Flamin series: Flamin' NORA!

Where, of course, NORA stands for “Numerous OpenFeint-supporting Redemption-style Arcade games”. Nicolas Robert‘s minimalist “Flamin” series is mostly based on those end-of-the-pier gaming machines that reward players with prizes either directly or by giving out tickets that you can redeem at a kiosk, but there are no prizes on offer here – not even Coin Dozer-type virtual ones.

Happily, though, AuroraFeint’s popular high-score service has stepped in to save the day by providing an alternative goal-and-reward system, and everything’s worked out beautifully in the end. Hurrah!

Drift Mania Championship HD: The battle of b0rked drift

Drift Mania Championship HD is free today. I’d had a brief play of the Lite version when it came out and dismissed it as an uncontrollable and dull stunt game (and I hate stunt games, because I’m not 12). So this seemed an ideal opportunity to give it a second chance, especially as I’d bought my iPhone 4 since then and would have a chance to admire its gleaming Retina graphics.

I don’t think that’s actually them in the screenshot – it looks a lot crisper and shinier than that in real life, which begs the question of why a publisher would choose to use a low-res image when the high-res graphics are a sufficiently big deal as to be highlighted in the game’s title. But anyway.

Situation Shuffle: Do the iPod Shuffle

If you liked the splendid Say What You See (and why wouldn’t you?), you might find the alliteratively-similar Situation Shuffle (currently free) a comparably pleasurable time-passer. It’s another game in which forensically examining the fine detail of hand-painted pictures is the key to success, and if you want to try it out, you can play a level using only the picture below.

The object, as alert viewers might be able to ascertain, is to put the six frames of a short comic strip into the correct order. All you have to guide you is what’s in the pictures, and it’s not as easy as it looks.

Naughty Bear: The wrongest game of all

Oh, this is wrong. It’s so, SO wrong. It’s ultra-wrong. It’s the wrongest thing ever. It’s Naughty Bear.

The bears of Perfection Island are having a party, with yummy cupcakes for all. But they haven’t invited Naughty Bear. This makes Naughty Bear sad. And when Naughty Bear is sad, things happen. Bad things.

I am the Earl of Zombwich

Somewhere in my voluminous cellar full of board games, I’ve got a version of this that I bought from Past Times many years ago and which is simply called The Viking Game. Presumably this was because the original name, Hnefatafl, wouldn’t have attracted many customers in a posh UK knick-knack chain, and Centurion Games have taken that thought process to its logical conclusion, giving their iPod version the altogether snappier – and more informative – moniker of Zombwich.

The core of the temporarily-free game (which in the iOS incarnation has been simplified from the orifinal lineup of 24-vs-12 down to a punchy 8-vs-5) is capturing opposing pieces. Each side controls pieces which move like a castle in chess – covering as many squares as they like either horizontally or vertically – and capture an opposing piece by sandwiching it between two of their own side in immediately adjacent squares. But here, some of the pieces are ZOMBIES!!!!!!

(Super) Marble (Roll) madness

It’s surprising that on a format with both tilt and (depending on generation) gyroscope controls, we haven’t seen more Marble Madness knockoffs. There are plenty of 2D tilting-and-rolling games but remarkably few utilising the third dimension to channel Atari’s 1984 cult classic, and that may be at least partly because Super Marble Roll pretty much nailed it first try.

An App Store veteran with over 18 months service under its belt, Super Marble Roll recently went free for the first time ever. What we’re saying here is that you should go and download it now, yeah?

Fruit Nonja

Even if we hadn’t been going to cover blatant Fruit-Ninja-but-not knockoff Cut Cut Boom Pro (which is temporarily available for free) just so we could make the awesome pun above that you’re chuckling over even as we speak, we might have had to do it just for the irresistible update info:

“What’s New In Version 1.2

Retina MAX
Incredible bang”

Heck, for that we’ll even let them off with a marketing-department screenshot. It’s a fun little game, whose main point of difference from Fruit Ninja is the presence of preset patterns, whereby groups of animals helpfully fly in formation to enable you to slash the feathers/fur off lots of them in one swipe for tasty bonus points. (If you’re one of the four people outside Japan who ever played Juggler DS – it’s right at the end of the feature in that link – you might even get a little bonus extra deja vu.)

There’s an endless mode and a 90-second score attack, and it’s all very well done for a clone, with bags of character and fancy-face Retina graphics. Just like Fruit Ninja it’s a three-misses-or-one-bomb affair to end your game, so even when you’re cruising comfortably you’d better be giving it your full attention or your hubris will become your nemesis. And nobody wants that.

Games We Would Have Written

…About Properly If Their Developers Hadn’t Provided Such Piss-Poor Excuses For Screenshots, But Which Are Very Good And You Should Download Anyway While They’re Free (ie Now) So The Stupid Idiots Don’t Make Any Money, Alongside A Picture Of Something Somehow Thematically Related Which Is Less Likely To Hideously Disfigure Our Nice Website Than Their Butt-Ugly Marketing Shots.

#5: Train Conductor

Podgamer would like to apologise to sensitive viewers for the completely unnecessary repetition of the phrase “shit-fuck” in the above image, and also in this sentence.

Linez: Buy Linez (Don't Do It)

Because it’s temporarily free, of course. Do you see what we did there?

The game that Linez is a variant on exists in several guises on the App Store, but this is as good as any of them and it’s currently the free-est. The instructions are about as helpful as giving a man on fire a hammer, so we’ll have a quick run-through below, but the short version is that it’s well worth a download. I mean, obviously. Would we waste your time?

NB: Not "chess on speed"

This is a real favourite of mine. I used to play chess when I was a wee laddie back home in Scotchland, but in this fast-moving modern world I don’t know anyone who has the attention span/mental discipline for it any more. Speed Chess (or Chess – The Speedgame, as it appears to have clumsily renamed itself), currently selling for the bargain price of 0p ($0.00/€0,00) is the perfect solution.

The picture tells the story, really. The rules are the same as normal chess, but you only have five pawns and one of everything else. You can play against another human or three levels of CPU opponent, and it took me about 40 games to beat it even at “Student” (the lowest). The move clock can be set to 20 seconds (the default), 60 seconds or off, which somewhat defeats the point. Apart from the fact that it says “Times up” if you let the clock run out, it’s excellently presented and generally lovely.

I can think of literally nothing else to tell you about Speed Chess. Bye!