Amazing Alex tops Android Games of the Week

Amazing Alex tops Android Games of the Week

This week is full of mostly casual titles, but it was really very hard to choose the top game. I love the first four games on this list equally, for various different reasons. I decided to top it off with Amazing Alex, the latest title from the parents of the Angry Birds. It’s not necessarily my favorite, but it’s by far the biggest game on the list. We’ve also got a brilliant endless runner from Defiant Development, a Fruit Ninja/fishing hybrid game, a clever and innovative racing title, and the latest big shooter from Madfinger Games. With that, here are this week’s top Android games.

After a few straight years of massive success, fame and fortune from the Angry Birds^[1] intellectual property, Rovio is finally bringing us something different. Amazing Alex is actually based on another game entirely though, called Casey’s Contraptions. The studio bought the game up and gave it new visuals and mechanics. It’s essentially a casual puzzle game involving Rube Goldberg style domino effect machines. Heck, this all just reminds of the game series Tim, which I was playing when I was six. Originality aside, this is a well-made title from an insanely popular studio, and you will all surely play it. There’s also a free version^[2] and HD version^[3] available.

This is a fun little title from Gamenauts. It’s a simple casual arcade title which essentially works in two phases. First, you fish, and then you chop up the fish in a Fruit Ninja^[4] knock-off section. The fishing part itself is quite fun. The goal is to actually use all of your line to get to the bottom of the lake, where treasure chests sit and wait. After you reach the bottom or hit any fish on the way down, you begin reeling the line in, trying to grab everything you can on the way up. It’s a fun game with lots of unlockables and upgrades, and I highly recommend it.

Download the Appolicious Android app^[5]

This is a brilliant endless runner title from Defiant Development. In it, you ski down the side of a mountain while outrunning an avalanche. Fleeing alongside you are penguins (yes, mountain penguins), Yeti, and eagles, and you can ride every single one of them. You can even ferry smaller animals on the big ones, and occasionally find super fast snow mobiles to use, all with a commonly used mission system to progress through. On top of this addictive gameplay are unique visuals, charming background music, and a very clever sense of humor. Definitely go on this safari ASAP.

While Chillingo hasn’t brought many of their published titles to Android thus far, it’s not surprising that this one made it. The Draw Race series from Redlynx is a brilliant top-down racer with a very unique control scheme. You actually draw out the path of your car for each lap before the race even begins, slowing your drawing down to slow the car down around turns and such. This sequel upped the ante with high fidelity visuals and improvements all across the board. Unfortunately, this port is having tons of technical issues thus far, so purchase cautiously.

After giving us a stylistic hack and slash in Samurai II: Vengeance^[6] and a high quality shooter in Shadowgun^[7], Madfinger Games has returned with a new title, this time focusing on that all-too-common enemy, zombies. The mission-based gameplay is actually very solid, and the high quality visuals at work here are exactly what you’d expect from this developer. Unfortunately, despite being a paid game, Dead Trigger is set up fairly similarly to a freemium title, lacking only an energy bar, thank goodness. I don’t like how much it reminded me of Contract Killer: Zombies^[8]. The freemium may or may not ruin it for you down the line, but this is definitely worth checking out for shooter fans.

And here we have yet another zombie game to finish out the list, from Huale Interactive. It’s actually a simple little puzzle game with cute visuals. Essentially, your job is to get all the similar looking zombies to be next to each other. Every time you give a move command, every zombie moves at once, and the maps are shaped in different ways to create new kinds of challenges. The translation is fairly poor, and it’s not a perfect game, but it’s simple and fun with a neat concept. Granted, there is a game with the same mechanics on iOS, though its name escapes me.

References

1. ^{^} Angry Birds (www.androidapps.com)
2. ^{^} free version (www.androidapps.com)
3. ^{^} HD version (www.androidapps.com)
4. ^{^} Fruit Ninja (www.androidapps.com)
5. ^{^} Download the Appolicious Android app (play.google.com)
6. ^{^} Samurai II: Vengeance (www.androidapps.com)
7. ^{^} Shadowgun (www.androidapps.com)
8. ^{^} Contract Killer: Zombies (www.androidapps.com)