iPhone App Reviews

Boxterity

Jacob Jones | Apr 21, 2010 Games

User rating: (8 votes, average: 3.13 out of 5)

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Boxterity is the mutated offspring of “Where’s Waldo” and “The Rubix Cube”.

I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with Boxterity. I don’t say this very often about an iPhone game but the way Boxterity presents itself is downright sexy. I’m not the type to play puzzle games but SoftMosis had me hooked from the very beginning with the whole comic/cell shaded look. Not to say that the only reason I like this game is for it’s aesthetic beauty, the game play is original and challenging, it’s just in a world where so many app developers develop games for a quick buck and skimp out on delivering a quality product, its nice to see some people are still putting forth the effort out to make a seriously professional game.

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Tags: Games, Jacob Jones, puzzle

Perfetto

Jacob Jones | Apr 17, 2010 Education, Games

User rating: (7 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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Exercise your brain and raise your stress levels at the same time!!

Welcome to Perfetto! Chances are you’ve probably played this game in your childhood as it is a direct copy of  the legendary game Perfection by Milton Bradley. The object of this game is to place all the yellow pieces into their respective slots before the red timer runs out. As a kid, playing perfection was five times more scary than it was fun. I’d always freak out and jump when the timer ran out and the pieces all flew out. After a week of messing around with it I shoved into my closet and never touched the thing again until I was in middle school. Luckily, when your minute runs out it doesn’t pop up into your face like the original game did. Instead, the pieces float up magically and the board resets itself.

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Tags: $.99, Games, good for kids, Jacob Jones, puzzle, traditional

App Sale: Spikey’s Bounce Around

Michael (Admin) | Mar 17, 2010 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.25 out of 5)

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Spikey’s Bounce Around is on sale for free – normally $.99-$1.99

If you’ve ever taken a peek at the growing catalog of app store titles from Donut Games, you already know that these guys got some, uh, “mad skillz”! Their games are polished and slick, and Spikey’s Bounce Around is no exception.

The object of this quirky puzzle game is to release all the poor butterflies from their glass jars by launching Spikey in various directions to knock out the vegetation that’s supporting the jars. When Spikey makes obstacles disappear, the jars fall and eventually break when they hit a solid surface.

As with nearly all puzzle games, I suck hard at this one and still can’t get past Level 8. Gameplay is simple… just touch, aim, and release… so it’s easy to learn and really, really hard to master. Games of this quality don’t go on sale every day, so if you’re up for some fun and frustration, get bouncin’ for free while you can!

P.S. Btw, Donut’s Traffic Rush is also on sale for free… and has been since November 30th. I haven’t played it, but it looks promising.

iTunes Link – Spikey’s Bounce Around

Tags: puzzle

NineGaps

Brad H | Jan 24, 2010 Games

User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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Let me take you back to 2006, when sudoku is all the craze and I was caught up in it. I had the books, I had a solving method, and I despised when people called it suduko. Fast forward a bit and I had lost the drive to solve the puzzles. It just wasn’t challenging enough so I retired my pencil. Smash cut to now. Enter Quadion Technologies with NineGaps and I am pulled right back in.

NineGaps isn’t your Dads sudoku. Cut out one 9 square section throw in some plus, minus, multiplication, and division symbols between the squares.  Place sum totals after each column horizontal and vertical. Then you have to figure out where the 1-9 numbers go on the board so all the totals match up. There are five levels of difficulty to choose from. Novice starts you out with four numbers placed on the board, Medium three, Advanced two, Expert one, and finally Master where you have to figure out where all nine numbers go. As if solving the puzzle isn’t hard enough you also get to race the clock. Your best time for each level of difficulty is saved. NineGaps uses Open Feint for Leaderboards and Achievements.

The art is simple but works well. Everything in the game is a different piece of paper. The main menu is page ripped from a spiral notebook, the difficulty menu is a coffee stained napkin, and the game is played on a piece of graph paper. The game play is easy to pick up and hard to put down. With so many different variations of sums you’ll almost never play the same game twice. The only thing I could suggest would be to have a penalty when your column doesn’t equal the right number.

$.99 is the perfect price for a good brain exercise that’s challenging and fun.

iTunes Link – NineGaps

Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS 3.1.2

Version 1.2

Tags: $.99, Games, puzzle

Doodle Bomb

Michael E. | Jan 21, 2010 Games

User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.60 out of 5)

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Bottle Rocket’s Doodle Bomb: Physics Puzzle with a Bang wasn’t the game I was expecting it would be.  It was better.  Much better.  The game’s story is simple enough: You are a Doodle.  But you’re not just any Doodle, you’re a Doodle Hero.  But you’re not just any Doodle Hero.  You’re The Doodle Hero, the one prophesied to restore peace and balance to a world of chaos.

How do you accomplish this?  By becoming a Bomb Master, of course.  Ironic?   If you look at it from a certain point of view, I guess so.  I chose not to.

The game consists of a series of missions (or puzzles) that must be solved by exploding your ever trusty, ever present bombs.  You must throw bombs that, in the process of detonating, can activate or deactivate machines designed to move you closer to or farther away from your goal of opening doors that allow you to proceed to the next puzzle.

And did I mention the bomb-bouncing mice?  No?  Well, they’re in the game.  Plus, you get to stun, maim, or kill Doodle soldiers.

Doodle Bomb features 50 total missions, 15 of which are designated as Master Missions.  There is an in-game tutorial to guide you through your first few puzzle missions and then you’re on your own.  The objective is to solve the puzzle within a predetermined number of bombs.  The number of bombs can vary with each new mission.  If you successfully solve the puzzle mission with the predetermined number of bombs, you’ll be awarded a bomb badge.  If you exceed that number of bombs, you can “retake” the puzzle however many times it takes for you to earn your badge.  Or, if you’d prefer, you can skip any regular puzzle mission in favor of the next one and come back to the one you skipped later.  Each mission requires the right balance of timing, strategy, and bomb placement.

Doodle Bomb is fun, entertaining, and challenging.  The game’s design is clean and although additional missions are currently in development, the replay value of the current missions is quite high.  It’s the perfect game, whether you’ve got five or fifty minutes available.

But be careful.  It’s addictive.

iTunes Link- Doodle Bomb

Version 1.0

Reviewed on iPod Touch 3.1.2

Tags: $1.99, Doodle, puzzle

Rune Trails

Brad H | Jan 12, 2010 Games

User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.25 out of 5)

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From the pan flutes in the soundtrack to the stony jungle themed graphics, Quadion Technologies pulled me into this puzzle game that is unlike anything I have ever played.

The game board itself is 8×6 square grid minus one random square of debris. Your game pieces are stone squares (runes) that have a piece of trail running from one side to another. This gives you horizontal runes, vertical runes, and the four curved runes that when put together make a circle. When you start a game you have four runes that you can move anywhere on the board as long as there is a clear path. When you make a move three more runes are randomly placed on the board. The top right corner shows which runes will come but where they land no body knows. Once you make a trail at least five runes long the trail will disappear. You can also clear trails by having the two end pieces connect to the edge of the board or connecting the end of the trail to the beginning of it. Some runes show up with spheres on them, when you clear a trail with a sphere on it you gain that bonus.

White: freezes the incoming runes for three turns

Purple: Doubles the score of the cleared trail

Green: Triples the score of the cleared trail

The goal is to get the highest score you can without the board filling up, thus ending the match. Each rune cleared gives you one point so you need to use your multipliers wisely.

Quadion Technologies utilizes the open feint technology for  their leader boards and achievements. At $.99 this game is a must have for you puzzle addicts and open feint fiends looking for a fun way to get more achievement points. Rune Trails is great for a quick match but be careful because with the “just one more game” factor you might find time slip away from you.

iTunes Link – Rune Trails

Version 1.0.1

Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS 3.1.2

Tags: $.99, Games, puzzle

App Sale: Finger Physics

Michael (Admin) | Jan 7, 2010 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

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Finger Physics is on sale for free – normally $.99

Fans of physics-based stuff like Ragdoll Blaster and iChalky should definitely check out Finger Physics! This is a super-frustrating physics game where your job is to solve puzzles that use the magic of the accelerometer to piss you off, I mean, challenge your intellect.

Btw, if anyone knows how to “construct a stable building” on the first “Lawn mode” level, I’m all ears! See, that’s how stupid I am… I can’t even get past the fifth level without using a lifeline. (p.s. somebody might post the answer in the comments so if you wanna figure it out for yourself don’t go there!)

PressOK says the free giveaway is one day only so you better get on it if this is your thang.

iTunes Link – Finger Physics

Tags: physics, puzzle

Sudoku!

Sara | Jan 1, 2010 Games

User rating: (4 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

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Sudoku, everyone’s favorite Japanese puzzle game. It first became popular a couple years ago and spread from newspapers to hand held games to finally the iPhone. Of course you know how to play, right? If you answered, “No,” to that question, you should Google it. This sudoku app designed by Mayan Software is cheap, fun, addictive, and did I mention cheap?

For only $.99 you get 20,000 that’s right, 20,000 different puzzles! That divides up to 4,000 puzzles per level. If you played a puzzle a day, it would take you about 54 years to complete every puzzle! Now that is a worth-your-dollar app! The levels range from easy to devilish. And when they say easy, it’s not, “This is sooooooooo boring,” easy, but, “Wow, I actually have to think,” easy. It took me 7 1/2 minutes to complete the first puzzle, so I can’t imagine how long it would take me to do a devilish level puzzle 8O . Either I am stupid, or this app is really challenging!

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Tags: $.99, challenging, fun, Games, puzzle

App Sale: Bebbled: The XMAS Challenge

Michael (Admin) | Dec 23, 2009 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Bebbled: The XMAS Challenge is on sale for free – normally $.99

Bebbled is one of those puzzle games that will drive you up the freakin’ wall if you’re the type of person who absolutely refuses to give up! It’s a little like reMovem with all the pretty colors and match gameplay, but it also lets you rotate your iPhone to rearrange the balls.

Like reMovem, your basic task is to knock out like-colored groups of “bebs” with double-taps. The more bebs you can take out at once the more points you score, and if you eliminate an entire column then everything to the left will slide over to fill the gap. You can play Freestyle which is casual and pressure-free, and the really hardcore puzzle solving comes in Campaign mode where you need to meet certain goals in order to clear the level. I made it through the first four levels in Campaign and that was all I could manage; hopefully your brain is bigger than mine (most are) if you’re planning to get to Level 5.

Even though this game is called “The XMAS Challenge” that doesn’t mean you need to dump it on December 26th. It includes both themed and non-themed versions of the game, and I think I’d be willing to pay a dollar for it if I were more of a Puzzler but you can get it for free until December 31st!

iTunes Link – Bebbled: The XMAS Challenge

Tags: $.99, puzzle

Christmas Sudoku

Michael (Admin) | Dec 19, 2009 Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Hey sudoku nuts, are you ready to tear your hair out? Christmas Sudoku is a holiday-themed sudoku game where the typical rules apply… even when you’re playing with “goodies” instead of numbers.

That’s right, in this game you can choose to play with either numbers or nine little Christmas goodies like candy canes, snowmen, and jingle bells. I’ve never been good at sudoku to begin with, and it only gets harder when you take away the numbers and throw in the tiny pictures.

Not only does Christmas Sudoku come with the fully functional sudoku game, it also includes a bunch of other extras like “Hug-a-Friend” for creating and sending a Christmas card from within the app, “Tug-a-Friend” which pits you vs. another player via bluetooth as you race to finish the puzzle first, and several different background themes for the game.

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Tags: $1.99, Christmas, christmas cards, puzzle, seasonal

App Sale: BoXiKoN

Michael (Admin) | Dec 14, 2009 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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BoXiKoN is on sale for free – normally $.99

The backgrounds change as you level up

Puzzle fiends, get this app now! BoXiKoN is a little like Tetris, except instead of trying to fit pieces together as they fall, you have to drag them from the bottom of the screen into the main puzzle area. Pieces waiting to be used will rotate in place until you drag them to wherever it is you think they should go.

There’s no right or wrong way to stick the puzzle pieces together, but the trick is to do it efficiently enough that you don’t wind up with pieces that don’t fit anywhere. When all of the squares at the bottom fill up with unusable pieces, it’s Game Over.

I’d easily pay $1 for this game, so if you like puzzles then right now is the time to grab this one.

iTunes Link – BoXiKoN

Tags: $.99, puzzle

App Sale: Billionaire

Michael (Admin) | Dec 2, 2009 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (No Ratings Yet)

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Billionaire is on sale for free – normally $.99

If you like Tetris, then I think there’s a good chance you’ll like Billionaire… it’s pretty similar, but instead of trying to fit blocks together you’re basically doing a match 3 thing where you have to match up falling jewels.

The action is a little slower than I’m used to for this kind of game, but it’s tricky enough that you’ll eventually appreciate the moderately lazy pace at which the gems are falling. Shen Marshall has built in a good set of options that allow you to adjust game control, background, music, and a couple other game attributes.

At this game’s normal price of a buck I’d say that’s about right, but it’s even better when it’s free! If you miss out on the sale, there’s also a free lite version.

iTunes Link – Billionaire

Tags: $.99, match 3, puzzle