The iFriday Roundup, No. 39

Friday Freebies

Wow, we were surprised that Taco Graveyard’s Omegapixel landed on the App Store so quickly — and for free! We’ll bring you our usual critique next week, but from our preview you can no doubt tell this is one you should absolutely run out and download right now at the magic price of zero.

Also going free this weekend: just about every Zenonia title; Burn the City (Our Review), and Paper Monsters (Our Review). Also check out this groovy controller app that lets you use your iDevice in lieu of a physical controller for PC and Mac games — whodathunkit?

Finally, G5 Entertainment are making Youda Survivor (Our Review) free this Saturday — that’s an awesome deal for management sim fans considering the game usually goes for $4.99 USD!

Sketch Nation Studio Launches for Free

This just in from Engineous Games, Inc., and it sounds really awesome: “Pretty sure this is an App Store first — rather than pay money to play other people’s games, you can make your own for free! Sketch Nation Studio lets you make all types of runner and platformer games, share with friends, and sell them for real money on the App Store. Even if you don’t want to make games, you can play the ones your friends make and check out the best from the community.” Check out the trailer here or in this week’s video gallery!

Sales Roundup

Rotor Games lowered the price of their vehicular combat title Final Run (Our Review) to $2.99 this week.

Also check out Time of Heroes (Our Review), which is going for $0.99 again. Not a bad deal if you’re into TBSs of the Langrisser variety!

Jazz: Trump’s Journey (Our Review) is celebrating its new Mac incarnation with a $0.99 sale on iOS, and Crescent Moon Games are also running a $0.99 sale on Kids vs. Goblins — just make sure you’re running an iPhone 4S or high-end iPad before checking that one out.

Big Blue Bubble were in touch this week to let us know that the licensing agreement on the Fighting Fantasy gamebook franchise is about to expire, so they’re holding a blowout clearance sale-of-sorts on the entire iOS collection. That includes City of Thieves, Creature of Havoc, Citadel of Chaos, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and Deathtrap Dungeon.

On The Wind Gets UI Update

Controlling the four winds in Don’t Step on the Cracks’ unique side-scrolling debut (Our Review) just got easier for iPhone and iPod Touch owners thanks to the latest interface update. Check out our interview with the creator to find out more backstory on this one if you haven’t already!

Super Lemonade Factory Becomes More Super

Initials Command just implemented that screen orientation fix we hoped for in Super Lemonade Factory (Our Review). They’ve also added iCade and iControlPad support, plus a way to edit button positioning. And whaddaya know, we have an interview to whip out for this developer too!

Prisoner 84 Gets Universal Makeover

It has been quite a long time since we reviewed Hidden Games’ survival horror fest Prisoner 84, but if there’s anything we’ve learned about the App Store it’s that dev support dies hard. Version 2.0 adds HD graphics suitable even for the New iPad(!), interface improvements and multitask support.

Kitaru Off to a Great Kickstart

The folks at Aoineko Studios are already raking in the attention for Kitaru, which has to be the flashiest indie RPG project we’ve yet seen on iOS! They’ve just crossed the 10% funding threshold on their first day as Kickstarter campaigners, and naturally we’re going to use this news to highlight yesterday’s studio interview and the gigantic gallery of CG renders Aoineko were kind enough to lend us.

New Releases

Reviews for Brawsome’s MacGuffin’s Curse and Michael Yatskar’s Towers are upcoming, but you can feel free to check out our previews for both in the meantime! Don’t forget that you can sample MacGuffin’s Curse for free too.

Crow Gets Official Preview, Soundtrack Release

Sunside’s action adventure debut Crow (Our Review) sports glorious visuals and an even more glorious soundtrack, which is why we were so excited to find out the OST by Voodoo Highway would come hot on the heels of the game’s release. It’s on CDBaby right now, and should take flight on Amazon MP3 and iTunes any day. Check out the game’s new preview video in this week’s YouTube gallery:


Are you an iOS videogame developer or publisher with a cool update, video, or other news that you want to get out to the masses? iFanzine probably has an eye on you already, but don’t hesitate to get in touch via our Twitter feed or Contact page. We want to fill our iFriday Roundups with all your beautiful stuff!