Dragons are notorious for collecting gold and jewels then storing them in their lair. They are known as fierce creatures that kill anything and everything for treasure. Some of that is about to change. Behold a new kind of fierce.

Redikod, a small developer from Europe, has created a new iOS title, A Gay Dragon. Fierce is now a pink dragon, Melwin, who must save his prince from the evil princess and her posse.  Melwin might not look dangerous, but to take on women dragons, he must act similar to the accepted persona of his race.

The players place arrows along a forest bed to guide Melwin to his prince, while fending off the princess’ friends. Also, in this strategic puzzle platformer, Melwin can transmute gold into armor and a dragon’s breath ability. Other items can be collected to decorate Melwin’s dragon lair.

“Melwin is a fun and loveable protagonist, and we think that the overall theme of the game is just audacious enough to give players a chuckle as they maneuver through the levels,” said Erik Robertson, managing director at Redikod.

A Gay Dragon symbolizes the change in society. The game uses a traditional story changing it only slightly to make it original and well…sassy.

Rating

BUY

I enjoy casual gaming, most people do.  Whether it be on your phone, pc, ipod, or even your Xbox; people play casual games all the time.  I’ll admit, I carry my tablet with me everywhere and 60% of my apps are games of all genres.  Recently, I’ve become more interested in Hidden Object games.  They are fast paced, fun and challenge your mind.  At times, they can be a bit frustrating.  So, when I was given the chance to play Vampire Saga: Welcome to Hell Lock I was very excited!  This is a fun and affordable addition you can make to your pc games library.  Although the title doesn’t seem so family friendly, it really is a game that anyone of any age can enjoy with excellent content and nothing too scary.

As I said, I was really excited to play this game.  I have not had the pleasure of playing Vampire Saga: Pandora’s Box so going in, I really didn’t know what to expect.  ”Hidden object” made me assume that’s all I’d be doing.  I did not expect an engaging storyline at all.  The game surprised me and I think that is what made it so enjoyable.  Having other tasks to complete, countless puzzles and mini-games to solve along with dozens of hidden object games, made this a worthwhile experience.  It also kept the game from getting monotonous and too repetitive.

The game starts off in a bit of confusion.  The main character has had an motorcycle accident, he wakes up not knowing where he is and of course, is experiencing memory loss.  No phone, no flashlight and lost in the woods…not a good place to be.  Once you realize you need to get going and find help, the story begins.  The game is a point-and-click adventure where you choose where to go, which paths to take however, your choices do not effect the outcome of the game.  There is still the storyline and required tasks to progress but you’re free to explore and examine as you please.  The graphics are top of the line for this 2D game and I was really pleased.  I also found that there were no glitches and everything ran smooth and quick.  I always hate when there are hang ups when traveling to different locations or having to wait minutes for screens to load.  This time, not one complaint.  There are a total of 35 different locations in-game and travel is made easy by following arrows OR if you’ve taken a picture of the location with your camera, you can travel instantly.  I thought that was really neat.

“Welcome to Hill Lock, a place no one in their right mind would want to be. But then again, you’re not in your right mind.  All you can remember are moments – speeding down twisted back roads on a motorcycle; a spectral figure soaring through the night air; a piercing pain on your neck; and darkness.

You preferred the darkness to what you now see.  An abandoned town beckons you to explore its ravaged streets. Fire that reaches up through cracks in the earth threatens your life. And signs that something unnatural is stalking you have your nerves on edge. To survive, you’ll have to search for clues, gather useful items, and solve clever puzzles. If there’s a path that leads out of hell, you’ll find it, but only if you take the first step!”

Now, even though I found the game enjoyable and fun, I was a bit disappointed with the way the story goes.  I’m telling you, it’s a complete cliffhanger…you’re really left hanging on the edge.  With so many unanswered questions, no explanation of why certain tasks were given to complete and the big question, WHY?  I expected that completion of the game would reveal all to me but, it didn’t.  I was really engaged in the story and had so many questions that were not answered.  There were vampires, ghosts, creepy dolls, bugs and a whole slew of other unpleasentries.  This brought me to believe there would be an understanding by the end and that it would all make sense.  Sadly, these mysteries are never solved.  The ghosts were never explained even though they seem play some kind of role.  We learn what caused the memory loss, but not why.  I could go on but I don’t want to ruin it for you or dissuade you from giving it a try.  I’m assuming that the main focus when the game was created was of course, the hidden object and puzzles but when theres a storyline, people want answers.  I’m not saying that the game isn’t worth your time, I think it’s great but I feel strongly that there will be another addition to the Vampire Saga.

The music and ambience sounds give the game an eerie feel, it also gives you the sense that something is not right here.  There is dialogue but not much.  Many of the story cutscenes are filtered in like shots from a comic book.  I think it was a good way of making it more fast paced without the dragging on of dialogue.  I appreciated that it moved quickly through and for those of you who aren’t interested in story or dialogue, you can skip it and move on at any time.

Overall, this game is very short compared to other pc games of a similar genre.  Being that it was so enjoyable, I wish it were longer.  Maybe if it were a bit lengthier, there could have been more to the story.  Also, there are different levels of difficulty.  “Casual” and “Expert” are your choices and I believe they are very straight forward.  Although, I recommend starting out with the “Expert” setting because the “Casual” is a bit too easy.

In my opinion, this is a game anyone can and will enjoy.  It’s available for purchase on the Vampire Saga website and is currently being offered at $6.99.  You may also download a FREE 1 hour demo of the game which is always a good idea.  I hope you’ll give it a shot!

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Endless Fluff introduces their first commercial game with a clever blend of RPG, puzzle, and adventure, Legend of Fae, which takes players on a journey with Claudia as she searches for her missing uncle with only a note and an unfamiliar artifact as clues. Meet Claudia as she sorts through the mystery amidst a newly troubled island crawling with strange and mischievous creatures called Fae, calling upon elementals to guide her.

Legend of Fae features
* more than 50 levels
* 30 upgradeable elemental skills
* fast and dangerous combat
* two modes for customizable fun

Try a free demo today. Meet you behind the Faery Gate!

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Lost in Shadow is a puzzle game with a twist.  The game is known as “A Shadows Tale” in the UK or “Kage No Tou” in Japan, which translates to “Tower of Shadows.” The latter name makes more sense as the title of the game, but that’s translations for you.  The game starts with a boy, suspended in midair on top of a tower in the middle of an arc.  A hooded figure shows up and materializes a weird looking sword.  He slashes towards the boy, no blood or movement comes from the boy but his shadow collapses on the floor.   The hooded figure then grabs the shadow and tosses him over the edge of the tower. The boy is called, simply, “Boy.”  Spangle, a fairy that accompanies you, very much like in Zelda, also has an unknown origin.  So this is how you start the game, the weird hooded dude takes shadow of the boy named Boy, who later is accompanied by the fairy.  The only thing you know at this point is that you must climb the tower in order to be able to reunite your shadow with your body.

The demo reminded me of Braid and many other puzzle games, but what makes Lost in Shadow unique is the shadow part.  The detail as to how the shadow looks on different surfaces is amazing.  How it bent, broke, changed perspective, enlarged or shrunk according to the light of the game at the time was nicely done.  It took a bit to get used to looking at the shadow of the platform I needed to walk or jump too, instead of the actual platform, but once I got the hang of it, it became almost second nature.  The game is not only played by the shadows that are already in place, but you can use Spangle to help you move platforms to cast a different shadow, or to make a shadow so you can get to a higher area.

On each stage, you have to collect 3 artifacts that grant you the ability to exit the area, which is protected by a shadow wall.  If you reach the end and don’t have all 3, the shadow wall will hurt you if you touch it.  Among other things, you have memories that you pick up and read.  Every time you do so, your shadow gains weight.  Yes, weight! If it’s a trivial memory, you might gain 0.10lb.  If the memory is of more significance, the weight you gain is greater.  I was a bit confused by how the weight worked, but the only thing I could derive is that at certain point, you gain enough weight to become solid and work other puzzles.  The weight also works as your health bar.  If you get hit by shadow spiders, shadow stars with pom-poms or shadow spiders with blue eyes, you lose weight, aka you lose life.

The enemies are far and few in between, and they show up only when you pick up the shadow of a rusty sword that was left behind.  The fact that is rusty, doesn’t bother you because the shadow it’s just a normal sword.  The 3 types of enemies you encounter on the demo are spider blue eyed, spider red eye and the star.  The different between red eye and blue eye is that red spider can be killed with your sword.  The blue eyed spider must be killed with elements present on that particular stage.  As you advance, you can also mess with the light of stage in order to cast a taller or shorter shadow, or lean the shadow to the left or right.  You can also encounter a shadow door that takes you to another shadow dimension where you must change the platforms to create new shadows to find and reach the next shadow door. Once you are out, it disappears and gives you health and experience, since the boy shadow is capable of leveling up.  What happens at level up is unknown to me, since the demo didn’t explain that.  Another interesting thing is that if you die the message reads “Boy’s shadow #1 fainted at ___” and lists the level you where in.  The game keeps track as to how many boy shadows you go through.

The demo lasted long enough to get me curious about the game.  I did not like the fighting system, as the boy does only 3 animations and most of the time the spiders had a longer reach, hitting me no matter what I did.  Things might be different later in the game, and I’m hoping Boy will get a longer sword, so killing the spiders would be a bit easier.   The game has different difficulty settings that can be changed on the fly.  When I made it harder, it took more hits to kill a spider. Normal took 2 to 3 hits and easy only 1 to 2 hits.  The puzzle didn’t seem to get any harder.

If you like puzzle games and like the look of PS2’s Ico and the playing style sort of like Braid, this might be the game for you.  If you have never heard of Ico or Braid, no worries, you will then be in for a treat!  (PS you should go check those out too!) I would like to play more of this game and discover the deep dark secrets the game has.  Best part? You can play the demo online at their website, the downside being that you won’t get to see how it works on the Wii.

A review copy of this game was provided by the publisher and did not affect the outcome of this review.

To solve a room puzzle, you don’t have to place everything perfectly, only manage to put the pieces together so that Chris can find his way out of the room. As part of the larger part of the game, you’ll also have to pick up certain items to unlock different areas in the mansion. On the Wii, you use the Wiimote to manage selection of items, negotiation of room piece movement and just about everything else. However, even on a large television I found a lot of this difficult because the game is not very well rendered, and even where it might be detailed, the puzzles don’t take up the entire real estate on my television screen like it could. Honestly, I felt like this might not be best suited for the Wii, and might instead be better for the Nintendo DS, which the game will also be available for soon. This isn’t a huge surprise for those that might already be familiar with the flash version of the game that came out in 2007. The game isn’t a direct port, but the graphics haven’t been expanded much.

The full game promises more than 100 puzzles as you play through the Room mansion, so if you’re a fan of puzzle games, I’d say this game would definitely be worth checking out. Even though I wasn’t completely sold on the game for the Wii, had I had the full game at my fingertips, I 100% positive I would’ve tried to crank through the 100+ puzzles. It’s just the sort of great puzzle game that lends itself to hours of mostly mindless game play, that makes it worth the money.

You’ll be able to find the game the 23rd of this Month.

Rating:

BUY

MatchMaker’s rules are simple: Touch board pieces to rotate them 90°, match halves, and then they disappear and you get points and a tiny amount of time added to the clock. Got it? Good, ’cause there’s a little more.

Get one match of each color, and you get a bonus. And this isn’t Bejeweled – you can actually rotate pieces in advance and set up some pretty epic chains.

That means you have pretty much two play style options: Either set lots of chains up and hopefully get all of your time back when you finally turn the key, or just do things as you see them and let bonuses happen when they happen. Me, I tend to choose the second method, and I think that’s turned out just fine, since my leaderboards have me at fifth place…among, you know, everyone.

How do I know that? Well, MatchMaker utilizes OpenFeint, like lots of other games in the App Store. I can see what my Twitter and Facebook friends are playing and compare scores. But back to the rules.

Occasionally, a spinning bonus piece pops up. The faster the spin, the more points it’s worth, so stop it at the right point and make a match to get the points and a few more precious seconds added to the clock.

Is there much more to it? No. Make matches, rack up the points, and compete against your friends. It’s incredibly fun and a good timewaster. The best part is that you basically choose how long you want to play. Not necessarily as a starting variable, like “I want to play for five minutes,” but when you don’t want to play anymore, you can quit or just let the counter go down to zero. Yeah, sometimes it just ends whether you want it to or not because you run out of time and can’t make a match quickly enough, but if you want to quit early, there are options for that.

I highly recommend this because it’s simple and pretty much endless fun. Of course, it’s easy enough to say that, but if you’re still on the fence, why not give it a try yourself with Candystand’s original Flash version here?

This game was provided for review by Candystand and does not affect the outcome of this review.