Game Topz (gamtopz@gmail.com)

Around this time four years ago, mobile gamers were treated to one of the best games in all the land when HeatPot Games released Hero Emblems ($2.99) . For years by-the-numbers match-3 games had been flooding the market and those craving something with a bit more meat on its bones were left reminiscing about the good old days of Puzzle Quest . Well, the days of Puzzle Quest before it became multiple free to play iterations based on various IPs, I guess. Anyway, Hero Emblems was a match-3 RPG with lovable characters, a surprisingly interesting story, fantastic gameplay, and a premium price tag with no IAP. It was heaven and is still beloved to this day. It feels like forever since a sequel was announced in September of 2016, and updates on the game’s progress have been fairly infrequent. Today however HeatPot has dropped a new gameplay video and progress update in our forums , and Hero Emblems 2 is continuing to look fantastic. The video below shows off a boss battle, and then a cu...

Once again Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad has some breaking news concerning Nintendo and their upcoming mobile plans. Announced today, Nintendo will be partnering with chat juggernaut LINE to produce a mobile game based on the Dr. Mario franchise. Titled Dr. Mario World , the game will be coming to both iOS and Android and is pegged for an early summer 2019 release, according to the official press statement . The game will be initially released in approxiamately 60 countries and regions, which will include both Japan and the United States. And as expected it’ll be free with optional in-app purchases. Nintendo is partnering with LINE to create a Dr Mario mobile game. It will be a puzzle game for smartphones planned to launch in Summer 2019. pic.twitter.com/dAOZOSS29i — Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) January 31, 2019 As pointed out in a follow-up tweet by Ahmad, this will now be the third company Nintendo has partnered with to produce a mobile game. They worked with DeNA on Animal C...

Back in April of last year, Konami announced a new mobile entry in their decades-running Castlevania series. Like the more recent announcements of mobile entries in popular franchises, like Alien and Diablo , the console and PC crowd did not take kindly to the announcement. However, the game itself, titled Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls , actually sounded really cool. It features classic 2D side-scrolling gameplay but with characters, monsters, and environments all modeled in 3D, a style typically dubbed 2.5D. Like many mobile games in popular AAA franchises, Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls would feature multiple characters from throughout the series history and would also include the option for cooperative online play for up to 4 players. And as we all probably expected it would also be a free to play game. The month following its announcement, a closed beta test was conducted in Japan for Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls , resulting in various bits of random footage making its way o...

Crescent Moon Games are ALWAYS up to something, and it looks like their next mobile release will be the gorgeous world-rotating platformer called Linn: Path Of Orchards . Crescent Moon has been teasing this one on Twitter for the past couple of weeks, and it’s a platforming game where the actual platforms are always in motion rotating this way and that. Your job is to run along those platforms to collect items and reach the goal without falling to your death. Isn’t that what we all strive for in life, not falling to our deaths? There’s currently no trailer for Linn but here’s a few tweets showing clips of the game and its really unique art style in action. #ScreenshotSaturday Linn: Path of Orchards – a beautiful platformer was submitted to the @AppStore @AppStoreGames #indiegame #gamedev pic.twitter.com/fgZ8uaBBGu — Crescent Moon Games (@CM_Games) January 26, 2019 Whoa this level #Linn #screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/UhcRbCAc4Z — Crescent Moon Games (@CM_Games) Ja...

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for January 31st, 2019. The first month of the year is already in the can, and we’re sending it on its way with a whole gob of new releases for your consideration. Due to the heavy volume of new releases, we’re going to be skipping the news today, but it wasn’t a particularly busy news day anyway. And hey, I’ve got a couple more reviews for you to check out, so you won’t be hurting for things to read. Let’s attack aggressively! Reviews Dragon Marked for Death: Frontline Fighters/Advanced Attackers ($14.99 each) It doesn’t take very long to realize that Dragon Marked for Death has had an awful lot of effort put into it. The pixel art looks great, the animations are excellent, and the controls are simply a dream. Of course, you would probably expect that from Inti Creates, the developer behind a frankly ridiculous list of excellent 2D action games. Mega Man Zero , Azure Striker Gunvolt , Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon ,...

Adventure games have split into multiple sub genres over the last decade or so with many catching on quite well on mobile platforms. The lost phone sub genre has been quite popular recently but the one sub genre I’ve grown to enjoy quite a bit in the last few years is the FMV one. FMV or full motion video games play great across all platforms. Wales Interactive has published some interesting FMV games across consoles and PC platforms but the one I’ve enjoyed quite a bit is The Shapeshifting Detective . It just got revealed for iOS and is out next month. Watch the teaser trailer for it below: The Shapeshifting Detective is a noir murder mystery experience with a detective who can shapeshift into other characters. What really had me interested in this was the great voice acting in addition to the premise. As an FMV experience, there are more than 1600 video responses. This obviously implies a large install size and the App Store lists The Shapeshifting Detective at 3.3GB so keep t...

In April of last year, the Japanese version of Everdark Tower (Free) hit our forums , and we tried our best to give it a go, but being English speakers we quickly got lost. Well, that is not the case anymore, as Everdark Tower just got localized via an update. Similar to Archlion Saga (Free) , Everdark Tower is a “pocket-sized RPG", which plays pretty directly into the kind of stuff I end up enjoying on mobile. While our own Shaun Musgrave often digs into these massive Kemco RPGs, one thing Jared and I often talk about on our podcast is how these days with so many games being released on a daily basis what we really prefer are super-tight game experiences that you can beat in a couple hours and move on to the next thing. That’s exactly what their pocket-sized RPG series is all about. They’re designed to be played in 2-4 hours, they’re free, and I think Kemco’s goal here is to have people try these games and think to themselves, “Hey this is pretty neat maybe I’ll check o...

Rome: Total War ($9.99) launched as an iPad only experience initially. After fans kept demanding an iPhone version, they actually added it for free making the app a universal build. I’m still in awe at how developers manage taking these complext interfaces and not only adapting them for iPad but also for the much smaller screens on iPhones. Today, version 1.10 arrives on iOS. Watch a trailer showcasing this below: This update is now live on the App Store. Rome: Total War version 1.10 adds 8 more playable factions. The total is now at 19. You can even unlock all factions from the settings for the game if you want. The update also adds a range marker for missile units and lets you command grouped units to move together at the same pace. If you don’t own it already, you can grab Rome: Total War for $9.99 on the App Store and it supports iPhone and iPad. If you are on Android, get it here on Google Play for the same price here . Check out our forum thread for more discussion a...

As we get closer to the end of March (this financial year), everyone was wondering where Mario Kart Tour was. Nintendo announced Mario Kart was coming to the App Store and Google Play in the ofrm of Mario Kart Tour a while ago. It was set to release before the end of March. Today, Nintendo’s financials are going on in Japan with them giving everyone updates on million sellers on consoles and mobile games. スマートフォン向けアプリ『マリオカート ツアー』は、アプリの品質向上および配信後のサービス内容拡充のため、配信予定を2019年夏とさせていただきます。 pic.twitter.com/YhtI2DWw4H — 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) January 31, 2019 Mario Kart Tour has officially been delayed to Summer 2019. The reason for the delay is to improve the quality of the game. I was pretty skeptical of the End March window because we haven’t even seen anything for the game yet. Nintendo is capable of announcing and releasing something in a very short period though so there was always the possibility of it being shown off in February for a March 2019 release. That didn’t work out in the...

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!   Another Eden iTunes Description Game Overview ・An unprecedented amount of content in the smartphone gam...