We’ve got three discounted games to take you into the weekend on today’s Download Discounts. If you’re a fan of the very cool Osmos (one of my favorites), you’ll dig Last Fish, which uses a similar concept but with tilt controls and an emphasis on lighting. A thirst for some zombie mayhem can be quenched with Dead Rising Mobile, which is on sale for a limited time. And for those of us feeling defensive, there’s Knight Defense, which mingles chess rules with the tower defense genre. Check out the details on all of ‘em below.
Last Fish (iPhone, iPad) Free (was $0.99)
A stylish, black-and-white, casual arcade puzzler, Last Fish uses tilt to let you control a small fish in dark waters through various levels. Each level requires you to fulfill different requirement by swimming around, avoiding toxic dark elements and absorbing light ones by touching them. Things get tough as dark elements grow more plentiful on the darkened screen — you can only see the area immediately around your fish, so staying on your toes, so to speak is key.
Last Fish has a cool look and some complex, tense levels. It supports Game Center for achievements and leaderboards, and includes 45 levels to work through — plus five arcade stages. Fans of Osmos, grab this one while it’s free.
Dead Rising Mobile (iPhone, iPad) $1.99 (was $4.99)
You’re Frank West, a photojournalist working on a huge story that might just kill you. You’re trapped in a mall filled with zombies, but you have piles of weapons to use to smash in their heads: everything in the mall is a weapon. You’ll scramble around picking up food to refill your health and pilfer different stores for more items and weapons to use against the horde. And when you’re not killing zombies, you can photograph them to earn experience that will help you become stronger.
Dead Rising’s most interesting aspect, though, is its social aspects. If you should fall to the zombies, you can issue a call for help on Facebook and Twitter, and your friends can come revive you. And if they leave you for dead, you’ll rise again as a zombie — and you can inflict your cannibalistic revenge on those who failed to help you.
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Knight Defense (iPhone) Free (was $0.99)
Imagine mixing up the tower defense genre with chess and throwing in TRON-like graphics and you have Knight Defense. It uses a chess gameboard, pieces and rules, but instead of taking turns, everything happens in real time. The object is to protect your king from the onslaught of enemy pieces, which march down the board toward you. You have to array your pieces along their route so that your pieces’ attack moves — diagonals for bishops, rows and columns for rooks, for example — align with their paths. Instead of moving to intercept enemy pieces like in chess, Knight Defense’s game-pieces fire energy beams to destroy their enemies.
The game also includes a few role-playing elements to get you thinking about different strategies. You’ll need to spend points you earn to upgrade your pieces so they can take on bigger threats, and occasionally make use of special moves to deal with big enemy attack waves. The game lets you keep track of your scores and see how you stack up against other players with Game Center and OpenFeint.
