A new Gameloft title is king of the hill in our Games of the Week list, and for good reason. StarFront: Collision is a highly polished, great-looking game that nails the real-time strategy experience and brings it, on the small scale, to the iPhone. If you’re a strategy game fan, you’re going to want to give StarFront a shot. And if you’re still not convinced, keep reading — we’ve got lots of information about four other worthy games, below.
StarFront: Collision Free (with in-app purchase of $6.99 for full version)
Gameloft, the mobile developer known for riffing on popular games on other platforms to create quality premium iPhone games, have scored another victory with StarFront: Collision, a game that’s in no way subtle about the fact that it’s basically recreating the extremely popular PC real-time strategy title, StarCraft. But even though the game is a rehash of one considered among the best in the genre, Gameloft has put significant work and polish into StarFront to create a great strategy game that plays exceedingly well on the iPhone’s touchscreen. In StarFront, you have to construct a base and issue commands to units to do things like gather resources, construct buildings, and raise your armies. You can battle through 20 different story campaign levels (with barely a story, but it’s not that big of a deal) spread out among the game’s three races, or take on up to three other players with StarFront’s online multiplayer mode.
Tiny Wings $0.99
This arcade title is seriously addictive and so simple that it’s really hard to put down. You play a tiny bird with tiny wings that really wants to fly, so at the start of the day in the game, he heads out to try to do so on its hilly island. The bird can pick up some lift, provided it has some speed — luckily, the side-scrolling island the bird lives on is 100 percent hills. You progress by touching anywhere on the screen, making the bird stop flapping and fall. He increases his momentum and hopefully falls into one of the gaps between hills coming down on the downward-running slope. Then, you release your finger, and he starts flapping again — using his fall to build momentum and change it into a ton of high-flying distance by ramping off the other hill. Chaining falls together is tough, but a lot of fun, and Tiny Wings issues many challenges to keep you altering your play style to earn more rewards.
Particula $0.99
In the vein of games like Osmos, Particula takes physics quite literally when it calls itself a physics puzzler. Each of its puzzles concerns electrons, neutrons and protons, and utilizes rules like opposites attracting to challenge the user. In each puzzle, there’s a charged particle somewhere on the screen, with at least one other uncharged particle elsewhere. Your goal is to shoot an electron from the charged particle to the uncharged one, simply by dragging your finger. Trouble is, there are a lot of things in the way. Your score in each puzzle depends on how many of the three stars on the screen you can catch by hitting them with an electron, too. It sounds easy, but obstacles require you to use objects like magnets to either attract or repel your electrons, sending electrons on orbits before they reach their destinations. It takes some thinking, but Particula offers a lot of interest and challenge.
Sky Combat $0.99
Sky Combat’s top-down vertical shooter style might be fairly traditional, but its graphical presentation is certainly something worth checking out. The game looks great on the iPhone, and while it’s not really that dissimilar from other games in the genre, its level of polish and production values set it apart. It also has some interesting diversity — you play the game by piloting an Apache helicopter to take down tons of enemies, as well as an armored Humvee and a speed boat. Sky Combat packs a bunch of different control schemes to help you find the most comfortable solution for blasting things, and the game gets its achievements and leaderboards through Crystal.
Volcano Escape $1.99
At its core, Volcano Escape is a vertical jumping game with some great, fun graphics. It doesn’t stray far from the jumping game formula, but it does well to tweak it in such a way that there’s plenty of variety. You play one of several characters (which are unlocked based on performance) sacrificed by some island natives to their volcano god. Fortunately, you hit bottom inside the volcano, and aren’t immediately consumed by lava. So begins an ascent out of the volcano, requiring you to think quickly about your path as the magma rises below you. Power-ups adorn just about everything in Volcano Escape, giving you lots of opportunities to change things up and get some advantages. You also have a gun with which you can quickly do battle with the natives who block your path, but it can cost you precious seconds.
