iPhone developer Matto recently released a free game called Jimney Chimney for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The game is perhaps best described as "if Eliss was a shooter".

Jimney Chimney's graphics are as simple as can get, line graphics with your ship represented as a cube. The game, however, was designed with the iPhone in mind with full support of multi-touch. Drag your ship around to dodge enemies, while tapping on the screen to fire. You can tap and hold in up to 4 different simultaneous directions to shoot. It really does feel like Eliss in both style and controls. Like Eliss, I found the best way to play is to set your iPhone down on the table to be able to use more fingers at once. Oh yeah, and it's also pretty fun.

The game also comes with a surprisingly good background music. We'd love to see the game fleshed out even further... but it's free and, even now, a strangely compelling package. We recommend giving it a try.

App Store Link: Jimney Chimney, Free

I spent the afternoon chatting with Bruce Morrison of Freeverse regarding their upcoming title which was shown at the iPhone Launch Party, Warp Gate. A game that is sounding more and more ambitious each time I hear about it, Warp Gate is a galactic conquest and trading game that is working up to having an amazing amount of depth for an iPhone game.

Players will master commodity markets, battle space pirates, and meet several friendly and hostile alien species. Featuring a fluid and ever changing economy, 6 warring factions including 2 alien species, a full arsenal of weapons including lasers, missiles, shields and beams, all spread over a galaxy of more than 75 planets and space stations in 32 star systems.

Sounds pretty crazy, and I can't wait. This bundle of screenshots is just a small sampling of what is coming in the final version of the game.

There's no question that Origin 8 had a hit on their hands with the original Sentinel: Mars Defense [App Store], a game that firmly held the title of my favorite tower defense game for a very long time.

Originally pitting players against a savage alien onslaught on the surface of Mars, Sentinel 2: Earth Defense [App Store] brings the fight home. A brief text introduction explains that despite your best efforts, the defense of Mars failed. Your drop ship, Sentinel, received a massive arms upgrade, and now you're forced to defend Earth. While not exactly a riveting plot, it gets the job done.

Where Sentinel 2 lacks in plot development, it more than makes up in overall gameplay. Now, before I get too far in to this, readers should be aware that I'm a tower defense nut. (Which comes as somewhat of a surprise to me since before I got in to iPhone gaming, tower defense games never interested me much.) Also, fellow tower defense nuts, I fully realize that labeling certain games in the genre as the "best" is as controversial as labeling the "best" Star Wars movie among Star Wars nerds. (Pre-remastering Return of the Jedi on Laser Disc of course.)

So, with that out of the way, prior to the release of Sentinel 2, I thought Sentinel was one of the best tower defense games on the App Store. The graphics were superb, the music was well done, the game performed great on my iPhone 3G (even while using the fast forward mode), but best of all, Origin 8 really nailed it with the balancing of the game.

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For those who enjoy numbers or think they need help with numbers, you may want to check out Reiner Knizia’s Robot Master [App Store], a neat game that looks easy at first, but can be quite daunting. It’s a puzzle game that is as much a test of your ability to plan as it is an assessment of your logic skills.

The objective is to score the highest points possible in any row or column. Sounds simple until you realize that the column or row with the lowest score is what counts as your high score. Confused? Don’t be because the game makes plenty of sense once you get into it.

Here is an exceprt from the game’s tutorial:

Take turns placing numbered cards down on a 5 x 5 grid to score lines both vertically and horizontally. The scores for each line are determined by the sum of the cards. Here's an example:

(1 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 0) would score 12 points.

Sounds easy, right? Well, here are a couple of twists: First, pairs of cards anywhere in the line count 10x their face value. Here's an example:

(1 + 2 + 4 + 2 + 0) would score 25 points.

Second, triple cards anywhere in the line count 100 points regardless of face value. Here's an example:

(0 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 0) would score 103 points.

That's all there is to it but remember that your final score is only your lowest scoring line, and you want the highest score possible! So if you're playing solo play and you got lines of: 100, 79, 150, 99, 10, etc. Your final score would still only be 10 because that's your lowest scoring line.

The game consists of 36 cards with values ranging from 0-5 with 6 of each. The play area is a 5x5 grid where these cards will be placed with a tabulation area at the end of each column and row. The game is nicely designed in a retro kitschy presentation with simple to understand scrollable menus. The soothing yet edgy soundtrack is similar to what you would hear in the background during sports highlights on the evening TV news. The touch controls are intuitive enough where you simply tap the location where the card is to placed.

The initial temptation for me was to build out a specific row or column with a high score. The problem is that this undoubtedly impacts the totals in other rows and columns because the game only counts the lowest score in a row or column. The 36 cards are randomly used in the game so you won’t know what will come up so it’s never the same game twice. With practice, I’ve gradually increased my lowest number, but really the key is to build evenly throughout because it only takes one misplaced card to screw you over.

Robot Master has two modes of play: Solo and Versus. Solo is the single player option and there are two settings: Easy and Tournament. Easy can be seen as a practice mode while in Tournament you can submit to the global score board for the High Score table. In Versus (which I find a lot of fun), you can either play the AI or another player via a hotseat multiplayer where one will play on rows and the other on columns. The one with the lowest scoring line loses.

Robot Master is a simple concept that will frustrate and entertain you at the same time. You can’t ask for more than that.

App Store Link: Robot Master, $0.99

Here's one that falls in the just-for-fun writeup category. How so? Well, this is a fairly enjoyable, very simple dodge-the-obstacles game that almost certainly will only appeal to the highly nostalgic, retro gaming crowd (of which I am the leader).

Did you ever have an IBM PC in the early '80s? Did it have a monochrome screen? Did you game on it anyway? If your answer is yes to all three, then you'd have loved spending some time in front of 8bit Games - Flying [App Store] on that clunky classic computer.

And, if you answered no to any of the above three questions, then move on -- nothing to see here....

8bit Games - Flying is what arcade heaven would have been way back when on your Hercules graphics-equipped 8088-based PC. With a gameplay mechanic similar to Cube Runner, the game puts you in accelerometer control of an airplane flying through a cityscape with the goal of dodging everything. And it's a challenge, because your eyes are bleeding while you play.

The game offers three different monochrome screen colors (with a fourth that's unlocked based on true play skill) and a global scoreboard. It's fun, but retro, retro, retro.

If you don't crave retro -- do not buy this game. But if you do, it's pretty amusing. You've been warned.

App Store Link: 8bit Games - Flying, $1.99

Low Five Games made their debut on the App Store yesterday with Earth Vs Moon [App Store], a game that features a mixture of vintage gameplay elements all wrapped up in a delightfully cheesy game universe where the Earth defends against the evil Moon army.

Beginning with a brief tutorial, Earth Vs Moon explains the simple touch controls of the game which are largely based off the classic arcade game Missile Command. Utilizing the three satellites that make up Earth's defense system, you touch the screen to launch missiles.

The point that you touch not only controls where the missile will go, but also where it will explode. When one of your missiles explodes, it will take out any enemy missiles inside of the blast radius. Fend off the entire wave of missiles and you progress to the next level.

This gameplay style worked great for Missile Command, as well as the countless Missile Command spin-offs and works equally well with Earth Vs Moon. The game is also spiced up with five boss battles, each of which have elements that tip their hat at other classic arcade games. For instance, one boss functions like a giant Pong machine, another works similar to Breakout, and there's even a level where you fight waves of Space Invaders.

This is all wrapped up with an art style that perfectly fits the mood of the game. Scores are displayed in nixie tubes and the health of Earth is shown in the vintage-looking gauge in the center of the menu bar. Between levels, the story moves forward using in-game newspaper machines, which display the front page of The New Earth Times. (These newspapers can be zoomed and panned using standard iPhone gestures, and are totally worth reading.)

As you progress through the game, additional game modes are unlocked. In Boss Attack, you race to defeat all the bosses as quickly as possible and in Score Attack you play in randomly generated levels to achieve the highest score possible.

Low Five Games released the following trailer for Earth Vs Moon, but unfortunately the trailer's epic soundtrack is nowhere to be found in the actual game itself:

Earth Vs Moon is totally worth a look if you've found yourself enjoying the vast array of updated classic games that developers have been releasing lately to quench the nostalgia of gamers that grew up on them. If Missile Command was before your time, Earth Vs Moon is a game with gameplay elements that have stood the test of time and some pretty great graphics to boot.

App Store Link: Earth Vs Moon, $3.99

Game developers seem to be releasing lite versions of their existing games left and right this week. Now is a very good time to try out some of these older iPhone games now that free versions are available if you hadn't picked them up or were on the fence before.

• Zenonia Lite - Gamevil's epic action RPG, which was well received in our review, recently updated to address most problems, and still has an extremely active community of players on our forums.
• Phaze Lite - A futuristic Wipeout-like velocity racer that provides a great sense of speed coupled with highly refined tilt controls.
• Brothers In Arms Hour of Heroes Free - Gameloft's World War II third person shooter, the first of many games based on the same engine.
• Let's Golf! Lite - Still one of my favorite games, Gameloft really sunk a hole in one with this one. As stated in my review, Let's Golf is on par with the PSP's Hot Shots Golf.

Ichromo recently announced their upcoming propeller-powered flight simulator, Aera. According to their web site, the gameplay is "a mix of side-scroller and flight simulator" featuring aerobatic, dog fight, race, and free flight game modes.

The developer has been fairly active posting in the thread announcing Aera's upcoming release, and has shed some light on a few things. First off, the game is controlled using the accelerometer, tilting right and left controls the pitch of your airplane and shaking the iPhone sends your plane in to a barrel roll.

Aera is set in a 3D world, but controls closer to a sidescroller as horizontal movement is controlled automatically. Also, aside from the single player campaign modes, two player WiFi multiplayer will be included in the initial release, with Bluetooth peer to peer connectivity being added later with an update.

That's all we know right now, but I encourage everyone, even if you're not normally interested in flight games to watch the trailer. It's one of the more impressive ones I've seen, and needless to say, we're going to be keeping a close eye on Aera's development.

Last week I posted about a mysterious video of an upcoming iPhone game. Forum members played a bit of a guessing game as we all speculated what the game would be about. Some were sure it was a trailer for Cartel, an MMO-type game currently in beta, others through some internet detective work traced the site back to Gameloft and hoped that we were looking at an upcoming Grand Theft Auto styled game.

Those of you who thought we were watching a trailer for Gangstar were correct. We just got some news and exclusive screenshots of what Gameloft has in store for us, and it sounds like a pretty ambitious title for the App Store.

Gangstar: West Coast Hustle is slated to be the first iPhone full-3D open-ended crime sandbox game. Players will be immersed in L.A. gang life and able to explore an entire city filled with buildings, cars to steal or crash in to, and missions that can either be completed or ignored as you drive around wreaking havoc.

Driving controls are said to be intuitive, with both accelerometer and touch controls. The gun fights you will undoubtedly find yourself in are controlled via a touch auto-aiming system and Gangstar comes loaded with several radio station options as well as the ability to play your own tracks.

Also included is some type of rags to riches progression system, where you will connect with people in the city, increase the strength of your gang, and generally grow in wealth and power. Naturally, this all needs to be accomplished while avoiding the police.

Meanwhile, German iPhone site iFUN.de just attended a semi-public preview of the game and posted this brief gameplay video:

The game will, of course, support all iPod Touch and iPhone models and is expected to be available "by the end of summer".

Off-road racing fans are in for a real treat in Invictus' new iPhone release 4x4 Jam [App Store].  The game appears to be a loose adaptation of the developer's 2001 off-road racing game 1nsane which, at the time, PC Gamer called "the best off-road game ever" and Gamespot called "the only 4x4 racing game to date that truly offers a sense of the freedom--and the chaos--found in real-life off-road racing."

The stand-out feature of 4x4 Jam, and one that makes it unique among its App Store peers, is the fact that its terrain playfields are not closed routes, but provide total freedom to roam about -- they are boundless.  Two such terrains are provided: a green European countryside and an American rock desert.  Three play modes are available across both terrains.  Jam is a race from gate to randomly-appearing gate across the vast game areas, in Off Road Race players (loosely) follow a dirt track to victory, and Free Ride offers a no-pressure opportunity to roam about the land.  There is no "career" mode, to speak of.

The game provides the choice of either a 4x4 truck or a Baja-style Beetle buggy to drive in each race type, with four different paint jobs for each.  There are three control modes to choose from: accelerometer steering with manual acceleration, accelerometer steering with auto acceleration, and touch steering with auto acceleration.  The options screen also provides the ability to tweak the display rendering for those wanting a framerate boost on slower iPhone platform devices (the game plays very smoothly on my 2G iPod touch test device).

As a real fan of off-road racers, I find that 4x4 Jam delivers a very enjoyable game experience, thanks in particular to its spot-on vehicle physics and the ability it provides to cut my own track across the landscape and head off the other racers.  The game's free-roam mechanic really sets it apart from more traditional, track-based racers (even the game's Off Road Race feels rather unlike track-based games) -- to such a degree that some gamers married to the track may find it a bit too "loose" for comfort.  The lack of career mode may also be a bit off-putting for some and the track and vehicle selection is a bit limited, and I do hope to see more in future updates.  But overall, my guess is that most off-road racer fans will find 4x4 Jam to deliver a highly enjoyable (and unique) game experience.  (So far, our forum readers are loving it.)

See the our video to see the game in action. The developer's game trailer can be seen here.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

App Store Link: 4x4 Jam, $3.99

Both old Mac gamers and classic arcade gamers are going to be pleased to find out that the old Mac game Glypha has been ported to the iPhone.

Glypha was a Joust clone for the Mac originally written by John Calhoun years ago. The game code was released as open source and has been kindly ported to the iPhone by Kent Sutherland and released for free.

Gameplay is, of course, similar to Joust where you must joust with your enemies by colliding with them while retaining higher ground. An egg is dropped when an enemy is defeated and must be collected.

You are in control of a knight on a winged steed in an Egyptian temple, battling sphinxes through increasingly difficult levels. Gameplay is simple – you must fly and collide with enemy sphinxes with your lance above theirs.

This developer provided video shows the gameplay:

App Store Link: Glypha, Free

Apple has started promoting [link] the fact that the App Store launched a year ago this week. The celebration seems to be a bit premature as the official launch date for the App Store was July 11th, 2008. Still, Apple has collected a list of their "favorite" games to celebrate the occasion. It appears the lists are a little different depending on which region you are in. Here are some of the favorite games from the U.S., U.K., and Australia regions:

Common Favorites

• Flight Control ($0.99)
• EDGE ($4.99)
• Fieldrunners ($2.99)
• Toki Tori ($0.99)
• Rolando ($5.99)
• TouchGrind ($4.99)
• Flick Fishing ($0.99)
• Real Tennis 2009 ($4.99)
• Sims 3 ($9.99)
• 2XL Supercross ($7.99)
• Zen Bound ($4.99)
• Real Racing ($9.99)
• Topple 2 ($0.99)
• Baseball Slugger ($2.99)

UK/Australia Specific (Some of these links may not work in U.S.)

• Bloons ($0.99)
• Monopoly ($4.99)
• Tiger Woods ($6.99)
• Myst ($5.99)
• Sonic the Hedgehog ($5.99)
• Trism ($2.99)
• Sentinel: Mars Defense ($0.99)
• Super Yum Yum ($1.99)
• Paper Toss (Free)
• F.A.S.T. ($1.99)
• Real Soccer/Football 2009 ($0.99)
• De Blob ($3.99)
• Crazy Machines ($2.99)
• Tiki Towers ($1.99)
• Up There ($1.99)
• Spore Origins ($2.99)

U.S. Specific

• geoDefense ($3.99)
• Let's Golf! ($1.99)
• Peggle ($4.99)
• WordFu ($0.99)
• Airport Mania: First Flight ($0.99)
• Sally's Salon ($0.99)
• Tap Tap Revenge (Free)
• Bejeweled 2 ($2.99)
• Labyrinth ($2.99)
• Fantastic Contraption ($4.99)
• Terminator Salvation ($4.99)
• iDracula ($2.99)
• Eliss ($0.99)
• Motion X Poker ($2.99)
• Glyder ($1.99)
• Galaxy on Fire ($4.99)

One of my very favorite iPhone games is Cowboy Rodeo's iPhone port of the classic Amiga pinball game Pinball Dreams [App Store] from Digital Illusions.  It's easily one of the best multi-table pinball games in the App Store.  And, while I greatly enjoyed the original on my Amiga back in the early '90s, I found it's sequel -- Pinball Fantasies -- to be a superior game.  And so it was with a smile on my face that I reported, back in February, that Pinball Fantasies was headed to the App Store.

And, based on an update from forum reader Mindfield, it seems Pinball Fantasies' release is just a few weeks away.

Mindfeld is a beta tester who's been working with Cowboy Rodeo of late and was able to give us a feel of what's to come in the iPhone port of this highly acclaimed title.

...the main menu is still familiar with its coverflow-style interface, but the high scores have been moved below so they can be seen as soon as you flip to a game. Flipping the game icon now rather amusingly shows you the back of a floppy disk. Most of the rest is still pretty familiar, though. In-game, all of the same features are present; all of the screen action areas are still there, and the pause menu still brings up the options to change graphics, lock orientation, and so on, but there’s a new option to add a “finger area” which blocks off a portion of the bottom of the screen dedicated to flipper use. This is purely a visual thing, in case you don’t want your thumbs obscuring part of the action. Landscape mode is still supported as well, which has its own natural areas for the thumbs due to the portrait nature of the tables, though it is at the expense of some visibility.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the tables in Pinball Fantasies are vertically taller and generally more complex than those in Pinball Dreams, and the game features four different tables.

• Party Land - a table oriented around an amusement park, where the letters of either PARTY or CRAZY must be lit to start a high-scoring event. This is the easiest table due to several high scoring targets such as the Arcade and the Loop Ramp. This is the table included in the shareware release
• Speed Devils - focused on car racing, and the player must overtake cars to take the lead. This is more difficult due to much fewer high-scoring targets
• Billion Dollar Gameshow - a gameshow-style table where the player attempts to win prizes by achieving certain combinations of ramps. This is the most difficult, as if the player loses the ball before winning the jackpot the prizes are lost
• Stones 'N Bones - based on a haunted house, where the player must go through different modes of play (by hitting targets spelling out "Stone" and "Bone"), with the later modes scoring more points. This is generally considered the highest-scoring table. It is similar in theme to Nightmare in Pinball Dreams.

Mindfield indciates that the game runs rather close to a solid 60 fps on the 2G iPod touch and will be submitted to the App Store in the next day or two.  So, in the next few weeks, Pinball Fantasies for the iPhone should be available for download.

Have a look at the game in action.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Stay tuned for a closer look at this one when it goes live in the App Store.

While Duke Nukem Forever may be dead, or close to it, MachineWorks Northwest has been busy at work porting Duke Nukem 3D to the iPhone. Developed by the same company that brought us Prey Invasion [App Store], Duke Nukem 3D seems to borrow heavily from the control scheme of both Prey Invasion and 3D Hunting [App Store]. IGN broke the news this afternoon, and according to them-

The developer has ported over the entire 1996 PC game to the iPhone, so if you have fond memories of ventilating pig-cops and saving strippers, all of this will be both welcome and familiar. It had been a long time since I last stepped out with the Duke, but settled right back into our old two-step after just a few minutes with an earlier build of the game. While MachineWorks has not monkeyed with the gameplay at all, it has subtly upgraded the visuals. The sprites still get a touch blocky up close, but they have been smoothed out so it's not as harsh as you may recall. Those wise-ass cracks, though? They are full intact.

IGN shares our concern over the controls, but describes the tap-to-shoot mechanic as "far more tactile -- and enjoyable." Either way, Duke Nukem 3D brings so much nostalgia to the table that fans of the series will no doubt find any control issues very easy to overlook.

I've emailed the developers, so hopefully we will have more information on the game before it's released. Otherwise, IGN states Duke Nukem 3D will be on the app store "very soon."

IUGO's Star Hogs [App Store] was high on my list of games that we saw at WWDC that I couldn't wait to get my hands on after sitting down with both Sarah Thomson and Hong-Yee Wong to get a sneak peek. After our preview, I described the game as "Worms on crack" and between the preview version we recieved earlier, and the final copy for sale on the App Store, that description couldn't be more accurate.

Instead of cute worms with a comical arsenal of bazookas, sheep, and other contraptions, Star Hogs has you piloting between 1 to 4 ships (depending on the level) loaded with as much weaponry as you can afford. The depth and variety of the different ships, weapons, and defensive gadgets that each can be equipped with is one of the greatest assets of Star Hogs.

There are three types of addons for your ships: Arms, hull, and tech. Also, three different types of ships which have a different number of slots for each type of upgrade are avilable for purchase in the ship yard. For instance, the combat ship has four slots for weapons, while the intelligence ship has four slots for tech upgrades along with 2 to 3 slots for other equipment types.

Arms upgrades, as the name would hint, give you different weapons to attack with. Initially your ship will only come equipped with a basic rocket and machine gun, but playing through the single player campaign will not only give you money to buy additional weaponry, but also unlocks weapons in the process. I only have access to a few new weapons so far playing my final copy of the game, but according to Thomson at WWDC, around 20 are available.

Hull upgrades give your ship passive bonuses like increased armor or speed, and tech upgrades can provide with a beefier shield, and additional energy. In Star Hogs, the amount of energy you have translates directly to how much you can do with each turn. This puts a neat spin on the game and adds quite a bit of strategy to each turn.

With my basic combat ship, on each turn I can shoot my missiles twice and move a tiny bit, shoot one missile and move more, or shoot nothing and move until I run out of energy. Having the flexibility to do more than just move and shoot once each turn like in Worms is nice, and the energy system does a good job of really giving you a lot of flexibility in what you're going to do with each of your ships.

Instead of a flat battlefield, quite a few of the Star Hogs maps are circular with a planet or some other gravity producing body in the center. Because of this, quite often you will have to plan firing your missile and other projectiles to take advantage of the pull of gravity to curve your attack around the map to hit targets that you don't have direct line of sight to.

Learning how to aim your attacks and how much power to put behind them is challenging, but extremely satisfying when you successfully land a head-on missile straight to the grill of an enemy Hog on the opposite side of the asteroid field. New players will be dealing with lots of trial and error before getting a feel for things, but once you get a handle on the capabilities of your weapons, Star Hogs becomes exponentially more fun.

Aside from the 32 single player levels, the meat of Star Hogs is by far internet multiplayer. You can compete online against 2 to 4 players, using anywhere between 2 and 4 ships in a ranked or unranked battle. Online games have a 30 second time limit for each turn, which keeps the game fast paced, but it would be nice to have the option to change this setting as on more advanced maps with lots of players, it can be hard to plan and execute your turn inside of 30 seconds.

In my tests, online multiplayer worked well and because of the turn-based nature of Star Hogs, if there was any lag in playing over the cellular network, it was indistinguishable. One thing that I really feel is missing from online play, and I don't know how difficult this would be to implement, is some way to resume a game in progress.

I play my games on an iPhone, and being a phone and all, interruptions are fairly common and even at its best AT&T's network can be a little flaky at times. A full multiplayer game with 4 players each controlling 4 Hogs can take quite a bit of time to complete, so losing a player due to unforseen circumstances like network interruptions or phone calls is slightly irritating. (More so if you are the player that got dropped.)

It would be great if you could rejoin the game you got disconnected from, and even better if while you were disconnected the players in the game could vote to kick you, skip your turn, or wait the 30 seconds you would have been allowed if you were in game. Overall though, online play will be extremely fun to veterans of Worms multiplayer, as it provides a very similar experience playable anywhere with WiFi or a cellular data connection.

The one downside currently to playing Star Hogs online is you have to organize your games over forums or instant messages. There aren't enough players online yet to ever find anyone when you search for quick matches, but hopefully this will improve as more people pick up the game.

The music in Star Hogs does get a little repetitive, but thankfully each time you load the game it asks you if you would prefer to listen to in-game music, your iPod, or no sound at all. (A feature I wish more iPhone games had.) Also, another nice touch to Star Hogs is that on the first launch the game loads the tutorial before you even see the title screen, leaving new players no room to get lost in the game's fairly intuitive controls and purchasing system.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Star Hogs is less of a Worms clone, and more of an evolution of Worms-like turn based combat. The variety of options for ships, 32 single player levels, free play (which is basically just online play but with AI or human opponents sharing the same device), and the potential of online multiplayer makes for a solid title that can easily hold its own amongst the other $4.99 games on the App Store.

Star Hogs Lite [App Store] is also available, and if you ever enjoyed a Worms game in the past, you owe it to yourself to at least give the free version a try.

App Store Link: Star Hogs, $4.99 - Star Hogs Lite, Free