A few weeks back we reviewed Burn the Rope [99¢], the puzzle game with the sort of familiar sounding name but really unique gameplay. In Burn the Rope, you ignite a single point of an elaborate picture made out of rope with the goal of burning as much of it as possible. The catch is that the flame will only burn upwards, so you must twist your device around as the flame burns along the contours of whatever picture you are burning. It’s a clever game and quite a lot of fun too.

Yesterday developer Big Blue Bubble released the first update to Burn the Rope. One of our biggest gripes with the game in our review was the inconsistent way the flame would burn around sharp corners in a picture. Even if you swear you burned around the corner properly, the game had a tendency to leave just the tiniest bit of rope unburned, thus preventing you from getting 100% completion and a gold medal on the level. It was frustrating to say the least, but this issue seems to have been completely squashed as I have yet to encounter it since updating. Also, it appears that you no longer need a complete 100% to earn gold, so even if you do leave a tiny portion of rope unburnt then you can still manage to get a gold medal.

Besides this much needed fix, the new update also contains a new area with 16 brand new levels to play through. Game Center is now integrated with online leaderboards for each area and 30 achievements to obtain. The ability to play music from your iPod library has been added, as well as your choice of 3 additional flames to pick from which are unlocked by doing things like rating the game in iTunes or “liking” its Facebook page. The flames are cosmetic only, but I actually really like being able to mix up which one I use. My personal favorite is the one that sparks like the fuse on a stick of dynamite.

Burn the Rope was pretty awesome initially, and this new update has fixed most of my issues with the game as well as added a lot of new content. My only request now would be for Retina Display graphics, and the developer has said in our forums that this feature should be coming sometime down the line. A lot of other folks seem to be enjoying Burn the Rope too, as since our initial review the game has skyrocketed into the #2 position overall in the US App Store. If you have yet to check out Burn the Rope, now is a great time to grab it as the game is currently 99¢ but should be jumping up to $1.99 with the next update.