Never Stop Sneakin’, the part-comedy-part-action take on Metal Gear Solid’s Tactical Espionage Action formula, is now available on the App Store with full Gamevice support.

Although the overall presentation is incredibly reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid, the gameplay has been heavily simplified. Most actions are handled automatically, with player input mostly limited to deciding where to move. There is strategy involved in sneaking past guards, making your way to objectives, and timing your combat strategies to enemy positions, of course, but for better or worse, all of it feels incredibly simplified.

The biggest place Never Stop Sneakin’ differentiates from the formula is in its levels. Almost everything is procedurally generated here, which means no two games will play exactly the same. Procedural generation gives a nearly endless amount of variety in the way levels will be structured, which should increase replayability.

Never Stop Sneakin’s appearance on the App Store should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. Dust: An Elysian Tail, The previous game from developer Humble Hearts, was a mobile exclusive years, and even on console, Never Stop Sneakin’ looked and felt like something that would be right at home on mobile. Unsurprisingly, just like Dust, Never Stop Sneakin’ runs great on iOS and has excellently-implemented Gamevice support.

If you’re looking for a casual-friendly take on the Metal Gear Solid formula, this is as good as it gets on mobile.

• Download Never Stop Sneakin’ for iOS

This is huge news. Perhaps the biggest thing to hit mobile gaming in years. Fortnite, Epic’s extremely-popular Battle Royale game, is coming to the App Store soon! In fact, it is available now, in an invite-only beta release! An Android port should follow in the near future.

This isn’t merely a Fortnite-themed mobile clone, either. This is the real, true version of the PC / console game. It will support cross-platform play between mobile versions and PC, PlayStation, and even Xbox. And because this is a real version of Fortnite, it will even receive weekly content updates and patches at the same time as the other versions.

Gamevice support will not be included in Fortnite at launch, and is not currently supported in the beta. Epic plans to support controllers later in the future. They have concerns about keeping things fair, and are considering requiring mobile gamers with controllers to be kept in the same matchmaking bucket as console gamers, rather than being able to play in the mobile-only lobby.

Epic is looking for additional beta testers to try Fortnite on iOS, before the game goes into wide release. Sign ups are live, so be sure to head to the Epic site and get yourself on the list. Epic will be adding testers over the coming months, but the earlier you sign up, the better chance you’ll have of trying Fortnite early.

Because this is such a new game, in such a new genre, you’d be forgiven for not knowing why this is such a big deal. But make no mistake, this is one of the biggest games in the world right now, and a watershed moment in mobile gaming. Here’s a little history…

Fortnite is part of the somewhat-new Battle Royale game type. The idea is, a bunch of players spawn on a giant map, collect weapons, and try to be the last one standing. The map periodically shrinks its borders, which forces everyone into conflict, which prevents camping. It’s a clever take on the last-man-standing deathmatch game type, which perhaps explains why literally everyone seems to be playing a game like this these days.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) was the first of these games on the scene. Throughout its 2017 early access period, PUBG managed to grow from its humble origins as a ARMA 2 mod to over 30 million sales, even overtaking DOTA2 in having the most concurrent players on Steam.

Fortnite was originally launched as a pay-once premium game, called “Save the World”. In this game type, you build a base, then go on missions to collect resources, get back to your base, and use those resources to survive against waves of monsters. Epic founder Tim Sweeney described it as “Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead”. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell well. Shortly after PUBG hit the scene, Epic released a free-to-play, retooled version of Fortnite, which aped the PUBG Battle Royale formula. Since then, Fortnite has taken off like a rocket, even managing to surpass PUBG’s concurrent player record.

Oddly, PUBG’s developers and Fortnite’s developers are both partly owned by the same company, Tencent. Tencent is relatively unknown in the West, but they’re a massive game publisher in China. What’s more, they’ve made a huge push into mobile gaming.

In addition to launching PUBG clones of their own, Tencent has already launched two official versions of PUBG on mobile (for some reason). Sadly, neither have Gamevice support, and we have no idea if support is coming. So in a way, Fortnite is their fourth attempt at a mobile Battle Royale – hopefully this experience will translate into a great mobile release.

Being able to play the real Fortnite, with a real Gamevice controller, against the real console and PC releases, is about as good as it gets for mobile gaming. And it seems like this dream is going to become a reality very, very soon.

If you have any questions about controller compatibility, or want to voice your support for Gamevice and Fortnite, get in touch with Epic on Twitter or on their web site. If the folks at Epic see how much enthusiasm there is for controller support, hopefully it will encourage them to implement it sooner!

Alto’s Odyssey, the sequel to one of the best games of 2015, Alto’s Adventure, was recently released on iOS. Since then, I’ve had a hard time putting it down.

Side-scrolling auto-running platformers are certainly not a rare game type on mobile. Between Jetpack Joyride, the Rayman series, the original Alto’s Adventure, and countless others, most of us probably own a few games like this already.

The biggest way Alto’s Odyssey differentiates itself from the rest of the field is through its beautiful, relaxing, peaceful atmosphere. Everything about the presentation – the gentle sunrise, the use of simple silhouettes against smooth background colors, the perfectly-matched sound effects – the whole thing creates an almost zen-like feeling.

The other big way Alto’s Odyssey differentiates from the rest of the games out there: quality. Everything about this game feels like its been tested, polished, and retested hundreds of times, until it couldn’t possibly be improved any further. It is a rare feeling these days, where the trend is to launch games in an incomplete and buggy state, then push a bunch of updates to bring things up to par. Alto’s Odyssey feels like a game that is perfect exactly as it is, and although I’m sure it’ll receive the occasional update, absolutely nothing about it needs an update.

Honestly, I could go on and on about why this is such an amazing game, but there are enough stories like that already. Federico Viticci at MacStories wrote a wonderful article describing the feelings and emotions this game can engender. TouchArcade gave Alto’s Odyssey their game of the week, and a glowing review. Review aggregator Metacritic currently lists Alto’s Odyssey at a score of 91 out of 100. Our Twitter timelines are full of people posting their high scores and commiserating over bad-beat stories.

Everyone is playing and loving Alto’s Odyssey, and that fills me with enthusiasm about the state of mobile gaming. Premium games – games where you pay an upfront fee to get a great experience – have always been what I gravitate towards, as a player. When one this good comes out, and does this well, it lends creedence to the model of selling great games. ArsTechnica has a great interview with Alto’s creators about just how much went into making such a great mobile game, which is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in premium mobile gaming, and some of the ways in which Alto’s creators approached iOS.

Games this good don’t show up often. An extremely polished, pay-once, premium game like this is a bit of an anachronism in 2018. If more games take a page from Alto’s Odyssey, I think the App Store would be a much better place.

• Download Alto’s Odyssey for iOS
• Download Alto’s Adventure for iOS

When I first saw footage of Trap Adventure 2 shared on Twitter, I assumed it was a joke. It seemed like a parody of the tough-as-nails platforming genre, made by some indie developer for other indie developers to laugh at. The reason why: even though this is a genre where the focus is on building incredibly-difficult levels, the player should never feel cheated, but should always feel like if they were quick and observant, they could succeed.

That makes this “game footage” a pretty clever joke, if you’re a developer who is focused on carefully crafting levels to meet the rules of the genre. Skilled play seems to be irrelevant here, with the game killing you in unexpected and cheap ways which violate the previously-established rules of the game. It does everything a good developer is supposed to avoid doing, subverting genre expectations. Which is the footage was retweeted hundreds of thousands of times, and got good laughs in the game dev community.

Well big surprise; it turns out Trap Adventure 2 isn’t a joke at all, and is an actual game you can buy right now on iOS. What’s more, it even has full Gamevice support! And after playing it over the weekend, I’m happy to say there’s a lot more going on here than first appears.

Let’s get one thing clear: Trap Adventure 2 is not a bad game. It is not an intentionally-bad parody of platforming games. It is also not an unfair game. Yes, you will die a bunch of times on your first attempt at each level, as the game seems to know exactly where you’re going, and reveals a surprise obstacle in your way. But here’s the thing – after your first death on each obstacle, you know exactly where that obstacle is. At this point, passing the level becomes a game of skill, just like any great platformer.

After you do pass a level, you get a checkpoint before the next level. Subsequent deaths only send you back to the start of the level you’re on, rather than requiring you replay the entire game. At least until you’re out of lives.

Even the life system has been cleverly thought out. You start out with a handful of lives, which you’ll probably burn through pretty fast on each level. When you’re out of lives, you have to start the game over again from the beginning. But here’s the nice thing: every time you play, you gain experience points. When you finally run out of lives, your experience points are cached in. Gain enough points to level up, and you gain even more lives for subsequent plays. Thus, even though you’ll be restarting the game often, the game makes it easier for you to progress by giving you more lives. It’s a clever bit of balance, and one that belies the thought that went into such a superficially haphazard-looking game.

So yes, if you’re looking for a difficult game, but one that will put a smile on your face with the way it toys with your expectations, give Trap Adventure 2 a download. I’ve been playing it off-and-on for the past few days, and enjoying the heck out of it. The surprise obstacles almost become something that tells a story about the nature of platforming games, and our preconceptions when playing them. And considering that I completely skipped over this game when it was released two years ago, it’s a lesson to me to not judge a book by its cover – or a game by its screenshot.

• Download: Trap Adventure 2

Huge news from legendary game designer Yuji Naka:

Just a quick note to let you know, I joined SQUARE ENIX in January.
I’m joining game development as before, and strive to develop games at SQUARE ENIX.
I aim to develop an enjoyable game, please look forward to it.
Source: Twitter

Yuji Naka is an incredibly important video game designer, being the head of the legendary Sonic Team studio during the ’90s, and lead programmer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game series.

After leaving Sega in 2006, he started Prope, an independent studio. Prope has developed numerous mobile games, and although they a lot of them feel like proof-of-concepts, I have a soft spot for Prope Discover, which played like an expanded version of Epic Citadel.

While it’s too early to know what he will be making at Square Enix, it certainly is an exciting development. Square Enix (separately and together) were responsible for some of the most important RPGs of all time, and continue to make world-class games for console and mobile. Yuji Naka’s Sonic games are all on mobile, Square Enix’s classic RPGs are on mobile, and Yuji Naka’s last development studio was focused on mobile gaming, I’d say there’s a good chance whatever they design together will be coming to mobile.

Great news for fans of premium mobile gaming: it looks like Crescent Moon Games is preparing to develop new sequels to some of its biggest franchises!

From Crescent Moon on Twitter:

So its highly likely that we could be getting a new Paper Monsters, Legend of the Skyfish, and a new Ravensword by the end of the year. As crazy as that sounds :p

And later…

Official development starts on Legend of the Skyfish 2 and Paper Monsters 2 next week!

If you missed out on the earlier entries in any of these series, they’re all important mobile releases. Ravensword was easily the most ambitious RPG of its era, bringing a stripped-down Morrowind-style experience to mobile. Legend of the Skyfish is a Zelda-style top-down puzzle platformer, with an incredible degree of polish. Paper Monsters is a beautiful 2.5-D sidescrolling platformer, full of personality and clever level design, and available in a remastered “Recut” edition.

Sequels to any one of these games would be a major story. Crescent Moon has consistently made some of the best, most polished, and most complete premium games on mobile. Sequels to these three games would catapult themselves far up my list of most anticipated games. It seems possible that for Legend of the Skyfish and Paper Monsters, at least, sequels could be coming sooner, rather than later.

• Download Paper Monsters Recut for iOS
• Download Legend of the Skyfish for iOS
• Download Paper Monsters Recut for Android
• Download Legend of the Skyfish for Android

Interesting news for PC and console gamers:

From Hope Corrigan at IGN:

It looks like the popular vehicular soccer game Rocket League is set to see cross-platform party support in 2018, building off of its cross-platform play functionality.

When asked on Twitter whether the feature was coming, the official support account for the game replied, saying “We’re actively working on cross-platform party support for a 2018 release.”

Cross-platform play is great, but of more interest to mobile gamers is the question: “when will Rocket League finally come to mobile?”. Rocket League has been ported to pretty much every console under the sun, but sadly, we’re still waiting on this one last platform. We’ve reached out to the developers, and we’re hoping for good news!

In the mean time, mobile gamers have the similarly-structured Turbo League, available for iOS and Android. It’s not a bad game – it plays well with Gamevice, has real-time 3v3 online multiplayer, and even supports cross-platform play between iOS and Android. But still… it isn’t the same as the real deal.

Of course, if you already own a PS4 or a Nvidia-powered gaming PC, you have other options. Thanks to the magic of streaming, PC gamers can use the excellent Moonlight app to play Rocket League with your Gamevice today, on iOS or Android. PS4 gamers can use R-Play to stream the real Rocket League direct to iOS.

• Download Turbo League for iOS
• Download Turbo League for Android
• Download Moonlight for iOS
• Download Moonlight for Android
• Download R-Play for iOS

Sad news, via TouchArcade.

Unsurprisingly, loads of speculation began circulating about a potential Rockstar release, as they’ve been pretty regular with blasting out iOS ports this time of year. Last year we got Bully: Anniversary Edition (which we also reviewed), but there won’t be any Rockstar iOS ports this year.

Rockstar usually has a great game release planned for this time of year. Last year, it was the excellent Bully. The year before, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, one of my personal favorites.

I’m disappointed that we won’t be seeing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, L.A. Noire, or Grand Theft Auto 4 any time soon. Maybe next year.

If you were following anyone in the iOS gaming community this morning, you probably saw some interesting news: Cuphead was – apparently – released on the App Store.

Sadly, this was too good to be true. The release was a scam app. It re-used fake assets from the PC version of Cuphead, re-packaged them into a bundle that looked official, and slapped a $4.99 price tag on it. This was a sophisticated job, though – TouchArcade fell for it, and they’re usually good about spotting fakes.

Scam apps like this are nothing new – see the multitude of games called “Minecraft 2” that briefly climb the App Store charts before being pulled – but I’ve never seen a scam app release that looks this polished. The level of detail in the store description is superior to many real releases from major developers.

Be careful out there. For all the talk about App Store rejections, Apple doesn’t actually do much to police their store.

After 3 and a half years of teasing, Oddworld: New n’ Tasty has finally hit the App Store, with full Gamevice support. And it’s as good as you could possibly hope for.

The story of Abe’s Odyssey – originally criticized for being quite dark – has aged well. Abe is enslaved as a factory worker at a facility responsible for processing meat into a variety of food stuffs enjoyed by the aliens that make up this universe. One day, he stumbles upon a meeting between the higher-ups, where they reveal that because they’ve harvested almost every other creature into extinction, they’re planning on grinding up Abe’s species into a new meal – “New n’ Tasty”.

As dark as that premise sounds, things never devolve into self-seriousness. Abe’s aww-shucks demeanor and overall positivity keep the tone grounded as a dark comedy. In fact, while replaying this iOS port, I was most struck by how much Abe reminded me of Jar-Jar Binks – who came several years after Oddworld was released. Almost like if Jar-Jar was transported into Soylent Green, and then superimposed over a story about escaping from slavery. Yeah, it’s a weird tone. But it works.

Previous games in the Oddworld franchise have been ported to iOS before, and work great with the Gamevice. Unfortunately, while these games are perfectly competent, they also never quite captured the magic of what made the original Oddworld so special. They were in-universe spinoffs, but that is all.

New n’ Tasty is a ground-up remake of Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey. Whereas the original was a great looking game for the original PlayStation, its pseudo-3D visuals and low resolution graphics don’t quite convey the sense of wonder they once did. New n’ Tasty fixes this. Visually, this is about as good as 2.5D platformers get.

Gameplay, on the other hand, is almost completely unchanged. Oddworld has always been a complex game, blending strategy and platforming, and taking full advantage of pretty much every button on your controller to command a deep set of actions. This gameplay, while complex and difficult, holds up perfectly well. If you’ve ever played Flashback, or any of the classic Prince of Persia games, Oddworld feels like an expanded version of that type of game, with the same difficulty you’d expect.

Oddworld’s challenge is mitigated somewhat by a few modern features. Quick saves are probably the biggest – you can quickly save your place, and reload from exactly where you left off, rather than relying on checkpoints. Far from feeling like the developers are just throwing a bone to casual gamers, these quick saves actually enhance the gameplay experience, removing frustration points that hurt the original release.

If you have fond memories about playing the original Oddworld, or if you want to see what all the fuss is about, and why so many people consider Oddworld such a cult classic, now is a great chance to pick it up and see for yourself.

• Download ‘Oddworld: New n’ Tasty’ for iOS