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Scog

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JDubYes

JDubYes

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Like if they made iOS game reviews for cheap cable TV stations back in the 90s. Horrible horrible video. Game looks fun though.

Yeah, sorry about inflicting that on you. It's kind of a hard game to explain properly, so I was being lazy and showing the vid instead.

That said, I've been carried through a weekend (and counting) of man flu by this and the inFAMOUS games, and I still adore it, so I'll give it a shot. It's earned that much...

Right. Monsters Ate My Condo then. At it's core it's another match three game, but with a few quirks and deviations from the norm. Well, okay, loads of them. And it's batshit. Both in terms of how it's presented, and how frenetic it is.

It looks at first glance kind of like Shibuya (which I'll assume you've all played, as you really should've (though it looks kind of dull to me now next to this)), in that you get rectangular blocks falling single file from the top of the screen. However, whereas in Shibuya you succeeded by manipulating the order the blocks fell in and dispatched them at your behest, in this all that's automatic, so you're actually swiping the blocks you don't want off to the sides of the screen to make combos. Mtch three of any colour and you get a Bronze Condos (worth more points), match three of them you get a Silver, and so on.

So far, so simple, but then there's the first quirk - at each side of the screen theres a Godzilla-sized monster who, like the blocks, is colour-coordinated. When given the right colour Condo, they're placated, but when ignored/given the wrong colour they'll gradually get more and more angry and eventually stamp the floor, making your tower shake...

Which is another major quirk, as well as the reason your game will eventually end - these blocks aren't stuck to each other, or landing uniformly like in most games of this ilk. If they're shaken off-centre, then you're racing to realign your tower while ensuring that nothing else happens to further destabilise it, which gets more tricky as you progress as the Levels advance and your monster chums become increasing difficult to keep happy.

The other big thing about the monsters is that they each have powers. Swipe a 'special' block over to them and, depending on which of the four monsters you use you'll either straighten/restabilise your tower, slow time and send the monsters to sleep. cause a 100x points multiplier or make it so that any combos cause twice as many blocks to be created for a limited time (depending on the value of the special block.)

There's a bunch of other stuff I could witter about now (bomb blocks, Kitty condos (yes, really), the Mega Zone...), but trust me when I say it'd be more fun to find out for yourself. It's just this huge, mental, endearingly presented, frenetic, involving take on a really standard type of iOS game/puzzler which I love, and would recommend to anyone interested. I don't think everyone will like it as much as I do, but if you like it half as much it'll be 69p well spent.

EDIT - apologies for the unbridled enthusiasm. It's easily one of my facvourite iPhone games though, and I really like pretty much every aspect of it (gameplay, control, presentation) so I'm struggling to appear unbiased.

Anyway, just wanted to add that it has Openfeint and Game Center support, and that I'm pretty sure that the scores on those leadeerboards are actually kosher (I went from under a million to over a billion in about 24 hours, and my top score is now nearly 40 billion...)

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Broker

Broker

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I love Game Dev Story. I'm just playing the free version at the moment but i will definitely be purchasing it once the trial runs out. It's so utterly compulsive, and adorable.

I was just about to come in here and post that! Only got around to playing it the other day (because there are so many iOS games I can’t keep track ;)) and it’s wonderful. I’ll be buying the full version this week, it’s such a brilliant idea.

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Stanley

Stanley

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I'm nit really digging Groove Coaster that much. Seems to be very little skill involved or sense of achievement. A case of style over substance perhaps.

I'm taking the plunge and buying GDS for £2.49. It's the most I've ever spent on an iOS game but I can't get it out of my head. I must have it!

That write up Stiff posted explains fairly well its appeal.

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Don Rosco

Don Rosco

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Robot Wants Kitty is free at the moment. Fun little platformer. Controls surprisingly well, too.

One of my favourites, I was quite happy to pay for it ages ago. There's an update with 5 extra levels as an add-on as well. Haven't tried them yet, but i'm sure they'll be worth the 79c/69p.

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sammy

sammy

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Yeah, sorry about inflicting that on you. It's kind of a hard game to explain properly, so I was being lazy and showing the vid instead.

That said, I've been carried through a weekend (and counting) of man flu by this and the inFAMOUS games, and I still adore it, so I'll give it a shot. It's earned that much...

Right. Monsters Ate My Condo then. At it's core it's another match three game, but with a few quirks and deviations from the norm. Well, okay, loads of them. And it's batshit. Both in terms of how it's presented, and how frenetic it is.

Loving this, looks and plays great on iPad :wub:

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JDubYes

JDubYes

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Loving this, looks and plays great on iPad :wub:

Awesome, glad to hear it. :)

I realised last night when I was thinking of playing a game while waiting for my lift to football to arrive that I still have no idea how long it takes to finish a game of it. It could anything from 5-30 minutes for a (good) game and I'd have no idea, just because I'm always transfixed and inevitably end up playing more than one game.

All in all, I just think it's brilliant though. If I ever had to narrow my collection to 10 games it'd be first on the list along with the Cave ports. I think it probably went from a game a friend mentioned that I thought had a stupid name to my favourite iOS puzzler in about 24 hours...

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Rev. Stuart Campbell

Rev. Stuart Campbell

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Space Junk is simply sublime... great, great retro shooter! Been playing it for a few days now and it's fast becoming an all time fave!

It should be a fantastic game when the first update comes out. Right now it plays beautifully and looks awesome, but it's far too easy, the interface is really sloppy and the absence of multitasking and online leaderboards is rubbish.

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JohnnyFive

JohnnyFive

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It should be a fantastic game when the first update comes out. Right now it plays beautifully and looks awesome, but it's far too easy, the interface is really sloppy and the absence of multitasking and online leaderboards is rubbish.

What are you not liking about the interface?

From what I hear the developers are looking into the multitasking side of things and game center will be added in the first update.

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joeplus

joeplus

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Right. Monsters Ate My Condo then. At it's core it's another match three game, but with a few quirks and deviations from the norm. Well, okay, loads of them.

Never mind loads, this game is entirely quirk. And it's friggin' awesome. SO FUN.

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Rev. Stuart Campbell

Rev. Stuart Campbell

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What are you not liking about the interface?

The fact that it took me six or seven games to work out how to pause (and even then I had it wrong, I just got lucky by coincidence). The fact that it resets the difficulty to Easy every time you load. The way it doesn't give you a clue how to enter your name on the scoreboard (or even make it very clear that you have the opportunity to do so), or remember your name from one game to the next. Trivial but irritating stuff like that. The actual game is brilliant, it's just presented horribly. With stuff like this you end up suspecting they deliberately released it half-finished so they'd get another round of coverage when they fixed it.

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JohnnyFive

JohnnyFive

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The fact that it took me six or seven games to work out how to pause (and even then I had it wrong, I just got lucky by coincidence). The fact that it resets the difficulty to Easy every time you load. The way it doesn't give you a clue how to enter your name on the scoreboard (or even make it very clear that you have the opportunity to do so), or remember your name from one game to the next. Trivial but irritating stuff like that. The actual game is brilliant, it's just presented horribly. With stuff like this you end up suspecting they deliberately released it half-finished so they'd get another round of coverage when they fixed it.

Valid points...

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Alex W.

Alex W.

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Someone's going to have to explain how to get to the last level in Spider. I've found all the *mumblemumble* and activated all the things that should need activating, but still nothing happens in the last room when I *mumblemumble*. I've been using level select, is it safe for me to assume that I have to activate all the things on one playthrough?

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