iOS Game Review:Â Niko
Niko is a platformer from Habbo Hotel creators, Sulake. It is worthy of comment for two reasons: Firstly, it has some level of integration with Habbo Hotel, a hugely successful and popular virtual world that has been one of the innovators of micro transactions and secondly, it resolves a lot of problems that platform games have on a touch screen device.
Title: Squids
Developer/Publisher: The Game Bakers
Price: 69p
The phrase ‘Turn based RPG’ can send a shiver down the spines of many gamers. Some hate them for the predominant use of clunky menu systems, a relic from a bygone age that has somehow survived into the modern era of gaming, some dread how compelling they can be and have fevered nightmares of the amount of time they have sunk into them, and some love them so much that they have become frustrated that it’s a relatively under-served genre.
Whatever you think of them, the turn based RPGs of this world can display an awful lot of depth and complexity and the right one can compel even those not traditionally fans of the genre to sink many hours in to them.
Enter Squids.
Uncomplicated mechanics and controls seem to be essential in iPhone and iPad games due to the limitations of the interface. Games that forget they are being played through a touch screen and try to overcomplicate their gameplay with elements that would be happier in a PC or console environment can render themselves unplayable. With this in mind, when something comes along that has a simple control interface, it is not only a pleasure to play but more importantly, something that you are happy to keep going back to.
Today I’m looking at Dream Track Nation which is one of these titles that is effective in its simplicity.
I own an iPad and I always find it difficult to find good recommendations for games. It is one of the fastest growing gaming platforms, coming second only to the mighty and diverse PC (which of course any moron can release a game on) and so it can be a bewildering place to look for decent titles.
Today, we have Quiz Climber, a game about general-knowledge-question-answering squirrels climbing trees.