Good Game Get! Kometen
Kometen’s real charm lies not in in its beautiful water colored visuals, nor its superbly crafted and catchy background music. While both are charming in their own right, they’re really not the defining points when it comes to the iPhone game’s magic.
Kometen rules because it engages us in such a simple way with non-linear goals that promote the joy of flying through space, attaching our comet to the planetary pulls of Issac Newton’s famous law, and engaging with nothing but inanimate objects and isolation.
We naturally find it exhilarating to fly through space (the notion at least), collect things, and discover new places. All of this is possible in Kometen and no one is telling you what to do, how long you have to do it, and the consequences for not doing anything but fly around aimlessly so are non-existent.
Kometen confirms why we play games.
To escape.
Good App Get! Joypad
Joypad is an excellent app that enables you to turn your iPhone/iPod touch into a fantastic touch-based wireless controller for your Mac. You can play your favorite emulated games and customize the controls using an easy to use keystroke mapper. I even managed to get it to work with MacMAME and played some SHMUPS and it worked really well.
Haters gonna hate. Touch screen controllers have been hit and miss, but I assure you that Joypad’s well-thought out design completely dismisses any criticisms sans physical feedback that you might have about them.
You might think that you’ll have to constantly look down at the controller screen to see where your thumbs are.
Wrong.
The size and layout of the buttons are super smart.
The Directional Pad
The directional pad at first may appear to you to only register input if you are touching it, but its merely an animated image that serves as a reference point as the input is actually calculated based on the origin of the directional pad versus where your thumb is, so according to the developers, “you can touch way outside the d-pad image itself and it will still work as expected.”˚
And, it does. It works incredibly well.
The B & A Buttons
The buttons on the right side of the controller are (obviously) the second half of the intelligent design of Joypad. Instead of choosing to emulate a traditional circular controller button - the devs decided to opt for big vertical piano key buttons.
It works so well that throughout my playthroughs of Espa Ra.De and Gunbird 2 I never once hit the wrong button or had a problem manipulating the smooth directional pad.
While you won’t find many apps like it, Joypad is the gold standard of controller apps. The idea is fantastic, executed so well, and it’s the absolutely best wireless controller you could ever buy for $1.99.
It’s a blast to use.
Want a free copy to show to all of your friends, or at least the friends who will get exactly how awesome Joypad is?
Lou Zell (one half of the developers behind Joypad) was kind enough to give me some iTunes promo codes for five free copies of Joypad for you to hopefully enjoy as much as I have.
The first five readers to comment get a free copy of Joypad!
I’d like to note that I myself have not received Joypad for free and initially bought it before contacting Lou and writing this post.
˚ Quote extracted from a Reddit comment from one of the devs.
Good Game Get! Lilt Line
Lilt Line for the iPhone is dubstep, the video game. The heavily rhythm and tilt-based gameplay is built on an intensely awesome dubstep soundtrack crafted by 16bit.
Lilt Line at its core is graphically simple and very reminiscent of of the guide this object through the scrolling horizontal cave while not hitting anything games, but remove that shallow comparison and you have a very unique rhythm game featuring a genre of music that has been criminally ignored in rhythm/music games.
The game has two controls, one being tilt, (left or right, controlling the pitch at which the line moves) and the other being a finger tap for when the line touches the white vertical bars which are timed with the music. It’s compelling and fun, and at times very difficult steering and trying to stay in tune with the level’s song. You receive score damage each time you let the line hit the walls and when you miss a horizontal beat bar. The level ends when your score reaches zero, and you must start over.
The minimalist art aesthetic the game conveys crashes into the absurdly layered and complicated, but enjoyable dubstep soundtrack and even though technically it’s a video game, I feel more like it’s a playable dubstep album by 16bit called Lilt Line, rather than a video game featuring music by 16bit.
Imagining that is the case really excites me, because I feel that if artists, game designers and musicians want to team up and do more wonderful, simple, and specific ryhthym games like Lilt Line, then they may very well reinvigorate a genre already becoming stale of countless overpriced plastic instrument peripherals and mediocre music.
Good Game Get! Spirit
Spirit may be the best deal in the app store right now. Seriously. It’s only 99¢!
Now lots of apps in the in the app store for the iPhone and iPod touch are 99¢; this I know, but Spirit is polished contemporary retro arcade goodness.
The premise is simple, it’s a top down score chaser with typical alien enemies with fairly recognizable behavior, hence the classic feel. The catch, and it is an awesome catch is that you have only one way of destroying enemies, and no you can’t shoot them, nope.
Your only defense is flying away from them, and your only offense is making circles quickly to form space-time holes to send them into another dimension. Once the field is clear of enemies, you too, move on to the next dimension and continue on until the game’s difficulty takes a toll on your limited lives.
The controls are spectacular, you just offset your finger from the spirit and begin to move your finger and fly around. Excellently simple and well executed.
The art style and graphics engine are great too, with great particle effects and a pseudo 3D top-down view where the field is manipulated by your death and when you create space-time holes.
Totally nerdy looking and sci-fi, but completely fitting and overall cool. Definitely the best score chaser on the iPhone, next to Canabalt.
Good Game Get! Eliss
Eliss is a multi-touch iPhone/iPod touch game that destroys any notions that the iPhone and iPod touch aren’t relevant video game systems.
The game is much easier played than it is described, but simply it’s a game about controlling different colored planets with your fingers, keeping them from colliding with one another, and turning them into supernovas.
On top of that you have to deal with splitting and combining them with fluid multi-touch controls. You also have a health meter and that decreases when you collide planets (or let them collide) and when other sources of danger affect your planets, thus killing your health, and decreasing the size of the planet making it difficult to create supernovas and stardust which can be swiped to regain health. The goal is reached when you create a predetermined number of supernovas.
If that sounds simple, it is. On paper. The difficulty develops when the game forces your multi-task abilities into over-drive forcing you (if you want to win) to use up to three or four fingers at a time (put your device on a table-top for best play) to control various colors of super novas, especially when a black hole is trying to pull them into one another. It’s challenging, but oh so satisfying when you complete a level that you’ve failed at numerous times, and like any good game, it rewards you with satisfaction when you best it with knowledge learned from failure.
Graphically the game is something behold with its modern minimalist and retro appeal. The color pallette that creator Steph Thirion developed for the game is also awesome. The graphic design from the interface to the GUI to the actual gameplay is top notch and solid throughout. Not only is Eliss an achievement in incredible and original gameplay, it further innovates games as art, and the wonderful music contributes to that as well.
You’ll love the game if you play the lite (free!) version, and if you do so happen to most likely dig it, you should pick it up and support the incredible yet tiny (compared to most of the shit on the App Store) indie game movement on the iPhone OS.
If you have an iPod touch or iPhone, you have nothing to lose.
Trust me. Eliss is pure mobile magic.