Everyone has the new iPad on the brain after Apple’s exciting announcement. The future of mobile games is about to get brighter (and gain a higher resolution). In the meantime, though, there are five great titles from the last week that deserve your attention, starting with touch-controlled arcade title Lightopus, which looks beautiful even on your slightly older iOS devices. Read all about our picks below.
Lightopus (iPhone, iPad) $2.99
The latest game offering from Bulkypix captures the developer’s oft-seen bright and colorful graphic style. As the lightopus, you’ll go swimming through monster-infested waters, trying to save young lightopus by snapping them out of shells and leading them to safety. But the babies, which are your means of scoring points as you gather them from each level, are also your only weapon, and can be used against your enemies by drawing them into your path. It’s an interesting gameplay system that has you balancing your ability to survive with the need to score more points in each level. Combine that with a simple but fairly effective control scheme, plus a pretty art style, and Lightopus is the result.
Prince of Persia Classic (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
Ubisoft’s side-scrolling action adventure title Prince of Persia isn’t a stranger to the App Store; it has actually already been available in a form that’s more akin to the original, first released in 1989. But this classic has gotten a beautiful new coat of paint, as seen in the 2008 version released on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network, and some touch controls to mark its most recent iteration. That makes Prince of Persia Classic a great deal prettier and more accessible to a new generation of players who never saw any of the earlier iterations. It’s still really, really difficult, too, which will appeal to hardcore players, but mostly it’s just fun to leap, climb and fight your way through a Persian prison and palace in search of a princess under attack by an evil vizier.
Fancy Pants (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
A fast-paced 2-D platformer, Fancy Pants has some pretty solid controls to go with its high-speed run-and-jump gameplay. As you speed through each of the game’s levels, you’ll need to perform some acrobatic feats to grab all the collectible objects that ratchet up your score in each level. As you earn more collect more stuff, you’ll be able to unlock lots of different awards and costumes. There are also bad guys to fight and a great hand-drawn art style to make the game lots of fun to work through.
Cavorite 2 (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
Cavorite 2 adds a bunch of interesting features to the popular side-scrolling puzzle gameplay established by its predecessor, Cavorite. Players navigate caves deep in the craters of the moon, pushing boxes of various kind to open pathways and push down switches. You’re armed with an anti-gravity gun that allows you to float boxes in the air and ride them, which is key to solving each of the game’s puzzles – the quicker the better, if you’re looking for a high score. Cavorite 2 is packed with 63 levels and lots of clever puzzles to solve. Fans of the original will find a lot more to love here.
Draw Something by OMGPOP (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Turn-based games work exceedingly well on Apple’s iOS devices. They allow players to engage in games similar to Scrabble and Hang Man at their own pace, taking turns when they can against multiple opponents in multiple games. Draw Something applies that same thinking to picture-drawing challenges in the vein of Pictionary, with similarly successful results. The combination of a touchscreen to support making drawings and guessing at what the terrible renderings your friends have made are supposed to be makes Draw Something a whole lot of fun, and proves that playing an online game against real humans at your own pace can support a lot of different types of titles.
