Lucky Fighter is a new casual game from Hiccup Studio.  A customizable main character, quirky art direction, and pick-up-and-play ease are what defines Lucky Fighter—is it enough to catch and keep the attention of fickle casual gamers? To get a piece of the popularity pie, a casual game has to have the “it” factor—whatever it is that makes these games, which are so easy to learn, simply impossible to put down.  Lucky Fighter has “it.”

The storyline offers a nice parallel to Lucky Fighter’s newbie role in the App Store.  The premise is pure underdog-unleashed.  One (hopefully) lucky fighter against one hundred lowlifes who want to mess up her game.  Thankfully, they’re at least lining up—Lucky Fighter is a one-on-one enterprise.  There’s just a lot of other “ones” to beat before you can declare victory, that’s all.  It’s a rough and tumble ride to the top, and action-packed.  Don’t worry, though; you won’t need to memorize a phone-book length list of fighting combos to pull it off.  Despite the fact that there’s a lot of punching in the face going on, it’s your wits that will ultimately figure in your Game Center stats, and your wits that make or break your attempt to come out on top in this interactive action game.

Well, wits, and how fast you can put them into practice.  The weapon chosen for this 1 versus 100 duel is none other than that childhood chestnut, rock-paper-scissors.  Opponents line up; the hero faces off with nothing but hand signals to defend herself (at first, anyway), and you can only clear each opponent by winning a rock-paper-scissor combo.  What makes this so action-heavy then? Well, each time you win by smashing their scissors, covering their rock, or snipping their paper, you celebrate by punching the clown.  Each time they win… yep.

As for winning by wits, there are two things that turn this set up from unstructured, random brawl into a surprisingly sophisticated game: Special items and HP.  Your character can only take so much of a beating before it’s time to snivel into the loser’s circle, so it’s vital to take out the bad guys before they destroy you.  But since rock-paper-scissors is, mathematically, a game of chance, how can you really win? That’s where the special items come in.  HP boosts, sneak peeks at the next plays, and the ability to roll your stats back to where they were 3 turns prior are all perks that come with bonus items that you snag with certain wins.  Using them wisely is when brains complement brawn in Lucky Fighter. And if you want a true underdog victory story, that’s the part you’ll have to master.  On top of the addictive fusion of simplicity and sophistication, Lucky Fighter offers another tidbit.  It’s not essential to gameplay, but the interactive customizable character and the pics you can take using it are pretty awesome.  First, you can insert any face from an image you keep in your gallery (or take a pic in-app) as the hero’s face.  Second, you can then pose your hero against photo backgrounds.  Not  just by moving the hero around on a still shot like a virtual sticker—you can position the hero in your live preview viewfinder and snap the pic with the hero inserted.

Plenty of casual game blockbuster-wannabes (and some of the blockbusters) opt for ultra generic graphics and design.  Not Lucky Fighter. Edgy alternative-comics inspired artwork provides both the cut scenes and the character design. Lucky Fighter is free to try out in the iTunes App Store today.

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