Time for Ruan to pick out his favorite iOS games of the past year. No mean feat, but after much deliberation, he's finally managed to whittle down a list longer than your arm to just three titles...
Has anyone ever left a game on his or her iDevice for three years straight? It seems unimaginable in the App Store's ultra-fast release environment but veteran racing game developer RedLynx is shooting for just that, and they've got exactly 1000 Heroz to back them up! The one-level-per-day content strategy might strike cynics as gimmicky, but there's actually a very solid little time attack racing game to be found here whichever way you slice it.
A surfer has just found the gnarliest wave ever, but darn it all if an endless school of sharks hasn't popped up to spoil the tubular ride of a lifetime! Now this Surfin' Dude hangs in the balance; will he go on to be a surfing champ or wipe out and get a bite taken out of him?
Fans of traditionally psychology-heavy Japanese horror might plunge into this one expecting "The Ring" in game form, but it shares a little more in common with American slasher films for better or worse. The intriguing mix of survival horror and maze puzzles, now, that's worth sticking around for!
Part fish, part armadillo, all hunter. One can only guess at what Arno is, what he's hunting exactly, or why, although the High Score meter makes it clear he's doing it for sport! He stars in a lovingly crafted indigenous take on classic arcade shooters, its one flaw being that there simply isn't more on offer.
Like the eyeball-equipped flora that populate it, Mystic Forest is an eccentric creature indeed. It's certainly not without its flaws at present, but worth a look if you could go for a puzzle-adventure and don't mind putting on some platforming shoes.
Visual novels are some of the more interesting review requests we get at iFanzine. This one, recently re-released by m-kz with an updated script, is quite the roller coaster, and in more ways than one! If you enjoy visual novels despite their sometimes curious translation quirks and you know what the word "moe" refers to when it comes to Japanese art styles, this one might just have your name on it.
Undead hordes having such a treasured place on iOS, this had to happen eventually! In hindsight, the third Evil Dead movie was uncannily ripe for a transition from the big screen to the touchscreen, and now that it's said and done, it's not a bad thing at all for fans of sidescrolling Castle Defense.
Next up, angry melons! Batuhan Akalin's truck-mounted, precision-guided fruits don't quite unseat the reigning champs of action and physics puzzlers when it comes to gameplay depth, but this game's real-time user feedback should still make it a contender for genre fans.