There is nothing quite like the power that a video game has to make you feel emotions. It is one of the genres most powerful things which is criminally underused, I mean while feel when you can shoot stuff?

Well Sumire goes the other way and makes you feel many feelings, and it does a glorious job of it.

Sumire is a young girl who has a bit of a shit life.  Her grandmother, who was a central part of her life, had died and her mother seems to be in an incredible cycle of depression and her father aint around. So yea, great for a kid.

She is going about her life when a seed smashed through the window which she plants in a pot.  After dozing off she awakens to a flower who is talking to her. The flower says it only has a day to live and it wants to see the town before it dies. Sumire is reluctant to do so as she doesn’t want to leave the house, but eventually does so.

Then as you and the seed adventure around the town Sumire deals with a lot of the issues she has been facing and we get to uncover more about what she is going through.  It is a very short game so I don’t want to spoil too much, but the game uses point and click mechanics to explore the world to great effect. Added to this is the dialogue options you choose allowing some of your own feelings to be played out through Sumire’s experience.

The game uses everything it has to incredible effect. The process of leaving the house, with many things reminding her of her grandmother, is quite clearly a difficult task. This is emphasized with an achievement popping that is called “My Journey Has Begun” with a description of “Just leave the house!”.  This is so on point as such a simple task can feel inside like it is so easy, but it can be really hard.  This just shows the detail put into every aspect of the game.

Being a point and click adventure game, it translates really well to mobile.  Using your left thumb you move around and click around to interact with things in the world.  It is absolutely perfect for the platform.

Sumire shows how much can be done with so little.  It uses the gamey aspects to great effect and tells a powerful story of trying to wade through grief.

Thanks to its short length it doesn’t overstay its welcome, it comes in, impacts you emotionally, then leaves.

The post Sumire (iOS) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Released on PC and home consoles earlier this year, The Gardens Between is a home-grown Aussie puzzle game that reflects deeply Australian culture, told through a gentle, indirect story.

Now released on iOS, perhaps it has found its true home as a premium mobile game. Every Level of the game starts and ends with you walking up a spiral to the top, but to reach there you must manipulate motes of light, so that by the end of the spiral you can place one at an altar found there. This sounds simple, but the game soon introduces time manipulation, which quickly becomes a key game mechanic.

Simply swipe and hold to the left to go back in time, and forwards to progress normally. This simply change opens up a whole new range of puzzle opportunities, and the developers deftly take up the challenge of creating tricky situations for you to navigate through. You’ll also have to deal with plants that steal your light, bridges and other clever obstacles.

The game is beautiful, carefully and subtly referencing Australian culture and its iconic characteristics. Here’s a hills hoist, here’s a tyre swing, a hose with a bright orange nozzle dangling around a craggy rock.

Playing on my iPad Pro 10.5” (2017) I had no issues running the game, though on my iPhone X it was a little difficult to see what exactly was going on in some of the more complicated, busy Levels, so I’d suggest using the biggest screen possible to play.

My only real complaint with the game is that the fast forward and rewind mechanics simply aren’t fast enough. When you’re trying to figure out a puzzle through trial and error, it takes too long to go back and forth to see what your experiment has done. Especially when swiping and waiting took twenty seconds the time it took to go back and forth added up quickly.

Fortunately the game supports keyboard controls (with arrows and the space bar), bluetooth and MFI controllers. Even though the controls are very simple I appreciate their inclusion, as I personally found it more comfortable to play this way, with the Steelseries Nimbus controller, rather than holding my finger on the screen all the time.

The Gardens Between isn’t a long game, but it certainly earned its modest asking price. Further, there’s no microtransactions, in app purchases nor anything else. It’s just one up front price, which I appreciate in today’s subscription-filled, microtransaction-fueled game and app economy.

If you haven’t yet delved into The Gardens Between, or were thinking about picking it up for console, the mobile version is a no-compromise port that is well worth your time.

The post The Gardens Between (iOS) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Go back to the early 90s with pixelated gameplay on ‘Throwback Arcade’ available on Krispy Kreme New Zealand’s Instagram page.

Yup, a huge and addictive revisit to the days where games were simpler – yet still tricky enough to cause a bit of sweat and alot of tears as you aimed to get through the ensuing Levels and aim for that all important high score.

There were no Save Points, no Checkpoints, just perseverance.

Krispy Kreme New Zealand has four retro-tastic short to mid play games on offer for mobile, accessed via their Insta.

Finger Bun Fighter hearkens back to the early days of Street Fighter, except you are a doughnut, of course. Perform crazy super moves, kick and punch you way to sugary glory in the best of two doughy fisticuff rounds.

Cookie Dough’s Krispy Kart sees you taking on the doughnut kart against opponents across varying tracks in old skool top down view as you race against your opponents, collecting boosts and power ups and all the while aiming to stay on the track. Harder than you think.

Fairy Bread Fantasy was my favourite. Evil Snacks have invaded and they have switched off your Hot Light. It is up to you in this coin collecting, enemy pouncing and sprinkle spraying 2D platformer to save your friends from the impending darkness… and presumably uncooked sweeties.

Finally we have Brownie Batter Bash and I’ve saved the most addictive to last.

Brownie Batter Bash is a take on the classic Pong. Your doughnut is the ball and there are many treats and bonuses to be collected at the top of the Arcade screen.

Bounce your doughnut from the board and reap the tasty delights, but of course timing and a lot of skill is necessary.

Having played alot through all four mini-games I thought it would be a breeze – but nope. Prepare to be severely tested with these pixelated bite sized addictions.

Krispy Kreme know that the 90’s gaming era was a memory that all of us who were around then and old enough to have birthday parties with school friends, go to the Arcades or play on our SEGA Master Systems or Super Nintendo’s is a memory that we have all held on to.

To coincide with their retro mobile game offerings Krispy Kreme New Zealand also has four doughnut flavours for their Throwback; Cookie Dough, Fairy Bread, Finger Bun and Brownie Batter.

Both the free to play games and the doughnut range are for a strictly limited time – so get in to these button mashers on Krispy Kreme New Zealand’s Official Instagram and play while you can and chomp on down to party favourites from yesteryear.

The post Krispy Kreme Retro Game Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Adventure games are having a bit of a renaissance in recent years, sparked by the massive kickstarter campaign for what became known as Broken Age.

Since then there’s been a raft of new games in this venerable genre, but really, adventure games never went away. A prime example of this was Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes, which was originally released in 2011 for the PC. Now, with a new iOS port, this game is being given new life.

Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes takes you on the journey of young girl Lili, who lives in a convent and is tasked with helping her friend Edna escape from the severe clutches of Mother Superior. The game spirals down from there. The story is contained within three distinct acts that take you to a surprisingly wide array of locations. The first is set mainly in a convent school, the second in the town nearby and the third in an asylum. While these sound rote, there are plenty of dreamlike sequences that interrupt these locations to give the whole experience an unpredictable atmosphere. The cartoony graphics belie its dark tone that sometimes delves into the surreal.

Harvey’s New Eyes is generally a traditional adventure game, and doesn’t stretch the boundaries of the genre too much. For the most part, you’re talking to NPCs, collecting information and items, combining them and generally messing around so that you can make headway in the game. You are given the option to skip some of the more trickier puzzles, though it’s always best to try and resist that temptation for as long as possible – solving some of these puzzles were genuinely fun once I got into them, and for the most part the solutions flow logically rather than ending up in a MacGyver style crafting situation. Fortunately, you have the ability to press a question mark button and instantly see what objects in the scene are selectable – a godsend that all adventure games should have.

Harvey’s New Eyes is self aware, with a narrator that guides you along your way. Fortunately the game manages the fine line of being witty without becoming insufferable. Perhaps too many games try and break the fourth wall and be “ironic”, but Harvey’s New Eyes does a good job of being funny throughout the six or so hours you’ll be with the game.

Harvey’s New Eyes has been adapted quite nicely to the touch screen, though I did find it much easier to play on the larger iPad than on an iPhone screen. I did find I needed to use the question mark button to move between scenes, as the touch targets were a little finicky to accurately press at times, especially in some of the more complicated scenes.

If you’re looking for some classic adventuring on the go, Harvey’s New Eyes is a great little diversion. It maybe stretches on a bit too long, but as a pick up and play sort of game that shouldn’t really be be an issue. A forgiving save system meant I could pick up and play for short stretches when time permitted, yet the story was compelling enough that I had to see it through to the end in only a couple of sessions. A quirky, strangely dark yet charming adventure, Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes has been given new life on iOS, and is absolutely worth checking out if you missed it before on PC.

The post Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes (iOS) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Ark Survival Evolved is one of the major games that used Steam’s Early Access to push itself across the line. Known for being a buggy mess, but also being adored thanks to its survival game nature mixed with Dinosaurs, and more importantly Dinosaur taming, it’s something I have wanted to check out for a while. Now it has come free to play on mobile, and I don’t know how much I want to play this game now.

Ark Survival Evolved plops you on an island which is large, beautiful and full of dinosaurs living their lives. Your job is to survive, get yourself better equipped than the underwear you have been dropped with, and start taming some dinosaurs.

The game has been out on console for a while, and it seems like it’s a fun take on the survival genre, so porting it to mobile phones, with its size and complexity is ambitious at least. The problem is how the game runs, but I’ll touch on that later.

The controls are well designed, using your touch controls to move around like a joystick, but they resisted the urge to put a faux one in place, which was the right call. Swiping in the right ways allows you open your items and menus, which never felt intuitive, but I got there eventually. With a bit more time with the game, I’m sure anyone could adjust to that.

When standing still, the game looks surprisingly good, with detailed plants and dinosaurs around. Unfortunately, the game moves, a lot, and as such it quickly becomes a rough ride. Frame rates drop from a barely usable degree to borderline unusable, regularly. The number of times I’d be moving towards something, touch to grab it, and after that moment see I overshot it, was frustratingly high.

The problem is that because the game is survival based, it needs to be fair enough that if you didn’t deserve to die, you shouldn’t. But so many times I would be running and lose my path because of the choppy framerate, or when I think I’m doing one thing, it does something else.

These issues were absolutely exacerbated by me trying to learn the game for the first time too. Trying to learn the fundamentals of the game, while the game struggles to show it to you, or respond, is immensely frustrating. If you are familiar with the game and can laugh at some quirks or aspects that go wrong, then it could work, but this isn’t a place to learn. For context I was playing this game on a Samsung A8+, so not a $1400 phone, but hardly a weak contender.

Ark Survival Evolved is free to play on iOS and Android, so it costs you nothing to see if it works on your phone better than mine, except your time. (Comment below if you have played ARK: Survival Evolved on mobile and let us know it worked well for you).

The post ARK: Survival Evolved (Mobile) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Mobile games, especially free to play ones, always make me apprehensive. How much game is there going to be and how much of it is going to be trying to convince me to spend money, and how much money is fair to spend, are always issues I struggle with. Might and Magic: Elemental Guardians falls on the better side of those issue, but it still pulls you a little.

Might and Magic: Elemental Guardians is a turn-based battle and monster collecting game. As weird as it may be to see as the describer of the game, as they are usually aspects of something else like an RPG, the game is boiled down to those two aspects.

Monster collecting is based around a loot box system, or better described as a loot gem system. Throughout the game you get a lot of gems to crack open, and each time you do so you get a creature to add to your collection for the upcoming fights. This is a clear point where you can spend a lot of money if you’re not careful, but the game does dole out gems to crack open regularly. This makes it feel less dirty, but you need to be careful to not get hooked.

Monsters are ranked on a star scale, and when their hit their level cap you can rank them up to increase their leveling capacity. You are also able to strengthen your beasts using runes, which having varied stat boosts, such as increasing attack, defense, and accuracy. You level these runes up as well, using a system where you commit resources, and it decides if it does or doesn’t level it up randomly. This is one of those mobile systems that seems gross as you can burn resources for no gain, letting you spend some real money.

The other way to boost your beasts is with evolution, to make sure the monster collecting doesn’t feel too much like another pocket monster collecting game. Evolving gives more stat boosts, and makes your creatures look more impressive. Monsters vary from looking like witches, orcs, elemental wolf cubs and baby griffins, so evolving them is fun watching them become more impressive looking in your team. Evolving my little fire griffin was especially satisfying as it looked awesome in every stage of the transformation.

Leveling your beasts, their skills, runes, and evolving them involves a lot of resources. Resources are dropped regularly thanks to reasonably short battles, and a massive list of achievements that completion nets a lot said resources, and gems for monster hatching. Making sure you keep an eye on these is the best way to get the most from the game without spending a lot of coin.

I haven’t touched on the gameplay yet, because it’s not the most interesting thing. The game uses a rudimentary turn-based battle system, pitting your team against enemies, in waves. Your creatures each have some moves, and your character has a move that powers up throughout the fight. It’s a well-crafted simple turn-based battle system, but there not much more to it.

The story mode has you playing through a training scenario, which has huge leveling spikes. With minimal dialogue, and a lot of time between dialogue, it’s hard not to forget the story beats soon after you read them. This grinding throughout the modes is consistent, though you can use auto battle to complete repetitive battles while you watch something else.

Online is a bit more fun, which has you set up a defensive team. When you’re not watching, your defensive team has fights with opponents, and you can fight other people’s defensive teams when you’re feeling energetic. Wins net you a specific currency to spend, but it takes an age to afford anything.

Might and Magic: Elemental Guardians is a gorgeous game, that works well, and rewards you often. It’s grindy, which is clearly geared to spending money for time saving, but if you play it casually, you wouldn’t have to drop much coin to enjoy the game. T

he monster collecting, and evolving is fun, but takes so much time to complete. All-in-all it’s free to play enough that you can have a satisfying time, but it will put opportunities to spend money in front of you a lot.

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The post Might & Magic: Elemental Gardens (Android) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Norse mythology is so in right now. Between God of War, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and now Oddmar, the gods of old Scandinavia are hot gaming property.

Oddmar is a beautiful, traditional 2D platformer that takes some of the best lessons from console platformers and translates it onto Apple’s mobile devices. For owners of iPhones or iPads, its an essential addition to your mobile gaming retinue, at least for the short time it takes to complete.

One of the most striking aspects of Oddmar is its presentation.

It’s stunning and frankly far above almost every other mobile game that I’ve played. It appears as if the developers have adeptly reverse engineered Ubisoft’s UbiArt framework, used to make the excellent recent Rayman games. What this means is a sumptuous painterly feeling, like concept art has come to life in the actual game.

Oddmar’s art is luscious, and looks extremely high quality throughout. On my iPad Pro and iPhone 7 Plus every element was high resolution, and it was only a disappointment that it isn’t available on the Apple TV as well, where I could truly appreciate the art style. On top of that, animations are top notch, and it all runs at a smooth sixty frames per second.

While the story is a bit more involved than your traditional Level-based platformer, it still isn’t much to write home about. But it does give you four worlds to explore each with five Levels, and, for almost every platformer that doesn’t concern me terribly.

The Levels are generally fairly straightforward to get through, though like all great platformers to collect all the triangles, coins and bonus Levels will require a good level of dexterity and determination. There are also plenty of checkpoints in case you fall in to a pit or run in to an enemy, and restarts are fast. Some of the auto run sections, where the screen automatically scrolls and you have to keep up, were a bit poorly planned.

For example, if you get a little bit too ahead or behind exactly where you were supposed to go, then it almost guarantees a restart. At least lives are infinite, and once you know the path it generally isn’t too hard to get through.

I mainly played using a controller, the Steelseries Nimbus, the controller that Apple themselves promote.

Playing platformers on mobile devices is always a bit tricky (though it’s obviously a lot easier than full 3D games like Fortnite or PUBG), especially when there’s a lot of tight turns and twists. The controller set-up was great, and is definitely the best way to play Oddmar, especially on a bigger iPad like my iPad Pro 10.5”. I did use the touch controls on both the iPad and iPhone, and they were serviceable, and for most people they will be a perfectly fine way of playing the game.

In the constant flood of games and apps to the iOS App Store, it is rare to find a true diamond in the rough. But that’s exactly what Oddmar is. Every aspect of the game screams care and attention, and it’s a shame that it didn’t release more widely, such as on Android or Switch. I hope though, that Oddmar is a huge success, and the developers can use the money earned through the iOS versions to reach a larger audience on new platforms.

It’s risky these days to launch an iOS game, especially one with an upfront cost greater than than a snickers bar. But Oddmar has done just that, and it’s worth every cent that it asks for. A gorgeous, fun and entertaining platformer, the only downside to it is that not everyone can play it. If that’s the worst I can throw at it, it must be doing something right.

The post ODDMAR (iOS) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Recently at Oculus Connect 4, Camouflaj announced its first foray into virtual reality, République VR, for Gear VR. Rebuilt from the ground up, République VR will include all five episodes of the award-winning stealth series when it launches this winter.

Set in a dystopian surveillance state, République VR stars the player, who must use their VR device to hack into the nation’s elaborate network and guide a captive woman on a treacherous journey to freedom.

“From the very beginning, the team set out to build the quintessential mobile VR game,” said Camouflaj designer, Ryan Payton. “We are so excited to finally lift the veil on this incredibly challenging project. I’m happy to say that the hard work has paid off—République VR plays and looks absolutely stunning despite the obvious hardware limitations.”

Co-developed by New York-based developer Darkwind, République VR is highly battery efficient and utilizes single pass rendering techniques, granting performance gains of up to 30% in key areas. Coming soon to Gear VR, République VR will be compatible with Samsung Galaxy S7 and S8, and supports three unique input methods: touchpad, motion controller, and Bluetooth controller.

Additionally, Camouflaj announced the République Anniversary Edition Soundtrack, now available on vinyl, CD, iTunes, and streaming services via a partnership with premiere label Brave Wave. The vinyl edition will be a limited release and includes fifteen tracks, concept art, photography and anecdotes from the team and a free redeem code for République VR when it launches this winter.

The post République VR Brings Stealth to Gear VR appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The mobile market is a fickle beast, with an exhaustive list of games being released regularly, varying from good to utter trash it can be tough to see the good ones rise to the surface.  This is even more the case on Android with many quality titles staying put on iOS, so it’s fantastic to see a game like Arcane Dragons rear its head from the noise.

Arcane Dragons is an Action RPG that involves dropping into dungeons where you will run around defeating all of the enemies and collecting treasure.  Each dungeon is relatively short, though the harder the dungeons get the longer they take to beat.  This is essential and makes for a great mobile game as it is easy to pick up and play for a little while and either keep playing or put it back down.

The short dungeons in single player mode is framed with the story, which is told by character drawings and text.  The issue of reading too much, which can be tedious in some games is beaten by providing short bits of dialogue before and after each mission.  This means you do not need to tap through too many walls of text to get to the gameplay, but keeps the story rolling.  The story itself is OK, telling the story of Ethel who with his smart companion Heidel, and Cerise, the dragon they find, work on discovering the source of a change of monsters and dragon activity.

While I fell in and out of the story as the game progressed what I did not fall out of was the gameplay.  It is a simple isometric action game with a gorgeous chibi aesthetic.  Running around using the left stick that appears when you place your finger somewhere on the left side of the screen and attacking using the virtual attack and special attack buttons its relatively simple and starts super easy before you hit its steep difficulty curve.  The biggest win is its Auto mode where you can have the game play the levels for you.  But you can override the controls at any time, which I found myself using more during extended play periods or when trying to beat time trials where the game could move me more efficiently but I would do the attacking.

Arcane Dragons is not just a story with small dungeons either, the further along you get the more options open up, from time trial to doing the missions co-op, to daily, other additional missions including rids and the Tower of Infinity where you beat waves of enemies until you are beaten.  This is Arcane Dragons biggest strength, its variety of content.  This variety is mixed in with changing missions and regular events including extra XP events.

Arcane Dragons also borrows some elements from MMO with a group chat very similar to any other MMO, a Guild system, PvP, pets and encouragement to play harder dungeons together with friends.  One of the other strengths of the game is the friend system, which is super easy to build a friend list even if you do not know anyone playing the game with a recommended friend list.

The weapon and armour system has a lot of depth too, where you have a few slots which equip different kinds of armour which can all be upgraded.  You can level it up, strengthen it, equip runes and evolve it depending on your level and the varied item drops you will get.   This was a nice surprise, but can get very time consuming as you break down crappy armour and try to find the most efficient ways to make your weapons and armour stronger.

The game rewards you, a lot.  There are multiple currencies from coinsto rubies and friendship pointswhich you will regularly earn throughout the game to use for purchasing armour and other objects.  You can buy a lot of currency with real money and the game balances telling you about it, but not shoving it in your face perfectly.  But to weaken the pay to win mentality, weapons and armour are bought using a randomised system, where just buying more spins in what they call the Gacha, does not guarantee you better gear.

The biggest problem I found with the game and this may affect others is the fact that in weaksignal areas the game stops working.  For those who do not leave the metro areas this will not be an issue, but for some like myself who has a 20-minute mobile dead zone in his commute it is a pain to not be able to play even single player content.

Ultimately Arcane Dragons does a very wide selection of things very well.  Its variety in systems and game options is absolutely commendable, but on the whole the game loses a little focus because of it.  That is not to say it is a bad game, far from it.  It is a free to play game that is filled to the brim with content, that rewards you regularly for playing and is a lot of fun.  With its non-intrusive micro-transactions Arcane Dragons is the kind of game I highly recommend spending money in, to reward the developers holding back from making it pay to win.

Arcane Dragons is available for Android and iOS (apple Devices).

If you are keen to get some codes for in-game loot hit us up HERE!