KooFish: Break’em Out for iPhone and iPad is a slingshot puzzle game like Angry Birds. Using the wildly successful platform that Angry Birds made famous, KooFish takes to the water in this slingshot puzzle extravaganza. The puzzles are elaborate and there are a lot of them.
KooFish is a very simple game unless you are one of the few people are there who haven’t played Angry Birds. It employs the same gameplay and similar physics. You slingshot conch shells at blocks of ice that contain fish. Using your surroundings you have to break out the fish that are trapped in the cubes while using as few shells as possible, sound familiar? The characters and levels are very nice and fairly polished. This game looks great.
The fish are “cute” in the words of my wife and with 150 unique puzzles that are strategically laid out, there is plenty to keep you busy here. The game also has Game Center integration which is a must these days to compete with friends. Who doesn’t have office wide game challenges like my company?
This game is for both the iPad and the iPhone and looks great on both. I enjoyed the game very much, though I must admit, I haven’t played Angry Birds in quite a while.
Angry Birds fanatics will surely have their rips about this game not being quite the same and being incredibly similar. I say why not let someone use the same base game and have their own spin on it. It worked for Battlefield and Call of Duty. That being said, the similarities and the price made me go with 3 stars on this one.
I like the game but the audio isn’t that great, it is very similar to Angry Birds and at the 3 dollar price, its tough to go any higher. That being said if you can’t get enough of the Angry Birds style play and want a new atmosphere, this is the game for you.
[rating: 3/5]What we like
What to know
I must admit, when a friend and I decided to take up app coding as a hobby to see if we could make a game, I thought mobile app coding was the same across the board. Guess what? It is not the same. Surprise I know, don’t get me wrong I didn’t think it was identical but I did think it would be more cross-platform than it is. Specifically, we’ll look at the differences of aesthetics between iOS and Android in this article.
In a nutshell, it’s easier to make good looking apps in iOS than in Android. Hipmunk UI/UX designer and iOS developer Danilo Campos explains: “The very simple short answer is it’s easier to make a good-looking, attractive iOS app compared to making an Android app.”
It’s no surprise that when you look at an Apple product vs. a Google product that the Apple product is going to most likely be more polished and sleek, also more expensive. This should give you a hint as to which one cares more about these qualities when it comes to software as well. Now that I sit down and think about it, it makes perfect sense, I just hadn’t thought about it.
Though many things that Apple product users such as myself see as issues with Android many Android users see as benefits. This might be true but some of these are the very reason for the apps not appearing as polished. One thing is for sure, it is is not for lack of talent in the Android development scene.
Let’s look at the reasoning before I am strung up by the Android users:
“Android devices come in different shapes and sizes, different screen resolutions, different device speeds – and that’s actually a huge hurdle,” Karma app co-founder Lee Linden told Wired.
Campos states, “It feels like you’ve got more documentation, both officially sanctioned and thirdparty, so that makes things smoother.” He adds, “One of the hangups [with Android] is so much of the stuff doesn’t feel fully documented.” “Ryan, our Android guy, has to go digging around in the source code to figure out some XML formatting piece that isn’t made clear. That’s been painful for him.”
Overall, Google is learning from their developers and fixing many of the issues. Adding developer support pages to Google+ and also adding a much more robust Android training regiment. With these improvements, some issues still persist. The fragmentation remains as a major issue as less than 3 percent of Android devices currently run Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). I’ll continue to monitor the progress as my company utilizes Google Apps for Business and I am a fan of all things Google, except Android. Sorry Android fans, it just hasn’t lured me away from iOS… yet.
{via Gizmodo}
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Fat Cats for iPhone and iPad is a game for all ages. It’s a simple pick up and play game that might seem a little familar to millions of people. The reason it might seem familiar? It has the same core concepts as Angry Birds. If you haven’t heard of Angry Birds, you must be living under a rock, just kidding.
Fat Cats takes from the wildly popular Angry Birds and gives you a slightly different style, with different story, different maps but same fun game-play. You might look at it and say that it is just another Angry Birds clone and you wouldn’t be far off. Who says you can build off of a successful platform?
Taking down greedy cats is the name of this game. Catapulting objects at symbols of greed is the primary goal. Along the way you can check out the witty backgrounds and their play on words. At times, the backgrounds were my favorite part of the game.
Fat Cats has a number of different characters that you will launch at the cats to clean them out. Some will drop things, some will launch super fast when you double tap and others split up like a shotgun shell. That being said, you’re trying to take out the money bags, diamonds and other symbols of greed while taking out the cats. The idea is to take out all of the symbols of greed as well as the cats in as few catapults as possible. Sound familiar?
The game definitely looks, acts and feels like Angry Birds so if you haven’t been able to get your Angry Birds fix then this game might be for you. I will say that the game doesn’t seem to be as polished as Angry Birds but does feel and act incredibly similar. At 99 cents, its something that is worth giving a shot but don’t expect it to outpace Angry Birds.
[rating: 3/5]
What we like:
What to know:
Black Tie Adventure [rating: 2.5/5]
There are times when you have to presume that some higher power is attempting to tell you something. For example, if on your wedding day as you are all dressed up to the nines in your black tie, your bride to be and your guest suddenly disappear then you may start to get suspicious. If you also find out that your bride and guests have been kidnapped by serpents and hidden around the place in gift boxes you may begin to think that getting married was not such a good idea after all!
Well, it’s this bizarre premise that is the back story for Black Tie Adventure, is 2D sideways scrolling platform game in the style of Super Mario, just without the style!
The game is a little retro in it’s style, graphics and gameplay and while that can sometimes be a good thing especially when it’s been created with that in mind in this case it doesn’t and you end up feeling like you are playing a game that is devoid of any originality.
As I mentioned previously your task is to find your bride and guests that have been hidden around the levels in gift boxes. To do this you run and jump around the environment as you would expect from any similar platform game.
The controls are straight forward enough and even younger less experienced players will be able to pick up the controls relatively quickly. 2 virtual buttons on the left control your characters left and right while a jump and an action button allow you to leap up, over and onto platforms and, believe it or not, kill the aforementioned serpents with a swish of your bouquet of flowers!
It all works well enough, it just feels pretty uninspired. The levels aren’t too long and so while your death at any point results in you having to start the level again it’s not too much trouble. The enemies too in the shape of serpents are predictable in their movement and method of attack meaning that avoiding them or killing them is pretty easy too.
There are levels to add a bit of mix to them by offering portals to get to hard to reach areas as well as vertical climbs into the sky to rescue some of the more remotely hidden guests. It’s all pretty obvious stuff with no limits of platform games being pushed to where the game may actually offer some reward.
Collecting all the hearts along the way of each level results in a higher grade of score but it offers little replay value. There are 32 levels in total spread across 4 unique environments and a future update promises OpenFeint integration that can only be a good thing so at 99 cents Black Tie Adventures could offer some value for money especially for the younger gamer who is after a simple platform game that won’t cause them too much frustration.
Pros
Cons
Black Tie Adventure Trailer
Price: $0.99 (iTunes Store)
Category: Games
Updated: Jun 05, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.1
Size: 18.1 MB
Language: English
Seller: Glen Poon
© 7th Playground
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.