We've already posted a TA Plays on NimbleBit's upcoming snake-like NimbleQuest, and could totally write up an extensive preview article detailing even more about the game for its upcoming release. But, really, what's more fun? Reading what we think about an upcoming game, or just playing it yourself? We're thinking the latter, so we're trying something new here. NimbleQuest is made in Unity, and among the other magical properties of the engine is the ability to build the game into a format that's playable in your browser.

All you need is to do to play it is download a tiny browser plugin and mash the image below to load the game up and give it a spin:

This online preview is only going to be active through Monday night, so if you want to check out NimbleQuest before it launches on the App Store, be sure to do it before then. As far as when it's going to launch, NimbleBit isn't ready to get official on the release date, but their fingers are crossed that we'll see NimbleQuest before the end of the month. Enjoy the game, and feel free to post any tips or strategies you come across for maximizing your score in the comments.

Also, let us know what you think of this style of game preview, as we'll try to do more of them in the future if people enjoy it. It obviously wouldn't work for every game, but NimbleQuest is a perfect example of a title that plays just as good in your browser window with arrow keys as it will on your iOS device with swipe gestures.

TechCruch has the scoop on a fairly basic HTML5 game of Blackjack running on the Apple TV. While a browser-based game of Blackjack isn't exactly mind blowing, it's still awesome seeing the Apple TV taking these baby steps towards becoming what could potentially be a brand new market for iOS developers. Remember, the foundations of the App Store we know and love today was largely in part of jailbreak developers proving it could be done.

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Gameloft has been posting video podcast on their YouTube channel for quite a while now, and it can be a little hit or miss regarding the amount of interesting tidbits nestled inside. The latest episode, which hit a few days ago, mostly covers E3 and the games they were showing there. Some are already released, and we had our hands all over some of the other ones. Considering all this, the most interesting part of the last podcast is a Facebook game of all things, which should be more than a little familiar to some of you (proper part queued up for your viewing pleasure):

Utilizing the Unity web player plugin, Gameloft has (since this podcast was released) brought Order & Chaos to Facebook. Playing is as simple as downloading the plugin (if you don't have it already) and heading over to the Order & Chaos Facebook page. It's completely free until level 10, and after that you'll need to subscribe. There's a number of payment options ranging from 1 Facebook credit (equal to 10¢) for a day of access, or 30 Facebook credits for six moths.

Unfortunately, Facebook players play on separate servers from mobile players, so you will need to start fresh. Regardless, this is incredibly cool to see Gameloft doing and just goes to show the sheer ubiquity of the Unity engine. It's always neat to see iOS titles hopping platforms, and it will be interesting to see how Order & Chaos does on Facebook since it's basically now a passable World of Warcraft clone that people can play at work in their browser.

Last night, TechCrunch leaked some details of a new initiative taking place over at Facebook called "Project Spartan." This project aims to utilize HTML5 to free Facebook (and Facebook games) from App Store dependence, essentially putting the ball back in Facebook's hands for control over their platform. If you're not privy to the differences between HTML5 and native apps downloaded through the App Store, I'll break it down for you real quick so you can understand why this matters:

Currently, if you want to release an app or game on the App Store, you need to build it in Xcode using C, C++, or Objective-C, using the documented API's available for developers. To submit said game/app to the App Store, you need a valid developer account which costs $99 a year and your game/app needs to abide by Apple's guidelines. Updates to existing games/apps need to go through the same process, and pushing an update out not only requires an additional trip through the week (or more) long approval process, but also depends on users to actually download said update. When you think about it that way, there sure are a lot of hoops to jump through.

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It was back in October that we began following the saga of Sarien.net, a retro Sierra adventure game portal setup by developer Martin Kool. In April 2009 his website began offering entirely web-based remakes of classic Sierra adventures, built entirely with HTML, CSS, and Javascript (though the project really began back in 2001 with a Sierra-inspired graphical chat client). Last year, Kool began creating versions of these web-based games with an interface and graphical treatment appropriate for the iPad and mobile Safari. The first iPad release to go online was Space Quest, which we previewed in November, followed by King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, earlier this month. These games were basically reverse engineered, ground-up remakes and were not licensed by Sierra. And, as such, last week's news of Sarien.net receiving a cease & desist letter from Sierra and closing its doors was sad, but not highly surprising.

It seems the Sarien.net story is not over, however. Kool has just revealed in a lengthy blog post that includes a fully history of the project that, in an unexpected turn of events, Activision has contacted him with a proposal offering limited official authorization to publish a subset of his remakes online.

Activision proposed to officially authorize Sarien.net to publish the first game of any series in its multiplayer HTML5 form. As it may generate interest in also playing the games' successors, Sarien.net will provide a link to Steam and other services that offer the full game collections. To me that sounds beyond "fair enough", and very reasonable. Also, as Activision may (or may not) choose to provide official releases of these games through the AppStore, they requested that all iPad versions of the games be removed.

Now even though it is based upon the same HTML5 technology I also find this request understandable, as I would probably have done the same if I were Activision. Then again, if I co-owned Activision instead of Q42, there might've been a World of Space Quest and worldwide free beers on Fridays, but right now this really is a huge step forward and allows games like Space Quest, Police Quest and King's Quest to be played by many people during work hours - err, I mean, in a browser.

And, so it seems that that Sarien.net and some of its web-based Sierra adventures will live on, though iPad gamers will not be enjoying the excellent custom treatment that they may be accustomed to -- unless Sierra launches their own iOS versions of said classics. (Incidentally, the jury is still out on what will ultimately become of Leisure Suit Larry, as it seems Activision sold it to CodeMasters at some point in the past.)

Kool indicates that his first order of business is to restore Sarien.net to what it was (but with the approved list of games), with a redesign and additional functionality to follow. While it's less than we'd hope for as far as iPad adventurers are concerned, this is certainly good news for the gaming community in general. And we offer a "hats off" to Activision for their consideration to Sarien.net regarding these classics.

In October of last year we first caught wind of Martin Kool's loving homage to retro adventure games, Sarien.net. Nearly a month later, we got a hands on preview of Space Quest, the first game Martin ported from its previous web-based browser state to an iPad-specific version that was custom tailored for both the screen and input of the device. Not long after that, Space Quest went live. While I'm not entirely sure how many people played the web-based version of the game to completion, it sure was awesome to have, and was a great tech demo for just what was possible via a web app on the iPad.

Today we got word that the rest of the Sarien.net catalog has been ported over, and in addition to iPhone support, the whole site is now hosted via Amazon's content distribution network to make loading even faster. Most of the games have even been extensively tweaked to be easy to play on the touch interface.

I'm not sure how much more detailed I need to get on this because, well, all the games are completely free to play and don't require any kind of installation beyond navigating your iOS device to sarien.net, tapping the game you want to play, adding a bookmark icon for it, then launching it. The single down side (if you'd even call it that) to all this is that since the games are played online via a web browser, you need an internet connection, but that seems to be a decent tradeoff to being able to instantly play such fantastic vintage adventure games for free on your iPhone or iPad.

We've made a number of posts over the last few months regarding a fan-created, iPad version of Sierra's graphical point-and-click adventure Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter. What makes the effort particularly interesting is the fact that the game is entirely web-based. Load the URL in Mobile Safari, save a bookmark to your Home Screen and -- voila -- you're a tap away from playing a true classic on a device more suited to the style of gameplay than anything that was available back in 1986.

We're happy to report that developer Martin Kool has completed his effort and shared the public URL where iPad-toting space cadets the world around can get started on this excellent adventure. The game can be found right here:

http://ipad.sarien.net

Our observations of a pre-release version stand true for the final product. You tap the home screen icon and the game loads completely seamlessly without any additional work. It's crazy just how fast and easy the whole process is. The first time you load it up, there's a small load time, but as soon as mobile Safari starts caching parts of the game it's just like playing the actual computer game. There's even multiple save slots, and accessing them is as simple as rotating the iPad in to portrait mode.

The game features the same, relatively blocky graphics as the original. And, to the retro gaming fan in me, that's a splendid thing -- but getting them to render unaltered in the iPad's browser was no walk in the park, it turns out.

The only complain I could offer is the lack of sound effects that were present in the original -- a challenge of in-browser, HTML / Javascript gaming that the developer indicates he hasn't addressed "yet." I spent a brief period with Space Quest in days long past, and I can say that what the developer has delivered here, despite that complaint, is all that I remember and then some. Now, I confess that I'm more of a King's Quest man at heart, but that's no matter; Martin recently indicated that once Space Quest was complete, he's moving on to The Black Cauldron, King's Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry.

I would encourage any iPad gamers who counts themselves among fans of adventure to give Space Quest for the iPad a try.

Fans of the effort should visit Sarien.net's forum where Martin is soliciting opinions on an official iPad adventure series as released by Sierra.

Owners of the original iPhone will remember the dark days before the App Store or even the original jailbreaks and third party software when games and apps consisted of nothing more than clever web pages, usually loaded to the brim with javascript. The games were basic, and the "apps" consisted of little more than simple database-powered applets and tip calculators, but they did the trick.

Akihabara is a HTML5 toolbox filled with all kinds of neat goodies that creative developers can use to make browser games. On the Akihabara web site there are five demo games ranging from a simple Tetris-like game to a basic Zelda clone. The cool part is, these games work on every modern non-Internet Explorer browser, including the browsers of the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and apparently even other touchscreen phones like the Palm Pre.

Depending on what platform you're playing on, all of the proper controls appear on screen or you use the keyboard and arrow keys. On the iPhone, virtual controls pop up at the bottom of the screen and while they're not as responsive as a native game, it's still pretty amazing to think you're essentially playing a web page-- Without even a smidge of Flash.

All of the games on the Akihabara site are free, and really worth a spin both because they're really impressive pieces of web development but also so you can appreciate what things were like before the App Store came around.

While we wait for the official iTunes App store to launch in late June, I thought I'd highlight some of the better web-based games that have emerged since the iPhone's launch.

Popcap ported their popular Bejeweled game to the iPhone and is accessible by pointing your iPhone/iPod Touch's browser to Popcap.com.

The game works reasonably well over an EDGE connection and can be a good way to pass some time. The gameplay is simple: use your finger to swap adjacent jewels in order to line up 3 or more of the same color.

iPhone gamers may want to have a look at Connextion.  It's a Pipe Dreams sort of game where you are presented a screen of randomly oriented pipes with the goal of properly connecting them by clicking on various pipe tiles which rotates each tile's pipe.   Connect all the pipes and the game is won.

Connextion is a web-based title that plays fine on any iPhone or iPod touch.  It's simple, it's fun.

With all the recent news concerning native iPhone games headed for debut at the launch of the iTunes App Store in June, let's not forget that web-based games written for the iPhone can be great fun, as well.  And what's more, they're here right now.  Two such titles, recently released by Balazs Vagvolgyi of Maryland, exemplify this point perfectly.

The first is Rubik's Cube.  (You remember the Rubik's Cube, right?)  The game presents you with a 3D rendered, on-screen cube with rotational control arrows arrayed about it.  Once you click the randomize button, your goal is to rotate portions of the cube such that each side is a solid color (in case you actually don't remember the Rubik's Cube).  The interface is intuitive and it's a fun, new way to fiddle with your iPhone or iPod touch.

As the author reports on his blog,

I've finished the Rubik's Cube game for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. It runs pretty fast in Safari. There will be updates coming later. Any feedbacks are welcome. This is the first JavaScript application I've ever written but I still could finish it in about 10 nights.

I'm particulary proud of the 3D engine built on JavaScript and HTML CANVAS that features ambient+directional lighting and backface culling. This version is specialized for the Rubik's Cube here but I have a more generic version as well.

The second title is Tap-a-Brick 3D.  It's basically a remake of California Dreams' Blockout (1989), which is a top-down, 3D slant on Tetris.  As I've enjoyed Blockout on a variety of platforms over the years, this title comes as a particular treat.  Like Rubik's Cube, the interface is great and doesn't get in the way -- a well done iPhone game.

Vagvolgyi comments,

No compromises! It's the full 3D experience in your iPhone's web browser. Smooth animations and an interface fine tuned for the touch screen. Apparently it is possible to build quality games without Flash or the native iPhone SDK.

Rotate the block using the arrows and move it by tapping on the 3D pit. I added all the goodies: the mandatory collision detection, valid path detection, automatic computation of the shortest path. If it's not possible to move to the position where you tapped, the game even finds the closest valid location. (It's fun to try how a block moves around an obstacle if it has enough free space.)

These titles feel less "restrained" by nature of being Web 2.0-based titles rather than native iPhone apps than many such games out there.  Hats off to Balazs Vagvolgyi for his strong work.  We're anxious to see what's next on his list.