Command a force of swords-and-sorcery heroes made up of various character classes in Battleheart, an iPad offering that tops our Fresh Games list today. If you’re not a real-time strategy or role-playing game fan though, consider a pair of casual games — Bop It! (yes, just like the toy from the mid-1990s) and SPUTNIK. Both have simple but addictive gameplay, and both have their guts spilled for your reading pleasure below.
Battleheart (iPad) $2.99
A real-time strategy and role-playing game hybrid, Battleheart requires you to build a party of heroes to lead into battle and take on groups of monsters. You’ll pound through enemies, gathering special powers and upgraded equipment, in order to allow your troops to ravage more enemies.
You’ll command your forces through a campaign of more than 30 levels, and build your army to consist of several different kinds of heroes, including knights and wizards. You’ll also be able to upgrade your troops over time to specialize them, then use their individual abilities in battle to maximize your strategy. The game also includes an “Arena” mode, in which you’ll need to defeat waves of enemies for as long as possible.
Bop It! (iPhone) $2.99
This iPhone recreation of the electronic Simon Says-like motion game does a pretty good job of recreating the feel of the actual Bop It! toy. The game gives you a combination of moves in sequence, and it’s your job to recreate the moves by interacting with different objects on the screen — one of which you tap (or bop), one that’s “twisted” with a swipe, and one that you pull by dragging. The longer you manage to mimic the action, the more involved and complex they become.
Bop It! comes with four single-player game modes — Classic, Extreme (which includes more objects), speedy Blitz and super-simple Basic. There are also four more multiplayer modes, which incorporate the single-player modes into a turn-based passing game that lets you include up to 10 people. And when you get a score worth gloating about, you can share your scores on Facebook and Twitter.
SPUTNIK (iPhone) $0.99
SPUTNIK is a pretty simple game — the world’s first man-made satellite needs to get out of the solar system, apparently, and you’ve got to help guide it there. In order to get as far out into space as possible, you’ll use tilt controls to help SPUTNIK dodge all kinds of obstacles, like UFOs, asteroids and black holes.
That’s about all there is to the game. Your primary function is just to tilt to avoid obstacles and their effects, while SPUTNIK’s speed invariably increases. It’s a bit like the popular vertical jumping game Doodle Jump, except you’re moving forward rather than up, and you’re a satellite. And there’s no jumping. Still, it’s a good, addictive and easygoing time.
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