There have been no new iPhone games for 6 months and 2 weeks!

Three simple words. Pizza. Versus. Skeletons.
You are a pizza. You must fight skeletons, beat them in snowboard challenges, rescue puppies and then sumo wrestle giant skulls off cliffs. It is excellent.

Puzzle juice is a puzzle game that promises to ’punch your brain in the face’ and it kind of does, being a Tetris like, a match three game and a word game all in one. Pieces fall and you make lines or isolate like colors to turn blocks into letters to make words. Similar in its achievement driving progress structure to something like shibuya. Me like.

20th anniversary edition of Eric chahi (from dust)’s seminal Amiga/pc adventure another world is out today. It handles surprisingly well thanks to a reengineered control system that uses taps and swipes rather than the lazy virtual dpad route. Very much of its time (it is essentially a trial and error driven memory test) but tells story through gameplay better than most modern games and creates a hell of an atmosphere.

Jetpack joyride- another endless runner sure, but halfbricks latest has some great powerups, a nice shibuya esque structure where getting game center achievements is how you advance in the game so you have to change up your playstyle all the time, the whole central conceit is that you have a jetpack that flies by the recoil of machine guns attached to the bottom for crying out loud, AND the main character is called Barry Steakfries. What’s not to like?

So…who has played the new Rally X game? Is the control really as bad as all that?

My goodness quarrel dx is good. It is risk, except it is scrabble- rather than deciding clashes via dice roll, you have to make the biggest word you can with the troops (letters) you have to capture territory. Scrabble is good, risk is also good, both together is a delight.

Playing Shadow Era. Fermium card game similar to MTG. Simple system with some good strategic depth, but it is really, really slow to earn cards for free.

Picked up DOOM while it was on sale for $2. (It may still be on sale, but I’m not sure). It’s the same game you all know and love. It’s just really weird trying to control your movement with just your thumb on the touchpad. Also, I don’t think there’s any music, and those melting screen transitions to levels aren’t in there.

Also dabbling with Gesundheit!. It’s an adorable puzzle game- and I mean squeal with delight adorable with its Eric Carle story book aesthetic and just awesome characterization. The concept centers around strategically sneezing so that monsters on the level who love eating snot are lured into booby traps where giant fish monster things eat them. Awesome.

OK, so Space Invaders Infinity Gene is one of my very favourite iphone games ever. I’m also partial to a music game here and there. Music game in the style of infinity gene by the same people? Yes please. Groovecoaster is cool, and unlike other rhythm games is played by tapping holding or scratching with one thumb, while beats appear in the environment of this gorgeous visualiser style world which means you’re actually looking at the (very nice) art the game pushes out, as opposed to rock band, say, where the graphics are super irrelevant. Downer? Even though it’s probably impossible to do and that’s why, the cool things infinity gene did with music stages had me hoping I could bring my own tracks into groovecoaster, and you can’t. But still, 85 yen for this? Great.

If anybody else remembers Epic Pinball, I recently found that they updated 3 of the tables from that game and released it as Retro Pinball for free for your iDevices. I’ve been playing the heck out of the Super Android table.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/retro-pinball/id415637674?mt=8

Awesome free game alert- Magnetic Billiards is designed by design legends the Pickford brothers, and is a great little puzzle game. Basic idea involves shooting coloured balls around a billiard table like space with the idea being for like colours to stick together.
The wrinkle is that rather than finishing a table in the fewest possible shots, the trick is to actually take as many shots as possible for more points without fouling a shot. SImple fun.
Also recommend Async corp- which is a charming little puzzler- in effect two match four puzzle games played simultaneously, where blocks are traded between the two game sides to create packets.