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Backflip Studios' CEO Julian Farrior let us know that his studio is handing out the neon glow of Tunnel Shoot [App Store] for free, today only. The game is a universal application that renders at full screen resolution on all iOS devices. We took a close look at the title when it went live in late June.

Tunnel Shoot is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a tunnel shooter in the vein of N2O: Nitrous Oxide for the Playstation (and is somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone's own Boost 3D). The goal of the game is to survive as long as possible, travelling down a neon-vector tunnel while dodging obstacles, blasting enemies, and collecting green gems for points. You're placed in tilt-control of your craft, with a tap / hold mechanic for firing your blaster and bombs.

Your ship's blasters, when first activated, fire bursts of three bolts per shot, but as you hold down the fire "button," that soon drops to two bolts, and then to just a stream of single bolts. Let up on the button and your blasters quickly recharge and it's back to three bolts per shot. (Read: don't just lay on the fire button, folks.) You start off with one bomb which, when activated, flies down the tunnel destroying all enemies in its path. More are accumulated along the way. Your damage bar replenishes over time, and fairly quickly. A nice touch is that when you get blown up, the force of the explosion sends a destructive shockwave down the tunnel before you respawn.

We very much liked what we saw in Tunnel Shoot and recommended it as an instant buy for anyone who calls themself a shooter fan. If you haven't grabbed it yet, don't miss today's offer.

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In a surprising move, 2K Games has dropped the price of Civilization Revolution from $6.99 to Free for one day. We looked at the game back in August when it was first released for the iPhone:

Civilization Revolution is the latest iteration of Sid Meier's dynasty of games where the player is simply tasked with the goal of building an empire to stand the test of time. Like previous Civilization games, Revolution is a turn-based strategy game where you take command of a primitive civilization from their meager beginnings to complete world domination. Civilization Revolution was originally released in 2008 to strongly positive reviews.

Pick it up for free while you can.

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Early last month we first heard that developer Yoot Saito had plans to bring The Tower to the iPad. Saito is a Japanese game designer who is responsible for both SimTower and Yoot Tower (also known as The Tower II in Japan) as well as Seaman, a virtual pet game of sorts that focused on voice recognition for the Sega Dreamcast. The Tower games focus on building a skyscraper with all sorts of different facilities in it while providing as good of a living experience for the residents inside of it as possible. If you've never played the game before, think of it basically as a vertical Sim City.

The Tower for iPad [¥450] was just released on the Japanese App Store, and there are plans for an international English version soon. Judging by the below screenshots, quite a bit of the game is in Japanese. You could jump through some hoops to register a Japanese App Store account and figure out how to fund it with yen, but unless you speak some Japanese you're likely going to be fairly lost when it comes to actually playing.

As a huge fan of the original SimTower, I really can't wait for The Tower to get an English translation and show up for download in the US App Store. If you played the original game, it's really not hard to imagine how well it would work with touch controls, as evident from the following gameplay video:

I've sent off an email to the developers to determine how soon they expect the English version to be released, and of course when it finally appears expect to see a full review.

Japanese App Store Link: The Tower

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