Yes, the leading game this week is Human Defense, a tower defense title. Yes, there are a lot of those in the iTunes App Store. But Human Defense successfully introduces a number of elements that change up the gameplay and add an element of timing and planning to the mix. You’ll have a great time defending a body’s organs from evil viruses. Check it out below, along with four other great titles from this week’s pull of App Store games.
Human Defense (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
Tower defense games all have the same formula: build towers that kill bad guys, earn money from the kills, use the money to build more towers. Human Defense stands out because it requires a little more strategy and timing than that. The locations where you can build your towers are actually pretty few, so placing the right defense in the right place is key. But your money comes in the form of nutrients moving through the human body as it’s being assaulted by viruses, so you actually need to time building your towers so nutrients can power them. You also have to keep an eye on the amount of nutrients each organ (the basis of the game’s levels) is getting during the battle to keep it in good condition. All these aspects mean Human Defense looks like just another tower defense game, but actually has multiple layers of complexity to keep you engaged.
Suspect in Sight (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
You’ve probably played games in which your role was to evade the police in a getaway car, but Suspect in Sight puts you in a position that you’ve probably never had the privilege of trying: pilot of a police helicopter. Using tilt controls, your job is to fly around city locations, tracking down fleeing suspects and hitting them with your spotlight so the cops on the ground can catch them. You’re on a timer through each level, so it’s a race to take down as many suspects as possible, and the more successful you are, the more rewards you’ll unlock, including alternative helicopters and even more game modes. There’s also Game Center support to track your times against other players’.
No Red T-Shirts (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
You play a police robot in No Red T-Shirts, but you’re not really functioning correctly. And that’s why you tend to give out fines to people who break weird laws – like when they walk dogs, use cameras or read newspapers. To play the game, you need to tap only on the characters in each location who are breaking the law, and only until the law changes to something else. The more lawbreakers you grab, the more fines you rack up, which you can use to improve each town and start new challenges. It’s not an especially difficult game, but No Red T-Shirts is a fast-paced challenge.
Spellet by PuzzleSocial (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Puzzler Spellet is about spelling words – a pretty simple premise – but the way you do it is with geometry. A grid on the screen is filled with letters, while each corner has a barrel that fires a ball. The idea is that you need to bounce the ball around the screen to touch each letter in order to spell the word in question. In order to get the ball moving in the right direction, you can place rubber bands around the grid as well. It’s an interesting take on word puzzles that requires a different kind of thinking.
Unlock (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
You’ve probably seen puzzles made of wooden blocks before, with each block cut with niches that lets it interlock with the other blocks. Taking apart the puzzle requires figuring out the correct order in which to pull the parts free from one another. Unlock brings the same concept to a touchscreen game, using touch-based controls to rotate the 3-D puzzles and pull them apart piece-by-piece. The faster you complete them, the higher your score in each level, which are tracked on Unlock’s Game Center leaderboards.
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