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We've had our eye on Tweet Land [$1.99] from Why Ideas ever since we spotted it as a curious Kickstarter project back in April of last year. The project was more than sufficiently funded, and last month we were treated to a new trailer and news that Tweet Land would be hitting at the end of January. As expected, earlier this week the game finally went live in the App Store.

Tweet Land was intriguing due to its unique real-time usage of tweets drawn from Twitter that would trigger elements into the game. It reaches out into the vast ocean of Twitter and utilizes special keywords from real tweets to create things in the game. It's a fantastic idea in theory, and Why Ideas did pull it off on a functional level just as they had promised. However, despite being really innovative, Tweet Land doesn't hold up as well in the gameplay department, and there were a couple of unintended side effects of using live tweets that left a sour taste in my mouth.

First, let's talk about the kind of gameplay that's in Tweet Land. You control a car heading down the highway (Route 140 no less) and you must make it to the finish line while dodging tweet-driven hazards and other traffic on the road. You can veer into the other cars from the side to knock them off the road and score some points, and ramming multiple cars off the road at once will multiply the points you earn. If you hit cars from behind or run into road hazards, you lose a bit of life, which is represented by the visual damage on your car.

I really like Tweet Land's retro style, and there is a lot of humor and personality in its pixel art visuals (though it's kind of blurry on my iPhone 4S). But things start to fall apart when you actually start playing. The controls are very slippery, and it's hard to be precise when trying to properly ram other cars or avoid hitting hazards. With practice you can get used to it, but it's still really annoying when you're trying to quickly react to something and the controls don't afford you the kind of finesse that you need to get it done.

I think when you have games that are built on top of a very simple core gameplay concept, you have to get all the little details right. That's why games like Jetpack Joyride or Angry Birds are often imitated but rarely duplicated. as they get the feel of the controls and the movement in the game so right. If you're going to be doing the same action over and over again, you want that action to be fun. While Tweet Land has its share of fun moments, something about it just feels off, like it's missing something but I can't pinpoint what.

The game is broken into two environments with 12 levels each, with a spot for a third environment that's said to be coming soon. With each new level, new tweet-driven elements are introduced and added to the current ones, so as you keep going the variety of things that can happen increases quite a bit. An example of a hazard would be if someone tweets the word "meteor" then a meteor will fly in from off screen and you'll have to use the position of its shadow in order to avoid being crushed. There are helpful things that can be triggered in the game too, like health packs or a temporary spread shot for your vehicle.

One problem with the progression in Tweet Land is that it gets rather hard rather quickly, and if you get stuck on a level there's no moving forward until you beat it. This got pretty frustrating since many of the times that I died it felt like it wasn't actually my fault. When elements are brought in from Twitter, they are accompanied by a label with the Twitter handle of whoever tweeted that keyword. This is neat, but leads to an incredibly cluttered and distracting screen, especially when there are multiple things happening at once. Coupled with the floaty controls and the speed at which things are zooming by, and the odds are stacked against you.

Arrows indicate where things will be coming in from off screen, but they're hard to notice amongst the busyness on the screen and often aren't very helpful. Add in the fact that there's usually a ton of traffic on the road with you, and making it to the finish line intact can require a healthy dose of luck just as much as skill. The levels tend to be a bit longish, and nothing is worse than seeing your cheap demise when you're within a stone's throw of the finish. The more I failed a level over and over, the less I felt compelled to go back and conquer it.

However, my biggest issue with Tweet Land is something that I didn't really expect: the tweets that the game draws from can be much too somber for what is supposed to be a fun and lighthearted game. For example, if someone tweets about a "car crash" then cars will zoom in from offscreen and wreck into some of the other traffic on the road. When your run ends, you have the option of looking at a list of all the tweets that were used to bring things into the game.

To my horror, I found that in this particular instance "car crash" was pulled from a huge retweet campaign trying to raise money for a girl who had lost her parents in a car crash in Florida. I know Tweet Land has no way of telling the difference, but I couldn't help but feel crass for playing a game that was fueled by somebody else's tragedy. With some of the other keywords used in the game – like tsunami, terrorist, and death – I have no doubt that encountering a downer situation like that will occur often.

While I do still think the idea behind Tweet Land is incredibly clever, I just find the game too fundamentally flawed to be enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, I want to like it and I did find myself having fun with the game at times, but those fun times are quickly diminished when you realize your game is possibly being powered by the tragic tweets of strangers. Beyond that, the gameplay is too average to warrant dealing with cheap deaths and an unpredictable difficulty.

With some tweaks to the controls and interface, and perhaps some sort of filter for what kind of keywords are utilized, then Tweet Land could end up being something pretty special. It feels like it's just a couple notches off of being something great, and I hope it gets there someday. As it is now, though, it's hard to recommend the game except to those who might be curious to check out its novel use of Twitter or are prepared to deal with its shortcomings.

Readdle has released a new application for the iPad called Remarks which offers incredibly accurate handwriting recognition, PDF annotating, and more. At the heart of Remarks is PDF annotating, and PDFs can be imported by way of the iPad’s iTunes File Sharing feature or through opening the PDF with an email to the iPad. All of your PDFs are stored in an iWork for iOS-like file system, and a foldering system is also available.

The interface, though powerful and feature-packed, is simple for PDF annotating. A user simply taps to open a PDF and then they can do actions such as handwriting, highlighting, panning, and creating shapes like circles and squares like one does in OS X’s built-in PDF annotating application, Preview. Remarks also allows you to import photos directly from within the application to place in a PDF, and it also allows users to email, print, and open the created or annotated PDFs in other iOS applications.

While Remarks has been a fantastic PDF annotator in our testing, it’s marquee feature, perhaps, is its handwriting integration. In our tests, Remarks’ handwriting software is well crafted, very accurate, fast, and features no lag. A great bonus is being able to rest your hand on the display of your iPad without writing anything accidentally. Writing with Remarks with a stylus offers perfect iPad handwriting, but writing with your finger works great as well. Readdle says they are looking to bring more featureS soon to Remarks including Dropbox and other cloud storage system support.

Remarks is available for the iPad on the App Store for $4.99.

I love Halfbrick's Jetpack Joyride [Free], and if you like good iOS games, chances are you like Jetpack Joyride too. In fact, I'd like even more Jetpack Joyride, which, oddly enough, is where Big Pixel Studios' Off The Leash [Free] comes in. You're likely thinking to yourself, "But it seems obvious from the name alone that Off The Leash has to do with dogs, what does Jetpack Joyride have to do with anything?" I'll explain.

You know how we raved about Jetpack Joyride's mission system, its hefty in-game store full of customizables, and other single-user consumable perks? Well, Off The Leash does an incredible job of utilizing incredibly similar underlying systems to keep you playing game after game while feeling entirely new and fresh. In fact, in light of the recent NimbleBit cloning drama in the past week, it's seems particularly important to tip our hats at games like Off The Leash that utilize these mechanics that work so well, but only as part of building an entirely new game experience.

In Off The Leash you initially control a single dog. It almost has a Mega Jump [Free] feel to it in that coins are everywhere, and you tilt your device to move your dog around to collect them. There's also food to eat, and various power-ups to snag.

The premise of the game has you running from the police, as apparently dogs have been banned. This lends itself to my favorite gameplay mechanic, the dog rescue system. Since the cops are out in force to catch you (and presumably, all other dogs), you've got to snag every other dog you come across and recruit them into your coin collecting food devouring feral dog pack.

As you collect more dogs, you run in what could be best described as a massive canine swarm. Your dog friends you've picked up form behind you in a almost bird-like flying V formation which greatly increases the amount of coins and food you can pick up since any dog running into any coin or food product counts towards your total.

It's not that easy enough, as there's obstacles which make you lose dogs as the errant corners of your formation bumps into them. Thankfully, touching the screen makes your dogs form up in a line, but doing so greatly decreases your speed, which is really counterproductive since the game ends when your dog pack fails to make it through a checkpoint before you run out of time- Sort of like an old school racing game.

Like most of these games, you quickly find yourself in a rhythm of tilting tilting and tapping and the whole game melts away into this crazy dog pack management experience as you're trying to go as quickly as possible without losing any of your puppy pals. There's power-ups you can collect too such as your standard speed boost, time extension, a familiar coin magnet, and my favorite: DOUBLE DOGS. Collecting this power-up instantly doubles the dogs in your pack, which can result in a silly amount of dogs on screen.

Just like Jetpack Joyride, Off The Leash is totally free to download and play, with no ads or other restrictions as far as I can tell. Instead, it's monetized through selling coins that are then used to buy cosmetic upgrades, better power-ups, and golden whistles which basically act like extra lives to keep playing if you fail to make it through a checkpoint. There's also a similar permanent double coins add-on for 99¢, which seems to be a good place to start if you like playing the game since you can just earn coins for everything you'd want to unlock anyway.

I'm really sort of shocked by how much I find myself enjoying this game. The difficulty curve seems great, Jetpack Joyride already proved that this payment model works, and I love how they take the foundation that worked so well for Halfbrick but created what feels (and, really, is) an entirely new game around it. For the low, low price of free, you really shouldn't miss Off The Leash.

After spending some quality time with a preview version of Int13’s new bullet hell shooter Shogun: Rise of the Renegade [Free] last week, we were eager to get our hands on the final version to see how it all came together. And sure enough, earlier this week Shogun quietly snuck into the App Store.

It was interesting that Int13 was departing from their typical augmented reality based games, like ARDefender [Free], and trying their hand at an established and nuanced genre like arcade-style manic shoot ‘em ups, especially with veteran shmup developer Cave basically cornering the market with their stable of high-quality ports. However, Int13 has surprised me with just how right they got Shogun, and while it might fail to totally impress the more discerning bullet hell enthusiast, fans of shmups in general will find a lot of action and fun brimming from the game.

The very first thing that pops out at you about Shogun are its graphics. The environments are done up in 3D and give off a great feeling of depth as you’re scrolling by in your ship. It’s also Retina Display ready, meaning it’s razor sharp. Enemies are your standard alien-type of spacecrafts, and there are some rather interestingly designed mid-boss and end-boss fights that will give you a run for your money in terms of challenge. On the whole, gameplay in Shogun doesn’t divert too far from your typical bullet-hell shooter formula, but it executes the components of that formula extremely well.

However, Shogun does show some more innovative signs in a couple of areas. One is the method in which you change your weapons. Your ship comes with 3 weapon types: spread shot, laser, and homing. Whenever you lift your finger off the screen, the game slows down bullet-time style and a small menu pops up above your ship that lets you choose from the 3 weapon types, as well as trigger a screen-clearing EMP or choose to add small wingman ships for added firepower. It’s nice that the action slows down to allow you to concentrate on what weapon you need to pick, but you can still take damage in this mode so you’ll still need to stay alert.

The other thing in Shogun that I found very interesting is the system for filling and using your shield meter. You have the ability to scrape bullets that pass you by, which basically means getting your ship extremely close to them without actually getting hit. With each consecutive bullet you scrape, you build a multiplier, and this adds to your shield meter above which can go past the 100% full mark. Every time you fill up your life meter completely, it fills one of the 6 reserve tanks above the meter.

Now, these reserve tanks can be used for various things, like setting off the aforementioned EMP blast or adding one or more sets of the satellite helper ships to your own ship (which VASTLY increases your firepower, I might add). Also, when you do get hit by enemy fire, the game will automatically clear the screen of bullets and shield you for a brief moment while giving you a refilled meter, but it will cost you one of your reserves.

The scraping and usage of reserve tanks aren't totally new ideas in the shmup world, but they're done well and add a ton of strategy to how you go about being the most effective in Shogun. It’s in your benefit to scrape as much as possible and always strive to keep your reserves well stocked for particularly challenging sections and boss battles. But, you can’t concentrate too hard on just scraping, as inevitably that will lead you to take damage if you aren’t paying enough attention to killing the enemies as well.

While the graphics are gorgeous and the underlying mechanics are sound, about the only thing I don’t like about Shogun is that it’s pretty short. Featuring just 4 levels to play through, it comes to an end pretty quickly, but it’s a satisfying and challenging ride while it lasts. The pay model is also pretty accommodating, allowing you to download and play through the entire first level for free. The remaining 3 levels are accessible as well, but you can only play them for a brief minute – just long enough to get a taste. Each full level is then unlockable separately for 99¢ each, or $1.99 to unlock them all at once.

As a big fan of Cave’s shooters, I find it hard to really get into most of the other shooters on the App Store. They really did set the bar that high. But Shogun is a game that instantly drew me in with its visuals, and then backed it up with a ton of solid action. It even Universal and has iCade support, to truly complete the arcade experience. As a free download, there’s really no reason not to give Shogun a try for yourself.

I like to imagine there's an Oberlin burnout somewhere who's made a living getting bent on ayahuasca and pitching music-history based games to different companies. My hypothetical game designer, wide-eyed and euphoric, is responsible for games like Boom Boom Rocket, Eternal Sonata, Jazz: Trump's Journey [$2.99], and now Frederic --Resurrection of Music [$1.99/HD/Lite], by Forever Entertainment S.A.

In the first scene, set in present-day Paris, Fryderyk Chopin climbs out of his grave, speaks with the Muses, and rap-battles a French DJ with dual-wield keyboards and a jetpack. After this, he rides a horse-and-carriage to Jamaica and gets high with a reggae artist named Rob. Amazing.

As he travels the world in his mystic carriage trying to unravel the circumstances of his undeath, Chopin runs through a series of musical duels with local artists. Mechanically, this translates into a rudimentary version of Piano Hero: notes travel on a track toward a touch-screen piano keys, and players are scored on their accuracy and combo streak.

The songs in Resurrection are modern remixes of Chopin's most famous waltzes, nocturnes, études, and marzukas, re-imagined in the style of whichever locale our hero finds himself: country in Texas, Celtic dance in Ireland, chiptunes in Tokyo. I actually like most of the music -- the Resurrection soundtrack is available for purchase on iTunes [$5.99] -- but they all tend to suffer from repetitive melody and relatively simple arrangements. Still, the lighthearted pop remixes fit into the game's absurdist aesthetic much better than an orchestral score would.

With only nine songs, Resurrection is relatively short, though some players might be able to extend its shelf-life by trying to improve their scores. But even on its hardest difficulty, at its most complex, Resurrection goes out of its way to indulge and empower the player, not defeat them with impossible challenges.

Like Climber Brothers [$0.99], the real joy of Resurrection is the one-to-one relationship between tactile input and feedback: tapping the screen of my iPad is more or less a reasonable facsimile of pressing down a physical key. This is a relatively simple pleasure, but Resurrection goes to great lengths to extend it by being overly-generous  in its design -- players have a relatively large window to hit notes in, and it's almost impossible to miss enough notes to fail a song. The goal here is to listen to the music and soak up the strange animations going on in the background.

Since failure -- and, by extension, most of the game mechanics -- is largely an illusion, Resurrection's real hook is its insane premise and matching art direction. In both its art direction and treatment of ethnic stereotypes, Resurrection draws on the bande dessinée style of mid-80s Lucky Luke. The voice acting, too, is hard to place: British English re-routed through Forever Entertainment's Polish roots.

But Resurrection's essential Europeanness isn't limited to animation and cut scenes, and this isn't a game so much as it is a rewriting of Chopin's cultural identity. During the Cadet Revolution in 1830 Chopin, the son of a Franco-Polish immigrant, fled Warsaw for Paris, never to return. Resurrection ultimately leads him back to a culturally reinvigorated Warsaw, but only after he uses his musical gifts to destroy the stereotyped, corporate shills that populate the rest of the world. Chopin is cast as the savior of music, but it's odd that he uses modern remixes, not his traditional compositions, to further his cause.

By fudging its rhythm mechanics, Frederic -- Resurrection of Music actually presents itself as more of an interactive cartoon than a game. But when viewed as such, Resurrection often comes off muddled and directionless and, even at the end of the game, it's not clear why Chopin was resurrected, who he's "saving" music from, or if he really succeeded.

Nevertheless, Resurrection is a bold product, unafraid to be campy, kitschy, and surreal, and presented as a labor of love from a team full of ideas. This game is larger than the sum of its parts and everyone I've showed it to has enjoyed basking in the art and music and in the fact that Frederic Chopin uses his second chance at life to smoke dope on the beach and learn the keytar.

It's safe to say that cave flyers have been around the block a few times, and that a few of you might just be sick of 'em. Hey, that's fair—I know my enduring love of endless runners and cave flyers isn't shared by everyone. But do me a favor: take a look at Blot's [$0.99] trailer before writing it off. Yeah, it's just another cave flyer, but goodness, it's gorgeous.

We've seen the control scheme and basic design a thousand times before, and there's nothing new about collecting coins for upgrades, cosmetic or otherwise. Blot won't win many points for fundamental originality. But it's a solid, fun cave flier that also happens to be beautiful, with an underlying sense of humor that's sure to please.

Screenshots don't do it justice — a big part of Blot's appeal is how lovely its parallax backgrounds look in motion. Someone at Majestic Software has taken time to sketch out all manner of things — trees, candies, wastelands, ponies, helicopters wielding swords and morningstars, you name it—which the game then combines and recombines to build new backdrops each time you play.

This is part of a broader vision. Blot himself is an ink spatter, flying outwards from a pen. He dodges pencils and seeks out paint cans and smudges. The artistic theme isn't carried through as far as it could be—art and coin collection don't exactly go hand in hand—but it gets very, very close.

For controls you're looking at something a lot like Jetpack Joyride [Free], to name one recent and popular example. The titular Blot is bigger and a bit floatier than Barry Steakfries and his jetpack, but it has the same inputs—tap to rise, let go to fall. The arc of its movement might take a bit of getting used to, but there are no drastic changes.

And what would a modern cave flyer be without a collection mechanic or two? Aside from coins, you'll also seek out boost buddies. Blot grows as it absorbs these cute little dudes, making it easier to grab coins but harder to dodge obstacles. Once you pick up four, you get a big boost of speed and temporary invincibility. There are also colorful paint cans and smudges to be found that mess with speed, direction and magnetism.

The coins you collect can be exchanged for upgrades. The selection is pretty cool—stuff that makes paint effects or boosts last longer, alerts you to upcoming boost buddies, makes you magnetic or doubles your income. Since you can only pick one to equip, you'll have to consider whether you're grinding for coins, going the distance or working on a Game Center achievement that requires a bit of extra assistance.

The game takes any chance to serve up pop-culture references. Little things, mostly, like how the buddy detector is called the "pip-blot 2000," and the unlockable costumes play off things like Star Trek and the Ace Attorney series. There are also achievements for flying past wild reference in the background sketches, although you'll probably die if you take the time to look for them. Best of all, none of this feels as forced or out of place as memes so often do when they pop up in games.

Some of the foreground elements are a bit abrasive against the terribly sexy backgrounds, but everything else is awesome. There's lovely (if brief) music to fly to, and Blot is stupidly charming for something with only a few frames of animation (that little scrunchy face…!). And while there isn't a plot or a complicated mission system to keep you motivated, the high score grind is made valuable with coin rewards and a grading system. Practice makes perfect, but getting an A+ will take skill.

One little warning - you can purchase coins with cash. Don't bother unless you're out to support the developers or stockpile a huge supply of portals—you'll just rob yourself of the fun of actually playing. The grind isn't painful at all unless you need the highest end items right away. My only quibble is that the IAP coins come a bit cheap - a single $2.99 purchase can give you most of what you'd ever need, so grinding starts to look like a bad value proposition.

It's hard to complain, though. While it fails to distinguish itself on mechanics, Blot blows most of its competition out of the water with style alone. It's delightful, plain and simple, and when given the choice between equally solid games, I'll take the one that delights me any day. Who wouldn't want a little more joy in their games, right? So take a good long look at Blot, and let us know if you like what you see.

Ship management and pseudo line-drawing make an appearance in Kavcom Limited’s The Lighthouse HD [$4.99]. Offering a different take on the classic genre, The Lighthouse HD’s great visuals and variety offset some choice design decisions holding the game back from loftier heights.

In The Lighthouse HD, you take the role of an all-seeing lighthouse operator helping ships get across hazardous waters. Tap anywhere on the screen to shine a light on that area. If you shine the light near a ship, it’ll alter direction towards the direction of the light (and will then continue straight on its new path). The game plays somewhat similarly to line drawing games like Harbor Master [$1.99 / HD / Free], with the difference being that you can’t directly alter the course of your ships and instead must use the light to indirectly manage your shipping lanes (rather than drawing routes).

The goal of each mission is to accomplish various objectives (which include goals like getting ships from one point to another and leading fishing boats to giant schools) before losing all your ships. In addition, you’ll encounter barriers such as rolling fog, ship-seeking sharks, and giant krakens looking to trap your ship. As expected, a lot of multitasking, coordination, and precision are required to pass missions and hit the highest scores. Overall gameplay is executed well enough, although I would have liked an option to speed up the map when I’m working with slower boats (considering the game is on a timer, I could see why this wasn’t on the top of the list).

The areas that The Lighthouse HD does a really great job with are its visuals and presentation. The game succeeds in conveying a moody, dark atmosphere at the onset of each mission. Weather effects such as rain, lightning and fog add even more to the general feel of the game, although there were a few times when the various effects made it hard to see some of the baddies swimming underneath the water (call it part of the cruelty of the sea, I suppose). As you get towards the end of each mission, the sun begins to rise, the music starts swelling and the whole map gives off a sense of seeing a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I rarely see a game succeed at achieving a play on emotion, but The Lighthouse HD does a good job of getting there.

Unfortunately, there are several areas in The Lighthouse HD that feel rough around the edges. Specifically, the game is filled with a lot of frustrating gameplay nuances that just seem out of place. For example, there are no on-screen notifications when ships are about to come into play on the map. Considering that several levels charge you with taking ships from one end of the map to the other, with both entrances also posing as exists, it can be very frustrating when you get close to an exit and a ship appears out of nowhere and collides with your existing ship, making you lose both in the process.

Another example deals with actual gameplay mechanics. One of the items available to you to make guiding ships easier is buoys, which force nearby ships to divert course automatically. The problem is I could never get the buoys to work correctly – I’d place one in a certain location thinking ships would divert one way and they end up going another way. Considering there doesn’t appear to be a way to remove them once they’re placed. This ends up being a waste of resources and can make or break a level.

Another concern is in regards to content. The Lighthouse HD offers 30 total missions, making the game good on content for at least three or four hours (depending on whether you like collecting objective medals). However, I imagine that most gamers will clamor that the game could use more missions, particularly at its current price point. The developer has stated in the forums that additional levels are coming, and I hope they arrive sooner rather than later.

Despite these shortcomings, The Lighthouse HD should appeal to fans of vehicle management games and line-drawers. Its nuanced changes to the standard gameplay and overall visual presentation do a decent job of differentiating itself. Assuming you can get past the relative lack of content and occasional strange gameplay missteps, I’d recommend The Lighthouse HD .

Ship management and pseudo line-drawing make an appearance in Kavcom Limited’s The Lighthouse HD [$4.99]. Offering a different take on the classic genre, The Lighthouse HD’s great visuals and variety offset some choice design decisions holding the game back from loftier heights.

In The Lighthouse HD, you take the role of an all-seeing lighthouse operator helping ships get across hazardous waters. Tap anywhere on the screen to shine a light on that area. If you shine the light near a ship, it’ll alter direction towards the direction of the light (and will then continue straight on its new path). The game plays somewhat similarly to line drawing games like Harbor Master [$1.99 / HD / Free], with the difference being that you can’t directly alter the course of your ships and instead must use the light to indirectly manage your shipping lanes (rather than drawing routes).

The goal of each mission is to accomplish various objectives (which include goals like getting ships from one point to another and leading fishing boats to giant schools) before losing all your ships. In addition, you’ll encounter barriers such as rolling fog, ship-seeking sharks, and giant krakens looking to trap your ship. As expected, a lot of multitasking, coordination, and precision are required to pass missions and hit the highest scores. Overall gameplay is executed well enough, although I would have liked an option to speed up the map when I’m working with slower boats (considering the game is on a timer, I could see why this wasn’t on the top of the list).

The areas that The Lighthouse HD does a really great job with are its visuals and presentation. The game succeeds in conveying a moody, dark atmosphere at the onset of each mission. Weather effects such as rain, lightning and fog add even more to the general feel of the game, although there were a few times when the various effects made it hard to see some of the baddies swimming underneath the water (call it part of the cruelty of the sea, I suppose). As you get towards the end of each mission, the sun begins to rise, the music starts swelling and the whole map gives off a sense of seeing a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I rarely see a game succeed at achieving a play on emotion, but The Lighthouse HD does a good job of getting there.

Unfortunately, there are several areas in The Lighthouse HD that feel rough around the edges. Specifically, the game is filled with a lot of frustrating gameplay nuances that just seem out of place. For example, there are no on-screen notifications when ships are about to come into play on the map. Considering that several levels charge you with taking ships from one end of the map to the other, with both entrances also posing as exists, it can be very frustrating when you get close to an exit and a ship appears out of nowhere and collides with your existing ship, making you lose both in the process.

Another example deals with actual gameplay mechanics. One of the items available to you to make guiding ships easier is buoys, which force nearby ships to divert course automatically. The problem is I could never get the buoys to work correctly – I’d place one in a certain location thinking ships would divert one way and they end up going another way. Considering there doesn’t appear to be a way to remove them once they’re placed. This ends up being a waste of resources and can make or break a level.

Another concern is in regards to content. The Lighthouse HD offers 30 total missions, making the game good on content for at least three or four hours (depending on whether you like collecting objective medals). However, I imagine that most gamers will clamor that the game could use more missions, particularly at its current price point. The developer has stated in the forums that additional levels are coming, and I hope they arrive sooner rather than later.

Despite these shortcomings, The Lighthouse HD should appeal to fans of vehicle management games and line-drawers. Its nuanced changes to the standard gameplay and overall visual presentation do a decent job of differentiating itself. Assuming you can get past the relative lack of content and occasional strange gameplay missteps, I’d recommend The Lighthouse HD .

There’s nothing more frustrating than a game that has good core gameplay that is ruined by missteps and issues in all the other game elements. Such is the case with DvO [$1.99 / HD], a castle defense game that’s heavy on the gameplay depth, but falters in its visuals and slow execution.

DvO (a.k.a. Dwarves vs. Orcs) plays very much like a classic castle defense title. Players send units down five battle lanes taking down the resistance until they reach the opposing castle (with the enemy doing the same to you, obviously). The side that takes down the opposing castle first wins the match. Littered throughout the lanes are crystal patches, which must be mined by your mining units and are used as the currency necessary to build supplemental units.

There are no special moves, upgradeable units, or even changing lanes; units will march down their path until they are either taken out or are attacking the opposing castle. I can see how this kind of simplicity in gameplay can appeal to some folks, but gamers that have experienced (and enjoy) other castle defense games with more modern approaches may feel a bit disappointed.

DvO’s primary strength lies in the wide variety of units you can play with. While you only start out with a handful of units, you unlock subsequent allies as you complete each story mission (you must then ‘buy’ the units using gold earned in matches before you can add them to your list). Once you get a large amount of units unlocked, the real strategic magic of DvO begins. Units include basic melee and ranged units, to mages of a wild variety of elements, to even conjurers that will summon other units onto the field. There are over 25 units available for use, and since you can only bring seven into any individual battle, players will really have to start paying attention to their units and build teams based on their play style.

While DvO’s gameplay variety obviously drives the title forward, its visuals and presentation take the game a few steps back. Graphics-wise, DvO lacks any retina display support, and it’s very apparent in everything from the blurry text to the units and environmental backgrounds. The art style seems to be built more for the iPad’s non-retina display – considering that the HD version is sold separately, I don’t know why they couldn’t have made that one retina compatible. While the blurry visuals aren’t bad enough to actually affect the gameplay, it’s still an eyesore.

Presentation-wise, DvO feels very bare bones. There’s no story (other than a cliché-riddled introduction), and there’s very little to even make you feel like you’re in a world. In addition, the few tutorial portions and even the in-game encyclopedia on the various units don’t really seem to do the game’s depth justice. One of the worst things a strategy game can do is not sufficiently explain the great system it’s built. Unfortunately, DvO seems to fall into that trap.

There are also a lot of silly UI bugs that just feel out of place. For example, tutorial screens pop up when you purchase new units that you unlocked in the previous battle. If you happen to die in the next battle and restart, the game will feed you a tutorial screen for a unit you haven’t unlocked yet (because you haven’t beaten that level). Does it really affect the gaming experience? Of course not, but these kinds of silly missteps hold the game back from being taken seriously.

Perhaps the biggest issue with DvO is simply that the game is too slow. Units plod along at a very sluggish pace, with only the special “fast” units seeming to move at an appropriate speed. Even early battles seem to drag on, and as you get further into the campaign and the likelihood of temporary stalemates rise, missions take forever. Even worse, there aren’t any ways to speed up the gameplay, meaning each map starts painstakingly slow as you’re initially collecting minerals. I’m all for giving folks the time necessary to make proper decisions in a strategy game, but the amount of waiting you will do in DvO is excessive.

With that said, DvO still has a good core gameplay system that should appeal to most fans of castle defense. However, all the missteps in other game elements definitely hold this game back from having a greater appeal. At this point, I’d recommend DvO for hardcore fans of the genre looking for their next fix. Otherwise, you may want to pass.

Brad Nicholson said it best in our preview of Dungeon Crawlers [$1.99]: "It's the video game equivalent of a mullet, reserved and business-like, yet fun-loving and goofy." I'd add "A little bit awkward in any situation," for both the mullet and the game. It's a quirky strategy RPG that invests heavily in tropes of old, glorifies the Ghostbusters, and isn't quite ready for prime-time.

Don't get me wrong; fans of traditional SRPGs will find a lot to love if they give Dungeon Crawlers a chance. It's a funny, charming, and mostly well-crafted game. You'll run into a few glaring omissions, and you might have trouble with the game's high memory footprint, but rest assured that Ayopa Games and Drowning Monkeys plan to address all of that soon. No matter how much I enjoy myself, though, I keep coming back to the same problem: Dungeon Crawlers is just way too ponderous.

The mix of dungeon crawling and strategic combat works well. Basically, you poke around a dungeon floor by floor, fighting baddies, finding secrets, and occasionally solving puzzles. The game slips into turn-based combat mode the moment you enter an area with enemies. A movement grid is laid out on the floor. Enemies take their turns, one by one, and then the heroes take theirs. It's a good formula, but every bit of it is too slow.

Enemy turns take too long, and can't really be sped up. Every movement and attack feels a bit slower than it should, and everything has to happen in turn. Sometimes it feels like no one has any idea how to land a hit. In combat that already feels too slow, a whole round spent with weapons missing harmlessly (or landing glancing blows, a common problem) is dull, dull, dull. It would shorten the game, but combat would be a lot more fun if the developers cut out the weak hits, lowered everyone's miss rates and let you fast-forward through enemy turns.

If only they could apply that sort of trimming to the rest of the experience. For example, you start with only three of your four heroes: Payter, Aegon and Roy (if you're thinking Ghostbusters already, those should sound familiar), and each gets just one ability initially. For the first few levels combat is mindless. Payter walks up to an enemy and slashes it. Aegon casts Magic Missile from further back. Roy heals whoever is wounded. Rinse. Repeat. It's a fine way to start, but the game takes far too long to start filling your arsenal with new friends and abilities.

It's a shame, because I doubt many mobile gamers are going to wait the hour or two it takes for things to start getting interesting. Try to be the exception, because it's worth it. Even though Dungeon Crawlers has a limited roster of characters, its encounters get both challenging and strategic. Much of the strategy is in learning to carefully position your party members. Payter, for instance, eventually learns to stun the enemies that surround him. Predicting where the enemies will move, you can put him in just the right place to get surrounded. Then you can line up Aegon to hit the grouped up baddies with an AOE, and keep Failston blocking the way back to Roy. Mana isn't a consideration, but action limits are, so healing is a once-per-turn affair. If a character falls, they're out of the game until the next floor.

Failing isn't a a huge deal, since you can always restart from the beginning of a level or an encounter. But that decision really hurts when encounters start lasting for half an hour or longer. You should be able to offset this by using the coins you collect to buy potions in a tight spot, but you can't. A shop is coming, as are IAP coins for the poor adventurer with a wealthy player. The game can already be completed without the store, though, so the IAP will be optional in the extreme.

Unless, that is, you try to plow straight through. Dungeon Crawler's loot system rewards the explorer. You won't find much if you just stomp around killing enemies and opening chests, and your equipment will quickly fall out of date. If, on the other hand, you manage to find the levers that hide secrets in nearly every level, you'll be at the tip-top of your game. The game could use a balance tweak or two to keep less-curious players geared enough to fight, though. The loot is all pre-determined, and it really hurts your chances if you miss a few secrets.

Even with all the frustrations and issues, I really dig Dungeon Crawlers. If you're a sucker for references, this game plays with a ton of them - from the blatant and encompassing Ghostbusters theme to jokes about things the younger crowd might still understand. That's on top of an engaging adventure tale that does its best to keep you interested in slogging through fight after fight. The characters, the music, the level design and environments - all great. You get the idea: the game would be fantastic if only it were pared down, cleaned up and sent out much more streamlined.

Until then, a cautious recommendation will have to do. If you're looking for an old-school strategic romp through some very traditional dungeons, you're in the right place. But these aren't play sessions you can cram into five minute smoke breaks. Dungeon Crawlers is built to last - for better or worse, you'll get hours out of it. If you're a sit-back-and-be-patient sort, you'll be just fine.