World of Goo is a physics based puzzle game where you must use the various goos to build a structure to reach the end point of the level, represented by a pipe that sucks the unused goos off of your tower and in to a reservoir to calculate your score. The several types of goos in game all have unique properties, and the completion of each level hinges on exploiting each goo's abilities.

World of Goo exists on the Mac and PC (there's even a Linux version) and you can buy the game on WiiWare. To celebrate the anniversary of the game's launch, developers 2D Boy announced on their blog that World of Goo is coming to the iPhone:

We have it running well on the iPhone 3GS, and with a little luck we hope to get it running smoothly on the 3G as well. Hopefully more news on this soon.

Here is the trailer for the Wii version of the game:

It's unclear right now whether this is a straight port of the original, an entirely new game, or a little of both. Either way, World of Goo is one of the best computer games I've played recently, and I highly recommend giving the demo a try. The developer's web site features a free downloadable demo, but news of the iPhone port seems to have brought their web server to its knees. If you can't access it, the demo is also available on Steam.

Update: If you want to skip the demo entirely, you can buy the full version of the computer game until the 19th for whatever you want to pay for it. If you can get the 2Dboy site to load, you can buy World of Goo for its normal price of $20, or $0.01. Whatever you feel the game is worth.

After a very long and dramatic legal battle between Mobigame and Tim Langdell over a trademark dispute over the name "Edge", the game has once again appeared on the App Store. EDGE [App Store] is a game where you control a colorful cube through a series of 3D isometric maze-like levels packed with puzzles to solve and obstacles to overcome.

Featuring both touch and accelerometer controls, EDGE requires both quick thinking and fast reactions to progress past the first few levels.

We enjoyed EDGE, and recommend picking the game up now — both because it's a great game and also in case it gets pulled again as it's unclear whether or not EDGE is here to stay. An official statement from Mobigame is said to be coming soon.

If you haven't kept up with the "Edge" dispute which has caused quite a stir on the Internet, EA recently petitioned to get the "Edge" trademark thrown out, and Langdell responded calling the petition a "desperate attempt by EA". For a complete background on the dispute, check out the summary provided by TIGSource. Needless to say, the whole situation is unfortunate, and it's sad to see such a great iPhone game caught in the legal crossfire.

App Store Link: EDGE, $4.99

I've been slowly playing through Dr. Fun Fun's Hi, How Are You [App Store] since it came out nearly two weeks ago now, completely unaware of the phenomenon that is Daniel Johnston. I originally intended on writing about this game because I hadn't seen another cell shaded platformer on the App Store. However, after doing some research on the history of Hi, How Are You's development, I got turned on to the world of Daniel Johnston and quickly became aware that this is Johnston's life of art and music distilled into a iPhone game.

The premise of Hi, How Are You follows the theme of most of Johnston's music in that you're battling the forces of Satan to find love. Playing as Jeremiah the Innocent, you will make your way through over 25 levels to remove the curse of Satan. As the game progresses, you slowly change from a frog, to a block, to a ball, and finally back to human form.

Your movement in the game is controlled using the accelerometer and the two stop signs in both lower corners of the screen instantly stops your character from moving. Initially this seemed like such an odd set of buttons to have cluttering the screen, but it didn't take long for this seemingly strange control element to really grow on me as you never need to worry about finding the exact center of where you calibrated the accelerometer to in order to stay in place.

Instead, you hold the stop button, tilt the direction you want to move, let go, and you're off. This control method allows you to navigate the different obstacles in game with ease. The camera can be panned right of left by pressing either side of the screen, and to zoom out you press both sides at once.

Completing the levels in game involves hopping over every tile, turning them green, then finding the exit. It's not that easy though, as you quickly come across all kinds of obstacles, moving platforms, and other puzzles. The bottom of the screen displays your life, along with the time, the number of tiles left to turn green, and the number of bonus tiles on the level to be turned red. While each level is timed, you can keep playing and complete each level even if you run out of time, you just won't be awarded for beating the clock.

Hi, How Are You has a soundtrack featuring several of Daniel Johnston's songs, and an art style matching Johnston's drawings. The difficulty ramps up nicely, and with each achievement you unlock a unique piece of artwork to view. I had fun playing the game, but after doing some reading on the life of Daniel Johnston, Hi, How Are You has taken on a whole new layer of awesome. Dr. Fun Fun not only created a game with a neat style that's fun to play for people who have never heard of Johnston, but also an amazing piece of fan service for those who have.

If you'd like to know more about the world of Daniel Johnston, he has his own Wikipedia article, and his life is detailed in the 2005 documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston which is available on iTunes along with all of his music and several music videos.

Hi, How Are You is a fun platform puzzle game with a unique art style. If you're not a fan of Daniel Johnston, playing through this game might just make you become one.

App Store Link: Hi, How Are You, $2.99

Here are some games that have come out recently that are worth a look, but with all the excitement this week between the Eliminate and TouchPets Dogs previews and the 360iDev Game Jam they sort of fell between the cracks of front page coverage.

Bloons Tower Defense

Last month we posted an early trailer for Bloons Tower Defense [$2.99], an iPhone port of the Bloons spinoff tower defense flash games, all playable on the Ninja Kiwi site. Bloons [99¢ / Free] was a wildly popular game on the App Store, and if the positive reactions in our forums are any indication, Bloons Tower Defense may be another hit.

Bloons Tower Defense comes with 50 levels over 15 different tracks with multiple difficulty levels and unlockable medals for each. The game has the same touch controls of other tower defense games on the platform, along with oodles of different towers, upgrades, and tons of balloons for your monkeys to pop.

Mr. Mahjong Touch

FDG Entertainment, most famously known for Parachute Panic [99¢ / Free] and Bobby Carrot [$3.99] recently released Mr. Mahjong Touch [$4.99] based on the popular Mr. Mahjong series of mobile games.

Mr. Mahjong Touch features 100 layouts, 4 tilesets, tons of unlockables, and even a shop system where you can buy power ups. Big Albie posted a review of the game on our forums, and according to him, the game is "easily one of the best mahjong games on the platform."

Galcon Labs

Galcon Labs [99¢] is an evolution on the original Galcon [$2.99 / Free], providing the same basic gameplay with four new game modes not found in the original.

• Billiards – The the planets that make up the battlefield are in constant motion.
• Stealth – Enemy ships are only briefly visible after launching from a planet.
• Crash – Ships collide with each other, so instead of just going after planets you can run in to the enemy to win.
• Assassin – Players start with assigned planetary targets, the first player to capture their targets wins.

Reactions on our forums have been mixed as some people feel there hasn't been enough change to justify an entirely new game, while fans of the original are greatly enjoying Galcon Labs. If you haven't played a Galcon game, I recommend trying Galcon Lite.

Toy Bot Mini Missions

IUGO seems to be pumping out additions to the Toy Bot series like crazy lately. Toy Bot Mini Missions [$3.99] is based in the Toy Bot universe and comes packed with 100 mini games and 12 unlockable playable characters. These ultrashort levels are a bit of a departure from the other Toy Bot games which feature an extended level structure.

Fans of the Toy Bot series may want to consider Mini Missions, but if you're new to the Toy Bot world, you might want to try some of the other games or even the free version first. Take your pick of the seven different Toy Bot games on the IUGO App Store listing.

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.

From the makers of Dizzy Bee and Bed Bugs comes Flipside [$2.99], a remarkably fun and original matching game.

Flipside presents you with a board of two-sided tiles. Each tile has a shape on each side (star, heart, diamond, circle, and X). Your goal is to match 3 or more tiles of the same shape.

It all seems pretty straight-forward until you realize you get penalized if you match tiles on the back-side of the tiles. Even more mind-blowing is that in versus mode, your opponent is playing on the back-side of your board, and you are each trying to get matches on your respective sides.

Flipside offers 4 different game modes including Survival, Puzzle, Vs. Com and Peer-to-Peer. Survival offers 20 levels of progressively faster paced gameplay where you try to prevent the screen from overflowing by matching as fast as you can. In this mode, back-side matches result in a shower of penalty tiles that brings the board closer to filling. Survival mode starts quite slow but starts ramping up around level 8. Fortunately, the game allows you to start at any previously unlocked level, so you can get straight away into the action again. Meanwhile, Puzzle mode offers a familiar challenge of trying to clear all the blocks from pre-set boards by strategically flipping the correct pieces to create front-side matches.

The game, however, really shines in Vs. mode. The game offers 5 different AI opponents at 5 different difficulties that can be played in a set of rounds. Each player is given a match meter which grows as you make more matches. The first player to fill their meter, wins the round.

Remember, you are playing on the same board of tiles, just on different sides, so every move affects the other player. If you are fortunate enough to have a friend with an iPhone, you can play against them head to head over Bluetooth.

The main deficiency in the game is the lack of any high score mechanism or even what one might consider a more traditional "endless" mode. The game progress is primarily determined by the progressively harder unlockable levels and there appears to be no high score records, either local or global. As well, the game does not save state when you quit so you'll lose progress if you do.

For a brand new puzzle game, the mechanic works remarkably well. Aside from the silhouettes of the back-side shapes, each tile is also conveniently color coded to also reflect the back-side shape. I found that it took very little time to become comfortable with scanning the titles.

Flipside is a fresh new matching concept that has been incredibly well executed, however, the lack of high score record keeping and non-traditional level progression may be an issue for some.

App Store Link: Flipside, $2.99

Viacheslav Klimov's Alien Glyphs [$0.99] is an interesting new perception/matching game that has you exercising your mind in a surprisingly pressure-filled scenario. This game definitely carries a "how hard could this be?" vibe that is quickly dismissed as you start playing.

The game begins with a board of symbols. At set intervals, a new symbol slides into the top of the screen and your job is to match it with one of the symbols found on the board. Tap off a symbol and the top symbol is eliminated. Another symbol takes its place and so on. If you take too long to match up the symbol, however, the timer will run out and another symbol will appear. Take even longer and the row of symbols will fill eventually up and you lose a life. Three levels of difficulty (Easy, Medium, and Hard) should provide plenty of challenge.

Alien Glyphs tries to spice it up with Power-Ups, Power-Downs, that can be triggered or deactivated by matching quickly enough. However, I found myself too busy looking for matches to really register their presence. The game also offers multiple different skins for the glyphs if the neon red isn't to your liking.

The developer video shows the game in action:

While the game does carry a global high score list, a few factors might affect the value of those scores. Through no real fault of the game, itself, it turns out that high-score cheating is quite easy. Even having just two people playing at once on the same iPhone would give you an enormous advantage.

The other factor is a design decision by the developer. The starting board for each game is not randomized by default. They found that randomly changing the board for each game made the game too difficult. As a result, they have 100 distinct starting sets that can be chosen either manually (or at random, if you prefer). This gives you a chance to keep practicing on the same set over time. This doesn't actually make the as easy as it sounds as different factors can affect the positions of the glyphs in the course of a game.

As a result, the real strength of the game is the individual mental challenge it presents in what is a seemingly simple task. The overall production value of the game and music also make it stand out.

App Store Link: Alien Glyphs, $0.99

If there's one genre on the App Store that is completely saturated, it would have to be matching puzzle games. With so many similarities between most of these games as developers all try to provide their "unique twist" on the Bejeweled formula, it's not every day that we come across a game that is actually different enough to be worth mentioning. SnakeHead Software came up with a combination of gameplay elements distilled in to the matching format we're all familiar with that actually works quite well.

In Texas Tea [App Store], instead of matching a series of similar shapes together, you have to find matching sets of dice, but there's more to it than that. You can just play it like a regular matching game and match identical dice in a straight line up or down, but to really boost your score you need to look for poker hands within the dice.

One pair is the most basic match, followed by two pair, then three of a kind. Following that, you can find dice matching a full house, straight, four of a kind, or even a straight flush. Looking for these poker hands made of dice adds a deeper level of game board analysis and planning ahead than you have in most matching games.

The levels in game are laid out as some kind of road trip across Texas from El Paso to Austin. As you progress through the game, the different levels will have game boards with areas that are blocked out (seen below), hindering your matching capabilities. Completing a level involves turning the game board from green to black, within the time limit. This is accomplished by matching dice in each square, as every time a dice is cleared from the game board its square turns black.

If you enjoy these kinds of matching games, Texas Tea is worth a try. I've had fun playing it so far, and once you get over the initial hump of learning to scan the game board for poker hands, the game turns out to have much more depth to it than your average match 3.

App Store Link: Texas Tea, 99¢

We've known for quite some time now that a Lumines port for the iPhone was in the works, and with the flurry of releases lately it likely slipped to the back of everyone's mind. Tonight LUMINES – Touch Fusion [App Store] appeared for download along with an associated lite version, and so far the reaction in our forums has been all over the place.

The game is completely Lumines, with everything from flashy visual flare to the signature Lumines soundtrack. If you're unfamilar with the series, here are the basics:

Lumines is a color matching block dropping puzzle game. Squares made of four smaller blocks appear on screen that can be rotated and then moved in to place on the game board. A line moves from left to right across the screen synchronized to the music. When this line passes over groups of four or more matched blocks, those blocks disappear.

As the game progresses, the line moves faster and faster. Getting a high score hinges heavily on your ability to set up massive matched groupings of blocks between each pass of the line moving across the screen to clear them. Lumines is played with different unlockable "skins" that change the appearance of the board and the soundtrack.

Video by AppBank
[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

The problem with the iPhone port of Lumines, predictably, are the controls. Lumines is a fast paced game that obviously relies heavily on quick rotation and accurate positioning of the blocks to survive for very long. The control scheme of the iPhone port involves swiping to move blocks and tapping to rotate them. This sounds good on paper, but in practice the game can rarely determine what your intentions are unless you play much slower with much more deliberate on-screen gestures than you normally would.

In my time with the game, I've started to get used to the controls, but I'm still nowhere near the level of speed and precision I had moving blocks around in the PSP version of the game. Meanwhile, many others are finding the game unplayable in its current form. Aside from the controls, another point of contention on our forums is the inclusion of DLC skin packs that can be purchased for $1.99. Currently there is only one additional DLC pack available, and here is a video of the skins in the "Comic Pack":

Video by AppBank
[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

If you've never played a Lumines game before, give the lite a try just because the mechanics of the game are worth experiencing. But even if you're a fan of the game series, I'd still recommend sticking with the lite first to test out the controls.

App Store Links:

• LUMINES – Touch Fusion, $2.99
• LUMINES – Touch Fusion Lite, Free

Rake In Grass, the developers behind Archibald's Adventure and Westbang, recently released a new level-based puzzler called Crystal Cave Classic for the iPhone.

The game is reminiscent of Boulder Dash, requiring you to dig through dirt to dislodge boulders while collecting all the crystals. The game, however, also introduces a number of additional elements that take it beyond Boulder Dash in many ways. Aside from the usual boulders, enemies, and crystals, there are breakable walls, encased crystals, acid, glass boxes, flip tiles and more.

Crystal Cave Classic delivers over 170 levels of play with a number of control options. The default controls, which I felt worked well, are a simple virtual d-pad. The game also allows you to also use swipe controls or tapping on the top/bottom/left/right areas of the screens for movement. In practice, however, I had some issues with accidental movements using the swipe controls, so stuck with the d-pad.

Here's the game in action:

The initial 15 levels serve as an in-game tutorial introducing you to the various elements in the game. The game offers challenging play even with amongst some of the early levels. Like many similar puzzle games, such as Bobby Carrot, there is a bit of trial and error involved in figuring out how the pieces fit together. Levels are skippable, and if you are one to easily get frustrated with challenges, the developer has gone to the trouble of compiling video solutions to all the levels of the game.

The game was simultaneously released for iPhone, Mac and PC, so there are some elements of the game that don't feel entirely natural on the iPhone. You'll likely find yourself trying to pinch zoom and pan a level, but the game instead offers zoom in and out buttons on the bottom left of the screen. A relatively minor issue, but one you will likely encounter. Meanwhile, Mac and PC demos can be downloaded as well, which will give you an accurate sampling of the iPhone game.

Overall, the game offers a solid level-based puzzle game with over 170 levels that should keep you occupied for a long time.

App Store Link: Crystal Cave Classic, $3.99