Nintendo killed the bowling alley with its spin on the popular “throw spherical hard thing at cone-like hard things" sport in Wii Sports. Now, Freeverse is piling on the pain with its iPhone and iPod Touch game We Bowl [Free], which debuted on the App Store this December 2nd.

As you’d expect, We Bowl is a touch take on the sport, requiring little more than a finger swipe to send a three-holed ball down a virtual alley. The twist is in its avatar creation component, which houses a rather deep pool of items to put on your unique little bowler. And as you compete in the game, you’ll unlock even more stuff to put on your fledgling bowler / drunkard / wife abuser, provided you don’t opt to just buy items with your real, hard-earned cash.

We Bowl a simple and free game that we have no real problems with… except when we dig into the way they’re presenting the game. “Why bowl boring when you can bowl gonzo," asks the game’s curious slogan. We’ve been digging furiously through the game in an attempt to locate this indicated Muppet tie-in to no avail. Gonzo or his chickens — or even Kermit, Rawlf, or that cute little shrimp with the accent, for that matter — simply do not appear in We Bowl.

“Ludicrous!" we’ve cried to the skies with one fist cocked, the other firmly clenching our phones on numerous occasions. But no matter how frazzled, how depressed we get, we’ll continue to try to locate this elusive connection. Muppets have got to be in the game somewhere, right?

Regardless of how you feel about bowling, Muppets, or the apparent lack of Muppets, the avatar system in We Bowl is really cool. We’ve been told that items you unlock in the game to pimp out your avatar will stay with your avatar across future Freeverse games that also utilize this avatar system. Of course since We Bowl is the only game that’s using their avatars right now, we’ll have to take Freeverse’s word that my awesome Walter Sobchak looking avatar will persist.

Even if you’re not interested in the bowling aspect of the game, the avatar system is flexible enough and fun enough that you can sink a stupid amount of time in to just building all kinds of different looking characters. Just keep in mind that We Bowl is a freemium game like the other We games, so expect some ads, in-app purchases, and all that fun stuff.