Bulbs&Wires
sierra.baril | Feb 7, 2012 Games
User rating: 
(14 votes, average: 4.79 out of 5)
(14 votes, average: 4.79 out of 5)
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Bulbs and Wires ($0.99) by handsmade
Available on iPhone & iPod Touch
Bulbs&Wires is a puzzle-solving game with a simple objective: connect all the bulbs. Each game begins with a single lit bulb that attaches to unlit bulbs via one or more wires, thus lighting those up as well. Once you have a completely bright network of bulbs, you win. At first, I thought I’d get tired of this pretty quickly but discovered there are seven levels of difficulty, ranging from not too hard to borderline insane. In the easiest mode, you have under twenty bulbs to connect. Once you get to the hardest level, it’s over a hundred.
Tags: puzzle
iSo Kingdom
Tony Mei | Jan 12, 2012 Games, Uncategorized
User rating: (6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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iSo Kingdom ($0.99) by Zleepy Ztudios
Available on iPhone & iPod Touch
Solve puzzles! Battle monsters! Solve more puzzles! I hope you like solving puzzles, because there’s a lot of them. A clever mix of a puzzler and an action/adventure game, iSoKingdom makes some advances in uncharted territory.
iSoKingdom is based around the concept of an isometric puzzle. You get a complex 3D shape and must deduce the 2D images of different sides. It requires a fair amount of spatial reasoning and patience, and is something you’d expect to find on IQ tests and brain teaser books.
Since I have the reasoning skills of a plant, I didn’t plan on doing so hot. Thankfully, the app foresaw my incompetence, and provided a thorough tutorial. Needless to say, after completing a few puzzles, I was hooked. After a few hours, I wouldn’t be surprised if my IQ doubled.
Tags: iSo Kingdom, puzzle, Tony Mei
Xenocube SD
Clint | Nov 22, 2011 Games
User rating: 
(No Ratings Yet)
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XenoCube SD ($.99) by Digital Embryo
Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
Xenocube SD is another “match three” game wrapped up in a pretty package of vibrant graphics and a well-designed, albeit slightly flawed user interface. Xenocube SD essentially presents itself as a 3D puzzler involving a large, rotating, six-sided Rubik’s Cube. The player is then given the task of matching three alike colors either vertically or horizontally on any of the cube’s six planes. The xenocube levitates allowing the user to simply swipe at the cube to send it spinning allowing access to all six sides. This is where one of the few problems I had with the game surfaced. My wife always tells me to be more gentle frequently citing that old song “I want a man with a slow hand…” I guess my lack of finesse is not limited to the bedroom because I frequently found myself spinning the Xenocube on what seemed like a perpetual death spin causing me to lose precious time in my quest to find matches. Another problem I had with the game was the inconceivable use of 3D. I am unaware of any iPhone, iPad, or iPod that utilizes a stereoscopic 3D display, so I was a little baffled by what the 3D intensity slider actually did. After playing around with the 3D effect and finding it more cumbersome than beneficial, I simply turned it off and what followed was a rather enjoyable experience.
Rolling Star Free
Michael (Admin) | Nov 21, 2011 Games
User rating: (No Ratings Yet)
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Rolling Star Free (free) by zgame
Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
I’m gonna start off by saying that Rolling Star Free would be getting 4 stars if the developer could make up their mind about the “free” revenue model… sell upgrades, sell levels, or run ads? Unfortunately zgame is doing all three of those things which kind of ruins what is otherwise a pretty decent puzzle game (the video below doesn’t show the ads). Developers certainly have the right to make a buck when they give away their work for “free”, but this kind of overkill is really a turnoff.
So anyway… Rolling Star Free! You tilt your device to roll a Boy star through obstacle courses with the ultimate goal of hooking up with Girl star. Succeed and you move on to the next level; fail and the poor Girl star bursts into tears.
Tags: puzzle
Bag It!
Michael (Admin) | Nov 18, 2011 Games
User rating: (No Ratings Yet)
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Bag It! ($.99 on iPhone and $2.99 on iPad) by Hidden Variable Studios
Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
I have to admit I was kind of expecting Bag It! to suck pretty hard… I mean, bagging groceries doesn’t sound like too much fun, right? Wrong! This is a surprisingly fun and engaging puzzle game where your job is to arrange groceries in a bag with different goals in mind depending on the game mode you’re playing.
The default game mode’s goal is to fit everything into an empty bag without breaking anything and it’s decent, but Rampage and Puzzle modes are really where Bag It! earns its stripes.
Rubik’s Race
Michael (Admin) | Nov 16, 2011 Games
User rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Rubik’s Race ($1.99) by Prodo Digital
Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
Rubik’s Race is a puzzle game that’s every bit as frustrating as the original Rubik’s Cube, except this time you can’t “solve” it by peeling the stickers off and rearranging them! If you’re too young to know what a Rubik’s Cube is… well, sorry! We old folks sometimes speak in code that can only be understood with the help of Wikipedia.
This puzzle game feels very familiar, not because of the Rubik’s name, but because it reminds me of those old number-sliding games where you have to put the digits in sequence (sorry once again for the ancient reference). Rubik’s Race has several game modes and powerups that make it way cooler than just sliding squares around, but the general idea is to move colored squares to match a pattern in as few moves as possible.
Top 25 Free: Hardest Game Ever – 0.02s
Michael (Admin) | Nov 7, 2011 Games, Top 25
User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Hardest Game Ever – 0.02s (Free) by Ming Liang Chien
Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
Hardest Game Ever – 0.02s is currently #1 in the Top 25 Free section in the App Store
Top 25 is a new thing we’re doing here at IAR! We generally like to review apps that fall well outside the App Store’s Top 25 ‘cuz, let’s face it, apps that have reached “Top” status don’t need IAR’s help getting noticed. But are they any good?
Hardest Game Ever – 0.02s really is fun! And it’s pretty hard. It’s a collection of eight simple mini-games that are playable at three different levels of difficulty, and each mini-game is designed to piss you off, I mean, test your faculties. You’ll need quick reflexes and good motor control to successfully beat each level and not feel like a complete loser.
Zen Shift
Lucas Young | Nov 1, 2011 Games
User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Zen Shift ($0.99) by Brandon Hamric
This is one of those nice relaxing puzzle games that we like when we are sat in a coffee shop, or waiting for public transport. The aim is fairly simple, but it certainly isn’t as simple to finish some of the levels. I got as far as level 40 and got stuck (there is over 100 levels….) Through the game there is special new blocks that are introduced (around one per twenty levels) that provide a good twist, otherwise I think you would get easily bored.
Tags: puzzle
Troll Blaster
Michael (Admin) | Oct 18, 2011 Games
User rating: (2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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Troll Blaster ($0.99) by eMobiSoft Inc.
In Troll Blaster you shoot stuff across the screen with the goal of destroying a structure whose collapse will, in turn, kill all the little critters sitting on it. Sound familiar?
If you like Angry Birds then, at the very least, you’ll kind of like Troll Blaster. Is this app as good as the Birds? Not really. But it does do some things right and if you’re all bummed out ‘cuz you played through every Angry Birds level in existence then blasting some trolls might cheer you up.
Pix Maze
Brad H | Jun 15, 2010 Games
User rating: (23 votes, average: 2.65 out of 5)
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Budcat and Activision have teamed up to bring you Pix Maze. The object of this game is to complete different mazes and as you go a picture is revealed.
There are small mazes, medium mazes and large mazes for you to concour. With over seventy mazes for you to complete this game offers a lot of play time.
When you start up a maze your character is a bug that goes through the maze stepping on little color blocks that leave said color behind you to create the picture. In the top left corner there is a screen that shows your progress on the picture so the further into the maze you get the more detailed your picture becomes.
The controls are really simple and not intrusive. In the bottom right corner there are four arrows that you push to go in the direction you wish.
In the options you can set hints to be on or off. If you have the hints on and you wait at a fork in the road the right way will be show to you as a blinking color tab and if you wait even longer or find yourself off the main path arrows will show up to lead you back.
You can also set a playlist of songs to play from the option menu.
If this wasnt enough there is a custom maze creator. All you have to do is draw up the picture and a maze will be created for you automatically. Way cool.
I had a fun time testing this game out, cool graphics, cool pictures but the one and only thing I didn’t like was the character. Im not sure why they chose a bug as your character but I would have preferred something more appealing.
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- Main Menu
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- Options
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- Ready Set GO!
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- Hmm What could it be?
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- Starting to see something
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- OMG Its a mermaid
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- Time to be creative
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- My iPhone Maze
Version 1.0.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS 3.1.3
Laura Jones and the Gates of Good and Evil
Brad H | Jun 1, 2010 Games
User rating: (16 votes, average: 2.25 out of 5)
(16 votes, average: 2.25 out of 5) Loading ...
Growing up I was a big fan of point and click action games. This was due to that fact that my step-father worked at sierra entertainment, and we got all the games for free. I have been waiting for these types of games to surface in the app store.
When I came across Laura Jones and the Gates of Good and Evil the first thing that popped into my head was Laura Bow and the Dagger of Amon Ra (a sierra game). I was excited, so I loaded up the game and waited and waited and waited while the game was chopping through the intro sequence. Then I tried entering my name to start a new game and had to shut it off because my 3G couldn’t process the game fast enough. I then loaded up the iPad with the game and wala it worked. Mind you this problem has been fixed and is currently playable on the 3G. So we know Astar-Nevosoft was aware of the problem and got it fixed a.s.a.p.
Uni Sudoku
Tony Mei | Apr 21, 2010 Games
User rating: (7 votes, average: 2.43 out of 5)
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For the past few days, I’ve been rolling out lots of reviews for the action-y, thrilling and edge of your seat type iPhone games. So I figured that I would change pace for a while, and review an app that features a calm, relaxing and ubiquitous type of app store puzzle- Uni Sudoku by David Ross Software.
Completing Sukoku puzzles is easy- simply tap a box, then double tap a number to insert it or a single tap to just enter in a ‘pencil mark’ for numbers you aren’t quite sure of yet. For those of you who are sporting a brand new iPad, you apparently have the ability to ‘draw the number you want in an open square’, which seems pretty awesome, but I can’t personally attest to the functionality of this app on Apple’s latest gizmo.
