Featured image for post Trap Adventure 2 is Oddly Addicting and Worth a Download

Trap Adventure 2 is Oddly Addicting and Worth a Download

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.

Featured image for post Square Enix hires Sonic mastermind Yuji Naka

Square Enix hires Sonic mastermind Yuji Naka

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.

Featured image for post Crescent Moon Games Teased Sequels to Skyfish, Ravensword, and Paper Monsters

Crescent Moon Games Teased Sequels to Skyfish, Ravensword, and Paper Monsters

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.

Featured image for post Rocket League Gains Cross-Platform Multiplayer

Rocket League Gains Cross-Platform Multiplayer

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.

Featured image for post Rockstar Does Not Have Any iOS Releases Planned for This Year

Rockstar Does Not Have Any iOS Releases Planned for This Year

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.

Featured image for post The Brief Story of Cuphead’s Surprise iOS Release

The Brief Story of Cuphead’s Surprise iOS Release

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.

Featured image for post Sonic 2 is Free as Part of Sega Classics

Sonic 2 is Free as Part of Sega Classics

Sonic 2 joins the original Sonic as part of Sega Classics. Classics is a marketing initiative where beloved games from throughout Sega’s history are released on mobile and made free-to-play, with an optional in-app purchase to disable ads. Some of the games in Classics are emulated, others are rebuilt from scratch to run on modern hardware.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about these classic Sonic games that hasn’t already been said. You’ve probably already played these games – they’re among the best 2D platforming games of all time, and they virtually defined gaming in the late-’80s-early-’90s. They established Sega as a major player in the world of gaming, and Sega is arguably only alive today because of the franchise these games spawned. If you’ve never played these games, you should download them immediately.

These games are timeless masterpieces, and I’m not going to try to sell you on them. Instead, I want to talk about what makes these particular versions of Sonic so special, and why these mobile ports are the definitive versions.

Sonic 2 Gameplay

There have been many releases of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 over the years. Name any game system, handheld or console, and there’s a good chance one or both of these games have appeared on it1. But the iOS versions are notably different from all previous releases. They’re unique in that, unlike every other release, the iOS versions of Sonic, Sonic 2, and Sonic CD were rebuilt, from the ground up, specifically for iOS. A little history:

The year is 2009. Sega released both Sonic and Sonic 2 on the App Store. These original releases were poor quality, struggling to maintain 30fps on Apple’s most powerful devices, and lacking any modern features. Quality aside, the ports are successful from a sales perspective, and Sega is eager for more. They ask the community: which game should the bring to the iPhone next?

Developer Christian “Taxman” Whitehead, a longtime Sonic fan, and participant in the Sonic modding community, has an answer. In his spare time, he rebuilt Sonic CD himself, as a fan project. It runs on his own custom game engine, which perfectly replicates the physics of the classic Sonic games, down to the tiniest detail, at vastly greater performance than the poor-quality emulators Sega has been using. Whitehead shows off his custom version of Sonic CD, running at 60fps on an iPod Touch. The community wanted Sonic CD, and Whitehead wanted to work on it, but Sega went silent.

Two years later, and we’ve heard nothing more about Sonic CD or Christian Whitehead’s engine. Everyone assumes the project didn’t work out. Then, almost out of nowhere, Sonic CD hits the App Store.

Whitehead’s Sonic CD release is amazing. It runs perfectly on all iOS devices. It includes an expanded feature set, tons of bug fixes from the original ’90s game, and tons of additional bonus content. Arguably, it was the best release of any Sonic game, for any platform, ever. Better yet, because it was originally released for the obscure Sega CD system, it is one of the least-played games in the classic 2D Sonic catalog.

Because of these factors, Sonic CD’s iOS port was a huge success. It immediately became the best Sonic game on iOS, and was eventually ported to all of the major game consoles, PC, and Android2.

Sega and Whitehead followed-up Sonic CD by updating Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, with the assistance of co-developer Stealth’s development studio Headcannon. Gone were the poor-quality emulators, replaced with brand new, completely rebuilt, versions of the classics. These versions gained all the performance improvements and bug fixes that could be expected from the improved engine, but also included numerous new features. Knuckles and Tails were added to the original Sonic and Sonic 2, and an incomplete level that was cut from Sonic 2 was finished and re-added back to the game.

Sonic-2-Knuckles

After these ports, Whitehead and Stealth attempted to convince Sega to approve development of a similarly-updated port of Sonic 3, and even released a video proof-of-concept. Sadly, it wasn’t going to happen3. Sega had other plans.

Whitehead and Headcannon’s work on the mobile Sonic releases was so good, Sega trusted them with development of a brand new Sonic game using the new game engine – Sonic Mania. Mania has gone on to be the highest reviewed Sonic game in over a decade. It is, in fact, arguably the best game in the entire series. And it wouldn’t exist without the engine Whitehead used to port Sonic CD to iPhone back in 2009. But that is a story for another day.

Unlike with Sonic CD, the updated versions of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 were not ported to any other consoles, or to PC. The only way to play these versions of Sonic is on iOS and Android. For whatever reason, rather than porting these versions of Sonic to other consoles, Sega has reverted back to using emulated versions everywhere else. And unfortunately, even though Android has these updated versions of the Sonic games, only the iOS versions support the Gamevice (yeah, we’re hoping they fix that, too).

As it stands today, the best possible way to play Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 is on iOS. And although these games work with touchscreens, they’re best with a controller. And the Gamevice is the best controller you can get for iPhones and iPads. So we’re in an interesting position where the very best way to play two of the very best games of all time is on your iPhone or iPad, with a Gamevice. And on top of all that, the games are free to download now, with a one-time fee to remove ads.

If this isn’t enough of a reason to give Sonic a download, I don’t know what is.


  1. Oddly enough, Sonic was one of few games ported to the iPod – the one with the click wheel. This version of Sonic was released in 2007 and sold through iTunes, and predated the iPhone and the App Store. You touched the click wheel to move, tapped down on it to jump, and attempted to touch the bottom part of the wheel to roll. It cost $4.99, and was unplayable. 
  2. Although Sonic CD was ported to Android, it seems to have been removed from the Google Play store. Here’s hoping Sega reuploads it eventually. 
  3. Sonic 3 and Knuckles is almost never re-released, even in emulated form. The exact reasons for this are not known definitively, but might possibly have to do legal issues involved with its soundtrack, which might have been written by none other than Michael Jackson. It’s all very mysterious. Which is unfortunate, because Sonic 3 and Knuckles was my favorite game in the original series.