Touch KO: A New Contender Enters the App Store

It’s been over seven months since the last notable boxing game was released, Iron Fist Boxing. It seemed a little surprising to me that there wasn’t more boxing games hitting the App Store. Boxing games are a natural fit for the iPhone’s touchscreen after all.

Just imagine for a moment, you’re playing a boxing game on your iPhone. The bell rings and you lock eyes with your opponent, you begin to circle each other. You fire off two quick jabs to his face by tapping on your touchscreen, then you follow up with a hook punch by swiping your finger across the screen. He tries to counter with his own jab, to block you hold your finger on the touchscreen. After blocking his jab you see him winding up to throw a haymaker, instead of blocking you wisely tilt your iPhone to dodge his punch. He’s thrown off balance after throwing his haymaker, you step in and counter with an uppercut by swiping upward on your touchscreen. Your shot lands squarely on his chin, he drops to the ground like a rag doll, the crowd roars!

The game controls I just described isn’t as far fetched as it may seem, it’s actually the control scheme used in Chillingo’s latest release, Touch KO (iTunes Link). The game serves up some nice graphics thanks to the high-res textures and high-polygon character models. Another cool feature is the in-game physics driven by Ageia PhysX. Although there may be a little too much physics, when you knock people out they fall down in some weird positions, I could have sworn they were doing yoga. Oh and one last thing, the $2.99 price is only for the initial launch, Chillingo didn’t specify what the regular price will be.