Best of 2012 (Top 5):
No one ever said being a bandit was easy. Especially not a righteous Beat Sneak Bandit! This impressively creative game from Simogo (Bumpy Road, Kosmo Spin) combines the most basic musical elements with a visually sparse but stunning art style. The gameplay is different from just about every other iOS game out there, and you'll absolutely fall in love with it from the very first level!
Explore deeply layered fantasy landscapes, encounter boss battles and intriguing characters, discover treasure chests and secret coves, upgrade armor and weapons, level up and and everything else you'd want to find in an epic RPG platforming adventure. The on screen controls make your journey all the more enjoyable for a classic gaming feel. Any nostalgic cravings you had for your favorite games of old will be satisfied as you are the hero and your quest is great. Keep that sword handy and your magic prepped; who knows what danger lurks beyond those gates? You'll soon find out!
Oscura is a dark and shadowy mobile platform game created by Chocolate LIberation Front. The silhouette-based visuals might remind you of games like Limbo, but Oscura is much more grounded in action, preferring exaggerated leaps over more limited, realistic physics. Some of the levels feature horribly frightening phantasms, not all of which come in the form of moving enemies. But the visual design is one of Oscura's strong points, and you'll find it's both a graphical treat as well as a platform player's dream.
Granny Smith is lounging about with apples in her eyes when suddenly a whippersnapper of a thief skates by and robs her trees bare. Naturally, granny immediately heads out to get her fruit back! This would be a rather boring game idea until you consider the following: the apples are strewn from country to city and beyond, and both granny and the kid are on rollerskates! Granny Smith, from Sprinkle creator Mediocre AB, is kind of a stunt game, kind of a physics game, and most definitely a racing game. But where it really scores big is in simple playability and that magic formula that makes you want to keep playing no matter how many times you die.
Poor, helpless little... what are those again? Squished hippopotamus faces? Circle-blobs? Yeah, those. Poor helpless those. Actually, at least one of those circle-blobs has a name: Mayhem. And as you play this little genetically engineered experiment in OneSmartBunny's action/platform game Project: Mayhem, you'll begin to pity these critters more and more. But then you'll realize how tough this game is and start focusing on what really matters: landing jumps that require almost pixel-perfect execution, all without slowing down to see what you're doing. Good luck with that!
Update