Sometimes I'm the mood for a puzzle game, and sometimes, I'm in the mood for a word game. Or the rare occasion that I'm in the mood for both, I don't have a lot of choices on my iPhone, but I believe Chillingo has fixed that with the addition of Gum Drop! [$0.99 ] to their library. A hybrid of both genres, Gum Drop! is a very attractive game that I believe will have staying power with kids and adults alike.

Like a lot of other Chillingo titles, Gum Drop! has a great look. Pastel colors and jazzy music will usher you into the title menu, which is so basic that there aren't even any instructions before you begin to play. This could be slightly disorienting if you're used to being instructed in the games you play, but really this one is so self-explanatory you hardly need it.

A stack of gumdrops sit on the far left corner of your screen, and the rest of it is dominated by a series of squares with pictures on them. A closer look at the gumdrops will show that each has a word on it. As you see the word represented by a picture on one of the squares, you touch it with a finger, and it vanishes. The gumdrop with the word on it deflates, and you take out as many as you can in order to drop another set of them and proceed to the next level of squares.

Simple, right?

Gum Drop!'s challenge begins as you make progress. To begin, you only have nine squares to match, and the gum drops don't expand too quickly. It's when you hit level 7 and the blocks increase to sixteen on a grid that things get tougher. It's also around this time that the items you have to identify on the blocks all start coming up one color, like yellow or blue. Let me tell you, this is where the game starts to become a total pain (albeit in a really challenging, kind of throw your phone at the wall kind of way). You'll have to speed up to keep going. If you make a mistake and stab a block with an image that is not represented by one of the gumdrops on the left, guess what happens? One of them expands, doubling in size. Isn't that super?

One thing you can use to your advantage is keeping an eye out for the items on the level above you. As you take blocks out, eventually, the upcoming level that's above you will fall. You'll be able to see one row of the blocks coming, and if you can match one to a word on a gumdrop, it takes out everything in the current level and moves you immediately to that one, which earns you a sweet little points bonus. It deflates the gum drops too, so you have a precious few moments of time to get your bearings on the new level. And believe me, you're going to need them.

In addition tot he basic gameplay, you also have 25 achievements to dig into and Game Center functionality to brag about your scores. There's a Facebook button too, so you can easily let people know you're digging the game and encourage them to check it out too.

I like how simple Gum Drop! is. Typically iPhone games are pretty easy to learn to play, but this one is so effortless that it reminds me a little of the "jump in and play" mentality of games from the early retro era. I miss that sentiment, and while obviously many wonderful games are in the world that require a bit of instruction, on occasion it's a breath of fresh air to play one that lets you jump in and play basically on instinct. It's an elegant formula, and it works. Now if I could only get a little better at the levels where all the items are the same color…

Last month we posted a short preview of the upcoming GoatUp [link] (then to be called Goat Goes Up) from ungulate adoring game developer Jeff Minter. GoatUp is a retro-inspired platform game -- Llamasoft's first ever, in fact -- and is a title I've spent a great deal of time with over the last week or so. The game has just gone live in the App Store, so let's take a look.

GoatUp is a platform game of the endless climber sort that, according to Minter, draws inspiration from several oldschool platformers, including the Atari 2600 title Man Goes Down, Nebulus / Tower Toppler, and Rainbow Island. The game puts you in control of a cute little nanny goat faced with a never-ending, downward scrolling tower bristling with platforms. Your job is to climb as high as you can by deftly jumping from platform to platform as they scroll off the bottom of the screen. It's a mechanic that's pretty well represented in the App Store, but GoatUp is full of twists (so to speak) that make it something special.
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In this week’s bonus episode of the TouchArcade Show, we sit down with the two dudes behind Tiger Style Games to get the skinny on Lost Mars, the duo’s atmospheric and ambitious action-gardening game. We talk a lot about the game’s odd categorization, how it tries to be different in the third-person space, and how the studio’s equally unusual, but refreshing design goals inform its work. We, of course, also break down what Lost Mars is and how Mars was lost, if you’re wondering.

Lost Mars hits a much later this year across the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad, so why not listen to this while you wait, right? You can grab our pod just below via direct download or in-browser streaming. Additionally, you can subscribe to us on iTunes or Zune to get our new podcasts just as soon as we upload them.

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Developer Fractiv just introduced a new mechanic and a new character in a free and fresh update to its arcade racing game Lane Splitter [$.99]. New version 2.0 -- which the studio says is the game’s most comprehensive update yet -- adds Ricky, a character “who looks cooler than you because of his sweet [blue] chopper. Also, police. Yep! For the first time ever, you’ll be asked to avoid the long arm of the law as you switch lanes to and fro at silly speeds. From our tests thus far, escaping the police seems to simply boil down to "just keep driving fast," a conceit that jives with the whole game.

New animations, tweaks, and optimizations are also a part of the  free update. Interestingly, the studio has also added four more characters, but only as IAP. You can grab them one a piece for $.99 or in a bundle for $1.99. The latter is an introductory price for the moment.

Lane Splitter is stupid fun and we certainly got into it earlier this March. If you’d like to learn a little bit more about the crotch-rocketry that fuels this game, you should definitely give our review a read.

GRL Games’ awesome word game, Word Chat [$.99], has just received a brand new game mode and a few other select tweaks via a free update. The new mode is Word Solitaire and it’s basically what you’re envisioning -- you pull tiles from the columns to make new words and then the tiles on the upper reaches of the board are revealed until you clear the level. Designer Graeme Devine tells us that this was, at one point, an entirely fresh game, but he soon decided to roll it into Word Chat as a mode instead. How nice!

As far as new mechanics, Devine added in a power-up for use in Word Solitaire that allows you to change out letters. As for tweaks, there’s a few: tiles are now smoother on old devices and you can also shake your phone to alter the bubble background in the game.

More updates like this are coming in the future, according to Devine. He wants to update a lot with a ton of meaningful content, which is an approach we can certainly get behind.

Need more Zenonia in your life? You know publisher Gamevil doesn’t have a problem with fulfilling that steamy desire. A fourth game in the RPG series -- apparently dubbed Zenonia 4: Return of the Legend -- is indeed coming down the pipe and a member of our message board snagged the first images we’ve seen of the iOS version in action.

Say what you will about the series’ old-school design and approach to the genre, but you’ve got to admit that the art direction on display is top-notch. Hit up the thread to see the other three images, but also be aware that they're obviously marketing materials.

Our mysterious poster doesn’t know when the game will arrive in the US or at what price, but he or she does seem confident in a couple of features. Zenonia 4 will probably feature retina display support, as well as “thousands of costumes, upgradeable items, and rare items,” they said in the post. As if you didn’t already spend enough time with Zenonia in the first place, right?

We’ll obviously keep our all-seeing eye on red alert and our all-hearing ears to the ground for official announcement and even more assets, so stay tuned.

If you were among the group of people who scooped up the Parrot AR.Drone when it was first released (Check out our review) and have since gotten bored of the few apps/games that Parrot has put out since then, here's an idea for you: Aerial WiFI hacking rig. Appropriately named, SkyNET takes the Parrot AR.Drone, and trades the protective shell for a tiny Linux computer, a 3G card, GPS, and two WiFi cards.

The idea, in a nutshell, is once you've got your SkyNET drone all set up, you fly around in urban environments loaded with WiFi networks controlling the AR.Drone via 3G. It looks for networks it can break into, breaks into them, and attempts to compromise any vulnerable computer on the network. From there, these infected machines can take orders from SkyNET with no traceable ties back to the hackers running it, as everything is coming directly from an aerial drone connected directly to your WiFi network.

Pretty creepy, right? This seems like the stuff out of science fiction, but with the right technical know-how can be done today for approximately $600. So, if you haven't yet, now might be a good time to secure your wireless network. Personally, I'm just blown away that a device that was originally sold as a fun iOS-controlled quadricopter with some augmented reality games can be used for such crazy things.

[via Gizmodo]

Last week we reported on rumblings that GameStop was going to get into the iOS device buying and selling business. We also briefly discussed this on our last podcast, and the TouchArcade hive mind thinks it makes sense, as currently GameStop is a company with a business model based entirely around physical media that's facing the cold hard reality of a physical media-free future thanks to devices like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Without some kind of strategy, GameStop could potentially be the next Blockbuster Video, with a business made totally obsolete by advancements in convenience technology.

According to Kotaku, taking iOS devices on trade in isn't the only thing GameStop has up its sleeves. Apparently, they're rolling their own touch-based hardware platform… This, oddly enough, doesn't seem that far fetched either. There are a bazillion Android OEM's out there desperately trying to sell their various reference designs with hopes that they catch on in some meaningful way. And GameStop needs to figure out what it's going to do in the new frontier of app gaming as the bread and butter of their business is taking a game on trade-in for $6 and re-selling it for $60-- Something you can't do with virtual goods.

From the looks of it, GameStop will likely be taking an existing Android device (I'm guessing something based on the Tegra family) and branding it as a "GameStop certified gaming platform." This would potentially also allow them to run their own proprietary Android storefront, that they'd have complete control over, and could then sell virtual goods in stores via downloads codes quickly and easily. (Assuming this catches on, of course.)

What will be interesting to see is if GameStop attempts to weasel in some kind of wacky trade-in mechanic into their store, or what else they could possibly have in mind to make them think that something like this would take off in any meaningful way. Just branding something a "GameStop certified gaming platform" doesn't change the fact that Android's gaming library is largely filled with old ad-laden ports of iOS titles, and if you're standing in a GameStop, I'm not sure why you'd choose a GameStop tablet with Shrek Kart over an iPad with… everything else. Unless of course, the way GameStop is going to choose to compete is on price point, which hasn't exactly worked out for any Android tablet save the HP TouchPad which was liquidated at a massive loss.

[via Kotaku]

Gameloft made a splash back in February when they announced that they were hopping on the Unreal Engine bandwagon. This summer it was revealed that March of Heroes would be their first Unreal-based game… And it'd be playable at E3. Naturally, we had our greasy hands all over it at E3, and we even took home some gameplay video:

This information comes courtesy of the Gameloft twitter account, mere moments ago:

With that out of the way, maybe it's the custom designed tin foil hat I'm wearing right now, but something seems a little fishy about this announcement. First off, Gameloft's Twitter is notoriously meticulous when it comes to capitalizing things, even to the point of capitalizing "GALAXY" in "Samsung GALAXY," using all the proper periods in "N.O.V.A." instead of just typing "NOVA" like the rest of the world, and more. Secondly, the link they're linking to is just their generic Facebook page which contains no information on the matter.

So is this a prank, hoax, publicity stunt, or a little of the three? Who knows. I was looking forward to Gameloft throwing their hat into the proverbial Unreal Engine ring, so this is a bit of a bummer if it's actually true.

Update: Well, it turns out my tinfoil hat was reading tea leaves again, something it really loves to do. Gameloft's Facebook was just updated with this snippet:

Hi everyone, we know we have a big community of FPS fans here... so we are very sorry to announce that we will not be releasing March of Heroes.

Our developers will be focusing on developing various awesome games in the months to come and working on making them even better. Fans of March of Heroes should definitely look forward to the powerful Modern Combat 3. We are however, not cancelling our work on the Unreal Engine! We are expecting to release these games starting 2012.

So, I suppose, now is the time for rampant speculation as to why it was cancelled instead of just released as-is. The version I saw at E3 seemed very complete.

jAggy Race [99¢] arrived on the App Store without much fanfare, but this kart-racing game is an impressive debut release from Swiss developers SevenOnly. The goal is to race your little kart around the track within the allotted time. That sounds pretty easy, except the tracks are totally crazy.

They curve down-and-under, so your vehicle ends up racing upside down with 360-degree gravity. You can do massive jumps on the track which send you flying for ages, even around corners, or to other sections of track. If you've ever played the snowboarding game iStunt 2 Insane Hills [Free] the tracks are just as crazy, but here you're on wheels.

There's no other karts in this game, as you're solely racing against the clock and trying to avoid crashing. A timer starts beeping if you're running out of time, which really gets the adrenaline going, but If you take the corners too quickly you'll fly off the track altogether. Fortunately, there's mandatory checkpoints which illuminate as you pass and act as a re-spawn point if you wipe-out. This is a game of skill and timing as you can't simply hold down the accelerator.

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Chillingo is pretty reliable when it comes to fun mobile releases, so I went into my experience with Fruit Roll [99¢/HD] expecting to enjoy my time with it. A cheerful, colorful title with a cartoon-inspired style, Fruit Roll foregoes a complex approach in favor of a simple one, which really makes it easy to pick up and never want to put back down.

You play the game as a wide eyed, adorable fruit that must go rolling through sidescrolling levels, jumping through the air in pursuit of stars and other fruits and avoiding creepy-crawlies such as caterpillars and giant red frogs. The game is on rails, so you won't need to control your movement, only take actions as it's happening, such as jumping. You have a single jump and a double jump, controlled precisely by a tap or two from your fingertip. Movement is fluid and comfortable to use, so you never have any moments of stabbing at the screen with your finger trying to nail a jump.

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By the unspoken law of videogames, a sequel tends to follow at least a full year after the original, but in the case of HotGen's To-Fu: The Trials of Chi [99¢/ HD], it has been less than six months before we're seeing the follow-up, aptly titled, To-Fu 2 [99¢]. You wouldn’t think much could happen in just those few short months, but what To-Fu 2 lacks in artistic changes, it makes up for in level design chops.

In a lot of ways, it would have been easy to pull a Madden 12 on To-Fu 2 because, for the most part, this is the same game as it was before. The art, music, sound effects, and everything else are pulled from the original. That is, except for one single new feature: you can now charge To-Fu and send him rocketing through wood blockades.

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We’ve previously covered NaturalMotion’s ‘breaker’ series of sports games and have liked the way each title seemed to extract the core gameplay elements of each sport to create a series of enjoyable objective-based missions. NFL Rivals [$2.99], NaturalMotion’s latest title, operates very similarly to its Backbreaker Football series, taking the basics from those games and infusing them with the official NFL license.

For those new to the series, the goal of NFL Rivals is to score as many points as possible by hitting all the objectives, dodging any players coming at you as well as a variety of obstacles, and building up your swagger as much as possible before scoring the touchdown (or in the case of defense, taking down your opponent). Your player is controlled via tilt for directional and acceleration controls, while a few on-screen buttons provide the rest of the controls.

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Boiling down the themes of uber-profitable App Store games yields a single undeniable fact of the universe: animals are lazy. The birds can be as angry as they like, but they don’t seem to do a thing about the pigs on their own. It’s only when you launch them out of slingshots that they take action. The gormless Om Nom would starve to death if it weren’t for you rewarding his horribly sedentary lifestyle with candy by cutting the rope. Let’s face it. You’re all a bunch of enablers.

However, since your co-dependent tendencies aren’t likely to change any time soon, it’s as good a time as any to take a look at yet another creature lacking motivation in Swing the Bat [99¢]. Published by Chillingo and created by Deadbug, the game draws in numerous elements from many recently successful iOS games.

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Ever have one of those games that you desperately want to hate but can’t? You know there are better games on your phone and that by all definitions you’re essentially wasting your time by playing it, yet you can’t seem to escape the grind. That’s Pygmies-Hoglet [$.99]. It’s the digital equivalent of a menthol cigarette: it’s in no way what you originally planned to smoke, but the flavor is weird enough to see you through while you get your fix.

I don’t want to come across too harshly, but in good conscience I need to spell out up front that this game may quickly turn off some folks. That disclaimer behind us, this game has an innocent, playful charm I can’t seem to shake and some simple tweaks to classic RPG mechanics that kept me from dwelling on its shortcomings. If you liked the movie Rudy even ironically, you may consider giving this scrappy underdog (underhog?) a try.

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