Galaxy on Fire: Alliances is the next game from Galaxy on Fire creator Fishlabs. It's a different take on the IP, combining asynchronous turn-based strategy with grand battles of Galaxy on Fire proper. At the top-level, it's a game about conquering territories and utilizing their resources to take more. Built with the free-to-play model baked in, it's a heavily timer-based title that has you chilling out and waiting for ship and character upgrades and such.

What we saw earlier at this GDC was a small look at an alpha build, but it's a telling one. You'll get to see how players take planets, how you'll be able to upgrade, and how the cooperative "clan" component works.

Galaxy on Fire: Alliances is due out this year.

Since we first saw it in person at GDC 2012, Drifter has been under heavy development by Celsius Game Studios. The sandbox space trading game is approaching the final months of its development and studio founder Colin Walsh stopped by to show us some of its sights.

If you're not familiar with Drifter, it takes place in a massive open-world sandbox. You captain a small trading ship and work your way up the space food chain with new equipment and new ships. How you do that is up to you: mining and crafting, trading goods between systems, hunting pirates for bounties or engaging in piracy yourself.

We had a chance to take a look at a few of Drifter's current systems: the space station, the fast travel system and a fair bit of combat. The pirates were shy about coming out to play, but we managed to start a pretty impressive firefight nonetheless.

It sounds as though there are still quite a few systems to come: crafting, communications, RPG elements and a whole line of story missions to guide players through the galaxy, among others. The interface is also due for a major overhaul soon. Colin tells us he's hoping to have the game ready to go this summer, and we'll be keeping an eye on it to bring you more as it approaches release.

AnonA is the next game from Be-Rad Entertainment, the studio behind Lame Castle and that WarGames matching game. Created at a NASA game jam, it's a resource-slash-building game that has you making infrastructure on uninhabited moons. The premise revolves around the idea of harvesting moon minerals and using them to "print" buildings. Think 3D printing, but in space. It's neat stuff.

Brad from Be-Rad breaks it down in the video and also shares some of the technology he plans to throw into the game when it's a little bit closer to release:

AnonA is about five months out, and we'll be keeping our eyes on it.

At PAX one of the coolest things I saw at the show was Gun Media's Breach & Clear. Getting video of it on the PAX show floor was a little insane, so we met with Chris of Mighty Rabbit Studios at GDC. The gist of the game basically amounts to you controlling a squad of soldiers to, well, both breach and clear.

It's a turn based strategy game, and the way you control your soldiers is super-clever. You control each unit's movement, and can give them commands to supplement their own individual AI. Like, for instance, you can breach a door, take cover, set your viewpoint to a certain way, and then your guy will take out any enemies he can. Alternatively, you can set different way points for them to stop at, each with different little commands like looking a certain way or even using various types of equipment like grenades.

It still seems early, as there isn't much content to check out in the game yet aside from the brief demo scenarios they're doing. Regardless, the foundation seems incredibly solid and I definitely see lots of cool ways that this game could go. It definitely has all the free to play trimmings clearly visible with all the currencies on the top of the screen, but the developers have been insistent there will be no pay walls or any pay-to-win mechanics.

Last week, Halfbrick launched a teaser website for their forthcoming iOS game titled Fish Out of Water. As teasers are wont to do, they didn't reveal many concrete details on what exactly it is you did in the game, but during GDC this week the Australian developers have finally unveiled all the fishy details (that was terrible, I'm sorry). Check out our hands-on video where Luke and Phil from Halfbrick walk us through what will no doubt be another mobile hit.

Like many of the best mobile games, Fish Out of Water is simple for anybody to pick up and play, but it hides subtle strategic elements for those who really want to dig in and explore what the game has to offer. A bunch of cool social components, meta goals to achieve, and a nifty weather system all create a really complete package for a casual title. Expect Fish Out of Water to hit sometime in the next month or so.

Earlier today we had the opportunity to speak with the developers of Trace [Free] on their new title and sequel, the aptly named Trace 2.

If you haven't experienced this classic (in iOS terms) platformer, we covered its release back in 2008. Described as a 'casual platformer,' Trace had you steer your stickman avatar across a variety of one-screen levels towards a goal, drawing lines across the way to bridge chasms, avoid monsters, and create paths to the finish. Creativity was the key to success, and despite its basic visuals, Trace was a decent platformer for its time.

With Trace 2, the devs appear to have taken the suggestions for a better art style to heart, as this sequel looks quite lovely. A storybook style visual flair, complete with nice pastels adorn the world select screen while each of the levels boast vastly improved graphical quality. Pretty looks aren't the only upgrade either, as each of the worlds in Trace 2 are built around interesting 'hooks' that are neat twists to the standard gameplay. I'm particularly a fan of the levels based on audio cues, which are discussed in our video.

Interested? Hit the play button and check out our brief look at Trace 2. The game looks to be released hopefully in the next few months.

The studio behind Puerto Rico and a bunch of other brilliant board game-to-mobile ports, Ravensburger Games, has a new one coming down the pipes called Las Vegas. Appropriately, it's a dice-based title that tasks users with rolling and then placing dice in different casinos in an effort to win the most money. (This'll make a lot more sense after you see the video we've included from our demo at GDC.)

It's plain that this is a much more accessible game than most of the other stuff we tend to see from Ravensburger, but that's not to take anything away from its strategy angle -- these kinds of games tend to have a ton of depth. Check it out:

Las Vegas is due out for iPad at the end of April.

It feels like a lifetime ago that we first caught wind of Tengami, a gorgeous puzzle adventure crafted in the style of a pop-up book. Developer Nyamyam has been working on the game for nearly two years, and they brought an updated build to GDC this year to show off the progress that's been made so far. In short, it's looking absolutely fantastic. Check out the hands-on video where Jennifer from Nyamyam walks us through a couple of the environments and shows off some of the novel mechanics in Tengami.

I've been incredibly excited for Tengami since I first laid eyes on it, and I'm happy to see that it's finally nearing the finish line. Nyamyam is hoping to have the game out sometime this summer, shooting for around the July or August timeframe, and we'll definitely have much more on Tengami as it gets closer to release.

If you're into traditional card games, you should throw GRL Games's Rocket Patrol a look. Influenced, in part, by an ancient garage sale find, it's a retro-infused sci-fi turn-based strategy game that pits users against each other in a battle to grab enough "light year" cards to cross the finish line. Of course, players can also toss "delay" cards at each other, slowing each others ships or straight-up breaking components.

Creator Graham Devine came by and showed off the game to us today. In the video, he walks us through the basics of the play, as well as teases its future as a platform. It's pretty cool.

Rocket Patrol is due out in the next few weeks for the iPad as a free download.

At WWDC in June of last year, we took a look at how Mobula Games was set to reboot the iMech franchise on iOS with a brand new version called iMech Online. It was in a pretty early state back then, but still a ton of fun. We met up with Mobula again here at GDC to look at a near-final build of iMech Online, and it's come a very long way since WWDC. Check out this video where we get in on some 4-player fragging with the developers.

iMech Online is looking sharp and is definitely a ton of fun. Mobula has build a pretty reasonable free-to-play model around the game too, and they told me they spent a ton of time tweaking and balancing everything to ensure that there's no way it will be a "pay to win" type game. I'm excited to get my hands on the final build which Mobula is aiming to launch next month.

Behold Studio's Knights of Pen & Paper [$1.99] is one of the best tabletop roleplaying-style experiences on iOS, and it's about to get much better. Paradox Interactive has teamed up with the studio to bring the game to PC, Mac and Linux, and in the process the whole game will be seeing a big improvement on mobile with the +1 Edition update. We had a chance to check out the upcoming update, which is going to bring a lot of big changes to the already substantial game.

First up is the Tavern, a much requested feature. Currently, when you hit the party cap of five players you're done—there's no opportunity to change your party around. The Tavern fixes this little problem, letting you move characters in and out of your party. You can experiment with different player and class combinations, particularly nice when you unlock new character classes and want to actually use them.

The second big upgrade is the addition of dungeons. No longer will dungeon crawls be limited to single-room jaunts into caverns. You start out with a map of unexplored rooms. As you visit each one, the dice rolls and the result lets you know what you get: treasure, for the particularly lucky, traps for the unlucky and combat and the like in between.

Each dungeon has a boss battle locked behind a door, and a key hidden randomly in one of the rooms. Boss fights are intense, and running away means starting the whole dungeon over fresh. There are three dungeons in so far—fire, ice and sewer-themed—and likely more to come. Dungeon crawler fans will also enjoy one other new addition: random loot affixes.

Some of the other changes are a bit further under the hood. The game will be playable in landscape mode, and the team has put a ton of work into adding that visual content for the new view—more pixel art, more visual humour. You'll also be able to save a few clicks - tapping the end point of a journey will take you there without extra stops along the route. There will still be rolls on the way, but it streamlines the whole thing a bunch.

The +1 Edition update is still under development, so features could still change. It will be arriving at about the time Knights of Pen & Paper launches on other platforms—possibly as soon as early summer.

Secret Exit made a splash in the early days of the App Store with Zen Bound [$2.99], a unique and technically impressive puzzle game that was a showpiece for the graphical and multitouch capabilities of iOS devices in early 2009. They followed it up in 2010 with Zen Bound 2 [$2.99], a sequel that raised the bar of the original in every way, but not too long before that they released Stair Dismount Universal [Free], a touchscreen version of their popular "push people down the stairs" physics-based PC game.

Stair Dismount Universal felt right at home on the touchscreen of iOS devices, and since its release it has been well-supported with tons of content updates that added new levels and features to the game. After more than 3 years, Secret Exit is readying a follow-up to Stair Dismount Universal, tentatively titled Turbo Dismount. Utilizing the Unity engine this time around has enabled the most complex and vibrant version of a Dismount game thus far, as you can see in this hands-on video where lead designer Jani Kahrama walks us through an extremely early build of the game.

It's very possible that a lot about what's seen in Turbo Dismount will change before its final version, as Jani stated that what they have so far has really been getting themselves up to speed with using Unity and is more proof of concept type work than concrete level or feature design. Still, you can see that it looks leaps and bounds greater than the original Stair Dismount, and being a huge fan of the first game I really can't wait to see where Turbo Dismount ends up. It's planned for release at some point this year, and we'll have much more on this upcoming title leading up to then.

When developer 3 Sprockets released Cubemen [$1.99 (HD)] last year, one of the key features that immediately jumped out was its cross-platform compatibility, allowing players to participate in multiplayer battles between iOS, PC (via Steam) and Mac.

We had the opportunity to speak with Seon Rozenblum of 3 Sprockets at GDC on its upcoming sequel, Cubemen 2. With bigger maps, more units, and a load of visual options, Cubemen 2 also shifts gears from a gameplay perspective with a variety of new battle modes, such as 'Territories,' a time-based tug-of-war that charges players to 'claim' as many tiles as possible by walking over them (while preventing opposing players from claiming tiles previously taken).

I'm digging the changes that 3 Sprockets have made with the core formula in Cubemen 2. The shift to different play modes, combined with the returning multiplayer and wide variety of skins leads to a whole bunch of different ways to play, which certainly isn't a bad thing.

If you're curious, hit up the video below as Seon takes us through the large amount of customizability options as well as a few of the game's included levels and the coveted level editor, which will allow players to create, upload, and download user-created maps across all platforms.

Earlier today, I sat down with RocketCat Games' Kepa Auwae to discuss Wayward (previously Mage Dungeon), a pseudo-sequel to its 16-bit adventure homage, Mage Gauntlet [$2.99].

Hailed as 'what we wanted Mage Gauntlet to originally be' Wayward shifts the gameplay to a more rogue-like style with randomly generated levels, multiple classes (each with their own special moves and attacks), and perma-death. Permanent stat increases that persist across characters and runs offer some depth of progression and replayability that is typically missing from rogue-likes.

While fans of Mage Gauntlet will be intimately familiar with the visual style of Wayward (as the same engine is utilized in both), RocketCat is streamlining the control system by removing all visual buttons on-screen. Instead, attacks are performed by tapping (or holding and releasing) the right side of the screen, while swiping mechanisms govern special attacks. The left side still plays home to a (now hidden) virtual joystick for movement.

I'm really digging the direction that RocketCat seems to be taking with Wayward. Combining the 16-bit graphical feel of Mage Gauntlet with the randomly generated levels of a rogue-like seem like a great fit for the series.

While a release date hasn't been hammered out in stone, Wayward is looking to be released sometime in May. If you're curious for more, click below for a short video we cut showcasing a pre-release build.

Recently, Trainyard [$2.99] developer Matt Rix and Finger Tied [$2.99 (HD)] developer Owen Goss teamed up to create a Canadian powerhouse of game development which they have dubbed Milkbag Games (milk in bags is a Canadian thing, I'm told).

Matt is here at GDC showing off the first fruits of this joint venture, an upcoming game called Snow Siege. It's an interesting mix of genres, including tower defense, card collecting, and even a bit of Tetris thrown in for good measure. It sounds strange, but it totally works. Check out this hands-on video where Matt walks us through some of the basics of Snow Siege.

As you heard in the video, no hard release window for Snow Siege has been decided just yet. It's looking great so far though, and while I was skeptical about such a strange mishmash of genres, it actually seems to have come together brilliantly in Snow Siege. We'll have more on the game as its development continues.