Top 10 Games for iPhone / iPad (2011)
Shortly before the New Year, we made our own top of the best games for iOS. At the same time, we were guided by three criteria: the fascination of gameplay, the beauty of the graphic performance, as well as the quality of adaptation to the "apple" platform or, if in Russian, ease of management and lack of glitches. Of course, this was not without subjectivity, but we tried to minimize it. By the way, every game presented in our top for a year either occupied a leading place in the American top, or was included in one of the iTunes charts.
10) Draw Race 2
This game is loved even by those who can not stand the race, and treats cars with disdain. The thing is an unusual approach to the familiar and, as it seemed, incapable of surprising the genre of arcade "pokatushek" in any way. The game, instead of forcing the user to steer his four-wheeled monster along a winding track, offers to draw a route along which the car rushes after the start. What will happen next is almost independent of the player. After all the cars break away, he can only passively watch what is happening and root for his typewriter (well, press the “acceleration” button at a critical moment).
9) Tiny Wings
This game conquered many more simpler than Angry Birds, gameplay, original exploitation of the bird theme and easy psychedelic. It is difficult to call the Tiny Wings hypnotic process otherwise. Throughout the game, sparrows with bulging eyes jump from one striped slope to another, managing to collect coins with a rounded belly. All this under the sweet electronics and pigeon cluck.
8) Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
The most art house project on mobile platforms. Pixel adventure of an incomprehensible girl through a mystical forest, in which there was a place for battles with demons, visiting ancient temples, rescuing local people, witchcraft books, magic spells, contemplative philosophy and, most importantly, a wonderful story. A very rare and very valuable combination not only for a project for iOS, but also for a good game in general.
7) Ticket to Ride
One of the most successful and, perhaps, successful ports of board games, despite the terrible country music and all the same as in the original, a map of the United States. Plus a very important multiplayer feature: the ability to play four together on one mobile device (and, by the way, the system itself keeps track of it, so you don’t need to recalculate points for each move for the tenth time). The latter plays a very important role. From desktop hardcore, Ticket to Ride is turning into a cute tablet casual.
6) Gesundheit
A game about a flu-sick pig who fights terrible monsters by throwing snot. A certain momentum adds to the gameplay an important point - he throws boogers not at opponents. It is useless to throw in them; they are happy to eat these snot. So the piglet has to be marked in traps, or rather in fish that pretended to be traps that eat monsters. In general, if it were not for the graphics in the style of children's notebooks painted with crayons, then it would be safe to come to the Gesundheit art director with people in white coats.
5) Jelly Defense
The usual tower defense, painted under acid after viewing paintings by Salvador Dali. At least it is this feeling that is created when you get acquainted with the Polish project: mushrooms, smooth bends in the style of soft watches, white checkered backgrounds, tentacle-like laughing monsters, farting mustachioed centipede towers and Slavic electronics with a central part of the accordion. The result is a meditative project, from which it is doubly difficult to tear oneself away: on the one hand, proven mechanics, on the other, an abnormally good art design.
UPD: By the way, we recently talked with the developers of this wonderful game - the interview will be interesting to those who make iOS games themselves and are interested in promoting. Plus there are a couple of cool pictures of the creation process. Read and see here .
4) Infinity Blade II
Role-playing action from Epic Games, a kind of milestone in mobile gaming and just a good story about a knight without a princess. If the first part in 2010 was perceived as a demonstration of the capabilities of Apple devices and at the same time the talent of Epic programmers, who stuck Unreal Engine into a mobile phone, then the second part turned out to be a real triple-A project without discounts on the platform. A big world, a sea of content, addictive gameplay and a strong plot for the authorship of the fantasy master Brendon Sanders.
3) Bumpy Road
A retro-style love story whose gameplay is much like playing a xylophone. More precisely, a child’s fuss with this musical instrument, when the child persistently carries a wand on the tablets from “to” to “si” and vice versa. In the case of Bumpy Road, the player carries out a “fuss” so that a cute couple using a miniature machine collects coins for romantic music a la “France”.
2) Contre Jour
Lyrical Ukrainian psychedelics with an independent control, which the project subtly resembles Bumpy Road. One of the saddest and most atmospheric games of the past year, which, in fact, touched many. The only thing that bothers is the protagonist, looking like a big black sperm, hunting for strange luminous blue balls. However, probably, in this ambiguity the charm is hidden, inaccessible neither to a drop from Gish, nor to the mysterious boy from Limbo, nor, moreover, to the dead cat from Naught.
1) Where Is My Water?
Crocodile Swampy conquered the women's hearts of our editorial staff and, judging by the leading positions in the Christmas Top Grossing in the App Store, not only them. A well-fed, greenish monster that is not inferior in terms of tenderness to the frog from Cut the Rope, moreover, prone to cleanliness is the main star of the outgoing year. As for the game itself, there were some surprises here: a realistic physical model of game water forces us to replay simple-looking levels more than once or twice. So most of the time, poor Swampy has to sit in an empty bath.
Based on materials from the App2Top.ru portal
10) Draw Race 2
This game is loved even by those who can not stand the race, and treats cars with disdain. The thing is an unusual approach to the familiar and, as it seemed, incapable of surprising the genre of arcade "pokatushek" in any way. The game, instead of forcing the user to steer his four-wheeled monster along a winding track, offers to draw a route along which the car rushes after the start. What will happen next is almost independent of the player. After all the cars break away, he can only passively watch what is happening and root for his typewriter (well, press the “acceleration” button at a critical moment).
9) Tiny Wings
This game conquered many more simpler than Angry Birds, gameplay, original exploitation of the bird theme and easy psychedelic. It is difficult to call the Tiny Wings hypnotic process otherwise. Throughout the game, sparrows with bulging eyes jump from one striped slope to another, managing to collect coins with a rounded belly. All this under the sweet electronics and pigeon cluck.
8) Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
The most art house project on mobile platforms. Pixel adventure of an incomprehensible girl through a mystical forest, in which there was a place for battles with demons, visiting ancient temples, rescuing local people, witchcraft books, magic spells, contemplative philosophy and, most importantly, a wonderful story. A very rare and very valuable combination not only for a project for iOS, but also for a good game in general.
7) Ticket to Ride
One of the most successful and, perhaps, successful ports of board games, despite the terrible country music and all the same as in the original, a map of the United States. Plus a very important multiplayer feature: the ability to play four together on one mobile device (and, by the way, the system itself keeps track of it, so you don’t need to recalculate points for each move for the tenth time). The latter plays a very important role. From desktop hardcore, Ticket to Ride is turning into a cute tablet casual.
6) Gesundheit
A game about a flu-sick pig who fights terrible monsters by throwing snot. A certain momentum adds to the gameplay an important point - he throws boogers not at opponents. It is useless to throw in them; they are happy to eat these snot. So the piglet has to be marked in traps, or rather in fish that pretended to be traps that eat monsters. In general, if it were not for the graphics in the style of children's notebooks painted with crayons, then it would be safe to come to the Gesundheit art director with people in white coats.
5) Jelly Defense
The usual tower defense, painted under acid after viewing paintings by Salvador Dali. At least it is this feeling that is created when you get acquainted with the Polish project: mushrooms, smooth bends in the style of soft watches, white checkered backgrounds, tentacle-like laughing monsters, farting mustachioed centipede towers and Slavic electronics with a central part of the accordion. The result is a meditative project, from which it is doubly difficult to tear oneself away: on the one hand, proven mechanics, on the other, an abnormally good art design.
UPD: By the way, we recently talked with the developers of this wonderful game - the interview will be interesting to those who make iOS games themselves and are interested in promoting. Plus there are a couple of cool pictures of the creation process. Read and see here .
4) Infinity Blade II
Role-playing action from Epic Games, a kind of milestone in mobile gaming and just a good story about a knight without a princess. If the first part in 2010 was perceived as a demonstration of the capabilities of Apple devices and at the same time the talent of Epic programmers, who stuck Unreal Engine into a mobile phone, then the second part turned out to be a real triple-A project without discounts on the platform. A big world, a sea of content, addictive gameplay and a strong plot for the authorship of the fantasy master Brendon Sanders.
3) Bumpy Road
A retro-style love story whose gameplay is much like playing a xylophone. More precisely, a child’s fuss with this musical instrument, when the child persistently carries a wand on the tablets from “to” to “si” and vice versa. In the case of Bumpy Road, the player carries out a “fuss” so that a cute couple using a miniature machine collects coins for romantic music a la “France”.
2) Contre Jour
Lyrical Ukrainian psychedelics with an independent control, which the project subtly resembles Bumpy Road. One of the saddest and most atmospheric games of the past year, which, in fact, touched many. The only thing that bothers is the protagonist, looking like a big black sperm, hunting for strange luminous blue balls. However, probably, in this ambiguity the charm is hidden, inaccessible neither to a drop from Gish, nor to the mysterious boy from Limbo, nor, moreover, to the dead cat from Naught.
1) Where Is My Water?
Crocodile Swampy conquered the women's hearts of our editorial staff and, judging by the leading positions in the Christmas Top Grossing in the App Store, not only them. A well-fed, greenish monster that is not inferior in terms of tenderness to the frog from Cut the Rope, moreover, prone to cleanliness is the main star of the outgoing year. As for the game itself, there were some surprises here: a realistic physical model of game water forces us to replay simple-looking levels more than once or twice. So most of the time, poor Swampy has to sit in an empty bath.
Based on materials from the App2Top.ru portal