Glen Corpes recently released his visually stunning game Ground Effect into the App Store.

Ground Effect is an arcade style Ekranoplan racing game that takes place around a series of 14 different sets of islands. Despite the relative simplicity of the geometry of these islands, the game is visually stunning with extremely impressive draw distance and silky smooth framerates. The game is controlled utilizing either tilt or touch controls while acceleration is handled automatically. There are two on screen buttons for boosting and braking, and doing well in the game requires intelligent management of boost, which slowly recharges when you're not using it.

The game is structured as a pure arcade racer in which your goal is to get 3rd place or better to unlock the subsequent map. Each map is set up as a series of checkpoints that you must pass through to complete the laps. Even with this setup, the levels are free roam which in some cases allows you to try to find a shorter (but more dangerous route). As a low flying vehicle, you can only skim your way across low surfaces or make your way up gradual inclines. Fly into too steep a portion of rock or land, and you'll crash. The game has a really great sense of speed and movement as you find yourself bobbing over surfaces trying to make the best time, and level designs are also varied and enjoyable.

The video shows both in-game flying (brake and accelerator shown) as well as alternate camera views which aren't included in the game (though can be invoked).

Each of the levels end up requiring at least a few tries to familiarize yourself with the twists and turns and how best to maximize your boost. While there are other vehicles you are competing against, they primarily serve as time markers as there is no ship to ship interaction. There is also nice Ghost race mode that lets you continue to compete against your best performance and adds notably to long term replayability.

While the core gameplay is solid, the game's extras are a bit rough around the edges. While there are 10 ships to choose from, the differences are cosmetic only so there's no incentive to explore the different ships. Meanwhile, the high score system is local only and does not allow you to enter your name, so the game can't practically support more than one player on a given installation.

Despite these minor limitations, the game is great fun and has kept me coming back. The forum response likewise been very positive. We also spoke about this game in our recent podcast.

App Store Link: Ground Effect, $3.99

While I could go absolutely crazy with Baha Men references here, I'll spare our readers and instead just cut to the chase– The Canadian and Australian beta period of ngmoco's virtual pet game TouchPets Dogs [App Store] is finally over. Much like Eliminate [App Store], TouchPets is a free to download game, but your play time is limited along with the advancement of your dog.

Your dog in TouchPets is powered by virtual dog food, which you can either buy or just wait for your in-game dog food bowl to slowly recharge on its own just like energy in Eliminate. The main difference is, while you can play Eliminate all day long if you wanted to without earning credits, your dog in TouchPets actually goes to sleep when it runs out of food. Feeding your dog increases its energy meter, which then is depleted as you play with it.

What initially seems like a very simple virtual pet game quickly turns in to a surprisingly elaborate dog training roleplaying game of sorts where you need to constantly be raising your dog's attributes to rank up as a dog trainer and caretaker. As you level up, more items will be purchable at the pet store using the in-game puppy bucks currency which is earned by keeping your dog happy. There are also career paths for your dog to embark on such as becoming a crime fighter or a rescue dog along with silly careers such as a scientist or a politician.

Each step in your career requires items from the pet store you need to buy along with other requirements like trainer rank, dog happiness level, and some career missions even require you to bring another dog along, which brings us to the social aspect of the game. Since the game leans to heavily on Plus+, TouchPets must be constantly connected to the internet to play.

At any time during the game you can look through your Plus+ friends and invite their dog to come play with yours. The dogs then form relationships and can become friends, get angry with each other, or even fall in love. Every milestone in game is saved online and can be shared on Facebook, and your dog (as well as your activities with friends' dogs) are constantly synchronized with ngmoco's servers.

This allows you to do things like invite a friend's dog over and feed them. When your friend loads up the game, it grabs the latest snapshot of their dog saved on the TouchPets servers, and their recently fed dog will be have a full energy meter in their game. The social aspect of TouchPets is surprisingly fun, and the crazy dog relationships, scuffles, and love triangles that form have been endlessly amusing.

You can train your dog to do tricks, and if you're a good enough trainer (and have enough puppy bucks) you can even own multiple dogs. There's tons to do in TouchPets, and you could just play the game utilizing the free food you get throughout the day. Doing so, however, only allows you to play sporadically for a few minutes at a time, but otherwise there is no limit on how much you can advance your dog. If you're patient enough you could have a house full of dogs with multiple completed career paths without paying for anything.

The other way to play the game involves buying the different packs of virtual dog food which are currently priced between 99¢ and $29.99. Keep in mind though, the game seems to be designed more towards playing the game a little bit every day. While you could, for example, buy the $30 pack, and power your way through the game in few days, I'm not sure you'd have much left to enjoy. I've been playing TouchPets since the start of the Canadian beta, and without paying for anything I've ranked up significantly along with progressing nicely down the scientist career path by just playing a little bit each day.

TouchPets Dogs is definitely one of the best virtual pet games I've played, largely in part due to how much it utilizes Plus+ for building relationships between dogs. It adds a completely unexpected level of depth and complexity to the game that will likely keep me playing it for quite some time. I might eventually buy some food, but I've been happy with the amount of play time I'm getting with my free food allotment each day. Since the game is free, there really isn't much reason to not give it a spin. Further impressions and play dates are being coordinated in the official discussion thread in our forums.

App Store Link: TouchPets Dogs, Free

Fans of Rogue Touch or other roguelike games may be interested to see Tecmo's latest App Store release, The Isle of 8-bit Treasures [link], a turn-based adventure.

The Isle of 8-bit Treasures is more or less Rogue, wrapped up and packaged with a retro look and feel that seems more at home on an NES than an iPhone. But whereas Rogue is entirely set in a dungeon world, The Isle features a number of environments to play through, including dungeons, caverns, forests and ruins, across more than 60 missions. It has a feel that's somewhat reminiscent of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.

The game lets you choose between three different characters — Swordsman, Witch and Hunter, each with their own gameplay characteristics. Different areas of the island game world are accessed from a central map, some areas and weapons of which are randomly generated using songs in your iTunes library as seeds. The various play areas are full of roving creatures with which you must do battle, and three different types of objects — stones, powders and crystals — that can be collected to enhance your capabilities.  Each game area is completed when the heart shaped Valor icon is collected from the area's final floor.

The Isle brings an interesting twist on the weapons systems of most games of its sort. To the right of the on-screen play area is your vertical Weapon Reel. The Reel contains a light smattering of power icons by default and scrolls downward with each attack you perform. If a power icon appears in the window at the bottom of the Reel during an attack, your weapon delivers more damage than normal. Crystals collected along the way can be dragged onto your Weapon Reel to deliver a series of high-damage attacks in battle.

The game features colorful, whimsical, retro-inspired graphics and feels very smooth to play.  But don't let the graphics fool you, this is a rather difficult / challenging game.  Many's the time I've found myself slaughtered by a cartoonish enemy after just a few minutes of play. And while this presents a notable challenge, some readers in our forums lament the small number of floors in some of the levels (some just 3 or 4 deep), as compared to Rogue's far deeper dungeons. More troublesome, perhaps, is the lack of a mid-dungeon save feature. Tap out to the home screen or get on a phone call and it's back to the island map.  Hopefully Tecmo will address this unfortunate omission in a future update.

Despite its shortcomings, early adopters are enjoying it on the whole. The Isle of 8-bit Treasures is an interesting new take on a solid formula and should appeal to many iPhone adventure fans. Let's hope an update will make things less frustrating for an interrupted gamer.

See our brief video of very early stages of several game areas to get a feel for the game.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

App Store Link: The Isle of 8-bit Treasures, $4.99

Last month Wisp Games released a sprawling galactic role playing game set far in the future, known as Flatspace [App Store] for the iPhone and iPod touch.  An adaptation of the well-reviewed 2003 PC release, Flatspace is a large scale, open space trading game in the spirit of the legendary Elite, Galaxy on Fire [App Store] for the iPhone, and others of the sort.

The distant future. Space has expanded to such an extent that stars and planets can no longer hold form. Humanity still lives and works in space stations and ships, islands of light and technology in an otherwise cold and flat void.

Such is the backstory of the Flatspace game universe.  Upon reading the title of this game along with the backstory, I must confess that I was anticipating an amazingly clever and wholly new type of game experience that might harken back to Abbot's Flatland, or something like the same, but this is not the case.  Not that Flatspace is a let-down, but it seems the "flat" backstory is simply justification for a game of galactic proportions being rendered in top-down 2D (well, 2.5D) as opposed to 3D.  I just wanted to clear that up, directly.

At the start of a new game, you create a captain for your ship, choosing from among a variety of professions: Trader, Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, Space Pirate, Police Officer and Scavenger.  You're then equipped with a rather meager spacecraft and dropped into a random spot in the game universe.  From there you're out to amass wealth by way of completing various missions and trading items between space stations — that is, if you're on the straight and narrow.  Another approach is to basically become a space pirate, raiding, stealing, and killing in order to bring in the loot.  Whatever your approach, there are plenty of other space pirates out there to keep you on your toes — watch out for them.

Your ship has the ability to target and scan both space stations and ships.  This reveals important information about the nature of these vessels, so that you can decide whether to interact with them (and in what fashion) or to pass them by.  Your craft is armed with lasers, but available weapons upgrades, which include cannons, missiles and tractor beams, add to your abilities and are necessary to complete certain missions.  Control of your ship is handled via accelerometer for steering, as well as on-screen touch for control of weapons and various other ship features.

Flatspace for the iPhone features three different playmodes.  First off, there's the Standard Game, which lets you create a captain and begin amassing your fortune.  The Custom Game mode gives you control over the types of people in the universe (pirates, no pirates, etc.), the quantity and visibility of space stations, the numbers of asteroids and nebulas, and so forth.  The Arcade Game just throws you straight into the heat of battle, where the emphasis is on action rather than strategy.

Even with my abbreviated time with the game, it's clear that Flatspace offers significant play time to those who fancy a large-scale space RPG.  While more approachable than the seminal classic Elite, Flatspace is one of those games in which you can (and must) invest a lot of time.

The accelerometer-only steering can seem imprecise and the interface, a bit unpolished, perhaps reflective of it being a port of a PC game, but Wisp Games indicates that the first update is almost ready, which will include the option of non-accelerometer steering, video tutorials, and the ability to choose your initial bankroll for Custom Games.  And those who remain undecided can check out the free, demo version of the Windows release to get a feel for the action.

App Store Link: Flatspace, $2.99

In Karnival, [App Store] you play as a boy with the arm of a goat who decides to take his talents on the road by starting his own carnival that travels the country offering rides, fortune tellers, snack booths, and 30 different included oddities and attractions that are slowly unlocked as you play the game.

Karnival features gameplay that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played any of the Tycoon series of games such as RollerCoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, or many others. In the game you have control over every aspect of your carnival from what rides go where to ticket prices to even keeping your attractions in good repair. You have to intelligently build your carnival to maximize karma, fame, and money earned while (hopefully) keeping your taxes and payroll low enough to turn a profit each day.

Karnival has an intuitive touch based interface to handle all the different carnival management functions, and features a tutorial which does an excellent job at explaining all the ins and outs of running a successful carnival. While the controls and interface do their job well, there were definitely times where I wished I was playing this game with a keyboard and mouse.

If there's any down side to Karnival it's that once you progress in the game a bit, you could drive yourself crazy with the micromanagement of your different attractions. Like other Tycoon-like games, you can mostly let your carnival run itself, or endlessly tweak your business to maximize profits and other stat gains.

Overall Karnival is a game that is a lot of fun wth a surprising amount of depth. The art style and music give the game an atmosphere that's exactly what you would expect of a freaky carnival. With both a story mode that has you traveling across the country as well as a basic sandbox mode, Karnival should keep Tycoon fanatics busy for quite some time.

The game has received strongly positive feedback in our discussion thread, and the developers have chimed in with tips and answers to questions.

App Store Link: Karnival, $5.99

As one of the early tower defense games on the iPhone, Zombie Attack quickly became a cult favorite. The story of one man’s survival against a zombie invasion is something we could all get behind. But despite a fresh approach to the genre and all of that undead-hacking fun, the original game ultimately lacked a lot of variety with one small map and only four turret types. Zombie Attack: The Second Wave takes those concerns to heart and offers a vastly superior offering for those looking to fight off a legion of re-animated corpses.

Like its predecessor, Zombie Attack: The Second Wave will place you in the shoes of a zombie invasion survivor. You’ll be tasked with protecting a building from the undead horde. What sets the Zombie Attack series apart from other iPhone tower defense games is that your survivor will have to manually place and upgrade the turrets. You can’t simply swipe around the screen with a high omnipotent finger placing units willy nilly. You’ll need to safely guide your survivor past the oncoming monsters if you want to place that gun turret just right, or upgrade that cannon to maximum ferocity.

New turrets join old favourites and add a little bit of whimsy to this terror-filled TD. Scarecrows will attract zombies to their location and blow up in their faces. A giant hammer will pound back and forth trying to smash any zombies that get in its way. A ray gun will send out a space age sonic pulse that will slow the shuffling feet of the undead. Mix in Zombie Attack staples like saw blades and flamethrowers and you’ve got a fairly decent assortment of weapons at your disposal, which is good, as you’ll need them to tackle an assortment of new enemies.

The original Zombie Attack offered a fairly generic, repetitive experience in terms of enemy units. While the game boasted two zombie types, it was hard to ever notice a difference. This time around IUGO has introduced a slew of new baddies to tackle. Cheerleaders can use their heads as projectiles. Winged beasts are immune to a variety of turrets. Hounds lock on to the survivor and go for the throat. The Second Wave offers 6 zombie types, which is more than enough to help keep things fresh and a definite change from what’s come before.

Tools of death and types of terror aren’t the only thing to see an increase in Zombie Attack: The Second Wave – the map situation has taken a drastic step forward, going from only one map to four. The maps aren’t just greater in number, they’re also better by design. Larger areas mean you’ll need to scroll around the playfield to see every inch of zombie territory, and different map layouts mean there will be different obstacles that you can try and exploit. Each of these areas showcases a different location like a backyard or a trailer park. It’s a nice touch, but at the end of the day what makes these maps a success isn’t whether or not you’re navigating a spooky graveyard or an abandoned highway, it’s how different each of these levels plays.

This video by AppBank doesn't show much of gameplay strategy but shows moving your character around, though many towers have already been built:

If you grow tired of playing these different maps in the standard Survival Mode, you can check out the surprisingly robust Challenge Mode. You’ll select from 20 different challenges (5 for each map) that offer up some twists on the series tried and true survival gameplay. One challenge may restrict you to using certain turrets. Another may speed up the movement of the zombie horde. With 20 in all, there’s enough here to keep any tower defense fan occupied for days.

Zombie Attack: The Second Wave retains everything that made the original a cult classic while at the same time offering a drastically more robust package than its predecessor. If you were a fan of the original, Zombie Attack: The Second Wave is pretty much a no brainer. As for tower defense fans that found the original a little too shallow, the depth of content offered here definitely makes this franchise worthy of a second look. With all of the new additions and improved gameplay, it’s hard to not fall in love with Zombie Attack: The Second Wave. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun killing zombies with saw blades.

App Store Link: Zombie Attack! The Second Wave, $3.99

So, is it possible to fit another worthy line-drawing game into an already crowded market? Backflip Studios thinks so with their new game Harbor Havoc 3D [$1.99].

Like Flight Control, the objective of the game is to route your ships to their proper docks. Simply draw a line from the ship to the dock and you're on your way. Harbor Havoc 3D's claim to fame, however, is the incorporation of multiple layers of vessels that you must properly navigate. Depending on the map, this can include submarines, boats and helicopters or even submarines and ground rovers in the underwater map. Each type of ship can only collide with like ships, so keeping this in mind is critical for success.

The game comes with 4 maps: Far East, Atlantis, Arctic, and Lighthouse. Each offers a variant in gameplay. Far East is your straightforward Flight Control setup where you are docking different ships to their ports. Ships, however, don't have to be undocked as in Harbor Master. The game also adds an anchoring mechanism by tapping on a ship that will keep them in place. The Far East map is going to feel boring to anyone who has put in much time in any of the existing line-drawing games, but Atlantis and especially Arctic are where things get interesting.

The developer's gameplay video shows how crazy things can get and even shows the locked Lighthouse level which gives you a partially obscured view of the play area.

For advanced players who have gotten bored of Flight Control and are looking for more of a challenge, Harbor Havoc 3D manages to provide added layers of challenge without necessarily being different just for the sake of being different.

App Store Link: Harbor Havoc 3D, $1.99

TipCat Mobile just released a very nice side scrolling shooter called Cell War [App Store].

The $2.99 game offers a beautifully stylized side scroller that places you as the pilot of a nano machine whose mission is fight off viruses and save the humans from disease. Designed for the iPhone, the game has some nice touches with a good variety of level design and power-ups that seem to keep the game interesting. Three levels of difficulty are provided over 9 different stages, and the game also provides online leaderboards.

The game is controlled primarily through the use of the iPhone's accelerometer allowing you to move the ship with tilt controls alone. This can be calibrated in the options so you can choose the neutral position. Your primary weapon is fired automatically and can be upgraded multiple times. Beyond this, the game also offers a nice touch targeting system for missiles akin to Space Deadbeef — simply touching on the enemies will lock on your missiles.

Here's the game in action:

The developers have also released a fully featured Lite version that provides the first two stages of the game, complete with all 3 difficulty levels. There really is a lot to like about this game, and the production values are outstanding. My only real issue with the game may simply be a personal one. I've never been a fan of the use of the accelerometer for ship movement in 2D iPhone shooters, and I much prefer touch (which is not an option). If you have no such hang ups, this game is definitely recommended, but even if you do, the Lite version provides you with a great sampling of the game.

App Store Link: Cell War, $2.99, Cell War Lite, Free

We felt somewhat obligated to review a game as huge as Eliminate Pro [App Store]. Following its epic development cycle, it's hard to think of many other games which were as highly anticipated among our community. But it's not just Touch Arcade forum members who have been waiting for Eliminate, as countless other developers have all been anxiously holding their breath to see how successful the microtransaction-powered gameplay is from a business perspective.

If it wasn't apparent by now from reading our other coverage on the game, we really enjoy Eliminate. The classic four player deathmatch gameplay is enhanced with an RPG-style progression system which adds a great deal of depth to an otherwise simple game. Power-ups littered throughout the maps spice up battles, and when it's working as intended, the matchmaking system seems to do a decent job of making sure the game you get thrown in to is reasonably matched.

While we did feel obligated to review Eliminate Pro, since you can download and experience everything in the game for free, there isn't much reason for me to dwell much on the gameplay. Instead, I'll try to clear up some common misconceptions I've seen in comments and in forum posts, along with offering some helpful tips and hints for new players.

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In the debate of the best racers on the iPhone platform, titles such as Real Racing and Need for Speed: Undercover are likely to come up. You may want to add one more to the debate — Gameloft’s newly released Asphalt 5 is simply an adrenaline rush in your pocket. On the fun meter, Asphalt 5 definitely delivers with strong sense of speed. But, while the game delivers a solid overall racing experience with a good amount of content and responsive controls, the graphics and animation do keep it a notch below the others.

On that note, the first thing that hits you is the graphics. Even though they may not be the smoothest (on a 2G iPod) on the platform, they do pop off the screen, which makes a difference when you’re careening through tracks and dealing with oncoming traffic from all sides. Framerate aside, even though you may not be focused on the details, Gameloft obviously has. Whether racing through snow-covered freeways, mud soaked roads, or the darkness of night, the details are everywhere. From the signs on storefronts to damage on vehicles, Gameloft has definitely spent a good deal of development creating an arcade experience with good degree of visuals. The perky soundtrack is a keeper, although you can play your own music if you’re into something a little more gut wrenching.

The objective of Asphalt 5 is simple: win races and earn money to soup up your ride. Of course, you’ll face a variety of obstacles including oncoming traffic, innocent bystanders, and police in addition to varying weather conditions such as snow and rain. This can all be experienced through 3 different camera angles: close, far and bumper. Bumper provides a driver’s seat view which can be quite intense with every bump and crash.

The game takes you through 12 different locations including Aspen, St. Tropez, Athens and Las Vegas. The well-designed tracks offer different terrains and environmental conditions, and most importantly, shortcuts. These shortcuts, which can be seen on the mini-map, are a good addition allowing players the option of sticking to the standard track or risking it by taking a shorter yet tighter path. In some cases, these shortcuts are the only way to succeed especially in the time-sensitive races.

Asphalt 5 has three game modes: Single Race, Career and Local/Online Multiplayer. For many, Single Race will be the first taste of Asphalt 5 which provides a quick multi-lap race through the track of your choosing. While Single Race provides a good setting to practice driving skills, winning doesn’t unlock new tracks or earn money.

Online multiplayer provides a number of options which includes competing against up to six players in a single race. In our brief time with the game, the online experience was smooth with minimal performance issues, and joining or hosting a race is relatively easy.

Meanwhile, Career is the guts of Asphalt 5, and where winning matters. Whether unlocking tracks, picking up women, or earning money, Career is where you do it facing 8 different racing events. And once tracks are unlocked in Career, they become available in Single Race.

With a variety of challenging racing events (time trial, cop chase, escape, drift and more), Asphalt 5 has 33 licensed cars and motorcycles potentially at your disposal. From Lamborghinis and Ferraris to Ducatis and Kawasakis, winning races and earning cash will give you access to many of these vehicles for a price. The default vehicles are the Mini Cooper S and Nissan 370Z, and all vehicles are stored in the Garage section. If you want to cut through all that, playing online through Gameloft Live will provide full access to all the vehicles for competing against others or in individual time trials.

Cash can be used to upgrade vehicles in three areas: engine, handling and boost. And you’ll find there are numerous other ways to customize your vehicle. For example, paint jobs can be altered using the color slider and decals can be applied. Earning cash goes beyond winning races although that’s a big part of it. Cash is also earned by collecting tokens on the roadway, near misses with other vehicles, drifting, jumping, and eliminations.

Asphalt 5 provides a responsive set of controls, and in general, the handling is highly accurate. The game consists of three types of controls: wheel, screen tap, and accelerometer. Choosing the accelerometer controls allows you to turn on/off auto acceleration. Of the three, the accelerometer feels the most natural with screen tapping the most awkward. With auto acceleration turned off, a brake pad appears, although I rarely used my brakes except when wanting score style points for drifting.

Gameplay video from Japanese version recorded by AppBank:

When it comes to gameplay, Asphalt 5 does what it’s supposed to do—provide a good sense of speed. The different race types certainly offer variety, and a replay function is included at the end of each race to review the race, although replays can’t be saved. The AI in Asphalt 5 feels well balanced providing enough aggressive driving to keep it interesting but not overdoing it either to make it impossible. The controls make steering and handling relatively easy, and most won’t have issues picking them up. The game is fairly forgiving when it comes to crashing into objects, however, crashing into oncoming traffic tends to have more severe consequences by stalling your momentum and losing position in the race.

Overall, Asphalt 5 definitely delivers on the fun meter. The controls and content really makes this a racer accessible to everyone. Aside from the middling (though acceptable) framerate on earlier generation devices, Asphalt 5 is solid arcade racer with quality graphics. With a variety of different races, a relatively balanced AI, online multiplayer and a great feeling of speed, Asphalt 5 comes highly recommended.

App Store Link: Asphalt 5, $6.99