Tale of Tales’ indie title The Graveyard and THQ’s action puzzler de Blob: Revolution led off the slate of new games at the App Store on Monday.
Like Tale of Tales’ other games, The Graveyard (US$1.99) is more of an experience than a game: players guide an elderly woman who visits a cemetery, walks to a bench, and sits down to listen to a song. When it ends, she gets up and leave; there’s a chance she will die while sitting on the bench. "It's not a game in the sense that there is a way to win or lose or a puzzle to solve, or even a story to uncover. But the interaction does immerse you in a virtual world filled with narrative, an equally powerful feature of the medium of videogames,” said creators Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn.
In de Blob: Revolution ($2.99), players must free the Graydians trapped in Prisma City by the evil I.N.K.T. Corporation. They draw on the screen or tap it to find the best possible route to freedom within the maze of each building. There are three types of buildings to choose from in the game’s 4,000-plus levels: the Rescue Building, where players try to free as many Graydians as possible with no time limit and no threat from the I.N.K.T. Corporation; the Speed Rescue Building, where players aim to free the Graydians and receive a bonus for rescuing them quickly; and the I.N.K.T. Chase Building, where players have a limited time to attempt to free the Graydians before the I.N.K.T. agents enter the property and seize de Blob.
Other new games at the App Store include: Elemental Dusk, a strategy card game inspired by the popular Triple Triad mini-game in Final Fantasy VIII; Real Trophy Hunting; the GPS game Traveler’s Quest; the arcade title Asteroid Shooter; and the music game Maestro Green Groove.