We’ve been so wrapped up finishing our next App (almost there) that we nearly let May get behind us without our monthly installment of “What We’re Playing.” Here’s were we give an informal round-up of the games that are commanding our attention here at the Secret Worldwide Headquarters of Appy Entertainment (aside from Appy Newz, of course).

Several Apps doggedly hold on from last month — Sneezies (still brazenly defying us on Level 29); 10 Balls 7 Cups (flinging those balls up the chute is proving more meditative than spinning a Tibetan prayer wheel); Flight Control (winning the Ulm’s respect after those eye-popping sales numbers were made public); and MLB At Bat 2009 (keeping us up to date on the latest Dodgers and Padres heroics). Other games earned a download but didn’t quite stick — Bejeweled 2 (a brilliant game, but we’ve seen it before, of course); KarmaStar (slick interface, cool concept, but somehow less than the sum-of-its-parts), WarShip (might grow into something special with updates), and Zombie Nombie (which our kids love, at least).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vB0bUC14Js]

Leading the pack of new and notable games for us this month is UniWar. A science-fiction strategy game that will be familiar to fans of Advance Wars, UniWar really scratches the itch for a build-units-and-bash-each-other experience on the iPhone. The AI is unimaginative and the game sometimes comes down to a grind when you’re trying to capture that very last base, but these are forgivable sins shared by many other titles in this genre. UniWar features three factions that are just different enough to sustain interest through the game’s several campaigns, and it also features a host of one-off maps and multiplayer options that we haven’t had time to investigate just yet. The iPhone has lacked for a full-featured, playable, rock-solid strategy game and UniWar ably fills this niche.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXT_d27QKc]

Another welcome new App is Zooloretto, based on the German boardgame of the year by the same name. We’ve waxed poetic about our love of strategy boardgames in past columns, and so of course leapt at the change to purchase this iPhone adaptation, despite the $4.99 pricetag. At its heart, Zooloretto is a set-collecting game, where you assemble groups of animals for display in your zoo. You try to get certain animals while avoiding others, and score points for complete or near-complete sets, with a couple wrinkles thrown in based on positioning concession stands on your zoo map. The game is nicely animated with a good interface and colorful graphics. The AI is passive and sometimes puzzling, but we’re not playing this game for keeps, so we don’t mind winning more often than not. We unlocked both the additional opponents within our first five games, so we hope new unlockables will be provided in future updates, perhaps by including content from the boardgame’s many expansions, but even if the game never grows beyond it’s present form, it’s a pleasant diversion and it’s convinced us to pick up a copy of the boardgame for summer game nights with the kids.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHAbHz8iYHc]

We love us Zombies here at Appy, and our iPhones have been filled with the largely indifferent bounty of the App Store’s Zombie-themed Apps*. We’d figured on doing a comprehensive survey of them all, but iSmashPhone beat us to it. Even though it isn’t an iPhone game, the Ulm has been playing a lot of Plants vs. Zombies (when he’s not busy scooping Ubi-Soft on the coming Apple game console … try to keep up, guys!). We’ve put the bite on the Ulm for a review of PopCaps’ fastest-selling game ever, and will run it here if the Ulm can be bothered to reply.

That’s it for May! See you back here in a month … can’t say for sure which games will appear at that time, save for one, assuming Apple approves our first game App for sale in a timely fashion!

(If you’re interested in “What We’re Playing” columns from previous months, they’re archived here.)

*The reason why we’ve been looking so closely at iPhone zombie games is left as an exercise for the reader …

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 12:43 am and is filed under Praise For The Other Guys. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.