Inundated with iOS

So there's more iOS games than I remember which have the same appeal so I've decided to go off track a little here and direct my attention to where it looks like 'charm' has been applied to a currently existing franchise. I'm using F1 Race Stars in my Contextual review so I thought it'd be appropriate to put it in here.

In case you weren't aware, Codemasters make both the 'F1 (Insert year here)' titles and 'F1 Race Stars', the latter of which is, basically in essence, Mario Kart. This led to the team who developed the F1 games, applying an alternative style to their popular F1 title, making it a totally different game in its entirety.

Aaaaand here's F1 2013 for a little comparison:

Yeah you can see the difference...

What..? You can't? We'll pretend that the obvious needs pointing out then shall we...

So quite obviously the art style is vastly different in comparison, even just looking at the racer models, the difference is clear. Having the lower polygon models for the 'Race Stars' racers definitely gives off the charming feel, not to mention the colours are much brighter and have much less gritty realism about them when put against the 'F1 2013' title. Even the gameplay (which is hard to show here so just click this link to take a look on YouTube) has a more 'karting-esque' feel to it. Codemasters officially said that they were looking for F1 Race Stars to be more about 'entertainment' than 'simulation' which definitely gave them some room for creativity here.

From this one example, it seems that, when applying certain aspects to games, it can drastically change the outcome of the tone and feel of how it plays, looks and sounds.

Looking into 'charm'

What games have we seen so far then? Wide Sky, Zack & Wiki and The Legend of Zelda to name a few. Fortunately, with connecting this to my Literature and Contextual reviews coming up in a couple of months, I've started looking at more iOS games which fall under the same category.

A game I've had for a while now is one called Lili, a really colourful adventure puzzler for iOS. It came out about a year back and if I'm not mistaken it was featured on iTunes' App Store as an Editors Choice (might be wrong about that though, no quotes please). It's a pretty fun game with really attractive stylistic art. Characters are also quirky which makes it for a fun game to play all round. Take a look:

I can outright say that this is definitely a game to play if you've not had the chance to yet, and better still, it sits on the App Store at a modest £1.99 so go now young followers, adventure awaits!

... Oh you're still here?

Alright then, on the researchy side of things, the modelling is a mixture of low and high poly, with the main environment being low and the character modelling on the opposite end of the spectrum. That being said, the game still looks gorgeous. The blocky, flat colours lend to the charm of Lili like we've seen in other games before and the detailed texturing on Lili herself makes it really enjoyable to be part of her character. Besides, who doesn't love a girl with glasses?