Bendroid, the development team behind the hugely popular Mystique series of games, have announced the release of their latest Andriod game, CarWash 3D.  Car Wash 3D is a similar concept to the flight control style games where instead of guiding a number of aircraft to land safely, you have to try and guide a number of cars through a car wash without them crashing into either one another or the scenery.

Here’s the description from the official market:

CarWash 3D is the world’s most challenging game created just for you. Touch and guide cars directly into the car wash and avoid being hit! Remember, you need to wash every car, otherwise you are OUT OF BUSINESS!!!

Featuring:

- Incredibly simple, but amazingly engaging.

- Beautiful 3D graphics.

- 3 unique locations.

- More than 10 various vehicles.

- Local and Global highscores.

- WARNING: Insanely addictive gameplay.

As well as announcing the game’s release, Bendroid have also announced that, for the first few weeks, there will be a little competition running: the player with the highest score across the three online leaderboards will win a Verizon DROID.

We’ll take CarWash 3D for a spin and will have a review for you next week.

More details can be found here.

This week, we’re taking a look at See The Light, a puzzle game from a new developer by the name of The Animal Farm Creations.  In See The Light, the aim of the game is to direct different coloured lights to their respectively coloured goals.  This is achieved through strategically placing mirrors and other objects on the game grid to redirect the light beams.  Here’s the description from the official Android Market:-

A puzzle game set in deep space, See the Light challenges you to manipulate light using mirrors, lenses, energizers, absorbers, and other tools to solve 80 levels.  See if you can overcome increasingly tricky puzzles while unlocking every award!

As mentioned, gameplay in See The Light revolves around guiding beams of light towards goals by dropping objects which have differing effects on the light beams on to the game grid.  There are 9 different objects in all; mirrors, which reflect light at a 90 degree angle; lenses, which er, deflect light through them at a 90 degree angle; mirror balls, which send beams of light reflecting off in multiple directions at once, prisms, which can deflect light at different angles depending on their orientation and the colour of light that hits them; black holes which suck light in, preventing it from travelling any further; two destructive ‘energizers’ which destroy objects in the path of the beam of light and two rotaters which shift an object  clockwise or counter-clockwise by 90 degrees.  The game is controlled via the touchscreen, you just drag the object you want to place from the sidebar and it snaps to the invisible game grid.  You can then tap on the object to rotate it until you’re happy with it’s angle, where you can then tap a little green tick that appears next to the object to confirm it’s placement.  These controls were a little inaccurate at times, particularly in the bottom right hand corner of the touchscreen, but the developer has confirmed to us that this is to be fixed with an upcoming update.

Graphically, the game is pretty simple.  The objects are nothing startling to look at, but they don’t need to be for a puzzle game like this.   They are crisp, clear and easy to make out against the starry background though.  There is a mellow feeling soundtrack to the game, which, even after playing the game for a good while, I never found annoying – to my mind that’s about as close to a compliment as you can get.

Gameplay in See The Light is engaging and I caught myself on a few occasions simply staring at levels for a few minutes at a time, trying to plan out my next move.  Gameplay isn’t forgiving.  If you fail at any given level, you ahave to reset the level.  I’d like to see an “undo last” type button in there as there were a few times I placed an object only to realise I’d set it at the wrong angle – which is a little grating when you’re at the end of an elaborate set of object placements.  That’s a minor criticism though, and probably more indicative of my ham-fistedness at times than any failings in game design.  One thing that is glaringly missing from the game though, is the opportunity to skip a level and come back to it later: some of the 80 levels are fiendishly difficult to crack, taking a lot of experimentation before reaching that eureka moment.  Add to this the fact that even some of the earlier levels are real head-scratchers and I can see a lot of people being put off before they’ve even finished a quarter of the levels due to frustration.  It’s worth persevering with though, as those moments when you nail a level you’ve been staring at impotently for the past 15 minutes are their own reward.

Overall, I’m reasonably impressed with this as a first effort.  The progression of difficulty could possibly be tweaked a little as some levels which I felt were very difficult were often followed by levels that were completed on the first attempt, within seconds.  A level editor would also be a great addition to a game like this and would help keep interest up.  The inability to skip levels will undoubtedly see some frustrated folks reaching for the refund button within the first 24 hours, but die-hard puzzlers will find they’re kept busy and will certainly enjoy the challenge.  The game is currently available on the Android Market for $0.99, but this is apparently a limited time half price offer which ends on July 2nd, when the price reverts to it’s usual $2.00.

Gamevil yesterday announced that the sequel to their very successful Android baseball game Baseball Superstars is now available on the Android Market.  The original sold very well and featured in many folks’ top 10 games lists for the platform.  The sequel promises more of the same and, unlike many new titles these days, is Android 1.5 compatible, so all of you Hero users who are still awaiting an update will be able to play.  At $5.99 though, it’s not as cheap as a lot of the games on the market.  Here’s the press release:-

LOS ANGELES, CA — June 23rd, 2010 — GAMEVIL(R), a leading mobile game publisher and developer, today announced that its Baseball Superstars 2010 game is available on the Android Market. The game will support HVGA and WVGA screen resolutions and will be available for Android 1.5 and above.

Baseball Superstars 2010 for Android is a full-featured baseball game with six different modes: Exhibition, Season, My League, Homerun Race, Mission, and Match Play. In this new version, the user can now customize up to six players through My League mode and enjoy playing the game with more items, more hidden characters and even more hidden teams. The new Match Play mode enables the user to play against their friends asynchronously over the network, and the new leaderboard enables the user to compare their records with everyone around the world.

“Baseball Superstars has been the top selling sports franchise on the Android Market ever since its launch and we’re thrilled to release its sequel.”, said Kyu Lee, Head of GAMEVIL USA. “We’re confident that our users will enjoy the enhancements included within this year’s version as GAMEVIL continues multi-platform support with Android.”

Baseball Superstars 2010 is now available for $5.99 from the Android Market. For more details, please visit www.gamevil.com.

About GAMEVIL

GAMEVIL(R) is a premier mobile game publisher located in Seoul, Korea and Los Angeles, USA. Established in 2000, GAMEVIL has earned a reputation as one of the best companies in the mobile games sector by crafting award winners in a diverse portfolio of games. GAMEVIL is well known for revolutionizing the sector with its original and innovative mobile games, backed by unparalleled expertise in advanced mobile technology. As a world class leader in mobile games publishing, GAMEVIL continues to lead the sector with a commitment to establish mobile as the definitive mass market entertainment platform of the world. GAMEVIL is currently listed on the KOSDAQ Market (Ticker: 063080, Bloomberg: 063080:KS, Reuters: 063080.KQ)

We’ll have a review of the game for you over the next few days.

Door-6, the developers of the play for cash prizes game, Vacuum, have announced the “Unofficial Winners” of their first round of prizes.  We’re not entirely sure what an unofficial winner is, but perhaps the listed winners should not get too carried away just in case…

Congratulations to the winners anyway, official or otherwise!

Vacuum Contest Period Ends, Unofficial Winners Announced

Madison, WI – June 2, 2010 – Today Door-6 is proud to announce the top scoring players of Vacuum: The Global Competition. The prizes which will be distributed after confirming the players’ eligibility are $500 (USD) for 1st, $250 for 2nd, and $100 for 3rd. For the purpose of privacy, only the in-game nicknames of the winners will be released today.

Coming in first place with a score of 2132 is “tim”. In second place, with a score of 2073, is “imran”. The third highest score was posted by “tim” as well with 1952, but the fourth highest score and therefore the winner of the third prize is “Stephen” with a score of 1921.

Congratulations to our winners and thanks to all our players who competed ferociously over the past 60 days. Keep an eye out for forthcoming updates to Vacuum and we hope you continue to enjoy the game!

Vacuum is the latest release from game development studio Door-6, Inc. Founded in 2009 and based in Madison, Wisconsin, Door-6 focuses on delivering premium software to smartphone users. Development began initially on Google’s Android mobile operating system, but has grown to include others. Look for the great mobile games of tomorrow to come from Door-6.

Brick Annoyed is classic arcade game.  You have to destroy all balloons on the screen to advance to the next level.

Gadgets will fall from some balloons and help you finishing the level or even get you an extra ball.

Global geoscore: http://www.party-ville.com/ba

Gameplay, like in all Breakout clones, revolves around trying to clear all of the bricks (or as is the case here, brick-shaped balloons) from each level using a bat and ball. The ball flies towards the bricks, damaging them and eventually bounces back towards the ground/space/thin air, you need to position the bat so as to prevent the ball landing/being lost/disappearing (if this format is completely alien to you, then you should probably avoid downloading any games for any device. Ever.). The game is controlled by one of two methods – you can either use your device’s accelerometer, or you can swipe across the touchscreen to change direction. The controls (both accelerometer and touchscreen) seemed just ever-so-slightly sluggish in the response to me, but otherwise worked fine.

There are two different game modes: Ball, in which you follow the standard Breakout format of smashing the balloons with your bat and ball, and Clock, in which you follow the standard Breakout format of smashing the balloons with your bat and ball…against the clock.  There’s little noticeable difference between the two game modes, except that the Clock mode gets much more difficult to progress in as you increment through the levels.  Graphically, whilst the game isn’t going to win any awards, it’s simple, bright, easy on the eye and has a polished, cartoony feel to it.

The gameplay is pretty much what you’d expect from a Breakout clone-  you’re not going to come across many surprises here, but it’s well put together and instantly playable, which I suppose is all you can ask of a free casual game.  I did find that, in addition to the slightly sluggish response I mentioned above, that the game occasionally lagged a little, but I tested it on a Hero, so it will presumably fare better on current generation Android devices.

Overall, I can’t think of too much that’s wrong with Brick Annoyed.  It’s a solid, straightforward Breakout clone that does exactly what it says on the tin.  But at the same time, that’s what holds games like Brick Annoyed back – in a Market that’s filled to bursting with clones of classic games, it would be nice to see a novel approach to an old format to make a title really stand out from the rest.  However, it would be unfair to use this criticism as a negative mark against Brick Annoyed.  It’s well put together, I noticed no bugs and it’s definitely an above average example of it’s genre.  Add to that the fact that Brick Annoyed is free and I’d say it’s well worth a look.

Some selected comments from users of Brick Annoyed:-

“Great! Totally worth downloading.” – (5 out of 5 stars)

“Yea this is an above average paddle game.  Good work the shifting background is a nice touch” – (4 out of 5 stars)

“The game has the ability to improve, however lag and lack of response for the Cliq is the reason for the uninstall” – (3 out of 5 stars)

It’s taken a little while, but Badlogic Games last week released the fully paid version of physics puzzler Newton (reviewed here)to the Android Market.  The full Netwon version contains the same levels which can be found on the  ‘Lite’ version plus 47 newly designed levels.  As promised, the update to Newton also contains a map editor so that budding sadists can create their own levels.

Badlogic Games have also updated the Lite version to add the map editor, an additional 27 levels and ad support.

The full version of Newton is available on the Android Market for €0.99

You can read more here.

Some of our readership out there may be players or ex-players of Pocket Empires, a pretty popular medievil themed empire building game in which players can get ahead quicker by donating money for gems.  We’ve never played it ourselves as none of us here are keen on the pay for resources model, but we’ve heard very good things about the game.  Sadly, though, many of our readers (particularly those who are developers who have published apps to the market) will be more familiar with Pocket Empires through the sheer volume spam comments related to the game that have been appearing under completely unrelated games over the last few days.  That, in itself, is bad enough, but what if the developer had actually been encouraging users to spam by rewarding them with in-game resources?  Well, sadly, that’s an allegation that’s being made by a number of members of the development community, who are accusing Pocket Play, the developers of Pocket Empires, of offering it’s playerbase gems in exchange for leaving Pocket Empire related comments in the Android Market.

There have been a number of threads (see here and here) on the Android Market forum, and other Android related forums relating to the Pocket Empires spam.  One commenter claims to have gotten their hands on a chat log of Pocket Play actively encouraging people to spam, here’s an excerpt from the alleged chat:-

[4/18/2010 9:05:19 PM] Pocket Play: Any players wanna help me out?
[4/18/2010 9:05:20 PM] Michael Lytle: aw ok my bad
[4/18/2010 9:05:23 PM] Saltrix: how so?
[4/18/2010 9:05:29 PM] Michael Lytle: ill help
[4/18/2010 9:05:40 PM] Jf: how
[4/18/2010 9:05:40 PM] Pocket Play: Could use some help advertising our game on the market. I’ll reward anyone who helps with 200 gems.
[4/18/2010 9:05:57 PM] Michael Lytle: hell i cant donate so what u need
[4/18/2010 9:05:57 PM] Kevin: what about country wars
[4/18/2010 9:06:04 PM] Jf: how would i do that
[4/18/2010 9:06:38 PM] Kevin: put the purchase of gems on Droid market and I will buy some
[4/18/2010 9:07:20 PM] Pocket Play: Basically, I need some people to go to apps and post >>one time<< per app about our game.
[4/18/2010 9:07:24 PM] Pocket Play: So we can spread the news.
[4/18/2010 9:07:51 PM] Pocket Play: Not every app needs to be done but just some.
[4/18/2010 9:07:59 PM] Jf: sure count on me doing that
[4/18/2010 9:07:59 PM] Michael Lytle: done and done ill post every where without my reference code
[4/18/2010 9:08:16 PM] Saltrix: no spamming for me, sorry
[4/18/2010 9:08:33 PM] Michael Lytle: 4pca ill start on droid defense
[4/18/2010 9:08:39 PM] Michael Lytle: lol
[4/18/2010 9:08:43 PM] Pocket Play: Just post something like..
[4/18/2010 9:09:14 PM] Pocket Play: “Want an awesome online medieval war game? Search up Pocket Empires in the market. 40,000 and counting.”
[4/18/2010 9:12:25 PM] haakjes-pocketplay: i’m off, good night all
[4/18/2010 9:12:30 PM] Kevin: how do u add comment in an app
[4/18/2010 9:12:52 PM] Pocket Play: You have to rate it first
[4/18/2010 9:12:56 PM] Pocket Play: Rate everything you comment on 5 stars
[4/18/2010 9:16:10 PM] Kevin: everyone is using this to try and gems they r using their referal code not trying to grow the game greedy people
[4/18/2010 9:17:15 PM] Michael Lytle: Try pocket empire’s online its free and addictive rts on the phone oh by the way its FREE Search pe. For what is one of the hottest games on the droid . thats my post sound good?
[4/18/2010 9:17:41 PM] Saltrix: except its not really a rts, i dont think
[4/18/2010 9:18:02 PM] Michael Lytle: its a real time stratagy
[4/18/2010 9:18:09 PM] Michael Lytle: lol pardon spelling
[4/18/2010 9:18:41 PM] Saltrix: i guess maybe it is, but if you told me that ahead of time, i would expect something different than this
[4/18/2010 9:19:16 PM] Jf: i posted comments on two games on the market advertising empires
[4/18/2010 9:19:45 PM] Pocket Play: Sounds awesome Michael
[4/18/2010 9:20:27 PM] Michael Lytle: lol i guess its a difference of opinion. cause all i play is rts and thats why im stuck on this game
[4/18/2010 9:20:44 PM] Pocket Play: Hehe =) I’m more of an mmo player but rts is awesome too
[4/18/2010 9:20:58 PM] Jf: i still haven’t figured out how to use the referral codes
[4/18/2010 9:21:11 PM] Michael Lytle: ne ways did 6 posts going to do more
[4/18/2010 9:23:42 PM] Jf: anyone been able to defeat a monster castle yet
[4/18/2010 9:23:53 PM] Pocket Play: <— But I dont count
[4/18/2010 9:24:03 PM] Pocket Play: Michael whats your ref code
[4/18/2010 9:24:06 PM] Jf: lol
[4/18/2010 9:24:17 PM] Michael Lytle: 4pca
[4/18/2010 9:24:28 PM] Michael Lytle: im aralin
[4/18/2010 9:25:35 PM] Michael Lytle: at work and paypal didnt work on my phone: (
[4/18/2010 9:26:02 PM] Pocket Play: all good.
[4/18/2010 9:26:10 PM] Pocket Play: Theres your 220, keep up the good work

If these comments are true, then this is not a good way to go about things.  There are multiple entries in the Android publishers Terms of Service which this sort of campaign could arguably be breaching, for example:

“3.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that
interferes with or disrupts the Market (or the servers and networks
which are connected to the Market). You agree that you will not use
any of the Products found on the Market in a way that interferes or
disrupts any servers, networks, or websites operated by Google or any
third-party.”

and

“3.8 You agree that Google and/or third parties own all right, title
and interest in and to the Market and the Products available through
the Market, including without limitation all applicable Intellectual
Property Rights in the Products. “Intellectual Property Rights” means
any and all rights existing under patent law, copyright law, trade
secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, and any and all
other proprietary rights worldwide. You agree that you will not, and
will not allow any third party to, (i) copy, sell, license,
distribute, transfer, modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative
works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise
attempt to derive source code from the Products, unless otherwise
permitted, (ii) take any action to circumvent or defeat the security
or content usage rules provided, deployed or enforced by any
functionality (including without limitation digital rights management
or forward-lock functionality) in the Products, (iii) use the Products
to access, copy, transfer, transcode or retransmit content in
violation of any law or third party rights, or (iv) remove, obscure,
or alter Google’s or any third party’s copyright notices, trademarks,
or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within the
Products. ”

and also

Malicious Products
Don’t transmit viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, malware, or any other items of a destructive nature. We don’t allow content that harms or interferes with the operation of the networks, servers, or other infrastructure of Google, carriers, or any third-parties. Spam, malicious scripts and password phishing scams are also prohibited on Android Market.

As anger amongst the development community grew, a representative of Pocket Play, Overdestined, took a moment to respond to the criticism as follows:-

Hey everyone. Overdestined from Pocket Empires here. (Head of Customer Service)

Just want to clear up a few things.

First of all, yes that chat log was from Skype. When I put this up I intended for it to be a post on each thread, not spam. This was also after the spam had started.

I don’t think everyone here realizes just how hard it is to get a community of 80,000+ active players (probably 5,000 of which do this) to completely stop.

Also, the developers didn’t start this and it is ending soon as we just sent a system-wide message out.

The Skype log was a huge mistake and it wasn’t mean to crank up the spam level, nor is this some super mastermind plot myself and the other staff members thought up.

So I would like to apologize about this, and also i’d like to inform you that this will be over (at least a majority of it) extremely soon.

If you play, please continue to enjoy our game. If you don’t, give it a shot. You’ll be surprised.

Thanks for understanding.
-Overdestined

So, Pocket Play claim that the spam was not as a result of a request by any member of their development team.  Fair enough if true, and no one can say with any certainty that Pocket Play were responsible, but the evidence does seem to suggest that players have been actively rewarded for spamming the Android Market with Pocket Empire related comments.  At the end of the day, I daresay most people are “spam-blind” to this sort of thing, and will automatically assume the worst of a title that is being actively spammed, certainly, there seems to be a growing resentment towards Pocket Empires amongst the Android community.

Pocket Play have taken steps to try and remedy the problem, having recently changed their homepage to ask that people stop leaving Pocket Empire spam in Android Market comments.

Hello Pocket Empire builders!

As most of you know we recently offered a promotion for your one-time assistance in an advertising campaign to help boost our Android Market rating.    The results were overwhelming and beyond our expectations, and for that we are very grateful.

The number of players joining the ranks is growing everyday and with all the new players we are better able to evaluate certain aspects of the game.   One aspect that has been re-evaluated is the manner in which gems are obtained.  Some players, so eager to earn additional gems took the initiative of referring the game in the comment section of other games and applications in the android market.  While we certainly appreciate referrals of friends or by word-of-mouth we cannot support, or condone the idea of referring our game in the comment sections of other games and applications. As such, any player who does use another game’s comment section to publish their referral code, or promote PE will be banned from PE for 1 day.  A second offense will be more severe. Please be aware that such spam may result in the banning of PE from the market.

This is exactly what the community wanted from Pocket Play, an official request to stop the spam, however, the damage (in the eyes of the community, Pocket Play may see it as a successful advertising campaign…) has already been done. This does highlight how open the Android Market comments system is to abuse, and, we fully expect further spam campaigns (whether or not they are sanctioned by the developers) to crop up, but there’s probably very little that can be done about that.

We enjoyed Polarbit’s Armageddon Squadron immensely when it was first released, so we were a little sceptical when a very similar looking game, Winds of Steel, by DeckEleven Entertainment popped up in the Android Market.  Winds of Steel is, like Armageddon Squadron, a 3D air combat game set in World War II.  Unlike Armageddon Squadron, this game attempts to inject some small element of realism to proceedings by letting you take part in some  famous historical battles (albeit almost exclusively ones that took place over the Pacific).  Here’s the game’s official description from the Android Market:-

Experience World War II’s most epic and legendary air battles in Asia and Pacific theaters on your Android mobile phone.From the attack on Pearl Harbor, and all the way to the bombing of Tokyo, take command of 12 famous Pacific fighters and bombers in a challenging 3D game.

Graphically, this game is pretty good.  It’s 3D gameworld is very similar in it’s look to Armageddon Squadron, and is, arguably, better in some places, paritcularly during some of the cutscenes.  The level designs are, for the most part, well thought out and often very busy with aircraft, ships and trucks, which adds a little realistic chaos to proceedings.  The sound is also well implemented, between levels you are treated to a little period swing music, and, in game, the engine thrums away, rising in pitch as you dive and dropping as you climb, and the machine gun fire is suitably “dakka-dakka”.

The game is controlled via the phone’s accelerometer.  Tilting left or right makes your aircraft turn in that direction, and tilting forward or back makes the plane dive or climb.  There are also a few virtual buttons: a fire button, a change weapon button and a couple of buttons that only appear in certain contexts.  The two contextual buttons are used to roll the plane or do a loop.  If you steer hard to the left or right, the roll button appears, if you pull up hard, the loop button appears.  This works pretty well and, as you play more, you start to instinctively roll or loop away from incoming fire, often giving you an edge in a dogfight.  The main criticism we have for the game’s controls is the lack of any method for controlling your speed, which, whilst not essential to the gameplay, would be nice as another addition to your dogfight armoury.

It’s in the gameplay that this game comes in to it’s own though.  In the case of Armageddon Squadron, the main criticism levelled at it was that it was a little too arcade-like in it’s feel.  Winds of Steel, whilst still undoubtedly light years away from being a proper flight sim, does feel a couple of steps closer than Armageddon Squadron.  Impacts with the ground or sea in Winds of Steel don’t just add damage to your plane, they blow it up.  Battleships begin to smoke as you bomb them, and enemy aircraft buzzing around the skies do their best to menace and harass you as you make bomb runs.

Overall, we were pretty impressed with Winds of Steel.  It’s a very well designed game with a lot of polish and character.  We’d have liked some sort of throttle control method, but in truth it doesn’t detract from the game that much.  We actually prefer this game to Armageddon Squadron, which we praised pretty highly back when we reviewed it.  It’s well worth the €2.99.

This review is a little later in coming than we’d intended, seeing as Zenonia was released a few weeks back, but better late than never we always say.  Zenonia is a multi award winning action-oriented RPG for the iPhone by developers Gamevil, which has recently been ported to Android.  It was a hugely popular title on the iPhone Apps Market and is expected to be just as popular on Android.  It’s style is very reminiscent of old-school classic, top-down RPGs such as Zelda and Final Fantasy.  Zenonia sees you playing a young man going by the unfortunate name of Regret (nice way to give your child a feeling of being unwanted Mum and Dad) who is trying to piece together what happened to his father and what it is that makes he himself so special.  It’s an undeniably cheesy and cliched plot, but I guess this isn’t Planescape: Torment, it’s an action RPG.  Here’s the official description from the Android Market:-

THE RETURN OF CLASSIC ACTION RPG

AWARDS
Best Adventure/RPG Game from The Pocket Gamer Awards 2010
Best RPG Game of 2009 by IGN
Best RPG 2009 by TouchGen

FEATURES
Numerous quests following an epic storyline
Create your own character
Hundreds of items
Stunning effects and graphics
Innovative real life system

Veteran players of RPGs such as the early incarnations of Zelda will find they settle comfortably in to the gameplay mechanics of Zenonia.  It’s got all the ingredients for a trip down gaming memory lane, right down to some laughable dialogue sections between NPCs, carrying on the meme-inspiring tradition of all good games translated from the original Japanese/Korean.  The game is controlled via a virtual D-pad and on screen buttons.  Judging from the Market comments, a lot of users have found that they had issues with the controls being either a bit hit or miss, or downright unusable.. This reviewer found, for the most part, that the controls were adequate, but a little over-sensitive at times.  Gamevil claim the game has some 40 hours of gameplay, which is no mean feat for a mobile title, and, I daresay, probably makes it fairly unique among Android games.  Given the nature of the RPG, I daresay you could spend longer than the suggested 40 hours purely through grinding.  There are also a good number of sidequests for a bit of variation from the main plot.

Combat in Zenonia, rather than being turn-based,  is handled in real time.  You tap the attack button to take a swipe with your chosen weapon.  Additional attacks and skills can also be picked up as you progress through the levels, which helps keep combat interesting.  I was pleasantly surprised at how intuitive the combat actually was, although, occasionally, I’d have prefered to be able to choose my target, rather than rely on the auto-targeting.

There is a full day and night cycle in the game which influences more than just the generation of a lighter or darker area: as time passes, Regret needs to eat to keep himself in tip-top condition (which was an occasionally annoying distraction), and weapons and armour degrade as the days go by, requiring replacement or repairs

Graphically, Zenonia looks great.  The animations (particularly for some of the magical attacks), visual effects and colouring all look carefully thought out and very polished.  It’s a gorgeous looking game in fact.  The audio for the game is also pretty good with a well-scored soundtrack and evocative sound effects, although they can get a little repetitive after you’ve put in a few hours of game time.

Fans of the action RPG genre will find plenty to love here, with perhaps only the pointless requirement to keep Regret well-fed as a negative.  More casual gamers though, may be put off by the sheer scope of this game as well as the amount of grinding that is required from time to time just to level up enough to progress through to the next dungeon or area.  You need to invest time in Zenonia to get the most out of it, 5 minute dips here and there probably won’t do it justice.  Also, as mentioned, don’t go in to this expecting a particularly engaging plot, or great characterisation; this is an action RPG with a hackneyed and predictable story, littered with the odd (and often hilarious) post-translation grammatical error, so hardcore RPGers, who like their heroes angsty and their plots original, may prefer to wait for something a little more highbrow.

Overall, this is a superb addition to the Android Market.  It’s professional, polished, full of personality, occasionally humourous and is far and away the best RPG we’ve seen for the Android OS.  It’s not without it’s flaws, but, as part of the overall package, those flaws are forgiveable.  It’s also a little pricier than a lot of the market at $5.99, but considering you get 40+ hours of gameplay, that’s a bloody bargain.

Zenonia is available now on the Android Market for $5.99

Some selected user comments:-

“Plays perfectly on moment.  More games like this please ” – (5 out o5 stars)

“Reminds me of WoW.  also, I find some of the dialogue amusing.  Definitely the best game available on the market as of yet” - (5 out of 5 stars)

“Controls are pretty bad, writing is poor, first 10 mins are reading cutscenes – get me playing already!” – (2 out of 5 stars)

AndAppStoreHQ rating:-

Android apps at AppStoreHQ

Among our wishlist of apps we’d love to see on Android is a game called Canabalt by Adam “Atomic” Saltsman, so, when we heard that a game inspired by Canabalt had been released to the Android Market, we had to give it a go.  Parkour: Roof Riders, developed by Blyts, is, like Canabalt, a game where the object is to survive for as long as possible whilst jumping across ever-scrolling rooftops.  Here’s the not-exactly-verbose official description from the Market:-

“Become a professional Parkourist!
Run over the city’s roofs, but be careful! You may fall in the attempt…”

The game is controlled by tapping the screen to make the little parkourist jump.  With a longer press making him jump farther than a short press.  The scenery scrolls along at a quickening pace and you have to time your jumps just right as you progress further.  In addition to having to jump between rooftops, you also have to try and avoid obstacles such as crates and other objects or items dropped from planes which can slow you up or cause you to have a nasty accident.

Given that Parkour: Roof Riders is such an obvious tribute to Canabalt, we would be remiss in our duties as reviewers if we didn’t compare the two games, so, to that end, we’ll sprinkle the review with comparisons to Canabalt.

Graphically, the game is bright and colourful, and is reasonably animated, but it lacks the character of the original Canabalt, with it’s dark monotone feel.  The parkourist running animation doesn’t sit quite right with the speed that the scenery scrolls at at times, but it’s not enough to distract.  The soundtrack to the game is a somewhat cheesy dancey affair, but it’s inoffensive, however, in Canabalt, the custom soundtrack is one of the game’s main strengths.  The song (RUN, by Danny B) really adds a sense of urgency to proceedings and it drives you to struggle on just a little further.

Gameplay is straightforward, as you’d expect from a one-button game.  It’s easy to get frustrated as you play and find yourself falling just short of the goal because you jumped early to avoid a crate, meaning you didn’t have the time to avoid the gap between two buildings.  But, it’s a good frustration, pushing you to try again and concentrate harder.

Overall, this isn’t a bad effort.  It’s reasonably well polished and there are no glaring bugs or performance issues in the game, but it is a pale imitation of what is a classic game.  We had high hopes for Parkour: Roof Riders, and, whilst it’s a commendable attempt, we can’t get over how similar Parkour: Roof Riders is to Canabalt, whilst being so far away from it’s quality.

Parkour: Roof Riders is available now on the Android Market for $1.49.  There is also a free trial version for those of you who like to take apps for a spin before purchase.