Game Topz (gamtopz@gmail.com)

The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn’t necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable “best" thing. Instead, it’s more just us picking out the single game out of the week’s releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one . These picks might be controversial, and that’s OK. If you disagree with what we’ve chosen, let’s try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why . Without further ado…   SpellTower+ Zach Gage’s original SpellTower launched almost a decade ago, back in November of 2011. Its

Earlier this month we took a look at the announcement trailer for a new game called Bulwark of the Abyss from developer Chase Holton, aka When’s Lunch? Games, aka maker of one of my favorite dungeon crawlers of the past few years The Scrungeon Depths ($1.99) . Bulwark of the Abyss is easily his most ambitious project yet, and looked to take inspiration from his previous work, specifically the deflection-based combat of Gwarmbee (Free) and the over-the-top items and weaponry of the aforementioned Scrungeon Depths . It looks really promising, and here is that announcement trailer once again just in case you missed it the first time around. So, something that I did not realize was happening was that over the past several weeks, Chase Holton has been posting entries on his development blog that are… strange, to say the least. I guess you could describe them as snippets of short stories, or perhaps journal entries from some unnamed character, perhaps a character in Bulwark of the

The most recent release on mobile from develop Doublethink Games is the brutal, and I mean absolutely brutal, two-button Metroidvania-style platformer Necrosphere ($2.99) . It is a game that will chew you up and spit you out over and over and over again, and is actually an incredible game if you are into borderline masochistic difficulty. So what is on, like, the complete other side of the spectrum from Necrosphere ? Their next mobile game Melbits World , I’d say. It’s an extremely cute and colorful 3D puzzle platformer where you control a huge cast of Melbits, adorable creatures who live inside all of our fancy electronic devices. Their job is to eradicate the evil viruses that cause our digital devices to malfunction, and in turn keep the “good vibes" of the Internet intact so it can keep on working for everyone. Here are a couple of really cute trailers for Melbits World . Interestingly, Melbits World originally launched more than a year ago on the PlayStation 4, and one

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for January 31st, 2020. In today’s article, we’re taking a quick look at a new special edition of the Switch hardware, hitting some summaries for today’s many new releases, and checking out a rather robust list of new sales. Some good stuff is hitting the shop today, and some of those deals are quite good. Let’s head on in! News Special Edition Switch for ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Coming Need a new Switch in anticipation of the upcoming release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons ? Nintendo has your back, friend. The special edition Animal Crossing -themed Nintendo Switch will arrive on March 13th for a price of $299.99. It includes a special dock design, a pattern on the back of the Switch screen, and specially-colored Joy-Cons. It does not include the game, which will arrive on March 20th for $59.99. But wow, just look at that thing. It’s gorgeous. If I weren’t holding out for that Switch Pro that the pundits have

While it’s fair to say that the granddaddy of all collectible card games, Magic: The Gathering , has not always fared spectacularly on mobile, one thing you can’t deny is that it keeps coming back around in new forms. With Magic: ManaStrike (Free) , Netmarble might finally have hit on a way to keep the flavor of the brand fully intact while presenting its characters, creatures and lore in a cool new way. That’s not to say that ManaStrike is built around some revolutionary mechanics, because it’s a real-time, live PvP strategy game — essentially a mobile MOBA (which is always fun to type or say). But it’s a very well-designed example of its genre, pulling off the neat trick of being both simple and deep, and you don’t even have to have any prior M:TG knowledge to enjoy it. Let’s get you slinging some spells and summoning some Planeswalkers, shall we? How to Play Magic: ManaStrike —  The Basics Magic: ManaStrike features quick and relatively short PvP matches against other play

It looks like Apple is back to bringing something new to Apple Arcade each week. After Butter Royale arrived last week , Apple Arcade gets a multiplayer augmented reality experience in the form of Secret Oops! from Mixed Bag Games today. Mixed Bag Games previously brought games like forma.8 GO and Waking Violet to iOS. You play with others on the same game board that is shared across everyone’s devices locally. Secret Oops! supports up to four players totally playing together to try and help Charles finish his missions. Watch the trailer for it below: Secret Oops! has 35 levels right now across two game worlds. More will be added in future updates. The game supports cross play between iOS, macOS, and Apple TV. I’m not sure how Apple TV will deal with the AR bits but I’ll check it out when I download the game. Hopefully Apple continues getting new genres into the service but a lot of people who subscribed initially are likely waiting on Apple to reveal some sort of schedule on

It’s coming up on three years ago that we sat down with the folks from Noodlecake Games to see four of their upcoming mobile titles at GDC 2017. Those titles were: Flipping Legend , Lichtspeer , Invert , and Summer Catchers . Well, here we are all these years later and all of those games EXCEPT Summer Catchers has been released on mobile. I was starting to get worried, but thankfully this week my mind was put at ease when Summer Catchers became available for pre-order on the App Store with an expected release date of February 19th. Phew! Summer Catchers is a side-scrolling driving game, somewhat similar to those that have been popular on mobile over the years where you see how far you can drive before your vehicle craps out, then you take the coins you earned on your run to upgrade all sorts of stuff and set out on a new run where your upgraded vehicle allows you to get just a bit further than you did last time. Summer Catchers is kind of like that, but heavily story-based, and wi

Shallot Games, makers of such fine mobile titles like the Vista Golf series and Sprout: Idle Garden , are currently working on a more robust building game which they’re calling Shallot Town . Shallot Games, Shallot Town … it makes sense! You might remember if you were a fan of Sprout: Idle Garden that one of the best parts about that game was building and designing the layout of your garden. Did you go symmetrical or asymmetrical? Did you group same types of flowers together in their own sections or go willy nilly with where you placed things? Did you try to create cool designs with your pathways? All those types of things made creating and maintaining your garden in Sprout a ton of fun, and based on this early trailer of Shallot Town , it looks like it’ll take that same concept and excellent idle game-inspired progressions syste, but flesh it out into a full city builder. You don’t just have to take this trailer’s word for it though, as Shallot Games are looking for beta testers

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for January 30th, 2020. Today is all about the new releases, and we’ve got a whole ton of them to look at. Some interesting games, though I can’t say many of them have what we would call general appeal. Besides that massive list, we have exactly one news nugget to check out, along with the usual list of sales. Let’s have at it! News New Costumes Hit ‘Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3’ Nintendo has been sharing information recently about the upcoming major expansion content on the way for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 , but what to do if you haven’t bought that fancy Expansion Pass? Well hey, you can enjoy some free costumes in this latest update. Four characters get some new threads, and most of them will be quite familiar for comic book fans. Spider-Gwen gets her Gwenom costume, Venom gets the Anti-Venom suit, and Miles Morales and Ms. Marvel get some street wear. All of this adds up to an update worthy of the coveted SAMSotW a

We’ve been following the upcoming Company of Heroes iPad conversion from Feral Interactive for a while now. While it was disappointing that the game missed its initial release window , a Feral Interactive port is always worth the wait. Feral Interactive just showcased a new trailer for the upcoming port of the Relic and Sega RTS classic and announced the release date for Company of Heroes on iPad. They also revealed what iPad models will be supported. Watch the new trailer for Company of Heroes on iPad below: To play Company of Heroes on iPad, you need one of the following iPad models and at least 6 GB of free space: iPad mini (5th generation) iPad Air (3rd generation) iPad (5th generation) iPad (6th generation) iPad (7th generation) iPad Pro (1st generation: 9.7", 12.9") iPad Pro (2nd generation: 10.5", 12.9") iPad Pro (3rd generation: 11", 12.9") Company of Heroes supprts the retina display as expected with a UI built for touchscreens.

Each and every day new mobile games are hitting the App Store, and so each week we put together a big old list of all the best new releases of the past seven days. Back in the day the App Store would showcase the same games for a week, and then refresh those features each Thursday. Because of that developers got into the habit of releasing their games throughout Wednesday or very early Thursday in order to hopefully get one of those coveted features spots. Nowadays the App Store refreshes constantly, so the need for everyone to release all on the same day has diminished. Still, we’ve kept our weekly Wednesday night format as for years that’s the time people knew to check TouchArcade for the list of new games. And so without further ado please check out the full list of this week’s new games below, and let us know in the comments section which games you’ll be picking up!   Bird BnB (Free) iTunes Description Have you ever dreamed of getting away from the daily grind, maybe even ow

Over the last few years, I’ve been playing more games from NIS America on PS4 and Nintendo Switch. They’ve been bringing loads of games from both NIS in Japan and third party partners to consoles and PC over the years. Most people know NIS America for English releases in the Disgaea and Danganronpa franchises. Today, the PS4 and Nintendo Switch enhanced remake of the original Disgaea just got a surprise release on the App Store in the form of Disgaea 1 Complete () as a fully premium release. This is a nice surprise after how much of a mess Disgaea RPG has been in Japan on mobile. Watch the trailer for the mobile version below: If you’ve never played Disgaea 1 or any Disgaea game before, the franchise is known for great tactical battles and humour that will be hit or miss with you. You’re always in for a good time with a Disgaea game if you enjoy over the top action though. Disgaea 1 Complete is an enhanced remake that is based on the PC version of Disgaea 1 that was an