I have been in contact with the PR of Chillingo and I managed to get some screenshots and the application description of the Chillingo’s upcoming game ‘InkVaders’.  Hopefully this game will be out soon, no info when this will be released. I’m really looking forward to this game it looks very fun at almost looks like ZombieVille USA.

Screenshots:

Application description:

Whilst doodling away, half dazed from the boring lecture I was in, I thought I saw the image move. The Martians I was drawing were invading my notepad! I had to do something to stop them. Pen in hand, I drew a hero to fight them off. Bold, brave, no fear of death, the story unfolded before my eyes…

The Earth was in peril… again!

The task of saving the day falls at the feet of Generic Marine (G to his friends).
As the Martian horde invades, G must battle his way from his lunar base on the Moon back to Earth, to wipe the Martian menace from our streets and restore the human race.
It won’t be an easy task but G has an arsenal of 15 deadly weapons to hand. Join him and shoot, splat, and blast your way through 30 levels over 3 unique locations, to victory!

Manage ammo, three weapon types, health and boost (jet pack). Collect Martian rocks and meteors to earn cash and upgrade weapons – there is always a new way to purge the Martian Invaders just around the corner! Single shot weapons, multi-shot weapons, beam weapons, and rocket launchers to send them to oblivion.

Easy to learn, addictive to play, saving the Earth from the Martians has never been so much fun!

Features:
Stunning graphics with comedy visceral deaths
Story mode, 30 levels over 3 unique locations
Endurance mode, play as long as you can!
Easy, normal, hard play modes.
Bespoke sound track, designed to kick butt too!
Listen to your iPod music while you play

TBC
+ Achievements to unlock
+ Control your iPod music from within the game
+ OpenFeint support for online high scores and achievements

Requirements:
Compatible with all iPhone and iPod touches
Requires iPhone OS 2.1 or later.

The company I-Play has released a video of their upcoming game Red Bull X-fighters. For those of you who dont know, X-fighters is a motorbike stunt series that goes around the world. In the video you’ll see both real coverage and some gameplay. The graphics look good and if this can hold true to the sport, then this game will be very good. In the video it says August 2009 so not too long for this one.

iNsane on the App Store

Foreword

Well we all know that we should work our brains a bit when playing games rather than mindlessly shooting zombies or some other pointless task. iNsane presents that opportunity in a nice, simple and fun way.

Gameplay

The basis of this is a memory game. The board is full of grey squares. Then one will light and then another. You must then remember where they lit up. The first stage is only 2 but it increases as you go up the levels. So that you have to remember the placement and order of 6 squares. It is really tricky. The board can be either 12 squares or 24. 12 I found a bit simple so I keep it on 24. You can also choose the color of the light. It can be Red, Green, Yellow and Blue. You’ll then proceed to follow that light around the board. There is also difficulty. What changes with this is the speed of the game. The square will light for a very very short time on Insane, the hardest difficulty.

Now there are online scores in this game.  Also something I was very surprised to see was a robust online system built into the game. It’s slightly hidden though. You must submit your score and this takes you to the online part. With it you can challenge others to matches for coins. Unfortunately there is no one online with it so I haven’t had a match. You can also have friends lists, which allows you to easily challenge them. And of course there are leaderboards.

Presentation

There isn’t much to talk about in terms of graphics. There isn’t much to go on. I kind of wish there was more colour but it does help when the squares light up. You can easily pick it out. So ya its done well enough. You also have sound effects for when being shown the light and when you tap them. Just simple sounds. Again nothing special.

Cons

I don’t have much to say here as there isn’t much you can add to the game. Its just a simple fun game. I can’t think of game modes or features. There should be a tutorial or some help. As when I started it the first time I didn’t know what to do. It was a bit weird. But I go it fast enough.

Final Word

This is a good simple game, to work your brain on your ipod. Its easier than some puzzlers you’ll find out there so if your not into the big robust puzzlers I’d look this up. Its currently at a cheap price of $1.

- Works the brain

- Fast gameplay keeps you on your toes

- May confuse you if your not sure what your doing

Gameplay 8/10

Presentation 7.5/10

iNsane 8/10

QuitIt! is an entertaining, stress-relieving game.  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to poke Lumpy, a cute litte blue alien from the planet Zgrunturos.  The game itself, is set up as a virtual game show and you win money by poking the expressive Lumpy.

What do you do with this cold, hard cash you ask?  Well you buy stuff for Lumpy!  Right now the game’s store is stocked with a variety of zany pokers and questionable gifts.  The developers are actively coming up with more content right now including more pokers, gifts, and holidays.

You’ll have to constantly make more cash because each of these fancy pokers is only good for a limited number of pokes and then, poof, it’s gone.  However, re-purchasing a poker will give it more “poketasticness” and Lumpy will be more likely to spit out multiple coins when you use it.

Gifts are another entertaining aspect to this game.  Each one costs various amounts of money and are certainly not what I would want to see under a Christmas tree.

For example, let’s buy Lumpy an exotic tropical fish.  How fun!

Ooooh, the excitement! 

…and the agony of disappointment.

Better luck next time, Lumpy.

The game is also stock full of holidays which will change the appearance of Lumpy’s room.  You can also purchase custom holidays as well…Lumpy’s pad will get a makeover on my birthday.  Here is Lumpy enjoying National Lasagna Day…yup, that’s a real holiday.

Gameplay
Playing the game is super simple.  At the Main Menu you are presented with different selections including Options to control music and sound effects, the Store where you buy pokers, gifts, and holidays; and a How to Play to explain the game’s basics.  Press Play to get to the fun.

In the game screen, simply tap on Lumpy to get the current poker to poke him.  Swipe over Lumpy in an arc to reposition the poker for more poking fun.  Various motivational signs will appear to let you know that you’re doing well, and if you watch carefully Lumpy’s window scene actually changes with the time of day.  Your accumulated money is shown in the upper right and when you have enough funds, press Menu in the lower left to bring up different options.  From here you can return to the Main Menu, go to the Store, or visit your Poker storage area if you have any specialty pokers that still have some pokes left on them.

Overall
Pros:
-fun game show theme including zany music
-great cartoony graphics/animation and well done sound effects
-fun pokers and gifts to purchase

Cons (not detriments, just more content stuff I’d love to see):
-purchased pokers need more pokes before they are used up
-needs a fun statistics page – total pokes, pokes for each poker used, number of times each gift is given, etc
-need more stuff to buy in the store, like custom rooms with items to purchase to decorate it

QuitIt! is highly entertaining and great for a little stress relief.  Just give Lumpy a few pokes, earn some cash, and discover the gift of giving.

Price – $2.99

QuitIt! in iTunes

Critter Defense is one of the cutest tower defense games available in the App Store. Despite its appearance, this game has a lot of fun to offer tactically for those seasoned with tower defense games while being simple enough for more casual players to really enjoy.

In this game, your base is assaulted by colorful crawling bugs in one of three areas: Grasslands, Seashore, and Metropolis

You start the game in Grasslands while Seashore and Metropolis must be unlocked. Within each area there are three levels and then a Boss Fight making a total of twelve maps in the game. Each map is fixed path, and the paths themselves are pretty short; however, in Metropolis, critters will enter the map from multiple points making this area more challenging. I would love it if each map was longer and you had to pan or pinch to zoom in/out to see all of it.

One of the tactical twists this game offers is that not only must maps be unlocked, but your towers as well. Each level must be won to unlock the next map and a victory in the 3rd level also unlocks your first new weapon, a poison tower. Your initial guns are a basic cannon tower, a dart tower which is effective against fliers, and an ice tower for slowing the critters.

This is where one of the game’s more interesting aspects comes into play. Eventually, you will have access to eight different tower types, but you will have to make a tactical choice. You can only select three of the available towers to bring into a map. This makes for some hard decisions, but also allows for experimentation by combining different tower options. Once you have a tower unlocked, you can use it in any previously unlocked map.

Gameplay
Critter Defense includes a short tutorial showing you how to play and how to interpret the information on the screen. It is simple and effective.

Your base will be assaulted by various really cute little bugs. You can see the next wave coming at the upper left. Flying bugs are really fast…so fast that your basic cannon tower can actually miss when shooting at them. Each bug’s health is denoted by the stripe in the center of its back which is a very clever way of showing their status without cluttering the screen with a bunch of small red or green bars.

There is quite a variety of bugs, so many that I wish the developers had included a Field Guide to Critters. Some are slow but can take lots of damage, others are fairly weak, there are flying bugs, health regenerating bugs, and in Metropolis you will face bugs that can shoot at and destroy your towers.

If your base takes damage, it is shown by a black arc erasing the red ring. It definitely works for me, but I can see some people wanting exact numbers although that would detract from the simple, clean graphics.

There is no fast forward button, but you can choose to send waves in early. The maps are currently small enough that a lack of a fast forward button is not a detraction to me.

Tower Building
Tower building has its own twist as well. Each tower must be built where it can receive power so your initial towers must be built near pre-determined power stations shown as a white circle with a red lightning bolt. However, each tower you build also emits its own power, and this lets you start chaining towers away from the power station. Touch anywhere in an open area and all of the legal build areas are shown as white circles.

The tower building process is very easy. Your available buildable units are shown at the bottom. Simply touch a tower icon, it will highlight, and then drag up to a point on the terrain. Crosshair colors will tell you if you can or cannot build on a point.

White = okay to build
Black = tower will not activate…not close enough to a power source
Red = tower cannot be built on that spot

Because of the ‘drag to place’ tower building, precise tower placement can sometimes be fickle as you are trying to determine a tower’s location under your finger. Also, you must be careful to simply lift your finger and not move it sideways or you may alter the build location. This is where the inclusion of crosshairs is of immense help; they really help you pinpoint where a tower will be located before you have placed it.

To see a tower’s range, tap on it once it has been built and a gray circle will appear showing its range. I would really like it if the range was also shown before a tower was built just to make it easier to decide on placement.

As each gun fires, a black arc appears on the tower and when it becomes a circle you can then upgrade. Simply click on the upgradeable tower and a menu appears at the bottom. You can choose to increase damage, range, or rate of fire. Each tower can only hold five upgrades so choose wisely. Upgrades get progressively more expensive, as well.

Scoring
Your final score is affected by several factors:

-damage to your base or lack of it
-the more cash you have left, the better a score multiplier you get
-sending waves in early, risk = reward

You are also awarded medals:

Gold = win + no base damage
Silver = win + base damage

There are personal and global high scores for the game. Both are stored remotely so you must have Internet access to view them. The personal high score table shows your total accumulated score for all games played and then you can see your top five scores by map. Your medal earned and towers used are also shown. The global scores show the top five players for total points accumulated and top five scores for each individual map.

Overall
Pros:
-simple, cute, and clean graphics for the maps and bugs
-highly visual interface – bug damage, base damage, tower upgradeability, upgraded towers are all denoted visually
-interesting tactical twist – must build near fixed power stations initially and choose which three towers you want to use on a map
-global scores and detailed local high score table
-8 unlockable towers
-3 areas with 4 maps each for a total of 12 maps
-you can “lock-on” all guns to a specific critter and have them concentrate fire
-large variety of critters including those that shoot back

Cons:
-there is very cute, cheerful music playing during the main menu, but it doesn’t play during the game
-the black bullets the towers shoot are really not attractive, it would look so nice if each tower had a different graphic for shooting
-same for the sounds, the towers make sounds when they shoot, but they all seem to sound too similar
-no endurance/endless mode
-need to display the tower’s radius of fire as we are dragging it up to build so you can decide where to place it more effectively

This game is full of charm and has a very nice graphical interface; I would just love to see bigger maps requiring pinch to zoom or panning. Right now, it may not be the deepest tactically, but Critter Defense is still fun and can be challenging if you are going to go for gold medals. There is enough content and tactical potential here to satisfy tower defense veterans while offering a good learning curve for the casual player. There are a few areas that I think could use a little tweaking to add some polish, but as it stands, I think this is a great addition to the plethora of tower defense games on my iPhone.

Price – $2.99

Critter Defense in iTunes