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Claire: Extended Cut is a 2D pixelated horror title from Hailstorm Games that drops yon into the shoes of a young woman called Claire. A psychological horror, this is a journey into Claire’s past, the uncovering of a truth as we witness the unravelling of her psyche. The game begins in a hospital where Claire is visiting her bed-ridden mother. She is plagued with guilt & often talks to herself about not doing enough for her sick mother. While going to get some coffee Claire begins to experience nightmarish visions as the hospital begins to twist & darken into a monstrous environment. The similarities with Silent Hill are obvious with creatures hidden in the shadows & bloody imagery adorning the walls. As Claire’s sanity begins to slip the nightmare gets darker & darker blurring the lines between reality. You start to question just how much of what you’re seeing is actually in Claire’s head. The 3 to 4-hour story is what makes Claire such a compelling game to play. Confusing at first, seeing the truth unravel is both elating & depressing. Claire is a character you can get behind, sympathetic & innocent but with a toughness that comes from the life she has had to live. Unfortunately, the gameplay isn’t up to par with the story with the over-riding memory being just how many doors were opened in the end. Claire: Extended Cut is all about exploration, make your way through the murky corridors opening doors, checking rooms & occasionally hiding from the monsters that roam the hallways. The beasties are a threat to Claire’s health & sanity but rarely pose a problem as Claire can just sprint past them. Any damage taken can be healed with the many health/sanity pickups that are littered throughout. Claire: Extended Cut is not a difficult game. There are a few interesting puzzles about that need solving to progress but none are particularly taxing (it is clever how they tie into the overall narrative though). The game comes with a map, a map that again is similar to Silent Hill’s style but isn’t as easy to read. Get used to staring at it because you’re going to get lost in Claire…a lot. The problem is that most of the environments look way too similar making it difficult to remember where you’ve been before. It can be a frustrating experience & one that saw me quit playing several times early on (eventually with practice you will get to grips with the map). Claire: Extended Cut manages to create an oppressive atmosphere, one that will have you running for safer areas when the music & sound effects really start bearing down on you. It’s not scary in the traditional sense but with its dark & ominous environments it has a certain creepy style that begins to seep into your thoughts. Short as it is there is plenty of replay value as the game has multiple endings that depend on actions taken as you play. Stick with Claire, the story is very satisfying & enough to overlook most of the gameplay issues.

Hue is vibrant & gorgeous puzzle platformer where you alter the world by changing its background colour. Dropped into a greyscale world, you take on the role of a boy who is learning about is mother who first discovered how to change the world around her. She was a scientist who invented the Annular Spectrum, a ring that allowed her to not only see colours but also to alter them. It’s this ring that drives the gameplay of Hue as you make your way through the world picking up segments of the ring & notes left by your mother. The 2D world’s background can be changed with ease to a colour segment that you’ve discovered. This is how you navigate, as coloured obstacles can effectively be deleted by swapping to the relevant background. For example, if you need to get past a blue brick wall then just switch to that colour & you can pass through with ease. Simple to understand but as the game goes on these become more fiendish requiring deft timing & much more thought. Split into ‘rooms’ dying results you having to restart that room from the beginning but it’s rarely too much of a setback. Short enough to never really become tiresome most only take a handful of attempts to solve. The traps & puzzles require some occasional trail & error but often patience & planning is all that is needed. Rushing will only result in failure. Switching between colours is straight-forward (the right stick is used to highlight the colour needed) but on occasion it sometimes fails to register resulting in an un-necessary death. This is particularly frustrating at later points in the game as timing & quick colour switches are needed. It’s a small complaint in a game that has very few flaws, thankfully. Sleek & very pleasing to the eyes, the visuals are charming even if the story isn’t exactly gripping. It lacks depth with only vocalised notes & thoughts from your mother driving it on. Finding her never feels like an important goal unfortunately. The addictive & rewarding gameplay does make up for a lot of the stories’ short-comings though. Backed up by lovely visuals, the softly subtle piano driven music fits the game perfectly. It’s an immersive experience that will last between 8-10 hours, well worth picking up.

Most gamers will instantly feel at home playing Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas as its gameplay is heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda series. Explore dungeons, fight enemies with a sword & shield, fish, sail, throw pots & cut bushes to find coins? Sounding a bit familiar, right? Even visually the game draws comparisons to The Wind Waker. Not that any of this could be considered a negative as what it lacks in originality it makes up for with a thrilling story, exciting, pretty locations & some really memorable music. Oceanhorn: Monsters of Uncharted Seas was first released on iOS in November of 2013 with console ports finally arriving in September 2016. The story places the player in the shoes of a young boy who sets out on a quest to find his lost father & defeat the mechanical monstrosity, Oceanhorn. To do this players have to explore islands & the dungeons that reside on them picking up weapons & upgrades to make the journey to the final boss that much easier. There are three major dungeons with three fun boss battles before you’re able to take on the sea monster & with cursory exploration the game can be wrapped up in about 8-10 hours. There are a number of islands to explore, ones that house towns & NPCs while others are just home to a number of nasty beasts for you to destroy. There you can collect coins for spending in shops, open treasure chests, find heart pieces (find 4 to gain an extra piece of life) & uncover secrets. Early on, exploration on some islands is limited & you’ll find you have to return later when you’ve got a specific upgrade (such as a pair of boots that allow you jump over small gaps). It’s not a taxing game but there are times where it’s not clear just where you need to go next. Dungeons tend have a few puzzles to try & trip you up but they mostly relate to pushing blocks, hitting switches or blowing up walls (once you get bombs). There really isn’t much variety in the puzzles. There are a few different enemy types that require different approaches with experience gained once they have been defeated. Experience leads to levelling up, with each new level giving some form of upgrade. It’s simple stuff really, reach a new level, the game will prompt you to push the button & you’ll get some text describing what you’ve gained. No stat building or balancing needed here; the game does it for you. Travelling between islands is done via a boat. From an overview screen an island is selected & then the boat travels there with no control via the player. This is disappointing as all you can do is shoot a gun to destroy any obstacles that might get in your path. The lack of variety in this ensures that after a few trips you’ll be bored shooting pellet spitting octopuses & mines. Thankfully it’s rarely a long journey. The islands differ in size & complexity but a mini-map in the corner helps keep you on track. The controls could do with a bit of tweaking as movement feels a bit stiff & the sword swing comes up way short. That really takes some getting used to & will see some early damage taken regularly. Where the game really excels is with its musical score, created by some fairly large names within the business (Kalle Ylitalo, Kenji Ito, Nobuo Uematsu). It’s relaxing & uplifting during exploration while urgent & oppressive during conflicts. Its memorable stuff that really helps drive Oceanhorn’s story along. Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas has its flaws & it is a pretty blatant rip-off of the Legend of Zelda series but it is a game that is well worth playing. Its gameplay is rewarding, the story is interesting, its boss battles are fun, it looks lovely, it has some great voice acting & even better music. Hopefully the sequel (Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realms) can improve on the small issues here such as the controls & on the rails sailing.

Set in the tranquil retirement village of Sunny Pines, Coffin Dodgers sees seven elderly people attempt to thwart the Grim Reaper by challenging him to a number of races set in & around their little town. The Reaper agrees (if you’ve seen Bill & Ted, you know that the bony one can’t turn a challenge down) so the old people set about pimping out their mobility scooters. The challenge is simple, beat the Grim Reaper in a racing championship & they will be allowed to continue living. Bright & colourful, mixing offbeat humour with karting mechanics. Coffin Dodgers looks like a lot of fun on first glance but look deeper & you’ll see an ugly, bland, boring & overly easy game. Let’s start with the graphics… Coffin Dodgers goes with a simple cartoonish look with very little detail. Looking more like a Playstation One game, the backgrounds are bland & the tracks themselves uninspired. Several times while driving through tunnel sections the word ‘disgusting’ kept coming to mind. Now I understand that this is a karting game with cartoon graphics, that it’s going for a simplistic look however that doesn’t excuse just how dated they are. To make matters worse when moving at a high speed I found characters & objects would blur & glitch slightly. This is made even worse when stuck among a group of other racers. There are 7 different characters to choose from (with the 8th – the Grim Reaper unlocked once the main story is complete) but it really doesn’t matter who you choose. Other than a bit of background information about them they have no personalities & offer no difference in driving. You can upgrade your scooter in the garage with coins you earn in the races but it’s not really that important. You see, the game is so easy that with minimal upgrades to your speed & acceleration you’ll be winning races with ease, that is provided you can avoid the horrible melee weapons of your opponents. Possibly my biggest complaint surrounds the added detail that you can melee your opponents to slow them down. They can also do this to you making the early stages of a race a nightmare. No matter how well you did in the previous race you’ll always start at the back & while it’s easy to get to the front dodging the swinging sticks of all the other racers requires some serious skill. Getting knocked off you’re scooter is far too easy while among the crowd & it takes far too long to respawn. Have that happen to you a few times in the race & finishing within the top 3 is suddenly a tough prospect. It’s not just the melee weapon but also power ups dotted around the track. It’s the usual kind of stuff you’d expect in a karting game; homing missiles, boosts, shields etc. Except here the missiles miss more times than they hit, the shield lasts far too long & don’t get me started on the Uzi. I’ve been directly behind other racers using that thing & it still misses. The controls are infuriatingly responsive & using your brakes is almost pointless. Bouncing off lamp-posts, getting stuck in corners, loosing huge amounts of speed after launching off jumps, obstacles that suddenly come round the corner not giving even a second to react…the list goes on & on. As you can see Coffin Dodgers is filled with flaw after flaw & with only 10 races overall there isn’t that much content either. Local multiplayer, while welcome just prolongs the agony & an open world mode offers little in the way of extra fun. For achievement hunters it’s an easy enough completion but you’d be wasting your money. Some may think I’m being harsh here but this game costs just under £10, which is a lot of money for just how poor the overall product is.

The short description that accompanies The Park is enough to get any horror game fan salivating. Set in a creepy amusement park hiding a dark & sinister secret. The Park is a one to two hour first-person psychological horror experience focusing on intense storytelling & exploration instead of combat & action. Don’t let the length put you off, The Park is an excellent & immersive walking-simulator. You play as Lorraine, a single mother who has been visiting Atlantic Island Park with her young son, Callum. Getting back to the car as the place is closing she realises they’ve left his favourite teddy bear inside. As she talks to the operator at the main entrance, Callum runs into the park. Lorraine is allowed to go after him…and this is where things get really interesting. Going up the long escalator the park changes before your very eyes. What was once a bright & sunny day has now become a dark & starry night, what was once colourful & exciting rides are now rusted & dangerous looking, the park has been abandoned right before your very eyes. Gameplay is limited, you can walk or run to try & catch up with the boy while picking up notes & other clues that have been left hinting at a much darker turn of events. You can also call out to Callum which can often give you visual or audio clues about what direction you should take. While you move around the park Lorraine will often talk about her experiences & difficulty being a single mother. The voice acting is excellent, she sells the hardships she has gone through well making her a very sympathetic character. At first it all seems ok but as the game goes on her narration begins to turn darker & much more troubled with her rant about how children should feel lucky & that Callum owes her everything leaving an uncomfortable feeling. A lot of scares come from the well built up atmosphere & odd jump scare. Often it’s just seeing something in the distance or an implied threat (such as the end of the Ferris wheel ride) but it is very effective. As well as walking around the park you can get on some of the rides often for more of Lorraine’s narration that add much more weight to the story. A few good scares come from these with the subtle swan head turn in the Hansel & Gretel story boat part being particularly awesome. That being said this ride in particular goes on for far too long, lasting over 5 minutes with no way to interrupt once you’ve started. It’s a minor complaint in a game that just drips atmosphere. The focus on Lorraine’s mental health left me cold & uneasy with the realisation that this was more than just a spooky park. It’s not a long game, I finished it in just under an hour & a half & there is little replay value (even achievement hunters can get the full 1000 in the first play-through without even trying) but for the time it does last it’s well worth every penny. I’d love to see this idea expanded on.

Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey Remastered mixes two popular yet very different gaming styles into a single game. By taking the framework of an old school RPG like Soleil or early Final Fantasy games (think Super Nintendo/Sega Megadrive) and turning the battles parts into word games like Scrabble the developers, Bacon Bandit, have managed to pull off one of the rarest of things in modern gaming. They have made something that is genuinely unique but we all know, unique doesn’t mean good. Letter Quest is remastered as it was originally a mobile platform game that was then ported to PC and Steam a little later. Brilliant programs like the current Xbox One indie developer program (1D@XBOX) have now opened the door for games like Letter Quest to get an outing on the massive console market which can only be a good thing for developers and gamers alike. Letter Quest is brought to us by Bacon Bandit Games who hail from Canada. Made up of just two guys, Mark Smith and Jake Macher, Letter Quest was the first game produced and released by this small company and the remastered version is more than just a graphical upgrade as a ton of new content such as an endless mode and a new soundtrack have been added to the remastered version. Letter Quest follows a young reaper named Grimm who is on the hunt for a pizza and to make some cash. You control him on his journey which turns out to be more perilous then a pizza collection should be. You also enlist the help of a young female reaper called Rose and between you both you set off to collect jewels and defeat monsters in your realm on your important quest for sustenance. The characters and levels within the game are cartoon like and pretty simplistic in style but in a good way. Rose and Grimm are cute as can be and the bad guys you fight along the way look simple but perfectly suited to the rest of the games style. There are a load of cool character animations when you win or lose with Grimm having some particularly funny ones. Musically, it feels retro but again that seems to fit nicely in with the games design and doesn’t ever get annoying. I must admit I often didn’t notice the music because I was so enthralled in the gameplay. The controls are supremely simple as you don’t actually move the characters. The way the game works is that you select a level from the main map and that level will have a certain amount of monsters in it. Grimm will walk from left to right across the map, stopping when he reaches a monster. When that happens, battle commences. This is where you get involved but instead of swinging swords and throwing spells you have to put together words from a letter board at the bottom of your screen. Much like scrabble, longer words or words containing rarer letters are worth more points than others and these points are the XP damage you cast against your enemies. Defeat one and Grimm automatically moves through the level to the next one. Sounds simple and it is simple but it is brilliant. A few levels of doing the above should lead to boredom but that isn’t possible here because along with this simple and ultimately playable design is an absolutely huge range of additions that make each level feel like a whole new game. Once you complete a level you open up challenge versions of those levels where you have to beat it again but under a set of constraints like beating it in a certain time which means you have to be quick with your words or beating it while only using 3 letter words or even beating it against massively upgraded monsters. As well as that, within each level there are huge variations in battles where some enemies have the power to mess with your letters freezing tiles so you can’t use them, poisoning tiles so you take damage if you do use them and more. The monsters themselves range from being ones that you fight using any old words you can find, ones that only take damage from words of a certain length or one that only takes damage from words starting with a corner letter and so on. There is a reasonable but not harsh rising difficulty level as you progress which also stops any boredom from setting in and it is this challenge that really pulls in the RPG elements. Every time you beat a monster, a level or a challenge you win gems. You use those gems in the store to buy upgrades to your own health, ability to take damage, strength of attack, add perks to words (like 2 x damage for using a double vowel), add power to your weapon and even buy health potions that you use in game, as a last throw of the dice. Just like the variation in monsters and their specifications, there are a load of upgrades which unlock as your progress and it is extremely satisfying to fail on a level, go back and play a few challenges on earlier ones to earn gems, upgrade yourself and then kick monster butt in the previously failed level.

Where do I even start…I mean how in the hell do you screw up Pac-Man? Pac-Man 256 is inspired by the glitch that appeared in the original Pac-Man game. I **** you not, the basis of this game was a freakin’ glitch. Oh, but of course they had to chuck in plenty of pointless in-app purchases because if there is anything Pac-Man needed to cement his legacy it was to be made into a free to play, endless runner…inspired by a glitch. It’s simple enough…you control Pac-Man in a never-ending 3D maze while trying to avoid ghosts, eat dots & make it as far as you can to set a high score. All while the Pac-Man glitch is chasing you down. So this glitch…in the original Pac-Man game should you make it to map 256 the right side of the map turns into a mess of numbers & letters obscuring the dots making the level impossible to beat. This numbers/letters mess is what fills up the bottom of the screen as you play forcing you to constantly move Pac-Man onwards. To try & add more to a pretty basic game a number of new ghosts have been included & the further you make it the more hectic it gets. Thankfully power pellets make their return as does a number of new abilities that Pac-Man can use such as lasers. You get 6 credits to play with it & they are refilled over time. 1 credit, every 10 minutes or you can watch an advert to earn more quickly. You can pay 79p for an extra 12 or £3.99 for unlimited credits (please note that this is currently on sale & the normal price is £5.99). Now it is nice to see this option available as paying for unlimited credits will open up most of the game to you however that price is a joke. This is an endless runner where you set a high score, that is it. They are charging more than the cost of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, The Sims 3, Goat Simulator, Lego Jurassic World, Five Nights at Freddys, Hitman Go, Worms 3, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2…these are fully fleshed out games with not just hours of fun but days & even weeks of gameplay! …but it doesn’t end there. You have the option of playing on different looking mazes, basically different skins. There is a range from the classic 80’s look to one that takes on the form of an office. Each costs 79p or can be bought using in-game coins that collect as you play. To buy one of these skins you would need 2048 coins. I hope you’ve got a lot of time on your hands because you’re going to need it. You can speed up your coin count by purchasing (are you surprised?) a coin doubler which automatically gives you 2048 coins & doubles any collected afterwards. It only costs £3.99… Seriously!? The thing is while gameplay is brief, it is fun. Pac-Man 256 encourages you to try once more when it comes to beating your own high score & having a ‘free play’ option (although you get no power-ups in this mode) is a great idea. It’s not enough to make this game anything but another poorly thought out free to play game obsessed with trying to take as much money from its customer base before they work out they’ve been ripped off.

Initially released on Nintendo consoles, Shantae & the Pirate’s Curse is the third in the series so far. Having not played the other two there are elements of the story that passed me by (connections to characters etc.) but it doesn’t make the game any less enjoyable. You take the role of Shantae, a half genie who lost her powers in the last game. Waking to the sound of gunfire in Sequin Land, Shantae’s first task is to confront the Ammo Baron who is attempting to take over the town. The Ammo Baron is the first boss you’ll face & once he’s defeated it is revealed he owns the town having bought it from the lazy mayor. Shantae is put under lockdown & while having a bath she is confronted by her old nemesis, Risky Boots. Risky Boots accuses Shantae of stealing her powers & putting a curse on her henchmen but it is soon revealed to be the work of the Pirate Master so Shantae agrees to help Risky Boots take down the Pirate Master once & for all. A 2-D platformer in the style of old SNES games, it’s bright & colourful visuals are very pleasing to the eye. The game is divided into islands that each house an Evil Den, making your way through the dungeon & defeating the boss inside will gain you a map which unlocks the next island. Shantae is very versatile attacking enemies with her hair. Upgrades bought with gems can improve her attacks as well as gift her new abilities. To progress through the game Shantae will need to find a number of pirate upgrades. Things like a pistol to shoot far away switches or a cannon that allows Shantae to do a triple jump. Each of these unlock new areas in previously explored maps so back-tracking is necessary. Shantae receives quests from many of the games lively characters in a system that reminded me of an old Playstation classic called Tomba (or Tombi) but with less depth. Meet a character, they’ll drop hints & some time later you’ll find the item they need. Remembering who needed it & where they are is quite important which brings me to my major complaint…it can be difficult to know where to go next. Several times I just didn’t know how to progress. There are no clear directions & the fast travel system can be a bit frustrating (if you’re in a dungeon you’ll have to leave first). Once you do work it out how to progress it is ever so satisfying. There is a lot of variety in enemy types & the boss bottles can be a lot of fun. The final boss (Pirate Master) is disappointing though being quite uninspired & a bit too easy. Initially the ending might seem disappointing but if you collect all 20 bits of dark magic you’ll unlock the best ending. The game can last anywhere between 5-8 hours depending on your skill level. Beating the game once unlocks a number of bonuses in particular Pirate Mode which sees Shantae starting with all the pirate upgrades from the start. The game’s humour can be a bit hit & miss, it’s the sort of stuff that will either bring a wry smile to your face or groans as the not so subtle adult jokes are dropped. You’ll find yourself raising an eyebrow when conversations take place as some of the outfits for the female cast are quite…skimpy. Ultimately Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is an old school romp with hours of entertainment. It looks lovely & has a great soundtrack, a few tweaks here & there (less back-tracking/better fast travel system) and we’d be talking about one of the best platformers of the last few years.

101 Ways To Die is a game about killing but not just plain old gunshot to the head type of killing, which would be too quick and easy. It gives the player the tools and challenges you to be as creative as your twisted mind possibly can be. In this physics based puzzle-platformer you’ll play assistant to mad scientist Professor Splattunfuder; a scientist, inventor and weapons manufacturer of questionable sanity. Nearing the end of his career, he devoted himself to a terrible “recipe book” focused on the death and destruction of his enemies, preferably using the most stylish methods possible. An unfortunate laboratory accident resulted in the destruction of the first draft and now it’s down to you to assist him piece the fragments back together. As each level begins, you are given the opportunity to place traps and contraptions in whatever way you see fit. There always seems to be the possibility to create a chain reaction of blood and destruction but these can be quite tough to pull off as you get further into the game. You’ll need to plan smart and visualize exactly how things will go down once the unsuspecting Splatts arrive. The game starts you off slow and I found the tutorial very helpful because it can be quite confusing at first. However, once you fully understand it can be extremely satisfying at times and yet a little frustrating at others. Maybe I’m just not very good at this game but I found myself replaying levels several times, trial and error was the method that worked best for me. It can be quite tedious to repeatedly fail the same level over and over just because a certain trap was placed slightly in the wrong place or a bomb explosion was timed half a second too early. Now, don’t get me wrong I understand that this is exactly what the game is all about and that it requires players to be patient. After a couple of levels it does get kind of samey so I would recommend playing a couple of levels here and there so it stays fresh and enjoyable. Still, I must admit that it is extremely satisfying to witness the carnage unfold once everything is placed perfectly. It’s just the later levels are so well designed and elaborate, you’re given so many items to place it can be kind of overwhelming. By the end of some levels, you’ll certainly get a huge kick out of seeing Splatts get maimed, sliced, burned, exploded, ripped and impaled. 101 Ways To Die requires you to think but it’s rewarding and has a dark sense of humour, it’s a lot of fun to play around with. While the visuals are nothing to write home about, I found the cartoon style fitted the game nicely. 101 Ways To Die looks pretty simplistic on the surface but hiding beneath is a really smart, well designed puzzle platformer that is a bunch of fun in short bursts.

The year is 2186 & humanity now lives in protective city domes safe from the deadly environment. However a new threat has arisen, the robots are rebelling. That’s as much story as you’re gonna get, this top down, twin-stick shooter is light on plot but heavy on the action. Destroy every human in your path as you make your way through procdureally generated infinite cities. Your robot is built from scratch with a number of options available offering different play styles. It’s split into 5 categories: head, left arm, right arm, torso & feet. New weapons & body parts can be unlocked offering a range of customisation but it’s not as extensive as it first seems. Taking damage from enemies will see your parts destroyed bit by bit starting with your head. It is possible to finish a level as just a pair of legs! Different pieces of gear offer different stat boosts such as increased speed or faster reloading. You can also earn XP & level up offering a mix of passive & active abilities. Abilities such as increased health, faster speed & faster reloading. The active abilities can be a mixed bunch but the more points put into them the better they become. You’ll need a few to fight against the onslaught of enemies that come at you. Levels have simple objectives…collect an item, destroy shield generators or just fight your way to the exit. The aim of the game is to reach the core in the middle but to do this you’ll need to collect cells. Cells are the currency needed to equip better parts with the best stuff costing the most. You need to balance your deployment cost effectively so you don’t run out of cells. They can be picked up in levels as you go along so it’s just a matter of being aware of the cost of your equipment & not over-spending. There isn’t much variety even if levels are uniquely generated. The problem lies in just how uninspired the locations are. Other then the onslaught of enemies, occasional laser shield to destroy & cars that you can blow up there is little to excite. Putting it simply after a while you’ll be bored & often find yourself rushing to the exit rather than slog through another endless pile of enemies. Even the levels that offer a different objective repeat too often to be interesting for long. However, in 4-player co-op the game comes to life offering hilarity & a much needed challenge. Many will find the ‘always on’ friendly fire option a frustration but in my co-op experience it just made the game-play more fun. Not only are you dodging enemy attacks but you have to mindful of where you shoot. Even playing with just an additional player can make the game much more fun & is definitely the best way to play. Even though it doesn’t have as much depth as it promises Spareware is a fun & addictive game. For the price, you can get hours of fun & even more if you’re playing in co-op.

Game of Drones (see what they did there!?) is a match 3 or more game taking the formula made popular by many before it & slapping a Futurama paint job on it. Unlike many in this sub-genre of mobile gaming Game of Drones tries to create a narrative that plays out across the many, many, many repetitive & luck based levels. To make the Planet Express crews jobs easier, Professor Farnsworth has invented delivery drones. However the machines aren’t exactly the smartest & need to be grouped together before being delivered. After the first few tutorial levels Mom, the CEO from MomCorp gets involved sending in her own drones to interfere with the crews work. This just varies the levels up on occasion with the odd boss battle thrown in. The game is split into 8 chapters with 200 levels…that might seem like a lot for a free to play game but you have to remember that not only does this game have a steep difficulty curve it’s also heavily luck based. There are few ways each level will play out. Mostly it’s as simple as matching an amount of relevant colours within a certain amount of moves. Other times you’ll have to get a certain amount of items dropped to the bottom. It makes little difference because the game-play is the same each time & really isn’t that much fun. Like any free to play to game, Futurama: Game of Drones has its fair share of in-app purchases relating to premium content. Unlike most though it doesn’t try & force itself on you too early. In fact it wasn’t until around level 25 that I really noticed they existed. While that is a good thing I do have to remind you that the game has 200 levels that all follow a very similar formula. The premium currency are bucks & can be bought in bulk ranging from 100 bucks for 79p to 5000 for £39.99. An example of how cheeky these prices involve buying in level boosters. 3x ‘Doomba’ would set you back 900 bucks. The nearest amount of is 1000 bucks for £7.99…£7.99 for 3 boosters, that is disgusting greed but also incredibly stupid. No-one is going to be dumb enough to pay that kind of money for effectively nothing. Ultimately Game of Drones offers nothing fresh or interesting in the match 3 category of gaming except making it a match 4 & giving it a Futurama skin.

Artifex Mundi continue their trend of quality puzzle/adventure games (similar style to point & click games) with Enigmatis: Ghosts of Maple Creek showcasing one of their strongest stories to date. The game opens with a woman waking outside having no memory of how she got there. She is in Maple Creek & a storm has ripped through the town devastating the surroundings. There isn’t a soul in sight & in the distance the church bell tolls continuously. Taking control, the aim is to recover her memory while investigating the reason she even came to Maple Creek. It seems as though she is a detective & came here to investigate the disappearance of a young woman. Something strange is going on in Maple Creek & the explanation is far sinister than she could ever have imagined. Gameplay is straight forward; you have no direct control over the character rather you point your cursor to locations & click to move there. In each area there are items to be picked up, puzzles to be solved & an item search mini-game that might be a bit over-used here. These aren’t normally too bad but the frequency they arise gets a bit frustrating nearer the end. They offer convenient ways to find an item that you might need to progress but this happens far too often to be anything but lazy. To top it all off these item search mini games are some of the hardest ones I’ve done with items blending in incredibly well among the piles you have to search through. On the other end of the scale the puzzles are fun & just the right amount of challenging, never frustrating & there is always that sense of satisfaction upon completing one. Items that are picked up are stored in your inventory for use later. Every item you pick up has a use & you’ll be revisiting locations constantly to unlock the next area of the game. There are a lot of locations you can visit in Maple Creek so the hint button is handy to show you where to go next. It can also be used to show you where an item is in the item search mini-game & used to skip puzzles although it has a recharge timer (but I would suggest not using it as the game really won’t be much fun if you’re skipping everything). The locations are interesting & backgrounds are gorgeous, a highlight of the series of games so far. Being a super-natural orientated game there are plenty of moments where the spooky factor is cranked up & amazingly it’s very effective here. The town of Maple Creek is a creepy location & as the story unfolds it becomes more & more sinister. This is one of the darker stories Artifex Mundi have told. One of my favourite inclusions here is the evidence tracker that sees you collecting scraps of information & adding them to your evidence wall. It’s really cool to see it all come together slowly as you add more information to the correct section be it…the victims, the villain or the mysterious detective that came before you. The game can be completed in a few short hours but it’s ending will leave you satisfied (even if it has a ‘to be continued…’). A bonus episode is thrown in showing what took place in the town when the first detective arrived looking for his missing love. It’s very short, lasting about 30-45 minutes & doesn’t really add much to the overall game. One of the best stories that has appeared in this series of games so far let down slightly by the over-use of the item search mini-game. Still well worth picking up.

Well, here we are again as another ‘developer’ (I use that word very loosely here) tries to cash in on the Trumps popularity, or unpopularity with Trump on the Run. A free to play, endless runner the very first thing you get as the game starts is a pop-up ad. Seriously, before you even see the main menu you get a god-damn pop-up advert. Once you start the game the premise is very simple. You control a pixelated Donald Trump who is in Mexico running down a road. I know he is in Mexico because of the cacti that litter the surroundings, the tacos that he has to collect & the sombreros he has to jump over. I kid you not. The sombreros aren’t the only obstacles that the floppy haired one has to deal with though, oh no. He also has to jump over walls, which I guess is to signify his suggestion that he would build a wall between America & Mexico. Hilarious, right? Gameplay is like any other endless runner…make it as far as you can & set a high score. Well that is a bit of a problem here as Trump on the Run has some of the worst controls I’ve seen on a mobile game to date. All they had to do is programme jumping & they didn’t even do that right. Obstacles come thick & fast but the only way to safely make it past the walls is to wait until you’re almost on top of them before hitting jump. Jump to early & you’ll somehow hit the wall as you land on the other side. Jumps you’re sure you should be able to make always fail, you have to wait until his legs are pretty much touching the damn wall! It makes it nigh on impossible to progress far into the game as walls often come in threes meaning you’ve got to have razor sharp reactions. Hardly a game that you’ll be able to play on the move. So with that in mind this game is pointless…it doesn’t work & is about as much fun as a trip to the dentist who also happens to be a bit of a sadist. Every couple of runs an ad will pop up, these are incredibly frequent & some un-skippable. Those that argue that it’s free to play so the ‘developers’ don’t actually make any money would be wise to play attention here…ad revenue. These people are going to be doing very well just based off the amount of ads that pop up! Oh but of course you could pay to have ads removed. £1.49 right? That’s the usual price for the removal of ads from a free to play game. Nope, these cheeky **** have the audacity to charge £2.29 to remove ads. Let me put that into perspective for you…the excellent, lengthy & fun game, Plants vs. Zombies costs 79p. …and of course, Plants vs. Zombies actually works. Normally I wouldn’t worry too much about the reviews the game is receiving on the iOS app store but I just want to share a few snippets with you here, just to show you how stupid people can be. Currently the game as an overall rating of 3 and a half stars with just over 100 reviews written. 3 and a half stars for a game that doesn’t even work properly…it just boggles the mind.

A mix of endless runner style games & ragdoll physics, Faily Brakes is a free to play game where the main aim is to set a high score as well as earn coins to purchase different types of cars. Can you guess how this review is going to go? The premise is simple…the brakes on your car have stopped working forcing you off the road & down an endless slope with all manner of obstacles in your path. The speed is set & all you can do is steer to the left & right to avoid the many obstacles that stand in your way. Steering isn’t as straightforward as you might think as the cars have an tendency to drift when the buttons are pushed for too long. When you’re trying desperately to move in between trees, rocks & cars a badly timed drift can be the difference between sneaking through small gaps or ending up as a smear across the mountainside. The further you make it, the higher the score. Even if you crash you’ll be able to gain a little more distance as your driver is launched from the car at speed. This is at least mildly entertaining the first couple of time but like the game as a whole it quickly becomes repetitive & uninteresting. There just isn’t enough going on to keep you coming back. Earning coins is such a slow process that it hardly feels worth the amount of effort needed to actually get enough to unlock a new car (100 coins). Of course you can earn a few more by watching video ads as well as an occasional gift of extra coins. Every couple of runs will see an ad pop up on the screen also, it’s not unexpected for a free to play game & they can be disabled with a one-time purchase of any car (the cheapest being 79p). That might seem like a decent deal but bear in mind how little actual gameplay there is here. In fact that there are so many cars on sale is easily the worst thing about this game. In my store I currently own 3 different cars. There are: 32 cars costing 79p each. 16 cars costing £1.49 each. …and one car costing £2.29 but is considered a special vehicle giving 1000 credits & double credit pickups when playing. So if I was to spend real money to buy every car in this game now it would cost me the insane total of £51.41. The argument on the pro free to play side is always…well you don’t have to actually buy anything, no-one is forcing you. That’s true, I don’t but if a developer wants me to sink time & money into their game than surely they should take the time to actually make a fun, engaging & lengthy experience? Now I’m not asking for 40 hours plus here, anything over a handful would be an improvement. As it stands Faily Brakes is 5 minutes of barely-fun gameplay, offering nothing original yet the developers found the time to design 50 odd cars & stick a price tag on them. The free to play mobile market is a disease & rather than stand against the tide of **** running towards us all, Faily Brakes just adds to the mess.

A polarising figure at the best of times, Donald Trump is rarely out of the news. As a candidate for the United States presidency his views have been met with equal amounts of horror & adulation. It’s the former reaction that seems to have spanned this one-note joke about the bad-toupee wearing billionaire. Trump Dump’s premise is a simple but direct rip-off of the popular Flappy Bird ‘game’. Here you control a bald eagle & you must beat Trump’s wall (presumably the wall Trump suggested he would build on the border with Mexico). Tap the screen to guide the eagle through the gaps a set number of times with increasing difficulty (start at 1 with the number increasing every level after). You then get to drop bird **** onto a cartoon version of Donald Trump which turns him into a huge poo. That’s your game…barely 2 minutes of fun & delivering a clear political message, the bald eagle, the wall, Donald Trump being a piece of ****…it doesn’t get much clearer than that. I’m not interested in reviewing its message; this is a free to play game with obtrusive ads & an in-app purchase of £1.49 to remove said ads. The reality is this is an exploitive game hoping to cash in on the unpopularity of Trump. Don’t believe me? Check out the reviews on the Apple Store for the game. Huge amounts of 5 star ratings as those playing believe they are in some way ‘sticking it’ to Donald Trump. The latest questionable reviews sees a user claiming that Trump had said he would drop out of the race for president if the game had 10 million downloads. These reviews urge people to rate it high & download it as often as they can to support the possibility that Trump would ever drop out. However I can find no evidence that Trump has ever spoken publically about this game let alone made such a promise. The only one laughing here are the ‘developers’ who are raking it in with ad revenue & people who think they are sticking two fingers up to Trump by paying £1.49 to remove ads from the game. I don’t know which side is dumber…

I’ve made no secret of the fact that Quantum Break was one of my most anticipated games of the year. The concept alone was enough to hook me but knowing Remedy Entertainment was at the helm meant it had potential to be something truly special. Alan Wake was one of my favourite games of the last generation; this is a developer that knows how to make creative, story driven experiences like nobody else. I’ve learnt over the years that great anticipation can at times lead to great disappointment but would this be the case here or would Quantum Break turn out to be what I had hoped for and maybe more? Quantum Break is an action-adventure science fiction third-person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios. The game features Jack Joyce, the main protagonist, trying to stop Paul Serene, a close friend and Monarch Solutions CEO, from enforcing the End of Time after a failed time-machine experiment, which gives Jack time manipulation powers. Due to miscalculations by Paul Serene, a time travel experiment goes wrong. Doused in chronon radiation, the material that makes time travel possible, protagonist Jack Joyce and antagonist Paul Serene are granted time-based abilities. Both can freeze time and move at higher speeds, whilst a higher dose of chronons means Serene can see into the future to decide which choices to make in the present. Additionally, the collapse of the machine damages the structure of time, causing a “fracture” that means it sporadically freezes for all without time-travel abilities or the correct equipment. Joyce and his ally, Beth Wilder are pursued by Monarch Solutions, a corporation founded by Serene. The game enforces the rule that time travel cannot be used to alter the past. Throughout the game you’ll hit “junction points” between acts, these serve as sections in which you’ll make choices that will not only affect the state of the game but the direction of the integrated live-action TV show as well. The show features the actual actors of the characters, interacting with the player’s choices, displaying the outcome of the choices made. Players can use a variety of firearms, as well as their time-manipulating powers to defeat enemies in the game. Joyce can stop time temporarily, allowing him to escape from attacks or freeze enemies, unleash a “Time Blast”, which is an offensive projectile, and reverse the direction of bullets. Quantum Break is quite possibly the most unique console video game experience on the market at the moment. Not only is it visually impressive but it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before in terms of the effects used throughout. Witnessing time bend, stutter and stop around you creates an environment like no other. The motion capture used and the actors performances is as well done as you could possibly hope for. Remedy Entertainment are masters at creating a compelling narrative and with this game, that hasn’t changed. The story is dramatic yet thrilling in all the ways a game about time travel should be. When dealing with time travel, you leave yourself open to potential plot errors and while there are many twists and turns along the way, thankfully it’s executed with a lot of thought and care. You’re introduced to a number of different characters and while some get much more screen time than others, I enjoyed each of their individual storylines. One of the most commonly asked questions about Quantum Break isn’t about the game itself, it’s about the TV show and whether it’s any good or not. The show is split into 4 episodes which are each roughly 20 minutes long so it’s not too long overall unfortunately. I enjoyed the show, it has high production value and all the actors involved give decent performances. The ways in which it’s integrated with the game is what is truly special here and it’s achieved with fine precision. While the choices you make are limited, they make a noticeable impact on the game and show which is satisfying. I think what is truly disappointing is that none of the choices you make leaving any impact on the final outcome; it leaves your decisions feeling fairly pointless ultimately. Still, I’d definitely be up for more games using this interesting format in the future. While I do think you’re given access to all of your abilities way too quickly in the game, it’s exciting to be let loose on the battlefield with them at your disposal. It’s extremely responsive, reacting to your every move in exactly the way you want it to. One of my major concerns about the game was difficultly, how can you be given such power and still make it a challenge. The game isn’t hard, even on hard mode you’ll only suffer a handful of deaths which could annoy some.

Artifex Mundi’s Nightmares From the Deep: The Cursed Heart is an exciting point & click adventure/puzzle game that sees you in a desperate race against time to rescue your daughter from the clutches of an undead pirate. You play as the owner of a museum who is naturally excited to be receiving the preserved body of a legendary & fearsome pirate. Control is handed over the player almost instantly as your first steps are simply to gain access to the body & make sure he has all the bits he needs to complete his intimidating look. It’s a short introduction into how the puzzles work, how interacting with the backgrounds work & how you transition between areas. With no direct control regarding movement you simply place the cursor over an open door or area & click to move through it. It’s the same process when interacting with objects. Unfortunately reuniting him with his items re-animates him & he comes to life, kidnapping your daughter & making his getaway on his ancient ship. Thankfully before it leaves you manage to get aboard. This is where the game really comes alive with gorgeous imagery, backgrounds & plenty of puzzles to boot. While the game is chock-full of puzzles they rarely bore as there is a great amount of variety & it’s rarely confusing. Everything you pick up in your inventory has a use somewhere & it is ever so satisfying to complete a tricky puzzle opening up more of the game to be explored. One of the nicer touches relate to the ‘item search’ mini-games…these pop up quite a bit throughout & require you to find a list of items hidden among an image. Finding everything can be a little frustrating at times as they can be really well hidden but should it be proving too difficult you can switch to a game of Mahjong instead & complete the puzzle that way. The story is satisfying, not exactly original but told in a way that keeps your interest up until the very final scene. Making the villain more of a sympathetic character was a risky choice but it works thanks to the good voice acting & brief cut-scenes. The game is a decent length coming in at about 4-6 hours for your first play-through (provided you’re not using a walk-through) but other than achievement collecting there is little replay value at all. An extra episode that takes place after the main game adds an extra hour of game-play to the overall package detailing how the pair managed to get back home. It’s not that interesting but does have some of the better looking imagery of the entire game.

Adam Venture: Origins is a third-person puzzle solving adventure. It’s style of gameplay is more point & click than anything else because it lacks action & you effectively transition from one puzzle to another. The game reminds me a lot of the Broken Sword series but without even a quarter of the charm. That’s not to say it’s a bad game but unless you like these kind of linear, story driven adventures you’re more than likely to not get much out of it. The story begins with Adam Venture, an arrogant young man being woken from his slumber in his fathers office. His father wants him to go find his assistant & than track down a book he needs within the library. This is where control is given to the player & the first problem becomes apparent…Adam moves so stiffly. Moving him around doesn’t feel like you’re moving a person, he’s slow & irritatingly chipper. Every word that comes out of his mouth is laced with some kind of pun or sarcastic remark. I don’t know if he is supposed to come across charming but it doesn’t work. In fact his dealings with the opposite sex borders on sexism at times (when escaping the airport, listen to the conversation he has with Evelyn about who should drive). I know, it’s set in the 1920’s & things where different then but it just feels unnecessary & hardly endears you to him as a character. In fact I found myself regularly muttering abuse aimed at him every time you opened his mouth to utter another charmless sentence. **** your first task is to find your fathers assistant in the huge house. A chance to explore & get to grips with the tank-like controls, right? Not quite…you see this is where the second problem with the game arises. It’s very linear, almost every door in the house is locked forcing you to take the only path available. Doors that open only reveal small rooms where you can’t interact with anything. This is continues throughout the entire game as later you’ll be in huge underground caves but unable to explore as there is just one route & that’s the route you have to go. As I said above this ends up making the game feel as though you’re just moving from puzzle to puzzle. So Adam meets his father’s new assistant Evelyn & together they find the book. Using it they discover a secret cave below the house which Adam explores uncovering a secret that will see the pair travelling across the globe to halt a religious battle that threatens the entire world. Now it has to be said that this game is actually a remake of a trio of games that were released between 2009 & 2012. Here the game has been streamlined, updated & given the next-gen once over. Locations are varied & often very nice to look at…from a distance. The game suffers from a lot of texture pop-in & seems to worsen the closer you get. With so little to do in each location though you’ll just rush through them, you can’t really interact with anything or anyone save for a little piece of pointless dialogue. The majority of the game is made up of puzzles & there are a lot of them with some real brain-teasers thrown in. I enjoyed a lot of these & I liked that the game didn’t hold my hand for most of them. Initially confusing it quickly turns to satisfaction as you begin to unravel the solution. Guess work isn’t going to fly here, you need to work for your reward…which is often just another puzzle a short while ahead. Ultimately Adam’s Venture: Origins major selling point is its story & it keeps you interested for the most part. Adam & Evelyn’s blooming romance is extremely unconvincing especially considering how much of a **** he is. Worst of all though is the ‘bad-guy’ whose dialogue is horrendous, his motivation sketchy & threat extremely unconvincing. Seriously, during one of his speeches at the end of the game the character of Evelyn started doing stretches as if she was bored even though he had her captive! Even she wasn’t worried about him! If you’re coming into this game hoping for a mesh of Tomb Raider style puzzles & action with Broken Swords epic story-telling you’re going to be disappointed. It lacks so much in so many departments but does tell a interesting story & doesn’t over-stay it’s welcome (can be finished fully within 4-6 hours). The puzzles are fun, challenging & visually the game looks pretty good.Adam Venture: Origins is a third-person puzzle solving adventure. It’s style of gameplay is more point & click than anything else because it lacks action & you effectively transition from one puzzle to another. The game reminds me a lot of the Broken Sword series but without even a quarter of the charm. That’s not to say it’s a bad game but unless you like these kind of linear, story driven adventures you’re more than likely to not get much out of it.

Steredenn, in the words of the developer, is a frenetic and chaotic space shooter, carved in big beautiful pixels with insane boss battles. Embark in your ship and engage the fight against dreadful space pirates in a never-ending combat for your survival. The game is fast, addictive, hard and action-packed. Some of that rang true for me. It is quite beautiful and pretty fast but mostly, it is just hard. Frustratingly so. Steredenn seemed like a strange name but a little research shows that it is actually a translation from the language Breton which is spoken in Brittany in France and loosely means Stars (though Steredenn is the singulative). The game is brought to us by Pixelnest Studio who are a French company based in Rennes. They have a little history on PC and Steam in the shoot-em up (shmup) arena though this is their first venture to current gen consoles. Like many of the “indie” games that have arrived in recent times, the game is quite beautiful to look at. It seems the lack of funds available to these smaller guys forces them to look for alternative ways to make their game look good such as hand drawn, painted or, as in the case of Steredenn, an arty pixel style. It looks good though and is just pixelated enough to make it look retro without ever feeling retro while the backgrounds a big, bright and full of colour. The game loads quite quickly and you definitely get the feeling that they have gone for a very basic, uncluttered, less is more game here. There is a small menu with just a few options and the smallest of tutorials with very little back story. That back story is what you would expect – you are the pilot of a spaceship and are in training (the tutorial) when you come under attack and start the game. That is your lot but to be fair, there is little point in a story in a game like this especially as there are no really obvious breaks in levels to further that story. Training teaches you to move up, down left and right and how to fire your main weapon as well as switch to and fire your secondary weapon. That is it for the controls so it really is a simple game to pick up and play. Steredenn works sort of like an endless runner game. There is no real end and no real levels and instead you work across this infinite loop which is broken up by boss battles. The levels are mostly randomly generated though after enough time playing, you will start to notice slight patterns in the generation. To try and add a bit more excitement to the game within each section and before you hit a boss there are certain types of enemy drop ships that, when destroyed, drop a new weapon. These drops are random and you can choose whether or not to pick it up as they are not always of benefit. The weapons are pretty cool. You start off with a standard blaster that shoots a stream of bullets directly out in front of you and can upgrade through many weird and wacky alternatives from the standard shotgun, rocket launcher, 3 way and 5 way blaster through to weapons that turn your ship into a giant saw, clamp or give you a huge laser. Generally the best weapon to have depends on the section of the game you are in and that makes it really difficult as the drops are random. You could be really struggling with your blaster, get a weapon drop, pray for a long range laser but get a saw. As well as weapon power ups, you do also get the chance to upgrade your ship once you beat a boss. The fragments he leaves behind turn in to a set of power ups of which you get to choose just one. There are a fair few of them such as a couple extra health points, an increase in power, and an increase in laser energy or even in increase in the power of a weapon though make sure you actually have that weapon first. I remember choosing to have powerful rockets a couple of times before realising it doesn’t give you rockets, you have to already have them to make it powerful. Sounds like a great game right? Well, maybe not. Here is the problem I have. The game is hard but not hard to the point of being challenging. It is hard to the point of being extremely difficult for the casual market (maybe even for the non-casual market). As far as I can see there are around 10 bosses to face to complete a single loop of the game and start back at section 1 and so far, with hundreds of attempts, I have never beaten the 3rd boss. I have never even come close to beating him. I would say, if I have played this game 100 times then I have made it to the 3rd boss three times before being obliterated, beaten the second box maybe 10 times and beaten the first boss maybe 20 times. In fact, in the majority of games I have played of Steredenn I have died long before reaching the second boss. The game demands luck and demands perfection. There are no health pickups and no healing. To heal, you need to make it to a boss, survive him and then you start the next section with full health and repeat.

It’s war! Meat & Cheese have taken over the world & it’s up to Fruit & Veg to stand against them in a battle that will see only one side remaining! Organic Panic is a stylish 2-D puzzle game that puts you in the role of one of 4 characters on the Fruit & Veg side. Each has their own unique abilities (Carrot can climb walls, Apple is very versatile) & mode of attack. Told in comic book form the story is hardly exciting Begging to be skipped through quickly so you can get to the next set of levels even though the cartoon-style visuals are pleasing to the eye & levels are well detailed. Organic Panic boasts over 200 levels spread through several game modes. The majority of those levels are in the single player mode where you’ll play as a Fruit or Veg (or sometimes a combination of more) to solve tricky puzzles all while defeating enemies & collecting purple crystals. The crystals at first might seem irrelevant, only there for the completionist but the more you collect the more lives you’ll have to battle the tough final boss. The goal in each level is to reach a portal often positioned in a difficult to reach area. You’ll have to make the most of each characters abilities & powers to get to it. The difficulty ranges with some being frustratingly tough. You see the environments are fully destructible & if you’re not careful you can inadvertently block your own progress by bringing a wall or platform down by accident. This is most prevalent with Apples super-ability (collect blue orbs to activate) who can drill through anything for a limited time only. There is a lot of trial & error involved here with solutions being easily found once you’ve had a few tries at it. The early few worlds are a bit of a bore, serving more as training levels to get you used to characters abilities & the different ways in which levels can be approached. Thankfully the latter half of the game picks up with a lot more variety & less hand-holding. It borders on addictive at times with you just wanting ‘one more go’. The single player story can be completed in a few hours once you’ve got the hang of it. Making it to the portal is the easy part, what isn’t so straightforward is getting a gold star in a level. There are 3 ranks…bronze, silver & gold. To get a gold star you’ll need to kill every enemy in the level as well as collecting the purple gem then reach the exit. These rankings add much replay value to the game. By time you’ve reached the final stage you’ll be something of a pro so early levels that you struggled to get a gold on suddenly become so much easier. Completing the story will unlock some additional modes that are a mix of challenging & laughably easy. The game does include a local multiplayer mode pitting players against each other in a Versus style battle for dominance as well as co-op where you work together to solve the puzzles & reach the exit. There are a huge amount of levels here too. It’s fun with a player who can match your own skill & versus games become frantic battles as you dodge desperately looking for an opening where you can launch your own attack. Organic Panic’s mix of cartoony visuals, puzzle solving & destructible environments make for addictive play. It’s hard to put down & even easier to just have another go. The many game modes, huge amount of levels & star ranking system gives it a huge amount of replay value. well worth a purchase.

Coming from UK studio Total Monkery, MagNets: Fully Charged is an arcade style collect-athon where you control a small robot called Faraday tasked with saving Polarity City from the Bloxbots. Using your MagNet, an electro-magnetic net you can stun & destroy the attacking Bloxbots collecting their scrap to put in a recycling machine that then spits out an item required to progress in the level. Upgraded significantly from its original release on Steam, it’s retro look is appealing to the eyes & the gameplay easy to get into. Early tutorials give you the basics, you cast your net using the trigger buttons, this extends from behind you but has limited range. Stun or destroy enemies (depending on how many times they have already been caught in the net), collect the scrap then repeat. It’s a formula that has very little variation unfortunately. The game is very easy at first…you’ll fly through the first 2 zones of which there are 4 with 5 levels in each. The Factory is when things finally get a bit tougher requiring you to become a bit adept with the dash & slam moves. These can get you out of trouble in a pinch but most of the game will just see you running, casting a net then running some more. It’s these later levels where the game massively improves, urgency is needed & much more skill to survive the relentless attacks of the Bloxbots. The enemies only ever really become a threat when you find yourself surrounded by many but a quick slam can see you away to safety quickly. Faraday’s speed far outmatches the Bloxbots so running circles around them while casting nets is the sensible way to survive. Standing still for too long in this game will not only see you take damage but scatter your collected scrap around forcing you to pick it up again. It’s repetitive but addictive too, it’s the kind of game where you tell yourself you’re just going to do one more level but keep carrying on. The main story can be completed in a handful of hours depending upon your skill level but where the game really comes alive is in its challenge mode. Timed challenges spread across all the levels offering a more intense experience, easily my favourite part of the game. There are a different types of robots to unlock which adds a bit more replay value to the overall package but it’s not going to hold your attention for very long. The game does suffer from a few visual bugs & roughness, nothing game-breaking thankfully. The level designs are a mixed bunch, a bright & colourful world but with some levels lacking inventiveness. The music is well worth praising though, retro & catchy as hell. It fits the game perfectly and some of the later levels really capture the desperation you’ll feel as you try to survive the relentless attacks of the Bloxbots. Unfortunately the mutli-player side of the game is currently unavailable, going to be included in a free update soon. Local co-op/competitive modes will be a great addition to the game & when it is available will probably knock the final score up by a point or so. Overall: 6/10 The simple arcade gameplay is addictive & fun but the lack of variety, lack of available multi-player (currently) & visual bugs hurt the overall package.