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Capcom Mobile Launches KENKEN for iPhone

Capcom Mobile, a leading developer and publisher of mobile games, and NEXTOY today announced the launch of the hit puzzle game KENKEN on the Apple App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. KENKEN: Train Your Brain!, features stunning graphics, intuitive controls and 250 new puzzles to challenge puzzle masters and casual gamers alike.

KENKEN has become a certified phenomenon with more that 1.5 million puzzle books sold and regular puzzles appearing in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Detroit Free Press, Readers Digest and on NYTimes.com.

The brainchild of Japanese Math teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto and made famous by puzzle master Will Shortz, KENKEN requires simple arithmetic calculations and logic to decipher the ingenious puzzles. Translated as “wisdom squared” in Japanese, KENKEN involves addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

With difficulty levels from beginner to advanced, KENKEN puzzles improve logical thinking, concentration and perseverance.

If you’ve never played KENKEN it is in the same category as Sudoku but with a different twist. You can try it out online here and see what you think, or you can watch a how to play video here.

KENKEN: Train Your Brain is available from iTunes for $4.99.

iPhone Game Review – Bed Bugs

My wife and I both have iPhones and this weekend she was mentioning that she has yet to find a game that she “just loves to play”. Now, to be fair, she doesn’t have a lot of time to surf through the thousands of games in the App Store but I have found quite a few that she likes, just none that she is addicted too.

Well, I may have found one tonight in Bed Bugs. Developed by Igloo Games Bed Bugs is highly addictive and very fun. You play the role of a sleepwalker who climbs out of bed and is bombarded by all different types of Bed Bugs that are doing their best to wake him up. At each level (I made it through 9) a new Bed Bug is introduced and each of them have to be handled differently.

Some you can’t touch. Others you have to touch multiple times and in the latest level, some you touch once but you better not touch them again.

The game starts out pretty easy but gets progressively more difficult as the new Bed Bugs get introduced and you have to keep your fingers moving to keep your Sleepwalker asleep.

This is a game that is simply perfect for the iPhone and iPod touch and everything about the game is done extremely well: the sound, the graphics, the controls and the game concept are fantastic.

This is Igloo’s second iPhone game. Dizzy Bee was the first and although I have personally not played it, it has gotten tremendous reviews so it’s no surprise that these guys have nailed it again with Bed Bugs.

This is a game for all ages and I’m excited to show my kids this one as well. It is currently selling for $1.99 in iTunes and I highly recommend downloading it now.

iPhone Game Review – iZombie Death March

The folks at Sonic Boom recently released their latest iPhone game – iZombie: Death March

I downloaded the game last night and had a great time killing lots and lots of Zombies. The game is very straight forward – you play as a lone gunman surrounded by Zombies who come at you from every angle. Simply touch the screen where you want to shoot and “pow!” the Zombies go down.

There are 6 missions or chapters to choose from:

1. Point Blank
2. Guardian
3. Bunker
4. Graveyard
5. Runaway
6. Extraction

And in each chapter you can choose from four different difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Death Wish or Nightmare. As the descriptions indicate, the chapters get increasingly more difficult.

I played all 6 chapters and mixed in varying difficulty levels. My personal favorite (pictured) is Runaway where you are in the back of a pick-up truck gunning down Zombies while trying to drive away from some crazy monster chasing you down the highway.

The game is also made more interesting with the clever storyline that is displayed between chapters. There are some great quotes in here including my favorite:

“Time flies when you have a gun.”

There must be something weird going on in the Zombie space because between this game and Popcap’s new PC game “Plants vs Zombies” I’ve been spending too much time killing zombies, but boy, is it fun.

SonicBoom is offering iZombie Death March for an introductory price of $1.99 through iTunes. The game is very well done and it’s a fun diversion for 5 minutes or longer. I highly recommend downloading this title and don’t be surprised if you find yourself groaning BRAAAAAAINS!! every now and again after playing it.

Digital Chocolate Dominating the App Store

Mobile games and applications developer Digital Chocolate reports its five titles for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch have topped the 8 million download mark less than 100 days since going live in the App Store. According to DChoc, games like Crazy Penguin Catapult, Tower Bloxx, and 3D Brick Breaker Revolution–available in both premium and free editions–currently represent 2% of total App Store downloads.

“Based on the app downloads chart they just showed this week, we have represented two percent of all downloads of all kinds since we made our debut,” said Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate. “The unprecedented and record-setting aspects of our performance suggest that something big is going on.”

All five Digital Chocolate games now rank in the Top 90 of the App Store’s Free Games list, and have received more than 200,000 consumer reviews since their inception.

“Apple is showing many industries how the world can take computers, content, community, and retailing to a new level,” explained Hawkins. “If I brought a man from Mars down to Earth and showed him a Wal-Mart, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the on-device iPhone App Store experience, which do you think he would find the most amazing?

“This merchandising model on a mobile device is the wave of the future and will someday be used by billions of people. For consumers, this experience is well beyond what the writers of Star Trek came up with when given thousands of years to imagine. It is arguably the greatest achievement in the history of human commerce,” he continued.

Congrats to Digital Chocolate on their tremendous success with this platform. The company has always produced great games but never could quite compete in the “traditional” carrier controlled ecosystem. They’ve obviously figured out this new distribution option and hopefully they can continue their success here.

iPhone Game Review – Sky Force Reloaded

Thanks to Infinite Dreams, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently playing a fun vertical shooter game called Sky Force Reloaded.

Sky Force Reloaded is the sequel to Sky Force, an advanced and highly acclaimed arcade shooter. The game reminds me of an old favorite – 1942. It is a pretty simple game mechanism where you maneuver your airplane/space-ship using the touchscreen to shoot down various sized aircraft, tanks, guns etc while trying to rescue humans and collect stars along the way.

First off, you choose from 3 ships with variable speed and shield capabilities. Then you pick the level you want to play. The game includes a total of 8 levels; 3 easy levels, 3 medium levels and two hard levels. The main difference between the levels is the opponents “aggressiveness” and the % of enemies you have to destroy in order to pass the level.

For example, in Easy Level 2 you have to shoot down 80% of the targets to qualify. Sound easy? Well, the game is not simple and it took me a number of tries to pass the easy levels but after awhile I started getting the hang of it. When you get the laser going, things get really fun as you’re basically torching the whole screen.

The game features a leader-board as well as support for 8 languages. Nothing overly fancy here – just a fun, straight forward shooter game that is well worth the $.99! they are currently charging.

It’s definitely worth a buck – click here to get it now.

Interesting iPhone App Store Strategy

Any of you that are familiar with what’s going on in Apple’s AppStore with the thousands of games available and the extremely competitive pricing problems might be intrigued to hear about a new strategy used by 5 independent iPhone game developers to try to raise awareness (and sales) of their games in the AppStore.

Majic Jungle Software, Veiled Games, Antair Games, IMS and Warhorse Games have gotten together to launch The 5 Fingers Games Bundle that includes 5 games, one from each developer, all for $5.

Per the press release, this is the first games bundle for the iPhone, but the real story here is the way in which it came about. Often for a games bundle, a publisher pulls together one or two good titles and pads them out with some weaker games, but this bundle includes the best selling game from each of five developers. The 5 games included in the bundle are:

* Chopper – Previously a #1 game on the App Store
* Up There – The most emotive game on the store
* Sneezies – An adorable puzzle game for all ages
* BurnBall – Addicting and high energy arcade action
* BlackBeards Assault – Puzzle adventure on the High Seas

If you purchased these games separately today, it would cost you $11. (Each game is $1.99 except Chopper is $2.99) All of these games are good and this is a phenomenal value for $5.

I think it’s really cool watching all these creative minds come up with different strategies to compete in this new marketplace. I’m going to try to reach out to these guys in a few weeks to see how it’s going. In the meantime, if you’re interested, you can buy it now on iTunes by clicking here.

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