Back in 2008, Adam Atomic and Danny Baranowsky, two of the three masterminds behind Canabalt created a flash game called Gravity Hook originally based on a typing-tutor game called Gravity Key by Arne Niklas Jansson. After securing permission to develop an endless mouse-based version of the game, the original Gravity Hook was created in five days utilizing the beginnings of what is now the flixel framework.

A year later, Danny and Adam revisited their game and added new graphics, sound, controls, and gameplay to create Gravity Hook HD. Much like Canabalt, a free flash version is available that allows players to experience the game in its entirety, with global leaderboards reserved for the upcoming iPhone version.

If you have flash installed, you can try out Gravity Hook HD by clicking below. The game has sound, so make sure you mute your speakers before clicking if you're playing somewhere that epic soundtracks are frowned upon.

The developers aren't ready to discuss specific release dates, but hope to have Gravity Hook HD on the App Store sometime this month. We plan on spending some time at GDC with the entire Semi Secret Software crew, and might have more information on Gravity Hook HD then.

iPhone developer Marco Mazzoli recently released a fresh new iPhone game called Spirit [App Store].

The $0.99 retro-styled game has been getting high praise in our forums for what is a relatively new game mechanic wrapped in a very nice package. The idea behind the game is somewhat similar to Upsi Looper (no longer available), but thankfully implements touch controls rather than tilt.

In Spirit you move your ship around the screen by simply tounching any part of the screen and moving around. The ship moves relative to your finger so it never has to be in the way. The goal is to destroy the enemies by looping them with your ship's trail. If successful, a vortex appears sucking them away to nothingness. Combos and chains improve your score, and all the while you need to avoid running straight into an enemy.

Check out the developer video:

Learning to move your ship accurately is a bit of a challenge, but in that "gotta try one more time" kind of way. The gameplay is also further enhanced by a great visual style and sound effects as well as a good variety of enemies. At only $0.99, if you're looking for a challenging new arcade experience, this one's easy to recommend. The current version does not have global leaderboards, but the developer has indicated Open Feint integration is on the way.

App Store Link: Spirit, $0.99

In early February we were tipped off to a mysterious announcement on Ubisoft's web site regarding a multiplayer Assassin's Creed game exclusive to the iPhone and iPod touch. Last night Assassin's Creed II: Multiplayer [App Store] was released, along with the surprising promotional price point: Free for the next 48 hours.

AC2: Multiplayer initially appears to be an extremely simple game. Players are matched with other assassins online, and then pick up assassination targets to determine which player they need to kill. Following this, you wander around town until you find them, then tap to assassinate. Doing well in a game seems to actually require a surprising amount of skill, as you need to walk with the other civilians around town, matching their movement as much as possible, all the while looking for other civilians who are moving irregularly or are somewhere they wouldn't normally be.

The game is loaded with several different power-ups, online leaderboards, a friends system, and other cool unexpected features. It's even under 20MB, so you can download it over 3G. In two days it's going back to its normal price of $2.99, so be sure you grab this game while it's still free.

App Store Link: Assassin's Creed II: Multiplayer, Free (For a Limited Time)

Nimblebit has made a name for itself in the App Store as provider of simple casual games in nicely polished packages. They are responsible for likes of Scoops, Textropolis, Sky Burger and Moon Drop.

Their newest game Dizzypad perfectly fits into that mold with a simple one tap mechanic. The goal is to simply get as far as you can while jumping from lily pad to lily pad. Each lily pad is spinning in place, and a well timed tap on the screen will launch you forward. The trick is to wait until you are facing the right direction and off you go. Sounds simple, eh?

Of course, like with any good game, it's harder than it looks and does a good job keeping you trying for higher score. Global scoreboard lets you see how you compare to everyone else. Jumping past a lily pad gives you an extra life, and achievements unlock cosmetically different frogs you can use.

The game is set in a nicely animated koi pond environment with some very nice touches. Nimblebit's fans have taken an early liking to it and I've had a really good time with it as well.

App Store Link: Dizzypad, $1.99

TouchArcade Rating:

Following a pair of really cool teaser trailers, we finally got our hands on a copy of The Hero, a game where you play as super hero doing various super hero-y things like flying around dispatching bad guys using three different super powers while high-fiving people hanging out their windows and catching falling babies.

The graphics of The Hero are absolutely incredible, all of the animations are extremely well done, and the landscapes are beautifully detailed. You control your hero by using a virtual joystick in the bottom right corner, and can speed up by mashing the on-screen button on the bottom right corner. The controls work well enough, although making precise movements can be challenging as you can't just stop in mid-air and turn around, your hero has to go through his whole turning around animation before you can go the other way. This is a minor complaint, but something I ran in to a few times while playing.

While I'm not very far in The Hero yet, the game seems to have a considerable amount of content with a full campaign where you fight crime in 15 different levels along with an unlockable survival mode. Two difficulty options are available, along with Chillingo's Crystal integration which brings online leaderboards and achievements to the table.

Expect a full review of The Hero when it's released soon on the App Store.

Last week was absolutely loaded with sneak previews of games, and thanks to the wonderfully fast App Store approval turnaround time so far this year, B-Boy Beats, Robot Rampage, and Drift Sumi-e are all available for download.

B-Boy Beats, $2.99

From our preview:

The gameplay of B-Boy Beats amounts to keeping your index and middle fingers on the screen of your iPhone and moving them in time with the red and green circles to dance to the songs. This actually seems to take quite a bit of getting used to, as instead of most rhythm games where you're just tapping things along with a beat, you often need to keep one finger down while you move the other one around. Doing well takes an awful lot of brain power as when the songs speed up you almost instinctively just try to go back to quickly tapping like you do in Tap Tap Revenge and other games.

Despite quite a few naysayers in both the comments of our preview article, YouTube comments, and the forum thread, this game is one of the better rhythm games I've played on the iPhone largely because of how different it feels playing it compared to the typical tap to the beat rhythm game. B-Boy Beats comes loaded with nerdcore and once you get in to the gameplay, dancing with your fingers is a lot of fun. (And even more fun if you draw some Nike Dunks on your finger tips.) This is a game that badly needs a lite version, as you really need to get a feel for the game to fully appreciate it.

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Robot Rampage, $1.99

From our preview:

Robot Rampage is a seemingly endless survival game where you play as a gigantic robot armed with a super laser. Your massive robot is controlled with a variety of touch gestures. Tapping on the side of the screen causes the robot to move in that direction, holding a finger down on the screen fires the laster in that direction. The robot can also punch and stomp by tapping on either side of the robot's torso to punch, and tapping its legs to stomp. As you destroy your surroundings, a gauge in the top left corner fills up. Once full, you can tap and hold the robot to charge up a massive attack that clears the screen.

If you like giant robots, cheesy Sci-Fi B-movies, and destroying cities with huge lasers and robot fists of fury, it's safe to say you'll enjoy this quirky survival game. Gameplay is a little on the simple side, as all you do is rampage through a seemingly endless and random cityscape destroying buildings, soldiers, tanks, and other meager human defenses. OpenFeint integration should provide quite a bit of replay value if you enjoy competing in online leaderboards.

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Drift Sumi-e, 99¢

From our preview:

The game involves drawing a single stroke along the racetrack as the path for your car. You must try to hit and connect all the red clipping zones and try to make it through the course as fast as possible. After you draw your single stroke, you sit back and watch the playback in 3D as your car drifts around the corners. Multiple camera angles are provided along with drifting smoke effects. Your ultimate score is based on the smoothness of the line and speed of your run.

Drift Sumi-e is an interesting blend of gameplay reminiscent of Draw Race with a really cool looking sumi-e art style. Gameplay is simple, although it seems to take a back seat to the extremely elegant graphics as most of the game is spent watching your car drift around corners and taking snapshots with the unlockable in-game camera.

Well, readers, that special day is upon us. It's Valentine's Day. And what better way to share our love with our readers — who are certainly glued to the website, the App Store, and their iPhones, rather than out weaving a web of romance with someone special — than to underscore a few Valentine-savvy iPhone games?

Makeout Mania! from StormHatch ($0.99)

Makeout Mania! is a "chain-reaction puzzler" that puts you in the role of that love-spreading cherub, Cupid, on a mission to pierce the heart of a school full of unsuspecting students with your arrows of love, sending them on a frenzied bid to kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss.

The title offers 24 levels of gameplay in Puzzle Mode, where the mission is to pierce a heart and make the perfect match (consult the yearbook to see who's nuts about who) while avoiding the teachers at all cost. There's also Mania Mode where it's a race against the clock to trigger the most kisses possible in an ever-scrolling schoolhouse, with the option to compete against your Facebook and Plus+ friends.

Free, new levels are on the way and an update has been submitted that tweaks a few areas of gameplay.

App Store Link: Makeout Mania! ($0.99)

Flower Garden from SnappyTouch ($0.99)

A big part of Valentine's Day, for those of us that don't spend all our time playing iPhone games, is flowers. And, thanks to Noel Llopis of SnappyTouch, you can have your own lovely flower garden right inside your iPhone.

As we said in our initial review of the app, Flower Garden is not really a game. It does, however, fall into the same sim / virtual pet type experience that has boosted apps such as Koi Pond, Pocket God and Touch Pets Dogs to the heights of popularity in the App Store.

There's no real goal to Flower Garden. It's something of a zen-like experience, really. Grow flowers. Unlock new seeds. Clip flowers to make bouquets. And it's the last that really puts this game under the Valentine's Day crosshairs; you can make a lovely bouquet and email it to someone special. Basically, it turns your iPhone into a digital Cupid, with email for arrows. And, to make things even sweeter, the game is currently under a 60%-off weekend-only Valentine's Day sale at $0.99.

App Store Link: Flower Garden ($0.99, sale)

Whac-a-Mole: Whacky Valentines from Mattel (Free)

Everybody's played a whack-a-mole game, in one form or another. It's a pretty simple formula: the mole pops up out of its hole and you whack it.  And, who doesn't like to bludgeon moles? Especially when the damned things are trying to ruin Valentine's Day!

Whac-a-Mole: Whacky Valentines is basically a Valentine-themed version of the iPhone original [App Store] which is, as such games go, a pretty solid take on the whack-a-mole formula. Amusingly, the digital backboard of the game provides the occasional (though highly simplistic) mini-game — a nice touch.

I'd go into further description of the title but…it's free, so just download it and start whacking.

App Store Link: Whac-a-Mole: Whacky Valentines (Free)

Touch Pets Dogs Valentine's Goodies Pack from ngmoco ($2.99 DLC)

Virtual pet buffs need not be left out in the cold on this day of love and merriment. Ngmoco is currently offering a Valentine's Goodies Pack as paid in-game DLC ($2.99) in Touch Pets Dogs for those that want to lavish their v-pooch with as much love as can be.

App Store Link: Touch Pets Dogs (Free)

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

Action RPGs on the App Store have been steadily improving with the release of each new game. The first, The Chronicles of Inotia, was received with mixed feelings. Later, Zenonia was greeted as a vast improvement (albeit with its own flaws) and most recently Inotia 2 stole the crown upon its release last November. Now FDG Entertainment has upped the ante once again with Across Age [App Store], an RPG that explores time travel and simultaneous management of multiple characters.

The story of Across Age is standard fare for the genre, falling cleanly into a long line of RPGs in which the goal is to save the world from an evil magician. Unlike certain other similar games on the App Store, however, the writing and translation is extremely well done, with no noticeable spelling or grammatical gaffes. These high quality production values show in the soundtrack and crisp art style as well; each environment is colorful and carries its own unique and catchy background music.

Across Age's big hook is that players control two separate characters at once, switching between them and separating them at will by touching on their icons located at the bottom of the screen. The male character, a knight named Ales, can pick up the female mage character, Ceska, and throw her to otherwise unreachable areas. This creates opportunities for fun puzzles that might require Ceska to reach a switch to open a door for Ales, or simply lead to hidden treasure.

The character separation and cooperation element works quite well to create good puzzle variation. One puzzle might require Ales to separate and engage in a simple block pushing minigame, while others could turn into a complex maze that requires the two characters to separate and help each other progress. New mechanics (like a "boat" that can be used to navigate watery environments) are introduced at a fairly consistent rate throughout the game, effectively preventing things from becoming boring and repetitive.

Across Age's other big gameplay gimmick is the ability for Ceska to time travel through the use of sparsely-located panels. This opens up plenty of possibilities, and often forces players to think creatively. In one instance, Ceska has to go back in time to drop off a wine bottle, only to return years in the future to harvest the now priceless aged wine. Special items called rebirth stones can be left along with a normal item in a magic pool located in the game's central city and returned to in the future to create special items and weapons. This system can often add special attributes to weapons and other items, and experimentation is encouraged to discover the best possible results.

Combat in Across Age might take a while to get fully acquainted with, but it works quite well after a bit of practice. Ales attacks by running directly into enemies (which looks quite stupid at first but makes sense if you think about it; why do you need hit a button to do something that can be done automatically?) and Ceska attacks with a variety of spells, usually long range attacks. Her spells can be cast by tapping the big button in the bottom right, and the game is pretty forgiving with the hit area around attacks to make up for the game's rather limiting eight-way directional movement scheme.

Boss battles might be one of the best parts of Across Age. Unlike many RPGs, which simply force players to mindlessly attack boss characters until they die, this game demands a sound strategy to earn a victory. In one instance I was faced with a giant plant monster which had to first be weakened with Ceska's recently learned fireball attack before Ales could rush in to attack in its weakened state.

Across Age does have its fair share of problems, most of which probably can't be fixed in a simple update. The equipment screen takes a fair bit of getting used to due to the small text size that makes it rather unresponsive to touch, and the game's zoomed-in camera makes some enemies lurking in the southern regions of the screen difficult to detect before running directly into them. The most glaring flaw rears its head early in the game: some areas must be revisited far too many times to progress through the story.

The lack of multiplayer might be berated by some, but since only one character can attack at once as according to the intentional design of the game, I don't think of it as a missing feature. A great combination of fun combat and good puzzle variation allows Across Age to swiftly avoid the problems that many RPGs run into, and its high production values only serve to increase the already substantial attractive nature of the game for fans of the genre. Zenonia 2 has a lot to prove if it's going to continue the trend of ever-increasingly great action RPGs being released on the App Store.

App Store Link: Across Age, $6.99

TouchArcade Rating:

Following on the heels of I Dig It Expeditions [App Store], InMotion Software gave us a look at their upcoming dual-stick top-down dungeon crawler, Catacombs. They take the familiar controls of the numerous dual-stick games, but instead of simply asking you to slay a never-ending supply of enemies, you have to make your way through the maze-like corridors of whatever evil dungeon your character found themselves in.

Along the way you will come across locked doors that must be unlocked with keys hidden inside the dungeon, as well as tons of gold and treasure. To assist you on your quest, the monsters of the dungeon randomly drop power-ups that do things like increase your movement speed, or offer different offensive bonuses.

Three classes are included: The warrior, mage, and archer. Each class plays a little differently and have their own basic attacks and special abilities. The following gameplay video shows each of the three classes going through a part of the first level of the dungeon:

Catacombs has already been submitted to Apple, and hopefully will be released sometime soon. If you like dungeon crawlers, and you like dual-stick shooters, you're going to love Catacombs.

Origin8 already has a library of good games on the App Store, including both Sentinel and Sentinel 2, two of my favorite tower defense games. They're heading in a new direction with their latest title, Robot Rampage, a seemingly endless survival game where you play as a gigantic robot armed with a super laser.

Your massive robot is controlled with a variety of touch gestures. Tapping on the side of the screen causes the robot to move in that direction, holding a finger down on the screen fires the laster in that direction. The robot can also punch and stomp by tapping on either side of the robot's torso to punch, and tapping its legs to stomp. As you destroy your surroundings, a gauge in the top left corner fills up. Once full, you can tap and hold the robot to charge up a massive attack that clears the screen.

The following trailer released by Origin8 goes over the controls and other features:

Gameplay is fairly simple, and involves little more than destroying everything in your path and continually moving right. The difficulty ramps up nicely as the forces of Earth increasingly their efforts to stop you by deploying more soldiers, tanks and other defenses. Every ten blocks you clear restores your health, and when you finally die your score is submitted to OpenFeint.

Robot Rampage is set to launch for $1.99 as soon as its approved by Apple. The graphics are just as high quality as the rest of the Origin8 games and the whole thing is dripping in awesome cheesy B-movie Sci-Fi charm. Keep an eye out for Robot Rampage in the not too distant future if you're a fan of giant robot destruction.