Last week we posted the preview trailer of XMG Studio’s Cannon Cadets [$1.99] which has since been released on the App Store. Riding on the undeniably successful coattails of Angry Birds [99¢ / Free / HD], Cannon Cadets provides similar physics-powered gameplay with some new twists that make it worth checking out if you’re like many people who have beaten every level in Angry Birds and now just anxiously await the next content update.

Gameplay is fairly similar in that you’re shooting things at various makeshift forts filled with enemies, only instead of birds and pigs, Cannon Cadets is home to robots and evil monkeys. By pulling back on a cannon you can shoot one of the cadets in to the robot base, and similarly, each level is completed by destroying all the robots. Gameplay is spiced up a bit with levels that are a bit more puzzle oriented, with moving obstacles to deal with and other physics gimmicks that go together like an odd Rube Goldberg machine.

One thing that I like a lot about Cannon Cadets is the secret levels that are unlocked by hitting various targets in the game world. I thought the golden egg portion of Angry Birds was really awesome, and this just takes that a step further in providing some actual incentive to finding the secret levels to play them instead of just filling out a golden egg page for the sake of completion.

Cannon Cadets comes loaded with 80 levels, and there’s even talk of a level editor on the way via future updates and an iPad version. The game hasn’t swayed me from my love of Angry Birds as I think Angry Birds flat out just has more character to it and a better physics engine, but Cannon Cadets is totally a competent supplement with similar gameplay and more than enough content to keep you busy between Angry Birds updates.