That apostrophe still bothers me. It has always bothered me. I’m getting that off my chest now. Ninja Master’s ($3.99) what? Sigh. Alright, I promise I won’t bring that up again for the rest of the review. There’s plenty to talk about here beyond that, after all. What we’ve got here is the final fighting game from World Heroes creators ADK, now available for you to play on your mobile device. But hey, there’s nothing unusual about a NEOGEO fighting game in your pocket anymore. So does this do anything special to merit notice? I mean, beyond the ninja thing. We all love ninjas.

What I will say is that this is, without question, the best fighting game ADK made. It’s almost frustrating, seeing how far the developer had come from the likes of the first World Heroes. Where could it have gone from here? We’ll never know. All we have is Ninja Master’s. It’s a game that shows ADK had been doing its homework, but it’s also a game that struggles from the company it was in. This game arrived in 1996, and by then SNK had a lot of irons in the fighting game fire. Between King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and Fatal Fury all flying high, it was at a point where the company’s new fighting game IPs were getting devoured by their own older siblings. Ninja Master’s is unfortunately no different.

The chief gimmick of this game, beyond the all-ninja cast, is that you can whip out a weapon at any time during the fight by pressing B + C at the same time. This changes the moves available to you along with various other factors, but not in such a way that your unarmed actions are rendered useless. Indeed, I would say that fighting unarmed is just as effective as using your weapon on the whole. It all comes down to how you like to play, and the situation. This blend of armed and unarmed fighting action makes it seem like ADK was trying to have its Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown it too. In addition to this mechanic, you have the usual SNK desperation moves, super moves, super desperation moves, and so on. You can also use your meter to put yourself in a hyper state that can be pretty helpful at times.

Ninja Master’s has another somewhat unique element among SNK fighting games, though one that wasn’t unusual at the time: dial-a-combos. If you’re not familiar with that term, it refers to a combo where you can just hit all the buttons in sequence without concern for timing and the whole combo will just roll out. Some people like them, some people don’t. Tekken uses them, and it certainly has no shortage of fans. Around the time this was being made, Killer Instinct would have been doing fairly good business and it is probably one of the more well-known dial-a-combo fighters. But you didn’t see a lot of SNK games use them, so seeing them here is interesting.

Otherwise, this is just another NEOGEO fighting game, and that’s not a bad thing. You have a solid cast of varied fighters, and they’re all detailed and well-animated. The backgrounds are terrific, with lots of interesting elements to catch your eye if you have a second to look around. The medieval Japanese setting and ninja focus tie everything together so that it doesn’t feel as scattershot in a thematic sense as some other SNK fighters. The bosses here are quite wild and toppling them is certainly a challenge, but the game gives you enough leeway early on so that you can enjoy batting the CPU around a bit without too much resistance. Which, as we all know, is pretty important for these mobile releases.

I think Ninja Master’s is a pretty good one-on-one fighter, and if it had been in any other camp than SNK’s (apart from Capcom), it would probably be among the very best of that publisher’s offerings in the genre. In the SNK line-up, it has to settle for the upper mid-tier. If you enjoy the theme, you can add some extra points to the bottom line. I like the weapon gimmick, though it probably isn’t used to its maximum effectiveness. Again I can only wonder what a sequel might have brought us when the first attempt was as solid as this is. If you’re tired of spinning the usual hits, give this one a play.

Of course, when we’re talking about these mobile versions, it’s not enough to simply consider the game itself. We also have to think about how well it adapts to mobile, because that’s a different question. As usual for ACA NEOGEO releases, the only multiplayer option requires external controllers and huddling around one display. Most are probably not going to be able to make much use of that, so you’ve got a fighter you can only play in single-player. This one isn’t too shabby in that regard because the CPU isn’t a total jerk until you get near the end, but there’s no doubt something is missing by not being able to play against another human player.

The other consideration comes in the controls. If you’re sporting an external controller like a Backbone One or Kishi, you have nothing to worry about. You’ll be playing it just like anyone on other platforms can. The touch control option is a bit mixed. Some of the special moves can be tricky to pull off, and the desperation attacks are a real pain. Interestingly, that dial-a-combo system is a boon here. At least for me, it’s easier to punch in those combos via touch controls than it is to deal with a standard combo system using such means. It’s no worse off than most other SNK fighters when it comes to special move commands, but in terms of whipping out combos on those virtual buttons, I think Ninja Master’s is more manageable.

We have now reached the part of the review where I talk about the usual features for ACA NEOGEO games on mobile. You can access a variety of gameplay, video, audio, and control options. The Japanese and International versions of the game are available for standard play, plus you get Score Attack and timed Caravan modes to play. There are online leaderboards for all of these ways to play, and they do extend the entertainment value of playing a fighting game alone somewhat. The emulation quality is great, and you would expect it to be given Hamster’s extensive experience in this area by now.

Ninja Master’s suffers from most of the usual problems with the fighting games in the ACA NEOGEO line. You’re highly likely to be playing solo unless you can meet some tough requirements, and fighting games on this platform don’t exactly shine when you’re stuck fighting the CPU. Still, the unique weapon system and dial-a-combo mechanic mean that there is at least something worth noting here, and I can’t argue that the theme and cast aren’t cool and well-implemented. If you’ve been able to enjoy any of the other fighters from SNK on mobile, you might want to give this one a shot. It’s not the best of the bunch, but it’s quite good.

Samba de Amigo finally got its first proper sequel on consoles with the release of Samba de Amigo: Party Central. To go along with it, there is also this Apple Arcade game, titled Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go (). Given the heavy online and multiplayer focus of many of the modes in the console version, Party-To-Go can’t easily follow in the dance steps of its fellow. For better or worse, this is a different sort of beast despite sharing the look, user interface, unlockables, and most of the soundtrack with its console counterpart. Wait, “for better or worse”? This is a review! Let’s determine which of the two it is!

What is Samba de Amigo? Well, it’s a rhythm game that was originally released in arcades in 1999 and on the Dreamcast in the year 2000. This puts it relatively early in the whole rhythm game boom, especially when looking at ones that used plastic instruments. SEGA is always a few years too early to the party, and it’s never a good thing for them. In this case, the plastic instruments were maracas, and they were a lot of fun. You had to hold them at one of three heights and shake along to the beat. Sometimes you would have to make poses, too. Great fun in the arcade and at home, especially if you have spectators there to laugh at you. The soundtrack leaned Latin, but had plenty of classic SEGA tunes and pop hits to round things out. It even had a cover of A-Ha’s Take On Me by ska band Reel Big Fish! Ska! It’s like punk, but with horns and happy!

While the game had a cult following, that was really all it was able to manage. Part of that came down to its home version being on the Dreamcast, part of that came from the cost of the maracas, and part of that was just rudeness. It’s a good game, people. It got a Wii port several years later, but the Wii remotes just couldn’t sub for the maracas. Also, it had Mambo Number 5 on the soundtrack. In 2008. That’s flying too close to the sun, SEGA. This port was developed by Gearbox, the makers of Duke Nukem Forever and Brothers in Arms DS. I get the impression it didn’t do very well, so Amigo went into the vault only to be allowed out to play in SEGA All-Star games.

The monkey has been freed, however. Not just one game, but two. Sort of. Since this is a review of Party-To-Go, I’m going to be focusing on it. I reviewed the Switch version of the other game, Party Central, in the SwitchArcade Round-Up if you want to read about that. In Party-To-Go, you’re given just two modes to play. First is the Rhythm Game mode, where you just pick a song to play and the difficulty you’d like to play it at, then have at it. The other mode is exclusive to this Apple Arcade game. Story Mode takes you through a weird tale of Amigo and the Legendary Maraca trying to bring music back to the Earth. It takes the form of a series of missions that you’ll have to complete. Finish one and you’ll get some story and unlock the next. You’ll also earn coins and levels the same you will in Rhythm Game mode, and can use them to unlock cosmetic items for Amigo.

I like this Story Mode a lot better than the StreamiGo mode in Party Central. There’s less song repetition, and it’s less vague about what you need to do to succeed. The story itself is pretty… banal, to be kind. It makes use of some decent FMV cutscenes now and then, but for the most part it seems to be going for the vibe of an instant message conversation. Which is fine, except the characters are usually face to face. It’s filled with the kind of dialogue you just want to skip through, peppered with the occasional really good line. Well, at least we now have irrefutable evidence the monkey is in a romantic relationship with the puberty-gifted fairy. It’s a fun mode to play through, and I suppose that’s the bottom line.

The soundtrack is mostly similar to Party Central, with a nice mix of classics and contemporary music across a variety of genres. Not many songs from the original return, and it doesn’t seem like the DLC songs from the other game are in the list here. But you do get a few exclusive songs including tracks from PSY and Lady Gaga, and that’s cool. The tunes are definitely more general in their appeal than the first game’s soundtrack, but that’s fine. It means most people should be able to find at least a few songs they know, and will be able to learn some new ones, too. Win-win.

Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go does not have maracas controllers. It does not attempt to replicate them, and even warns you not to shake or move your device. No, this game is entirely touch-based. The screen is divided into left and right and three different height levels. When the ball enters the circle, tap that side and height. When it tells you to pose, put your fingers in the right place. When it tells you to swing the maracas back and forth, slide your fingers back and forth. It’s certainly more accurate than the maracas or any motion controls would be, but it isn’t as fun. I also find some of the sliding motions and commands to be a bit unintuitive to pull off with touch controls. It feels like SEGA just tried to cram in everything Party Central does gameplay-wise into Party-To-Go, but not all of it works due to the differing input method.

Still, setting aside what it isn’t, Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go is a decent enough rhythm game with really strong production values for the most part. It’s not quite as good as Apple Arcade stablemate Taiko no Tatsujin, but the music is good, the gameplay mechanics are fairly easy to grasp, and between the Story Mode and unlockables you certainly have a lot to do. At times it feels like something cobbled together with bits of another game, which it probably has been, but it sometimes feels like it’s doing its own thing too. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there is controller support here. It works like the button controls in Party Central, mapping the positions to the sticks and buttons. I wouldn’t advise it.

I think the Story Mode and extra tunes in Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go make it worth trying out for fans of the series even if they’ve already grabbed Party Central, but there’s no question this game loses something the further it moves away from the grace of the maracas controllers. If you don’t care about that, and there’s a very good chance you don’t, the only thing you really need to worry about here is that the demands of the note charts seem more tuned for console play than touch. You’ll have to really twist your fingers at times. Otherwise, it’s a decent game for its genre with a solid list of tracks to tap along to. Nothing remarkable, but good enough.

While I have my criticisms of the Apple Arcade service, I certainly can’t fault it for its selection of puzzle games. Long time readers will know that Shaun brakes his car without fail for two genres, and puzzlers are one of them. The latest addition to the roster is finity (), which comes by way of developer Seabaa. It’s another one of those games where you’re sliding pieces around on a grid, but apart from the broad strokes it really manages to do its own thing. Is that thing good, though? Let’s find out.

At first, finity carefully holds your hand. It shows you how you can slide rows and columns to match three or more colored blocks vertically or horizontally and clear them. But it soon presents its chief gimmick, which is that each move you make counts down all the pieces in play. The longer they sit there unmatched, the more of a problem they’ll become. First you will only be able to slide them horizontally or vertically, effectively locking the movement of a column or row. Leave them too long and they just won’t be able to be moved at all. You can work around one or two of these kinds of blocks, but each one sends you closer to your demise.

You have some ways of dealing with them, of course. And I don’t just mean by clearing them out, though that is obviously ideal. First, if you match four of one color, the remaining blocks of that color will have their “age” rewound by one turn. This is very, very important. You won’t get far if you aren’t doing this as consistently as you’re able to, though setting up those matches also represents a tough strategic choice. How many turns will it cost you to set up that match? Is it worth the result? Locking two blocks to unlock one would be silly.

Your other means of dealing with these blocks is to use a power-up. In the Classic Mode, each match you make will fill up a bit of a meter. When it fills up, you’ll earn a random power-up. It might allow you to rewind the “age” of a block of your choice, or perhaps paint a block with a different color. These can get you out of a dire situation, but you’ll earn them slowly enough during a game that you shouldn’t even think about relying on them. In the game’s other mode, Tempo, you won’t have access to them at all. The last refuge of the damned, basically.

Just when you think you’re fine with all of this, split color blocks are introduced. They can only be matched by lining up colors on the side that matches that color. After you match them, a block of the remaining color will stay behind. If you have a locked split color block, it’s a major mess to deal with. Every move is critical, and you have to put some serious thought into each of them. Provided you’re playing the mode that gives you time to think, anyway.

Time to talk about those two modes. Classic Mode sees you trying to work your way through an increasingly difficult set of ranks. The general flow sees you making matches until you fill up a bar, which puts you into level-up mode. Here you’ll have to make matches to generate special blocks, then match those blocks to advance to the next level. Doing so will rewind the remaining blocks and send you immediately into the next level, should the rank have one to offer. Finish all the levels for that rank and you’ll earn a nice new skin to play in, unlock new gameplay features, and open up the next rank to play. The first few ranks go really easy on you, but by the time you hit the midway point you’ll either have learned the proper way to play or stall out full-stop. At present, Classic Mode gives you nine ranks to play through.

Next, we’ve got Tempo Mode. Here you’ll choose a tune and then play the game with a few different rules. No power-ups, as mentioned. There’s also a line moving down the screen, and if it reaches the bottom it will age some of your blocks. You have to think fast here. On your initial plays of each song, your aim is to fill up a percentage meter until it hits 100%. Doing so will clear the stage and unlock unlimited play for that tune. In unlimited play, you’re simply trying to get the highest score you can before you fully lock out. While you won’t have power-ups, making consistent matches will fill up three hearts in the middle of the field. If you get completely locked out, one of those hearts will bravely sacrifice itself to get you out of your mess. It takes a while to fill one up, so don’t be too careless. The music builds as you play in this mode, which is pretty cool.

Speaking of the presentation, it’s terrific. The colors are used well, the interface is nice and clean, and everything is where you would expect it to be. It’s all very easy on the eyes but colorful enough to keep your attention. The audio is excellent. Good music to shift piece to in Tempo Mode, and it seems like more songs will be added, so I’m looking forward to hearing those. In Classic Mode, the game leaves it to the sound effects to carry the load. They lend the game the pleasing clicks, clacks, and boops you want to hear in a game like this, and if you get into a groove the effects almost sound musical on their own. The game also makes good use of haptics and vibration, giving the game a bit of a tactile feel without being too in your face.

finity is a slick puzzle game that has some serious bite to it. More casual players might find themselves turned off by that challenge, but I think there’s a lot of merit in the approach the game takes. The Classic Mode gives you all the time in the world to think and sort things out, and hopefully that will train you to better tackle the Tempo Mode and its higher pressure. Despite the difficulty, the rules are easy enough to grasp and make for lively rounds that are different every time. It’s certainly worth checking if you’re an experienced puzzle game fan, and you might enjoy it even if you aren’t.

A provocative title is just the thing to get views, I’m told. Well, if there were ever a cause to drag the pineapple-on-pizza topic back into the discourse, Pizza Hero (Free) just might be it. After all, we’re no longer talking about how the sourness of the fruit is a fantastic match for the sweetness of the sauce and the saltiness of the cheese. No, we’re talking about how effective it is to have a big honkin’ laser beam attached to your slice. Surely that is something we can all get behind? If not, don’t worry: there are plenty of deadly toppings to go around in this Vampire Survivors-inspired romp.

Have we settled on a name for this genre yet? Bullet heaven? Horde defense? HoloCure-like? Auto shooter? A stroll gone wrong? Well, whatever you want to call it, that’s what Pizza Hero is. Almost to a tee, really. You start out with one weak weapon, wander around procedurally generated areas battling enemies, level up, unlock new weapons and passive abilities, and try to survive as the enemy waves get more numerous and powerful. Level up enough times and it starts to feel like you’ve flipped the script and become the monster. Your goal in each area is to survive a set amount of time, an arduous task at first but one that becomes easier as you unlock permanent upgrades and new weapons.

So with that said, what sets Pizza Hero apart from the crowd? The most obvious thing is its theme. You’re playing as some kind of sentient slice of pizza, and all of your weapons are toppings. Passive abilities? They’re all spices and seasonings. The aforementioned pineapple laser beam is here, along with things like a basic mozzarella shot, explosive green peppers, and heat-seeking mushrooms. There are eighteen toppings in all, and you can discover some fun combinations that actually make sense if you know your pizzas. There are also eight different passive spices, which adds up to quite a bit of variety all told.

As with other games of this sort, your main source of upgrades comes from defeating enemies. They’ll leave behind items that give you experience if you can pick them up, and collecting enough of them will give you a level-up. You’ll be presented with three perks you can choose one of as your level-up bonus, and the usual strategies apply here. You have to choose between adding new weapons to your arsenal to expand your spread of attacks or upgrading existing ones to make them more powerful. You’ll also want to pick up the occasional spice for passive boosts. Sometimes you’ll find sauce cans that can contain experience, gold, or health. You’ll also earn experience by firing up any pizza ovens you come across.

One thing you don’t see in many other games of this kind is the dash/combat roll you’re given in Pizza Hero. A quick swipe will boost you out of the way of harm, but a cooldown timer ensures you can’t abuse it. You can get by without using this move if you really don’t feel like using it, but learning it assuredly has its benefits. Since you’re invincible during that little dash, it’s a great way to escape when you’re surrounded. At times, anyway. Sometimes it will just put you in a worse mess. Well, that’s why you have to learn when to use it and when to keep it in your pocket. It’s a neat extra element to the game, if nothing else.

The other interesting mechanic here is that you have a pet with you at all times. You’ll start with a trusty pup that will fetch items for you, but as you play you can rescue its friends and add to your options. Of course, rescuing them is one matter. Surviving long enough to open the portal to bring them home and fully unlock them is quite another. There are ten different pets in total, making for quite the menagerie of furry/feathered friends to lend you an assist. In mechanical terms, this adds even more variety to your builds.

You can also unlock more weapons to choose from at the start, using the typical method of finding it and leveling it up to a certain point. At first, you’re limited to three starting weapons and just one pet to choose from. That’s not a bad thing, as it allows the player to get comfortable with the game before things get more complicated. In a lot of ways, Pizza Hero feels like a more guided experience than some of its peers. Following the roads will always take you somewhere of interest, adding a bit of structure beyond simply surviving. Still, it would behoove the player to remember that surviving is the main point. You won’t unlock the additional maps if you can’t pull that off. There are four maps in total, but one is the tutorial stage. It’s fun when you only have a few minutes to play but most of the action is in those other three areas.

Outside of each individual playthrough, there are a few over-arching elements to take care of. There’s a full list of achievements to work through, each one offering you some valuable gold. That gold can also be found in the game, and you can use it to permanently upgrade ten different stats. Well, if you’ve played Vampire Survivors you know how this works. The upgrades give you a sense of progression beyond trying to unlock the different areas, weapons, and pets, and some of the achievements are fun to figure out. All in all, Pizza Hero gives you a lot of bang for your buck.

That brings us to the monetization. The game is free, after all. And we all know that nothing is truly free. The thing is, Pizza Hero is pretty close to it. You’ll get the occasional mandatory ad after a session, but fairly rarely. You can also watch an ad to continue once after being taken down, and you can watch ads to reroll the upgrades presented to you at a level up. It’s all incredibly inobtrusive, but if even the presence of those few ads bothers you, the developer is apparently looking into adding an IAP to remove them.

Pizza Hero doesn’t reinvent the cheese wheel by any means, but its specific seasonings add an extra flavor to the familiar Vampire Survivors dish. The fun theme, bevy of interesting upgrades, enjoyable list of achievements, and solid action make for a game well-worth playing even if you’ve gorged yourself on a large serving of other titles in the genre. Sometimes it’s just one secret ingredient and a bit of charm that can make a dish its own, and that’s what Pizza Hero offers.

Well, this was a bit of a roller coaster. Publisher Crescent Moon Games is still out here doing its thing on mobile, and I genuinely appreciate that. Its latest release, Luminaria: Forgotten Echoes ($1.99) is an affordable little puzzler with cozy aesthetics, an intriguing little story, and some interesting shadow-based mechanics. It’s not going to last you much more than an hour or so, but there’s nothing wrong with brevity if it fits the game. But do all the pieces fit together? A little exploration is in order, I suppose.

In Luminaria, we follow the story of a little Bio-Drone who has stumbled across the planet Earth. This green, fertile planet once was host to a species known as humans, but something happened that seemingly drove them to extinction. The drone seeks out biological signatures of the departed and follows their memories of their last moments. It’s your job to guide the drone through this process. You get a few dozen stages spread across a few different mini-tales, with the last one bringing it all together and giving you some closure. While it isn’t the most original of tales, the plot did catch my interest as each little snippet was delivered. I don’t know that I loved the ending, but it was a decent bit of set dressing on the whole for a puzzle game.

So what is that puzzle game? It’s a little vague in some ways, but I’ll try to explain. You don’t control the drone. It just does laps around whatever shape or shadow it’s currently stuck to. By sliding your finger around the screen, you can move and stretch the shadows of the shapes on the screen. You need to manipulate the shadows and shapes to create a little square-shaped cul-de-sac in the right place, then make sure the drone goes into it. It’s pretty simple at first, and I was feeling early on that it was too simple, but as the game goes along it sprinkles in extra mechanics like having to match the drone’s color with the exit, blending lights to produce new colors, and so on. It’s a nice bit of progression that keeps you thinking, though the final mechanic irritated me a little. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

Beyond finding the exit, you can also find some hidden lights on each stage. They form a path, and if you can guide the drone along the path to scoop them up in one go, a word will flash on the screen. You need to do at least some of these to unlock the second and third episodes, though the game is fairly lenient with those restrictions as a whole. They mainly serve as an extra challenge to aim for if you want the game to last a little longer, which is a welcome addition. The words don’t really add much to the story, but some people might get more out of their presence than I did.

Luminaria is at its best when it’s asking you to use your reasoning skills to solve the puzzles in front of you. Which makes sense, as this is puzzle game, after all. How can I pick up the right color for my drone? How do I get from here to there? How do I block one lamp so that I don’t end up with a blended color? I enjoyed sorting these set-ups out and making my way to the properly-colored goal with the properly-colored drone. Most of the game is like this, thankfully.

Luminaria is at its worst when it wants you to react quickly over a series of moves. The bonus words can be vexing at times because the shadows move imprecisely and the drone sometimes just does what it wants when objects graze each other. But those aren’t mandatory for the most part, so you can just move on and come back later if you get frustrated. The final chapter introduces a new mechanic that requires you to haul your rear before things disappear. Its implementation in the final few puzzles is particularly annoying, demanding precision that the control sensitivity isn’t prepared to offer. That said, I’m not going to get too angry at a game for turning up the heat in its final stages. That’s how things go. Just be aware that it’s coming.

Presentation-wise, the game looks and sounds good. It’s pretty and soothing. Not designed to knock off your socks or anything like that. Just put you in the mood for some chill puzzle solving. Sure, you’re exploring a planet scouring the memories of a dead species, but it’s just your job. We’re far enough removed from it that we can relax and enjoy the puzzles, right? Right. And hey, who doesn’t like seeing shadows being cast? That’s just classic gamer soul food, there.

If you’re looking for something to play this weekend that doesn’t require a huge commitment of time or a lot of heavy thinking, Luminaria fits the bill nicely. I don’t know if it’s going to stick with me for very long now that I’ve finished it, but I certainly enjoyed my time with it. It irritated me at times and the story didn’t fully satisfy in the end, but overall it’s an interesting puzzler that will keep you busy on a lazy afternoon.

The kinds of games we see come to Apple Arcade has certainly shifted in the general sense over time. I can understand why, as Apple tries to get the biggest engagement bang for its bucks. Why blow the bank on a bunch of games that people will play through once or twice and then never touch again? Oddly, this has resulted in Apple Arcade seemingly coming full circle to provide a lot of games similar to the ones that dominate the rest of the App Store. Kingdoms: Merge & Build () is clearly one such title, taking after hits like Merge Mansion. Not the first merger we’ve seen on Apple Arcade, but it’s the first one I’m bothering to review. I’d like to say there is some grand reason, but it’s just a spontaneous choice. Let’s see how it works out for me.

Some information up-front before we get into things. I’ve played a few merging puzzle games before, most notably Merge Dragons. It helped me get some premium currency in Avengers Academy, and I found it amusing for a while. Eventually I hit the hard paywalls and just stopped playing. Not the worst thing I played for a leg-up in my stupid Marvel game, but also not something I was going to go far out on a limb for. Merge Mansion‘s ads certainly enticed me, but I quickly realized I was more interested in the ads than the game. So that is where I am at with this kind of game, and I apologize for fans of the genre if I don’t quite do things service here.

Prince Edward is the young royal heir of a fictional kingdom, and he’s a narcissistic, lazy, obnoxious, spoiled little twit. For reasons I can’t possibly fathom, his parents decided it would be okay to leave the kingdom in his hands while they went on a trip. It doesn’t take long for things to go to heck, and in the wake of an argument with a mage the entire kingdom is destroyed. The job of putting things back in order thus falls to the person least qualified in the world to do it. He only cares about his own comfort and revenge, of course. But he isn’t going to be able to get what he wants without the help of others, and he’s not going to get that unless he starts being less of a royal pri…nce.

That’s the story, and it pretty much progresses as you would expect. Edward gets to know the citizens of his kingdom, sees how hard they work, actually does some hard work himself, and eventually learns to stop being such a little jerk. Not a terribly original tale by any means, and Edward being the center of everything means you’re going to have to put up with his antics for a good long while. The story is broken down into chapters, and as you complete the various goals of each chapter you’ll get a bit of story doled out.

I wish I could tell you the gameplay has some original elements to it, but that would be a fib and a half. Generally speaking, you’re looking to rebuild your kingdom. Building anything or upgrading anything requires money and materials, and you’ll acquire both of those by merging things on the merge board. Some buildings serve to produce generators, producing a new one as you exhaust the previous one in an utterly pointless mechanic that is clearly there for the game’s eventual move out of Apple Arcade and into the realm of free-to-play. Other generators can only be acquired by fulfilling requests, which only require things you can get via the basic generators.

Some of your buildings will generate coins, but you’ll get the bulk of your money by completing standard requests. Those will eventually run out, but will refresh very quickly. The timers feel almost pointless since they’re really short. The more you play, the more generators you’ll have to deal with, leading to a much more cluttered board. Luckily, you can sell anything off the board whenever you like to make some room. You can also use some of the ultimate merged forms as tools in the kingdom building portion. Well, if you’ve played a game like this before you probably know how all of this goes. The more you play the more expensive everything gets, requiring you to grind on that board for a really long time to get anything done.

That’s the one remaining bit of friction from what I’m sure is the original free-to-play design of this game. Everything else has been toned down, such as the timers and generator spawns, so you can pretty much just keep playing until you finish the game or get bored. The latter will likely strike before too long, because it really does start taking too much time to get anything done. There’s absolutely no strategy involved in the merging game since most of the generators are readily available and any space issues can easily be mitigated by selling off items on the board. The result is a game that is more like a boring storybook that requires you to write lines on the board between page turns.

If you want to play a merging game in Apple Arcade, I’d recommend My Little Pony: Mane Merge over this one. It’s more interesting mechanically, the story bits are better, the characters are less annoying, and the presentation is a lot nicer. Kingdoms: Merge & Build is technically more interesting than, like, counting spots on the ceiling or twiddling your thumbs, but just barely. It comes off very much like a free-to-play game that has made a couple of tweaks to fit the Apple Arcade rules, and those changes end up squeezing out what little mechanical engagement the game likely had to offer. The story and characters don’t help matters, either. Just a dud all around.

While I’m still waiting for a few games from my list of games I’d like to see hit iOS, I’m super happy that Witch Beam’s narrative puzzler Unpacking ($9.99) has gotten an excellent conversion on iOS through Humble Games. Over the last week or so, I’ve been replaying Unpacking on iPhone, iPad, Switch, Steam Deck, and Xbox to see how I feel about the game over a year since it launched, how the iOS version plays, and more. It has been interesting to revisit the game and narrative of Unpacking with its iOS release and the added perspective of helping a family member move and unpack recently.

Your aim in Unpacking, as the name suggests, is unpacking and arranging various objects. You experience someone’s life through different stages with a narrative that slowly unfolds through objects, locations, and puzzles. Don’t expect a traditional story here though. Unpacking will take you about 3 or 4 hours to play depending on how good you are at positioning and placing objects. If you ever get stuck, you can enable an accessibility option to let you place objects anywhere. This removes the puzzle aspect of Unpacking, but is there as an option. It was fun seeing specific objects change over time, and also learning how you should arrange things, because I definitely have been organizing some items wrongly if Unpacking is to be believed.

These items are all in boxes, and Unpacking grows more complex giving you different rooms and more kinds of objects to place. As a zen experience, Unpacking nails everything, but I found myself confused for the specific placement for some objects. When you finish, these objects will glow telling you that they need to be placed somewhere else. This leads to trial and error, and is the only actual gameplay element of Unpacking that I didn’t like.

When I first played Unpacking, I used a combination of touch and button controls. I loved it on Switch, but it felt like a game that would shine on iPad. Fast forward to today, Unpacking is available on iOS and Android at half the price of the console and PC versions. The developers of the port have done a fantastic job, but there are a few issues right now on mobile, less so on iPad.

Unpacking supports full touch controls and controllers on iOS. I used my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone 11 and had a great time with Unpacking. Playing with touch controls isn’t an amazing experience on my iPhone 11 though. It is better on iPhone 14 Plus. On iPad, Unpacking feels right at home. The visuals are gorgeous on my iPad Pro, and it even supports controllers with correct button prompts. When I used my DualSense controller, it automatically swapped to showing me PlayStation button prompts. I have no complaints with the iPad version’s interface.

Unpacking on iOS has a lower frame rate than the console versions, but it isn’t a dealbreaker. I am disappointed to not see support for 120hz like the PC version has or even a locked 60fps option on modern iOS devices. When it comes to controls and the interface, mouse and touch are the best ways to play Unpacking. I would only use a controller with an analog stick to move the cursor as a last resort option or if you’re playing on your phone with a Backbone or Kishi controller.

The iPhone version even has a vibration option that uses haptics. They are very well implemented. Barring that, you can increase the touch target for icons to make it easier to play on iPhone. Unpacking isn’t a long game, but I would’ve still liked to have cloud saves using iCloud on iOS.

Having played Unpacking on Nintendo Switch, PC, and Xbox before the iOS version, it is hard to find fault with the latter barring the lack of iCloud save support. The asking price being half of other platforms and such an excellent conversion definitely makes it an easier recommendation. I already loved the storytelling, relaxing gameplay, gorgeous visuals, and soundtrack in Unpacking, but it has found a new home on iOS and shines on the plattform. I hope the developers can add a higher frame rate option, but I have nothing bad to say about Unpacking barring that. If you held off on the PC and console versions, Unpacking is essential on iPad.

A few months ago, SNK and Hamster released Savage Reign in the ACA NEOGEO mobile line. In my review, I gave it a bit of a drubbing due to its slap-dash mechanics, poor thematic consistency, and general lack of any real distinguishing features in SNK’s ocean of great fighting games. It was less about it being a bad fighter, since it wasn’t, but more about it feeling redundant in the face of the genre’s first major boom period. It somehow got a sequel in the following year, which shows you just how much money there was in one-on-one arcade fighters at the time. You wouldn’t be able to tell by the title, mind you. Kizuna Encounter ($3.99) is the follow-up to Savage Reign, but it doesn’t seem to want to advertise that fact. How much can change in just a year and a half, though? Let’s find out.

So, first of all, let’s talk about the roster. It mostly keeps the same characters, but it retires Carol the dodgeball girl and that one kid with the shield. In their place we get Rosa, a cool girl with a katana, and Kim, who wields a staff and has some mad Tae Kwon Do skills. He may or may not be related to the Kim we know and love from more famous SNK fighters. We also have a new final boss who is quite a bit cooler than the previous one. The rest of the bunch are essentially the same, but it’s impressive how swapping out a couple of the odder fighters for a pair of more grounded ones helps the roster feel more consistent overall. The backgrounds have also been reined in, with more thematically appropriate venues that actually feel like they’re from the same setting.

The mechanics have seen some heavy changes. The multi-plane fighting that served as the closest thing to a gimmick Savage Reign had has been tossed out entirely. It’s fully gone. The simple ranged weapon attack mapped to A + B is also gone, nixed in favor of more typical commands and special moves. One button uses your weapon, one button punches, and one button kicks. As to that fourth button, that’s where Kizuna Encounter gets interesting. You see, that fourth button allows you to tag in your partner character.

Let me hit you with a couple of release dates. Kizuna Encounter, released in arcades worldwide by SNK on September 20th, 1996. X-Men vs. Street Fighter, released in arcades in Japan by Capcom on September 25th, 1996. Both of these games introduced a feature that would become very popular in the genre in a hurry: tag team matches. Sure, the idea of having the player choose a team of fighters was well-established by this point, most famously in SNK’s King of Fighters series. But in those games, each character took their turn fighting. You couldn’t swap your characters on the fly mid-round. In Kizuna Encounter and X-Men vs. Street Fighter, you can. Check those dates. Kizuna did it first.

Kizuna Encounter also uses its tag system in a very interesting way. You can tag between your characters whenever you like, but you have to be in your tag zone. It’s basically the area where you begin each round. If you’re outside of that zone, you can’t tag in your partner. Further spice comes from the fact that if either of your fighters has their life bar diminished, the fight is over. No, the other character won’t jump in and continue the fight. So you have two full life bars to work with, but you have to juggle them to get the most out of them. On the other hand, if you can dominate your opponent and keep them away from their tag zone, you only have one life bar to whittle down. This… is a very intriguing hook. Wow, the sequel to Savage Reign has a solid hook!

I wonder if the developers understood at the time how ubiquitous this mechanic would become, albeit with a few tweaks? Probably not. But here we are, looking back almost thirty years later, and this game feels pretty darned good to play. That the tag zone element didn’t catch on serves to give this game a distinct flavor that helps it rise above a lot of its contemporaries. No, it doesn’t have Wolverine in it. I will admit that is a notable disadvantage versus the other tag-team fighter that came out that week. But when you compare it to Savage Reign, it’s frankly incredible how much of a glow-up Kizuna Encounter is.

As a cherry on top of all of this for mobile players, this is actually rather enjoyable to play in single player. The CPU isn’t too nasty, at least until you get to the last boss, so you can enjoy giving them a thrashing with the various characters when you have a spare minute or two. This is important because as usual you are probably not going to have the right set-up to enjoy this mobile version in multiplayer. You’ll need external controllers and some sort of means of displaying the game for both players. You know, unless you want to snuggle up around your iPhone screen. So yes, you’ll probably be flying solo and taking on the CPU opponents.

Time for the rest of the usual comments. As mentioned, you can use an external controller and it’s definitely the way to play. Hook up your Backbone or Kishi and you’ll be whipping out those special moves no problem. The touch controls are a bit harder to deal with, but Kizuna Encounter isn’t a game that relies heavily on fancy chains of moves or combos, so there are worse choices. The usual extra modes are here, along with all of the gameplay, video, and control options we’ve seen in the other ACA NEOGEO releases. The Score Attack and Caravan modes are an alright fit here, allowing you to jostle on the leaderboards if enough other players show up to the party.

With all the usual provisos about ACA NEOGEO mobile versions of fighting games in mind, I kind of dig Kizuna Encounter. I think you’re better off enjoying it on a platform where you can indulge in the multiplayer mode, but taking it for what it is, I can think of worse ways to blow a few bucks on a mobile game. It’s one of those NEOGEO games that I think a lot of people missed, and I would say that it holds up rather well for a game of its vintage thanks to that enjoyable tag team feature. If you don’t mind being essentially locked to single-player in a one-on-one fighter, give Kizuna Encounter a look.

It’s been a bit over five years since the release of Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, a game that I loved just as much as its predecessor The King of Dragon Pass. That might seem like a bit of a wait for a sequel, but the gap between the first and second game was almost twenty years, so I think we’re doing alright here. Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out ($9.99) once again returns to the fictional setting of Glorantha, a world where gods and goddesses hold major sway over the happenings of the mortal world. Or at least they did, because in Lights Going Out, the ca-ca has hit the fan. A clash between gods has put the world in the brink of ruin, and you have to somehow survive in the fallout of this fierce struggle.

The setting is the biggest change in Six Ages 2. Previous games saw you guiding a tribe in relatively prosperous times. Sure, there were plenty of dangers and risks, and it wasn’t unusual to fall afoul of the gods or spirits and get wiped out. But the smart leader could find a great bounty in the land and its offerings, leading their tribe to an unprecedented level of comfort and happiness. That won’t be the case here. The gods of Chaos have been uncorked, and many of the familiar gods from the previous game are straight-up dead. The land is ailing, the trade routes have crumbled, and everyone is filled with the tension and dread of an uncertain future.

We can’t choose the times we’re born into, and we can’t choose the setting of the game we’re playing. All we can do is play our hand as best we can, and that’s just what you’ll do in Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out. Despite the grimmer setting, this follow-up isn’t any more difficult than the previous games. The good outcomes are generally less good and the bad outcomes are quite a bit worse, but your ability to achieve either remains the same. It’s an interesting twist that helps this game stand out despite sharing almost everything mechanically with its predecessors. You really feel like you’re barely surviving in this harsh world, and just seeing the names of gods crossed out on the usual list has a heavy impact for those who have been following along with the series.

For those new to these games, this is a blend of two kinds of games. On the one hand, it is a simulation game. You are leading your tribe, managing your resources, making diplomatic choices, and dealing with attacks. You have to try to forge and maintain uneasy alliances with other tribes, keep your people well-fed, and avoid bringing down the wrath of as many gods as you can. It’s not quite as detailed as the likes of Civilization, but it holds a similar appeal. Not a whole lot has changed here when compared to the last game, but there is a sense of scarcity and you certainly don’t have as many gods to appeal to. It’s also a bit harder to adhere to the principles of your tribe, given the circumstances.

The other half of the game is a choice-based narrative adventure. Events will occur where you’ll have to make a decision. Your advisers will offer their input and you can choose which of them you want to listen to, if any. Sometimes there is a clear best answer, but it’s rarely that simple. Indeed, in this game you’re often faced with a choice between seemingly equally unpleasant outcomes. And sometimes you might think you made a good choice but it comes around later to bite you in the hindquarters. There are pleasant surprises too, though they’re not something you should count on. A lot of strange things can happen in the world of Glorantha, especially in the state it’s in, and a lot of the fun of the game is in seeing what happens in these events. The writing is really sharp, and it certainly has its own sense of humor at times.

Naturally, these scenes are all accompanied by some terrific artwork. Always a highlight of the series, and as good as it’s ever been here. It’s a little extra spice that helps bring this unusual world to life and helps sell some of the bizarre things that can occur. As with the other games in the series, there are hundreds of these events and they’re largely random in terms of when or if they will appear. This introduces an element of chaos into the game no matter how well you organize things on the simulation end, and ensures that the game can be almost endlessly replayed without covering the same ground.

One cool feature in this game is the ability to continue on your story from Ride Like the Wind. You don’t have to do this, and it’s easy enough to roll up a new tribe’s history just by jumping into Lights Going Out, but I love it when games allow this kind of thing. It makes the games feel even more connected despite the considerable amount of time between the two, and it increases your feeling of ownership over your own story. And for those dipping in for the first time, there’s a good tutorial here that will teach you the ropes, plus lots of tool tips as you play if you want them. I don’t think these are the easiest of games to get into due to their complexity and capricious nature, but it’s never been easier to do so.

It’s funny, but I think despite largely standing still in the mechanical sense, Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out might be positioned for the widest appreciation that series has seen yet. The world of gaming is now a lot more willing to accept random twists that disrupt your strategy, and I feel like the vibe is a lot friendlier towards games with strong narrative elements. The premise makes this feel more like a survival game, and those are pretty hot these days too.

If you enjoyed either of the previous games, Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out is a no-brainer. You’ll love it. Newcomers will have to climb over a bit of a wall to find the treasure that lay beyond, but that wall is easier to get over now than ever before. A real winner, and I’ll happily play it for however many years it takes for the next one to arrive.

The mobile ecosystem has done pretty alright with shoot-em-ups over the course of its history. Indeed, some of the earliest cell phone games were shooters. When the iPhone launched, we soon had a bunch of great conversions of Cave’s arcade shooters amid a number of indie games. Sky Force, Phoenix, Danmaku Unlimited, .Decluster, and more have provided us with a steady stream of enjoyable experiences in the genre. I think we can add another log to that cozy fire with the release of Bullet Hell Heroes (Free), a shooter that applies a less common theme to some familiar gameplay.

Well, less common than spaceships or military craft, I guess. Fans of the genre will be more than a little familiar with the Touhou Project shooters, which opt for cute characters instead of deadly craft. Bullet Hell Heroes openly admits its inspiration from those games, and it’s not as though it’s alone in that. This game offers up a whopping twenty-five different heroes to use, each with their own shot and special move. Sure, there’s a shrine maiden in there, but you also get more typical RPG-style heroes to round things out. There’s a good variety here, and it’s fun trying to find the heroes that fit your play style best.

But a hero shouldn’t set out alone, right? In this game, you don’t just choose one hero for the quest. At first you can bring three with you, with additional slots available via IAPs. These effectively function as extra lives. If your first hero is shot down, the next one will jump in. Run out of heroes and you fail the quest. It’s up to you how you want to build your team, but there isn’t a whole lot of strategizing since the means of swapping characters is to kill the current one. It mostly comes down to whether you want to put your strongest character first or last. Well, that’s not nothing.

The controls work as you would expect if you’ve played any mobile shooters in the last decade or so. Drag your finger around to move your character, and tap a second finger down to use your character’s special move. You can only do that if you have sufficient MP, of course. Each hero starts off with a full MP bar and the amount consumed depends on the move. You can rebuild MP by grazing shots, nudging you towards that popular mechanic. If you’re bold, you can tee up your special moves at a surprisingly steady pace, and that’s always fun. Since your MP bar caps out, you can’t stockpile too many of these moves, which encourages you to use them instead of just trying to hoard them for the boss battles. Oh, I should also mention that if you have an external controller, the game offers support for that. Either method works fine.

There are more than twenty different quests to play, each one consisting of a short stage followed by a multi-stage boss battle. While the stages aren’t anything special, I do appreciate that the game isn’t just a series of boss fights. I like to have that little warm-up before the main event, so to speak. The boss battles are naturally the stars of the show, and each one of them is a blast to tackle. They all have their own patterns that can often surprise you, keeping you on your toes as you whittle down their life bars. You can play each of the quests at five different difficulty levels, though you’ll have to earn the right to play the two highest ones. There are also Boss Rush stages to challenge if you’re looking for more to do, adding up to a rather substantial amount of content all-up.

Since I’ve briefly mentioned the topic of unlocking, let’s talk about how everything works in that regard here. At the start of the game, you have access to three heroes. The rest of them are all locked, and the means of gaining access to them varies. Some require you to beat a specific number of quests at certain difficulty levels. Some are bought with the money you collect by playing stages and checking off the game’s achievements. Almost half of them are bought with real money via IAPs, selling for a couple of bucks each. If you’re unlocking the non-IAP characters legit, you’ve got a bit of a task ahead of you, but it’s one that gives the game a solid sense of purpose and a pleasing trickle of new things to try. I kind of like that set-up. That said, even once you have the heroes there are lots of ways to spend your in-game cash. Each hero can be upgraded in various ways, and it will take a lot of playing to max out everyone.

Alright, let’s talk about the monetization. Dirty business, but when a game is free to download and play there has to be some way to pay the developer’s air conditioning bills. First up, there are ads. Unskippable ones, and they’re fairly frequent. The game will compensate you for watching them, but they can be annoying. Drop four bucks and they’re gone forever, with an additional hero slot and a coin doubler thrown in for your pleasure. There’s an IAP you can buy for a couple of dollars for an extra hero slot, and it’s available to buy twice. You can pay a couple of bucks for a ton of coins, and that’s available to buy as many times as you like. Finally, there’s an IAP you can pick up for four bucks that unlocks every hero in the game. Don’t buy those individual hero unlocks, in other words.

If you want to fully unlock everything in Bullet Hell Heroes, you’re looking at spending a rather reasonable twelve American dollars. I think the quality of the game supports that price, and you can certainly get by with one or two IAPs if you feel like it. Heck, you can get by with none of them if you don’t mind ads and the idea of missing out on heroes. But I do want to talk about that IAP that unlocks all of the heroes, because I think it’s in a weird place. It really does unlock all of the heroes, including the ones you would normally get by completing certain objectives and spending coins. That takes some of the fun out of the meta progression, in my opinion, so I think you’re almost better off waiting until you’ve unlocked the non-IAP heroes before buying this one. There are a lot of wrong ways to spend your money with this game, and that isn’t something you want to worry about while trying to enjoy a game.

Sigh, two paragraphs on monetization. Well, hopefully that’s all properly explained now. I should stress that the game itself is well-made and a lot of fun. I like that the developer went to the trouble of making backgrounds and pixel art monsters, heroes, and so on to fill things out instead of just going with simple shapes. Not that I mind that kind of thing, but it’s cool to see some non-abstract visuals now and then. I liked experimenting with various “parties” of heroes, and some of the special moves are quite unique and interesting to find a use for. There is a lot of stuff packed in here, and it’s all of very good quality. I think any fan of bullet hell shooters will be more than happy with what Bullet Hell Heroes has to offer. Just make sure you shop responsibly when it comes to those IAPs.