In this week’s Fresh iPhone Apps, check out key updates to Trundle and Canabalt. Also, help a pop diva dance in Save Toshi.
Trundle update (iPhone) Free/$1.99
Trundle is one of my favorite games on the iPhone. It incorporates an underplayed, silhouettes-at-dusk art style to portray its simple yet beautiful puzzle-platformer levels. Tilting your iPhone makes your character, a small gear, move across the side-scrolling levels, and tapping makes them jump. It’s an elegant, simple and clever game, the base unit of which is free but with in-app purchases for additional levels.
A brand-new update drops a new map pack into the game, which is available for a buck through in-app purchase. You can also buy both the available purchasable map packs, plus any future ones, for $1.99.
Ramps (iPhone) $2.99
This physics puzzler has you manipulating ramps in different puzzle levels to get a ball to a goal. It’s another of those simple, addictive casual puzzle games that’ll keep you busy with more than 100 levels to work through.
The game also includes 300 different challenges to complete as you work through its levels, and Game Center support to log your scores, rack up achievements and see where you stack-up on online leaderboards. There’s a lot of content here, so get comfortable — Ramps will keep you engaged for a long time.
Canabalt update (iPhone) $0.99
There are a lot of endless rooftop running games in the App Store — the kind where you have to jump to avoid obstacles and gaps, picking up speed the longer you run and getting scored on how far you get. Canabalt tracks those scores on online leaderboards through Game Center, and also includes achievemetns through the service.
Even though it hasn’t been out long, Canabalt just received a big update to add Retina display support to the game, which is a nice touch considering the underplayed black-and-white visuals (and silhouetted War of the Worlds aliens that seem to be destroying the world in the background) elevate the game above the competition. Even better than the look of the game is the sound — Canabalt packs an upbeat, high-energy soundtrack that really adds a lot to this fun, casual game.
Save Toshi (iPhone) $1.99
Speaking of addictive casual puzzlers, Save Toshi has a cool idea behind it and gameplay that demands logic and will draw you in. Your job is to get Toshi, a Japanese pop star, to a nearby dance floor. She can’t walk and she’s standing on goofy objects, like wood columns and ramps, so you’ve got to use physics and planning — and a gun — to push, slide and catapult Toshi to her designated dance area.
Each level is a different puzzle, using lots of different materials and different rules for how you can interact with them. Your only means of moving Toshi is to shoot things, but you can’t shoot Toshi or cause her to fall in the surrounding water, because she’ll die. So you have to get creative by breaking and knocking over things with your gun, and you’re scored by how well you do it, and on how few shots you use.
Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror Remastered (iPhone, iPad) $6.99
The sequel to Broken Sword: Secret of the Templars is another phenomenal point-and-click adventure title with lots of great storytelling, voice work and art direction. You’ll once again take on the role of helping French journalist Nico Collard unravel a mystery — this time concerning an ancient artifact she stumbles upon during her investigation of a drug gang.
Featuring great graphics and an interactive comic by Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame, Smoking Mirror is a game that has really gone all-out. It includes Game Center support and even integrates with DropBox, allowing you to access saved games over multiple platforms.
