Vlambeer’s (Super Crate Box, Luftrausers) 2013 mobile fishing game, which is an enhanced version of the company’s flash browser game Radical Fishing, is perhaps more famous for the developer’s battle with the developer of a cloned game. To make a long story short, shortly after beginning work on a mobile version, developer Gamenauts released Ninja Fishing, an game that had a similar style of play. The game became an instant success, and this discouraged the developers to a point where they temporarily scrapped the project. However, after winning awards for their game Super Crate Box, the team decided to scrap everything and rebuild Ridiculous Fishing. Thankfully the game was a success, and is one of the best games available on mobile platforms.
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Nintendo, The Pokémon Company and Niantic (Ingress) are working together to bring Pokemon GO to Android and IOS devices in 2016. Like Niantic’s mobile MMORPG Ingress, the game will make use of real world maps to allow players to find, battle, and capture Pokemon in the real world. The game will work in conjunction with a wristwatch peripheral named the Pokemon Go Plus which alerts players of events happening within the game so that players won’t have to spend as much time staring at their screens. Pokemon company president Tsunekazu Ishihara, Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata all had their input on the game. While this isn’t the first time Pokemon has hit mobile devices (The Pokemon Trading Card Game has been available on iOS devices since 2012), this is teh first full fleged Pokemon game developed with input from Nintendo. If this goes well, it’ll be interesting to see how this influences Nintendo’s mobile strategy going forward.

Well, everyone’s favorite gun-toting raccoon and living tree are among Marvel’s newest (and most obscure) movie stars as of this weekend in Guardians of the Galaxy, and earlier this summer, everyone’s favorite mutants returned to the silver screen in X-men Days of Future Past, and what good would any movie be without the prerequisite tie-in games? Of course unlike recent movie tie in games, such as the Gameloft-Cashgrab mobile games based on Captain America 2 and Spider-Man 2, these games have no in-app purchases (it’s a rather biting commentary on mobile gaming when we’re praising games for NOT having any IAP, but I digress). The games themselves aren’t bad either.
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While certain “Hardcore” gamers will forever debate whether or not tablet gaming is ‘legitimate’, games like The Room are deep enough for core gamers to appreciate while at the same time providing unique gaming experiences that have mechanics only possible in mobile gaming. The object of the room is to use clues and intuition to unlock a series of devices. You’ll tilt, scroll, and drag objects across the screen of your tablet as you unlock the mysteries of the strange devices you encounter. The game is short in length, although a sequel features even deeper gameplay, and sheds even more light on the secrets of the device.

10000000 is a mash up of match-3 puzzle gameplay and dungeon crawling. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s very addictive and it’s a perfect time killer for mobile devices. Your goal is to escape from a dungeon by scoring 10000000 points – however it all has to be done in one session. Each time you are defeated, you are sent back to your room. However, you can use the wood, gold, and stone gathered during each run to upgrade shops, unlock new features, and gain new abilities which will make it easier and easier to make it through the game. Although there isn’t much to do after gaining the 10000000, it’s still a fun and simple game that’s best suited for mobile devices.

Okay, what’s the most important part of any RPG, western or Japanese? Okay, yeah, the storyline, characters, and the battle system, but besides that? THE VILLAGE! Where else are your heroes going to go to get quests, restock items, hear the latest gossip, and lay their heads at night? Weather it’s Whiterun in Skyrim, The Town of Baron in Final Fantasy 4, Tristram in Diablo, Vizima in the Witcher, or even the Citadel in Mass Effect, the city/town/village is the glue the keeps the entire game together. Kairosoft’s downloadable title is one of the few games that simulates what goes on inside that village. You build a village from the ground up, building shops and houses for your residents. Your goal is to attract adventurers. These adventurers then go on quest that you give them, earn money, and (hopefully) spend it on your shops, thereby generating income for your village. You can hold special events, expand your town, and unlock new types of buildings. The only major issue with this is the one common to most business/city simulator games: once you begin to generate lots of income, the challenge disappears. Also you’re only in this for a high score. Even so, the game gets incredibly addictive, and you’ll love the 16-bit style retro graphics. If you got an iPhone or an Android, download this game and you’ll experience firsthand one of the most important, yet unappreciated parts of the role-playing-game genre.

I know how the world is going to end, and it ain’t pretty. It starts with one small bug known as…Hope. And not the Barack Obama kind either. You see, some unlucky schmuck in Indonesia gets infected by it after eating some bad cattle. Other than some mild insomnia and some nausea, the guy doesn’t think much of it. However, the virus is able to spread via insects and tainted livestock, and other people in his village catch it. Of course some tourists from Britain come over, and after mingling with a few ‘working girls’, they inadvertently take the bug with them back to the United Kingdom. Before the summer, the bug has evolved quite a bit, as now that nausea turns to vomiting, those coughs turn to pneumonia, and anemia begins to develop within the blood streams of those effected. This gains the attention of the international community, but the virus continues to develop new strains, making it harder and harder for scientists to keep up with it. Making matters worse, now Hope is being spread through air and water. As infections start showing up in first world countries like the U.S and Japan, it gets increasingly harder to keep a lid on the virus, as even our antibiotics are no longer enough to fight it. Affected citizens degenerate into outright insanity as whole governments are being shutdown to deal with the threat. By the end of the following year, there is no place on Earth that hasn’t been affected by Hope. The lucky ones are already dead. The ones left become living corpses as their bodies slowly degrade. Advanced dysentery shuts down their digestive systems as their stomach immediately reject any thing they try to eat. Humanity is left to die a slow, agonizing death within 2 years after the first infection.

That nightmarish scenario isn’t real thankfully. However, if it happens in Ndemic Creations/Miniclip’s Plague Inc, then you will have won the game. That’s right, your goal is to develop and evolve a super virus so that it will kill off all of humanity.
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We here at the Powet Municipal Court accuse the defendant, one 1337 Game Design of providing a fun and engaging 80s sitcom-style turn-based strategy experience, and we present this intro video as evidence.
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