Games are excellent teaching tools. After all, what are they if not mechanisms that teach us how to use themselves through interaction? By playing, we learn how to play. It's something of a no-brainer that those same loops of feedback and reinforcement can be used for more than training us to be really good at headshots. Here to illustrate the point is Hiragana Pixel Party, one of many apps tha Read More... app      day      hiragana      pixel      party      All     

In most games you essentially act as your avatar's brain, using your fingers and thumbs to send electrical impulses to their body and limbs: run here, jump there, climb this, pull that. In This Could Hurt, the latest game to roll off the prolific Chillingo production line, you have but one command to issue to your plucky hero: stop. Apart from his blue quiff, the protagonist is a fairly old-sch Read More... app      day      hurt      All     

The Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita have suffered slower sales than their predecessors in the UK. The 3DS has sold nearly 950,000 after 61 weeks on sale in the UK, according to Gfk Chart-Track data reported by PocketGamer.biz. It expects the console to pass through the one million sales mark next month. If it does, it will have taken around three months longer than the DS did to reach one mi Read More... nintendo      ds           ps      vita      uk      sales      slower      predecessors      All     

We live in a time where most games are delighted to hand out virtual tchotchkes for the lowliest accomplishments. Pressed start to continue? Here, have a Trophy! Viewed the tutorial? 20 Gamerpoints for you! It's an ego massage for the easily disheartened: reward the player to keep them from switching off. All of which makes Match Panic something of an anomaly; it's not often you'll find a game p Read More... app      day      match      panic      All     

When you hear the word "safari" you probably get pretty distinct mental images: the savannah, lions and elephants, straw yellow and burnt earth. But this is not what Brisbane-based Defiant Development had in mind, at least if Ski Safari is any indication. Maybe it has something to do with living in a country where a mundane trip into your backyard could yield a wildlife encounter considered exo Read More... app      day      ski      safari      All     

While I'd never stoop to the old "games cause violence" argument, there's little doubt that games teach us to treat death as a numbers game. Each individual demise isn't important: what matters is the body count, the chain reaction, the comforting tick of small numbers getting bigger. Pandemic, a morbidly fascinating disease simulator from Dark Realm Studios, is a game that, played successfully Read More... app      day      pandemic           All     

One of the beauties of smartphones, and especially tablets, is how beautifully they fit traditional board games. The daddy of them all is chess. It's been rather brutalised by technology in the past, one of computing's pre-emininent challenges being a program that could defeat a human grandmaster, until, in 1997, Deep Blue finally felled Kasparov. It's a mighty achievement, tinged with tragedy. Read More... app      day      social      chess      All     

The human immune system is one mad marvel. It monitors our physical well-being through a series of rigid precautionary and at-the-ready defence systems. It's governed by an army of cellular bodies carrying out their respective duties, in order to repel invasion from hostile viral and bacterial agents. With that in mind it's no stretch to imagine your role in Ballistic SE as that of a renegade c Read More... app      day      ballistic      se      All