Semi Secret Software had a major hit on their hands with Wurdle [App Store], a Bookworm-like word searching game. It was released early in the life of the App Store and saw a positive reception both from review sites online and actual newspapers. Wurdle went on to sell close to a quarter of a million copies, and has since been Semi Secret Software's only entry on the App Store.

Following Wurdle, Semi Secret Software went back to their flash game development roots and produced Canabalt, a fast-paced game of running for your life and jumping from building to building. I could go on explaining the intricacies of Canabalt, but instead you should just play the full-featured flash game freely playable online. (The original flash version is also available on AdamAtomic.com.)

Here is the world premiere iPhone gameplay video I shot in the halls of the Austin Convention Center:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Fast load times combined with short (yet exciting) game sessions really make for an attractive game to play on a mobile device. Semi Secret Software plans on submitting Canabalt to Apple soon.

Gameloft's Diablo-like action RPG Dungeon Hunter [$6.99] has arrived in the App Store tonight.

We had some hands on time with the game last month. Although we only had a brief amount of time with the game, it certainly seemed like a very solid take on the formula.

On-screen controls once again are utilized, with a virtual D-Pad controlling movement and a series of buttons that handle your attacks and magic. Three classes are included that each have slightly different strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. Dungeon Hunter plays a lot like Pixel Mines' Underworlds, in 3D, and could potentially have quite a bit of replay value as you play through the game as a knight, then a rogue, and finally as a mage. Also, along the way you will collect different fairies that assist you on your adventures, each providing a different offensive and/or defensive bonuses.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

The game description promises an enormous world with different types of quests and missions, tons of items, weapons and armor, and hours of gameplay. Early impressions are being collected in our forums, and we'll post more once we've had more time to put the game through its paces.

App Store Link: Dungeon Hunter, $6.99

Update: Gameplay video updated with a much higher quality version.

Update 2: Dungeon Hunter is no longer available for download, we're waiting for a comment from Gameloft but judging by our forums it likely is a result of a crash bug when loading a certain level of the game.

Update 3: Gameloft offers the following comment on the situation: "Dungeon Hunter was momentarily removed from the AppStore, an update will be live very soon."

In a surprise release, Namco has released BurgerTime Deluxe for the iPhone.

Join Chef Peter Pepper as he attempts to help his uncle thwart the dastardly Vinnie Vinegar. Scale the platforms and assemble the burgers to clear the levels, then speed through the exciting minigames.

This retro refresh of the 1982 classic was originally written for other platforms including the Mac and PC before being ported to the iPhone. The game contains 60 levels and a story mode.

Namco appears to have previously obtained the rights to the BurgerTime franchise remains with G-Mode who we reported acquired many of the rights to Data East's old intellectual properties.

Here's a video from Namco:

The game only offers a somewhat strange floating virtual d-pad controls for movement that appears where you tap down. If you lift your finger off the screen for a while the d-pad disappears and can be placed at will. Once in place, it acts much like a standard virtual d-pad, with the typical precision issues. There is no retro/original mode or even arcade mode. The game seems set entirely in the 60-level story mode.

A downloadable PC version is available to try, but appears to be formatted somewhat differently with a larger view area. Like with most of these retro refreshes, we suspect the primary target audience will be limited to big fans of the original title, but we will spend some time playing through.

App Store Link: BurgerTime Deluxe, $1.99

Fans of the long-running aerial combat franchise Ace Combat will be pleased to learn that Namco Bandai is bringing a sequel to the highly-rated PSP title Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception to the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Tentatively titled Ace Combat Xi: Skies of Incursion, the game will feature a variety of fighter aircraft, some of which will be available as downloadable content in the future. 

Skies of Incursion is a direct sequel to PSP's Ace Combat X Skies of Deception. The game's story follows the same battle as that title, but focuses on Falcon Squadron, a separate unit in the Aurelian Airforce.

Namco Bandai will be making use of the iPhone's accelerometer and touch screen to give the game a unique interface. It will be possible to pilot your plane by tilting your phone. Additionally, the game balance and play time are being adjusted to better suit mobile players.

The Famitsu website has posted a large collection of preliminary screenshots, some of which can be seen below.

The Ace Combat francise has been around since 1995 with versions of the game appearing on the Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox 360, and PSP. No price or release date for the iPhone version has been indicated. Stay tuned for updates on this release as we get them.

Thanks arta

If you're like me, you may not have even known that "Skee-Ball" was an actual brand. A fact that I'm sure Skee-Ball Amusement Games is none too happy about. Regardless, Freeverse has acquired an actual license to produce an official Skee-ball game for the iPhone.

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, Skee-Ball has been enjoyed by generations of players from boardwalks to arcades, and now Freeverse brings the fun to your iPhone! Developed by Graveck, the game's excellent physics and 3D graphics make rolling the signature Skee-Ball an extremely fun and exciting experience.

Freeverse has implemented a ticket-prize system allowing you to buy prizes and even different ball skins. But given the number of unofficial (and high quality) skee ball variants in the App Store, it's hard to predict how much demand there will be for an officially branded version.

Update: The developer of this official Skee-Ball game is the same developer as 10 balls 7 Cups [$0.99] which may have been the single best iPhone game trailer ever.

Wandering the halls of the Austin convention center we ran into InMotion Software, creators of I Dig It [99¢ / Free] and got to talk about their upcoming sequel to the game, I Dig It Expeditions that is due out this holiday season.

We don't have any screenshots yet aside from a few promo images like the one above, but they did give us some details that I Dig It fans can look forward to. If you haven't played the original, I Dig It is an exploration game that we greatly enjoyed in our review:

On the surface, I Dig It is a simple dig for treasure game, but it's not until you play it for a while that you start to appreciate the strategy involved in choosing your upgrades and intelligently planning your dig routes. On top of all that, you're constantly faced with the threat of overheating, hull integrity, and you always need to make sure you have enough fuel left to make your way topside.

Digging deep is key to maximizing profits, but also comes with the increased risk of not making it out alive.

Screenshots from the original I Dig It

Since our review the game has had a substantial update, adding a second campaign and even more things to collect underground. I Dig It is currently on sale for 99¢, and will be for a few more days.

I Dig It Expeditions is going to take absolutely everything that was great about the original and add features suggested by the userbase along with some substantial upgrades to the gameplay, new levels, and more. The entire consumable and cargo system has been completely overhauled. Consumables like different kinds of dynamite are now much cheaper, and you have more room to hold them. The trade off is, for every item you're carrying, that's one less slot available for diggins to bring back up to the surface. Aside from different types of dynamite, power ups are also available that will point you in the direction of valuable diggins or provide other useful effects.

The emphasis on these new consumables will make them a much larger part of the game, and additional upgrades for your digger will allow for even greater customization of how you play the game. The idea behind Expeditions is that you've successfully paid off your farm (The original motivation for you to go digging in the first game.) and decide to take your digger worldwide. Locales include the arctic seen in the above promotional image along with rain forests, or even underwater among others.

The whole game has a very Indiana Jones-like feel to it, with different archeological treasures you will be seeking in each of the various locations. Of course different upgrades will also be available on each level. For instance, while underwater, you will have access to improvements to your digger such as air tanks to allow you to stay submerged longer.

One of the coolest features included in I Dig It Expeditions is a mini map to show you where you've been digging along with a way-point system. The mini map has the same art style as the I Dig It interface with your path being drawn on what looks like a green and black oscilloscope screen. There are numerous other improvements both in game and in the works that InMotion isn't ready to discuss yet.

Something interesting that came of the conversations with InMotion that many people likely are not aware of is that it's a father/son operation with a small handful of other people with AAA industry experience from companies like id and Midway.

I Dig It Expeditions is currently in development and will be released during the holiday season this year. In the meantime, try out I Dig It or I Dig It Lite.

App Store Link: I Dig It, 99¢ - I Dig It Lite, Free

Day two of the Game Developers Conference in Austin, TX began with a talk by husband and wife duo Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova of Imangi Studios. Keith began the talk detailing the history of Imangi and how they approach making iPhone games.

Imangi Studios was founded in June 2008, based in Washington DC and neither Keith or Natalia had any kind of game industry background. The App Store created a market that would allow Imangi Studios to create low cost high quality casual games, and now have over half a million downloads across their five games on the App Store. Their most popular game Harbor Master [$0.99] reached a peak rank of #3 in Top Paid Apps with over 11,000 sales in one day.

(more...)

Tap Studio

Drop D Studios has released an interesting new type of rhythm game for the iPhone. Rather than bundling their own music, you are given the opportunity to create your own tracks by tapping out the notes yourself, and can then play against your previously recorded session.

Since Apple does not allow enough access for an application to automatically process the music data themselves, developers are left with these sort of workarounds. The most ambitious effort was by Beatrider which actually allows you to upload your music to a server for processing. This procedure, of course, is a bit cumbersome and the quality of the automated processing is variable.

We're not sure what Drop D Studios' plans are for Tap Studio but it seems the obvious next step would be to allow users to share their creations with each other. Unfortunately, the initial release of the game is marred with at least one major bug for users of iPhone OS 3.1 preventing the proper recording of your taps. Some been able to work around this by holding down the record button at least temporarily.

App Store Link: Tap Studio, Free.

Crazy Dunker

It's crazy enough that you just might love it.

KEEP RUBBING your iPhone/iPod to generate the enough power to jump off the ground.

TILT your iPhone/iPod when you get high up in the air to aim at the hoop on the ground.

If you ever wanted to slam dunk from 20,000 feet, here's your chance.

App Store Link: Crazy Dunker, Free

I'm not sure what it is about dual-stick shooters, but these games seem to generate huge followings on the iPhone platform. It may just be that the multi-touch screen suits the control system so well. Regardless, the latest dual stick shooter to make a big splash in the App Store is Alley Labs' Meteor Blitz [$1.99].

The game bears more than a passing resemblance to Super Stardust HD for the Playstation 3, so if you loved Super Stardust HD, that would be a very good thing.

Meteor Blitz is a dual-stick asteroid shooter that offers both Arcade and Survival modes. The game centers around your ship which can fire a variety of different weapons. The standard projectile weapons include a plasma gun, flamethrower, and ice cannon. Different weapons are better for use against specific obstacles. Ice meteors respond best to the flamethrower, while the fire meteors succumb easiest to the ice cannon. Other weapons at your disposal include screen-clearing bombs as well as the gravity gun which can be used to slingshot meteors into enemies causing massive damange. See this video showing the gravity gun in action.

As you destroy enemies and asteroids, coins are collected for weapons and ship upgrades. Meanwhile, in game bonuses give you extra lives, bombs, shields, enemy slow down or the ability to attract coins.

Aside from the onslaught of meteors, enemy ships constantly descend into the game field requiring near constant movement to avoid death.

The game's control system is the typical dual analog stick control system with spot on sensitivities. Weapon switching and bomb triggering are done with nearby buttons at the top right and bottom left corners of your right controller, while speed boost is triggered by tapping your left controller. There is no way to flip the control system left/right. See this video:

As you can see, the art and animation are top notch with all the flourishes you'd expect. The developers also seem to have paid a lot of attention to some other details in the game that are worth pointing out. Pulling your fingers off the dual pads will automatically pause the game. The game also features practically no load times. This YouTube video shows initial launch and the near instant resume on relaunch. And finally, your global rank is given to you in real time as you play (video).

Overall, Meteor Blitz is one of the highest quality space shooters we've seen for the iPhone. It delivers 6 unlockable worlds with a good variety of enemies, excellent controls, and a lot of fun. At only $1.99, this one comes highly recommended.

App Store Link: Meteor Blitz, $1.99

TouchArcade Rating:

The App Store seems to go in cycles with releases and upgrades coming in waves. Tonight a number of long awaited game updates have appeared, including Duke Nukem.

Here's a partial list:

• Duke Nukem 3D ($2.99) - The long awaited control system update is now available. This fixes the issue with the analog controls. The controls are fully adjustable and many find them to be too sensitive on the default settings, so be sure to adjust these until you find a liking. The controls are still perhaps not ideal, but are much improved.
• Samurai: Way of the Warrior ($2.99) - Stability and performance improvements and.... "minor game balancing" including that of level 3.
• Archon ($2.99) - New 1 player campaign mode called "Conquest" which is said to add hours of individual play.
• Wild West Pinball ($0.99 - New missions, music, tilt, and fixed camera option.
• The Deep Pinball ($0.99) - OS 2.x compatibility, and fixed camera option

Artificial Life has released a new 3rd person shooter called Pandorum for the iPhone which is based on an upcoming movie by the same name.

Pandorum is a Sci-fi/Horror film directed by Christian Alvart that is scheduled to be released on September 25. The movie plot follows the plot of the game which is set as a 3rd person exploration game and shooter.

Two astronauts wake to find themselves drifting through space and with no memory of who they are. They believe that they must be the only ones aboard the spacecraft, but can hear sounds coming from its center. Exploring the spacecraft, they encounter several other surviving crewmembers, and the astronauts start to learn that a terrible event has occurred on board which might affect the survival of the entire human race.

Here's the official movie trailer:

The game features a pretty immersive storyline that has you exploring the space ship while trying to reactivate the ship and find out what happened to the remainder of the crew. The mood of the game is dark and erie as you battle with psychological effects of deep space (known as Pandorum). These effects cause momentary hallucinations that can only be tempered by the use of antidotes that can be collected throughout.

The game is controlled through the use of a left virtual pad for movement and a right slider for left/right looking. The game's engine doesn't allow up/down looking at all. The controls take a bit getting used to, but can work reasonably well once you put a little time in it. The full version of the game has 5 missions split into 2 segments, so 10 levels in all and, based just on the Mission 1-1, should provide a fair amount of play time. Exploration and fighting are broken up by cut scenes and puzzle elements.

The game has gotten some positive feedback and does offer a feature complete Lite version to try.

App Store Link: Pandorum, $3.99, Pandorum Lite, Free

iPhone game developer Meridian is about to follow up their top 10 hit Alive 4-Ever [$0.99] with a followup title that seems to share a lot of the same attributes. Against the Fire! is another dual-stick shooter but set in the city of Waterfront where strange fire ball monsters are causing havoc.

Your character Andrew, a firefighter trainee without any experience, is ordered to stay behind at the headquarters. However, the siren goes off while he is at the station alone and it turns out the alarm is coming from the hotel right next to the headquarters! A huge number of hotel guests are trapped inside the hotel as the fire ball monsters loom outside attacking. Not wanting to stand aside, Andrew has no choice but to rescue them from the fire scene!

Meridian provides the following details about the game:

• 50 challenging levels
• Upgradeable items such as fire hose, HP recovery and speed
• Variety of fire monsters
• Hidden character to unlock
• Best time achievement
• Ranking system for most points

There was a whole lot to like about Alive 4-Ever, so we're anxious to see what improvements have been made in their next title. Fans of Alive 4-Ever shouldn't worry, however, Meridian has already detailed a number of new features coming to their Zombie shooter including a survival mode, new maps and new weapons.

Against the Fire! is scheduled for release in September.

We met with Seth Isenberg this afternoon of Go Yo Mobile who showed me a sneak peek of their first iPhone game, Squash Em. The gameplay mechanics are simple, and similar to a lot of other games where you tap various things on the screen. What piqued my interest in Squash Em is the sense of scale between the different levels. It's reminiscent of the old 1970's "Powers of Ten" educational video put out by IBM and Ray Eames.

Bundled with a silly story, you play as a janitor that stumbled in to a shrinking machine in the molecular research lab of the university you work for. The narrative continues told through comic styled cut scenes and carries you all the way through the molecular level to a massive planetary scale. Once you complete the single player game, an additional game mode opens up where you're able to zoom in and out through all these levels searching for aliens to squish.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

It's hard to say how much appeal this game is going to have, especially with the similarity in gameplay elements to the countless other touch games on the App Store. Power ups mix up the gameplay, and the additional game modes could add some replay value. Squash Em is due to be released sometime this fall.

GDC Austin kicked off today with an information packed talk from Randy Smith and David Kalina from Tiger Style Games discussing the evolution of their first iPhone game, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [App Store]. Much of their origin story was previously covered in our interview with the duo.

Randy and David discussed that prior to the App Store, there never was any good way for indie titles to reach a mass market. The iPhone brought together a great hardware platform and the possibility for an indie developer with no financial backing to publish their titles to a large audience. (And they don't deny trying to follow the App Store gold rush.)

The original vision of the game includes things like it being "unique and inspired" and "not about orcs." David and Randy then went on to explain the business side of Tiger Style, discussing an amazingly flexible and transparent development team. An interesting aspect of the talk was their conscious decision to price the game at $2.99. They looked at the market, the competition and decided to carve out a high quality niche:

While they've been thrilled with their initial success of nearly 100,000 sales of Spider, with 12 distributed team members and an 8 month long development cycle, they put an enormous amount of resources into the project. Still, they recommend that indie developers shoot for this "quality alternative" of high quality titles priced above $0.99 that exceed expectations and to engage the community (slide).

They also revealed that they are working on more levels, new features, a Lite version, as well as "Game 2".

Japanese game company Data East appears to be poised for a comeback on the iPhone platform -- or at least their intellectual property is.

Data East Corporation actually went bankrupt in 2003, but most of its intellectual property was acquired by G-Mode. This includes the rights to classic titles such as Burger Time, Heavy Barrel, Karate Champ and more. Now we don't know if they are planning on bringing any of these titles to the iPhone, but G-Mode has already released one and are working with developer Revolutionary Concepts to publish another.

Magical Drop Touch

Magical Drop Touch [$2.99] for the iPhone became available just last week. This port of the classic arcade title has been revised with swipe controls.

Overall the game was ported well to the iPhone platform, but the swipe controls just don't keep up to the original joystick controls. The control speed was the one nagging issue to an otherwise well done port. For this reason, we've been unable to recommend it. Note that similar gameplay, but with better controls can be found in StormBASIC's DynoQuest [$1.99].

While we can hope for a control update on Magical Drop Touch, this entry does raise a number of interesting possibilities. And, tonight, we heard about the next Data East title coming to the iPhone.

Cobra Command

Revolutionary Concepts has announced that Data East's 1984 arcade game Cobra Command is also coming to the iPhone.

Originally released in 1984 by acclaimed Japanese arcade games company Data East ‘Cobra Command’ combined the use of hollywood-quality full motion video and surround sound, (the then leading-edge) Laser Disc technology, and overlaid computer generated graphics, to create a first of it’s kind interactive experience which saw you the player flying a state of the art futuristic combat helicopter across ten wide-ranging action-packed levels.

In conjunction with G-Mode, this new iPhone title will feature a number of iPhone specific features including:

• Full motion widescreen video, fully restored and presented in H.264 running at 60 frames per second.
• Vastly superior graphics and effects to match the on-screen action. Including an all new Cockpit, guns, missiles, and sound effects.
• Redesigned precision multi-touch controls.
• Accelerometer-based tilt steering! You really are in command of the worlds most awesome combat machine.
• Instantaneous seek time, providing a seamless experience where on on-screen action unfolds uninterrupted in real time.
• Unlockable Bonuses. Including Arcade Classic, and Expert Modes.

The game has been updated with enhanced graphics as shown here alongside the original graphics:

A video of the original game can be seen on YouTube. Cobra Command for iPhone is currently in play-testing and on track for release this October.