Craneball Studios is well known for providing us with apps that are just that little bit different to anything else out there. Their latest project to hit the App Store, Monorace [App Store] continues that tradition; a gravity-centric side-scrolling platform racer that takes takes one-touch gaming to a whole new place (or 'pace' for that matter).

Monorace pits you as one of three distinct drivers-- Fat Big D, Skinny Gus and Hot Jane-- of a giant mechanical wheel called a Monobike. The basic idea behind Monorace is straightforward-- get to the finish line as quickly as you can and avoid going slow. Going slow is bad-- it gets you stuck, it gets you minimal stars (which are needed to unlock further tracks), and ultimately, it gets you dead.

At the beginning of each level, your Monobike launches into full-throttle and never looks back-- sticking to any surface it encounters but always moving forwards. Your job is limited to ensuring it always has somewhere to go, by avoiding obstacles and turning gravity on its head when the need calls for it. Gravity is pivitol in Monorace; as the entire world shifts on its head when you tap the screen, throwing its polarity upside-down. If you reach a ledge normally, you'll drop down to the next level; if you're racing upside-down, you'll drop upwards to the next level. If you're getting queasy already, don't fret-- it's a whole lot easier in practice.

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In May of last year Cyan Worlds released an iPhone version of their groundbreaking (in its day) point and click adventure Myst [App Store]. Earlier this year we got word that Riven: The Sequel to Myst would be arriving on the iPhone by early summer. And, while it's obviously not here yet, we do have an update for those who've been waiting anxiously for Riven's arrival.

Early this month, Cyan's Mark DeForest (or 'Chogon') made a post on the Myst online forums indicating that they are expecting Riven to be available in early Fall, with Riven HD for the iPad following sometime after that. What's more, Cyan today launched a simple Riven for iOS website that reveals certain details about the forthcoming iPhone version along with a screenshot gallery.

The original Riven sights and sounds have been meticulously re-assembled for a remarkable experience on the iPhone and iPod touch. Everything that you remember from the original Riven in a format where a simple touch or swipe moves you through the world.

According to the website, the install of Riven for the iPhone is huge -- and it's not surprising; Riven for the Mac and PC was initially distributed as a set of five CD-ROMs. Cyan has worked to optimize the original game data for the iOS platform but, even so, the game is about a gig and a half in size (probably the largest iOS application out there) and requires over 2 gigabytes of free storage for a successful install.

Riven for iPhone features, as listed by Cyan:

• All the original Ages & gameplay
• High quality images
• Full music & sound effects
• Movies & animations
• Auto-save (when quitting or phone call)
• "Bookmark" system to save & restore progress
• Swipe to turn
• Zoom in anywhere for more detail
• “Hot Spot” hints
• Works with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad

We'll take a close look at Riven when it arrives and share our experiences with our readers. But, that's not the end of the Cyan news...

A small ad banner has recently appeared on the Cyan Worlds website that reads, "never let your timbers be shivered!" A click on the banner takes you to a rather spartan "preview" page that shows a screenshot of a new iOS game entitled Stoneship. Now, the savvy Myst fan will recall that "Stoneship" is the name of one of the ages in Myst, and this forthcoming title, which looks as if it may be some sort of top-down naval combat / tower defense / puzzle game, was surely inspired by it.

Unfortunately, that's about all the details we've got at the moment on this forthcoming, new title from Cyan. We'll share additional news on this one as we get it.

[ Thanks Jordan ]

By now I'm sure we all agree, Chillingo really have a soft spot for decaying dudes with a bad case of halitosis. They are Liches of the App Store, raising an undead army to swarm your iOS devices. For the most part, this is actually a good thing, as all their zombie offerings to date have been of a particularly high standard. So it's no surprise that they've championed Viqua Games' Zombie Escape [App Store], a game we were eagerly anticipating after our hands-on preview.

Zombie Escape takes the traditional line drawing experience and changes up the formula significantly. Rather than being the be-all-end-all of the game, where one misplaced line means instant death, the line-drawing mechanic is a means to an end; namely, directing survivors of the zombie infestation to a nearby chopper, filling it up, and waiting for the next to arrive. Sure, while your task each level might be rescuing each and every survivor, the zombies have to eat something right?

In this respect, Zombie Escape is a lot more forgiving than other line-drawing games, by allowing some casualties before outright failure, and permitting your survivors to fight back a little; in the form of a small window of opportunity for you to direct a survivor away if they are caught by a zombie-- before their brains are eaten. This doesn't mean a less challenging game, but that the difficulty assumes a different form-- something you'll appreciate when your screen is bursting with zombies and you're trying to thread your survivors through the most narrow of openings, all while avoiding your own airstrike.

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Yesterday we showed off some screenshots of Top Gun 2 [$2.99], the Freeverse developed sequel to last year's Top Gun [$1.99/HD] iPhone game based on the the hit 80's movie. The screens looked really nice, and being rather fond of the first game I was really looking forward to Top Gun 2. After spending the last couple of hours with the game however, I'm fairly disappointed. While the visuals in the game are a pretty big improvement, most of what I liked about the first game is gone. It isn't necessarily a bad game, just more of a step sideways than a step forward compared to the first game.

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The wild popularity of Fruit Ninja [99¢ / HD] is a hard act to follow, but I think Halfbrick's next game is more than up to snuff. In Monster Dash {99¢], you play as Barry Steakfries, a man who loves two things in life: Running and killing monsters. Of course I don't know him personally, but I've been able to discern as much from spending the past week playing Monster Dash in almost every second of spare time I can find.

Monster Dash is a randomly generated survival platformer where you run to the right as long as you can, much like Canabalt [$2.99]. This is where the Canabalt similarities end, as between Barry Steakfries and wherever he's running to is an array of monsters which all must be either avoided or slain. Barry's default weapon is a shotgun, which has limited range, but along the way you will find weapon crates packed with sub machine guns, a powerful six shooter, and even a machine gun jetpack.

Barry's life is represented in heart on the top right corner of the screen, and you can regain health by picking up heart power-ups on your run. Colliding with an enemy or hitting spikes causes you to lose health, and when you run out of hearts or miss a jump and fall to your death your run is over. From there, your score is submitted to OpenFeint online leaderboards, and you start again. On your run you will randomly warp through four different settings, from an egyptian world filled with mummies to the rooftop ruins following a zombie apocalypse.

Monster Dash is host to oodles of OpenFeint achievements and also a ridiculous amount of stat tracking, keeping count of things like your total distance travelled, how many monsters you've stomped, most consecutive stomps, and a bunch of other things. Also, not only is there a leaderboard for single run distance, but you can also compete for total distance ran, total monsters killed in one run, as well as total monsters killed overall.

The graphics in Monster Dash consist of fantastically drawn sprites, and the fast paced music fits perfectly with the pace of the game. Overall, Monster Dash is just a ton of fun, the controls are simple and just consist of tapping either side of the iPhone screen to jump or fire, and I'm really having a hard time finding anything to complain about. Best of all, Halfbrick has had an amazing track record with updating Fruit Ninja with all kinds of additional game modes and content and all day people have been contributing their own ideas as to what would make Monster Dash even more awesome in the thread on our forums.

Halfbrick obviously hasn't committed to implementing any of these things, but it's not hard to imagine how well various power-ups and additional weaponry could fit in to the game. Regardless of whether or not these things ever happen, I'm happy as a clam with Monster Dash. If you like Canabalt-style gameplay and hate monsters, you basically need to download Monster Dash as soon as possible.

This isn't a game by any means, so if you're looking for the next cool iPhone game to download, keep on scrollin'. If you like games, RPG's specifically, and have always wondered what would happen if you combined the functionality of a to do list app with an experience bar, Epic Win [$2.99] is right up your alley. Created by Rex Crowle, responsible for the visual design of Little Big Planet, and Tak Fung, the developer behind MiniSquadron [$2.99 / Free], Epic Win is a list keeping app by gamers for gamers.

On your first launch of the app, you choose one of five avatars. Three are unlocked initially, with the other two available via in-app purchase. Which avatar you choose has no bearing on how the rest of the app works, and you can change them at any time in the options. Tapping the pencil icon opens up a new task, at which point you set its "epicness" and date along with what type of feat said task is. These feats range from feats of strength, stamina, intellect, social, and spirit.

As you complete items off your to do list, you're awarded experience for the level of epicness you set and your avatar gains a point on your profile page for the type of feat the task was. When each task is completed, your dude travels down a curvy road, and eventually is awarded various pieces of ridiculous loot... And that's really all there is to Epic Win. Sure, there are more full featured gettin' things done apps on the App Store, but how many of them have loot or experience bars?

Yeah, you can technically "cheat" in Epic Win really easily by just constantly making and completing tasks, but the "game" portion of Epic Win really has no competition, and only serves as a neat little bonus for checking things off of a list. If you've found yourself looking for some more motivation to get things done on your to do list, and filling an experience bar is your carrot on a stick that will actually lead you to do things, Epic Win is what you need.

Last week during the QuakeCon keynote address, John Carmack pulled an iPhone 4 out of his pocket and shocked the audience by showing a demo of id Software's next game, Rage, running on the device. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Rage will have elements of racing games and first person shooters. There's also said to be RPG elements in the game as well, making it sound similar to both the Fallout series and Borderlands. Information is still limited as the game isn't slated to launch until 2011, but either way the following demonstration is beyond impressive:

We've spoken at length with John Carmack in the past, where he's mentioned potential upcoming id Software titles such as Doom 2, Quake Classic, and the rest of the id back catalog coming to the App Store. Wondering what the state of all these projects were, we once again pow wowed with Carmack to see what he's been up to since we last spoke.

According to John, id has restructured a lot last year and several people from the mobile team has since been sucked in to other big projects, and they've only recently got the mobile team staffed back up to the proper size for iPhone development. Carmack admits that after releasing Doom Classic [$6.99] he hadn't even opened up Xcode until last month to start working on Rage technology.

Currently, id is completely focused on Rage, and John isn't sure when they will get back to the classic games "even though it makes a lot of sense." He also explained that while both Doom II RPG [$3.99] and Wolfenstein RPG [$1.99] have done well on mobile phones, their performance on the App Store has been less than ideal, leading to the decision to not bring the Orcs & Elves games over to iOS.

Carmack admits he's had a lot of fun working with iOS 4 recently, and wished he had more time to devote to it. And while it's more than a little disappointing that we won't see the classic id games anytime soon, with how impressive the Rage demo was, I'm A-OK with John Carmack and the rest of the id Software team working on the forefront of iPhone development instead of focusing on porting retro hits-- I doubt I'm alone in that.

The dreaded curse of the movie game has been in existence since the 1982 release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. Similar to many other famous curses, such as the curse of the Bambino or the curse of the Billy Goat, the curse of movie video games is just something you could almost always count on in that video games based on movies are generally mediocre if not much worse. In the rare instance that a game based on a movie isn't terrible, it needs to be celebrated-- And Jaws [$2.99] for the iPhone is cause for celebration.

If you somehow have never seen the movie Jaws, here's the gist: Amity is a New England summer town with beautiful beaches whose local economy depends on tourism. Not too far in to the movie the bloody corpse of one such vacationer washes ashore and serves as the first clue that there may be something in the water. They suspect it is a shark attack, but the local mayor refuses to close the beaches as the 4th of July is approaching and doing so would be a financial disaster for Amity. Needless to say, they don't close the beaches, Jaws attacks, and the rest of the movie involves the hunt for the massive shark.

One of the most memorable things (for me anyway) from Jaws was the use of music in the movie. The iconic Jaws theme ramped up in the movie perfectly with the suspense of being on the open ocean looking for the massive shark, and the developers of the Jaws game have implemented this same audio cue in the game with the real Jaws theme... Which I feel really is the most important part of any Jaws-based game.

Gameplay amounts to doing everything you can to save the swimmers of Amity in a variety of different scenarios. Ten levels are included, and the early ones will just have you flicking swimmers to send them swimming towards the beach while avoiding Jaws who comes marauding through the water whenever the shark fin meter at the bottom reaches the swimmer icon. Eventually this makes way to open water levels where you're able to flick swimmers around to avoid Jaws, and the only way to get them out of the water is by picking them up with boats that are controlled by drawing lines similar to Harbor Master [$1.99 / Free / HD]. There are also boats with guns on them that you target by dragging a crosshair around, and while I won't spoil the end of the game, if you've seen the movie you can likely guess what happens.

While Jaws doesn't really bring much new to the table, it combines gameplay elements that have been proven to work well with the touch controls on the iPhone in to a fun little game that really nails how a game based on the movie Jaws should feel. The later levels are downright frantic, and Jaws himself looks great-- Especially when he leaps out of the water to turn a swimmer in to a pool of blood. Levels are scored based on how many swimmers you're able to save, and each level has a limit as to how many Jaws can eat before you fail.

Jaws is a little light on content, with ten levels that shouldn't take you more than an hour or two to play through and unlock everything. The game comes with OpenFeint integration for online leaderboards and achievements, but I really wish there was something more to do once you beat the game such as unlocking endless modes for each of the levels that allow you to play as long as you can before Jaws munches on a swimmer. Either way, if you enjoyed the movie, you'll likely have fun playing through the game at least once.

Tiger Style's Spider is a game that we really just can't say enough good things about. The iPhone game, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99] was our game of the year in 2009, and Spider HD [$4.99] is great on the iPad. There's also the pseudo-lite version of the game, Spider: Hornet Smash [Free] which is totally worth checking out if you've yet to try Spider just to see how the mechanics of being a spider in the game work. We loved Spider in our review, and the development of the game itself is also fairly interesting which was covered in both an interview and a talk at GDC Austin.

An update just hit the App Store for Spider that among other tweaks finally adds Retina Display support which has made the game look even more amazing. One of my favorite things about Spider always has been the great hand drawn art style that encompasses the whole game, and the high pixel density of the Retina Display now makes Spider even more visually impressive.

Spider has been out for just over a year now, so if you've had it chilling in your iTunes library instead of synced to your device, now is an excellent time to do so if you own an iPhone 4. Otherwise, if you're looking for another game to show off just how great things can look on the Retina Display, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor is a worthy pick.

I recently had the chance to visit the Telltale Games San Rafael studio and spend some time with their upcoming story-based puzzle game Puzzle Agent. In the game, you'll play the role of Nelson Tethers, the country's preeminent (and only) agent of the FBI Puzzle Research Division. An incident at the eraser factory in Scoggins, Minnesota has brought production of erasers to a halt. Since this particular factory supplies erasers to the White House, the foundations of democracy hang in the balance until they are able to replenish their supply. All inquiries about the factory's closing have resulted in responses in the form of puzzles, so Nelson is sent to investigate the incident and unearths a twisted tale of what's really happening in Scoggins, Minnesota.

The art style in Puzzle Agent is directly inspired by the work of Graham Annable, who is responsible for creating the Grickle comics and animated shorts (which can be seen at his YouTube channel). Puzzle Agent isn't exactly a Grickle video game, but it does use the same type of characters, animation, and dark humor that the series is known for. Telltale Games producer and designer of Puzzle Agent Mark Darin engrossed himself in the world of Grickle before writing the story for the game, and Graham did the storyboards for characters and locations. For fans of Grickle, it's very much a Grickle game, but is not directly branded as such and doesn't require any previous knowledge of that series to enjoy the minimalist style and twisted sense of humor in Puzzle Agent.

Puzzle Agent can be compared to games like Professor Layton or The Jim and Frank Mysteries in that you're on an adventure and must use solving puzzles to unravel the story and progress through the game, but it makes some smart changes to the formula that sets it apart from similar games. Most notable is that all of the dialogue in the game is voiced, which gives the characters a ton of personality that couldn't be conveyed through text alone. Also, whereas adventure games are traditionally set against 2D backgrounds, Puzzle Agent renders the backgrounds in 3D. The game still has that 2D animated look that it sets out to achieve, but the 3D backgrounds allow for more dramatic camera movements and transitions between scenes.

Another smart design choice is in the way you interact with the environments. Tapping on the screen causes a ring to emanate from the point where you touch, and if there is anything interactive within that radius a small icon will show up. This allows you to inspect large areas without scouring every inch of the screen, or as Mark Darin calls it, “pixel hunting”. As someone who hates to miss anything in an adventure game, and who tirelessly hunt-and-pecked for every coin in Professor Layton, I really appreciate this mechanic. Despite being a multiplatform release, Mark has said that Puzzle Agent was designed from the onset with touch interface in mind, and it really shows.

Puzzle Agent was released for Mac and PC last month, but is shaping up very nicely for its iPhone and iPad release. It looks and plays like a dream on the iPad, and even makes the transition to the smaller screen of the iPhone rather well. Some textures need to be cleaned up a bit on the iPhone version due to being shrunk down to a smaller size, but overall both versions are nearly complete. Telltale expects to be submitting any day now, and hopes to have the game released before the end of August, although that can largely depend on Apple's approval length.

After trying out the game at their offices, I picked up the game for my Mac and have been enjoying it a lot so far. If you're as impatient as I am, you can get Puzzle Agent right now from the Telltale Games webstore or pick it up on Steam. Otherwise be on the lookout for Puzzle Agent on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch in the next couple of weeks and expect a full review then as well.

Update: Glu reports that this game was supposed to launch for free and not $2.99 as it did. Glu is planning on keeping the App free. The review was written when the game was priced at $2.99. Early adopters can contact Glu for a free promo code as compensation.

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Glu Mobile's latest foray into the App Store is a cheeky physics puzzler featuring what is essentially, traditional pinball mechanics à la Peggle. What Escape from Nom [App Store] does differently though, is that it supplements its standard levels with a comprehensive level editor and allows your creations to be shared online -- but with a few deal-breaking catches.

The core gameplay in Escape from Nom involves getting Alan, a colored blob at the top of the screen, to the pool of colored goop at the bottom. Key to this endeavor is that Alan must be the same color as the goop when he touches it (or the level fails), and he has to avoid being eaten by the evil Noms along the way. To help Alan are a number of tools either fixed on the level already, or able to be dragged onto the level from your expandable toolbox at your discretion.

Continuing the pinball theme, bumpers, paddles, shunters and teleporters make up the range of tools at your disposal; each gradually unlocked as you progress through the game's paltry 30 levels (with a further 20 levels and the teleporter tool purchasable In-App for $1.99). Taking a leaf from Peggle's book, Escape from Nom also allows you to fine-tune where Alan is dropped through a scroll wheel at the bottom of the screen. In this way you can set up your drops precisely (aided with the help of a double-tap zoom feature) and line Alan up perfectly-- a necessary feat for some of the more complex levels.

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Late last year Gamevil's action adventure RPG Hybrid: Eternal Whisper [$2.99 / Free] hit the App Store, offering an extensive skill upgrading system along attacks that change depending on how your character is gripping their sword. The original Hybrid was well received on our forums, with many fans of the Zenonia series enjoying the shift to an even more action-oriented gameplay model.

Hybrid 2: Saga of Nostalgia is in the final stages of beta testing which has been conducted in part on our forums and if all goes as planned, Gamevil plans on submitting the game to Apple towards the end of the month. In the meantime, they've released the following teaser trailer which includes a bit of gameplay towards the end:

We'll post more when we get our hands on the game, but if you enjoyed the first, look forward to Hybrid 2 arriving sometime this September.

In May of last year we first took a look at DifferentCloth's Lilt Line [$2.99], a well received rhythm game with a great soundtrack. Lilt Line was a little on the simple side, but the overall experience of the game was really cool as the tilt and tap based gameplay was paired really well with the music. Earlier today Helicoid was announced, which looks to be a somewhat similar music-based game only this time it's based on tilting your phone around to advance through a spiral.

It's hard to make out how much fun the game will be from the video alone, but I expect it to be a bit like Lilt Line in that it won't really make sense until you've got the game in your hands. Helicoid was submitted to the App Store yesterday, and DifferentCloth expects it to be released sometime next week. For more details, check out the thread in our forums or the Helicoid web site.

Last year, the Paramount licensed and Freeverse developed Top Gun [$1.99] was released on the App Store. It featured fighter jet action that loosely continued the story of the 1986 movie and brought some advancements to iPhone gaming that were noteworthy at the time, not to mention some awesome easter eggs. The first Top Gun was well received by players, and now Freeverse is set to bring out the sequel Top Gun 2. They have sent over some exclusive screenshots as well as some additional information about the game.

According to information from Senior Producer at Freeverse Bruce Morrison, Top Gun 2 will be a more streamlined experience than the first. You'll be able to start the game and jump into air combat quickly, and it will support the fast app switching of iOS4. As Bruce puts it, “we cut out the stuff that got in the way in the first game, and let players focus on what they really want to do: blow up enemy jets, tanks and helicopters, and look cool doing it.” He also notes that Top Gun 2 draws inspiration from some old-school arcade titles like R-Type and Galaga in regards to the behavior of enemies in the game, and will reward players able to react to and recognize enemy patterns.

Top Gun 2 will focus on preventing a nuclear strike on America, and will feature the F-14 Tomcat which is a fan favorite amongst fighter jets. As an added bonus, if you check out Top Gun 2 via the in-game link from the original Top Gun, you can unlock a bonus jet to play in the first game.  The Top Gun 2 screenshots look good, and it should be an improvement over the first title. The game is set to release this Thursday the 19th, so it won't be long at all before we're able to get our hands on the full game. We'll take a closer look at Top Gun 2 when it becomes available.

Whether or not you remember it or were even aware of it, earlier this summer Sony launched a fairly silly ad campaign starring Marcus, a sassy kid who has had it up to here with games like Paper Toss [Free] for the iPhone. Sony released a few other videos starring Marcus as part of the "Step Your Game Up" campaign, but this was the video that started it all:

The basis of the video seems to be that Marcus is outraged that on the App Store you're charged for a "fake version of a real game" despite the fact that Paper Toss, the game shown in the video, always has been and likely always will be free. After the initial surge of Marcus videos, the ad campaign seemed to die off, until this week when Sony released their next video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdPvVCbLY5c

The latest video highlights Sony's PlayStation Network "$9.99 Favorites" section with five year old games like Twisted Metal: Head On and Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee. What they neglect to mention in this recent video is that new PSP games, such as Madden 11 which is available on the App Store for $7.99 sell for just as much as their physical media counterparts at $39.99. They also leave out the fact that if you own a PSP Go and are limited to downloaded games only, you will often need to wait for games to be released on the PlayStation Network after they're released in stores, and sometimes they're not even released for download at all.

Then if you add in Sony's requirements of needing to be running the latest system software which can take hours to download and install to even browse the PlayStation Network store or that when you're downloading a multi-gigabyte game on your PSP you can't do anything with the system but wait for it to finish... I could go on and on. It should be interesting to see what Sony's next move will be, as declining PSP sales along with the failure of the PSP Go seems to be driving them to desperate measures to try to regain a foothold on the mobile gaming market.