Junk Jack is the latest super ambitious and super promising independent game to catch our all-seeing eye. At its core, it’s an adventure-ish game that borrows a lot from another indie darling, Minecraft. It also seems to draw from its side-scrolling cousin Terraria. In it, you’ll be tasked with gathering materials and putting them together, but mostly, you’ll be left to your own devices to explore and survive inside a world filled with treasure, Red Bull, and whatever else the two-man team, Pixbits, decides to drop into it.

Inarguably, Junk Jack is derivative of Mojang’s and Re-Logic’s respective titles, but I think you’ll be surprised when you hear that the team didn’t even know about Terraria when the game and it’s iconic smoking miner, Jack, were initially sketched out. Since then, the team has embraced that work and has allowed it to inform development.

“...we tried to get some inspirations without being too trivial,” Pixbits told us in a recent e-mail exchange. “When you develop for the iPhone you have to think about the fact that everything goes in a different way compared to a normal desktop game, controls are different, game experience is different, and also the time pattern you spend while gaming is different, so our focus in this regard was to develop a slick and fun gameplay, while maintaining the sandbox experience that users love and that we all know.“

“We don’t want to go beyond, since we really both respect Minecraft and Terraria (we play together to both of them), we just like to offer a similar gameplay experience to entertain with when you are not at home.”

Junk Jack is being developed with procedurally generated worlds in mind, and so a good chunk of time is being spent in the actual coding to ensure a smooth experience. The final world size hasn’t been decided quite yet, but you’ll get three different save files for three different worlds, none of which will trade usability in exchange for size.

Games like Minecraft typically lack structure, and that’s something Pixbits wants to provide in its open-world, exploration, and crafting game.

“We can say that the main goal of Junk Jack is to explore, craft and survive inside a procedural generated world full of features that we plan to add constantly. We were unsatisfied with the ‘only-sandbox’ approach, just because we felt that an iPhone game should give players secondary tasks to entertain themselves.

“That’s why, for example, we have implemented a simple yet effective mail system that allows the player to craft his own mailbox and use it to accept fun quests asked from various people which need to retrieve their lost items, providing rewards in exchange.”

Pixbits tells us that the mailbox is just the beginning of some sort of quest line -- the studio will continue to add tasks and give people something to do inside their respective worlds. Also, the studio will be looking to fans for ideas for future updates. To hear Pixbits tell it, users will have an actual stake in the game and will guide their hands after release.

Junk Jack is planned to hit at some point this September. The version you're seeing here is strictly for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but an iPad version isn't out of the question. It's just not on the docket at the moment.

The legal worker bees over at Lodsys have been incredibly busy lately. The company originally appeared on our collective iOS radar quite a while ago as the company has threatened to sue various iOS developers for not only using in-app purchase, but also links to upgrade to other versions of a game which Lodsys believes they hold patents for. Throughout all this, Apple has provided some backing for developers stating that their existing agreements with Lodsys protect developers, and Lodsys was quick to respond with promises of paying $1,000 to each target of this suit if they were wrong in their claims.

Previously, they've been targeting various indie developers with their legal requests and demands that said developers pay license fees. This type of tactic is particularly effective against smaller outfits, as often it can be both cheaper and easier to just pay whatever fees patent trolls demand instead of getting involved in drawn out and potentially considerably more expensive legal battles. However, as of today, things are about to get a lot more hairy.

Per a recent report from FOSS Patents, Lodsys is now including Rovio, Electronic Arts, Atari, Square Enix, and Take-Two Interactive. This brings about some interesting parallels between some previous legal drama on the App Store between Mobigame and Tim Langdell regarding a trademark over the name of the game Edge [$2.99]. Langdell was (mostly) getting away with legal intimidation tactics with Mobigame, then similarly decided to set his sights on EA. Needless to say, this turned out poorly for him.

It remains to be seen what will happen between Lodsys and the new targets of their wide-spread patent trolling, but now they've targeted companies who do actually have the resources to turn this into a proper legal war. I can't imagine things turning out well for Lodsys especially in US courts where all too often cases are decided by who has the deeper legal pockets to pay for lawyers… And really, in the mobile gaming industry, it's hard to find deeper pockets than the sleeping giants Lodsys has just awoken.

4th & Battery, the creative wing of developer PopCap Games, has released its second iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch title. It’s a track-based strategy game called Allied Star Police [Free], and its available for the low-low price of $0 just like the studio’s previous work, Unpleasant Horse [Free].

As a whole, Allied Star Police is an OK title as far as free games go. The “build and deploy on tracks” concept works well enough in execution, but the economy over substance approach to the design doesn’t do the game any favors. Then again, this was a special project developed for and produced by a special person in a special studio that specializes in releasing massaged proof-of-concept material. It jives, in other words with the mission of the place.

The special dude, by the way? That would be nine-year-old Owain Weinert. This game was his Make-A-Wish dream and 4th & Battery saw the development through. According to the studio, Weinert was in the office every morning and was allowed to steer the production and development. The studio and Weinert are both pleased with the outcome and with the experience, which makes me really feel like a complete jerk for criticizing the effort.

"I have to say, my brother can't stop playing it, my dad can't stop playing it, and neither can I," Weinert said in a statement. "This started off as a dream of mine, and now my friends and people all over the world can play my creation."

You can expect several more games from 4th & Battery in the near-ish future. The studio is primed to release several a year and across other platforms, too, like the PC and Facebook.

Famed game producer and co-designer of Mega Man, Keiji Inafune, fled Capcom earlier this year to pursue his own goals. At a press conference this week, the man announced his first project with his new studio Comcept. It's called The Island of Dr. Momo, and it’s a social game because, duh, that’s what all the hip designers who rag on their huge publishers for being complacent do once they jump screaming from the ship.

Details are light on Dr. Momo at the moment, but we do know that it’s centered on a man named Dr. Momo. He’s a lover of ‘cute’ stuff and you’ll somehow help him on a quest to gather the cutest animals on Earth to make something... cute.

(This is not Dr. Momo, FYI.)

Dr. Momo will be released in Japan via GREE, which is yet another Japanese mobile games service that offers free games in vast quantities and makes its revenue through IAP options like, say, clothing or bonus perks. Think Mobage, as it's a pretty good analogue.

At the press conference, Inafune didn’t say if the game was bound for a worldwide release. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, though.

Social games won’t be the only thing Inafune has to offer the world going forward, but it seems like a big part of what he wants to do in the near future. In a conversation with Kotaku earlier this summer he said that he wants to learn from this genre and push a few titles out quickly. After he feels fulfilled, though, who knows?

ACE Team, the Chilean studio best known for Zeno Clash, will be launching a new game later this August called Rock of Ages. Featuring the same bizarre, yet artistically inspired look of Zeno Clash, Rock of Ages is a third-person strategy game that combines castle defense with Super Monkey Ball. The namesake revolves around the fact that its set in five different time periods, all of which will be visually represented as you roll your gigantic boulders through enemy defenses and into their castles.

The target platforms are, and remain, the PC, Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade, and Sony’s PSN, but that doesn’t mean an eventual iPad release hasn’t crossed ACE Team’s mind.

In an e-mail chat, an ACE Team representative said that ACE Team has been chatting about the possibilities of an iPad version. Nothing, however, is concrete and there isn't an official build. It’s just an idea being thrown around in the office -- and a good, too, I add.

I was reminded that ACE Team is a small independent studio, so obviously resources are thin, especially while the team is crafting a multi-platform game. The standard “we’ll see” was thrown in for good measure, teasing me and now by extension, you. Feel my pain.

I certainly wouldn’t mind an iPad version of Rock of Ages, or really, any ACE Team joint. There are a lot of brilliant independent developers out there developing for iOS, but I haven’t seen many that do what ACE Team does. Fingers are crossed, sirs, because I believe this is a perfect game for this platform.

We've been keeping an eye on Dream Track Nation [$0.99] since we caught a peek of it on Chillingo's YouTube channel earlier this year. Even back in the depths of April, it looked like a leader in the 2D physics racing genre. Now that it's reached the finish line, the question remains -- is it a winner? Well, it's complicated.

If you're really into games like the Jelly Car [Free] series, then you're going to want this game. It has familiar 2D cars and levels, similarly wacky physics and a lot of content to enjoy. A ridiculous amount of content for its $0.99 price tag, in fact.

The sheer volume of content is Dream Track Nation's main selling point. The game includes 60 levels that can be played in star collect mode. Then you can play them again in time trial mode, which is a notably different experience. Throughout these modes you'll unlock vehicles to play with. You can also play the official levels against another racer in multiplayer mode. If you get bored of the built-in content, you can download new levels made by other players. Any time you don't feel like racing, you can work on building your own masterpiece of a level, which you can then upload to share with the world at large. It's frankly unreasonable that a game with so much content should be so cheap. It's basically Sony's whole "Play. Create. Share" model wrapped up in a one dollar package.

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Just a few short months ago, The 7th Guest: Infection [$2.99] emerged on iPad. It was iOS's first great take on 1988's Infection, and it was chock-full of nostalgia for PC players who looked back fondly on 1993, the year The 7th Guest made its debut. But if you lacked that nostalgic view of the subject matter, you might have found the game a bit mystifying. Enter Battle Slugs, [$0.99 / Lite] a reimagining of Infection that has a little more to offer the modern iOS gamer.

In Battle Slugs, players take turns placing their slugs. Each turn, you're given two options: clone your slug to an adjacent hex space, or jump it to one a step further away. Wherever you land, you'll convert adjacent enemy slugs to your team. The player with the most slugs on the board when there are no free hexes left wins.

To keep this formula from growing dull, Battle Slugs offers a few different options for variety. You can play against AI of three difficulty levels, or you can play hot-seat multiplayer. Whichever you choose, you'll have up to 25 different fields to choose from. The layout of the field can make a huge difference to the strategy you'll need to employ to win, so this selection keeps things fresh for quite a long time.

You won't have all the fields available at the start, however. You'll need to unlock them by playing against the computer on previous boards and winning. This is easier said than done -- even on easy difficulty, your AI opponent will put up quite a fight. The early fields are small enough that you can evaluate your errors and improve, but later levels get huge. You'll need a strategic mind to master and unlock them all.

It helps that Battle Slugs throws in a ton of character to keep you entertained. The art is well-done and pretty adorable, in a mutated-slug sort of way. The music is also great -- I've found myself listening to the title theme with its singing slugs an embarrassingly large amount. Whether you win or lose your matches against the game's AI, you earn experience, and that experience goes toward unlocking locations. Locations are randomly assigned when you start the game, and they give you new backgrounds, loading screens and music to play with.

There are a few things that keep me from recommending Battle Slugs unreservedly. For one thing, like every similar game, this one's hard. Even on Easy, the computer will probably stomp you a few times while you work out your strategy. It's also a bit opaque. You unlock new fields by winning on two prior fields, but the game doesn't make this obvious. Unlocking locations feels like a matter of bashing your head against the AI until you eventually earn enough experience, and even then there's no way to pick where you'd like to play.

But those are minor complaints. Gameprom is building quite a reputation for great games, and Battle Slugs is no exception. According to their posts in our forums, there are more fields coming in an update, along with online multiplayer and Game Center achievements. There's absolutely no reason not to check it out -- it's even Universal. Go grab it, and prepare to break against an army of devilish slugs.

It should be no secret that we’re pretty big Disc Drivin’ [$1.99/Free/HD] junkies around here at TouchArcade. Well, almost all of us (I’m looking at you, Eli). Disc Drivin’ launched back in December of last year, and we were pretty much hooked following our review. Since that time, I’ve continued to play the game every single day without fail, and I honestly can’t say that about any other iOS game.

But lately, I’ve noticed that my playtime (and the playtime of the many dedicated friends that I am usually playing with) has started to dwindle. Normally I’m running at least 15 to 20 games at a time, but in the past few weeks that number has shrunken down to a mere 4 or 5, sometimes less. As can happen in even the best of relationships, things were just starting to get a bit stale around the Nelson-Drivin’ household.

Enter developer Pixelocity Software, ready like Cupid to shoot a new update into the posterior of Disc Drivin’ and ignite our romance once more. This marks the third big content update to the game, as it received online matchmaking back in February and 3 brand new tracks as well as a refined UI back in April. This newest update adds another 3 brand new tracks, for a total of 18, as well as a new track element called the Flipper. You can see the overhead design of each of the tracks in the icons below:

As for the Flipper, pictured at the top of this post, you’ll come across this obstacle placed in various parts of the ground in each of the 3 new tracks. When you slide over it, it propels you forwards and upwards, catapult style. This can either be a very good thing or a very bad thing, mostly depending on where you end up finally landing. The faster you’re going when you hit the Flipper, the farther you’ll get launched, so there should be some good strategic uses of the new object if utilized correctly.

If you haven’t yet tried Disc Drivin', I highly recommend downloading the fully-featured ad-supported version for free and giving the game a spin. It’s one of those games that you won’t be good at right away, so give it time and practice. You can ask advice or find opponents in the game’s discussion thread in our forums, too. If you like it, the ad-free version is currently $1.99, and you’d be fueling support for even more updates down the line. This newest update to Disc Drivin' is already done and submitted, so keep your eyes peeled for it to go live most likely sometime in the next week.

One thing that I love about the App Store is that there's a lot about it that is highly reminiscent of the old 8-bit and 16-bit era of console gaming. Specifically, I'm talking about how seemingly everyone was just dying to make a character that could turn into a potential franchise, or better yet, a mascot for whatever console it might have been exclusively released on (for instance, Plok). There's a ton of these seemingly B-grade character driven games on the App Store, and Bean of Bean's Quest [$2.99] seems like a modern day Bubsy in that the protagonist has all the character it needs, however, will we ever be clamoring for another Bean game? I know I didn't really care about Bubsy's platforming career, that's for sure. But, I digress.

Bean's Quest is a strange beast. It's one of the shortest iOS games I can think of that I've played recently. So short in fact, that it's already over just about the time you start getting into it, which for most people will take around 5 minutes, but definitely no more than 10. Normally in a situation like this, I'd quickly move on to whatever other game I've got on my device and quickly forget about it until it gets deleted in my next mass-scale app purge. …But Bean's Quest is good.

The graphics are perfectly vibrant, and have just enough of that 16-bit era pixely-ness to them without going overboard. The original soundtrack by Flashygoodness is an excellent pairing, and the controls work great: Touching one side of the screen causes you to move left, while the other causes you to move right. Since you're a jumping bean, jumping is handled automatically, as in, you're always jumping.

Initially this always jumping mechanic seems to be a mixture of irritating and unwieldily. I reluctantly bounced my way through the first level, jumping on enemies to kill them, collecting various diamonds, and even coming across a mysterious axolotl. It wasn't until I bounced off the spring at the end of the level that things became clear- Bean's Quest pumps a flat out silly amount of replay value by counting the number of jumps it took you to get to the end of the level, as well as whether or not you've collected all the diamonds along with the (sometimes hidden) axolotl.

See, just bouncing around and cautiously going through the level resulted in me jumping 24 times. Bean's Quest challenges me to do it in less than 15, and I can't help but try. Hitting these jump goals involves some ridiculous levels of analysis of each of the levels, figuring out where you can jump, what to avoid, and what enemies you can bounce off of to potentially skip a obstacle that would take a few jumps to go over. Clearing each level with all the diamonds, the axolotl, and under par for jumps is going to be a serious challenge. I'm not even sure it's possible, or at least, it seems beyond my ability.

What absolutely slays me about Bean's Quest is how stupidly short it is. At the start of the eighth and final level I was really getting into the game, both focused on progression and going back and seeing how many jumps I could shave off once I got the gist of the level. But, just as quickly as I fell in love with the game it was over.

…Which brings me to the uncomfortable portion in this review where you find out whether or not Bean's Quest is a game I'd recommend. In its current form, I definitely feel like I've gotten $2.99 worth of entertainment out of the game because aside from the content included, it's an awesome package of graphics, sound, and undeniably sound gameplay. However, from a value perspective, Bean's Quest is a hard pill to swallow considering games like Soosiz [$1.99], League of Evil [$1.99] and even Pizza Boy [$1.99] provide similar gameplay with much, much more content.

The good news is, there is light at the end of the Bean's Quest tunnel. The developer's web site mentions an impending update coming next month that will raise the level total up to 24 levels. Their blog even teases what the second world will look like-- But waiting for updates, and specifically buying a game based on promised updates can be a dangerous game that all too often seems to end in disappointment.

If you're willing to roll the dice on Bean's Quest and the developers following through with their update plans, Bean's Quest is an effortless recommendation. However, if you've already got an iOS device loaded with platformers you haven't finished, it's likely best to add this to your mental (or AppShopper) wish list until Bean's Quest actually feels like a proper quest, and not a cruel tease of a potentially awesome platformer. With that being said, people who have taken the plunge on our forums are happy they did, and Bean's Quest is even universal which always sweetens the deal.

Prison can't be that bad if you can develop video games from there, am I right? At least, that's the ongoing gag in the media about Julius Styles: The International, an upcoming game being developed by Lapland Studios and Wesley Snipes, a man who is doing hard time for tax evasion. While hilarious, that might not be an accurate picture of what's going on here: we're under the impression that the majority of Snipes involvement was pre-prison. But I'm not here to tell you about that. Rather, I want to point out that the fruits of the pairings labor will arrive on August 11 on the iPhone and iPad, as was just revealed this afternoon.

We’ve been hearing about Julius Styles for a while now strictly courtesy of Snipes. Unfortunately, he’s been saying something very similar to today’s statement since January, when the game was first announced for XBLA, iOS, Android, and PSN:

“The concept for Julius Styles is an amalgamation of the ‘international spy, security specialist characters’ I’ve played in a couple of films,” Snipes said in a new press release.

“Except unlike previous characters I’ve played, who often have military special ops, spy backgrounds, I needed a twist for him. Thus, Julius Styles was born.”

Styles is some sort of amalgamation of an adventure / puzzle / third-person action game that puts you in the boots of the hero, Julius Styles. In the screens received today, we’re thinking that the latter element is the actual driving force behind the experience, though it’s entirely possible that we’re whiffing on this assumption. To be frank, we’ve yet to get our hands on it and the marketing behind it likes to play buzz word bingo, so it’s become pretty hard to judge what kind of game it actually is. Obviously, though, we’ll be keeping our eyes on this as it creeps towards release.

Just so we're all on the same page from the start, Bravo Game Studios' Xtreme Wheels [$3.99] is whole heck of a lot like RedLynx's Trials series. Actually, it's almost identical, but while many have tried to bring the painfully difficult motocross physics-puzzle-style to iOS, Xtreme Wheels is probably the closest to getting it right.

If you've played Trials, you'll know what to expect from Xtreme Wheels and it gets the job done confidently enough. If you haven't, Xtreme Wheels is a physics based motrocross game that requires you to traverse an environment and get from one point of the map to the other by accelerating and leaning your character and bike in the correct directions to get through a series of obstacles.

That all sounds simple enough, but the joy (or rage) of Xtreme Wheels is in the fact you have to finesse your way up and over exploding barrels, ninety-degree walls and across tiny platforms. Like its pedigree, this isn't a game for the faint of heart and while the first few levels are far too easy, the last ten are truly a pain to get through.

The goal of each track is to get through it alive once, then to head back and improve your time. You'll receive medal awards based on your time and the number of crashes. Usually, you'd spend your time beating friend's scores on the leaderboards, but right now the Game Center boards are pretty screwed up, with the top times listed as zero. For this type of game, fixing this needs to be on the top of Bravo's to-do list.

You'll have four different control schemes at your disposal, two styles of analog sliders, a digital pad and tilt controls. For the most part, the analog slider is going to be the go-to for Trials fans, but newcomers might find the other controls more to their liking.

Whichever control scheme you chose, you'll be rolling with it over the course of 25 levels in five themed areas. Again, if you played Trials, you know what to expect here -- the level progression, although a bit slow at first, ramps up considerably and awkwardly at the mid-point (like Trials, actually). If you haven't played a game like this before, you're going to run into some serious trouble early on because the game doesn't do a particularly good job of teaching you how to play it. Simple things like bunny-hops are going to frustrate newcomers pretty quickly and even old hands will have a little trouble getting the hang of them with the control schemes.

That actually brings up one of the problems with Xtreme Wheels, the physics are a little loose compared to the responsiveness of the controls and since the level design facilitates some ridiculous situations, the physics don't always respond as you'd expect. It's only jarring because the controls are so reactive, your character will lean and move exactly as you'd anticipate, but the bike doesn't always respond. Then again, that might simply be the sixty-plus hours I've poured into Trials HD tainting my view a little.

One of the other major problems comes in the form of framerate hiccups. Both on a 3GS and an original iPad the game has serious slowdown after explosions and in some of the more complex areas. This isn't a good thing in this type of game and it's almost impossible to recover from. There are a ton of checkpoints throughout each level to keep this from being too aggravating, but for those looking to go gold on every level it'll only make the game even harder. The same goes for your inevitable fail animations, which seem to drag on as the system stutters.

From early screenshots, the game looked like it was going to be a real stunner. The environments hold up to the screenshots and look great, but the animation on the rider is a little stiff. This only matters because your rider's position is key to getting through tougher parts and it's occasionally a little difficult to figure out exactly where he's positioned. Of course, I'd have preferred a steady framerate over fancy visuals any day, so we'll see if they can scale the graphics down to add some smoothness in the future.

Despite those flaws, the game is a faithful rendition of a Trials-style game, but it would have been nice to see a little more innovation in the environmental art or at least more of its own style instead of a nearly direct clone of Trials. Even still, if they can get the framerate up, it'll be one of the better renditions on the App Store, even if it's lacking it's own constitution.

Dene Carter, co-founder of the development house Big Blue Box that worked with Lionhead Studios to create the first Fable title for the Xbox, is currently heading up his own company Fluttermind which released Flaboo! [99¢] on the App Store in late 2009. If you happen to follow the Fluttermind blog at all, then you should be aware that Dene has been hard at work on a new iOS title called Incoboto ever since the release of Flaboo! a year and a half ago. And even if you have been following the development of Incoboto for that entire time, chances are that you still aren’t totally sure what the heck the game is about.

By Dene’s own description, Incoboto is a “puzzle/adventure/exploration/story/weird game”, which actually sounds totally interesting to me. Dene then goes on to explain:

It's an open world; and you can go back and forth as you see fit. None of this linear level nonsense. Most important to me, though, is that it's the story of the last living thing in the universe: a small boy named Inco, and slightly insane sentient sun called Helios. Together, they travel the cosmos finding weird machines left over from dead civilisations, and find clues to what happened to everyone, which ultimately reveals the nature of both Inco and Helios themselves.

As for the actual gameplay, we know that there will be a physics system and you’ll be able to touch to interact with objects and even drag to throw them, which will be a big part of the puzzles in the game. We also know that you’ll be able to direct the shine of your solar companion Helios’ sun rays, which you can see in the screen above, though I’m not exactly sure how that factors into the gameplay just yet.

I may not fully understand what is happening in Incoboto, but these teaser shots for the game are more than enough to pique my interest. The visuals have a really neat style, and from reading Dene’s blog I can see that he is really invested in making sure there is a distinct moodiness to the game that people will feel when they play. Fluttermind has been hinting at putting together a video to show some of what Incoboto will be like, which I think would be a great idea. We’ll keep our eye out for this video or any other new information for Incoboto, and there’s currently a discussion for the game you can get in on in our forums.

Gameloft has been posting video podcast on their YouTube channel for quite a while now, and it can be a little hit or miss regarding the amount of interesting tidbits nestled inside. The latest episode, which hit a few days ago, mostly covers E3 and the games they were showing there. Some are already released, and we had our hands all over some of the other ones. Considering all this, the most interesting part of the last podcast is a Facebook game of all things, which should be more than a little familiar to some of you (proper part queued up for your viewing pleasure):

Utilizing the Unity web player plugin, Gameloft has (since this podcast was released) brought Order & Chaos to Facebook. Playing is as simple as downloading the plugin (if you don't have it already) and heading over to the Order & Chaos Facebook page. It's completely free until level 10, and after that you'll need to subscribe. There's a number of payment options ranging from 1 Facebook credit (equal to 10¢) for a day of access, or 30 Facebook credits for six moths.

Unfortunately, Facebook players play on separate servers from mobile players, so you will need to start fresh. Regardless, this is incredibly cool to see Gameloft doing and just goes to show the sheer ubiquity of the Unity engine. It's always neat to see iOS titles hopping platforms, and it will be interesting to see how Order & Chaos does on Facebook since it's basically now a passable World of Warcraft clone that people can play at work in their browser.

Alawar's The Jolly Gang's Spooky Adventure [$1.99 / HD], is the type of game you're either going to love or hate after a single glance. There likely isn't going to be much of an in-between here, but thankfully there's a lite version for people to test out first, as well as tons of options for a PC demo since the game was originally released a couple years ago. The Jolly Gang's Spooky Adventure, like many of Alawar's previous offerings, is something of a mash-up between puzzle, hidden object, escape the room and adventure games with an often cringe-worthy style of humor.

You play as Moxxie, a rather androgynous girl who just got a job at a local ghost-hunting tabloid. Upon starting the game, your first task is to assemble together a series of objects you'll need before heading off to the office by touching various parts of the screen. It sounds like your typical hidden-object game, but Jolly Gang does a good job of mixing things up. You don't just need to find the objects, you need to complete tasks with them as well. You'll use the umbrella on the handbag to get it off the shelf, or you need to find the passcode to open a locked bag. As far as those sections are concerned, it's essentially a hidden object game mixed with some room escape elements.

There are other components tossed into it that make it a different kind of experience, including some mini-games, most of which will be familiar to fans of these types of puzzle games. It's certainly a more casual experience, but it's also exceptionally weird in both its humor and its puzzle style. It uses a lot of the traditional adventure tropes to get its puzzles across, but it throws in enough fresh ideas to keep it interesting, even if it never gets too difficult.

The elements that are going to polarize people are the art style and the sound. Jolly Gang has that lazy, poorly drawn look about it, certainly on purpose, but intentional or not, you'll either love it or hate it. The same goes for the voice acting, which sounds like one person did everything and pushed it through a pitch-shifter and called it a day. Chances are, you'll be muting it within the first few minutes. Depending on your own leaning, the game is aesthetically the ugliest thing you've ever seen or it's a fresh take on animation.

The look is a little troublesome for one reason that's hard not to deny, it looks like a kid's game. It most certainly is not and although the humor is never overtly adult or offensive, it's clearly geared toward an older crowd.

On top of being an adventure game with a plot to get through and puzzles to solve, there's also a scoring mechanic built in so you can compare on Game Center. It's a little strange, as it seems to be based on how quickly you find objects and complete a screen, which is clearly something you can bulk up over time, but as a needless add-on, it might offer enough incentive for super-fans to play again.

The Jolly Gang's Spooky Adventure isn't exactly what it looks like on first glance. There are certainly adventure game mechanics at play here, but the bulk of the game combines hidden object and escape the room tropes more than anything else. If you're fans of those two genres and you like the sloppy art style, you'll enjoy your time here, even if it is a bit short. If not, this certainly won't change your disposition.

A new sale is sweeping the App Store in light of the release of Zombie Gunship [$.99]. Creator Limbic Software is offering its Tower Madness games and Nuts! for $0 in celebration of this latest morsel of awesomeness. This is a sale with a total of two middling-to-good titles that should keep you pre-occupied if Gunship isn’t in your wheelhouse. If it is, well, I suppose this is the icing on the cake.

Here’s the quick hit sales list:

• Tower Madness - $2.99 -> Free
• Tower Madness HD - $7.99 -> Free
• Nuts! - .99 -> Free

We checked out Zombie Gunship earlier at WWDC 2011 in San Francisco. It’s basically an AC-130 game that has you defending key objectives from an endless zombie horde. If you’re familiar with any recent Call of Duty titles, you’ll probably appreciate the AC-130 action part of the title more than flight enthusiasts. It has a similar look and feel to those mini-game sections in Activision’s uber-popular war franchise.

More is coming to Zombie Gunship, by the way. At GDC, we were told that more zombie types, more weapons, and even more locations are coming in a free update. Neat!

UPDATE: Nuts! is also part of the deal. We've updated the list to reflect that.