PG's top 5 moments of the week - Luftrausers, GDC 2014...
Angry Birds Epic! Best RPGs! Terraria-alikes!
Every week, Pocket Gamer provides a weekly digest of the most important and popular stories from these digital pages.
This has been an exciting week for video games. If you're in sunny San Francisco, that is.
For those of us not at Game Developers Conference 2014, it's been a bit boring.
Not many games, not much news, not much to write about. But that's never stopped us, has it?
Here, then, are five things we covered this week, including turn-based birds, sepia-toned dogfights, and sandbox adventures.
We went to GDC 2014 and shot loads of videos
This week, every game designer with a few thousand bucks in her pocket descended on Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to talk game creation, meet the press, and find out how to monetise teens.
We were there, of course, and reported back with videos of huge upcoming games like Tiger Style's Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon, impossible adventure Monument Valley, stats-driven Vita game Metrico, and comic caper Framed.
Check out our YouTube channel for all the videos we shot from the show floor. You should subscribe to our channel, too. That would be really nice.
We are amazing at Luftrausers
With everyone and her grandmother out at GDC, it was a bit of a slow week for new releases. Picking just three great Android and iOS games was like finding six needles in a haystack factory.
But there was one saving grace: Vlambeer's bonkers dogfighting sim Luftrausers.
This one walked away with a Gold Award. We concluded that Luftrausers is "among the most enjoyable experiences you can have on Vita".
If you want more, you might want to read last year's interview with Vlambeer's Rami Ismail, who told us about remaking a flash game for Vita, making you feel like the world's coolest pilot, and Sony's indie ambitions.
We picked out some games like Terraria and Starbound
We put together a list of five side-scrolling sandbox games on mobile that might remind you of 2D Minecraft-alikes Terraria and Starbound.
"The iOS App Store and Android's Google Play house a whole bunch of games in that vein," we said. "Some are steampunk, some take place on Mars, and others let you play god."
If you like to dig, explore, collect cubes of dirt until your pockets are full, and make architectural wonders out of sand, be sure to grab the games in this feature.
We rolled for perception in Angry Birds Epic
Rovio's angry birds have been to space, gone go-karting, and enjoyed brand synergy with the ghost of Star Wars (twice). I don't think anyone was expecting to see them end up in a turn-based RPG, though.
But they have. And we've played it.
Angry Birds Epic went into soft launch mode in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which gave us a chance to check the game out and capture some video of it.
The long and short of it is: it's simple and it's stuffed with IAPs, but there's a pretty fun role-playing game to be found in here. You can get the game for yourself by reading our guide to making a Kiwi iTunes account.
We chose the best RPGs on iPhone and iPad
On the off-chance that Angry Birds Epic doesn't scratch your RPG itch, we got Matt to find the ten top role-playing games on the App Store.
Don't descend into that dark and scary dungeon until you've bought and equipped the likes of The World Ends with You, Final Fantasy VI, Ravensword: Shadowlands, Costume Quest, and Knights of Pen & Paper.
Around Steel MediaThis week, our pals over at 148Apps were all over GDC. However, they did also find time to review a load of new casual games, including Astro Golf, Word Forward, and, yes, even Shuyan the Kung-Fu Princess.
What more could you want? Check out the 148Apps week in review.
