Got an iPad and a friend? Check out Paddle Battle, a game that’s best enjoyed with a human opponent against whom you can launch your weapons of mass destruction in a modern take on the classic Pong. Read about it below, along with a few other choice offerings — Smoody, an interesting take on the mechanics that made Cut the Rope so popular; and Woolcraft, a puzzler that mimics some aspects of the uber-popular MineCraft.
Paddle Battle (iPad) $2.99
Two players can face off using the same iPad in Paddle Battle, a game that takes some of the underlying concepts of that old mainstay, Pong, and puts them to new use. Players each control one side of the screen and have a “paddle,” which they move around with touch controls and use to protect several vulnerable chunks of the wall behind it. The goal is to protect your own wall while firing missiles, bombs, chickens and anything else handy to destroy your opponent’s.
You can battle your friends in short, sweet matches or extend the mayhem into a best-of-seven pummeling. You’ll have to use physics to your advantage to outwit your opponent, as well as the various weapons, as you play through different sci-fi, interplanetary levels.
Smoody (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
One of the smartest physics puzzlers in the App Store is Cut the Rope, in which players swipe the touchscreen of their iPhones or iPads to cut ropes strategically to knock a piece of candy into the mouth of a waiting monster. Smoody goes a step further, using the cutting mechanic in its puzzles as well, but introducing all kinds of elements and physics actions, like swinging rocks and wooden platforms, which you need to cut so they drop or roll a character from one place to another.
The fewer cuts you can use per level to get the Smoody character to the level’s goal, the higher your score. These scores get saved on OpenFeint’s leaderboards, and you can also share them on Facebook and Twitter.
Woolcraft (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
In the last year, the PC game MineCraft has garnered a lot of attention for allowing players to create huge structures and worlds, by mining resources from its graphically old-school, grid-based world. Woolcraft utilizes a similar idea, but in a grid puzzler in which you’re tasked with returning sheep to their owner.
With four movement buttons, you can give your sheep orders to move them around each level, but once you issue a command for them to move, they’ll keep going until they’re stopped. Woolcraft requires you to dig up the ground, build bridges and use logic to keep the sheep from wandering off edges and into water as you play through its many levels. The game also include a level editor so you can create your own and challenge your friends to beat them.
Download the free Appolicious iPhone app
