#6 - Pocket God

Game: Pocket God

Price: £0.59 / $0.99 | App Store |
Genre: Simulation, Adventure
Developer: Bolt Creative Inc.
Rating: 9+

Design: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Overall: 9/10

Their Future Is In Your Hands!
Welcome to the island. Situated in the middle of, er well... nowhere really, and inhabited by a small tribe of people called Pygmies, you play the role of their God and have complete control over their everyday life, or should I say death? What will happen to the Pygmies and their picturesque island today? That's for you to decide and implement *insert evil laugh here*.

Design
The game looks amazing and is crammed full of vibrant colours, exciting locations and fun features. There are loads of ways for you to impact on the Pygmies lives including volcano eruptions, tidal waves, lightning storms, giant spiders, deadly ants and angry dinosaurs! Discovering new methods is all part of the adventure. There are numerous island locations to interact with including the sacrificial mountain, haunted woods and snowy retreat as well as a number of fun minigames that could easily be stand alone app games themselves. To date, there have been a staggering 35 updates to the game, each adding a new feature, minigame or location. Game design does not get much better than this.

Sound
The soundtrack to the game is left wanting a little, but it's pleasant enough and adds to the fun nature of the game. It is easily made up with a large selection of great SFX and character mutterings though. The SFX are not only triggered by your actions, EG erupting a volcano, but also automatically as the Pygmies go about their day on the island. It all adds to the fun atmosphere and allows you to truly lose yourself in the game.

Gameplay
There is a huge amount of things that you can do in Pocket God. There must be upwards of 40 different ways that you can destroy the Pygmies with at least another 20 ways that you can interact with them and yet more ways that you can interact with their surroundings. That's added to by a number of minigames that can be accessed through your interactions EG the cloud jumping game is triggered by dragging a Pygmie up into the sky and dropping them on a cloud. There are no scores per say but everything you do can be linked with Openfeint to unlock achievements and share progress with friends. You can also customise your experience by tagging the Pygmies with names or downloading new themes. The developers add content at a ridiculously high rate ensuring fresh content more than once a month on average. I doubt there's a game that's updated more often, making the £0.59 price tag an absolute steal.

Conclusion
Pocket God is by far one of the greatest games to ever be released on the iPhone and at £0.59 is one of the best purchases that you can make. There are hours and hours of entertainment in this game and with regular updates you are sure to need a space for this app on the front page of your phone as you'll be revisiting it very regularly. Additional content is released often and though it started out very light on its feet back in the day, it has now become a vast game packed full of features. Give it a go now, you won't regret it!

#3 - Bit Pilot

Game: Bit Pilot

Price: £0.59 / $0.99 | App Store |
Genre: Arcade, Retro
Developer: Zach Gage Sound: Sabrepulse
Rating: 9+

Design: 7/10
Sound: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

It's What We Call A Global Killer... The End Of Mankind
An absolute classic game that will not only bring back old memories but also create fresh ones. It's a bid for survival dodging specks of mere space dust up to global killing asteroids whilst cruising around in your spaceship in deepest, darkest space. The longer you survive, the higher your score will rise but, simultaneously, the likelihood of going 'splat!' increases. Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Design
It's a retro game so it's unfair to criticise the design based on other more colourful and graphical iphone releases. It has achieved exactly what it set out to by having the look and feel of an old skool arcade game, so with that in mind, it scores favourably. The graphics are very simple and although this is in keeping with the arcade theme, you could argue that perhaps an updated design would work better on the iPhone. Personally, I like the fact they kept it old, but I'm docking points as this has almost certainly put off new gamers.

Sound
The soundtrack to this game is unbelievably good. I'd buy the game just to listen to the music. There are a selection of songs to choose from (or you can have it set to random) and they have each been produced by Sabrepulse, an 8 Bit techno producer who is amazingly good at his job! The SFX have been tweaked perfectly and the whole package combined offers one of the greatest gaming soundtracks of all time. My only criticism would be that there should be more songs, but having said that, there's a certain charm about only having a few and there's always Youtube for the biggest fans.

Gameplay
Survival is your only mission. Using your thumb (my preferred method) or thumbs (can be hard to see) to swipe or stroke your spaceship movements between increasingly fast and large asteroids within a limited rectangle of space. That's not to mention the random enemy explosions that try to destory you every so often. Your score increases the longer you survive and there are regular power ups in the form of blue (shield) and green (bonus points) coloured pills - presumably a play with the themes related to techno music! The first few times you play the game, you wonder what it's all about and perhaps even grow a little bored. Then you have one amazing run where you score upwards of 10,000, hear nearly the entire length of a quality techno tune and suddenly you're hooked. The game offers two difficulty settings (Easy and Normal), Open Feint online scoring and a bunch of unlockable content, making it a very competitive and rewarding experience.

Conclusion
It'll take you a little while to appreciate this game, but after a few plays you'll experience one of the simplest yet most entertaining gaming experiences available on the iPhone. The music is amazing and I say again that I would pay the price just for the tunes. Coming in at £0.59, this game really is a steal and one of the biggest 'hidden gems' on the entire App store. It's games like this, developers like Zach Gage and musicians like Sabrepulse that I started this blog to promote. I highly recommend you grab this game and I challenge you to top my highscores on Easy (E) and Normal (N)!

#1 - Monster Dash

Game: Monster Dash

Price: £0.59 / $0.99 | App Store |
Genre: Action, Scroller
Developer: Halfbrick
Rating: 9+

Design: 7/10
Sound: 6/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

Do The Monster Dash!
A fast paced action scroller from the makers of Fruit Ninja and Age of Zombies promises to pack a punch. Armed and dangerous, you jump and shoot your way through the automatically scrolling levels in your bid to survive the longest possible distance. As you progress, the background themes change, new weapons become available and different monsters meet their match. Here's a quick review. Must dash...

Design
A colourful array of backgrounds, monster styles and themes keep a reasonable amount of interest and the random manner that levels and monsters appear promises a different game everytime. Levels include Transylvania, Great Wall of China and Tokyo Rooftops with monsters such as Vampires, Yetis and Zombies. Your arsenal of weapons start with the unlimited default shotgun which is then trumped by limited allocations of weapons you pick up on the go such as The Pacifier Magnum, Rocket Launcher and some creative inclusions like the Machine Gun Jet Pack.

Sound
The music is suitably catchy and each themed level triggers a remix of the ongoing song. There is certainly room for more variety, but the subtle changes are enough to stop you getting annoyed. The SFX are few and far between, but that's the nature of the game - you spend all your time jumping and shooting! Even if there were more monster and background sounds, I'm not sure you'd be able to appreciate them with the constant shooting and the soundtrack.

Gameplay
The aim of the game is to secure the highest possible score both locally amongst friends and through the use of Open Feint online scoring. There are no challenges or tasks to give an idea of progress, but this is mildly dealt with by the unlockable Achievements and playing Statistics. The controls are simple enough, with left taps jumping and right taps firing but you will find that it gets difficult very quickly with the pace of your running increasing all the time. Death is met by losing all your hearts through monster contact and obstacles or, most commonly, losing all your hearts in one go by failing to make a jump.

Conclusion
Overall this is a very addictive and catchy game, but only to a point. It's likely you'll play it endlessly for the first week and then it'll drop off your radar a little as the next distraction gets released. If the developers can add a new level, monster and weapon every so often, it'll spark a little more interest. However, some new playing styles are badly needed to keep this interesting such as challenges and tasks or just some form of completion other than endlessly chasing the highscore! At £0.59, it delivers some entertainment and it's well worth a look.