Clobbr for Android/iOS - "Precious, Adorable Mild Violence"

Doesn't this just SCREAM "Precious, adorable mild violence"???

I was informed about an intriguing little title called Clobbr that the developer very cleverly calls "precious, adorable mild violence." I'll admit, that little tagline alone had me intrigued!

Note: Since I have no device that can play the game, I couldn't test this out myself. I have only the developer's information, images and videos to go by.

That kitty is gonna get it!

Like any good puzzle game, the concept is incredibly simple: slide each row right or left to line up the symbols, then clobber the ball into the ground, watching it follow the path you've created. Your goal is to get the rock to hit the kitty, saving the mice, and you've got a limited amount of time to line it all up. At first, it looks like it's just arrows, but then there are trampolines, ice blocks, portals, bowling balls, mouse traps... Craziness galore! To quote the developer: "The game includes 100 levels across 5 worlds, each introducing a new type of block - trampolines, catapults, ice cubes, portals and bowling balls, with new worlds and blocks planned in the near future."

Available For: iOS ($1.99), Android ($1.99)

Developed By: Czarcade

Catapult for Hire is on Kickstarter!

Catapult for Hire is a game that I'd heard a lot about over the last several months. When I ran across it on Kickstarter, I was really psyched - it means the game is getting closer to release! Tyrone, the developer, lovingly calls it a Nintendo 64 era world, and he's absolutely right - the art and aesthetic are reminiscent of games like Banjo Kazooie or Ocarina of Time in the very best of ways.

"CANDY CANDY CANDY! Oh, and CANDY!" - A Game Jam and a Horrible Twist of Events

For those who aren't aware, King.com, the developers of Candy Crush Saga, the match-3 game that everyone and their grandmother plays and brags about making it to level 795 after a billion hours of failures and barely-successes (or lots of invested money) has officially trademarked the word "Candy". Already, apps in the iTunes app store are being told they must be removed for having the word "Candy" in the title. Oh, it was made 3 years before Candy Crush Saga? Too bad! You can read lots more about this much more eloquently than I could ever say right here on Rock Paper Shotgun. Oh, and you can also play the very first game I ever finished - Candy Catastrophe - here as well. It's not a match-3, but it IS close! Good thing it wasn't a mobile app...

Despite being developed nearly five years before Candy Crush Saga, it's quite obvious that I ripped it off on purpose to try to make lots of extra money.

Anyway, on the up side, there's a game jam that's taking a subtle little stab at this horrible turn of events... The Candy Jam! The goal? Make a game and submit it before the 3rd of February, use "Candy" in the title, cleverly steal millions of dollars from King.com since no one could possibly associate "candy" with anything but "Candy Crush Saga", so they'd immediately get excited and be unable to resist buying it... Okay, maybe not the last part, but you can (hopefully) expect a lot of games with the word "Candy" in their title soon!

Oh, and one more thing... I think I'll be making a game myself! Candy Catastrophe 2: The Saga of the Witch's Bubble that Stole Pear's Papa and His Loop De Hoop! I'll be patenting "The", "Of", "Bubble", "His", "Loop", "Hoop" and "2" myself once it's done.

My Dad's the Grinch - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

A Christmas game! How were there not more of those? Ludum Dare did run pretty darn close to Christmas, and Christmas was in the ratings period! Much like new Christmas songs, good Christmas games are hard to come by, so it's a double bonus that My Dad's the Grinch (by @MatthewVroman) is so much fun!

Be careful or you'll only get ONE present!

The game gives you 8 different gifts, randomly chosen from a bit more than the 8 (replays will have new items mixed in so that it's not just the same game over and over). Your goal is to figure out which present is which using the sizes of the gifts (some are small boxes, some are wider and some are taller) as well as your four tools: shaking them, weighing them, getting a hint about it or x-raying it.

You have a limited quantity of each of these, so use them carefully and remember what's what later on!

Of course, the more you get right, the less gifts there are, so it becomes easier and easier! The game is a blast to play, super simple so anyone can play it, and definitely something a grinch would do to their kid. You should definitely play the game here, and you can check out the game's Ludum Dare page here as well.

Hide the Baby - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Political satire! Hide the Baby (by @nickweihs) is all about, well, hiding your baby from an inspector. You see, you're a woman in China, where you're only allowed to have one child. Somehow you had a child without anyone knowing, but the neighbors have heard the crying, so now you've got to fool the inspector so that the baby isn't found out and you aren't hugely fined.

Step One: Find Items!

The game is broken down into three parts: find items, disguise baby and cross fingers hoping it worked. Finding the items is simple enough - simply move around your home pressing the space key to collect different items. You can check the whole house quite easily within the two minutes, so that's not a big deal at all, and luckily you can "Retry with items" so you can just skip to step 2 each time after.

Step two involves picking which item(s) to disguise your baby with. This is where things start to get really hysterical, as the baby can look really silly (the marker is my favorite item, even though I haven't found a winning combination with it yet).

SPOILER: Try this!

Step three is where the inspector comes in, which happens whenever you say you're ready or when the timer runs out. What makes this great (and rather amazing in such a short amount of time) is just the number of ways he responds to things. Just try the felt pen, for example... Even when you aren't successful, the inspector can be really hilarious, even if he is a jackass for making you lose so much!

Play the game here, or check out the game's Ludum Dare page here.

Tower Zoo for iOS - A Wild Puzzle Game

Note: I don't own any of the available platforms for this game, and am therefore unable to review it. It's not that I don't want to play it, trust me!

The creator of Tower Zoo reached out to me a while back (almost two months ago... Geez am I behind!) about this game, and once I checked it out I figured I had to give it some coverage. Plus, it's one of only three games that was nominated for the Media Innovation Awards, so that's saying quite a bit too!

Vexation Vacation Review AND GIVEAWAY - Bad Vacation, Good Adventure Game!

Yep, that's definitely one of the first signs of a horrible vacation - when your eyes need to be bleached.

I'm one of the fortunate few who has been on vacations but never had a truly bad one like they show in movies or on TV. I have no doubt that we asked "are we there yet?" a few dozen times in our lengthy car rides, but that was about the extent of the badness...

That is, of course, until Vexation Vacation. The game has everything going on that will remind you of any horrid vacations you may have had as a child: the long car ride where your primary entertainment is asking if you're there yet, people who REALLY shouldn't be in skimpy beach clothes and birds that love to poop all over you from high above. Oh, and a younger sibling who energetically follows you, babbles on and takes your things from time to time.

Full Bore: The First Dig Review AND GIVEAWAY - Puzzles are Challenging Again!

For those of you who have been gamers for a long time, you'll remember the "good ol' days" of gaming. I know I sure do! What always surprises me when I play them again, though, is that "good ol' games" are usually REALLY hard! I can't count the action games I wanted to smash my controller over (Contra, Ghosts N Goblins), the random battles in RPGs to take on a new area or buy equipment (Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy) and the puzzle games that were basically impossible to complete (Myst!). Heck, even Zelda was way harder back then, especially Zelda II: The Adventures of Link!!! Full bore truly is old-school for more than the fun, retro-styled graphics and animation, it's a really hard game!

Lilly Looking Through Review - A Magical Adventure

Look how cute she is!!! The goggles are even way too big for her face!

I recently had the honor of playing the full version of Lilly Looking Through. In case you hadn't seen it, I'd played and reviewed the demo already, and I'm happy to report that the full game continues the demo gloriously!

For those not familiar, Lilly Looking Through is a delightful Myst-style point-and-click adventure game for PC/Linux/Mac. Lilly, an insanely adorable little girl, begins by mimicking a frog, and when a scarf goes blowing by her she decides to chase after it. Along the way, she discovers some magical goggles that let her see (and even go into) the past to mess around, allowing her to get across now-broken areas or mess with things that entirely change the present.

Lilly Looking Through Demo Review AND FULL GAME GIVEAWAY!

Lilly Looking Through is pure innocence and whimsy in game form, where every click, every short video of action is purely delightful.

It takes only seconds to see the heart of this cute adventure. Lilly is standing there staring at a frog. When you click on it, she does a little hop. The frog turns away and she does a couple frog-hops toward him. Soon after the frog hops away, perhaps just as she would have followed in suit, a red scarf blows by. Unless it were a Scarf of Awesomeness +4 in any other game, this would mean absolutely nothing, but for Lilly it's enough to go on an adventure!

SCALE - A Unique Puzzle Game on Kickstarter!

EVERY treasure chest should be this huge!

What does that image look like to you? That's right, boys and girls, it's a super huge treasure chest, and it's only one of many awesome concepts in SCALE!

Steve Swink and CubeHeart, described by Steve himself as "a Voltron-like flesh monstrosity of game development talent", have begun a Kickstarter campaign for a truly interesting PC game named SCALE. SCALE, again in Steve's own words, is "a first person reality manipulation game that reimagines exploration with a unique resizing mechanic." I honestly don't think I could say that any better myself, which is why they make the big bucks. For such an awesome game, a goal of $87,000 is pretty SCALEd down! [Note: Right now as I write this, it's just over 42% funded with 27 days to go!]