Mikey Boots, the long-awaited followup to speed run platformers Mikey Shorts and Mikey Hooks, is available on the App Store. And, while developer Beavertap Games has made something different than the previous games in some key ways, Mikey Boots has somehow managed to take a relatively straightforward gameplay mechanic and turn it into an exceptional experience.
Mikey Boots takes a beautifully simple design and executes it perfectly, without ever losing focus on what makes the game fun. The titular Mikey (or a new female companion) have to traverse a series of levels covered in dangerous obstacles and swarming with enemies, and they have to do it using only jet-propulsion boots. These boots launch the character up and either to the right or left. Thatâs the only movement the player controls: move up-left, move up-right, or release to allow the character to fall. This is a rather limited move set compared to the more straightforward platforming of the previous Mikey games, but that limitation is the key to Mikey Bootsâ challenge.
The levels are loaded with things that will kill you – enemies patrolling the ground, spikes lining walls and ceilings, bullets that fly across the screen towards you. Successfully dodging these obstacles and making it to the goal in one piece is an immensely satisfying experience. More ambitious players can try to complete a series of additional goals to truly master a level: collecting all of the coins scattered throughout the level, beating the level within a certain time limit, and finding the secret room containing a pair of golden shorts. Successfully obtaining every goal in every level is going to keep even the best gamer busy for quite some time.
Mikey Boots enters a different App Store ecosystem than itâs predecessors. Flappy Bird showed a world of developers that gamers arenât afraid of a simple, fun, challenging game. In the weeks that followed, thousands of indie developers released their own games inspired by Flappy Bird. Mike Meade, half of Mikey series developer Beavertap Games, frequently joked about making a âMikey Flapsâ game. Iâm not sure when Mikey Boots entered development, but its clear that Flappy Bird left itâs mark in one key aspect: the level of challenge.
Lets get one thing clear: Mikey Boots is not an easy game. This is especially true in contrast with the previous Mikey games, which tended to be far too easy (I tended to create my own challenge in the other games by trying to attempt all of the level goals at one time). In Mikey Boots, by the later levels, youâll just be struggling to survive. With that said, the difficulty curve here is fair, with more than enough time to acclimate in the early levels before the challenge is ramped up.
One more thing. When talking about difficult games, itâs important to clarify exactly WHY the game is difficult. To put it simply, Mikey Boots is the best kind of difficult. The challenge always feels beatable. Failure never feels frustrating, or cheap, or beyond your control. It always feels like if youâd just timed your move a LITTLE BIT better, youâd have made it. And unlike Flappy Bird style games, the levels in Mikey Boots always have an end. So it isnât just playing the same thing for a high score – you always have a clear goal in front of you, and there is a great deal of satisfaction in actually reaching that goal after failing repeatedly. Personally, I think this makes for a much more rewarding experience than the high-score-chasing of Flappy Bird.
Graphically, there isnât much to say about Mikey Boots. The graphics were never really the strong suit of the Mikey games, with backgrounds that often feel inconsistent with foregrounds. But that doesnât really matter much – the graphics get the job done. Far more important to a speed run game like this is the framerate, which is absolutely rock solid at 60fps. The sound design is solid, with memorable level-dependent chiptune music and minimal sound effects. It feels retro without feeling dated. Most importantly, it never gets wearying, even after the 30th time in a row attempting the same level.
While the controls are quite simple, Mikey Bootsâ support for MFi controllers is particularly excellent. Movement can be handled any way you want – use the d-pad, analog stick, or shoulder buttons to send your character right or left; the choice is yours. This control scheme has the special benefit of playing to the strengths of every available controller – the PowerShell has a terrible d-pad but great shoulder buttons, the Stratus has terrible shoulder buttons but solid d-pad and analog sticks, the Moga has solid triggers and shoulder buttons but bad analog nubs and d-pads. Mikey Bootsâ control flexibility allows you to get a truly great play experience with every single controller, which is something very few MFi compatible games can claim.
Rounding out the list of features, Mikey Boots also includes the seriesâ trademark smorgasbord of unlockables. The coins you collect arenât just ornamental – you can use them to buy a variety of skins, clothes, haircuts, and boots for your characters. In addition to letting you customize your character, these accessories often make reference to other indie games or include inside jokes, which is something I always love to see.
Ultimately, Mikey Boots combines the Mikey seriesâ trademark speedrun gameplay with Flappy Birdâs willingness to challenge the player. Over the past week, three classic games were released with MFi controller support: Bioshock, Ridge Racer, and Back to Bed. I havenât played all that much of any of them because of how difficult itâs been to STOP playing Mikey Boots. Thatâs the best recommendation I can give. Download this immediately.
Wayward Souls, a top-down hack and slash action-RPG, has finally received it’s long-awaited MFi controller support update!
Fans of old-school action RPGs from the SNES days will absolutely want to give this a look. Not only does Wayward Souls bring a ridiculous amount of polish to the formula, it also incorporates more modern features such as unlockables, upgrades, and perks.
A game like this is just begging for real buttons
If you’ve already played the heck out of this game in the past, the latest update brings with it further improvements to the Endless Dungeon mode, which scales the difficulty up with a high-score format.
Developers Rocketcat Games have an interesting pricing model with Wayward Souls: with every major update, the price increments $1. The game launched at $4.99, and with the last update, the price rose to $5.99. Now that this second update has it, the price will rise to $6.99 on Monday. This policy has the dual effect of both rewarding early adopters and providing incentive for further development. But anyways, long story short, if you think you’ll enjoy Wayward Souls – and I think a lot of people will – you should buy it by Monday or it’ll cost an extra dollar.
Back To Bed, a surreal puzzle game with an isometric perspective, was just released with full MFi controller support!
Puzzle games aren’t hard to find on iOS, but Back To Bed brings a high level of polish to the table that absolutely makes it worth checking out. Gameplay seems inspired by games like Lemmings and Star Wars Pit Droids; your goal is to guide a constantly-walking sleepwalker through a dreamscape using obstacles to prevent him from falling off the edge of the level.
Dali meets Escher in an Isometric puzzler
There is a decent amount of similarity in presentation between this game and the recent classic Monument Valley, and comparisons between the two are going to be unavoidable. But there is more to the story than a simple case of “new game copies things from older classic”. In fact, Back To Bed is apparently an expanded version of a game the developers originally demonstrated in 2011, a full 2 years before Monument Valley’s release. The developers of Back to Bed then took to Kickstarted to successfully fund the expansion of Back to Bed into a full game – a process that was completed in March of 2013. One month later, Monument Valley was released to critical acclaim.
Anyways, that is not to say fans of Monument Valley won’t enjoy this game – they probably will. As will fans of puzzle games in the same vein as Lemmings. If the idea of a combination of those games sounds interesting to you – and it should, because it’s awesome – give Back to Bed a download.
The Gamevice, an iPad Mini exclusive form-fitting analog controller, has received a brand new coat of paint, and an updated website as well!
A newer, darker design
The Gamevice is a form-fitting controller case designed exclusively for the iPad Mini by Wikipad, the makers of a well-regarded Android gaming tablet.
Back in Black
As previously mentioned, the Gamevice will connect to the iPad over Lightning, and is being designed in versions both with and without an integrated backup battery.
Micro USB and a headphone jack clearly visible on the bottom
Unfortunately, specific pricing and release date information is still unknown, although the Gamevice is targeted at this holiday season, and will be priced “to be as aggressive as possible without giving it away.”
The lightly textured matte surface should feel good
The Gamevice is quite far in development, with members of the press already having been given access to demonstrations and hands-on sessions. This latest change appears to be mostly cosmetic, changing the Wii-U-esque white into a more “gamer” friendly black.
This is one beautiful looking controller
I don’t know about you, but this is WAY up on my list of most anticipated products this year. For gamers (such as myself) who primarily game on the iPad Mini, this is about as close to perfection as you can get.
Looks like a made a mistake on this one. According to Hori, the Horipad controller will NOT be released on August 31st.
My original posting of the release date was based on store listings of the controller, including on Amazon, all indicating an August 31st release date, and a price of $79. Apparently these were not finalized, as the store listings have subsequently been pulled.
Here’s hoping the real release date isn’t too far off. I apologize to Hori for the trouble, and to anyone who got their hopes up due to the previous report.
Here we go. Apple has sent out the invitations for the iPhone event. Expect new phones, more iOS 8 info, and who knows what else…
Jim Dalrymple at The Loop says:
Apple on Thursday sent out invitations to a special event being held on Sept. 9, 2014 at 10:00 am.
Itâs widely expected that Apple will introduce new iPhones at the event, which makes perfect senseâApple has used the September event to launch new iPhones for a number of years now. Getting new products out in the fall sets the company up for a solid holiday shopping season, the busiest time of the year for consumers.
Ridge Racer Slipstream, the latest game in the classic Ridge Racer series, has just been updated for MFi controller support!
Ridge Racer has been a mainstay of arcades and PlayStations for 20 years now. It strikes a great balance between fun and realism, with just the right touch of arcade gameplay to keep things interesting, without managing to turn into a combat racer.
Ridge Racer!
This iPhone edition of Ridge Racer features a mix of classic courses from other games in the series, and introduces a new “Slipstreaming” mechanic, where you can gain a significant speed boost by maintaining a position directly behind another vehicle. This adds an extra level of strategy to the more traditional mechanic, and provides a new way to catch up with an opponent in addition to your nitro.
Both Standard and Extended layout MFi controllers are supported, though only in-game. With a price tag of “Free”, it’s hard not to recommend this game to any racing game fan with an MFi controller.
Bioshock, the one of the most critically acclaimed first-person shooters of all time, has finally seen itâs long awaited iOS release!
This port is a faithful conversion of the original PC classic, albeit one with significant downgrades to the resolution and fidelity of the graphics, and a significantly higher price tag than can be found elsewhere.
Even at lower resolutions, the world of Bioshock is beautiful
Controller support seems solid enough so far, though it is obviously a bit of an afterthought. Only extended layout controllers are supported, you canât navigate menus without touching the screen, and the virtual buttons donât entirely disappear. Still, itâs a massive improvement compared with using the touchscreen.
Even with the downgrades in graphics, itâs hard not to recommend this game to fans of the genre. Iâll have a full review coming eventually, but let me just say this for now: many people consider Bioshock to be one of the best games of all time, and now you can play it on your phone.
Turns out SNK Games isn’t the only company running a massive 99 cent sale on MFi controller compatible games. DotEmu, the company responsible for porting most of the aforementioned SNK games to iOS, is also running a 99 cent sale on their own self-published classics!
Not all DotEmu games support MFi controllers, but many do, and those games are generally excellent ports with full controller support in-game and in menus. Fans of classic arcade games should absolutely check these out.
SNK, a publisher of classic arcade games, is running a massive sale right now, dropping the price of their games to less than a dollar!
This sale is in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the King of Fighters series, and should be over by the end of the weekend.
There are a ton of excellent games in this sale. The King of Fighters series are classic fighting games, and all feature full MFi controller support. The Metal Slug games are some of the best shoot-em-ups ever, though only the third features MFi controller support at this time.
This sale is a great opportunity for classic arcade game fans to round out their collections.
