Pac-Man creator Namco has married the classic character to the Doodle Jump model to create Pac’n-Jump, today’s leading Fresh Game. It’s a lot of fun to eat pellets and devour ghosts as you try to progress ever higher, just like it’s fun to tap along to the music in ReRave, a musical rhythm game in which you’ll have to pay attention to where to tap as well as when. Finally, there’s the memory game Gold & Chocolate, which has a great aesthetic style. Read about them all below.
Pac’n-Jump (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Start with Pac-Man, then blend in Doodle Jump and Mega Jump, two of the finest vertical scrolling games in the App Store, and the result is Pac’n-Jump, Namco’s new vertical jump game starring Pac-Man characters. The game is some pretty familiar territory — App Store game fans will have played this sort of game before — but the judicious use of Pac-Man items and graphical style give it a unique feel.
You control Pac-Man, bouncing from ledge to ledge and attempting to eat dots. Bouncing off ledges, grabbing Power Pellets and eating ghosts, snacking on cherries and eating dots all propel you upward (a lot like coins do in Mega Jump), so the game is less about hitting ledges than it is about grabbing and applying the right power-ups. The whole thing is controlled by tilt. If you’re a fan of the vertical jumping game, you’ll definitely want to give Pac’n-Jump a go.
ReRave (iPhone, iPad) $1.99 (with in-app purchases)
Finally, a rhythm game that might be able to give Tap Tap Revenge a run for its money. ReRave takes the tapping rhythm reaction template and does away with the scrolling prompts common to Tap Tap, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band, instead opting to make prompts appear all over the screen. Each appears as a dial, rotating from a down position to an up position — and when the dial is straight up, that’s the moment you’re supposed to tap.
ReRave’s prompts appear all over the screen and sometimes move, adding a lot of personality and action to the traditional reaction setup. The game comes with three free songs and there are three more in its song store that are free and available for download — after that, song packs go for $0.99.
Gold & Chocolate (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
We all played Memory as kids, but it was never as stylized as it is in Gold & Chocolate, a game in which each level is a new memory challenge. The game only features two colors — guess what they are — and several small little aliens that move around the screen. Your job is to call a gold comet by tilting your iDevice, and as it passes the creatures on the screen, some are revealed to be normal, while others are hidden monsters. After the comet passes, just tap the monsters to progress in the level.
Gold & Chocolate features 90 progressively more difficult levels to play through. Along with its engaging but simple graphics, it also packs some carefully designed, therapeutic design. It might be simple, but Gold & Chocolate is a nice change of pace from games that progress a little faster.
