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There’s been something of a renaissance of pinball games via digital platforms lately, and a lot of it is thanks to Zen Studios. Creators of the super popular Zen Pinball series, they’ve taken the classic game and updated it with all sorts of digital tricks that real pinball games couldn’t get away with, and snagged some pretty big licenses too. Pinball adaptations for video game properties like Street Fighter, Ninja Gaidan, and Plants Vs Zombies all led to their most lucrative license with Marvel Pinball. They wasted no time in putting out table after table for that one, covering events like Civil War and World War Hulk as well as standalone tables for everyone from Spider-man to Blade. As you played the game Marvel heroes and villains duked it out right on the table when certain conditions were met, something that seems to carry over to Star Wars pinball. More after the JUMP…

The Game: Dungelot
The Device: iPhone 5
The Price: $0.99 on iTunes and Google Play
The Basics: The roguelike isn’t a genre that’s well represented in mobile games. Perhaps best known from Blizzard’s Diablo series, rougelikes typically have you delving into a bottomless dungeon for no other good reason than the acquisition of loot. It’s not a type of game whose appeal makes a lot of sense if you explain it, but play and you’ll soon become a believer, and possibly an insomniac. They’re just impossibly addictive.

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The Game: Hackycat
The Device: iPhone 5
The Price: $0.99
The Basics: Do kids still play hacky sack these days? When I was in high school the second-favorite activity that involved standing around your friends in a circle was hacky sack. You’d kick around the little woven sack to your friends, trying not to be the one that let it fall. Once in a while someone would get better than the others and start doing fancy maneuvers- behind the back kicks and stalls on the tip of their shoes – and they’d either be ooed and aahed over or just merely shunned from the group. At every gathering someone would inevitably pull out a hacky sack from somewhere on their person and a game would start up, although to this day I can’t really tell you why. More after the JUMP…

The Game: The Godfather Slots

The Device: iPhone 5

The Price: Free

The Basics: You know what I most think about when I reminisce about The Godfather, one of the greatest films of all time, one whose influence can still be found everywhere in our culture? Slot machines.

So clearly you can imagine how excited I was when The Godfather: Slots was released. Not only would I get to play slot machines in famous slot machine locations such as the Don’s office or Connie’s Wedding, but I would get to play without spending real money! Each location features an exciting static image and icons on the machine that correspond to the scene — the office contains a pinky ring and a nervous Luca Brasi as icons, for instance. To play you choose the amount of lines you want to play and how much to put on each and hit spin. And then you see what you got, and you hit it again. You can keep doing this forever!

More after the JUMP…

The hugely popular Infinity Blade series was set to continue this year with Infinity Blade: Dungeons, but it looks like fans are going to have to wait a while longer. The game was being developed by Impossible Studios, a new studio mostly made up of staff from Big Huge Games (you might know them as the studio that shut down last year when Curt Shilling couldn’t keep his 38 Studios afloat in a really tragic tale). The developers managed to hook up with Epic Games to found the new studio and work on a prequel to Epic’s Infinity Blade series. Things took off with a bang, with footage from the new game being demoed at Apple’s media event for the iPad 3. But now, just a few months after a delay was announced in order that the studio add their “great ideas to the game”, Infinity Blade: Dungeons is being put on hold and the 6-month old studio is being shut down.

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The Game: Pixel People

The Device: iPhone 5

The Price: Free

The Basics: Your world has been destroyed. In most circumstances this would be a bad thing but for you it means that you can create a new one in your own image, filling up the endless void of space with buildings and an endless stream of clones. Your own pixelated Utopia.

While you can crank out the clones better than the Galactic Republic you run the risk of a world full of people without personality or direction of any kind- blank slates, liberal arts majors. By splicing together professions from current clones you can find new vocations and expand your world. You start with just a Mayor and a Mechanic but splice those two and you’ll get an Engineer. Combine the Engineer and the Mayor and you’ll get an Architect. And so and and so forth until you’ve got cooks, zookeepers, photographers, models, even superheroes.

More after the JUMP…

The Game: Fighting Fantasy: House of Hell

The Device: iPhone 5

The Price: $5.99 for iOS, Android and Nook

The Basics: Since acquiring the Fighting Fantasy license, Tin Man Games has made it their mission to bring back some of the classic 1980s gamebooks in digital form, but their first entry was actually brand new. Blood of the Zombies (review) was nevertheless an excellent title, written by original series co-creator Ian Livingstone and featuring a great story that saw you fighting through hundreds of zombies while trying to escape a madman. They now follow it up with a classic gamebook with a similar theme, House of Hell, written by the Fighting Fantasy co-creator of Fighting Fantasy Steve Jackson.

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The Game: Ghostbusters

The Device: iPhone 5

The Price: Free

The Basics: While deciding who was best to create a Ghostbusters mobile game, Sony Pictures decided to call up Beeline Interactive, Capcom’s mobile brand. They’ve been been behind quite a few licensed social and freemium games, everything from Smurfs’ Village to Snoopy Street Fair. As you’d expect from a free game on the App store, it comes with a catch- the best stuff is hidden behind a paywall.

But this is actually a pretty faithful title that surprisingly includes some of the humor and charm from the series, something that can’t be said for many other Ghosbusters videogame adaptations. Anyone remember that lackluster 2009 console title? It’s easy to forget it exists.

More after the JUMP…

Fans of EA’s Dead Space franchise are eagerly awaiting the third installment, which is set to release next week on February 5th. When they dive into it, however, they might find a horror far greater than reanimated, re-purposed corpses. Microtransactions.

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The Game: Fluxx

The Device: iPhone 5

The Price: $2.99

The Basics: You might not expect a game that was designed by former NASA aerospace engineers to be so whimsical, but then you must never have played Fluxx.

Andrew Looney (of Looney Labs) first published Fluxx way back in 1996 and the clever card game has enjoyed enormous success over the years. Fluxx is a terrific party game, the kind that’s so easy and accessible that first-timers can pick it up in minutes and give experienced players a challenge. Looney Labs hasn’t rested on their laurels and has has continued to release all sorts of different themed Fluxx games over the years- Star Fluxx, Cthulhu Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Pirate Fluxx, even Monty Python Fluxx.

Now we have mobile Fluxx in an app that’s perfect for the property.

The Review: This is a fantastic adaptation.

More after the JUMP…