Village Gamer

Cell Bound, the latest iOS device game from Hothead Games is available now in the iTunes App Store, and for just 99 cents, you can pick up a simple and addictive puzzle matching game that players in control of an important piece of science equipment – a sterile culture dish. Unfortunately, as soon as the dish is in the player’s hands it is subjected to contamination from a constant bombardment of colored cell structures.

To save the scientific sample, players have to spin the dish around using on-screen controls, catching and matching different colored cell structures as they drop into the field of play. Link five or more of the same color and cause the cells to burst and vanish before they can contaminate the whole dish. Burst more chains at a faster rate to score more points.

Cell Bound has three different game modes to play, plus Game Center support:

• Infinite Mode: The main mode, colored cells drop towards the center and explode when 5 like colors are connected. All of the cells can be burst using the smart bomb trigger in the center of the dish. More smart bombs can be accrued by racking up points.
• Timer Mode: Gain as many points as possible in 1:30 minutes. There are no smart bombs, and for every 1,200 points, one more second is added to the timer.
• Burst Mode: Cells that connect and are not the same color turn black and inert, obstructing the new cells.

[youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-4i7UbYZ6Y]

Collect shiny gems raining down from the sky, but beware of lurking sea monsters, all while playing four exciting mini-games – in tvokids.com’s The Mysteries of Lagoon Bay.

TVOKids.com continues to lead the way in teacher-approved, kid-tested fun with the launch of its new online educational game that was developed in close collaboration with students from a Toronto community school. The Mysteries of Lagoon Bay, which launches today on the TVO Kids web site, is an online board game that can be played by one to four players on the same computer – perfect for families.

Built from the ground up, over a one-and-a-half year period, game developers and educators from tvokids.com worked with a group of 10 children, aged five to seven, to incorporate their ideas and preferences into an exciting and challenging game. Not only is it adjustable for different skill levels, but The Mysteries of Lagoon Bay finely balances a mysteriously fun game while reinforcing the Ontario school curriculum.

The tvokids.com team began by building a life-sized physical board game and workshopped it with kids to determine the best way to make the educational elements of the game really come alive.

Players select one of six unique characters and compete to collect the most gems by playing four types of mini-games. Each game is designed to help kids with adding (Nice Dice), patterning (Ball Fall), geometry (Shape Escape), and spelling (Word Herd). The game’s adventurous setting incorporates suggestions from kids to add hidden passageways, top-secret trapdoors and wonderful surprises.

“The Mysteries of Lagoon Bay is the result of a collaborative effort between kids and tvokids.com – we really listened to what they liked in their favourite games and tried to pack as much as we could in this game,” says manager of tvokids.com Marie Morency-Lee. “When we showed the kids the final game, they were excited and screaming, ‘This was my idea!’. The game is a great tool to practice math and language concepts while having a blast playing with friends and family.”

New Brunswick indie studio On The Fly Entertainment has announced the launch of the studio’s first Xbox Live Indie Games release, math-based puzzle fighter Sum Fighter. Choose from one of six high school archetypes, use their unique abilities to bury your opponents and rise to the top of the school math competition.

To crush your opponent, rapidly add numbers to destroy blocks on your board and drop them into your opponent’s board. To destroy your blocks, you must drag adjacent blocks together, combining their face values. Once you’ve connected as many groups together as their face value the blocks disappear (players would connect five groups of the value 5 to destroy them or two groups of the value 2 and so on). The first player whose blocks reach and stay at the top for ten seconds loses. Our narrated tutorial steps the player through our mechanics before their first match.

Each character has their own path through story mode with their own unique character interactions and ending. The Jock, Nerd, Emo, Tagger, Principal and Librarian each have a unique ability they can unleash on their opponent, in order to be crowned the Sum Fighter Champion!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1hZSjLyxF4]

Sum Fighter Features:

• A fully animated intro
• A narrated tutorial
• 2 Player vs Mode and Story Mode
• 6 Animated characters at a gorgeous 720p
• 6 Character Endings
• 8 Expertly composed and varied music tracks

Sum Fighter is available now on Xbox Live Indie Games for 240 Microsoft Points.

Dragons vs Spaceships is a new project from Game Production Studios for Microsoft’s Dream Build Play competition. According to the game’s web page, Dragons vs Spaceships uses the XNA platform, with all engines developed by Game Production Studios excluding the Easy Storage engine for data management, developed at CodePlex and used under their license.

Dragons Vs Spaceships seeks to capture the essence of the genre, while putting a new spin on old conventions. Travel across many worlds destroying the enemy, using three weapon types that combine for a total of six special weapons. Fun and challenging, players will quickly master the controls, but will have a more difficult time downing the legion of Spaceships that stand in their way on the path to victory. There’s no telling who will lose the war, but Game Production Studios says the winner will be the player.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf7zp5e4EkQ]

The game’s premise, again from the official web page, is as follows:

Independent development studio Chaotic Box has launched its latest mobile game title to the iTunes Store. Match Panic challenges the tap skills of iOS gamers as they race to beat the clock and level up in order to increase their score multiplier as they tap madly to match the game pieces. Power-ups help blast players through each challenge to the next level, each more difficult than the previous.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssRfotgOQFA]

Unlock a dozen cute pixel characters and compete with friends on 5 Game Center Leaderboards. For the ultimate player challenge, there are 9 Game Centre Achievements for the taking. Match Panic is available for 99 cents USD and is rated 4+. This game is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices running iOS 3.1.3 or later.

Other Ocean Interactive is proud to reveal that Sir Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed TV and film star, will be lending his voice talents to The War of the Worlds, its upcoming cinematic side-scrolling platformer, coming to Xbox LIVE®Arcade and PlayStation®Network later this year. Based on the classic novel by H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds showcases Stewart’s distinct voice as the narration for the game, which follows one man’s experience in 1950s London during a decimating alien invasion.

Known to millions for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the popular TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as his performance as Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men film franchise, Stewart has enjoyed tremendous success over his decades-long film career including several Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.  However, providing narration for The War of the Worlds is an experience that hearkens back to Stewart’s childhood.

“As a young boy, I remember watching the The War of the Worlds so many times I was quoting the lines,” said Stewart. “The alien invasion both terrified and fascinated me and the movie has stuck with me since then. Now, being part of this project will provide a new way for gamers around the world to experience a fresh new take on a classic.”

The War of the Worlds is a dark and breathtaking new vision inspired by the classic H.G. Wells novel, retold as a single player, 2D action-adventure. The gameplay narrative parallels the timeline and events from the 1953 movie adaptation, but introduces a new story arc, characters, locations, and sub-plots.  With gameplay paying homage to classic cinematic platformers such as Flashback and Out of This World, players follow the exploits of an unknown everyman struggling to escape the Martian invasion of London and rescue his family. Forced to think through insurmountable odds, players will outsmart an army of alien tripods, spiders and drones as they make their way through a landscape of total devastation.

Frima Studios and Bolt Interactive have announced today that the Pygmies of Pocket God on Facebook have to worry not only about the gods smiting them, but now their fellow tribe members as well in Episode VIII: Hi-islanders. The latest expansion for the Pocket God world features a brand new item, a LARP rack, which enables Pygmies to duel one another using one of five fantastical weapons, introduces a new god challenge from new rival god Kali, and also expands the amount of in-game content by adding five new solo quests and a plethora of clothing options based on characters from the Pocket God comic book.

Since its debut in December 2010, the Facebook version of Pocket God has grown exponentially and is attracting more players every month. To date, there are more than 700,000 deities who have tortured Pygmies and more than 55 million loyal, unquestioning Pygmies have met their demise—that’s approximately the record-setting number for most votes cast in a single show on American Idol (okay, one more vote: Simon or Steven). Another two million sacrifices can be attributed to friends on Facebook sacrificing other friends in a host of brutal and irreverent ways, including electrocution, shark attack, venus fly traps, tornados, tar pits, and more!

The new updates for Hi-islanders include:

• There Can Only Be One Hi-islander: A mysterious LARP rack has appeared on the island and there’s only one thing to do now that it’s here: kill everyone. The new LARP item dons five video game-inspired weapons and swords, and when two Pygmies each get a hold of a weapon you’ll be witness to a fight to the death until only one Pygmy is left standing. Alternatively, if you dangle one of your hapless devotees in front of an armed Pygmy, your floating follower will be pummeled like a piñata (candy sold separately).

• Challenge Kali and Her Rack: New rival god Kali has showed up on the island, and she thinks that her rack is better than yours. Of course, you agree, and if you try to touch her rack then you best prepare for trouble as she won’t take your advances lightly. Successfully defeating Kali will earn you a weapon rack idol of your own, proving that your rack rules them all.

• Dress Up in Those Snazzy Comic Duds: Pocket God on Facebook is taking some fashion advice from its comic book counterpart and now offers fans the ability to customize their Pygmies with articles of clothing found in Pocket God Comics, as well as control the actual characters from the comic themselves! What’s that? You’ve always wanted to feed Ooga to a shark because he goes against everything the tribe says? Well then, your wish is our command.

• New Quests and UI Improvements Added: As always, we’re making sure to deliver new content for newbies and veterans alike with the latest update including five new solo quests for those deities who like to go it solo, as well as a slew of UI improvements in the Power and Clothing stores, along with some gameplay balances here and there.

The first of today’s Wild Games Studio video releases features the five minute E3 trailer for Dhaila’s Adventures, which focuses on the games’ three open worlds and the dungeons.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph_jhLS8n18]

The second trailer, also from E3, introduces the studio’s new IP World Circus, an innovative and original game that allows players to build and manage their own circus. World Circus is scheduled for release in 2013 and offers 3 game modes – career, simulation and multi-player.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZxoU3-un1I]

The third and final E3 video presents Wild Games’ new iPhone game Kung Fu Lobster, a colourful undersea world where you control a well-armed lobster and take on other denizens of the deep to prove that only the strong survive.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spg71sOkYDM]

Summer 2011 will see two new titles on many platforms coming from the Ludia game studios. The first announcement comes from Ludia Inc. and FremantleMedia Enterprises, who announced today that Hole In The Wall will be available worldwide exclusively for Kinect™ on the Microsoft Xbox 360^® and will be available for purchase from Xbox LIVE Arcade. Based on the global television game show phenomenon, Hole In The Wall is one of the trickiest, fastest and funniest games on the planet where agility and a hearty sense of humor are essential tools to survive.

Players must contort their bodies to fit through bizarrely shaped holes in themed moving walls hurtling towards them. Competitors attempt to clear the walls in order to boost their scores, or risk being swept away into a pool of water. Hole In The Wall will also incorporate online play, single and multiplayer game modes, as well as image captures of the outlandish player movements performed within the game and hilarious bonus videos from the TV show.

“Ludia is thrilled to create an immersive, controller-free Hole In The Wall game play experience that is perfectly suited to leverage Microsoft Kinect technology,” said Alex Thabet, Founder and CEO of Ludia Inc. “This first title is just the beginning of Ludia games for Kinect on Xbox 360, and serves to further reinforce our multiplatform game strategy.”

“The Hole In The Wall television show has been highly successful in dozens of countries worldwide, so we are very pleased to work with Ludia to extend the franchise to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, said Olivier Delfosse, Director, Interactive, FremantleMedia Enterprises, licensor for Hole In The Wall. “We are sure that fans of the show and wider audiences alike will enjoy partaking in a fresh and exciting new Hole In The Wall experience.”

The second development announcement came from Ludia and Mark Burnett’s One Three Television LLC. The development studio will publish games based on the multiple-award winning Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader?® TV game show. The North America-wide, multi-year will result in games for Facebook and mobile platforms including iPhone™, iPod touch™ and iPad™.

“We are excited to have the opportunity to create Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? games for the millions of people that play games on Facebook and mobile devices,” said Alex Thabet, Founder and CEO of Ludia Inc. “This new license helps amplify the Ludia portfolio of game show games, which has been a highly successful category for us and one we believe has strong on-going potential across platforms.”

The Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? games will feature the favorite game play elements of the television show as contestants vie to earn money by answering trivia questions from a set of ten grade school subjects in a quest to earn the top prize. The games will also incorporate real-time multiplayer competition as well as other unique social features that will result in high dynamic and entertaining game play experiences.

“We are pleased to add Ludia as a licensee to our Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? licensing program. We look forward to working with them on 5^th Grader games for social media and mobile platforms,” said Mark Burnett. “We are thrilled to see the franchise thrive so that fans of the show and wider audiences alike can enjoy their very own Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader? game experiences.”

Going Loud Studios, creators of Zombie Accountant, has announced that “Lair of the Evildoer” has gone gold will be released on Xbox Live Indie Games this Friday, June 17th. Gamers will be able to download it from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for only 80 Microsoft Points.

“We’re using the latest in cutting-edge set-your-release-date technology,” said Ben Kane, founder of Going Loud Studios. “It gives us an unprecedented level of control over when the game comes out.”

“Oh and the game’s pretty good too,” he continued, when asked to say something relevant.

In “Lair of the Evildoer”, players will attempt to escape the lair of mad scientist and all-around evildoer Dr. Odious. They’ll fight over 30 types of monsters as they explore the procedurally generated levels hunting for the best loot. Their only allies are the 25 varieties of weapons, each with dozens of variations. Fortunately, players will gain experience and spend stat points to improve their character and better their odds of making it out alive. They’ll need all the help they can get.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1JLIGP7TIM]