RetroVenture has released a port of the old 1982 Apple II game Transylvania. Originally developer by Antonio Antiochia, RetroVenture has collaborated with the original author to bring this classic game to the iPhone.

In Fall 2009, Roe Mobile Development will release Transylvania for the iPhone. Transylvania is an adventure game that was originally released for the Apple ][ in 1982. Back then it was quite successful and spawned two sequels (Crimson Crown and Vanquish the Night: Return to Transylvania). The iPhone version is a joint work between Kenneth Roe and Antonio Antiochia who is the original author. The iPhone version will add a new touch interface and sounds.

If you ever played the original version, here's your chance to get it again for free. Even if you miss the Halloween sale, the game will be available for only $0.99.

App Store Link: Transylvania Adventure, Free (Halloween)

Craneballs Studios, who brought us the unique iPhone shooter Blimp – The Flying Adventures, has just released 33rd Division [App Store], a combat-themed tactical line-draw game in the ilk of Flight Control.

Set in World War II, 33rd Division offers gameplay across four different European battlefields.  The goal is to guide soldiers, medics and sergeants entering the battlefield to each of their designated destinations without being seen (shot and killed).  This is done by drawing a course across the battlefield (Flight Control style) in and among obstacles and roving patrols.

Sounds just like all the other line-draw games, right?  Well, 33rd Division has some interesting variations up its sleeve.  The aforementioned roving patrols have a limited field of vision, indicated by a highlighted sight cone that moves as they turn about the battlefield.  As long as you stay out of their sight area, you're fine, but enter that cone and, well, let's just call it the cone of death.  What's more, if you're trapped and about to be seen, you can lie down, rendering you invisible…unless the patrols walk right up to you, in which case they render you full of lead.

The game offers two playmodes, Life, in which it's game over after you lose all your lives, and Time, where it's an all out race against the clock. Helping you out along the way are eight different power-ups that can be collected on the battlefield, including invincibility, bonus life, extra time, double speed, and frozen enemies. The WWII-era menu music, complete with crackles and pops, adds nicely to the effect, as does the ambient battlefield sound during gameplay.  OpenFeint leaderboards provide incentive to hone your skill.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

There are a number of line-draw games of this general sort in the App Store.  I do have my favorites.  And as it turns out, 33rd Division is among them.  The temptation to shortcut your way across the battlefield, cutting dangerously close to the patrols and dropping to the ground at the right moment, adds a great sense of danger and exhilaration to the gameplay.  But, be careful, you don't want to get stepped on!

App Store Link: 33rd Division, $0.99

Oddly enough, the App Store has no shortage of hunting games. Quite a few of them have flirted with positions high up on the overall sales charts, but none (until now) have come from such long-standing hunting game franchises as the Big Buck Hunter arcade machines and the Deer Hunter series of PC and console games.

Real Deer Hunting, 99¢ – The eighteenth installment in the Deer Hunter series offers a fairly in-depth hunting experience that takes place in the woods of Indiana and the plains of Texas. The game is packed with all kinds of deer luring actions, along with the choice between a shotgun, scoped rifle, and compound bow. Out of all the hunting games I've tried for the iPhone, this one seems the most technical, although having never actually hunted deer I can't say for sure how accurate the developer's claims of ultra-realism are.

Big Buck Hunter Pro, $2.99 – We extensively previewed this game last week following the Big Buck Hunter World Championship in Chicago where the game was originally unveiled. It's a fantastic port of the arcade machine, and provides a remarkably similar experience, only without the plastic shotgun. Big Buck Hunter machines are becoming as much of a bar staple as Golden Tee in my area, so if the iPhone game can tap in to the existing fan base it should be a huge success. However, if you've never drunkenly pumped quarters in to the real Big Buck Hunter game, the iPhone version likely won't have much appeal.

One game that we neglected on its initial release was Undead Attack Pinball — an interesting combination of a defense game and pinball.

The goal of the game is to avoid damage and ultimate destruction of your gate at the bottom of the board from hoards of zombies. You can take out these zombies through the use of the pinball itself and collect money for upgrades.

While hardcore pinball fanatics may find these gameplay changes a bit gimmicky, I find the inclusion of these in-game goals (smashing Zombies, in this case) holds my interest much more than compared to traditional pinball games. The initial version of Undead Attack! generated criticisms for the quirky ball physics, but the game has since been updated to address this issue.

The developers also recently released a Lite version so you can give the game a try yourself. The latest update of the full version released today also adds a Halloween theme and provides some additional bug fixes.

The game has also seen a price drop from $2.99 to $0.99 in celebration of Halloween, so give it a shot.

App Store Link: Undead Attack! Pinball, $0.99, Undead Attack! Pinball Lite, Free

I’m always on the lookout for new twists on puzzles. Sometimes these new twists or elements work and often times, they don’t. Besides the degree of fun which is highly subjective, the ideas that generally work and succeed are the ones that add complexity without complicating the game. When I first started playing Wriggle, I was lured in by the fun looking graphics, but what’s kept me playing is the mind benders that at first glance look simple enough. As you play with Wriggle, it becomes a test of logic all presented in a lighthearted package.

Wriggle is all about squirmy worms that come in a variety of colors. The only one you really care about is the blue one that must get to the exit within a certain number of moves. While the goal sounds mundane on paper, in practice, Wriggle is brain teasing at its best.

The control scheme involves your finger and the ability to drag Blue and the other worms in whatever direction. Wriggle has 4 levels of difficulty—easy, medium, hard and expert—with 80 total puzzles. In order to unlock the puzzles at the higher difficulty, you must complete 50% of the puzzles at the previous difficulty.

Each puzzle has a number of moves in which you must get Mr. Blue to the exit if you’re to receive an award. This involves strategically moving the other worms out of your way. Worms can be moved by dragging the head or the tail, and moves are counted when you drag a new worm. In terms of other features, once you’ve unlocked a set of puzzles in a difficulty level, you can choose to play any of the puzzles, skipping forward or replaying previous puzzles. Within each puzzles, a handy undo button is available so you can re-think your strategy without having to start from scratch. Plus, the game has auto save so your progress is saved regardless of where you left off.

Wriggle fits in that category of “simple to play but difficult to master”. It provides enough puzzles with a range of difficulty levels that novice and advanced puzzlers will enjoy, and provides enough to keep you coming back

App Store Link: Wriggle, $0.99, Wriggle Free, Free

And now for a change of pace.

If your first reaction to this app is "Why would you let your toddler play with your $300 iPhone?", well, it's pretty clear you don't have kids, so you can skip this story.

For those who do have children in the 2-5 year old range, Whizzit 123 seems to be the functional equivalent of Doodle Jump that has them coming back again and again. The game simply consists of different objects that are presented in quantities of up to 10 or 20 based on a user selectable option, and the child simply taps on each one as they are counted out loud. Each item displays a brief animated flourish as they are counted. Each tap offers a small animation and the final tally is repeated out loud at the end. That's pretty much it.

It's fun, educational, and strangely rewarding. My daughter rates it as "Yay!"

App Store Link: Whizzit 123, $0.99

Bryan Mitchell's Geared [99¢ / Free] is an excellent puzzle game that revolves around a very simple gameplay mechanic: Arranging gears on screen to make a working set of gears that connects from the yellow gear to the blue gear(s).

Geared starts simple and quickly progresses to levels that require pixel perfect accuracy to complete. We greatly enjoyed Geared in our review, and it even spent some time as the #1 paid app in both the USA and UK back in August.

Version 1.1 adds 40 new levels, new gameplay elements like gears that can't move and will jam your other gears if you get near them, along with a bundle of various tweaks and bug fixes. For instance, a new interface to move gears around makes getting them in their pixel perfect positions much easier, and if you find yourself stuck on a level you can skip forward.

If you've enjoyed Geared, now is the time to mash "Check for Updates" in iTunes and get started on the new levels. If this is the first you've heard of the game, I highly recommend at least trying the free version. The developer has started a thread for the new version in our forums, so if you have any questions about the game, that's probably the best place to ask them.

If you've really found yourself stuck in levels 1-80, a fantastic guide was posted on the Mac Rumors forum. Just beware, this will spoil the entire pre-update game for you– Geared Levels 1-80 Walkthrough

App Store Links: Geared, 99¢ – Geared – Free, Free

Last weekend we took a look at a preview release of React Games' Archon Conquest and, as fans of the 25 year old EA original, we liked what we saw.  The game has since gone live in the App Store [link] and we've spent a bit more time with this variation on the studio's remake of the chess-like action strategy game.

Back in June, React brought a revamped take on EA's 1983 classic Archon [App Store] to the iPhone. Archon is an action / strategy game set on a 9×9 chess-like board arrayed with a variety of Light and Dark game pieces, each with its own set of battle attributes.  When two pieces come face-to-face on the same board square, action turns to the battle arena where the enemies do battle, arcade style.  The winner takes the square.

Archon Conquest stays close to the original formula, but in place of the chess board setting is a variety of different environments in which to play — four maps or campaigns with 60 different quests or puzzles to complete in all.  As mentioned in our preview, Archon Conquest looks visually closer to EA's 1984 sequel, Archon II: Adpet, but the similarity ends there.  It's still a matter of controlling power squares or wiping out the enemy wholesale, but in new, obstacle-laden environments.

Archon Conquest allows the player to earn medals on each quest, depending on overall success and tracks skill through (Plus+) online leaderboards.  Power characters can cast spells, including new spells as compared to the original, and characters can level up and collect various power-ups in the combat arena.

The differing available characters through the game's various quests, along with the need to negotiate the new board environments, mixes the game up tangibly from the more ordered gameplay of the original.  It feels very much like the new take on Archon that it is, and as a big fan of the original, I find it pleasantly refreshing.  There's definitely more long-term playability here than in the classic title. In fact, the full play time is estimated at 16 hours to complete all four maps.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Those familiar and fond of the original should find the variety that Archon Conquest brings a welcome twist on a solid formula.  And, thanks to the variation that the game brings (not to mention a lower cost of entry), those who've never commanded the Light or the Dark before might just find React's latest to be more appealing than classic Archon. 

Wherever you fall, if a well-balanced fusion of action and strategy sounds appealing, you'd do well to give Archon Conquest a try.

App Store Link: Archon Conquest, $0.99

Rockcat Games' second title, Hook Champ [App Store] was approved and appeared for download last night. Since then, I've spent a good amount of time with the game and have really enjoyed everything about it.

In Hook Champ, you play as an Indiana Jones-like character equipped with a grappling hook trying to escape from various haunted ruins before you're eaten by a ghost. The core gameplay mechanic revolves around using your grappling hook and rope to swing through these ruins as quickly as possible.

The controls are simple and work well, touching the bottom right and left corners makes you run that direction, and tapping the top of the screen throws your rope in that direction. Releasing your finger recalls your rope, and you can immediately tap again to send your grappling hook flying back to the top of the screen to swing again.

Your time in every level is tracked and uploaded to an online leaderboard, and as you progress through the game you earn coins to buy various upgrades for your character. These upgrades tweak every aspect of the game from making your rope longer to making you run faster and everything in between. There are even superfluous upgrades like football helmets and headbands for your guy to wear.

The whole game is wrapped in wonderfully nostalgic pixelated graphics with chiptune music, and load times on my iPhone 3GS are nonexistent. It's very difficult to find anything about Hook Champ to complain about, although I do suppose the lack of mid-level checkpoints can be irritating on the more difficult levels. Still, all the levels are short enough that you never feel like you've lost that much progress when you die.

Hook Champ is an absolutely fantastic game that all fans of retro styled sidescrollers should own. It's currently on sale for 99¢ this weekend, which only serves to sweeten the deal. The thread on our forums are filled with enthusiastic and overwhelmingly positive impressions of the game, and Lasharor has some excellent tips for newcomers.

App Store Link: Hook Champ, 99¢

Dark Nebula is described as a "skill-based action game" which we previewed back in August. The game is brought to us in part by Anders Hejdenberg, the lead designer of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat.

Dark Nebula is a tilt-controlled ball roller, but one that adopts an action/arcade vibe rather than the more tedious precision work found in many others. In fact, it feels so different, I'd hesitate to put it in the same genre. The game proceeds across 10 levels of action-packed gaming. Each level is very well designed with a variety of obstacles introduced along the way. Your tasks include the avoiding of spikes, triggering switches, avoiding laser fire, and more. And despite no calibration options, the game's controls seemed perfect.

Each of the 10 levels are primarily vertical scrolling scenes with distinct start and end points. Your ball has a single shield that can be replenished along the way. Get hit with your shield down or fall off the level and you have to restart at the beginning of the level poriton you are died on. If you lose all your lives, you can restart at the beginning of any level you've unlocked. There are 10 levels in all.

In fact, it seems the developers have gone to special trouble to avoid user frustration in the game. For example, if you get killed by a laser shot or spinning spikes, these elements actually slow down so it's easier to get through on your next life. The result is a game that you will enjoy immensely to the end, though one that will end relatively quickly.

Dark Nebula is billed at offering an hour's play time to make it through the entire game. If you are particularly coordinated, you will be able to make it through in a significantly shorter amount of time, though going back to get gold stars on each level do offer a legitimate amount of replay value.

Overall, Dark Nebula offers a very fun, action-arcade experience that we loved every second of. The game's rather short length, however, is a legitimate point of concern, but at only $0.99 and high quality of the overall experience, we still recommend it.

App Store Link: Dark Nebula, $0.99