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Backflip Studios is a true indie success story that we've been following for quite a while now. They've had smash hits on the paid charts with Ragdoll Blaster [$1.99 / Free] and its sequel Ragdoll Blaster 2 [$2.99 / Free] as well as the free charts with both Paper Toss [99¢] and Strike Knight [99¢]. Recently, they've teamed up with fellow indie developers Team Phobic to release Tunnel Shoot [99¢], a fun little tunnel shooter that both is universal and supports the Retina Display of the iPhone 4.

NinJump, Backflip's latest fun and free game was released mere moments ago. The game plays a lot like Ninjatown: Trees of Doom [$1.99] in that you're scaling either side of the screens as a ninja like character. Tapping sends your ninja jumping from one side of the screen to the other, swinging his sword around attacking anything in his path. If you attack three of the same things in a row, you get powered up and soar even higher.

Like Backflip's other games, there's really not a whole lot of depth to NinJump. You climb as high as you can, submit your scores via OpenFeint powered leaderboards, and try again. The lack of depth doesn't make the game any less fun though, as I've found myself randomly firing it up to play since we got our first preview of the game. If you're a sucker for super-simple pick up and play high scoring games, you really need to give NinJump a try — and, it's free.

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After spending a considerable amount of time with Halfbrick Studios' upcoming game, Monster Dash, I've found my new favorite iPhone game. The games I seem to spend the most time with on my phone are pick up and play highly randomized games that are fun to play for only a few minutes at a time. Canabalt [$2.99] nailed it, and has been one of my go to games for nearly a year now. Monster Dash takes Canabalt one step farther, and instead of just running faster and faster jumping in between buildings, you're armed with a shotgun, and need to mow down an endless horde of monsters wandering about in your path.

Included in the game are multiple settings ranging from the zombie infested cityscape seen above, to an asian themed setting where you're running on top of a huge wall. While running around, you warp between these settings and your standard shotgun gets replaced with a number of other weaponry including a huge electric gun, a powerful pistol, and even a machine gun jet pack. With each monster or set of spikes you hit, you lose a heart, and once you run out of hearts the game is over. (There are also power ups to restore health.)

If you think the trailer for the game is awesome, it's nothing compared to actually playing the game. Halfbrick get so many things right with Monster Dash it's not even funny. There are OpenFeint online leaderboards, a ridiculous amount of achievements, stat tracking that keeps track of everything from how many mummies you've killed to how many times you've jumped and even your accuracy with weaponry. The game has great fast paced music, fabulous looking sprite-based graphics, and it even loads quickly. Monster Dash will be available on the App Store on August 19th, and that date really can't come quickly enough.

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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.

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For all the remarkable games we are seeing nowadays on the App Store, we are blessed with very few epic RPGs. It seems that developers are still unwilling to invest in the content heavy, quest-driven adventures that many other platforms routinely enjoy. Publisher Nate Games has thoughtfully identified this gap in the market and have given us the next best thing– a direct port of a critically acclaimed 2009 title for the PSP– Crimson Gem Saga [$9.99] by Atlus Games.

As the name would suggest, Crimson Gem Saga is indeed an epic by definition, weighing in at a satisfying 30-40 hours of story-driven, turn-based combat and exploration of a colorful, mythical world. Crimson Gem Saga makes no delusions, drawing strongly from the tenets of the Dragon Quest series in doing little to crack the molds of the genre, but focusing instead on bringing that traditional RPG experience in as fine a package as possible.

The wrapper to that package comes by way Killian, a tightly wound chevalier graduating from military academy and ready to embark on a new life in the big wide world. It's a setting told ad nauseum by RPGs, a factor that Crimson Gem Saga doesn't shy from. Wholly self-aware, Crimson Gem Saga instead colors that grey backdrop with a surprisingly well written, often humorous dialogue and a host of jaded protagonists alway at each other's throats– an interaction practically unheard of in JRPGs.

To look at Crimson Gem Saga, one would have to agree that it delivers abundantly in eye candy. The game is portrayed with a mixture of highly detailed and diversely animated sprites (for both characters and world objects) and painted, layered level design. In many ways, Crimson Gem Saga aspires to the likes of Star Ocean, with the same colorful and richly populated world and detailed anime dialogue sequences rounding out the game's visual spectacle.

Undoubtedly the meat of any RPG is in its combat system, where you'll be spending the majority of your time over the length of the story. And combat remains largely derivative in Crimson Gem Saga. You won't find any complex limit system or interwoven skill trees to get your head around; but on the iOS devices, that is actually a blessing. The most difficult concept to master is the eventual use of linked attacks, where certain powerful skills are only made available if particular characters have consecutive turns. Otherwise combat is straightforward but constantly challenging, maintaining its lustre throughout the game.

Where Crimson Gem Saga falls short is in its seemingly lazy port; something of a curse of crossing the platform barrier. The on-screen buttons are just plain ugly, something that could be forgiven (though we wish there was an option to hide them entirely) if the implementation was otherwise acceptable. But this is not the case, with the menu system providing a saga of its own to overcome. Context sensitive areas on the screen aren't readily understandable, and the swiping mechanic is backwards and overly sensitive. Granted, hours of playing the game does eventually train you to negotiate the UI's hitches, but do expect initial frustration.

Compounding these issues are a few major bugs encountered; from a game-stopping cutscene crash we experienced on our first play through (fortunately, not on our second), to a widely experienced upgrading item crash. And voiced dialogues are terrific when they do work, but also intermittently cut out and seem to arbitrarily skip sequences. The silver lining to all this is that the developer has already responded to complaints on our forums with a patch being worked on to address some of these problems.

Notwithstanding the above, Crimson Gem Saga is a well-rounded title whose whole certainly exceeds the sum of its parts. Its traditional approach to RPGs meshes well with its witty dialogue to deliver a surprisingly engrossing adventure. Though combat is simple, even the average encounter is never a push over and so remains fun and engaging. The characters too are infectious and constantly at odds with each other; giving rise to some very funny dialogue and pop gaming culture references. If you can endure the clumsily ported menu system, then Crimson Gem Saga will reward you with a notoriously rare, epic RPG on the iOS platform.

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This afternoon Gameloft announced the sequel to Gangstar: West Coast Hustle [$4.99 / Free] entitled Gangstar: Miami Vindication. Along with this announcement is a fairly extensive gameplay trailer compared to the teasers Gameloft usually releases which shows car chases, riding motorcycles, and even piloting helicopters. According to Gameloft, Miami Vindication is "the most ambitious crime simulation ever developed for handheld," which is a lofty claim considering the extensiveness of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars [$9.99 / Free].

Gangstar: Miami Vindication should be available fairly soon, as looking at Gameloft's previous game releases they generally don't release this kind of trailer without the game being very close to being done. For more information on the original Gangstar, check out our review. Also, Gangstar: West Coast Hustle HD [99¢] for the iPad is on sale for 99¢ and for that price is totally worth picking up if these kind of open world crime games are your cup of tea.

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One of the most classic game franchises of all time, Castlevania, finally made its long awaited debut on the iPhone last month, but not exactly as fans had expected. Rather than the action-oriented, whip-lashing platformer that we've grown up with the last two decades, the iPhone iteration of Castlevania appeared as a match 3 puzzle game with RPG elements.

Dubbed Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night [$1.99], the game takes place during the same timeframe as one of the most heralded entries in the series, Symphony of the Night. The majority of the game content stayed faithful to its inspiration in regards to equipment, enemies, and overall style, but the realtime fighting and platforming had been replaced with gem matching battle sequences reminiscent of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. After the initial disappointment of Castlevania Puzzle not being the type of game we were used to, looking past that aspect and judging the game on what it is meant to be revealed a fun RPG puzzler with a wealth of content to play through.

While we really liked the game in our review, opinions remain mixed amongst fans in our forums. If you were ever on the fence about purchasing Castlevania Puzzle, it just got a whole lot cheaper to take the dive and check out the game for yourself. Konami is having a 60% off “Back to School” sale on the game, dropping it in price from $4.99 to $1.99. If you're a Castlevania fan you'll likely get two dollars worth of enjoyment out of the presentation alone, and if you're a puzzle battling fan there are very solid game mechanics in place for some satisfying battles against the computer. If you're a fan of both, then this is a very good deal for the amount of content it contains, and I recommend checking out Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night during this limited time sale.

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If you weren't around for the great Enviro-Bear 2010 [99¢] fiasco of, well, 2009, here's what you missed- Imagine you're a bear, driving a car, and you have five minutes to fatten yourself up as much as possible before finally driving your car in to your bear cave. The ridiculousness of the game's premise was matched only by the terrible controls and even worse pixel art which in our review we dubbed the best bear driving simulator on the App Store. (A worthy title.) I invoke the unholy name of Enviro-Bear because it's from those same fiery depths of hell that So Long, Oregon! [$1.99] was forged in.

So Long, Oregon! is "A fun new game about American history" according to the developers, where you pilot (I say pilot because you spend most of the game airborne) a Conestoga wagon from Independence, Missouri to El Dorado– The legendary city of gold. Much like the original Oregon Trail, you'll need to cross rivers, travel the countryside, murder swaths of helpless animals, become afflicted with various diseases, and lose your loved ones in the process of searching for said ancient gold.

Unlike the the original Oregon Trail, you don't make it to El Dorado through intense simulation, ration management, profession selection, caulking and/or floating the wagon across rivers, or anything else. Instead you just hold down the left arrow and go flipping over hills, and tapping the screen to let out a barrage of bullets to kill anything in your path to then collect its meat for your food stores. The hills and mountains are tall, and will often send you flipping end to end or just flat out landing upside down forcing you to wait until your wagon rights itself.

Along the way you'll find various settlements such as indian camps that give you food, disease, or flat out curse your wagon. There are also trading posts that you can trade for food, bullets, or sometimes even see a doctor. There are other surprises along the trail, but I won't spoil them.

The novelty value of So Long, Oregon! is out of this world, especially if you have fond memories of the original Oregon Trail. But, much like Enviro-Bear 2010, both the controls and gameplay seem to be intentionally bad so if you're looking for something serious So Long, Oregon! is not what you need. If you do like these kinds of silly games, there's a lot to love about So Long, Oregon! such as multiple ridiculous game modes with tons of wagons to race, tons of animals to shoot, a case of the super-measles to deal with, and others. There's also all kinds of Open Feint achievements and online leaderboards.

The windows version of the game can be downloaded for free and likely will provide more So Long, Oregon! than one person would ever need in their life. If you need more, download the iOS version which also happens to be universal and is equally weird regardless of which device you're playing it on.

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Big Bucket Software's The Incident [$1.99] which we featured in yesterday's upcoming games roundup was approved mere moments ago and is now available for download on the App Store. The Incident takes the basic vertical jumping game premise that has become wildly popular on the iPhone and adds a new twist to it, and that twist amounts to massive piles of junk falling from the sky. The variety of objects that fall from the sky is astounding, ranging from boulders to crates to electric guitars and even Smart cars.

The game is controlled by tilting your device right or left to move, and tapping on the screen to jump. You're able to move objects around by walking in to them, and sometimes you can flip falling junk around with a well timed jump underneath whatever you're trying to move. Seven levels are included in the game, starting with the street and ending in space. Each level consists of its own height goal, and you just need to stay on top of the falling pile of junk to climb upwards. This sounds simple enough, and the first few levels are fairly easy, but it doesn't take long until things are falling so fast that you will have your fingers crossed that a health powerup spawns or a checkpoint is near.

The Incident is host to some excellent chiptune music, power ups, power downs, fantastic pixel art retro graphics, some odd achievements, and it's even universal. I tend to be preferring the game on my iPhone, but that's more just because holding and tilting the iPad for extended periods of time can be tiresome. I'd love to see some kind of onscreen control option, at least for the iPad, but as is the game is still fun to play on either device.

According to The Incident's web site, the developers are already hard at work on updates to add even more levels and gameplay. Hopefully somewhere along the way they add in some kind of online scoring and achievement tracking, because only having local scores is a huge bummer for a game like this. I'd love to see how I rank globally on things like how long it takes me to climb, how many coins I've collected, how many times I've been crushed by a couch, and a ton of other things.

Even without online scoring, The Incident has quite a few things I like to see in iPhone games. It saves at each checkpoint, so you can either play for a few minutes at a time or even longer, the controls work well, the graphics look cool, it's universal from the get go, and I really dig the whole concept behind the game. Forum members in The Incident's thread are enjoying it a lot, and I really can't wait to see what Big Bucket Software has planned via updates.

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Late last year Two Lives Left's Wheeler's Treasure [$4.99] rolled on to the App Store, and following a positive preview we took a closer look at the game and even discussed it on our podcast. In a nutshell, Wheeler's Treasure is a randomly generated survival platformer where you jump down a hill inside, on top of, or nearby a mysterious wheel. It's an odd game premise, but works surprisingly well especially with the whole slew of items that can be collected in game such as a grappling hook to latch on to the wheel or a magnet to suck up nearby coins among others. These items add a surprising amount of replay value to the game, as they're collected from chests which randomly appear in the game world at various intervals down the hill, requiring many play throughs since I doubt anyone is capable of collecting everything in one run.

Since we last looked at the game, it has had its controls revamped with a virtual joystick of sorts to control your jumping as seen in the above screenshot, and Wheeler's Treasure now comes with complete Retina Display support if you're playing on an iPhone 4. While 3D games like Real Racing [$4.99 / Free] look great on the Retina Display, I think hand drawn games like Wheeler's Treasure really look the best at high pixel densities.

If you've since forgotten about Wheeler's Treasure since its release nearly a year ago, this latest update is really worth reinstalling on your device, especially if you own an iPhone 4. Otherwise, if you're looking for a very unique pirate themed survival platformer, look no further than Wheeler's Treasure. For more information on the game, check out our review or stop by the thread in our forums.

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Last month we reviewed Infinite Dreams' Let's Create! Pottery HD [$4.99] for the iPad and actually were fairly surprised with just how much fun it was. Judging by the comments we got on the review, there were more than a few people out there who were disappointed that the art of pottery had been simplified to the point of basic multi-touch gestures, but for someone like me Let's Create! Pottery HD was a great experience.

The iPhone version hit the App Store today, and aside from the smaller screen, Let's Create! Pottery retains everything that was good about the iPad game. We explained how everything goes together in the virtual pottery creation process in our review:

As you may suspect from the title of the game, the object of Let's create! Pottery HD is to create pottery. Tapping "create" on the main menu takes you to a spinning pottery wheel with a lump of clay on it that you then transform using your finger. Dragging up or down changes the height of your piece of pottery, while touching and dragging in or out changes the width or whatever section you're touching. I'm sure there will be some pottery wheel veterans who don't like how dumbed down this all is, as you never need to deal with adding more clay, maintaining any kind of balance, or the million other things that can lead to all-out pottery disaster.

Once you're satisfied with the shape of your creation, you fire it up in the kiln. After that's complete, you're able to paint it with all kinds of different colored paints and "brushes" which are basically just stamp tools of pre-made stripes and other designs. Following that, you then add your masterpiece to your collection, at which point you can either keep it there to bring up later (and send emails including an image of it) or you can sell your creation at auction. Using the coins you earn from selling your in-game artwork you can then buy more paints and brushes to make even more diverse pottery. …Read More

It's a little disappointing that Let's Create! Pottery HD didn't just get an update to make it universal because the game seems to be a much better overall experience on a larger screen. If you have the choice, I'd get the HD version but the iPhone game is an excellent substitute if you have yet to purchase an iPad and want to make some virtual pottery.

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