With a name like Emissary of War, Cedar Hills Games’ RPG has to laced with all the sober-serious conceits and tropes of a traditional Western RPG, right? Wrong. As I continue playing a near, if not already, feature-complete build, I can’t stop myself from thinking about how badly I whiffed in our announcement post. It’s a Western RPG that’s informed by other party-based, isometric RPGs, sure, but it’s also one that trades in ye’ old sober serious tone and goals for something different. Also, it’s thrown out a lot of traditional mechanics so it can do something entirely novel on this platform: tell you a digestible, snappy story.

From a purely mechanical perspective, this is an isometric hack-and-slash. You point and touch to move the barbarian Ghent around his environment and you click on an enemy to kill it. It's pretty simple stuff. Each area operates like an arena with a finite amount of fantasy villains to maim. It's a cast that includes Mer-people, rock-spiders, ghouls and ghosts, and mercenaries.

After you take out everything, you’re allowed to proceed into a new area. If you look closely enough, you'll also notice that hidden areas unlocked, too. These will provide you with some extra goodies to use in the game and lead to some of the more challenging fights you'll have.

Ghent is accompanied by an old friend, Hassock the alchemist. He functions as a foil of sorts to the raw brawn of Ghent, but he’s also a handy design element: he’ll heal you as you fight, as well as add ranged support to battles. You don’t directly control him, but you can queue up his actions in the corner of the screen if you don’t agree with what the AI has in store.

This frees up you to focus on the action, which is typical hack-and-slash fare: you click on a dude and you swing until it explodes and rains crimson and coins. You don’t earn experience points or pick up loot. Instead, you’ll earn gold coins which can be exchanged for weapons in a hunk of UI that also includes ability upgrades which you can unlock by collecting Runes. I realize this might turn a lot of you off, but a streamlined upgrade path is a cool and functional way to cut out the standard RPG fat and get to what really matters to Cedar Hill Games: Ghent and Hassock and their part of the unfolding story.

The duo, before and after battle, have scripted, but also real-time conversations. Most of the time, chats break down to the two simply reinforcing the notion that they’re in this for the long haul together, but they’ll also talk about the next objective or the one they’ve just accomplished. Bigger, more produced ‘movies’ compliment this stuff.

I’ll be vague since I don’t want to kill the story for you. Ghent and Hassock are, as the namesake suggests, emissaries. Their unusual brand of bartering has made for a lot of solid alliances across the realm, but suddenly, all of their hard work being undone. The quest revolves around figuring out who is doing this, and of course, why.

One thing that really caught me off guard is the tone. It’s light. Hassock is a bumbling, but brilliant dude who is prone to tripping over his shoes. Ghent is heroic, but dim. You’ll see these two ham it up a lot, even when the situational circumstances turn quite dire.

The writing as a whole isn’t going to put Valve or BioWare or whatever out of work. But it’s some of the sharpest stuff we’ve seen so far in this genre on this specific platform. Also, Cedar Hill Games isn’t trying to stretch the story over 50+ hours -- this is a four-to-five hour romp, which means its writing flows in a much more natural, less fluff-laden way.

As for the lack of the traditional loot-grind driver, I was initially surprised that Emissary of War has retained my interest over the course of several hours, but the upgrades come quick enough to feel like you’re actually being substantially rewarded for fighting, so it operates in much the same fashion. Also, the story works well enough to keep you plodding along.

I certainly haven’t seen the entire game, so I’ll definitely be checking it out a little later this August when the game is slated to hit. You can hear Cedar Hill Games’ CEO Tobbyn Manthorhpe on our podcast this coming Monday if you want his perspective on the title.

Needless to say, we’ll be keeping our eyes on this one.

In case you didn't know, Unity provides the glue that makes a considerable amount of iOS games work. It's a game engine, development environment, and multi-platform publishing tool rolled into one easy to use package. (You can read all about it here.) The magic behind Unity is what brings the world of Aralon [$4.99] to life, and what allows you to level up in Order & Chaos Online [$6.99]. Similarly, it's what allows Gameloft to take Order & Chaos and seamlessly turn it into a Facebook game. The engine isn't limited to 3D either, it's what's behind fantastic 2D platformers like Max and the Magic Marker [99¢] and too many other games to list.

Recently, Unity 3.4 was released which brings a whole boat load of new features, functionality, and other tweaks. So many, in fact, that it's hard to pick out which to highlight. Personally, I'm excited for better water effects, because who doesn't love water effects? Also, finally having gyroscope support is going to be great. The best part about these kind of engine upgrades, is that most of the tweaks and enhancements are essentially "free" just as part as developers upgrading to the new version, and testing to make sure that nothing breaks in the process.

If you're a Unity developer, download 3.4 and give it a shot. If you're a gamer, keep an eye out for upcoming Unity titles that benefit from the mile long feature list of the 3.4 upgrade.

I'll set the scene for you youngsters out there-- It's the late 90's, you finally upgraded your weird Motorola flip phone to a fancy looking new Nokia candy bar with amazing new features such as a clock, a calculator, interchangeable faceplates… And the best of all: Snake. You'd go on to quite literally spend the next few years of your life playing Snake, as well as discussing strategy, tactics, and top scores with friends who all shared the similar problem of having a state of the art phone with a single game on it.

Even though the game was made popular by these Nokia phones of the late 90's, the concept behind Snake itself actually had roots going all the way back to 1960 where it was originally played on an IBM 1620 at the Physics building at UC Berkeley. This ultra-primative version of the game was displayed on an oscilloscope. Derivative titles then went on to make their way into arcade machines, the Atari 2600 launch lineup, the TRS-80, the TI-99/4A, and tons other classic platforms.

Enter Snake '97 [99¢ / Free], an absolutely marvelous rendition of the classic Nokia Snake. It features multiple virtual phones for you to play on, as well as all the original sound effects and (as far as I can remember) shockingly accurate gameplay. If you've similarly invested years of your life into playing Snake on your old Nokia, this is something you simply must have on your iPhone.

There's both a 99¢ version with no limitations, as well as a free version which allows you to play to a top score of 200. If all you're looking for is a taste of nostalgia, the free version is fine… But for true hardcore Snake players, that 200 point ceiling is going to come way too soon.

We see the “one man designing an ambitious game on his own” story a lot, but this one has a couple of cool twists. It involves a comic book illustrator and a game set to tackle an age-old genre and inject some really neat-sounding concepts.

Steve Uy is our designer in this story. He’s an artist whose credited in several Marvel and DC comic books. In our forums, Uy listed Uncanny X-Men, Iceman, Legion of Superheroes as titles he’s touched. And as you’ll see from the game images, dude knows what he’s doing.

Uy is the illustrator, narrative designer, and concept artist behind World Without End, a great-looking strategy RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics. But while Uy is doing the lion’s share of the actual game design, he has actually enlisted some programming and audio design help. This video explains how he's using the help in a little bit more depth.

World Without End, as described by Uy in a conversation with Wired, is a 15+ hour tactical RPG. Like Tactics, its battle system is turn-based and you move different characters with different abilities, strengths, and ranges around a designated battle area in order to get the best possible outcome against the enemy. As you attack, you’ll expend action points that will regenerate over turns.

Where it differs, it differs pretty wildly. World Without End is grid-free. You’ll be able to move your characters around the battlefield and around its 2GB world map wherever you please. Battles, as indicated by this video, are highlighted as “green” areas. Once you hit them, the fight starts immediately and without a load screen.

Uy’s game doesn’t have experience points. Instead, it has Battle Points, which are a currency that you’ll exchange for upgrades and the like. Uy doesn’t want grinding to be a mechanic, so he’s designing a BP upgrade system that gives you no clear-cut advantages. You’ll win fights based on how you play, as opposed to how many hours you’ve spent leveling. Honestly, this latter concept couldn't possibly sound more appealing to me.

As for the story, Uy is being way too cautious about its details. We know a couple of things, though. For one, you’ll play as a dude with amnesia. Also, when you meet (old) friends, you’ll find out that they know so much about you that they can predict your actions and thoughts. Neat!

Uy hopes to get World Without End out of the door by this fall and we definitely wish him the best in this endeavor. We’ll stay tuned to his updates as development continues.

Augmented-reality games are weird. They hardly work and even when they actually do operate as intended, the game experience is usually lacking and centralizes entirely too much around the whole augmenting gimmick. I’m also not too sure if there’s even a market out there for these kinds of games. But, I probably shouldn’t be so dismissive, especially when there’s a new, apparently solid-looking SDK out in there in the wild.

According to TechCrunch, Qualcomm has released its ARG SDK, which was originally intended for Android devices with Snapdragon chips, for iOS-compatible devices. This initial release has support for, specifically, the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and even the fourth-generation iPod Touch.

If you’re in the dark on augmented reality, it’s a pretty simple concept. You point your device’s camera at something real and then the game turns that into something interactive. A lot of card games, for example, like to incentivize their physical, branded cards by allowing you to scan them into their respective games and then use digital versions of them. Other games just incorporate real-world settings on top of existing mechanics, like this Star Wars game here:

Having an SDK at hand that actually works with a target platform organically should really empower those studios out there who have good augmented reality ideas, but don’t want to spend the research and development costs of getting the core technology that makes the "augmenting" work. This is a good thing for all of us because, hey, who knows? Maybe we will get that game that completely changes my jaded perspective on augmented reality games in general. (I hope so.)

[Via TechCrunch]

Developer Crystalised are throwing their hat into the Unreal Engine powered 3D shooter ring with their upcoming title Desert Zombie: Last Stand. They announced the title back in June via a teaser trailer, which was a cool cinematic but didn’t showcase any gameplay. Today, they have released a new gameplay trailer from an alpha version of Desert Zombie that showcases the game in action. So far, it’s looking pretty incredible:

Yeah, I’m pretty sick of zombies too, but that video looked awesome nonetheless. All we really know about the game at this point is that it will be a completely free-roaming third-person affair and include 6 levels to survive though, including an on-rails shooter sequence in a Blackhawk helicopter. No release date is given other than “coming soon”, but we do know the game will be $5.99 whenever it launches and will require 3rd generation hardware and up.

You can check out discussion of the game in our forums, and we’ll be sure to keep our eye out for more on Desert Zombie: Last Stand in the coming weeks.

One hurdle when making games for the iOS platform is creating controls for an entirely touch screen interface. Often, the simplest approach is the best, and it doesn’t really get much simpler than single-tap gameplay. That is the approach taken in Space is Key [99¢] by ChrisJeff Games, which was recently released in the App Store. Space is Key started out as a popular Flash game, which is another platform that is well-suited to single-button mechanics. Because of this the game translates extremely well to iOS, and offers a fiendishly difficult but strangely captivating arcade experience.

Space is Key is a series of 43 single screen challenges distilled down to the basics of running and jumping. Your tiny square character handles the running part automatically, entering from either the right or left side of the screen. Your job is to tap the screen to jump at just the right times to clear the obstacles in each level and safely make it to the other side of the screen.

That may sound simple, but Space is Key is anything but. If your square so much as grazes an obstacle, you’re instantly killed. This is a game where you will die no matter what, and you will die often. There’s no avoiding it, and that’s really the point of the game. Your score is calculated as the amount of times that you end up dying after a straight run through all 43 levels. So yes, we're all going to die when playing the game, but let's see who can die the least.

The margin for error when trying to successfully navigate past obstacles is razor thin, and the difficulty can be erratic. A certain level you might completely nail in just a few short tries during one play through, then the next time that same level might take you a hundred tries or more (literally). This makes it difficult to get too excited even if you are doing particularly well, since it can all come crashing down at the drop of a hat, but that also adds an intensity to the game which I like.

This sort of masochistic gameplay ends up working because Space is Key is so darn quick and easy to play. Upon death, your restart is instantaneous and automatic, to the point that many times you haven’t even processed that you’ve screwed up before you’re already off and running into a new attempt. This means it's incredibly easy to just waste lives with reckless abandon when becoming particularly fixated with passing a certain level, and if you aren't careful, a potentially good score can slip away in the blink of an eye.

At first blush, Space is Key might look like nothing more than an early Atari 2600 title. That’s basically correct, but little flourishes like cool particle effects and a kick ass chiptune soundtrack give it a modern touch that would never been possible on that old hardware. Despite the retro aesthetic, the game has a lot of personality. This is mostly due to the humorous messages that pop up throughout the game that are designed to teach, praise, and pester you along the way.

The only downside to Space is Key is that it doesn’t have a whole lot of lasting appeal. I played it pretty obsessively for a few days until I’d achieved a decent score, but after that there’s not much reason to revisit it. A global leaderboard and 25 well designed Game Center achievements extend the experience, but I’d really like to see some more levels or possibly some additional modes down the line. Hints on the game's Facebook page lead me to believe that we'll see such things in the future.

While the gameplay on the whole is a bit thin, Space is Key is pretty entertaining for a 99¢ title. At times you’ll feel like breaking your device over your knee due to the difficulty, but completing the game is a fairly quick and satisfying experience. It’s hard to not want to keep replaying through the game hoping for that “one perfect run” where you get an insane score. As infuriating as it can be at times, when you do finally have a great run in Space is Key it makes all the pain worth it.

When Traction Games first brought Stickman Skater [99¢/Lite] to the App Store, it was a bit of a surprise hit. With the release of its spiritual successor, Stickman BMX [99¢/Lite/HD] it's a question of how much of the core gameplay will change with the name while still retaining fans of the original.

Not much, it turns out. For better or worse -- depending on whether you like Stickman Skater -- Stickman BMX is essentially the same game. You'll get two buttons to use, one that controls your pedals and another that makes you jump. There is an advanced option that allows you to control your tricks as well, but although at a glance you might think Stickman BMX is about pulling tricks off, it has more in common with the likes of Canabalt than it does with anything else.

That's one of the main problems with Stickman BMX, it might have worked a bit better as a one-button game. The requirement to constantly hit the pedal button is more annoying than it is helpful and you'll rarely find yourself wishing you could slow down. Even with the advanced controls and scoring bonuses, the tricks still don't feel all that integral to the game, which means you'll spend most of your getting through the levels, not flipping over bars.

(more...)

Back in January of last year, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars stormed onto the App Store and showcased just how robust a gaming experience could be possible on the iPhone. You essentially got a full-fledged GTA experience, comparable to and in some ways exceeding the versions released for the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, for roughly a third the price. Even more than a year and a half later, it still stands as one of the best games on the iOS platform.

Chinatown Wars was easily worth its price of $9.99 when it released, and was a complete steal during the few price drops its seen in its lifetime, most recently being $4.99 this past February. But today, Rockstar is dropping Chinatown Wars to its lowest price ever. Currently you can pick up the title for just $2.99 for both the regular and HD versions of the game.

Really, $2.99 might as well be 99¢ for a title of this caliber. There is so many hours of gameplay in this game that for 3 dollars there really isn’t a better ratio of content to price available. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of time you can waste just getting lost causing mischief in the sandbox world of Chinatown Wars. If you really need more convincing, check out our exhaustive original review as well as our look at the iPad native version. But at this price, if you haven’t jumped on GTA: Chinatown Wars yet for whatever reason, now’s the time to do it.

Taito’s Groove Coaster [99¢] is an experiential music and rhythm game that mixes fun, upbeat, and jazzy tracks with a psychedelic and retro-informed visual aesthetic. At its truly mechanical core, it’s just a tap game that has you drum on your iPad whenever a bubble crops up on a neon rail, sorta like a one-note Rock Band. While that’s not necessarily entertaining in the year 2011, Groove Coaster’s constituent parts manage to overpower its simplicity, making for a game that’s a pleasure to pick up and thrum alongside, lack of depth and flaws be darned.

It’s easy to be wooed by Groove Coaster’s striking vector graphics presentation in the same way that it was hard to look beyond another Taito title’s visuals in Space Invaders: Infinity Gene [$4.99]. But even without the trains of retro baggage behind Groove Coaster, it manages to feel aged, yet refined and re-imagined in the same way. It’s a unique approach that really adds a certain flavor to the action and adds to the experiential edge of the project.

The thick wire-frame rail guiding all the action, by the way, isn’t static: it zigs, it zags, it ducks, and it circles alongside a given music track’s ebb and flow. Your cursor, which can be an assortment of objects including Taito-branded characters, helplessly runs along these tracks, speeding up and slowing down with the beat as thematic particle effects, ranging from flowery explosions to plain ol’ particle-vomit, crop up all over the place. Groove Coaster is a music game, sure, but it’s also a visual treat in addition to an audio one.

In this vein, the backgrounds and their respective effects are cool, too, especially as they morph and throb thematically as songs change tempo.

It’s not all great -- there’s an exceptionally fundamental flaw nestled within the visual design. Sometimes, instead of ratcheting up the intensity of a song and the beats you need to hit, Groove Coaster uses its presentation to conceal your cursor and thus hamper your ability to hit the glowing “beat” orbs. This comes off as a tactic to obscure its fairly rudimentary play, and a needless one at that. So, what? This game is easy to play. Who cares?

I’m not sure how to classify the music used in the game. There’s a mix of J-Pop, new wave, house, and other fast-paced highly electronic stuff. Most of it, actually, appears to be pulled from other Taito titles, but they all seem to fit with the visual stylings. In particular, Arkanoid DS’ “Happy Smiling - More Happy Mix” sticks out in my head as on of the best songs, as its thematic qualities and the music line up pretty well.

Most songs introduce some neat visual elements and mechanics to the fold. “Happy Smiling,” for example, is the first level to add a merry-go-round of beats that swirls and rotates as you hit (or miss) each one. As you move up in difficulty, new “beats” are added that make you do things like swipe and flick, or even hold and jiggle your finger. All of the songs seem to have a new mechanic, which makes for some compelling replay opportunities.

Oddly, but somehow fittingly, Groove Coaster features a fairly advanced “perks” system. As you beat levels in the game, you increase your own experience level. As you do, you unlock new avatars and upgrades that net you bigger bonuses or special in-game perks. It’s a pretty standard carrot-on-the-stick approach, but it’s effective. Additionally, you can purchase IAP items and avatars that do the same things these bonuses do, except they really push it to the max. I’ll stress that the IAP options feel entirely, well, optional.

Groove Coaster is a good game with a fundamental flaw. It also has a few nit-picky problems, too, like it’s spectacularly abrupt ending and horrible “How To,” but the strength of its presentation, music, and RPG-lite systems make up for anything that could sour the experience. I’m generally not too into music games, and for what it’s worth, I’m suggesting this one to whoever will listen. It’s fun, it’s sharp, and it’s an experience.

LambdaMu Games brought us Infinight [$1.99 / Free] earlier this year, and as we noted then, it's one heck of an atmospheric game. We anticipated big things from them in the future, but Dice Soccer [Free] isn't quite what we were expecting. Still, dice and soccer - has there ever been a more perfect pairing? Peanut butter and jelly has nothing on this one.

I kid, but they do make a surprisingly good fit. When you're up against AI opponents, there's always an element of trying to beat their numbers with your numbers. Dice Soccer just lays that process bare, and puts you in control of everything but chance itself.

Each match you play in Dice Soccer is split up into individual interactions, like taking possession of the ball, progressing down the field, and eventually shooting at the goal. For each, your line of three players is reduced to a roll of three dice. If the total of your dice is higher than the opposing line's total, you move on to the next step. If they beat you, they'll take possession and try to press the advantage.

If this sounds far too luck-based, don't worry -- you're given much more control than you'd expect. Though the dice are six-sided, there aren't six set results. Each player has his or her own selection of possible results, and most have special abilities on top of that. Luck will always play a part, especially in one-on-ones against the goalie, but you can strategize both in team building and in applying your bonuses each round. Once you've unlocked a few players, you'll be able to work on stacking your deck for crazy combos. I wish for multiplayer, if only so I could imagine the other player's grief when I roll a 36 to his 4.

My other wish is for a slightly faster experience. Each match is made up of a number of turns, and turns are long. The rolls take just a little too long, the animations are just a little too slow. Everyone seems to be enjoying a mellow day out on the field, occasionally leaving me as a rather bored observer. It gets worse when you're evenly matched with your opponent -- instead of watching a lazy day of scoring, you're watching while the teams swap possession back and forth while they run down the clock. Not that that's unlike some soccer games I've seen, but I'd still prefer something a little more fast-paced.

If you've got the patience to stick it out, though, Dice Soccer will give you more content than you can handle. There are 75 matches to play, and more coming. There are three leagues of increasing difficulty and tournaments in each. There are also 50 Game Center achievements to earn, and each of those achievements unlocks something new for your team, usually one of the 80 available players. Those players all have their own individual looks, powers and backstories, too. You can even recruit the team streaker.

The crazy thing is that LambdaMu has laid all of this out for free. There are a few unlockables that need to be paid for, but nothing game-changing. Of course, the game gives you plenty of opportunities to sink in a lot of cash, but you only need to do so if you want to unlock players quickly or buy unique outfits. We keep hearing developers say that they've looked at the freemium market and want to retool it to make games they'd find fun, and this definitely feels like one of those games. It's fun to play, it's more than just a time sink, and you really don't need to pay to enjoy yourself.

If any combination of dice games, deck-building and soccer sound fun, you really need to give Dice Soccer a shot, and be sure to stop by our forums to read further impressions or leave some of your own.

I'll just get the bad news out of the way first: No Final Fantasy Tactics this week, it seems. The good news, though, is that unless there's some substantial SNAFU with Squeenix and the Apple approval process, we should be playing FFT next week. (Assuming of course they don't hold the release date for marketing reasons, which would be evil for how highly anticipated this game is.) Oh! And there's even more good news! There's a ton of great releases out this week that will keep you busy until you're waist-deep in turn-based bliss next week.

If you're new around here, here's how these Wednesday release posts work: Developers are able to set specific release dates for their games on the App Store. Since the App Store is a global marketplace (which recently includes 33 new countries) and due to the modern-day wizardry that is time zones, these release dates happen at different times. New Zealand, for instance, gets first crack at everything because of their proximity to the international date line. Us North Americans get our games last, at 11:00 PM Eastern. Everyone east of us gets 'em earlier, basically whenever it gets close to being Thursday in your neck of the woods.

Here's some noteworthy games being released:

Dice Soccer, Free - Forum Thread - This game has me torn. As an American, I have to muster some serious effort to care about soccer, but I love dice games. Nissa had a great time with a preview version of this game, and her review will be up closer to its US release tonight!

Gesundheit!, 99¢ / HD - Forum Thread - We had a great time with an early copy of this game that we got our hands on. Hand drawn art combines with an adorable premise of a pig with allergies. Seriously, it's good.

Groove Coaster, 99¢ - Forum Thread - Brad has had his muscular hands all over this game today and plans on providing a review closer to the US release. It's from the same mind that brought us Space Invaders: Infinity Gene [$4.99] which basically makes it an automatic purchase for people who enjoyed the style of Infinity Gene. Wait, you haven't played Infinity Gene? You should fix that.

Heli-Awesome, 99¢ - Forum Thread - As we should have mentioned when we first caught wind of this game, Heli-Awesome looks Hella-Awesome. (See what I did there? Eh?) It's a tilt-controlled see how far you can go kind of game, and it seems like I've always got room on my phone for another one of those, particularly if it involves spiders with propeller butts.

Hungribles, 99¢ - Forum Thread - Hey it's the weekly physics-based ultra-cute puzzle game with tons of levels, updates coming, and a three star grading system! Sure, it's the same old song and dance, but I seriously just can't stop playing games like this, and if the iTunes top charts are any indication, neither can you.

Mad Wheels, 99¢ / Lite / HD - Forum Thread - Judging by the above trailers, the developers took Twisted Metal and turned it into a isometric 3D racing game… And you have no idea how OK I am with that. Three game modes are included, but the cherry on top has got to be online multiplayer. I can't wait for the player base to build up to play.

Pollen Count 99¢ / HD - Forum Thread - This game features that all too familiar line drawing mechanic to help bees pollinate things. According to the iTunes description, it's even the best looking casual game on the App Store. Anyway, a variety of bees are included to mix up gameplay, and there's even zombie bees. Yeah, that's right, zombie bees.

Ranger Rocket, 99¢ - Forum Thread - I really couldn't tell you how you play this game, but the iMovie trailer template sure makes it feel epic. A wide array of enemies are included, that must be dealt with using various power-ups, and I guess a black in white to color mechanic comes into play somehow too. Mysterious. I can't wait to try it.

Roads of Rome HD, $2.99 - Forum Thread - This is a PC game that has made the hop to the iPad. Roads of Rome is a time-management game centralized around building the Roman empire. That's certainly a much more intriguing premise than a beauty salon!

Roboto, $2.99 - Forum Thread - This 2.5D cel shaded hoverboard powered platformer just looks awesome. Just watch the trailer. There's even a free Flash version you can try out online.

Silent Ops, $6.99 - Forum Thread - This third person action adventure game features three different agents with different abilities, a 7 level single player campaign, and online multiplayer. Oh, it's even universal, a trend that I really hope Gameloft keeps up.

Silverfish MAX, $2.99 - Forum Thread - We were totally stoked about this when we heard about it a few days ago. We loved the original, so playing it on the iPad with the iCade naturally should be totally awesome.

The Marbians, Free / HD - Forum Thread - This free fling-powered physics puzzle game looks awfully nice, and it has an incredibly well done trailer… Which really makes me wonder what the catch of it being free is.

Normal people would call Healbot [Free], an app that aims to help people “practice the World of Warcraft healing mechanic anywhere you have your iPhone or iPad,” stupid, but I think those same normal, mildly unaware people would be surprised by how much traction World of Warcraft-anything gains. It’s a big MMO with a huge player base that seems to love absolutely anything that even vaguely relates to it.

Also, what World of Warcraft player wouldn’t like to get better? Raids are fun and all, but if you or your pals are causing boss wipe after boss wipe because of poor or unenlightened play or performances, you’re going to be looking for help.

At its core, that’s what Healbot tries to do. Kotaku breaks down the mechanics like this: the game features six health bars, five of which represent your and allies. The top bar is a boss character’s pretend bar. As you play, all of these bars lose health at different intervals, and since you’re a healing wizard as the game’s namesake implies, it’s your job to cast different healing spells to bring up the allied bars as the boss is drained of life.

And, yeah, that’s all there is to it. It’s impossible for me to evaluate if it can actually make you a better healer since I don’t want to give my life away to Blizzard, but I imagine that it can, at the least, give relative newbies a sense of what to do and when in a hectic boss fight.

I wonder if future updates will attempt to add in specific bosses and their attacks? Now that, I think, would probably make this invaluable.

[@lpollet via Kotaku]

Do you know what Julius Styles: The International is? Don’t look at me because I don’t. My best guess is that it’s an isometric character-driven action game with a few puzzles and a few rote stealth sequences. But I suppose it could also be a hunting game that mixes in a dialogue tree here and there. I’m not joking. Look at this latest trailer, which shows the titular character with a dead mountain goat slung over his shoulder and a bow in his other arm. Also, take note of the comic book-inspired narrative underpinnings. It's silly and vague, but also awesome. I haven't been this confused and excited since those early middle school years.

One of the oddest things about this trailer (other than the goat bit) is that Julius Styles does not sound like Wesley Snipes. We were under the impression that the man would voice the character he’s based on, but perhaps that’s not the case? Maybe this is where the whole spy angle comes in. That would make sense, right?

Regardless, Julius Styles is definitely a game we’ll continue following as it hurdles to a mid-August release on iOS. If it’s any bit what we think it is, though, we’ll be surprised.

The isometric, online-focused competitive shooter we talked about a couple of weeks ago on our fair podcast, Deadlock: Online [Free], is getting its first update. It’s a doozy by update standards, as it adds two new maps to the fold: Jungle and Desert Compound. We’re not too sure of the specifics on these, but with names like the and images like the ones below, we don’t really need them. We get it. You get it. We’re all happy.

This update also packages in a bunch of tweaks and fixes, which I’d imagine will thrill those of you out there actively participating in the game. Specifically, Crescent Moon is adding in a latency meter on custom game types. It’s also adding in region tags so you know where the host is and why his latency seems out of control. On the bug front, the update will stamp out the ‘double point’ flag glitch, you’ll now respawn instead of watch people play, and killed the name counter that hovers over dead folks.

We’re told this update is expected to land within the next two weeks, so keep an eye out for it. You can stare at those screenshots or play more, oh I don't know, Deadlock while you wait. We won’t mind.