Billed as the spiritual sequel to QWOP (which is now on iPad), GIRP employs every alphabetic character on the keyboard to great effect, letting you experience the closest feeling to rock climbing you’ll have while your fat butt is still glued to your chair. The goal of the game is to reach the top of the cliff and find the treasure hidden inside a bird’s nest.
According to Bennett Foddy, the game’s creator, GIRP is “NOT AS HARD AS QWOP BUT I THINK YOU WILL FIND IT… HARD ENOUGH.”
TIGdb: Entry for GIRP
I think we’re well due for an iPhone/iPod Touch post. My Touch has become the peripheral of choice for the go, so I made sure it was well-stocked with games. Here are 10 of my favorites:
Eliss – Steph Thirion’s Eliss was one of the first iPhone games to catch my eye, and still stands out as one of the best games for the platform, in my opinion. It’s gorgeous and challenging, and makes great use of the iPhone’s multitouch.
Canabalt – Conceived by Adam “Atomic” Saltsman, the big brain behind Flixel and Edgecrement, Canabalt has you leaping from roof-to-roof in a frantic and stylish escape from a dying city. It’s the best one-switch game I’ve ever played and the latest update – which features new environments and sick beatz by Danny B. – make it even better.
Developers should check out Adam’s post about “The $0.99 Problem”, too.
Evacuation – We covered Bennett “Benzido” Foddy’s Evacuation on TIGSource before, when it was a Flash game. It’s even better on the iPhone.
Little Master – Likewise, Benzido’s cricket game started life as a Flash title before it became an iPhone game, and we covered it before. What can I say? I really like his work!
Sword of Fargoal – Jeff McCord’s classic roguelike game has been rebooted by McCord and his partners, Paul Pridham and Elias Pschernig. For those of you yearning for a good roguelike experience on the iPhone, this is it! It’s a fantastic update to the game.
Earth Dragon – Earth Dragon was created by Chaim Gingold, the design lead for Spore’s Creators, including the Creature Creator (now indie as the day he was born). It’s quite cute and fun and makes clever use of the accelerometer and touch to let you control your dragon. The art is by Jane Ng, who also worked on Spore.
ZenBound – Zenbound is a calm (I wrote “clam” first, and almost left it), meditative game that has you tying up wooden animals with rope. It’s really striking to look at. The creators, Secret Exit, are best known for their Stair/Truck Dismount series of games.
Stair Dismount – And yes, Stair Dismount has finally made it to the iPhone. This version has a variety of different levels and lets you paste your friends’ faces onto the ragdoll via Facebook. I chose Edmund McMillen, because his photo was cropped the best. Then I chose a baby.
Skull Pogo – Chevy Johnston’s Skull Pogo started off as a Game Maker game, but it works best on the iPhone, where you can use the accelerometer to control your little skullpogoman. Aside from being an awesome, creative, and helpful dude on the forums, Chevy knows how to make an addictive game. The recent update is pretty sweet, too.
Cross Fingers – Because of a certain someone asshole, Edge has been removed from the App Store again. But at least he didn’t prevent Mobigame from releasing their next title, Cross Fingers, a sliding-block puzzle game that uses multitouch. Although perhaps not as unique as Edge, I actually prefer CF as a game to play on the go.
So there you have it! 10 good games for under $22. And I’m sure you got more, so lay it on us in the comments.
Brilliant idea to make a game about explosive decompression, in my opinion. Evacuation is a collaboration between Benzido (QWOP, Too Many Ninjas), the master of the one-screen Flash game, and programmer Ryan Chisholm. The goal in each of Evacuation’s 200 levels is to eject all of the man-eating aliens from the space shuttle by opening and closing the various colored cargo doors on the ship. Just be careful not to fling your own crew members into space! And there are a couple of other catches: 1. opening or closing a door will toggle other, similarly-colored doors open or closed, and 2. you must keep the captain and all officers alive or else you lose.
Because the levels are procedurally-generated the difficulty can feel slightly indeterministic. But like all of Benzido’s games, Evacuation is fast and fun and very addictive.
TIGdb: Entry for Evacuation
I’m not sure I could explain, in words, what Benzido’s Qwop is about any better than the above screenshot can. This must be what it’s like for a baby to try and walk!
TIGdb: Entry for Qwop
Top Spinner is an addictive new game from the creator of Too Many Ninjas, Mr. Benzido. TS is a batting game based on cricket, which is known in the U.S. as “What in God’s name have they done to baseball?!” In reality, however, cricket was probably invented sometime in the 16th century, making it an ancient sport of kings, or some such. Silly Americans.
The goal of the game is to keep swatting balls away from the stump behind you. If the stump falls over or if you hit a ball into one of the “out” zones, it’s over.
TIGdb: Entry for Top Spinner (the 400th game in our database!)