I’m not a big game player, but I’ve been enjoying Stagehand a lot over the last few days.
Made by the unstoppable duo of Matt Comi and Neven Mrgan, who also created The Incident and Space Age, Stagehand takes the standard scrolling platformer game mechanic and turns it on its head, as Federico Viticci writes:
You don’t maneuver a character with meticulously timed jumps across retro-styled stages filled with floating platforms and spikes; rather, you sloppily modify the stage itself with touch, dragging platforms to accommodate the hero’s run and making sure he doesn’t run headfirst into cliffs, fall into pits, or get eaten by the inexorable advance of the left side of the stage.
It’s incredibly addicting and frustrating. I don’t keep many games on my iPhone at any one time, but Stagehand has already earned a place in that hallowed homescreen folder.