Those Serious Sam games are fun right? Seriously! Running around with all manner of batsh*t insane weaponry blowing everybody and everything up that you can. Try as some might, there’s just not another game out there that supplies the kind of rampant violence and destruction on the most ridiculous levels that Serious Sam does. But really… Sam is kind of a dick to those poor Kamikazes.

Now, if you ever wanted a chance to take on the role of the infamous Serious Sam baddie, here you go. newly released this morning Croteam and Devolver Digital, with indie studio Be-Rad Entertainment, have released a brand new iOS/Android game called Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack and you play as the Kamikaze trying to blow up Sam.

It looks to essentially be a running platformer, like Canabalt or any of the other thousand games like it out there. Only with this game you actually have a goal: catch and kill Sam. Not that he’ll be making it easy on you what with his wide array of weapons. Still, with a little finesse and grace you can possibly, maybe, kamikaze bomb him. Both of you will die, of course, but you’ll still win! And that’s the important part.

That game comes with 40 levels and currently costs $0.99 on the Android marketplace and iOS app store. Apparently this is just the launch price so if you wait too long you could see that price increase. Download via the links below.

[Android, iOS]

Trailer

Tower “offense” game? I bet you’re wondering right if that was a mistake on my part, or if I’m somehow confused on what the genre ‘tower defense game’ is exactly. Nope, I’m well aware of each in fact! It just so happens that Age of Defenders is much more offensive than it’s genre-like cousins. Something that’s very cool, in my opinion.

Let’s be honest, at this point there’s very little to do with the tower defense genre that hasn’t already been done. Sure some people are making 3D TD games, but that’s really more of just a perspective change than any sort of revolutionary or evolutionary gameplay change. All in all, I’m quite bored of the genre as a whole… which is why I’m actually fairly impressed with what Age of Defenders offers: a multiplayer offensive/defensive tower game.

Essentially what Age of Defenders does is create a battle scenario similar to many TD games. You have your base which you must protect from a wave of incoming enemies by placing towers. What makes it different is that you’re playing against another human opponent and your goal isn’t just to survive but to also attack the opposing players base. To do this you’ll need, as you can probably imagine, offensive units. Hence the genre: tower offense.

The game looks really cool and can be played for free right now in your browser. There are also versions coming out for iOS, Android, Blackberry Tablet OS, Windows, Linux, OSX and Facebook. The cool part about it is that the plan is to allow for cross-platform play across this very wide spectrum of platforms. So, for example, an iOS player would be able to play against an Android player (let the real smartphones wars begin!).

So go check out the browser version. The game is pretty slick and looks like a lot of fun. If you don’t have time for that, give the trailer below a watch. Again, it’s very impressive…

[Age of Defenders]

Trailer

Just about this time last year, our old friend Michael Rose (who currently does great things at IndieGames.com) wrote a review about the then little known game development management simulation game Game Dev Story. Soon after the game became one of the most popular smart phone games amongst gamers due to its subject matter and genuine fun. Seriously, it was a great game, proven by just how much Michael enjoyed it.

Since then, Japanese indie developers Kairosoft have gone on to release other simulation titles in the same style like Hot Springs Story (where you manage a popular Hot Springs inn), Grand Prix Story (where you manage a racing team) and, as of this week, Pocket League Story, a game which strives to bring soccer club management to smart phones.

So I’m not going to beat around the bush and go on and on about this or that. I mean, I will if you keep reading, but let me cut to the chase really quick: if you enjoyed any of Kairosoft’s other sim games, you will enjoy Pocket League Story. It’s as simple as that. The mechanics are the essentially the same.

Now that that’s out of the way I’ll resume with the traditional review…

Essentially what Pocket League Story is about is managing a soccer (football) club. Those of you, like myself, who are very passionate about the world’s game will find that many of the basic aspects of the sport are kept true in the game, something that’s very reassuring. For example, a win gets you three points, a draw 1 point and a loss no points. Sometimes games like this can tweak the original sport to make it better for casual gamers or non-sports fans. Luckily, Kairosoft did not. You are running a soccer club and you’re building your team to play honest, legitimate soccer.

What Kairosoft has done here is created one of the most perfect soccer management simulation games possible on a screen with very limited real estate on a platform that’s not really designed to hold your attention for a few hours worth of gameplay, as is the case with the PC’s fantastic Football Manager series (which has destroyed more hours of my life than I’d prefer to admit).

In the game you’ll be able to hire/negotiate with players, build new facilities, send out players on fan services (to create more fans) and, as you’d expect, play matches. It’s a remarkably simple system that is both easy to learn and understand, but also deep enough so that you feel like you have full control of managing a team. You can even fire and hire new coaches if you want.

Of course, the ultimate goal of the game is to win matches. Doing so requires training and leveling up your players with new skills. This is automatically done when players are simply milling about your training field, but you can also increase individual stats by giving them specialty training. This is especially helpful when you’re trying to give players key advantages in certain areas of the soccer field.

And then we have the coup de grace… once you’ve trained your players up you’ll naturally want to have them play a match. When this happens, you actually get to see your little players passing, crossing, and shooting for goals. It’s quite fun to watch and, at times, can almost feel just as nail biting as a real soccer match, especially if you have a lot on the line.

There’s a lot more to Pocket League Story than I could ever get into in a single review, but suffice it to say, it’s a great smart phone simulation game. If you enjoy those types of games, or even enjoy games like Football Manager, then you should probably check this one out. It’s been more than worth my investment.

–

Pocket League Story is available on Android right now for $4.99. It’s not yet available on iOS, but I would assume it’ll be there soon.

[Pocket League Story]

[DIYGamer correspondent Ken Ellis made the rounds all over the main hall and up through Indie Alley at PAX Prime this past weekend; attending several appointments with developers and demo sessions for dozens of games in the process. Over the next week he'll be passing on his thoughts and impressions on as many as his brain and notepad can recall. Next up, his hands-on time with Feel Every Yummy's Word Fighter.]

PAX Prime offered up a plethora of unique Indie games this past weekend. One of my stand out games by far during the expo was PAX 10 finalist Word Fighters.

Word Fighters is a game from Feel Every Yummy that, at first glance, may remind you of Puzzle Fighter but what Tetris was to Puzzle Fighter, Scrabble is to Word Fighter. Expressly a multiplayer game, the title pits a selection of six fighters against each other in a boggle/scrabble style battle royal. Each player must choose one of six embodiment’s of famous authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Agatha Cristie, and H.P. Lovecraft and use a tile set of random letters to write out words to attack your enemy with.

The letters work on Boggle rules in which the word that is written must be made of letter tiles that are touching each other and if a word is used twice it does much less damage. Along with this, the game touches on Scrabble rules where each letter has a certain number value associated with it. More commonly used letters get a point value of 1, and less common letters such as Q and Z get points of 10. The higher the point value of a letter, the stronger the attack of the word. To spice things up even more, each character has three powers that they can use to buff up their own attacks or screw with the other player. Some of these powers include adding triple power to their words, hiding letters from the opponent, stealing the other players powers, and forcing the other player to spell everything backwards.

As of right now there is no single player mode planned with the release, but a brief demo of one was available at PAX. Instead of it being a player vs. computer fight, the single player mode would be the player being attacked by a hoard of monsters while having to use their words to stave off the mob of creatures. It is possible that some monsters would be immune to certain types of words such as nouns and verbs, but nothing is finalized. It was actually very fun, but will only be created if their is a big enough call for it from the fans of the game. So really its up to the players if they want it or not.

Word Fighter is releasing later this fall and only on the Iphone, Ipad, and Android devices due to its touch screen format of play. Any word-o-phile or boggle fanatic should check this gem out.

[Feel Every Yummy]

Roguelikes are all the rage right now in the indie gaming community. largely because they follow a fairly simple game design which promises fun for the already established user base which loves said game. It seems like every other day we’re being contacted about this roguelike or that roguelike. Unfortunately, there’s just no way for us to cover them all.

Today’s roguelike, Legend of Yore, stands apart from most others in the genre in that it’s charming, fun and, most importantly, free. Not to mention, of course, that developer Kevin Glass also took the effort to make sure it played on damn near every single operating system worth mentioning: Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS and Android are all supported.

Aside from that there’s really nothing that makes Legends of Yore all that different. Which isn’t a bad thing! Some times you just want to hop into a roguelike and mess around for 20 or 30 minutes. This game is perfect for that!

Check out the trailer below and, should you find it worthy, hit up the link below to download.

[Legends of Yore]

Trailer

[Earlier in the month we were able to stop by IndieCade's mobile game jam, hang out, and chat with various developers (and other people of interest) about what they're working on and the event as a whole. During our rounds we were able to get the camera rolling a few times and churned out a few video interviews to share. We'll be diving into the event's outcome more when we get back from PAX Prime, but for now enjoy another helping of our video content and an exclusive look at the jam.]

Interview with Developers David Leonard and Michael Lewis

Interview with Akira Thompson and Chris Bell of IndieCade

Interview with Andy Doe of LG Electronics — Sponsor of Event

Had a chance to stop by USC’s campus this past weekend to chat with those participating in the IndieCade Mobile 3D Game Jam, a two-day event sponsored by IndieCade partner LG Electronics. We popped in for a couple hours during the morning of Day 2, a little after everyone had gotten underway as they made their second-half push toward completing a game in an insanely short amount of time.

Throughout the rest of the week, we’ll be posting articles and video interviews coming from different participants in the jam. While we’re editing/transcribing away to get those ready, I’ve posted photos we were able to grab while on the scene. Kevin Harland, a friend and default camera man for DIYGamer, took the time to snap some excellent shots of everyone in action (click to supa-size):

If you’re looking to relive the intensity of the Electric Daisy Carnival, this probably won’t do it. I mean, chances are you were impaired in some way, sweating to the bone, and surrounded by tens of thousands of other house music and electro fans — that can get a person going. Instead, ReRave from Step Evolution aims to get you into a groove and doin’ some good-old reaction-based rhythm gaming. If it’s not your cup of tea, especially with the kind of music provided — which tends to be electro, house, euro dance, and so on — then you’re probably not going to enjoy the experience unless you absolutely love rhythm games and must own every single one.

But we all know that’s not how music games and its fans go. More likely than not, you had some reason to keep playing Guitar Hero, all 426941 of them; you either liked the music a lot, or you had a newfound love for rock-n’-roll, or whatever. If you dig electronic music, you’re probably going to like ReRave. It is indeed a challenging and worthwhile new venture into rhythm gaming on mobile and tablet platforms, and it looks pretty too.

So let me explain how this one works. The game uses a power button as your symbol for a note. The power button spins counter-clockwise and as it hits the 12 o’clock mark you must tap it. There are 4 kinds of notes that you’re going to have to track: Tap Notes, Omni Taps, Holds, and Follows. Tap notes are self explanatory… Omni taps are when you have to tap multiple notes at the same time … Holds require you to hold the power button to complete a full rotation… and follows simply have you follow along the power button tapping notes as it moves around the screen. I might just be terrible at explaining this, or maybe you understood what I said; either way, it’s going to take one or two songs to get used to, and it’s a good idea to take a look at the tutorial beforehand.

Once that’s over with, you can get to playing and it’s pretty much like any other rhythm game, but ReRave tries to integrate some social components. I don’t mean Facebook and Twitter, I mean you can create an account and thereby track your progress seeing how you stack up against friends and strangers. There’s leveling and a total of 118 awards — achievements, really — to unlock, so that’ll keep you going for a bit. Step Evolution has three songs you can start with and many more available to download in-app. There are 2 free song packs, but 9 others you’ll have to pay for ranging from $0.99 to $2.99 (usually 2 to 5 or 6 tracks). This is probably where most gamers will find they have a problem with ReRave. Again, though, you’re paying an initial $1.99 to download the app and it comes with 3 songs plus 2 free packs totaling 10 songs altogether. That’s not so bad and — assuming you like electronic music — you may even want to purchase some of the other packs.

I’ll outright say that I’m really not a fan of the music in this game. I do enjoy some electronica and house, but I did feel that some tunes were cheesy and even uninspired at times. Fortunately for house fans, I shouldn’t be the one judging this genre, so it is your opinion that counts here and your willingness to play ReRave to see whether it’s a good enough go-to rhythm game for electro fans. Step Evolution latched onto something smart: the popularity of this genre seems to be rising, but does this really mean ravers are also ReRavers? We’ll see!

[ReRave, Step Evolution]

[DIYGamer obtained a free copy of the game for review purposes. This in no way affected the outcome of the review. ReRave was reviewed on iPad, but is also available on Android.]

Kairosoft, maker of the hit iOS sim Game Dev Story, has released its latest title Pocket Academy–available now on the App Store for $4, and supporting both Japanese and English.

The education system sim has you acting as principal of your school; hiring teachers, recruiting students, and competing with other schools in your district. Level different stats, create classrooms and other facilities, decide on really odd things like “this week’s hot couple”, and more. All on your iOS device.

Game Dev Story ($2), and their other offering Hot Springs Story ($4) are still available on the App Store as well. If you’ve yet to try a Kairosoft game, these folks make them as addictive as they come.

Here’s some iOS sized screens:

[Kairosoft]

(Good) news coming out from developer Mobigame this week, as they’ve revealed their latest game Edge Extended. The title will be landing on the App Store later this summer–barring any absurd, outlandish, and unfounded objections of course.

The follow-up to Edge will be a new offering as opposed to a direct sequel of the dev’s oft-talked about for the wrong reason iOS puzzler. There’s to be ”new levels and new ideas,” and other than that, well we don’t know (seriously the image above is all we visually have to work with.)

Guess we’ll just have to see when it arrives in the next month or two. You can always grab Edge on the App Store for $3 in the meantime. If you were one of the many who missed it during its initial release and subsequent pulling and re-releasing frustrations, it’s there now and definitely worth a look.

[Mobigame]

[Source: GameSetWatch]