App of the Week (October 30, 2011): It’s Alive!

Posted by Hetal

I never was much into casino card games or even Magic: The Gathering card game, but our latest App of the Week seems to be a great mashup of both. It takes the calculating strategy of games like Poker and Black Jack and wraps it in an overall role-playing motif.

Not just that, but it also happens to be highly relevant to Halloween — shuffle up and try your hand at It’s Alive!

At first, I was a little hesitant of It’s Alive, with it purporting to be a “monster-building game” while revolving around cards. Usually, card games are pretty dull and force you to rely more on your own imagination to make things fun rather than the actual game itself.

Luckily, that’s not the case here!

Once you get the hang of how to play (don’t worry, it’s not that complex!), you’ll be hooked on Alive as you hit the deck and swap chips (“gold coins”) to buy body parts for your monster. There’s quite a bit of strategy involved as you don’t have a whole lot of coins to spare, so you have to get creative by bartering and bidding on hands, brains, hearts, etc. in your race to build a monster.

It’s Alive allows you to pass-and-play with friends, or play against some very tough computer opponents. It also comes in two difficulty modes, with one being a somewhat Bingo-style “get all the pieces first” race while the other factors in the “value” of your monster’s various pieces, bringing added complexity to the table.

Personally, I wasn’t able to win a single game, but was completely engrossed in it nonetheless — so, you know they did something right!

It’s Alive! is alive and kicking right now in the App Store for only 99¢.
Go pick it up and see if you, unlike me, can actually build yourself a win!