It seems like an eternity since King Cashing [$1.99] came out of no where in 2011. Combining a strong slot-machine battle system with a loose RPG system, King Cashing was a little rough around the edges from a presentation standpoint but absolutely nailed its combat mechanics, making it a sleeper hit amongst our forums. That same mechanic returns excellently preserved in King Cashing 2. With a refined leveling system, new characters, a wealth of weapons and items and a story told with an excellent visual novel style, King Cashing 2 addresses every issue I had with the original, making it a game that begs to be played.

If you're unfamiliar with how an RPG with a slot-machine battle system works, I'd encourage you to check out our review of the original King Cashing. For everyone else, the same combat system that we loved before makes a return with some minor improvements. Players still participate in battles with cherries as the currency of choice for spinning the reels with the goal being to match up characters and weapons against enemies to cause damage. One new twist is the ability to eventually purchase a power-up that will a selected reel for one turn during a battle. Otherwise King Cashing 2 focuses less on innovation and more on simply adding to an already excellent system.

With only three character types and corresponding weapons, simplicity was the name of the game in the original King Cashing. King Cashing 2 looks to up the ante with a lot more variety. Players eventually unlock 7 characters, each with their own preferred weapons and critical bonuses. Weapons also continue the hit/damage trend of the previous game, meaning that the stronger the weapons is the lower its hit attribute is (meaning the less likely it'll show up on a slot reel).

Some of the new weapons and characters are also pretty unique, such as the Necromancer, a relatively weak character that converts a 'Miss' reel into a 'Human' weapon with each hit. Another interesting addition is the potion weapon class which offers a wide variety of effects ranging from damage-over-time poison to armor damage, to enemy 'bait' (which temporarily adds more enemies to the reel). There's also a wealth of new secondary bonus items which can be equipped to modify the slots even further. These new additions and options lead to a lot more different ways to play the game and go a long way towards formulating new strategies, especially as later enemies start to become resistant (and immune!) to more and more weapons.

The most impressive improvement that Productions Multimage has made in King Cashing 2 is in its visual style and narrative technique. Taking on an entirely different theme than its predecessor, King Cashing 2 employs a slick graphic novel style that does a great job of telling its tale. It also doesn't hurt that everything simply looks amazing, with the game taking full advantage of retina visuals which are pretty essential for any game attempting to emulate comic-book visuals. King Cashing 2's story, meanwhile, is infinitely better than the original, telling a tale of an undead king awoken from his slumber and searching for gold. One minor complaint is the lack of full iPhone 5 support (borders fill out the extra space on the elongated device), but the game still looks great nonetheless.

Most importantly, like its predecessor, King Cashing 2 is simply fun to play. Battles are streamlined and offer players the ability to play the game as one of chance or to focus on memorizing and individually stopping reels. Incredibly difficult enemies return as 'side quests' that offer quite a challenge. Achievements, ranking systems for each battle, and leaderboards that track how fast you complete 'issues' all return, adding some extra replayability. While the story itself is a bit short, the system in place makes it easy to add new 'Issues' with a future already being promised.

As I mentioned in the review for King Cashing, a slots-based RPG is certainly not for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be folks that can't (or won't) grasp the unique battle system. However, for folks that can, King Cashing 2 is the definitive title for the genre. Where the original at times felt like a nicely implemented tech demo, King Cashing 2 is an excellent game in its own right, improving on nearly every facet over the original and well worth checking out.

TouchArcade Rating:

"Cautiously optimistic" could not better describe how I'm feeling about EA's upcoming Ultima Forever. As I mentioned before, Ultima Online is responsible for some of my absolute best gaming memories, and the thought of even vaguely replicating that on my phone is almost too awesome to imagine. Ultima Forever seems to be modernized quite a bit from the old UO days, featuring a quest and party system along with instanced dungeons to crawl though.

The initial setup seems to be curing the world of a nasty plague called the "Black Weep" which is spreading across the land. This time Lady British has called upon adventurers to save the world. Check out the trailer to see the game in action:

Word on the street is that Ultima creator Richard Garriott doesn't have anything to do with Ultima Forever, which may be slightly disappointing to fans of the series... But, he's busy doing things like traveling to space, so it shouldn't be all that surprising.

Ultima Forever is scheduled for a spring release, and judging how EA typically handles promoting their games with trailers and things like that I'd hazard a guess that we're going to be seeing this game sooner rather than later.

In case you didn't know, Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes creator NimbleBit has been working on a new game, as studios generally do after they wrap up super successful projects. It's called NimbleQuest, and it's probably not the game you'd figure would be the Next Big Thing from a studio that has basically mastered simulation games.

In brief, NimbleQuest is Snake, except on steroids. In the game, you control a conga line of fantasy adventurers, and, with a combination of ranged and melee attacks, you battle it out across a variety of settings against archers, skeletons, bats, and a whole lot more. Imagine if your old-school, traditional Snake snake could somehow attack incoming enemy snakes and you've got the picture. That's not quite Tiny Tower 2, right?

If you don't have the picture, we've got some moving ones below that'll definitely help you get your head around what NimbleQuest is all about. Before you hit play, we want to note that this is FOOTAGE FROM A GAME IN BETA. You'll see a few points where the video out functionality stumbles specifically, which is something we're sure will be addressed when the game is actually a thing that everyone can play. In other words, don't worry.

Anyway, NimbleQuest should be out soon, if the stability and polish of this beta are saying anything. Also, did you hear that music? That's Whitaker Trebella of Polymer [$2.99] fame. Cool tunes, bro! In fact, high-fives all around; this game is rad. Oh, and another super-sweet thing about NimbleQuest is you can actually upload game replays to the internet. Check out what people have been uploading here to get a look at folks who are way better at video games than we are.

The Sword & Poker games are ancient by today's standard, but, man, we couldn't get enough of them back in 2010. We reviewed both the first and the second game three years ago, but here's the gist of the game(s)- Imagine a game dripping with RPG trimmings, but all of your battles are played on a grid of cards where you have to make poker hands in order to attack monsters and crawl through dungeons.

It's one of those games that sounds totally crazy, but sucks you in and quickly becomes impossible to put down. It's debatable whether the first or the second is the better of the two, but here's what I recommend you do: Download the lite version of either or both games immediately, give it five minutes. If it clicks to you, grab 'em both. The Sword & Poker games have had sort of a mysterious life on the App Store, randomly disappearing then re-appearing like some kind of creepy carnival.

Keep in mind, these are every bit games from 2010. This means no iPhone 5 widescreen graphics, no multitasking support, and hell, it doesn't even seem to have retina display assets. None of this makes Sword & Poker any less fun.

I've played and enjoyed a lot of role playing games over the years, but one genre I could never quite get into was the first-person dungeon crawler. Typically very non-linear and lacking the conveniences of modern-day RPGs in terms of tutorials and guidance, new dungeon crawlers always felt like titles that only appealed to gamers that were already fans. However, QuestLord [$1.99] doesn't elicit that feeling of being immediately overwhelmed that I seem to encounter with other dungeon crawlers. In fact, I'd argue that QuestLord's simplicity in both scope and gameplay, while probably a turnoff to genre veterans, makes it a great title for folks looking to get into the mix.

If you've never played a dungeon crawler, QuestLord is a first-person turn-based RPG with an emphasis on exploration. Players initially make a character by choosing from one of three races, each with different stats. In addition, depending on your selection, you're placed in a different location within the world to start. Regardless of where you start, you're immediately given the role of QuestLord and told to travel the world providing assistance to the populace of the Shattered Realm.

As you might imagine, a large portion of QuestLord's content centers around the various quests assigned by the NPCs. From the first task given, the quests do a good job of encouraging exploration and placing players near other quest givers as well as providing ample award for completion. However, the actual objectives definitely lack variety and mainly revolve around killing certain enemies once you reach a location. I also wdould have liked more in terms of story narration and scope as QuestLord's writing is somewhat weak.

Based on the above, you'd think QuestLord wouldn't have much to offer but that's not really the case. The game's emphasis on simplicity goes a long way towards making what it does offer approachable. Stats are divided into three attributes which boil down to attack, defense, and spell points and can be increased with each level-up. Meanwhile, the spell system is based on discovering new spells in the world, a nice incentive to explore every map. In addition, QuestLord also features a robust item system, with plenty of slots and equipment to find. I also appreciated the game's auto-map feature which not only shows the player's location in the world, but also within each individual map (some magical items will even instantly reveal said maps for you if for some reason you don't want to explore).

This all leads to a game that's very manageable in terms of quests, world-size and objectives. Without having to worry about some of the traditionally more complicated pieces of dungeon crawlers, I found it enjoyable to simply explore the world and see what I could discover. It sounds like a small thing, but I think this, combined with the relatively easy difficulty went a long way towards making QuestLord approachable.

While it seems to be a calling card for the genre, one area that I really didn't enjoy was QuestLord's visual style. While I do realize that old-school graphics are part of the charm with most dungeon crawlers, the visuals in QuestLord are a little too classic, with retro graphics that are highly pixelated and a menu/item system and control buttons that just don't look too good. Does it detract much from the experience? Probably not, but it's still something that needs to be mentioned.

Still, I give QuestLord a lot of credit for properly introducing me to a genre that I never really could get into. With a streamlined attribute and quest system, there's not a lot of depth that is traditionally found in other titles. However, it's for this exact reason that I think it succeeds for newbies like me. Assuming you're looking to give dungeon crawlers a try, I'd definitely recommend QuestLord as an introductory taste.

TouchArcade Rating:

Oh, man, you guys needed to see QUEST LORD [$1.99], like, yesterday. It's a love letter to old-school, first-person dungeon crawlers that absolutely nails the look, the feel, and the trippy dungeon design sensibility of PC RPGs of yore. It also feels awesome on a phone, as the movement and combat mechanics have been tastefully engineered with touch-screens and gestures in mind. It's a blast, in other words.

In the game, you'll be tasked as either an elf, human, or dwarf with saving the world from a "great evil." In practice, this great task breaks down into searching hours and hours worth of catacombs and forests and mountain passes filled with treasure, secrets, and monsters. Earlier this afternoon, Eli and I spent around 20 minutes in the game in the hope of giving you a taste of all this game has going on.

There's a great story -- perhaps apocryphal -- about Will Wright designing SimCity to reflect his political beliefs. Specifically, the thinking is that Wright designed the trains and buses in that game to run smoothly and efficiently to reflect his own views about the importance of public transportation. I'm not sure how true that is, but it's a great illustration that the games we play -- and how we play them -- says something about us.

Kairosoft's latest, lightweight city management sim Beastie Bay [Free], for example, let me build my own kind of environmentalist utopia. Sure, I could probably attract more tourists (and therefore more money) by building roads through my island, but I'd rather have the beaches and wooded hills and caves -- and the fish, bears, and mecha-chimpanzees that live in them. I have plenty of food and lumber -- resources you'll need for everything from researching electricity to building nests to upgrading weapons -- and my upkeep costs are low enough that I'm not forced to expand faster than I want to. I appreciate that Beastie Bay is flexible enough to allow me that freedom.

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Kairosoft is back with a new game on the App Store, and it appears as though the studio is testing the free-to-play model with it. Beastie Bay [Free], as the new game is called, is a cartoony RPG that plays pretty similarly to Pokemon. Its twist is that it's also a city simulation game that tasks you with building structures to support your pocket monster fighting and collecting habit.

To our knowledge, this is the first time Kairosoft has launched a free game on the App Store. At this price, it appears you get access to the entire game. The drawback being you've got to look at ads. With a $4.99 IAP, however, you can remove the ads -- and enable landscape mode.

This is an interesting approach, as Beastie Bay will presumably get in a lot more hands than any other Kairosoft title ever has before. And the model appears to be for users, as there's no commitment upfront if you discover that the simulation isn't exactly clicking with you.

We'll be all over this one in the coming days, so stay tuned for a review.

Magicka proper is Paradox Interactive's most downloaded title to date. If you haven't heard of it, you can check out the web site, which also conveniently features about a million different places you can download it from ranging from Steam to services I didn't even know existed. It's a multiplayer co-op RPG of sorts, and in the not too distant future, will be making the jump to mobile devices in the form of Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet.

Where Magicka "proper" has a bit more serious of an art style and a 3D isometric view, Wizards of the Square Tablet mixes thing up a bit with a almost Castle Crashers-like cartoony vibe and gameplay that could be summed up as Battleheart with multiplayer and friendly fire. Tapping on the screen moves your dude around, and tapping on enemies is how you cast spells. Much like Battleheart, things get hectic quickly as enemies invade from both sides of the screen.

In the world of Magicka, you cast spells by combining elements. For instance, tapping fire, then earth, and your dude hurls a flaming boulder wherever you tap. Life heals you or an ally, and combining life with lightning can jolt someone back to life. The system of spells is just ridiculously complex, especially once you figure out that you can combine up to any four of the seven elements which makes for a ton of possibilities. Discovering new spells is super cool as you're mashing elements, and in the brief time I had with the game I was already discovering new tricks just through trial and error in mixing and matching elements.

You can play the game single player, but it truly shines in the four player cooperative mode. I mentioned how hectic the game is when playing by yourself, but when you add three more people into the mix, it's crazy- Especially so when you consider that most (if not all) of the spells in game have a different blast radius, and everything you cast hits both enemies and your teammates. The mayhem that ensues is hilarious, as the more powerful spells seem to have massive effective radiuses, so while you're spewing your volley of fire and brimstone across half the screen, you're also probably hitting half your team as well.

Someone almost always is dead, or dying, and playing quickly turns into a battle of not getting killed by your teammates almost as much (if not more so) than not getting killed by enemy monsters. It's not just all silly team kills though, as Magicka actually has a ton of depth via a rock, paper, scissors system of spell damage and debuffs. For instance, an enemy (or player) who is wet will take more damage from electrical spells. So, a viable tactic would be to have one player focusing on spells that involve the water element to get everything wet while the rest of the party goes to town electrocuting everything with lightning spells.

The catch, however, once again is that while you're spraying water everywhere chances are your character will also be wet, and being electrified as well. Cleverly, you "dry" yourself by casting a quick fire spell targeting your wizard. Levels range from typical side scrolling and kill everything arrangements, and there's also boss fights which each seem to have their own unique gimmick to deal with. There's an in-game shop filled with equipment to unlock, each which have various hilarious side effects such as a staff that really soups up your spells, but since it's a spent nuclear fuel rod, you take constant unavoidable damage while holding it.

Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet is "coming soon," and I'm super excited to sit around and play it with my friends. The multiplayer experience almost reminded me of Space Team [Free] in a way, as while success involves teamwork, gameplay will inevitably just devolve into ridiculous bouts of laughter as everyone yells at everyone else regarding which spells to use, who needs heals, and the almost guaranteed moment your party decides to just ignore enemies and kill each other.

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If you want to see what the game looks like in motion, check out the following video that Paradox captured for us. Without proper context it's a little difficult to tell what's going on as without all the subsequent shouting Magicka is just an explosion of numbers and spell effects. We'll do a proper TA Plays of the game as soon as we can get our hands on a more finished version of it.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition [$9.99 (HD)] is a faithful port of the classic AD&D computer game, and that in itself is an impressive thing.  Overhaul Games put a lot of work into this one, massaging the antique codebase, agonizing over the implementation, adding a new tutorial and arena-brawling in the Black Pits.

Fans of the original Baldur's Gate have been drooling over this one since it was announced, and we were pretty jazzed as well. When the game hit, players with anything older than a 3rd generation iPad had problems that varied from minor irritations to unplayable crashiness, but the new patch seems to have fixed those issues for nearly all iPad 2 / Mini users, and greatly impoved original iPad performance (results still vary).

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TouchArcade Rating:

Oh, neat: the first two Final Fantasy games are both on sale for the rest of the week in celebration of new language releases. Final Fantasy I [$8.99], which now includes Korean, Thai, and Indonesian language support, has been slashed to $3.99. Final Fantasy II [$8.99], which now includes Korean language support, is also available at $3.99. Both games are typically priced at $8.99, so you'll be saving a couple of hard-earned bones here, no problem.

• Final Fantasy I - $8.99 -> $3.99
• Final Fantasy II - $8.99 -> $3.99

While definitely old, both of these games are worth your time if you've got an itch that only an ancient JRPG can scratch. That's a pretty specific itch, though, so maybe you should get that checked out, yeah?

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes [$4.99] is one of those games I just can't get enough of. I've picked it up on three different platforms so far, and through them all there's been one constant: it offers an excellent blend of strategy, puzzles and roleplaying. It's more than worth playing, be it on PSN or XBLA, on Nintendo DS, or on Steam. iPad, too—aside from a few big bugs. iPhone, on the other hand? Not so much. Asynchronous multiplayer is a wonderful addition, but it comes at a cost.

Clash of Heroes takes a touch too much squinting on the small screen, but I could live with that if it weren't for the frustrating controls. This is a game that's likely to make most people feel uncomfortably fat fingered. You can zoom in on the action, which helps, but then you can't see the enemy team. The iPad, even the Mini, fares so much better it may as well be a different game. In fact, it probably ought to be - the iPhone version would benefit from a complete overhaul.

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It's that time of week again when the deluge of new releases finally land on the US App Store. It looks like a pretty decent week based on what's in our weekly Coming Tonight post, and all those games are now available with the links provided there. As we usually do, we're highlighting what is the most noteworthy release of the bunch and this week that game is Might & Magic Clash of Heroes [$4.99].

Clash of Heroes is a match-3 RPG hybrid in the loosest sense, and is wrapped in a massive single-player story-driven campaign. Typical RPG tropes are at play as you follow along with a ragtag group of young heroes as they try to save the world from certain doom.

Battles are centered around the matching style gameplay, and as we've talked about previously in our preview coverage of Clash of Heroes, this is the game's biggest strength. There are layers upon layers of depth to the fight strategies and mechanics, and while the story and presentation are key components if Clash of Heroes was nothing but battling I wouldn't complain one bit.

That's sort of what the multiplayer is there for, though. You can play against AI opponents, battle real-life friends locally, or take on the competition online in asynchronous bouts. The single-player campaign in Clash of Heroes should keep you busy for quite a long time, but the multiplayer options are what really give it long-term legs.

Might & Magic Clash of Heroes originally launched as a Nintendo DS title back in 2009, and was re-released and enhanced in HD for home consoles in 2011. The iOS game is based on the HD release, and because of that the file is nearly a full 2 gigs, so just a heads up. Other than that it appears to be a fairly decent touchscreen translation of an absolutely phenomenal original game, so check out our forums for more early impressions and watch this space for more on Clash of Heroes in the near future.

When we first heard that Square Enix would be releasing a new retro-based Final Fantasy, I was excited to see if we'd end up with another adventure similar to Final Fantasy: Dimensions [Free]. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy: All the Bravest [$3.99] is as far away from such a title as you  can possibly imagine. Focusing entirely on simplified battles, Final Fantasy: ATB is less of a game and more of a blatant attempt to extort cash from a weary fan base for a brief glimpse of nostalgia.

You'll find no story (other than a generic intro narrative screen), character development or meaningful interaction in All The Bravest. Instead, players bounce from stage to stage set in one-screen locations vaguely reminiscent of overworld locations across various Final Fantasy games. Each stage typically consists of several rounds of enemies also extracted from a wide range of previous games in the series. Players battle those enemies, earn experience, gain party level-ups and also earn gil, although there are no gil-based shops to speak of. While this description alone feels suspect for a Final Fantasy, this is only the tip of the iceberg for ATB's troubles.

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So, Final Fantasy: All the Bravest is indeed an actual video game, and it'll hit tonight as international releases continue to worm their way across the globe. In brief, it's a frantic, distilled, and "mobilized" take on the series that eschews pillars like exploration and dungeon crawling and even dialogue in favor of focusing purely on the series' combat and equipment mechanics and systems.

In the game, you can control up to 30 different classical Final Fantasy heroes across series of fights against classical villains. To attack, you tap on a character or, as we've discovered, just swipe up and down on the screen to activate all of them. After each attack, characters are smacked with a cool down timer, which keeps them from being able to attack for a few seconds.

Every enemy kills with one hit, regardless if it's just a basic Final Fantasy goblin or one of the horseman of the apocalypse. In addition to being flimsy, heroes are one note: they attack, that's it. You can't activate special skills, you can't target enemies, and they can't buff each other.

Boil it down, and the strategy revolves around raw numbers. The design reflects that. As you level up, you gain the ability to take more characters into battle. When you find a weapon, it's magically auto-equipped to every character of that can use it. Also, you can recruit new hero types on a regular basis, expanding your roster.

There's an emphasis on speed, too. Get slack with attacks, and enemies will shred you. A weird method we've been using is a constant circular swipe, as it'll activate every hero as soon as his or her timer refills. Pushing the bar further, every three hours you'll be able to activate a "Fever" attack that nukes your cool downs and lets you go nuts for a short, but effective, length of time.

If you haven't caught on, this definitely isn't the Final Fantasy you know, but there's a lot of the series' touches present. The presentation is old-school Final Fantasy. The enemies and heroes are, too. The simple "save the world" narrative hooks are all present and accounted for, as well as the late title card.

There's some mobile sensibility thrown in for good measure. When a character goes down, a cool down for a replacement starts. At any point, even if you lose your entire party, you can use an hourglass to replace every member. You can buy these in packs of three, if you're into that sort of thing. Also, you can buy classic named heroes via IAP and buy new arenas set in places from old games. Final Fantasy 7's Midgar is one, for example.

Watch the video to see if it clicks. We're still kinda chewing on ATB as a whole, so we don't have a firm opinion on if it's good or not and why. But we do think the game is an interesting one, especially if you've been riding on the Final Fantasy train since the start. There's a lot of like here.