Last year, Cipher Prime followed up their auricular puzzle game, Auditorium, with yet another puzzler, Fractal for the PC. Long story short, we enjoyed it. Short story long, the game featured simple yet challenging puzzles set to a mellow soundtrack. It stole the hours from under your oblivious feet.

The game is back and this time it’s for the iPad in the form of Fractal: Make Blooms Not War. After getting caught nearly numb pushing hexagons to an fro for who know how long, one must say that it’s as much a match made in heaven as a game and platform can get.

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If I asked you what Spectrum Shock was, you may be mistaken in thinking it was an unheard of spiritual successor to System Shock, or maybe a bad TV show about a guy who can manipulate electromagnetism, or maybe even a movie with Alan Rickman. In fact, it is the debut game from Boxfrog Games featuring all the tilting and tapping you can fit into a device rife for tilting and tapping.

So how does it shape up to the other titles on the app store? Is it a Canabalt or a Can Of Ba… Okay, even I’m not crass enough to finish that pun. Hit the jump to find out why Spectrum Shock should be the next game you download to your iPhone.

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Indie games are coming in thick and fast on the 360, and with so many “Free MS Points” offers being peddled by various publishing firms, gamers are able to take advantage of titles they may never have noticed before.

Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess may not be a shoe-in for GOTY, but at just 240 MS Points, this addictive little title is sure to entertain you for a couple of hours.

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There’s no two ways about it – gaming isn’t a cheap hobby. Luckily, the creeping rise of the digital distribution market is giving many budget-conscious gamers a break these days. XBLA, PSN, Wii-Ware, and others are all playing with how to offer alternatives to AAA titles, both in terms of content and cost. However, the pricing model for this market is still in an experimental, Wild West phase.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Apple App Store. There’s a ton of games out there, and separating the wheat from the chaff can be an arduous task. Even when you do find the good games, there’s no consistency with pricing versus quality. A poor game can run you upwards of ten dollars, but the good news is that you can often find extremely well-designed and fun games there for next to nothing.

If there’s one thing I like more than a good game, it’s a good game that’s also cheap. If you’re of like mind, then read on! Gamer Limit’s got your back with four great titles that will only cost you a buck.

Fractal is the newest puzzler by Cipher Prime (makers of Auditorium), with a few unique twist that will have you pushing until you manage to pull your hair out, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The game feels much like Hexic HD and Frenzic met at a party and got a little too drunk, resulting in a love child with great music, awesome puzzles, and three very sexy play styles.

The game borrows the idea of  clearing a hexagon from the board from Hexic HD but puts a twist on the play in that you’re not rotating three pieces, but using a limited amount of pushes to get the pieces into place. The main challenge comes in seeing if you can complete the 30 level campaign in a straight shot using the amount of pushes given to you. Think of it as a puzzle marathon that you’ll likely lose, but that’s not a bad thing.

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When you think of female characters in gaming, they tend to fall into one of two categories. On one hand, you’ve got your independent ass-kickers like Samus, Alyx Vance, and Jade. On the other, you have the damsels in distress, such as Peach and Zelda, who seem content to cheer from the sidelines and hang out in dungeons.

Throughout gaming, the word princess has been synonymous with useless… that is, until now. Enter Princess Fury for the iPhone. When her kingdom is threatened by all kind of evil creatures, she does what any self-respecting potential monarch should: she grabs an extremely over-sized sword and she hits the battlefield.

Now, you may think that a ruffly pastel dress, shiny silver shoes, and a tiara would be impractical for heavy combat. Well, the Princess is out to show us otherwise, and the result is an entertaining little title for the iPhone.

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Out of all the character archetypes one regularly encounters in sci-fi, I have to say that one of my absolute favorites is the space smuggler/trader. From Han Solo to Malcolm Reynolds, I’m automatically on their side. The whole underdog, wing-and-a-prayer, murky ethical waters, and shooting from the hip thing just wins me over.

Back in the day, I used to live out my space captain fantasies with BBS (Bulletin Board System) door games like TradeWars 2002 and Solar Realms Elite. In more recent years, trader games have moved to two extremes. On the hardcore end you’ve got EVE Online, and on the opposite side of the spectrum, there are the simple pirate trader games like Tradewinds. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to sink into EVE, and the more casual offerings just don’t offer enough depth to keep me engaged for long.

Enter Warpgate for the iPhone. When I heard that Freeverse had launched a game that could possibly hit that happy medium for me, I immediately bought the game to see if the porridge was just right. 20+ hours of single-player handheld gaming later, I’m happy to report that playing it induced a relaxed experience – one might call it a sense of Serenity.

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Since Booster Trooper is fresh in my head and the NBA lottery draft selection occurred only a few days ago, it’s only natural that I’ve been making many comparisons between the two. With some re-polishing, can Booster Trooper find its place in the video game industry? Do my lowly Clippers have an outside chance at picking Wesley Johnson or Al-Farouq Aminu? Among all the indie titles available this year, would I select this game in a draft; and how the hell did the Wizards steal the number one overall pick? GAHH!

With that being said, Booster Trooper is far from being the John Wall or Evan Turner of this year’s titles, but with some updates and time, can this game make its impression on the market? Read more… »

Robert Boyd, creator of Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, is quite the RPG connoisseur; at least, I’d imagine that anyone who makes a blog about game design theory and references Vay is more than merely dabbling in the genre. Seeing a game made in the classic JRPG style from someone who knows his stuff is refreshing. BoDVII is a game that revels in the old-school JRPG experience while always keeping in mind what other JRPG developers seem to forget: that the old model can be made better.

The game starts out by explaining that the world is no longer populated by humans, thanks to a huge war that eradicated life as we know it. Instead, we live in the age of undead prosperity. Zombies, Skeletons, Ghosts, and Vampires live together peacefully. Suddenly, ‘evil’ is coming back to the world, and it’s up to Dem, the skeleton knight, to stop… the evil. It’s a little abstract, isn’t it?

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When it comes to music, I’m a very open-minded individual. I’m willing to experience any genre and give each song a shot on its own merits. For example, I despise country for the most part, but I still very much enjoy Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.

In the same vein, casual games really aren’t my bag. That doesn’t mean I won’t give them a fair shake. Over the past year I’ve definitely fallen in love with a number of casual games, such as Plants vs. Zombies and Bookworm Adventures (1&2). I try very hard not to judge a game before I’ve played it.

Now that I’ve spent some quality time with Royal Envoy on my PC, I’m ready to render judgment. There’s a marked difference between a game that’s weak because it’s casual, and a weak casual game.

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I have a distinct memory of playing Raiden II when I was younger, and loving the hell out of it.  There’s something immediately fun and nostalgic about playing a classic top down shmup.  This is why that memory of Raiden II stays with me to this very day, and also what led to my interest in Shoot 1UP.

An indie title from developer Mommys Best Games, Shoot 1UP is very much in the vain of the Raiden series, in that it’s full of the top-down goodness that has kept this genre prominent (and more importantly, fun) for so many years.  However, the game adds in a unique, and dare I say brilliant, mechanic that really differentiates it from the multitude of other similarly designed titles. Read more… »