The Humble Bundle with Android 5
The latest Humble Bundle comes with six games, available for both PC and Android.
illo – birth of the cool
illo – birth of the cool is an action puzzle adventure designed for Apple iOS, Android handhelds and tablets, and now for PC. The game is being developed by Raylight, an independent Italian studio, and seeking funding through Kickstarter.
Expendable: Rearmed Launching on Android
Retrobomb, in association with Funbox Media, have today launched Expendable: Rearmed, the Android relaunch of classic PC and console title Expendable.
GAME Over and Other News
GAME has now officially filed for administration, after suspension of their shares this morning. Stores will continue to trade for the time being.
BioWare’s Mass Effect 3 woes continue this week.. gamers complaining about the ending, Amazon allegedly offering refunds on copies of the game, and now Dr Ray Muzyka, the co-founder and GM of BioWare, has released a statement which seems to suggest they may change the ending, or add more endings, at least.
To counter bad news with good.. I was pleased to see that the Chancellor has now announced tax credits for the UK gaming industry, this should hopefully boost the industry and allow the UK to compete with the rest of the world! (more…)
In the News – 6th March
Mass Effect 3 launched today for the Americans, with the UK release due on Friday. The game currently has a Metacritic score of 93, while the user score is currently at 2.5. Political voting? I think so.
The latest that the multiplayer will have an effect on the ending of your singleplayer game. As you complete missions and earn the support of different people, you gain them as War Assets: the game takes the number of collected War Assets into consideration when calculating your ending.. and it seems that you need a fairly high number of them. During multiplayer, you can improve your Readiness rating. This rating is used as a multiplier against your War Assets, so has a positive effect. (more…)
Indie Gala Fruit Blitz!
Another bonus game has been added to the recent Indie Gala bundle: Fruit Blitz!
Fruit Blitz is a mobile game for the Android, by Rubicon Development; featuring 90 second games with a simple matching mechanic. (more…)
The Humble Bundle for Android
The latest Humble Bundle is here, and this time it’s an offering for fans of mobile gaming, as the games are available for Android mobile devices, as well as Windows, Mac and Linux.
Games in this bundle are: reverse tower defense Anomaly: Warzone Earth, by 11 Bit Studios, ambient physics game Osmos, by Hemisphere Games, and Mobigame‘s puzzle-platformer EDGE, with 2D Boy‘s classic indie game World of Goo the bonus for those paying more than the average price.
As usual, the bundle is pay what you want, with a choice in how your donation is split up: between developers, the Child’s Play Charity, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Humble Tip.
Cut The Rope
Cut The Rope is an iOS physics puzzler developed by ZeptoLab and published by Chillingo back in 2010 for both iOS and Android, and later for the iPad.
I’m very late to the party with Cut The Rope, I know.. but I finally got to play it after I saw on RockPaperShotgun that a browser version had appeared!
The object of the game is to feed candy to a cute green monster called “Om Nom”.. said candy being attached to ropes which you must cut so the candy falls into Om Nom’s waiting mouth. After the first few levels, this means cutting the right ropes in the right order so you can get the candy into his mouth.
As well as guiding the candy to Om Nom, there are stars to collect on each level, which can mean swinging the candy away from Om Nom.. going for the stars means thinking then cutting 
If you drop the candy rather than getting it to Om Nom, he’ll be sad..
Later levels require more planning and timing, as you have to use bubbles and bellows to help move the candy, while avoiding spike traps, and other hazards. These include spiders.. good because they snare the candy and swing it into stars, but bad because they then start reeling in the candy too!
There’s also a Behind the Scenes section on the site for those wanting to know a bit more about HTML5 and the development of games such as this one!
Android Games – Alchemy
I recently got my first smartphone, the HTC Wildfire.. I wanted a new phone mainly for the camera and ability to record amusing videos of my friends, and this has a 5 megapixel camera with flash. It also has the Android Market, which is full of apps and games..
This morning’s find was Alchemy.
When I saw the name, I assumed it was a clone of PopCap Games’ Alchemy and downloaded it without a second glance.. but I found it to be a rather more interesting game.
You start off with four elements, which you combine by simply dragging and dropping on top of each other.. this makes new elements, though not necessarily what you’d expect, and not necessarily what you’d call an ‘element’. Combining water and fire produces alcohol, while water and air produces steam..
There are 370 elements to discover.. up to now I’ve found 31. Most of the elements you produce can be used to create other elements in turn, though some, such as the “Molotov cocktail” are terminal elements, and are of no further use.
I’m not sure if this is a game that I’ll finish any time soon, as some of the elements are more likely to be discovered by randomly combining items rather than logically thinking it through. However, it’s easy to pick up for a few minutes here and there 