Genre Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

OpenFeint developer aims for a hardcore audience with Fates Forever MOBA

by Mike Schramm (Jun 6th, 2013)

Jason Citron is a true veteran of iOS gaming. He was one of the two developers behind Aurora Feint, and later vaulted it up to the huge social network that OpenFeint became. Now, Citron is back to making games with a new company called Hammer & Chisel (formerly Phoenix Guild), and he's ...

Daily iPhone App: Polara switches up the endless runner genre

by Mike Schramm (Oct 15th, 2012)

Endless runners are one of the most-used genres on the App Store lately -- from the original Canabalt to later hits such as Jetpack Joyride and one of my current favorites, God of Blades. There are plenty of them out there, and the best ones have some innovation or a new twist. Polara, one of ...

Daily iPhone App: Cruel Jewels is pure match-3 bliss

by Mike Schramm (Aug 13th, 2012)

As anyone who regularly reads these Daily App posts probably knows, I am a grade A sucker for the match-3 genre. From Bejeweled to Puzzle Quest to Call of Atlantis, if it lets you match three of a kind, I'm in. So Cruel Jewels won me over from the first screenshot. It's a pure match-3 title, ...

Daily iPad App: Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North is a freemium gem

by Mike Schramm (Mar 15th, 2012)

Many of my fellow gamers look down on the "set-it-and-forget-it" style of social freemium games, but I have a soft spot in my heart for them. For me, the genre's appeal started with We Rule a few years ago, and continued with Battle Nations and Dragonvale. There's a definite addictiveness and ...

Daily iPhone App: Spice Invaders

by Mike Schramm (Feb 9th, 2012)

If you're tired of tower defense games, I don't blame you. Feel free to skip this post, but let me say this before you go: I wouldn't spotlight yet another tower defense game if it wasn't special. That's why Spice Invaders has made the cut. The standard tower defense tropes are in place. Build and ...

Daily iPhone App: Seal Force

by Mike Schramm (Dec 28th, 2011)

Seal Force is an interesting app from Tactile Entertainment, makers of Pocket Creatures and the recent Pigs in Trees line-drawing game. It tries to combine two relatively new genres in iOS games: Line-drawing and running. You play as the Seal Force team (they have their own Saturday ...

Daily iPhone App: Gem Keeper

by Mike Schramm (Nov 3rd, 2011)

Gem Keeper is a relatively new game from developer NCSoft, which usually makes Korean MMO titles for the PC. The company has released a couple of apps for iOS, but this is the first full game made for North American audiences -- and it's a good one. It's a pretty basic tower defense title, but ...

TUAW's Daily App: Dungeon Raid

by Mike Schramm (Jan 25th, 2011)

I am a sucker for both puzzle games and RPGs, so Dungeon Raid is right up my alley. It's a puzzle game where you have to match up various icons on a grid, as you can see above, but the real draw here is that all of those icons map to various RPG abilities that then let you level and grind out a ...

TUAW's Daily App: Project Sanctuary

by Mike Schramm (Aug 25th, 2010)

Project Sanctuary is one of the best dual-stick shooters I've seen on the App Store yet. It's quick and responsive, and it's got a surprisingly solid back-end, which includes four different characters to choose from, multiple game modes and settings, and even an in-game talent tree where you can ...

Woz coming to the Big Bang Theory

by Mike Schramm (Jul 26th, 2010)

Our own Steve Wozniak is scheduled to appear on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory sometime later this year, the cast and crew told an audience at their Comic-Con panel this weekend. Woz is already no stranger to television, of course, but I think this is the first time he's appeared on a ...

Apple adds Comedy genre to iTMS, or: why I'm going broke

by David Chartier (Feb 15th, 2006)

Apple has sealed my death sentence by adding an all-inclusive Comedy genre to the iTunes Music Store. I call myself a dead man because this top-level genre covers everything from audio and video content to audiobooks from all the big names, and as soon as my fiancé finds out how much I'll be ...