Developer: WKode
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPod Touch
Graphics / Sound Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.38 out of 5 stars
The fastest way to ruin a picnic is bug infestation. Whether it be ants crawling on your sandwiches or bees trying to steal a sip of your soda, nothing mucks up a nice day outside quicker than insects. Thus along comes Squashbug in an effort to provide you some measure of revenge. While the game lets you squish and smush to your heart’s content, the rather shallow and punishing experience isn’t likely to hold your interest for long.
Gameplay in Squashbug is as simple as it gets, all the player needs to do is tap on each bug which appears onscreen before it makes it all the way across to ruin your day. Each stage consists of five increasingly quick and nasty waves of enemies, and after all that squishing there’s a boss level to cap things off. In an effort to spice things up players can earn bonuses for smashing multiple bugs at once or waiting until the absolute last second to make their move. There’s little more to it than that though, so the core mechanics start to wear thin rather quickly.
The game tries to spice things up with a few unlockable mini-games along the way, but none of them really stand out as such memorable experiences that you simply must play them. Of course, that’s assuming you even manage to unlock all the content, as the game’s difficulty can be incredibly unforgiving. If a single bug makes it past then it’s game over, and players must then restart from the beginning. Boss stages are slightly more forgiving, granting three lives, but fail out on those attempts and it’s back to the start with you. If you want to annoy and infuriate gamers then there’s no better way to do so than lead them all the way to the end of a stage, only to send them right back to start. It’s the same reason no one plays Chutes and Ladders after about seven years old, it’s too frustrating.
This app is entertaining for a short time but doesn’t stand up to repeated play. In a world filled with “tap the enemy to win” apps there’s really not much that makes Squashbug special. It’s a pedestrian, sometimes irritating game that never really manages to impress.
Carter speaks with Appular’s COO and Director of Publishing, Dino Decespedes. They talk about how Appular has evolved from a PR company into a full-fledged publisher, how the process of finding games to publish works, the role social media plays in promotion of apps, and finally, they talk about a few of Appular’s upcoming releases, including Push Panic, Terrorist Zombies, Invaders World Tour, Exclusion Zone, Miracle Baby, and Neo Defender 2.
Developer: iBright Studios
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1
Graphics / Sound Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
This might firmly place me in the strange category, but I liked TightWire more than just about anyone out there. Something about walking that huge balloon of a man across that tiny little wire, way high above the ground, made me really happy. The concept was really funny, the controls were surprisingly functional, and I was pretty darn good at it (always a good quality for a game to have).
iBright Studios, makers of the aforementioned app great, have now come out with a new app called Mazonaut. Like TightWire, the concept is a bit silly, but this time I’m not sure if it works. Mazonaut is a fairly simple maze game that has you controlling an astronaut looking guy in a maze in space. The controls are all accelerometer based, so maneuvering around the endless walls is fairly challenging, and to make things worse, pieces of the ground break off randomly, falling into the big black hole below. Don’t get too upset if you fall though, because there is no end to the maze… just a high score to be obtained after a tedious trip through the neon walled halls of space.
At the end of the day, Mazonaut is a forgettable experience that isn’t nearly as good or creative as TightWire. The accelerometer mechanics in maze finding are inexact at best, often seeming horribly tedious. For a dollar it’s hard to criticize a simple high score game too much, but with the multitude of amazing time wasters out there, there’s really no reason to run out to get Mazonaut unless you are a real maze superfan. Even still, I’d probably play something a bit more polished like Labrynth instead.
There are few things in life more stressful than trying to pick out a new house or apartment. All the appointments, showings and prices are enough to make your head spin with information overload, and keeping it all straight can be a major pain. Thankfully the new Cool Igloo app can help you keep things straight, no matter how hectic the hunting becomes.
Cool Igloo allows users to input their ideal attributes for a home including price, square footage and noise level, and then weight each of the factors to contribute to an overall score. By plugging data into each field you can see just how well the property you’re looking at matches your ideal home, and then compare multiple houses or apartments against one another for an objective tally of which is most right for you. The app also includes a handy map feature which shows you where each location is in relation to your current home or workplace so you can easily factor in commute time and how far you’ll have to lug all your stuff.
While the app does a great job of helping you organize what you’ve already looked at, it doesn’t offer any sort of help in searching for potential homes. It would be nice if the app could take the criteria you entered and then scour the web for properties matching what you’re looking for, but that’s not in the cards. Still, for what it is the app works extremely well and offers a great service.
Cool Igloo is available for free, with the option of purchasing a pro version. We only got to test out the base model of the app, so we can’t really speak to what enhancements pro brings, though we know it adds more customizable categories, so you can expand your search to take account of even more factors. If you’re in the market for a new home, this handy free tool can do a lot to assist you in your search.
Developer: Fun Tribe
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
Doodle Lab101 is a classic example of just what the App Store does best – physics based puzzlers. It’s extraordinarily compelling and with just a bit more polish, it could be a true great.
There’s a typically simple concept behind play – you have to direct various balls (or elements) into their respective beakers. This is done by drawing lines with your finger so as to create barriers that force the balls in the direction you want. It’s not as simple as that, of course. There’s only a set number of balls that you can fail to save, for example. Different colored balls react differently with some being heavy and desperate to drop down, while others bounce happily and unpredictably around the arena.
Some of the levels are easy to figure out what you need to do next to navigate the balls in the right direction. Others are a bit more fiddly and take some thought. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a natural learning curve to this. Simple levels are interspersed with difficult levels so it’s not obvious that levels will get increasingly harder the further you progress.
Annoyingly, Doodle Lab101 also offers an utterly useless tutorial which you’re better off avoiding and figuring it out as you go along. Fortunately, the game is very simple to learn with only occasional moments of trial and error required. Another annoyance lies with the touch controls. They’re not as accurate as they should be. Instead, wherever your finger is placed, the cursor is a few centimetres away. Once you get used to this, it’s fine, but at first it can be rather frustrating.
It’s a shame to see such problems, as Doodle Lab101 is great fun. Offering 70 levels with 30 more promised soon by the developer, and also GameCenter and OpenFeint support, Doodle Lab101 is a complete package of physics based puzzle fun at an ideal price.
Gameplay in Squashbug is as simple as it gets, all the player needs to do is tap on each bug which appears onscreen before it makes it all the way across to ruin your day. Each stage consists of five increasingly quick and nasty waves of enemies, and after all that squishing there’s a boss level to cap things off. In an effort to spice things up players can earn bonuses for smashing multiple bugs at once or waiting until the absolute last second to make their move. There’s little more to it than that though, so the core mechanics start to wear thin rather quickly.
iBright Studios, makers of the aforementioned app great, have now come out with a new app called Mazonaut. Like TightWire, the concept is a bit silly, but this time I’m not sure if it works. Mazonaut is a fairly simple maze game that has you controlling an astronaut looking guy in a maze in space. The controls are all accelerometer based, so maneuvering around the endless walls is fairly challenging, and to make things worse, pieces of the ground break off randomly, falling into the big black hole below. Don’t get too upset if you fall though, because there is no end to the maze… just a high score to be obtained after a tedious trip through the neon walled halls of space.
There’s a typically simple concept behind play – you have to direct various balls (or elements) into their respective beakers. This is done by drawing lines with your finger so as to create barriers that force the balls in the direction you want. It’s not as simple as that, of course. There’s only a set number of balls that you can fail to save, for example. Different colored balls react differently with some being heavy and desperate to drop down, while others bounce happily and unpredictably around the arena. 
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