This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go.

Fist Face Fight is a simple, fast-paced tap-to-punch game in which you defend a heart from attacking ninjas. You act from an overhead perspective, keeping tabs on the heart at the bottom of the screen and directing a disembodied fist while ninjas and other hazards encroach from all sides.

By tapping around the screen, Fist Guy (as he shall be called from now on) will strike out at that spot in a straight line and rest. Anything in Fist Guy's path will be be punched, even the heart.

Continue Reading

Namco Bandai's Idolm@ster games have been exclusive to Japan since the series started, and for good reason: they're all about being a producer who recruits, trains, and promotes a girl group of "idol" performers. It's a huge sensation in Japan, and would meet mostly blank stares over here.

And now, Namco is helping generate those blank stares, releasing three Idolm@ster games, in English, on the iOS App Store. The catch: they're rhythm game spinoffs, without any of the simulation aspects. The real catch: they're $54.99 each. They're the same, except each stars a different team of erstwhile idols and includes a different animated sequence.

Square Enix just breathed a massive sigh of relief, as the pressure is off of its insane iOS pricing tendencies for a while.

Buddy & Me, a beautifully drawn 2D endless runner about a boy and his "magical flying creature" pal having adventures in a dream world of "infinite treehouses," passed its $40,000 Kickstarter goal, ending with $42,093 raised. That funding will enable developer Sunbreak Games to complete the iOS/Android game, expected in June.

Founder Jason Behr had experience working on the Metroid Prime series as lead level designer, and on Halo 4 as senior mission designer, before starting his own company and working on a game that looks nothing like either of those. "At Sunbreak," the Kickstarter project explains, "we're dedicated to crafting entertainment with a more 'positive' tone, so for Buddy & Me we focused on three core themes: companionship, an obsession with treehouses, and the natural excitement of exploring the great outdoors."

Indie developer Vlambeer is getting used to its games being cloned before final release, with the developer discovering today that its upcoming game Luftrausers has a clone called SkyFar on the iOS App Store. Freelance journalist Scott Nichols noticed the clone today, following its App Store release on March 24.

"We obviously endured a bit of a scare when news arrived of Luftrausers being cloned and released ahead of our own release schedule by another developer," Vlambeer lead Rami Ismail told us. "This time, however, it's not 'just' the idea of the game that has been cloned, but also the visual style. This gives us much more room to fight the whole thing, and we fully intend to."

Ismail continued, "The developer of the clone has gotten in touch with us after Twitter exploded and let us know that 'acttuly we genrated our assets, Codes and all newly' and that the gameplay as indicated on the screenshots 'is not there in game as in the screen shots. We just done those screnshots for public attraction'. They signed off with the note that 'we really dont think it links your game at all.'"

Vlambeer was famously at the heart of another cloning incident, when its 2010 browser-based game Ridiculous Fishing was cloned in 2011, while the developer was in the process of porting it for the platform. Another key issue with that clone, Ninja Fishing, was that it became a hit on the App Store. SkyFar hasn't seen such traction.

Continue Reading

The Realm is being developed by Atomhawk Design, a studio that specializes in art production. Having worked on several well-known games – including Mortal Kombat, Dead Island, Injustice and Enslaved, among others – Atomhawk is now trying its hand at an internal project, The Realm.

A point-and-click adventure game that draws inspiration from Monkey Island, Machinarium and Ico, The Realm tells the story of a girl, Sarina, and her stone golem, Toru. Controlling both characters, the player solves environmental puzzles using the abilities of each. From the sound of things, Toru's immense size and strength will probably come in handy.

Atomhawk is seeking £195,000 ($297,000) to fund The Realm on Kickstarter. The goal is to put the game on PC, Mac and tablets within approximately eight months.

Hiversaires, a "cryptic point & click adventure game in a textless world," is out now on iOS for $2.99. The adventure game was developed by Devine Lu Linvega, a French Canadian designer currently living in Japan.

Hiversaires was "created for adventurers who remember drawing maps to survive," its official site reads. Check out the game's mysterious art style in the gallery below.

When THQ went bankrupt and saw several of its IPs heading to the auction block, indie developer teamPixel began crowdfunding bidding money to win the Homeworld property for use in its upcoming space RTS game. Even after garnering $58,644 through a successful Kickstarter campaign and $13,675 on Indiegogo, teamPixel recently announced that it failed to win the Homeworld IP during the auction process.

"We hope you will join us in supporting Homeworld's new owners in building a future for the franchise," the developer said in a Kickstarter update. "We anticipate an announcement of the new owner to be made within a couple weeks and for the sale to be finalized around mid-May."

Well into development on its own Homeworld-inspired strategy game, teamPixel will refund all money earned during its crowdfunding efforts while also offering donors a "special credit" in the game. The developer's "Save Homeworld" site has since transformed to a landing page for tracking donor refunds.

The final THQ auction is expected to earn $6 million to $7 million. First details of the bidding results are expected to be revealed Monday.

This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go.

Halfbrick's Fish Out of Water launches on iOS today and it's unlike any of the studio's previous games. It's a much more casual experience with a far more simple premise that is, by all appearances, aimed at capturing a younger audience.

The goal of Fish Out of Water is to see how far you can fling a fish across the ocean. Your score is calculated across three tosses, factoring in both distance and the number of times your fish skipped across the water.

Continue Reading

For close to the past year, Doug Smith has been toiling away nights and weekends on a passion project called ChuggaBugga. It's a game for children about a train full of bugs hauling four boxcars – kids poke and prod the various interactive elements, such as an accordion-like boxcar and another replete with swimming pool and high-dive for the whimsical bugs to enjoy.

Smith, a recent ex-LucasArts employee, initially started working on the game just for his daughter, though he's not complaining about all the support he's received from people who aren't his daughter – specifically, Reddit. "Who knows? Maybe I can turn this into a full-time indie thing," he wrote. In a subsequent update, Smith called the reception "an amazing silver-lining" to his LucasArts woes.

ChuggaBugga is currently available for $1.99 on iOS devices.

Kachina is a game by Ben Esposito, who did level design on The Unfinished Swan with Giant Sparrow, in which you control a hole in the ground that moves around, swallows up animals and deposits them elsewhere. It's a game about a hole, and a game "exploring the relationship between modern American and indigenous Pueblo cultures through themes of erasure & discovery."

That seems like a wide-ranging set of goals for a small game, and Esposito is getting help in realizing those goals from the Indie Fund, which revealed Kachina as its next project. Originally a Molyjam creation, the "whimsical physics toy" is planned for commercial release on PC, OSX, and iOS.

Gritty, futuristic adventure game Gemini Rue started as a student project by Joshua Nuernberger. Nuernberger received help from Wadjet Eye Games, the husband and wife tandem of Dave and Janet Gilbert, who helped bring the point-and-click adventure to Steam in October 2011. The game runs on the Adventure Game Studio engine, which was first created in 1999, back when the notion of porting games to a mobile device wasn't at the front of developers' minds. Janet spent eight months adapting the AGS engine to iOS, and Gemini Rue is the first attempt at bringing one of Wadjet Eye Games' adventures to the platform. For a first attempt, it's quite impressive.

Gemini Rue has players controlling two characters located across a stretch of space from one another in the distant future. Azriel Odin, an ex-assassin, is searching for his missing brother. The other playable character, Charlie, starts the game with his memory being erased after a failed escape attempt from an unknown testing facility. Each piece of the mystery unravels at a good pace. The initial puzzles provide the backdrop for the game's well-conceived universe, itself an intriguing, nearly relatable Earth-like world full of crime. As the story progresses, the plot thickens and twists in a mostly expected manner before dropping a hefty, deep series of concepts on the player at the end.

If you think that sounds like a vague explanation of Gemini Rue's story, you're spot-on. I can't unveil the plot in good conscience; it simply needs to be played. It isn't ground-breaking by any means, but the tale is wholly enjoyable and worthwhile to anyone who enjoys dark sci-fi.

Continue Reading

ZeptoLab is gearing up to launch the third entry in its Cut the Rope series soon, Cut the Rope: Time Travel. This latest adventure follows Om Nom, the critter with a craving for candy, as he gets sucked into a time machine and travels to various periods in time to presumably solve various physics-based puzzles to make it back. You know, that old chestnut.

Cut the Rope: Time Travel will launch on iOS and Android simultaneously, though ZeptoLab tells Joystiq it's currently unsure of when exactly that will be. As far as how time travel will fit into the game, this is also a mystery.

Tekken Card Tournament was downloaded over a million times (in aggregate) within the first four days of its availability on the App Store, Google Play and Amazon's Appstore for Android, Namco Bandai has announced. That's not counting however many people played the game directly in their browser, either.

To signify the occasion, Namco Bandai has enacted a 48 hour, 30 percent off sale for all in-game booster packs, as of 11 a.m. Eastern this morning. Do note: this discount applies to the packs of cards themselves, which must be purchased using in-game currency. The purchase price of the in-game currency itself, however, has not been discounted, though you'll still get more for your credits while the sale is in effect.

You can always earn credits by winning matches and stuff too, but who has time for that in this modern age?

Continue Reading

Rockstar has released the soundtracks for its most recent Grand Theft Auto games onto Spotify and iTunes. Sadly, just the tunes from Grand Theft Auto 3 and every entry since are here – none of Rockstar's zany commercials or satirical talk radio stations.

The only place to get the full soundtracks still is through Rockstar's box set releases; however, if you want to just listen to the ads, you can point your browser to The Advertising Council.

Rockstar recently revealed the box art for Grand Theft Auto 5, due on September 17 for Xbox 360 and PS3. Even though over 100,000 have signed a petition calling for a PC port, Take-Two has not announced Grand Theft Auto 5 for the PC at this time.

Rayman Jungle Run, like Rayman Legends, is being updated with a bunch of extra levels. However, unlike Legends, the mobile runner's free levels aren't a gesture of reconciliation following a delay, they're there just because.

Also different: with Rayman Jungle Run, there is no delay. The game, and 20 new levels, are there right now as a free update to the iOS and Android versions. Windows 8 is coming soon.

Continue Reading

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which handles consumer protection in the UK, announced it's reviewing if freemium web and app games are encouraging children unduly to make purchases. The OFT says it's contacted certain companies behind free-to-play games, and asked parents and consumer groups to reach out with info about "potentially misleading or commercially aggressive practices" within such games.

The investigation is focusing on games that directly target children, the OFT says, via excessive pressure to make a purchase or to do something that requires a purchase. The OFT states this is illegal under the country's Consumer Protection Regulations Act of 2008.

"We are concerned that children and their parents could be subject to unfair pressure to purchase when they are playing games they thought were free, but which can actually run up substantial costs," said OFT Senior Director for Goods and Consumer Cavendish Elithorn. "The OFT is not seeking to ban in-game purchases, but the games industry must ensure it is complying with the relevant regulations so that children are protected. We are speaking to the industry and will take enforcement action if necessary."

According to OFT, 80 of the country's highest grossing Android apps on April 9 were freemium ones. Earlier this year, Apple paid upwards of $100 million in gift certificates to account holders whose children spent money without holder permission on Capcom's Smurfs Village iOS game, this after a settlement on a lawsuit which stated Apple "failed to adequately" disclose the presence of in-app purchases aimed at children.

[Image Source: PicPocket Books]

Rag Doll Kung-Fu, the marionette brawler on PC, is getting an iOS port this summer courtesy of Another Place Productions. The iOS version sports new art from Fable art director John McCormack, a single-player survival mode and, of course, a new touch-based control scheme. One finger lets you move your character around, two fingers control attacks.

Local iOS multiplayer is possible through Bluetooth synchronization, plus there's online multiplayer over the internet, Eurogamer reports. Rag Doll Kung-Fu will be a free download on iOS, with in-app purchases funding Another Place Productions.

Rag Doll Kung-Fu was created by Mark Healey, an employee of Lionhead at the time. After a favorable GDC showing in 2005, Healey found a publisher in Valve who then put the game out on Steam to great success – a milestone as the first third-party game to launch on the platform. Healey went on to become co-founder of LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule, and currently resides there as creative director.

You don't really have to care about Star Wars or Angry Birds in order to try Angry Birds: Star Wars. It's Starbucks' free app of the week, so there's not much investment required on your part.

Don't worry, you don't even need to care enough to get up and go to Starbucks. While codes for the game are available on cards in stores, you can also get a free copy of Angry Birds: Star Wars through the Starbucks app.

Although a bit of coffee might help with your motivation problem.

Jared Bailey of developer Nocanwin has confirmed to Joystiq that Fist Face Fight will be available on Thursday, April 18. Fist Face Fight will be a free download on both Android and iOS devices, ad-supported with in-app purchases of in-game currency. Any in-app purchase will disable advertisements permanently.

Fist Face Fight is a self-described "frenetic physics based arena combat game" in which you defend your heart by punching back waves of encroaching ninja. They want your heart; punch them.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown won't go down the common iOS route of charging for upgrades, items and the like, mainly because the game's lead designer can't stand the idea. Firaxis' Jake Solomon made the blunt disclosure to IGN, reaffirming the upcoming mobile version of the 2012 strategy game is a straight port.

"Oh God, please...," Solomon responded to IGN when asked about in-app purchases like power-ups, "No. I'm not sure I would be able to sleep at night. My food would taste like ashes in my mouth."

Solomon told us last month the iOS version, due this summer, is "the exact same game [as on PC or consoles], it's just now fully playable on an iPhone or an iPad." Given that it's the full game, it'll be "appropriately" priced at a premium point, although we're still waiting to see what that is. The iOS version will include the Elite Soldier DLC but not the Slingshot pack, while the Second Wave update remains a possibility.