as yet, we’re not complaining in the slightest. The game’s simply filling a gaping hole in the market. The idea is to have your bee slide a long an undulating landscape, collecting honeycomb and timing screen presses in order to launch into the air at key moments.
YOU SHOULD READ – Android games round-up – Robotek, Riptide GP, Contract Killer, Hyperlight, Backbreaker 2
Article source: http://www.fonehome.co.uk/2011/06/03/android-games-round-up-happy-vikings-jenga-icarus-x-robo-surf-tiny-bee/
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