Village Gamer

Hothead Games producer Hamish Millar (heyyyy, we know that guy!) provides an in-depth tutorial of the gameplay from the Tower Mode in this new Kard Combat video.  Kard Combat, which is already available for Canadian iOS gamers will be unleashed upon the masses in the iTunes App Store on July 13th.

Watch the video to learn how players can earn upgrades for their mage, items, and additional cards by completing the Tower campaign.  The walkthrough covers basic strategy, offensive and defensive tactics, card combinations, and powerful spells.  This particular battle is fought out on the Master difficulty level, but nothing less should be expected from the producer of the game.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcjfDJvq-Vc]

Kard Combat is rated 12+ for the following:

* Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
* Frequent/Intense Horror/Fear Themes
* Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence

Device Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 3.1.3 or later.

An exciting new health and fitness iPhone app has been released by Calgary’s Gratisites Inc. Body Tracker is an app that allows users to keep all of their essential measurements in one place and compare their progress over time when used in conjunction with a workout regime. Progress can be viewed by measurement or pictures to help with motivation.

“Gratisites prides itself on creating technological answers to everyday problems,” says Gratisites spokesman Danton Lalonde. “Our objective is that Body Tracker will fill the need of enabling people to reach their fitness goals.”

Body Tracker monitors users’ body fat and weight, while keeping track of the following measurements:

• Waist
• Chest
• Hips
• Thighs
• Calves
• Neck
• Arms

“We recognize that goals need to be written down if they are to be effective. With Body Trackers “History” and “Compare” functions, you can easily see your progress, encouraging you to stay on track,” Lalonde explains, “Body Tracker is your accountability partner.”

Body Tracker for iPhone is available immediately for $0.99 on your mobile device or from Apple’s App Store. The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and requires iOS 3.1.3 or later.

Big Bad Brush has announced that their much anticipated iOS game Big Sticky, will be available on the app store on July 26, 2011 (pending review and approval). Utilizing intuitive controls combined with original gameplay, Big Sticky will be sure to dazzle, challenge, and entertain gamers of all ages. Stay tuned for follow up releases with promo codes.

Sticky is a purple frog prince who was living happily with his princess until one day chaos erupted when a jealous lonely castle abducted her, along with all of the other princesses in the world! Injured by the evil castle, Sticky is forced to use his Big Sticky tongue to stick and swing in search of his beloved princess.

With simple intuitive controls combined with an original gameplay experience, players help Sticky conquer the evil castle, moving him through the levels with his sticky frog tongue. By simply tapping the screen, players will use a stick and swing action to get Sticky to the castle door, where he then must save the princess hidden within each level. With a total of 51 platform-styled puzzle levels, there are always new obstacles and challenges to overcome.

Join Sticky in this wild sticky adventure as you swing over snow, lava, enchanted platforms, moving walls and more. Everyone needs a little purple hero and there’s never a dull moment in this fairy O’ tale.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iv1MiSPV4c]

Big Sticky Features:

• Original gameplay with simple intuitive controls
• Using the tongue, tap to stick and swing away
• 51 platformer puzzle levels to overcome
• 5 beautifully illustrated worlds to explore
• Many out of this world princesses to save
• Collect roses and earn gold trophies
• Obstacles such as fireballs, moving walls, switches and more
• Available on iPhone, iPod and iPad

Loud Crow Interactive Inc has released Sandra Boynton’s Blue Hat, Green Hat 1.0, the third title in their collaboration with Boynton Moo Media. Available now as a universal app on the iTunes Store for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch (regularly $3.99 USD, it’s on sale for $1.99), Blue Hat, Green Hat is a wry and light-hearted adventure in which children guide three earnest animals and one misguided turkey through various activities involving clothing and colors. The app offers narration by famed British Invasion rocker Billy J Kramer, the wonderful narrator of the bestselling Boynton app, The Going to Bed Book.

“I have a particular fondness for Blue Hat, Green Hat,” says Sandra Boynton. “At age three, my son Devin had a surprisingly hearty laugh for a small person – a laugh that would make everyone else laugh. I created this book long ago just to elicit that belly-laugh from him.”

Originally published in 1982, Blue Hat, Green Hat is one of Boynton’s all time bestselling titles, having sold over four million copies. Working closely with Loud Crow, Boynton designed the interactive concepts, wrote and produced the soundtrack with Michael Ford, and digitally recreated the original illustrations with new animations to ensure this interactive re-imagination delights fans while keeping true to the spirit of her widely-loved board book. Loud Crow then carefully worked its widely-praised technical magic to fully realize and enhance her interactive concepts.

“It was great fun to re-invent Blue Hat, Green Hat as an interactive e-book app,” says Boynton, “collaborating again with my endlessly clever Loud Crow friends. The digital dimension gave us so many terrific opportunities for adding theatrical flair to this spare yet decidedly Vaudeville book.”

Blue Hat, Green Hat is compatible with Phone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 3.2 or later.

Neggi Studio, based in Montreal and Monterrey, Mexico has announced that its new game, Zombie Piñata for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is now available on iTunes for 99 cents USD.

A terrible and evil Mayan spirit has been released from its prison; the curse says that the first “species” that this evil spirit touches will be transformed into zombies. The problem is that the biggest piñata chain store in Mexico was build on top of the prison, so the spirit ends up possessing the body of a piñata and thus transforming all the piñatas from all the retail stores in the country into Zombie Piñatas!

Zombie Piñata is an action packed game, challenging players to fight their way through over 30 stages of pure madness while fighting the now evil piñatas. Find the zombie lair deep in the Mayan archeological site and face the biggest zombie piñata of them all: Piñaton!

The game features old school side-scroller gameplay that presents a quick fix of action on the go.

Key Features:

– Travel around some of Mexico’s most famous cities and areas while whacking all the piñatas that stand in your way, clean each town and free the land from this zombie infestation.

– More than anything, piñatas fear the might of the whacking stick, improve your skills with upgradable combos and get power ups to turn your piñata stick into the legendary “Master Stick”

– Visit the totally groovy “Cheke’s Specialty Shop” for grenades, extra ammo and other awesome improvements to increase your chances for survival as you face hordes and hordes of zombie piñatas and people they have turned into zombies.

– Use every weapon and special item at your disposal; inflate zombies or blow them up, dish out justice, piñata hunter style!

– Download additional content such as music and game wallpapers for free!

– Future updates will bring additional achievements and future leader board integration using OpenFeint.

Zombie Piñata is rated 9+ for the following:

• Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
• Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
• Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence

TVO has launched its first app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. My Canada is a fun and engaging memory sequencing game just in time for Canada Day. Beginning today, My Canada is available as a free download for BlackBerry PlayBook on BlackBerry App World™. It is also available as an online game at TVOKids.com.

My Canada is the perfect game for parents who want to help their kids learn about Canada’s geography, and nurture their children’s sense of pride in their country. It helps kids ages 6-11 learn about the locations of the provinces and territories, the capital cities and Canada’s Great Lakes. At the same time, the game focuses on “working memory” which can help enhance important memory skills in kids.

“We’re proud to announce the launch of TVO’s first app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook tablet,” says Lisa de Wilde, CEO. “My Canada is another example of the many ways TVO is using new digital media platforms to nurture important 21st century literacy skills and to complement classroom learning. My Canada makes learning about Canadian geography fun and accessible for kids.”

TVO’s My Canada memory game was designed with learning objectives that support the Ontario school curriculum and has been classroom and teacher tested and developed with TVO’s on-staff educator.

The introduction of TVO’s My Canada for BlackBerry PlayBook closely follows the recent launch of TVO’s two early learning mobile apps for BlackBerry® smartphones. Polka Dot Shorts and Flower Frenzy were downloaded over 250,000 times within the first two weeks of launching and recently held the number 2 and number 4 most downloaded positions on BlackBerry App World in the Education category.

Bulletproof Outlaws, an indie start-up studio documenting the process of developing a videogame from scratch, has teamed up with Ravenous Games, developers of the wildly popular iOS version of League of Evil, to release Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Elusive Ninja has full-screen visuals, tight controls, catchy music, and comes packed with a ton of behind-the-scenes information about the game’s development, starting up a game studio, a Post-Mortem analysis, the original Game Design Document with commentary, and more.

“We’re proud to release our first game, and eager to get started on the next,” says Bulletproof Outlaws founder Jeff Hangartner, “It’s been a long journey, and we’ve learned a lot about everything from streamlining the game development process to handling the business and financial side of starting a studio up.  We’ve documented every step of the journey and there’s over 100 pages of game development information for other developers and gamers curious about what goes into making and releasing a videogame.”

Game Features:

• Epic full-screen visuals
• A whole bunch of behind-the-scenes Bonus Features everything from a Post-Mortem to the original Game Design Document with commentary on how the final game compared to the original design
• Leaderboard support (both OpenFeint and Apple Game Center) so you can compete with the whole world or stick to one-upping your close group of friends
• Achievements (OpenFeint and Apple Game Center) to give you some extra challenges to shoot for when you’ve got your skills rockin’
• Super tight controls, and a difficulty curve that’s challenging but not impossible…the AI gets smarter the longer you last but there are a few strategies to discover and master that will help you survive the most chaotic situations

IUGO is pleased to announce the launch of its next mobile social title Sunshine Cruise Lines. Sunshine Cruise Lines is a free-to-play title offering a fresh and innovative spin on social games. Begin your cruise today by visiting the iTunes App Store and downloading Sunshine Cruise Lines for your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad device running iOS 3.0 or later.

“We have strived to create a new and unique experience for mobile gamers, and I think we have succeeded with Sunshine Cruise Lines,” states IUGO’s CEO Hong-Yee Wong. “It is engaging, easy to play, and you can share the experience with your friends.”

Sunshine Cruise Lines App Description

Welcome aboard your very own cruise ship! Build, customize and manage your one-of-a-kind dream cruise. Play with friends, earn rewards and have the most fun in the sun.

• Customize your own cruise ship with over 40 different facilities, unique crew members, color schemes and more
• Choose your play style! Fun, fast-paced en-route gameplay or take it easy and let the crew handle it for you
• See the world! 50 different ports around the globe (and more to come)
• Take on the role of Captain while getting to know your lovable and quirky crew
• Rich storyline infused with personality and humour
• Play with friends through Facebook (optional)
• Gamecenter achievements give you and friends plenty of rewards
• 100 beautiful postcards to collect and share with friends
• Hundreds of fun destination facts
• View friends‘ routes on your world map
• One-of-a-kind art style, signature IUGO polish and quality
• In-app purchases optional with Cruise Bucks

Fit Brains has released a new iPhone app that encourages you to get walking.  Available as a free download, Arookoo: Walk+Game is a breakthrough app that makes it fun to walk because every step counts.

This new app and its companion web site turns walking into a game by sending you on fun challenges that motivate you to move around your city. Arookoo rewards you for increasing the amount of steps you walk each day by completing a wide variety of fun activities, including:

• Fun Walking Challenges and GPS Map-based Scavenger Hunts – Arookoo’s strong game layer makes walking fun through imaginative walking challenges, collectable GPS-map rewards, and a loads of special awards to earn
• Daily Team Challenges with Friends – Invite friends to join your team or compete against you, and help each other stay motivated
• Healthy Calorie & Distance Tracking – Want to go deeper? Improve your health by setting personal walking goals, tracking distance, burning calories, and more
• Is always with you – Arookoo automatically tracks your walking, making it easy to walk and take more steps to a healthier you

Calling all secret agents – Rocketfuel Games has announced your latest assignment. Step One is to download the free app from the iTunes App Store and unlock the clues at a museum, science centre, zoo or aquarium in a city near you – see below for the currently available locations.

Upon completion of your mission sync your award to Discovery Kids: Seek Your Own Proof to earn tokens and special rewards. You can continue your career as a secret agent by customizing your avatar, playing online missions and puzzles, and defeating the villains of I.C.E.

While currently-available sites are limited, Rocketfuel invites their secret agent corps to submit locations for further investigation.  The free to download Discovery Kids Field Missions is rated 4+ and is compatible with  iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices running iOS 4.0 or later.

*Current Investigation Locations*

Canada

Lethbridge, AB – Galt Museum & Archives

United States

New York, NY – Discovery Times Square
Seattle, WA – The Burke Museum
West Palm Beach, FL – Johnson History Museum