This week’s best games list is kicked off by Saturday Morning RPG, a nostalgic romp through two memory filled worlds, the Saturday morning cartoon and the old-style role-playing game. You’ll battle monsters in 16-bit graphics as you enjoy the game’s humorous story and turn-based combat. Check it out below, along with four other titles that rise above the rest in the App Store this week.
Saturday Morning RPG (iPhone, iPad) Free
Nostalgia runs deep in Saturday Morning RPG. The game’s funny and irreverent story is modeled in homage to Saturday morning cartoons of the 1980s, and the gameplay is modeled on the turn-based Japanese role-playing games many gamers have grown up with over the years. The result is a fun throw-back experience divided into episodes and driven by a lighthearted story throughout. Combat includes strategy but is just simple enough to keep the edge off, and things like dialog and art style keep the game interesting for all kinds of players. Fans of old-school RPGs especially will get a kick out of Saturday Morning RPG, especially if they have memories of older cartoons to go along with those RPG skills.
Fibble (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
From well-known first-person shooter developer Crytek comes Fibble, a game that’s neither a first-person shooter nor a PC title, putting it at odds with most of Crytek’s resume. But what Fibble does have that most certainly makes it a Crytek game is some very high-quality graphics. It also has some great arcade physics play. The game has you shooting a round alien character through its levels with the goal of getting him to the goal in as few “flings” as possible, grabbing stars along the way to increase your score. The levels are challenging, the atmosphere is light and the graphics are great – Fibble is worth a look.
Light The Flower (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
A new Chillingo puzzle title, Light The Flower is pretty simple in terms of its premise. Light beams emanate through windows of houses where there are potted flowers, and your job is to bounce the light around the room with mirrors to get it to the flowers. In each room are several stars, and to earn them, you’ll need to make the light beams cross them before landing on the flowers. The puzzles get steadily more difficult as more flowers and more mirrors are introduced, and then there are even more surprises, such as flowers of various colors that require light to be filtered before it hits them. Light The Flower is just tough enough to be challenging without being frustrating, hitting that perfect sweet spot of addictiveness.
Reiner Knizia’s City of Secrets Skyline (iPhone, iPad) Free
Logic puzzler City of Secrets Skyline is a little bit like Sudoku, but instead of numbers, you need to fill a grid with buildings. Each building is a different height, and your job is to fill the grid so that no two buildings of the same height occupy the same row or column – just like numbers in Sudoku. And to make things more difficult, some rows and columns include notations that let you know how many buildings have to be visible in a straight line from down that column or row. For example, if a row has a two marked on it, you’ll need to make sure that from the direction the two is on, you’ll need to be able to see two buildings, which means that you can’t have a tall building at the front of the row to block the others. All those factors make for some interesting and deep puzzle-solving that logic-lovers will enjoy.
Bug Princess 2 (iPhone, iPad) $4.99
The follow-up to developer CAVE’s last shoot-’em-up brings a ton more shooter action paired with great 3-D graphics. If you were a fan of CAVE’s last Bug Princess title, Bug Princess 2 will be right up your alley. In fact, the games are pretty similar, with power-ups, tons of enemies and a mess of bullets coming at you that you need to dodge using the game’s solid touch controls. Notably, Bug Princess 2 includes four different game modes that each provide a different version of the experience, plus three difficulty levels that make the game easy enough for novices but tough enough for hardcore fans.
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