Did we miss your favorite release this week? Be sure to let us know!

Stranger Things: The Game

From the moment Strangers Things first aired, fans have been whipping up 80’s quality homages to the series — so I suppose it was only a matter of time until we’d see a top-down pixelated adventure like this with the official Netflix seal of approval. Stranger Things: The Game has a Zelda-meets-The-Upside-Down thing going on, making it a perfect fit for the show’s fans who grew up in the same era as Will Byers and friends.

• App Store (free)
• Google Play (free)

FLAME vs BLAZE

Did somebody say mobile MOBA? Square Enix’s latest release dives into this popular genre, promising a huge assortment of characters and 10 minute battles. We’ve seen some pretty great MOBA’s on mobile (Vainglory, Call of Champions), and a lot of flops. We’re looking forward to finding out which camp FLAME vsBLAZE falls into.

• App Store (free)

Batman: The Enemy Within

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na BATMAN! The second Telltale series focused on the Caped Crusader kicks off on mobile this week with a free episode and an encounter with The Riddler. Telltale are still the kings of story-based gaming, so if you’re a bat-fan, what have you got to lose?

• App Store (free)
• Google Play (free)

REKT!

A little bit skatepark, a little bit Rocket League, REKT is flying up the charts this week because people love doing stuff with cars in video games that they probably shouldn’t do with the Dodge Neon they have parked out front.

• App Store ($1.99)

Goon Squad

Let’s face facts: Clash Royale is pretty great, and for a while, everyone tried to put their own spin on it. Goon Squad is no exception. The latest game from Atari offers a familiar approach to multiplayer gaming, but does so with a slathering of Capone-era gangster shenanigans. If you’d ever wished Clash Royale was more like The Godfather, this is probably the game for you.

• App Store (free)
• Google Play (free)

June’s Journey

Hidden object gamers, pay attention: June’s Journey is the latest mobile HOG from Wooga, the company who brought you previous hits like Pearl’s Peril and Agent Alice. This time you can step into a world of Gatsbyesque extravagance — try not to have sticky fingers with all of those fancy objects you’ll find.

• App Store (free)
• Google Play (free)

The post This Weeks 6 Mobile Games You Need on Your Phone appeared first on Gamezebo.

While we’ve seen augmented reality games before (like 2016’s insanely popular Pokemon GO), iOS 11 introduced its own set of developer tools tailored to AR development. And as you can probably guess, that means there are a bunch of ARKit experiences showcased on the App Store right now, and even more buried beyond the front page of the Games section. But which ARKit games should you check out first without spending a dime? We’ve selected our five favorite free ARKit games so far.

Flat Pack

The latest game from Nitrome — the creators of Leap Day, Gunbrick, and countless other mobile gems — Flat Pack is a platformer that mixes elements of 2D and 3D space. It’s a 2D platformer that takes place on different sides of a box, but unlike traditional boxes, the levels in Flat Pack have more than six sides to them, and you’ll need to get up and physically walk around each box to guide your hero to success. Nitrome has a knack for making uniquely fun platformers, and Flat Pack is no exception.

• App Store (free)

Stack AR

Chances are you’re already intimately familiar with Stack — the Ketchapp published game that takes the classic “Stacker” formula from midway arcades, adds a second dimension, and puts the whole thing in your pocket. It’s the kind of quick play, high score, “I know I can do better” game that Ketchapp has built their brand on. Stack AR is the exact same game, but played on your table or floor. Does that sound kind of lazy? Maybe — but it’s also crazy cool. Stacking in the traditional sense would build a tower higher than you’d want to navigate in AR, so the game wisely drops the floor of your tower to hide lower levels . But then, when your game comes to an end, the whole thing comes shooting out of the ground for you to admire as it fills the room.

• App Store (free)

IKEA Place / Housecraft

Putting these on the list is kind of cheating because they’re not really games, but… we also know how much our readers love Design Home, so including these two apps is a bit of a no brainer for Gamezebo. Both apps do effectively the same thing: let you put new furniture in your house virtually to get a sense of how things might look. But each has its own perks, too. IKEA Place, as the name suggests, lets you place actual furniture from the IKEA catalogue so you can decide if that little shelf is big enough to hold your fiddle leaf fig (spoiler: it isn’t). And while Housecraft has generic items that you can’t buy, it also lets you unleash a tornado to wreak havoc in your living room. The options for items are a little light right now in Housecraft, but we’re holding out hope that they’ll rectify that in a future update — possibly with more disasters.

• IKEA Place (free)
• Housecraft (free)

AR Sports Baskeball

Shooting hoops is always fun on mobile, but AR Sports Basketball does one better by letting you put the basket anywhere you’d like in your actual space. The gameplay here is fairly straightforward: just point your device to aim and choose the power level to shoot. The more baskets you sink in a row, the higher your score. But like real basketball, it’s tougher than it looks. At least for me. My high score is 3. This one gets bonus points for understanding limited space: you can choose a full size net in “normal” mode, or something tiny for your tabletop in “desk” mode.

• App Store (free)

AR Dragon

Face it: you’ve been waiting for this moment since you fed your first Tamagotchi 20 years ago. Augmented reality and virtual pets seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly, and AR Dragon is one of the first games to capitalize on this combination. You can feed it, you can play with it, you can dress it up — what more could you want in a pet?

• App Store (free)

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Start with the Bonus Word

When you get stuck in Wordscapes, you can spend some coins to unlock a helpful tip. But where do those coins come from? The easiest way to earn them is by guessing the bonus word that appears in some puzzles. The bonus word isn’t connected to the main game board, and if you clear the rest of the puzzle before guessing it, you’ll miss out on your chance to earn the coins. So whenever there’s a bonus word, always start here. How do you make sure you’re only guessing the bonus word? Take note of how many letters are in it, and then only spell words with that many letters until you’ve guessed the word and earned the coins.

Play the Daily Puzzle

When you play the daily puzzles, you’ll be rewarded with coins for completing enough of them — but you’ll also earn coins for every bonus word you make! There’s no telling how many bonus words are in each Daily Puzzle, but since you’ll earn a coin for each one, it can turn into an easy earner by the time the puzzle is done. NOTE: If you spell any words in the main mode that aren’t on the board, just like in Daily Puzzle, you’ll get an extra coin for that too.

Tell Your Friends

If you’re enjoying Wordscapes, you can make a whopping 300 coins just by texting or emailing someone about it (and then, y’know… getting them to play). Just tap the little person icon in the bottom left corner of the main menu to bring up your invite options.

Watch a Video

Every so often you’ll be given the chance to watch a video in exchange for coins. This is what we in the business like to call “easy money.” If you’re willing to trade 30 seconds of your time, you can watch those coins roll in.

Buy’em

Ok, fine — you came to this article looking for a way to get coins without spending some of your own. But you know what? There’s really no better way to get a huge injection of coins in your Wordscapes experience in a short period of time. There are plenty of options available to suit your budget, and if your budget is zero, well… at least you have all the tips above!

The post How to Earn Coins in Wordscapes appeared first on Gamezebo.

So what’s Device 6? It’s a narrative puzzle game that sort of reinvents what reading can be in the digital age. The text meanders in different directions, with visual and audio clues laced in throughout and a taxing challenge to solve at the end of each level. I’m always hesitant to use the term “games as art,” but Device 6 very much classifies as that.

It’s a truly unique experience, and if you enjoy experiments in storytelling, it’s an absolute must have — especially at it’s teeny tiny $1 price tag.

The post Device 6 is Still Incredible, On Sale for $1 appeared first on Gamezebo.

Box Cat Bash looks to be a healthy dose of crazy car-bashing fun from a pixelated cat, and if the trailer’s humor is also present in the game, we’re sure it will be worth a look. Not only is the trailer full of silly goodness (and built around a classic Metal Gear Solid motif), but it lists “watch ads for other games” among Box Cat Bash’s many objectives for players. Why? As the colonel explains to Box Cat, “it’s a complicated marketplace.”

That sort of tongue-in-cheek awareness of the mobile market can’t help but put a smile on your face. And if you’d rather abandon that objective, Box Cat Bash will let you opt out of ads for a 99 cent purchase.

Expect Box Cat Bash on the App Store and Google Play next week as a free download.

The post Box Cat Bash Trailer is Crazy Fun, Knows Mobile is ‘a Complicated Marketplace’ appeared first on Gamezebo.

Now it’s the Queen’s turn.

Reigns: Her Majesty is the official sequel to Reigns, this time exploring the monarchy from the other side of the gender coin. Judging from the trailer, the gameplay looks pretty much identical — but more of a good thing is never something to complain about.

Not much else is known at this point, but earlier this year the developers suggested the setting would be less medieval and more Marie Antoinette – so don’t be surprised if the timeline moves up a bit.

Reigns: Her Majesty is coming to mobile and desktop devices later this year. If you want more in the meantime, there are a handful of GIFs revealing some of the cards in the game on their website, and you can always go back and play the first Reigns for a few more generations.

The post Reigns: Her Majesty Embraces the Wild Lives of Queens appeared first on Gamezebo.

This fall, that game is getting a sequel in Middle-Earth: Shadow of War — and this morning, Warner Bros Games has announced that Shadow of War will be getting a mobile tie-in.

If that though makes your stomach hurt a little, I’m pleased to remind you that WB are also the folks who made exceptional mobile tie-ins for Injustice: Gods Among Us, Injustice 2, and Mortal Kombat X. And while Shadow of War isn’t in the same genre as those games, it seems to reason that we might walk away pleasantly surprised once again.

The mobile edition of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War will hit the App Store and Google Play this fall. Interested players can pre-register now to secure special content at launch by visiting shadowofwar.com/mobile.

The post Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is Getting a Mobile Game appeared first on Gamezebo.

SEGA has a bit of a mixed history when it comes to revisiting their classics, but their latest attempt, SEGA Forever, sound stupendous on paper. As an initiative that brings beloved games from across all of their systems to mobile and offers them completely free (with ad-support, or you can pay a nominal fee to remove those forever), it’s hard to poke holes in what they’ve set out to accomplish.

And yet the first week of SEGA Forever looks a lot like swiss cheese.

Nobody has ever enjoyed Altered Beast

As a pack-in title for the SEGA Genesis, Altered Beast’s gameplay is laughably bad by today’s standards — and it wasn’t much better then. Punch, kick, get stronger, and duck. It’s about as basic as a beat’em-up gets.

And yet of the hundreds of games at their disposal, they included Altered Beast in their SEGA Forever launch line-up. They seemingly thought it was a fitting representation of what gamers can expect going forward.

Alongside Altered Beast, mobile players received free-to-download versions of Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star II, Kid Chameleon and Comix Zone. With all but one exception. these are sub-par ports of games the general population has never cared about. Should you download one of these, get ready for immovable on-screen buttons and zero support for your device’s native dimensions, — instead, you’ll have big blue bars framing the 4:3 gameplay in the middle.

If SEGA Forever is meant to bring back the best SEGA games from across generations of systems, why are they leading with games that nobody is asking for, and all from one platform?

I played Kid Chameleon back in the day. I loved it. Five minutes with Kid Chameleon on my phone only served to show me of how rose-colored my childhood gaming glasses have been.

Here’s what SEGA can learn from the charts

The one exception to this troubling start is Sonic the Hedgehog. Like Phantasy Star II and Altered Beast, the game has already been available on mobile devices — albeit as a paid app. But unlike the other games in the SEGA Forever launch, the version of Sonic the Hedgehog offered here is a glorious remake that was celebrated at the time of its release, giving its overseer Christian Whitehead a career working knee-deep in the Sonic franchise (he’s programming the upcoming Sonic Mania as we speak!)

Sonic the Hedgehog is currently #1 on the App Store, and with good reason. Unlike the other four games in SEGA Forever, Sonic the Hedgehog has two things going for it: name-brand recognition and mobile-first execution. This wasn’t a slapdash port that feels forced onto the App Store to make a quick buck — it’s a flawless adaptation of a well-loved game, so perfectly executed that it’s a hit again even after it’s 2011 mobile debut. Good luck finding any other mobile game from 2011 doing so well in 2017.

In short– SEGA, we love you, but nobody’s clamoring for a mediocre port of Out Run. We might entertain a modern mobile re-imagining (its DNA lives on in games like Dashy Crashy and Horizon Chase), or a slick, lovingly crafted port with a mobile-first mentality — but jamming something out as a sloppy free port just isn’t going to cut it. You need to be putting out games that even non-gamers recognize, and you need to be doing it with your best foot forward.

We know you have a great catalog of games to choose from SEGA, but mobile gamers have hundreds of new options every week. If you’re going to get our attention, you’ve got to earn it.

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