If you've been getting stomped in Star Command [$2.99] and stopped playing as a result, consider giving it another shot. Creator War Balloon just pushed out an update that added a bunch of rookie-friendly features, including tutorials, a beginner difficulty level, and tips for the weapon-firing mini-games. Also, three additional tokens are now being dished out at the start of every new game, bringing the total to a hefty 15. Show the space zombies who's boss! Or not!

This update also sees a bunch of other tweaks and improvements. The list is sorta crazy huge, actually. Here are some notable additions: room ammo and assign buttons have been disabled if a room can't hold anymore, max crew has been increased, and you can unlock "larger ships and heavy difficulty," provided you're a Bad Enough Space Dude to handle them.

You can check out the patch notes for yourself over at our sister site AppShopper. Also, if you're still having troubles after updating, consider swinging by our guide for Star Command, which is full of hot tips from us and our community.

"Endless fallers" isn’t a proper genre name, but if it was, that would be the easiest way to describe Daddy Was A Thief [$1.99] In Rebel Twins' latest, you play as the titular daddy -- imagine a more nefarious Andy Richter -- who finds himself abruptly fired and turns to a life of crime to provide for his family. Instead of cooking meth a la Breaking Bad, he opts for something much more traditional: robbing banks.

Every game starts off with dad escaping the bank’s rooftop and then leaping onto an adjacent building’s roof presumably to make his escape. He automatically runs from left to right, reversing course whenever hitting anything, which frees you up to either jump (swipe up) or smash through the floor below (swipe down). That, pretty much, is the entire game.

Nevertheless, Daddy Was A Thief tries admirably to not feel repetitive. There are obstacles to get in your way, certainly, but part of what keeps things moving are the aesthetics. It’s a subtle move, but each floor is a different, bright, warm color. When you’re crashing through floor after floor, it tricks the eye into feeling like there’s more variety than there really is. Not that Daddy Was A Thief is tricky: It has a few core things going on, and sticks only to them.

To impede your progress, you'll have to deal with a wide variety of threats, both human and inhuman. Of the latter, you'll have to contend with errant missiles being sent to stop you and lasers that can shrink you in one blast -- making it much harder to shatter the floor below. Of the former, you’ll run into residents (grandmas who can mule-kick you back a few floors), cops (who will club you), and fellow criminals (who will shoot you). Aside from the laser, one hit from anything will kill daddy immediately. To keep things still family-friendly (aside from, you know, all the theft going on), he doesn’t explode into a geyser of blood -- he just collapses into a weird, stone skeleton.

Your main objective, really, is to just keep moving and falling as quickly as you can. Being an "endless faller," the only thing you’re striving for is to beat your own record and see how far down you can get.

To further shake up the rhythm of things, occasionally you’ll crash-land into a casino floor, where you’re no longer in control and watch as dad balloons up into a giant ball. It’s a funky mix of pinball and pachinko, and you wait to see whether he’ll collide into all the green bulbs on the floor. If he does, the casino will "pay out" its entire vault.

For such a frenetic game, it’s somewhat odd that control is wrenched away from you so suddenly on these floors. This is even more frustrating because occasionally dad can get stuck between obstacles, and you can no longer move at all. This usually happens on the casino levels, or it did to me, and so I was forced to surrender all my momentum and just quit back out to the main floor. In all my marathon sessions, I only got stuck on one other regular floor, and in that case a missile eventually struck me down.

The coins you earn can be spent for upgrades and power-ups. These can add new wrinkles to the game via rockets you can board (which you tilt to control), potions that turn you into the Hulk, and, a la Jetpack Joyride and many others, magnets that will make coin-collecting all the easier.

This sounds like a back-handed compliment, but as far as iPhone games that can be used as time-killers, Daddy Was A Thief is perfectly suited to make you miss your subway stop or not realize the line in front of you has been moving. Or, if you don’t want to leave the house, it’s great to play while your console games are updating or installing. Its simplicity is what makes it work, so as long as you aren't looking for your next deep iOS gaming experience, Daddy Was A Thief should fit the bill.

Talisman is a geeky boardgaming legend. Created in 1983 by Games Workshop, it features a broad range of fantasy archetypes (Elves, Wizards, Monks, etc.) competing to be the first to reach the Crown of Command.

Each of the heroes available has a simple set of RPG stats, including Strength and Craft (magical power); plus one or two special abilities, such as the Druid's ability to change his alignment at will. Some also have drawbacks: the Monk can add his starting Craft to his Strength when fighting, but can never equip weapons.

The goal is to reach the center of the board, but movement is intentionally imprecise. Each turn you roll a die and move that many spaces in either direction then follow the instructions for the space you landed on: usually drawing one or more Adventure cards, which can represent monsters, loot, followers and other kinds of enconters.

Further die-rolling is common: will the Witch grant you increased Strength, or turn you into a toad? Roll a d6. The board is divided into three realms of increasing peril, and moving inward toward greater risks and rewards is restricted. Are you ready to challenge the Sentinel who guards the bridge? You could build a raft - if you can get your hands on an Axe and then land in the Woods...

The feel of the game is a little like Dark Tower or Dokapon Kingdom, both of which may have been inspired by Talisman.

Nomad Games' Talisman: Prologue [$4.99] is a beautiful port of the revised 4th edition of the game, and captures the tabletop feel beautifully, but it is a single-player quest-based game.

The Crown of Command still lies at the center of the board, but you'll be going after marauding bandits and seeking ancient artifacts. Prologue features 10 of the game's original 14 heroes, and six quests of increasing difficulty for each, starting with a tutorial in how to use that character's powers and culminating in fights with dragons and trips to the Plane of Peril.

Talisman DE, a multiplayer Talisman game, is forthcoming for PC (and presumably iOS thereafter). Prologue doesn't allow you to play the full game, but that may actually be a good thing, as its quest system makes for mobile-friendly bite-sized gaming, whereas full games of Talisman are notorious for being very (and unpredictably) long.

You see, Talisman is like a retired adventurer of venerable age: respected and full of old war stories, but old fashioned and a bit... random. Lady Luck chooses her own in this game, where success depends largely on favorable rolls of the movement die and drawing the right cards out of the Adventure and Spell decks. Knowing what you need is easy, getting it is mostly up to chance. A series of bad rolls can leave you feeling like you're playing fantasy Snakes and Ladders: roll, move, draw... oh wait, I just got teleported back to the Tavern.

Game balance in Talisman is also approximate. The Assassin can keep foes from adding a die roll to their strength, making him the deadliest character in the game, whereas the Elf's ability to jump directly from one Woods space to another is rarely used. Then there's the Clairvoyant, a follower that completely breaks the game's "Fate" system for re-rolling dice.

Prologue customizes the adventure deck for every quest, which means the Assassin will be swatting down giants when the Elf is still drawing goblins, but that fix won't work for multiplayer: it will be interesting to see if Nomad offers balance options in Talisman DE, or just embraces the free-wheeling chaos of the original.

Talisman: Prologue offers quick loot-grabbing play and one of the best recreations of sitting down with a boxed game I've seen. If you have fond memories of playing Talisman with friends, you'll want this nostalgic solitaire remix. If Talisman is new to you, Prologue can be a good way to see if you want to invest your time and money in the boxed or digital versions of this flawed but enjoyable classic.

We've been incessantly tweeting about it, but I figured it was worth a quick PSA post to get the word out to folks who don't do the whole social media thing. In a nutshell, we're always on the hunt for new writers. As the App Store gets more and more popular, there's an ever-increasing need for more people to handle the exponentially increasing onslaught of weekly iOS game releases.

Whether you're just getting your start in the games journalism world, or you're an experienced freelance writer that's seeking another notch in their belt, we're anxious to hear from you. For more information about what we're specifically looking for and how to submit your details from us, follow this link.

As someone who can get pretty obsessive about both reading and video games, I keep expecting gamebooks to grab me by the throat. It seems as though they should be perfect for that: part game, part book, all gripping entertainment.

Most of the time, however, I find them a bit thin. Not enough game to really sink into mechanically, not enough book to really reel me in. Sorcery! [$4.99] managed to keep me up well past my bedtime, though. Inkle offers the same expertise they displayed in bringing Frankenstein [$4.99] to life to the task of drawing the magic of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! out onto the screen. At least in part: thus far, only the first of the four books of Sorcery!, The Shamutanti Hills, is available.

The journey through those hills is still a gamebook trip, no doubt about it. There are stats, interactive combat scenes and plenty of big decisions to be made. It's just that nothing feels restrained; nothing feels all that formulaic. Sorcery! goes big where needed, and the app shines for it.

Take combat. You can put your dice away, because this game's combat feels like it's less about numbers and more like making the right call for the narrative at hand. The numbers are there, mind, but the text is the key. You and your enemy stand across the field from another. The text indicates his stance, and you react to it by dragging your character back and forth in a rock/paper/scissors manner. Lunge, defend, or strike carefully: whichever you choose, the narrative reacts. Your enemy shows signs of weakening. If you're as much a sap as I am, you might even feel bad for them as you drive them into the ground.

Overcoming the enemy can be a challenge or a cakewalk, but even when you stomp them you need to take care. You have a very limited pool of stamina, and each blow—glancing or heavy—will eat away at it. Mistakes you make come back to haunt you. Your gods occasionally deign to heal you, but it's easy to lock yourself into an impossible situation. Thankfully, Sorcery! always lets you go back in time.

Even if you don't play yourself into a corner, you might find yourself glad for the chance to go back. I'm a bookmark abuser in any gamebook—sure, I want to explore that sketchy looking cavern, but I'd also like to live out my journey, thanks. Sorcery! skips the bookmarks and simply lets you set yourself back to any previous decision at will. Doing so might take away some of the immersion, but so does handling a list of bookmarks in more skeuomorphic games.

While combat adds literary elements, exploration adds artistic ones. If you have to decide to go left or go right, it's to drag your character along routes on a topographic map of the hills. It may not drill down into villages or caves, but it feels just a touch more involving than to flip to page 53.

Spells also get a bit of love, but this doesn't work quite as well. You have a spellbook to page through, with a huge pile of spells. Each is situational; many require special reagents. Whenever an opportunity for magery pops its head up, the game gives you the option to cast a spell. Then you peer deep into the source of magic, drag letters around until they all settle into place, and cast. It's a pointless process, one that serves to make spell-casting feel a bit more interactive but does nothing else. Harmless, though.

The only real bummer is how quickly it's all over. Once there are two or more books in the series, the experience will have more heft. As it is, the potential feels a bit unexplored. You can spend a good chunk of time exploring the different paths of Sorcery!, going back and taking the routes untaken, but it still feels painfully like you're trapped in the introduction to a much larger tale—because you are, of course. There are spells that will only tease you, hooks that go nowhere, and a save system that will keep you tracking all your completed files until the next book is eventually released.

When the four-book work is finished, Sorcery! is likely to be one heck of an impressive gamebook experience. Inkle's groundwork is fantastic, making for an unusually vibrant piece of interactive fiction. It's a bit like a prologue at the moment, but every journey has to start somewhere. This one gets off on the right foot.

Indie developer Grapefrukt released their minimalist strategy title Rymdkapsel on PlayStation Network just last week, and today they've revealed on Twitter that their game will also be hitting iOS and Android devices in July. IndieGames has a nice write-up of Rymdkapsel, and in a subsequent Twitter conversation an editor inquired about a possible iOS or PC port to which Grapefrukt replied "iOS and Android in July! No promises for PC." If you follow Grapefrukt's blog Prototyprally then you are probably already aware of the impending iOS version. Check out the trailer for Rymdkapsel to see what it's all about.

Back at GDC in March, Rymdkapsel was nominated for an IGF award in Excellence in Design, and while it didn't win it did receive an honorable mention. Grapefrukt has been making many interesting Flash games for a while now, and Rymdkapsel is their first title to be sold and available on a platform like PSN. A week after release and people really seem to be digging it, so if you're liking the look of things then throw Rymdkapsel on your TouchArcade [Free] app Watch List and get ready for the iOS version this summer.

[Twitter, IndieGames]

Foursaken Media's castle defense third-person hack 'n slash mashup Heroes and Castles [$1.99 / Free] has just received another massive update adding all sorts of new goodies to the game. You might remember that we thoroughly enjoyed Heroes and Castles when it came out in January, and the very next month a huge version 2.0 update hit which sweetened the deal even further by adding a competitive multiplayer mode, a single-player Siege mode, and a trio of brand new character classes to play as.

Today's update, which is significant enough to be called version 3.0, again adds a trio of new characters. First off is a female Assassin which gives you a sneakier way to dispatch your enemies. Next up is a Barbarian who has a unique "risk vs reward" attribute that seems him getting stronger as his health gets lower, which should make for some interesting tactics. Finally there is a Druid who uses nature and various kinds of spells to augment the units under his control. The Assassin comes free for everybody, while the Barbarian and Druid are unlocked using gems like the rest of the characters in the game.

In addition to the new characters, a new 20 mission campaign has been added which continues on from the end of the first campaign, and is balanced for players who have beaten the first. It features a new beach environment and new enemy types. There are also several new ally units that you can utilize, like a long-ranged Hunter, heavily armored Dwarves called the Iron Helms to beef up your front lines, two new types of Wizards, and a very powerful (but very expensive) Dwarven Tank which sounds pretty bad ass. Speaking of ally units, you'll be able to level up your buildings and units by 3 additional levels thanks to the new update.

All of this new Heroes and Castles version 3.0 content will be available in versus and co-op, and there's a new multiplayer map to battle it out on as well. If you have a higher-end iOS device you'll also be treated to real-time shadows, and Foursaken has lowered the RAM usage on lower-end devices which should help with of the crashing issues some people had been experiencing. Of course, there's many other tweaks and fixes under the hood in this update too.

Heroes and Castles just keeps getting better as time goes by. There is a full-featured free version which will let you give it a spin risk-free, though the version 3.0 content in that version had a slight hitch and is still waiting for approval from Apple. Seriously, Heroes and Castles is truly awesome and players in our forums have been loving it since day one, check it out if you haven't done so already.

I need Road Not Taken in my life, like, right now. It's the next game from Spry Fox, the studio behind Triple Town [Free]. Inspired in part by Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," it's being described as an "evergreen rogue-like" that explores life in loss -- you know, heavy stuff, like what happens when you stray from your path and all that.

Spry is being pretty vague with details (and probably for a good reason), but it is sharing some concept art and a teaser trailer, the latter of which we've embedded in this post. Take a look around; this thing looks like a winner.

Road Not Taken is due out for PC in 2013 and "eventually" mobile and tablet down the line. There's no doubt we'll be keeping our all-seeing eye on this thing, so add this one to your Watch List in our app [Free] if you want to be alerted whenever we post an update on the project.

The setting and characters in Murder Files (formerly Blue Toad Murder Files) [$2.99] are bursting at the seams with English flavour, so when I first heard about the game, I wondered if it would have a similar feel to the Sherlock Holmes stories I've loved since I was a kid. Nope; not at all. Once I started playing, however, I found it to be very reminiscent of another, completely different style of detective story I also enjoyed in my earlier years. I remember devouring the type of books where a couple neighborhood whiz-kids on summer vacation would decide to start an amateur detective agency. During their search for, say, old Mrs. Johnson's missing cat, they'd uncover million dollar jewel heist or some such, foil the culprit, and maybe even make the front page of the school newspaper.

The recent iOS port of Murder Files--originally released for the Playstation 3 in 2009--features that same sort of fanciful storytelling and over-the-top mysteries. Despite the alarming body count that accumulates as the story progresses, the game maintains a lighthearted and cartoonish feel. You play as one of four detectives (including, appropriately, two whiz-kids on summer vacation) from the Blue Toad Detective Agency, sent to the small town of Little Riddle for some R&R between cases. But before you can even unpack your bags, you witness the cold blooded murder of one of the town's prominent citizens. A conspiracy unfolds, and you must put your sleuthing skills to work to unravel the mystery.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week on The TouchArcade Show, we manage to do a pretty good job talking about iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch video games. After a rousing discussion about Beef Stick Mouth, I dive into why I'm all about Rodeo Games's upcoming strategy title Warhammer Quest. Jared talks about WazHack and Daddy Was A Thief, and Eli praises Dig! and some other notables. See? I told you we stayed on topic!

If you'd like to listen to us, feel free to click one of the links below. Also, you can subscribe to us on iTunes or Xbox Music. The latter is the easiest way to grab us since downloads come instantly. Neat!

Read the rest of this entry »

Cavern [$2.99] is a pretty traditional, top-down rogue-like. You might recall the name. It made an impression on folks back when it was released in 2011. Frustrating, game-ending bugs ultimately held it back, though, despite its neat ideas, great touch interface, and hip combat. Most of those issues have now been fixed. A flurry of recent updates, including a big 2.0 update, have made it pretty playable. We've been enjoying it so much, in fact, that we thought we'd share a run in the game with you.

Earlier this afternoon, I decided to school Jared in the art of perma-death in Cavern, which, in hindsight, was a pretty easy thing to do because all I had to do was die. But it sure was nice to walk around in the randomized dungeons of this game again and grab all sorts of loot. Poison, on the other hand, not so much fun.

If you're in the market for an iOS rogue-like game, you need to grab this. Just check out that video and see if it clicks with you.

After a soft launch period that began in February, Gameloft's free-to-play class-based shooter Blitz Brigade [Free] has now been officially launched in the App Store. Originally announced in January, Blitz Brigade feels like the lovechild of Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield Heroes. It's a lighthearted kind of game, as opposed to the gritty, realistic nature of most shooters nowadays. Despite not being an entirely original concept, I'm actually surprised with how much fun Blitz Brigade has been so far.

As you'd expect, it's pretty freemium'd out, but not really in a gross or unfair way. It looks like you'll be able to earn everything the game has to offer just by playing, or if you're impatient or otherwise just don't mind dropping a few dollars on in-game currency you can purchase packs of gems to spend on basically anything in the game. The part that's annoying is that Gameloft takes every chance possible to let you know you could be spending that gem currency, so it's pretty in your face, but at least it doesn't appear to gate any of the content from you outright.

It's sad that so much time need to be dedicated to explaining how a game's pay model works, but that stuff aside Blitz Brigade is pretty darn cool. It looks nice, it plays well, and it's fun. The main dish is of course its online multiplayer, but there's also a good deal of single player missions to work your way through that'll pretty much walk you through all the different aspects of the game and its characters. The online connection has been a bit iffy but seems solid for the most part. If you've played any other Gameloft shooter you pretty much know what to expect.

I'll be spending the weekend playing some more of Blitz Brigade to dig in further, but I have to admit I'm pleasantly surprised with it so far, and our forum goers seem to be digging it as well. It's free so give it a look if you've been waiting for this type of shooter to hit your iOS device.

As we learned back in August of last year, Rodeo Games, who brought the excellent Hunters [Free / Free (HD)] and Hunters 2 [$4.99] top-down strategy games to the iOS platform, are hard at work on an official Warhammer Quest game for our little touchscreen Apple devices. Today they've finally released a look at the game in action, and the developers are even on hand with commentary to explain things and answer some questions they've gotten from the fans. Check it out.

As someone who isn't familiar with anything to do with Warhammer and who didn't play the original board game, I have to say I'm pretty psyched for Warhammer Quest. It looks phenomenal. For even more, take a look at our hands-on preview from earlier this week. And if you haven't already, add this to your TouchArcade [Free] app Watch List to be notified when more news stories hit, and of course head into our forums for some community discussion. Warhammer Quest should be hitting the App Store sometime in the next month or two, and we're pretty darn excited for it.

Back in October of last year we learned that Pixbits, makers of the awesome side-scrolling Minecraft-alike Junk Jack [$2.99], were considering making a new 2.0 version of the game. As the story goes, they had many ideas for Junk Jack that they originally wanted to include but ended up cutting in an effort to support as many generations of iOS device hardware as possible.

With Apple implementing new rules mandating Retina Display and widescreen support for all apps on the App Store, and a new software development kit that cuts support for the oldest devices, it pretty much forced Pixbits hand into creating a new version of Junk Jack that would comply, or risk being removed.

I think, though, that once Pixbits started cranking away on Junk Jack 2.0 things just spiraled out of control in a fantastic way, as yesterday on their blog they announced that version 2.0 is actually a completely new game they're calling Junk Jack X and it looks like they're throwing everything they ever wanted including the kitchen sink into this new project.

I'd highly suggest checking out their blog post for yourself, as there is just so much new information about Junk Jack X, but let me try to summarize the highlights. It will have online multiplayer through Game Center for two people and local multiplayer for up to four. They'd like to increase the number of players who can play together in the future, and for now all multiplayer is cooperative so you can build and explore with your buddy (but not kill them, not yet anyway).

You'll be able to fully customize the look of your character with basic stuff like gender and hair styles, but even more exciting is you can further customize him (or her!) using the new functionality of equipping stuff. Similar to an RPG, you'll have four slots on your character to equip stuff in: head, chest, legs and feet. You can craft items to equip and those will further change your characters look as well as performance, and there's even a special fifth slot which will be used for bonus items or augmentations.

Probably the biggest new aspect in Junk Jack X will be the ability to visit and build on different planets. In addition to creating and saving one-off worlds like in the first game, there will be an Adventure mode which starts you out in the original world but you can find and assemble a portal which lets you travel to different ones. These new worlds will have different themes, different block types, and different mobs. Once you discover a new world in Adventure mode, you'll be able to generate the one-off worlds using that theme, and this time around there's no limit on how many worlds you can create and save.

As I said, there's tons more too, like the addition of liquids, a vastly improved crafting system and craft book, more types of weapons, and a huge upgrade to the visuals. No price has been decided just yet, but one thing that Pixbits says is for sure is that Junk Jack X will not be freemium. Be sure to check out their blog for more, our forums for discussion, and add Junk Jack X to your TouchArcade [Free] app Watch List to get notifications when new stories hit. Junk Jack X is planned for release sometime in the second half of this year.

[Pixbits Blog]

While the folks over at Big Bucket Software are busy cranking away at their next project, they've decided to show a little love to their previous iOS release The Incident [$0.99] and drop its price down to 99¢. What is The Incident? Well, imagine on any random day you're outside standing on the sidewalk. All of a sudden, stuff just starts falling from the sky. And by stuff, I mean just a bunch of weird stuff. Like refridgerators, cars, foam fingers from sporting events, garden gnomes… if you can think of it, it's probably falling from the sky in The Incident.

Your job is to avoid getting smashed by this stuff, but also continually stay on top of what eventually becomes a rapidly rising junk pile. What results is a fun and challenging arcade game that has stayed on my device since its original release nearly 3 years ago.

Check out our original review for more, but keep in mind that over the years The Incident has been updated pretty frequently to keep with the times. First it received an endless survival mode, iCloud progress syncing, iPad Retina Display support, and most recently iPhone 5 widescreen support. It really is one of those cool little games that's always fun to fire up and play, so if you don't own it yet then definitely consider grabbing it during this 99¢ sale.