Game

Tired of old-school construction games that lack real action? You're not alone. This very quote kicks off the description for Game Insight's latest release for Windows Phone, My Country. The game is essentially a challenging city builder with more content than one would expect. Players are tasked with developing industries, transportation infrastructure, hiring employees, eliminating ecological threats and controlling energy use.

Oh, did we mention you're building your own country too? 

UK video game retailer GAME has bumped its Windows Phone app to version 3, introducing a new interface and features to help enhance the loyalty card experience. So what's new in the latest release? Well, the team has managed to implement a brand new layout, which looks much better. As well as this, the app now supports Wallet integration.

Enjoy the classic marble shooting games where you're centralised and have to shoot and match gem colours to prevent the trail from hitting the end? You might want to check out Sparkle for Windows Phone 8, which is a game that will take to your liking and offer up many hours of gameplay to pass the time.

Have you ever played through a video game you really enjoyed and thought to yourself, "Wouldn't it be great if I could run my own video game developer studio?" Well, now you can with Game Dev Tycoon by Greenheart Games (www.greenheartgames.com). The Windows 8 title is a simulator that puts the player in charge of a video game studio, which all starts in the garage.

LiquidLab, a title that won the Developer Camp Competition in Macedonia earlier this year, is now available on the Windows Phone Store at version 2.0. It's an indie Windows Phone project that makes use of a simple concept - the aim of the puzzle game is to fill a beaker of liquid to reach the designated level. Not too exciting? In LiquidLab there are no measurements on the glass to guide the player, and one has to use other bottles and tubes to measure the volume. Sounds slightly challenging now, right?

Microsoft's BUILD event is now over, which took place last week and saw the company reveal details about Windows 8's launch, as well as launching the Windows Phone 8 SDK for developers who have been anticipating its release. To celebrate the event, the developer of MonsterUp Adventures, Karios Games, has slashed the price of the title temporarily.

The popular Windows Mobile game HexaLines now breathes fresh air on the Windows Store as a Windows 8 title. We last looked at HexaLines with the news of the strategic game making its way to both Windows Phone and the desktop stores. The aim of the game is to expand by deploying new hexagons (all players start from the centre) and attempting to cut off or annihilate enemy colours.

Atoms, the Amiga inspired board game is now available to all in the Marketplace. We previously caught up with Ross, the developer of the game at the Bournemouth Dev Day where he was kind enough to give us a first look. It’s a turn based board game that Ross has been working to release for some time. There is an Xbox360 variant in the works and a homebrew Nintendo DS version too.

The game currently supports six players, be them human or AI but presently no turn based online play. The game sports a nice Amiga style soundtrack and clean punchy graphics.

You can download Atoms from the Marketplace for £0.79p or you can run with the full, ad supported version for free. (QR code after the break)

**UPDATE**

Ross has been in touch to advise that at present the app is currently only available in the following countries US, UK, Canada, Ireland and Italy.

Nokia has finally released an "exclusive" video game for their Lumia line of Windows Phones. But no, it's not Angry Birds: Space or anything from EA, it's a little indie title that they had on Symbian awhile back called Climate Mission 3D.

Sounds like a bad 80's movie to us. That or an episode of Captain Planet.

Regardless of Cartman-like reaction it's not half bad. The 3D graphics are well done and the music is chill enough without being annoying. You basically have three mini games--Iceberg, Ants and Trees--which keep you occupied with little tasks like making bigger icebergs, forcing slave ants to do you bidding by collecting pine needles or populating the earth with fruit launching trees.

Although we jest at the theme of the game, considering it's free it' s not a terrible time killer. While the initial levels are dead simple (to train you) it does get a little challenging. There are also things to unlock and do around the globe and we guess the message ain't too bad albeit tacky.

But hey, free is free so if you're on a Nokia Lumia phone go and grab Climate Mission 3D  now in the Nokia Collection. Thanks, Kay O., for the tip