Zombie games and the App Store seem to go together like peas and carrots. I'm not sure what the allure of zombies is, but I'm not one to argue about slaying legions of undead. Developers Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team (Yes, that's their real name) have been working on a sports zombie apocalypse hybrid for quite some time now, and finally seeing it in motion with this gameplay video is truly something to behold.

Details are vague right now, but the developers have provided us this list of things to expect in Pro Zombie Soccer:

• One of the most surreal and funny stories to ever grace a videogame.
• Lots of different zombies for your zombie killing pleasure, all of them with different hit points.
• A powerful blockbuster-type soundtrack and sound design.
• And of course: a nice combo system; different levels; Zombie Odyssey Mode for the hardcore gamers; character skill upgrading system.

If you've watched the video and think there are some strong similarities to the art and animations in Plants Vs. Zombies, it's because Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team is comprised of an international team of seasoned game industry veterans with titles under their belt such as Worms, Vin Diesel's Wheelman, the EyeToy Play series, and Plants Vs. Zombies itself.

Pro Zombie Soccer is still in development, for the most up to date news on the game's progress, check out the official thread on our forums.

Along with tower defense and line drawing games, it seems like the twin stick shooter genre has an amazing representation on the App Store. We just got exclusive word from Angry Mob Game that they're ready to show the world what they've been working on for the last six months: Guerrilla Bob.

The game takes the standard survival shooter format we're all familiar with by now and structures the gameplay through various levels that take place in canyons, deserts, and urban environments. There also is an exploring element to the game, with new weapons and secret items to be found. While on your quest of mowing down everything that moves with your arsenal of weaponry, you will encounter bosses described as "epic" as well as "elements of depth and complexity never before met with any iPhone games of its genre" according to CEO Bogdan Iliesiu.

The recently released trailer and screenshots are required viewing for anyone interested in dual stick shooters:

Guerrilla Bob is still in development, but Angry Mob Games is hopeful to have the it submitted and ready for release in early December. In the meantime, feel free to stop by the Official Guerrilla Bob Thread in our upcoming games forum.

I first got a look at Five Minutes to Kill Yourself [App Store] as part of an oddly secretive preview from the folks at Adult Swim. With the game's impending release in the near future, now is finally the time to pull the cover off Adult Swim's latest iPhone adaptation of yet another one of their flash games.

As the title may imply, in Five Minutes to Kill Yourself, you've found yourself fed up with working in your monotonous office environment and have decided to off yourself. Utilizing various objects found around your office, you only have five minutes to do enough damage to put yourself out of your misery.

It isn't that simple though, as your bothersome coworkers often initiate unskippable conversations with you. Much like working in a real office, these conversations accomplish nothing other than wasting your time. In some instances, through dialog choices you might get a coworker to attack you, but most of the time they just pester you about lunch.

You can staple your forehead, drink toilet water, pee on computers, and countless other things. The amount of objects that you can interact with and the objects that can be combined with others for even more lethal damage is pretty amazing. The following video shows the game's tutorial, selecting clothing, and finally, killing yourself:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself is also available as a free flash game on the Adult Swim website. It plays exactly the same as the iPhone version, the only difference is instead of using your mouse you use your finger.

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself should be available on the App Store very soon.

Update: Wow, we weren't kidding about it being available soon. It was just released moments ago.

App Store Link: 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself, $2.99

Last weekend was the Big Buck Hunter Pro world championship held in Chicago, IL and aside from thousands of dollars of prize money that was given away, they were also giving people the first look at the upcoming iPhone game.

The iPhone version is based on the series of Big Buck Hunter arcade machines which originally debuted all the way back in 2001. Since then, there have been several spin-off machines that have you hunting things like big horn sheep, elk, and even antelope. The arcade game is played using a shotgun aimed at the screen to shoot whatever it is you're hunting and often can be found at bars right next to the Golden Tee machine.

The iPhone, obviously lacking any light gun accessories uses your fingers to do the shooting. This mobile version of the game plays remarkably similar to the arcade machine, although quite a bit of the allure of Big Buck Hunter has always been playing it while you're out drinking with friends and there isn't much the iPhone can do the emulate that.

In the following video I go over all the functionality of the game including shooting deer, the bonus stages, online leaderboards, and even the ability to use your GPS coordinates to find the nearest arcade machine:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Big Buck Hunter has an absolutely massive following, and it's great to see an iPhone port of the game that is actually fairly representative of the original instead of a quick cash-in on the series. Big Buck Hunter Pro is expected to be available soon, and while no price has been announced yet, I'm sure the iPhone game will be much cheaper than a single night of pumping quarters in to a real Big Buck Hunter machine.

Yesterday I made it out to the Freeverse offices and sat down with their development teams to look at their lineup of upcoming games. The title closest to completion was Warpgate, which we have previewed in the past. I played through the first few tutorial missions, and the game has grown substantially from the initial screenshots we saw so long ago.

The concept of the game has stayed essentially the same since our preview, but since then Freeverse has added a tremendous amount of content and graphical effects. Each system that you can land on has their own economy which is in constant flux, along with a series of procedurally generated random missions that will allow you to play the game forever without running out of things to do.

In the graphical department, normal mapping has been added to every object in game. Normal mapping is a rendering technique used to fake shadows and lighting on objects to create much more detailed graphics while still maintaining a low enough polygon count to be rendered at a high framerate. (Wikipedia has an excellent article on the specifics of normal mapping, including an image that does a great job of illustrating what it can do.)

There have been other games for the iPhone that have used normal mapping, but all of these games have been sold as "3GS-Only" games. Warpgate is anticipated to be the first game for the platform that scales these graphical effects based on the device you're playing it on.

If you're playing on an iPhone 3GS, normal mapping will be enabled and you'll be able to see canyons and crags in planets along with the different details of the ships and warpgates. But, if you're playing on a previous-generation device, the game will gracefully degrade back to standard textured 3D models. If in the future you upgrade to a newer device, all of the graphical features you didn't have access to are instantly enabled without needing to buy a "enhanced" version of the game.

Here is a video provided by Freeverse illustrating the difference in graphical quality between devices:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version | Quicktime Movie]

Warpgate is still in development and Freeverse is hopeful to have it on the App Store in time for the holiday season. We've been playing different builds of the game over Warpgate's development, and the game seems to be rapidly progressing. Look forward to a more detailed preview and review of the game here as its release approaches.

Last month, we previewed an upcoming iPhone game from True Axis called Jet Car Stunts.

Jet Car Stunts was described as "a fun, over the top, 3D driving game, with massive jumps, mid-air hoops, floating platforms, spiral roadways, outlandish maneuvers and impossible environments." Controls are accelerometer based along with mid-air flight controls to nudge the angle of flight or adjust speed with air braking.

We loved the look of the game video, but had some questions about the game's playability from that video alone. We've since had a chance to interview Luke Ryan and Andy Coates of True Axis about their upcoming racer. They also provided this exclusive hands-on video showing their game and controls in action:

TouchArcade: We understand Jet Car Stunts is based on the True Axis Physics SDK. Can you give us a little bit of history on this game engine and the company?

Luke Ryan: The True Axis Physics SDK was a bit of an accidental development. It started back in 2002 as part of a game demo I was developing. The physics engines back then were not good enough, and I already had a few years experience involving lots of physics programming, so I made a much better one. I started getting a few requests to make it commercial. In-between doing contract work for mobile and handheld games, I did all the extra work necessary to commercialise it, which was the reason for the formation of the company, True Axis.

Since then, the physics engine scene has changed unrecognisably. I'd always kept in touch with the mobile gaming scene here in Melbourne and I started to fall back into that. I met my co-owner at True Axis, Andy Coates, while I was helping out at Firemint. In 2008, I decided to take True Axis into independent game development which has always been my dream.

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Empty Clip Studios' rhythm puzzle game Groovin' Blocks, which debuted a year ago as a WiiWare download title and has recently seen retail release on the Wii, will soon be available for download in the App Store.  The iPhone version is a conversion of the larger, Wii retail release.

Groovin' Blocks, which GameSpot calls "a music-based game like no other" (in reference to the Wii release), is, at it's core, a match-three puzzle game.  Now, there's no shortage of match-three puzzlers in the App Store — there are too many to count, really — but what sets Groovin' Blocks apart is its musical / rhythm component.

Each level — and there are over 50 in all — is played to a pumping techno soundtrack with scrolling beat-indicators on either side of the screen.  Block clusters slide onto the playfield in a Tetris-like fashion, and will ultimately come to rest at the bottom of the screen.  A tap on the 'drop' button will quickly drop the piece into place — but if you "hit a beat" (tapping the drop button during a beat of the soundtrack) the blocks will be bigger, brighter, and worth more points.  Hitting consecutive beats without a miss increases your score multiplier — but miss a beat and it drops back to zero.  Hitting the occasional Superbeat, shown brighter in the scrolling beat display, will double your current score multiplier.

Certain blocks contain power-ups that can be collected only if you hit a beat when placing said block.  Power-ups are unleashed when the successfully placed block is destroyed by a match-three scenario.

Empty Clip Studios was kind enough to give us an exclusive preview of the upcoming iPhone title.  We've spent some time with it and find it to be one of the most enjoyable match-three puzzlers in the App Store.  And there's really more to playing the game than screenshots reveal.  iPhone gamers who enjoy a solid puzzle and/or rhythm game should keep an eye on this one.

Have a look at our very brief gameplay video showing action early-on in the game.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Groovin' Blocks for the iPhone should arrive in the App Store very shortly.

Chillingo also revealed to us another upcoming game today that they described as "Gauntlet on steroids". Gauntlet, of course, being the classic multiplayer Atari arcade game where you hacked and slashed your way through levels. And The Relic sounds like it's going to mimic that gameplay:

You find yourself in the deepest level of a dungeon – you must seek out and destroy the Quinotaur (a 5 horned Dragon). The beast has ruled over 1,000 years and – through the power of The Relic – re-animates the dead and draws power from them.

The game is described as a hack n'slack close-combat multi-player game that can be played by 1 to 4 people. You'll fight against zombies, skeletons, huge spiders and more with 3D graphics and frantic action.

The game is expected for release in November.

With the release of iPhone OS 3.1, developers are now allowed to produce augmented reality (AR) apps for the iPhone. We first covered this technology on the iPhone back in March, when we met with game researcher Blair MacIntyre about his work in the field.

Augmented Reality is described as a combination of real-world and computer-generated data, where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.

Unfortunately, at the time, the iPhone SDK prevented full exposure to the proper APIs required to implement it. All that changed with iPhone 3.1.

Several developers seem to be working on Augmented Reality applications, with several attempts at games. Chillingo has revealed that they are bringing Toyspring's Arcade Reality AR game to the iPhone. Arcade Reality was first released for the Palm Treo and offers a number of game modes:

• Arcade Reality – the main mode, featuring the first person perspective shooting scored for precision, interleaved with the special "bonus levels"
• Infinite Shooter – simple shooter without sophisticated goals, just kill everything that moves
• Asteroids Mode – 3D version of the well known game. Steering the spaceship feels similar to an RC toy – you must figure out which side is "left" or "right" depending on the current orientation

Video from the Palm Treo version shows the basic gameplay, demonstrating the overlaying of video game graphics on real life surroundings.

Meanwhile, Freeverse has recently released a simple AR app called Fairy Trails [$0.99] which offers a bit of a tech demo, and Yelp recently included an early version as an easter egg.

We'll be interested to see how Arcade Reality actually plays on the iPhone as well as seeing what else the future might hold.

iPhone developers Neptune Interactive and Smells Like Donkey have teamed up to create a casual fighting game inspired by classics like Street Fighter and Karateka.

Readers may remember Neptune Interactive as the creator of 7 Cities [$2.99] while Smells Like Donkey is most famously known for iJiggles [99¢].

Tap Fu is a fighting game that features story and survival game modes along with training and free play. The default control scheme utilizes gestures and taps to move your character around and fight the onslaught of evil ninjas that are attacking you. A virtual D-Pad control scheme is also included.

Meanwhile, the combat in Tap Fu is spiced up by adding a combo system as well as style points that have been seen before in other games, notably the Devil May Cry series. Tap Fu will initially come loaded with the "Ninjas of the SweetTooth Clan" chapter and the developers have plans to implement more content over time. The game also comes with online leaderboards and achievements.

The video shows a very nice look at the combat hands-on:

Tap Fu was recently submitted to the App Store, so assuming no approval delays, it should be available for download inside of two weeks.