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Back in June at Apple's WWDC, we visited ngmoco's San Francisco studios and spent some time with the gamemaker's upcoming TouchPets: Cats, a virtual pet title that follows the studio's earlier TouchPets: Dogs.

Not simply a reissue TouchPets: Dogs – but with cats — the upcoming title takes a different approach to the virtual pet experience in a number of areas. Perhaps most notably, the feed-to-play mechanic of the earlier title is gone, so you need not feed your pet every time you want a few minutes of playtime. In its place is catnip, which can be used to jack your cat up in order to get it to perform certain actions, like collecting coins from the sofa cushions, in order to further the game. You can read more about what we found in our time with the game in our hands-on article.

Ngmoco has recently released a new gameplay video that should give readers a clear look at the play mechanics found in TouchPets: Cats.

TouchPets: Cats is expected to arrive in the App Store later this year.

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It's not very often that a game comes along on the App Store that is too different to really liken it to anything. I suppose since the game involves going moving to the right it could be compared to Canabalt [$2.99] or Line Rider iRide [$1.99] since you're technically drawing the line that your character skis on, but neither seem like apt comparisons. In Solipskier [$2.99], you draw the mountain that your skier flies down by placing your finger on the screen. When you pick your finger up, you stop drawing but your skier keeps going– So, by tapping and moving your finger around you can create slopes of all kinds, along with ramps and huge jumps.

The way this all works on the iPhone goes together so well with the touchscreen that I was more than a little surprised in researching this game for this review that it started its life as a completely free to play flash game that is played by clicking the mouse instead of dragging your finger around. The presentation is top notch too, with music that ranges from this really somber sounding piano piece in the menus to a fast paced heavy metal rock ballad while you're skiing.

Also, as you paint the slopes with your finger houses and trees spring up from, and despite being largely black and white and 2D, the scenery has quite a bit of depth to it, with trees and houses scrolling on front of the scoreboards. Yet another cool little flourish in the game is that the music you're listening to is actually emanating from your character's headphones. If you go fast enough for them to fall off, all you hear is the sound of the wind. Upon successfully landing a jump, you're judged by off-screen judges who hold signs up scoring it, and the name of the game is to just score as high as possible.

Included in the game is OpenFeint online leaderboards for tracking scores, although achievements are curiously absent. Scoring high seems to be highly dependent on keeping your combo going to keep the rainbow following your skier up, which involves constantly skiing through the gates and tunnels are they appear on screen. One mistake I initially made when playing the game was drawing my jumps far too steep, and seem to be having better luck with long slow inclines and then short ramps at no more than a 45 degree angle. Forum member Ataloss offers additional tips in the Solipskier thread.

If nothing else, you should really try the free flash version, but just be aware that the game seems to work even better using the touchscreen of iOS devices. Solipskier is universal, and even comes with high resolution graphics for the Retina Display of the iPhone 4 (which look excellent, by the way). The game plays nice with the fast app switching in iOS 4 and reloads instantly, but it would be really nice if the game resumed in a paused state to give you an opportunity to reorient yourself before playing instead of having your little dude just go right back to skiing almost always resulting in death.

Overall, it's really hard to ask for more in a Flash to iPhone port, and Solipskier is really worth grabbing if you're even the least bit captivated by the Flash game.

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With the week coming to a close and the weekend almost upon us, why not load up on freebies to spend your time playing iPhone games instead of going outside. (Or I suppose you could play them outside too if you really wanted.) These free game promotions are temporary, with some running longer than others so if you're interested in any of these games, it's best to snag them ASAP. For a listing of all paid games that recently went free, check out this page on AppShopper.

The game that everyone should download that's free right now is Touch Racing Nitro [Free]. I thought the game was great in our review, and is totally worth grabbing now that it's free. Take a peek at the trailer:

Other cool free games today include:

Chop Chop Runner, Free The ninja from Chop Chop Ninja is back in this fast-paced single-button sidescroller. See how far you can go while unlocking a hand full of achievements and finally submitting your best scores to the game`s OpenFeint-powered online leaderboards.

Flipstones, Free This recently released puzzle game puts players to the task of drawing lines to flip different triangular stones around the screen to form larger gems which each have their own unique power-up effect such as exploding or speeding up the game. There are tons of levels included to be solved, as well as an endless mode.

Jelly Invaders, Free An interesting take on the Space Invaders formula of shooting enemies invading from above. Jelly Invaders has two game modes, power-ups, cool graphics, and OpenFeint for online high scores, achievements, and all that other fun OpenFeinty stuff.

Starship Defense, Free This is an odd conglomeration of gameplay mechanics that go together quite well. In Starship Defense as the title implies, you defend your starship. I`m not sure if it would make more sense to compare it to a tower defense game or a castle defense game, but if you like either genres you should check this out.

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