It's Monday, we're all back in our respective homes, and have just posted the remainder of the GDC straggler stories. PAX East and GDC were both insanely busy this year, so much so that we found ourselves wondering if we were actually posting too much event coverage. Regardless, good times were had by all, and like every year, it was awesome to see both familiar faces as well as meeting all sorts of new people at GDC. I've said before, and I'll say it again, if you're involved in game development in any way, GDC is an event you need to get to. GDC 2014 will take place from Monday, March 17 to Friday, March 21, 2014... So plan accordingly!

PAX East kicked off with a bang as Blizzard announced Hearthstone, a cross platform collectable card game. I got to spend a little time with it, and while I can't really speak to the depth and strategy involved without getting deeper into the game, the production values seemed out of this world.

Word of a few game releases also came from the PAX expo floor. Ms. Splosion Man got dated, and details leaked on a iOS port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Oh, and Ms. Splosion Man was even released while we were at GDC. As an aside, I spent the whole plane ride back to Chicago playing it.

I got a quick look at Magic 2014 at the Wizards of the Coast booth, although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least vaguely disappointed with how close to 2013 it is. New cards, sure, but as a long-time Magic player I wish there was more refinements to some minor things that'd vastly improve gameplay for familiar players. Following that, I stumbled across the developers of Organ Trail [$2.99] who were excited to show off a teaser for their upcoming Wizards & Warp Drives, a D&D-style shooter-ish spin on FTL.

We recorded our podcast with me chiming in from Boston, then I quickly hopped on a plane for San Francisco where GDC started. This year we experimented with 100% video coverage, and I think it went really well. The first game we saw was Snow Siege by Milkbag Games which was a crazy mash-up of tower defense, card collecting, and Tetris. From there, Kepa came by to show us Wayward, the entirely randomized roguelike spiritual successor to Mage Gauntlet [$2.99]. I'm particularly excited for this game.

We spent some time with Cubemen 2, and if you liked the original Cubemen [$0.99 (HD)] you're going to be in for a treat as the theme of the sequel definitely seems to be "even more and even better." If you're into ragdoll punishment, the next Stair Dismount is totally going to be your thing. I mean, punishing your dude in Stair Dismount [Free] was great, so it'd stand to reason that doing anything to that formula is going to be even more fun.

Fans of Knights of Pen & Paper [$2.99] were in for a treat with this GDC as a new update was revealed with all sorts of cool new features. Also, while iMech Online has been in development for ages, it definitely looks like it's getting way closer to release with our hands-on where the developers seem confident that we'll see the game in the wild next month. Oh, and while Magic 2014 and Hearthstone might've been overshadowing PAX East, the talk of the collectable card town at GDC definitely was GRL Games' Rocket Patrol. Oh, and while we don't typically cover kid-centric stuff, Hakitzu is definitely worth a look as it's a puzzle game that actually teaches you how to code.

I've been really stoked for any news on the release of the upcoming Leisure Suit Larry remake, and we got an extensive hands-on at GDC. CEO and Larry enthusiast Paul Trowe walked us through the game, which admittedly might be a little less than work safe in our video. (And as an aside, if Larry is up your alley, take a look at the just-released iOS port of Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold.)

I was impressed with the demo we saw of Third Eye Crime, as the Spymouse [Free] style gameplay melded incredible well with a noir-theme. Speaking of games with cool atmosphere, Tengami knocked it out of the park with a puzzle adventure game that's actually set in a pop up book. It's really clever how all the interactions both look and feel. Additionally, while the dual stick shooter aisle of the App Store has been a little defunct as of late, we were happy to see some new contenders such as Annihilate which definitely gave us some Geometry Wars vibes.

Las Vegas will be joining the ranks of other iOS board games, which is an always welcome sight with how well they work on touch platforms. From there in our rapid-fire meeting schedule we hopped about as far as you can get from board games to the platformer genre with the sequel to Trace [Free], aptly named Trace 2. Switching gears with something that feels a bit more natural on the touch screen we spent loads of time with Halfbrick's upcoming Fish Out of Water, which puts you in charge of flinging fish for a set of picky judges ready to rate you on your performance. I spent the whole week insisting the game needs more sparkles.

I'm really stoked for the above Breach & Clear, which Call of Duty's Robert Bowling gave us a full walkthrough of. I think this game will be a hit, although it remains to be seen just how well (or poorly) the free to play implementation will be. A similar hardcore-ish title that we saw next was Dead Squared which is a clever combination of roguelikes and first person shooters. ...And again, the variety we see at GDC is crazy as just after getting involved in a rogue-like, Brad from Be-Rad Entertainment was standing there waiting to show us AnonA, a game built at a NASA game jam with a gameplay mechanic that hinges on 3D printing.

Oh, and if you, like me, have been wondering what in the world happened to Drifter after they got all that money on Kickstarter... Well, the game has come out of hiding. It looks awesome, and I totally can't wait to play it. We got a fairly extensive walkthrough, take a look:

Be sure to take a look at the video for DeckWar. It's a pretty crazy game that I guess you'd describe as a CCG, but the way to cards link to the gameplay seems really unique. On the subject of unique games, there was also Vitamin Z, which is a fixed position shooter... Except you're shooting fruits and vegetables. From there we hopped over to Stellar Wars, which takes Liv Games' saga of sidescrolling battlers to space. Legendary Wars [$1.99] was great, and if you watch the video, all the improvements will be immediately clear.

Golf Star by Com2uS seemed really cool, as it's your typical golf game wrapped in this whole almost-MMO wrapper filled with items and avatars to unlock. It's all multiplayer-enabled too, so hopefully a community picks up after it launches. Following Golf Star we saw two other super casual titles from Trigger Happy, Feed Frankie and $1 Popcorn, each using swipe controls in slightly different ways.

I'm not traditionally that into sports games, but the above Football Heroes has me super excited. I don't watch football, like, ever, but if you make it arcade-y enough, I'm all over it. I'm also all over Gamevil's upcoming Diablo-like Dark Avenger. It looks awesome, and coupled with a super high frame rate I'm hoping it'll be as fun as it seems.

Drastically shifting genres again our next meeting was with Pixowl Games who showed us a substantial update for The Sandbox [Free]. Definitely give that a look if you're into that game. Island Escape seems interesting as well, they take super fast-paced mini-games with an over-arching story. I'm anxious to spend more time with it to see how it all pans out. Oh, and there's even something for Fred fans in the works with Skiing Fred which will join Falling Fred [Free] and others on the App Store soon.

Continuing the theme of sequels and spinoffs is Soccer Rally 2. Check out the above video. Meetings then took another turn to the RPG-side with Pylon, which puts Quantum Squid in the driver seat of making their own Diablo-like. And of course, it wouldn't be a GDC without an awesome Crescent Moon game. This year's was Exiles. Take a look:

Hopping genres as far as you can go once again, the next game on the lineup was Zombie Faceball which combines zombies and baseball. Hey, it could happen? Crystal Siege was the first traditional tower defense game we saw, and its video is totally worth a look as they're doing some neat things.

It was at this point that things were getting pretty late in the day on Friday, so we quickly recorded our podcast which features Halfbrick's Phil Larsen as well as our own Arn, Nissa, and Marianne. We recorded it live, so the quality is a little different, but it's still a good listen.

Once we all got home, we only had a few cleanup stories to post of games we saw really late in the week. The first of which was Bean Dreams, which is the sequel to Bean's Quest [$0.99], a title which is always on any short list of best platformers of mine. We got a look at The Other Brothers which is coming soon, and saved the best for last with five minutes of Oceanhorn. Be sure to watch this:

And last, but certainly not least, if you're interested in the developer side of things be sure to check out the live episode of Walled Garden Weekly. I'm on it, and we're talking about the various aspects of freemium. Alternatively, you could just subscribe in iTunes.

Alright, with this out of the way, now I can finally exhale. GDC and PAX East were awesome. I can't wait for them to roll around next year. Thanks for everyone we met with, my staff who busted their butts on all this coverage, and all of our readers who enjoyed our videos. This has been the craziest ten days in a really long time.

As I've mentioned before, I did a lot of talks at GDC. All of them should eventually be available on the GDC Vault (hopefully for free) if you weren't at the event, it's just a matter of waiting for the GDC teams to do all the video processing and all that fun stuff to get them online. One of my three talks was a panel in the format of a live version of the Walled Garden Weekly podcast.

Walled Garden Weekly is a regular podcast with iOS developers Arash Keshmirian of Limbic and Kevin Pazirandeh of Auxbrain. In this special live edition, they invited both me and Keith Shepherd of Imangi Studios to discuss various aspects of free to play gaming.

Walled Garden Weekly is typically very developer-centric, but even as a non-developer it's super interesting to get into the head(s) of people who are making the games we play every day. If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe on iTunes.

iTunes Link: Walled Garden Weekly
Direct Link: wgw-23.m4a, 69.2MB

The upcoming Zelda-esque action RPG Oceanhorn is one of the most anticipated games amongst our community, and I've been dying to get my hands on it myself. Especially after a premature copy was accidentally released in late February, further teasing us anxious gamers. At GDC last week I finally got to sit down with Phillip from FDG Entertainment, who signed on last December to help developer Cornfox & Bros wrap up development on the title, and give Oceanhorn a spin.

Unfortunately, there were issues with Oceanhorn and our capture hardware, so we weren't able to do the typical hands-on commentary video like we had been doing all week at GDC. However, FDG was nice enough to capture about 5 minutes of footage through their own simulator so we could have a look at the early goings in the game.

Oceanhorn will tell its story via many cutscenes and voiceover work, but since those elements haven't been finalized yet they've been omitted from this hands-on look. So it's just straight up gameplay, but I'll try to give the video some context. Your father is missing after fighting the evil sea monster Oceanhorn, and it's up to you to finish the job. Your first quest in the game is to track down your father's old sword and shield, then get the sailboat that lets you explore the huge open game world and properly begin your adventure.

From the storyline, to some of the game mechanics, to the Wind Waker-esque open-sea sailing, the Zelda influence is apparent in Oceanhorn. That's not a bad thing at all, by any stretch, as it'll likely be a cold day before we see our pointy green-hatted hero on an iOS platform. More importantly, though, is that despite those similarities Oceanhorn still feels like its own thing. It nods but doesn't pilfer, and it's been tailored beautifully to be played on the touchscreen.

Sadly Oceanhorn is still a ways off, and likely won't be hitting until late this year at the earliest, but if my sampling of the game at GDC is any indication it will certainly be worth the wait.

It feels like we've been waiting for The Other Brothers forever, but after a long and somewhat rocky development this throwback platformer is finally ready for the masses as it's set for launch this week on April 4th. I sat down with Giuseppe from Simian Squared at GDC last week to give The Other Brothers a spin for myself. Have a look at our hands-on video.

It's been a long time coming, but I'm really excited to finally get a hold of the finished version of The Other Brothers when it launches later this week. I've loved the look of the game since I first laid eyes on it, and after my hands-on time with The Other Brothers at GDC I can confirm that it's a blast to play as well. Check it out when it hits the App Store April 4th.

One of the more interesting platformers on iOS, and a personal favorite, is Bean's Quest [$0.99] from Kumobius. Playing as a perpetually jumping bean named Emilio, it wasn't just about making it to the end of a level in Bean's Quest, which could definitely be a challenge in itself, but rather doing it in as few bounces as possible. It could be downright maddening at times, but in that good way that made you want to keep trying until you finally succeeded.

At GDC last week, Tom from Kumobius was on hand to show off a Bean's Quest follow-up title, called Bean Dreams. It ups the ante by giving Emilio some nifty new special moves, like a dash swipe or a wall jump, giving way to even more complex level designs and greater challenges. At the same time, the difficulty ramp is much smoother this time around so as to ease players into the challenge better than the original game did. Check out our hands-on time with an early version of Bean Dreams.

Bean Dreams was looking great even in its early form at GDC, and as a big fan of the original Bean's Quest I'm eager to get my hands on some more of this brand of bouncy platforming. Kumobius hopes to have Bean Dreams finished sometime this year, and we'll bring you any more news as development on the title continues. In the meantime be sure to check out the original Bean's Quest if you haven't previously, as it should be a good way to get yourself warmed up for the forthcoming sequel.

FDG Entertainment was on hand at GDC to show off a couple of their upcoming projects, one of which was a very interesting tower defense game called Crystal Siege. Right off the bat it reminds me a lot of Kingdom Rush [$0.99 / $2.99 (HD)], which isn't a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, since Kingdom Rush is fantastic. But Crystal Siege also throws in a few more elements that give you a more hands-on approach to tower defense, like directly controlling your main character to help fight off enemies and neat environmental features that you can activate and use to your advantage. Take a look at our hands-on video of the game for a closer look.

Tower defense isn't one of my favorite genres, despite its prevalence on the App Store, but every once in a while I'll come across one that I really get into. I think Crystal Siege may be just such a title, I really liked what I saw of it so far. It should be hitting sometime within the next few months, so keep an eye out for it.

Besides giving us a look at Pylon yesterday, a rather hardcore action RPG, Quantumsquid was also showing off an upcoming game on the other end of the spectrum with their casual high-scoring game Zombie Faceball. I know, I know, zombies, am I right? But Zombie Faceball does the theme well, and the game itself is fun, which is what really counts.

Zombie Faceball is similar to a catapulting game where you're trying to go for the greatest distance, and you use a baseball kind of mechanic to actually knock the heads off of approaching zombies and see how far you can send them. Think Flick Homerun [$0.99] with zombies and a ton of customizations and power-ups. Check out the video. (Side note: I'm not sure why but the audio quality didn't come out too great. It's still very listenable, just a bit on the muffled side. Apologies.)

Zombie Faceball is a silly, fun kind of game that doesn't take itself seriously, and it should be hitting within the next month or so. Be on the lookout for it if you've got a hankering to knock some heads off of some zombies.

Crescent Moon Games put out a ton of different styles of games, but they are most widely associated with expansive role-playing games like Aralon [$0.99] and Ravensword Shadowlands [$6.99]. They're getting back to that once more with their upcoming science fiction themed, open world RPG called Exiles, and as with most their games it's quite the visual treat. Check out this brief look at an extremely early build of Exiles to see for yourself.

As I mentioned, Exiles is still in a really early state and there's a ton left to do to get things finished up. Crescent Moon hopes to wrap up and release the game later in the year, barring any sort of hiccups. I really can't wait as even now it looks really interesting, so keep an eye out for more on Exiles as development marches on.

QuantumSquid was here at GDC 2013 showing off a couple of upcoming games, and their Diablo-esque hack 'n slash RPG Pylon was looking incredibly good. I'll keep my introduction brief as we cover a lot of ground in this fairly lengthy look at Pylon, so without further ado please give our hands-on video a look.

There have been many attempts at Diablo-like games on iOS, with varying levels of success. My all-to-brief time with Pylon has me feeling very positive that this will be one of the winners, and I'm really looking forward to its release sometime this summer.

Dedalord is continuing their series of "Fred" games, following 2011's Falling Fred [Free] and 2012's Running Fred [Free] with a snow sports themed version called Skiing Fred. Like the other games in the series, there is a ton of personality in the environments and with Fred himself, as well as a ton of gore and brutality. Here's some hands-on video from Skiing Fred with some commentary from the developers.

There's so many of these "running" kind of games that it can be hard to stand out, but I really enjoyed my time playing Skiing Fred, and it's literally stuffed with content in terms of customization and environmental elements. It should be launching sometime this year so keep an eye out for more from Skiing Fred as that time approaches.

There have been a few attempts at bringing Warioware-like frantic mini-game collections to iOS, but I've always wondered why it wasn't a more popular idea. The mobile platform is great for these quick-hitting type of experiences.

Kooapps apparently felt the same as they are readying just such a game, though this time the collection of more than 70 mini-games (with about 40 more planned) is connected through an overarching narrative about being a castaway on an island. Check out this hands-on video for Island Escape as Stephanie from Kooapps walks us through some of the mini-games.

Island Escape is just about to enter a beta period and is expected to hit within the next couple of months or so. We'll bring you news of its release just as soon as we get it.

Straight-up, if you were a fan of Tecmo Bowl, Mutant League Football, or any other zany old-school football game, you've got to check out Football Heroes. It's a throwback to those games of old, except updated with modern RPG, customization, and competitive trimmings. As you play, your players level up and you can acquire increasingly zanier moves. You can also name your own players, teams, and assign colors. It's a small thing, but as you'll see in our video, you can get some pretty hilarious results.

You might not get a sense of this in the video, but the feel of the game is fantastic. The movement is fluid and easy and the gestures make sense. Hilariously, this over-the-top football game is the best controlling football game we've ever played on iOS.

Football Heroes is due out at some point later this year. We'll be keeping our eyes on it, for sure. Oh, and here's that image of the new look (as mentioned in the vid):

Crazy about Legendary Wars [$1.99] and/or Monster Wars and find yourself wanting more? Well, Liv Games is hard at work on turning the "Wars" series into a trilogy with Stellar Wars which builds on the foundations of previous games with a sci-fi spin and even side-scrolling shooter sections.

Check out the hands-on:

The new animation system they mention sounds particularly exciting, as I'm a huge sucker for massive, massive bosses.

Namaza Studios's Vitamin Z is one of those fixed position dual-stick shooters. In the game, you play as a girl armed a wild assortment of weapons. The goal is to keep waves of zombie vegetables and fruit (yep!) from reaching a centralized platform. Along the way, you'll pick up power-ups and earn currency to upgrade your guns and power-ups.

We're told Vitamin Z is a few months from release, but the early build we took a gander at this afternoon looks pretty sharp. Check it out:

We had a chance to sit down with Matthew Hall from KlickTock, the studio behind Little Things Forever [$2.99] (and personal favorite ZONR [$0.99]) to check out his upcoming game, Deck War. It's still early in development—only six weeks of a planned six month development cycle—but what Hall had to show so far is looking pretty great: colorful, cute, and a lot more active than your average collectable card game.

That's because Deck War is a non-abstracted CCG. The cards don't just represent creatures or armies or wizardly powers, they become creatures and armies and rather creaturely spells. Instead of carefully scrutinizing the cards on the field, you play your card, creatures pop out and they go to town against the enemy army. It's the sort of card game Hall's been looking for since the advent of CCGs on the app store, and that can be one of the beautiful things about developing games: if there's an underserved niche out there, it's always possible to be the one to fill it.

So here's how it works currently: the player takes a card from his hand and lays it on the field. Troops go down at the side and start marching across the field to the enemy goal, and spells get placed directly where they're being targeted. Cooldown timers keep players from spamming attacks and troops, but the field can get insanely packed with armies. So far there are only about a dozen cards in the game, but Hall expects to have around 200 available to unlock by the time Deck War launches. Players will unlock new cards by playing through single player missions, and the quality of the cards they'll unlock depends on how well they perform. There will be purchasable booster packs available as well.

The bright, colorful style may seem familiar to fans of Hall's Little Things series, but for this game he's brought in artist Ben Weatherall, whose work you might have seen in games like Firemint's Flight Control. They've put together several armies already, each adorable in its own way.

Hall tells us there's an asynchronous multiplayer mode is in the planning stages. It's a cool idea: players will build a defense deck that other players can raid. The defense deck will get an online ranking based on how many win and losses it gets. It's sort of an 'end game' mode, with special cards as rewards. He's also looking into the possibilities for synchronous multiplayer.

Single player is the big thing, though. Unlocking all the cards will take players across a sprawling, evolving campaign map and into combat with armies of all sorts.