The latest entry in Capcom’s stable of App Store games is also our best game of the week. It’s Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, a game in which you play a ghost working to solve his own murder (and a bunch of puzzles along the way). Check out all the details below, and read about four other quality titles you should try this weekend.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (iPhone, iPad) Free (with in-app purchase of $9.99)
You’re dead. Murdered. You can’t remember who you are or why you might have been killed. Even worse, the witness to your murder is being accosted by the hitman who did you in, and she’s not long for this world, either. Luckily, in Ghost Trick, you’re a ghost, and the tricks in the title refer to the ability to manipulate objects, stop the murderer and start to investigate the reasons why you were killed. Ghost Trick is filled with puzzles to solve as a tricky ghost, and tells its story with a great animation style. The first two chapters of the game are available for free with the download; to get the rest, you’ll need to pay $9.99 through an in-app purchase.
Spice Invaders (iPhone, iPad) Free
There are tons of tower defense titles in the iTunes App Store, but Spice Invaders excels by being filled with content. You play as a space pirate commander tasked with defending pirate bases from earthlings as you and your allies ransack the planet for your beloved spice. The cool part of the game is that there are tons of towers to unlock and use and better than 50 upgrades to apply to your forces to help you win battles. Spice Invaders also includes an online multiplayer mode that supports as many as eight players. There’s just tons of defense and towers on hand, and the game won’t cost you anything to get started.
Dungeon Crawlers (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
A top-down, turn-based, tactical role-playing experience, set in a fantasy world, in which players fight through huge dungeons. Sure, there are plenty of games that meet that description, but Dungeon Crawlers endears itself by having fun with the conventions of the genre and with its humorous, light story. The game has a great, cartoonish 3-D art style, an easy play style that takes very little to pick up and understand, and a fairly engaging story with quite a few dungeons to explore. Experienced gamers will have tread some of this ground before, but Dungeon Crawlers’ light atmosphere and solid writing more than make the game worth exploring again. It’s a great variation of the dungeon crawler genre for mobile devices.
Mystery of the Japanese Werewolf (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Another game with solidly funny writing, Mystery of the Japanese Werewolf will speak to old-school gamers in a goofy language they understand. The humorous story references video game culture quite a bit and carries a light-hearted tone of its own, while the old-school gameplay is endearing because it feels like many of the classics that drew gamers into the hobby in the first place. With a mix of Super Mario Bros. and exploration-heavy titles like the Metroid series, there’s a lot on offer for players. There’s also a heroic girl who carries a sword and a talking alien T-Rex who supplies you with tactical support via smartphone – and that’s awesome.
Hank Hazard (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
At first glance, Hank Hazard is another cutesy physics-based puzzler in which players need to gather stars scattered throughout each of its levels. But that ends up being an oversimplification of Hank Hazard. The game offers quite a bit beyond its cute graphics and daredevil hamster protagonist. Its level design is extremely solid, offering lots of challenge to players and often requiring them to rethink a puzzle solution multiple times in order to unlock everything found in each level and maximize their scores. This arcade title is ultimately about high scores and speedy gameplay, and it has some very addictive qualities.
