This week, you need to play Horn. It leads our best games list, and it really is a gorgeous and engaging title that feels like it belongs on a much bigger platform. It puts players on a fantastical journey that draws influence from adventure and fantasy titles, as well as great action games like Infinity Blade. Get the skinny below about Horn, along with a bunch of other great titles, below.
Horn (iPhone, iPad) $6.99
First up, Horn is beautiful. It looks amazing on your iOS devices, and it sounds just as good. That helps make it an incredibly immersing experience of the caliber you’d expect from larger and more involved titles like those that appear on PC or game consoles. Horn also tells a compelling story and does it with a lot of cool mechanics, giving players sword-fighting capabilities similar to those of Infinity Blade, and adding puzzle-solving and other mechanics like a crossbow. The developer behind Horn is Phosphor Games. They created Dark Meadow, and the influence of that game is very present in this one, and that’s definitely a good thing. Horn is one of those great titles that will surprise you as to just what your iPhone or iPad is capable of handling.
One Epic Knight (iPhone, iPad) Free
From the developer that created the awesomely addictive tower defense-ish Tiny Heroes comes One Epic Knight, which puts players in a different perspective from the former title. In Tiny Heroes, you play the ruler of a dungeon that heroes keep trying to ransack for all its loot, defending it with traps and monsters. One Epic Knight is a Temple Run-like 3-D running game in which you play one of those knights, running through a dungeon and dodging traps and monsters. But what’s great about One Epic Knight is how much more it brings to the genre, adding new features and a mess of good ideas. You can pick up weapons to smash through enemies and obstacles, for example, and there are a ton of different things to avoid along the way. It’s a great take on a popular genre.
Download the Appolicious Android app
Super Mole Escape (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Things are pretty simple in Super Mole Escape, at least at first glance. You take on the role of a mole on the run from the law, tunneling deep into the ground to avoid being recaptured and returned to prison. So the basic gameplay has you tilting your device back and forth to avoid things like rocks, molten lava, mines and other dangers hidden under the earth as you tunnel downward. It’s Super Mole Escape’s fast-paced play and variety of things that can kill you that makes it fun, though. The game requires a surprising amount of skill for a tilt-based vertical scroller, and Super Mole Escape will definitely keep you busy.
Supermagical (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Nina has made a bit of a mistake. In attempting to cast a new magic spell, the young witch has accidentally released a bunch of nasties from the underworld and she has to send them back, one level at a time. Players will recognize the basic gameplay of titles like Bust-A-Move, in which you’ll need to fire projectiles to colored monsters in order to make matches of three or more to zap them out of existence. Efficiency nets you extra points and power-ups along the way. Supermagical has a great cartoonish art style and 71 different levels to play through. In each one, you’ll rack up coins that can be spent on new items and upgrades. You’ll also have to take down bosses not just with your shooting skills, but with your silver tongue as you play through “dialog battles” and try to convince your evil sisters to head back to the underworld.
VOTE!!! (iPhone, iPad) Free
You’ve played VOTE!!! before if you’ve played ChAIR’s Infinity Blade games – and at this point, if you haven’t done that, I feel bad for you. VOTE!!! is mostly a political re-skinning of Infinity Blade to turn it into a “debate” between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney. While the mechanics are familiar, however, the goofy addition of politically themed items, visuals and sound effects gives it a bit of novelty. There’s also some of the Infinity Blade-style skill to be found in VOTE!!! and a lot of items and perks to unlock through playing the game. But the primary reason VOTE!!! gets a mention here is that it pushes players to register to vote before the November election, and that’s always a good thing. Oh, and it’s free.
