Tactile Entertainment is working on what they call an “open-world pet sim” and it’s called Pocket Creatures. At first glance it just looks like another pet sim but after watching the new trailer it looks like there is potential for more.

Something worth mentioning regarding this developer is that their founder and CEO, Asbjoern Soendegaard, was also the development manager on Crysis, a PC game released in 2008 that is still used as a benchmark for pushing gaming PC's to their limits today. In Pocket Creatures you will be able to explore a tropical world, plant a garden, and find other NPC creatures to interact with. Everything you do effects the world your creature is living in. There also appears to be a magic element to it too. Admittedly, with the links to Crysis, our expectations are high.

Screenshots:

Tactile Entertainment hopes to have Pocket Creatures on the App Store by the end of March. Also, be sure to check out the developer’s blog, where they have a lot of character development sketches up. We will be meeting with CEO Asbjoern Soendegaard at GDC, and should have some hands-on time with Pocket Creatures as well next week.

A developer behind the iPhone port of the FPS classic DOOM recently spoke out regarding the port project as well as iPhone development in general.

Developer Psychochromatic explains: “Looking at the hardware specs, I knew iPhone would be able to play a simple game like Doom no problem as it was open-source and already ran on the click-wheel iPod running Linux. I knew Stepwhite, who I work with on Mac projects, and as he'd just bought himself an iPhone and was working with the unofficial tool-chain I jokingly told him he had one week to port Doom to iPhone, and all it had to do was run; he didn't have to implement controls. One week later, he proudly linked me to his Doom port homepage.”

The first build of Doom saw 15,000 downloads on the project site alone, even without a way to control the game. Once controller input had been included that version received over 25,000 downloads.

Behind the ease of development lies the iPhone’s inherent support for a full scale OS. “The iPhone runs OS X. It's a full UNIX system in your pocket, with brilliant Objective-C frameworks that make coding beautiful and powerful applications a dawdle,” explains Psychochromatic.

Psychocromatic is not the first developer to expound the virtues of the iPhone's rich, versatile, open development environment.  While writing iPhone apps was once a challenge, Apple's release of the free iPhone SDK has made such projects "trivial."

Apple's iTunes App Store launches in June and the list of games that will be available at launch grows daily.  Stay tuned to keep up to date on just what download to expect on launch day.

The iPod Observer has recently posted a review of EA Mobile's iPod version of Hasbro's classic roll-the-dice game, Yahtzee [iTunes link].  This modern reinvention features easy scorekeeping, multiplayer game modes, and simple click-wheel controls.

The iPod is a personal device: You listen to your music on it, watch your movies and videos, you get podcasts and audiobook that you like loaded up on it. It's a small device with a small screen that is meant for private viewing.

Yahtzee, on the other hand, was created to be played with at least one other person, someone you can kid around with. Yahtzee solo just ain't a lot of fun and playing against the computer is no good either. You need another person to play with.

That's not to say Yahtzee for the iPod is not a well executed game, in fact I think its a game ideally suited for the iPod. The screen is simple and easy to see, the controls are equally simple and an absolute joy to use, and this version of Yahtzee is faithful to the original, almost to a fault.

I also believe that in situations where you and several folks are cramped into a small space for 30 minutes or more, on a road trip for instance, you'd be hard pressed to find a more suitable and fun game to play. You can't hear the dice shaking in the cup, however, unless everyone has earphones of some sort. But then, that might not be such a bad thing because it's likely everyone will be talking anyway.

Yahtzee works with the iPod (5th generation), iPod classic and iPod nano (3rd generation) and can be purchased through the iTunes Store at a price of $4.99 USD.

HermitWorks, who recently ported id's classic Quake 3 to the iPod touch, isn't simply resting on its laurels with that one, notable achievement.  No, as Inside Mac Games reports, the development group is "madly coding" a port of their own action / strategy game Space Trader to the iPhone as well as the classic iPod.

Sure enough, HermitWorks has set their sites on Apple’s mobile gaming platform the iPhone, but their goal isn’t to enable armies of iPod-wielding Apple fans to play Quake III; instead, they’re “madly coding,” says Tofer, to port their own Space Trader to iPod and iPhone, hopefully in time to be released in June with the official iPhone App Store. “I’d love to have it by June; we’re just in a kind of porting frenzy right now.” Problem is, in order to be a part of Apple’s official offering, they’d need at least minimal support in the form of the official Apple SDK, which has been rather late in making the rounds. HermitWorks doesn’t want to be viewed as a group of iPod hackers: they want “people to be able to go to iTunes and download” their games through an official channel.

And if that's not enough, they are also working on a role playing game for the iPhone and iPod touch, based on a modified Quake 3 engine, known as Quest.

...Details were scarce, but HermitWorks has something else hidden away in their dusty straw hut: the underpinnings of a casual iPhone RPG, tentatively called Quest. Before you call up memories of King’s Quest, Puzzle Quest or even Peasant’s Quest, know that this game isn’t your average 2D Fetch Quest. Using the same modified Quake III with the graphics “kicked up a few notches,” HermitWorks promises a heavy-duty 3D single-player role-playing experience with one very ambitious addition: instead of NPCs, characters you meet will often be other players.

Stay tuned for more coverage of HermitWorks' commendable efforts in developing for the iPhone platform.