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How long do you need to play to have a good time? Windosill [$2.99] is a straight up terrible value proposition if you like serious length from your games. It doesn’t take much longer than 15 minutes to run through and there’s no real replayability. But damned if it isn’t a great 15 minutes while it lasts.

If you take it down to fundamentals, Windosill is a puzzle game about traveling. A toy car drives from room to room. Each is locked, each has to be solved with creative thinking and exploration to open the next. There are only eleven rooms, and they’re over in a snap. Yet whimsy and charm makes it ever so memorable.

This is a port of a Flash game from 2009, but the iPad version feels like it was always meant to be. There was always something tactile about its puzzles; now players can interact with them directly. Multitouch makes a huge difference – not in how the puzzles are solved, but in how they can be played with.

That’s what Windosill is: playful. It’s a game, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s also a toy. Poking around is almost as fun as solving a room. Each room is filled with interactive widgets – boxes to open, lights to turn on, leaves to pull off – and the trick is to find which ones can be used to open the next door. But playing with everything else will reward you with equally delightful results. And every bit of it is eye-candy, designed with a look to surrealists of the past.

Windosill doesn’t get into how to play, so neither will I. Poke around, experiment. That’s all you need to do. There are no awkward controls to deal with – just tap and drag things around, see what they do. And don’t be afraid to experiment.

There is a little value in the iPad version over the Flash game. Once you complete the game, you can turn on two settings: Complex Gravity and See-Thru. The former lets you play with tilt controls, the latter lets you look at the inner-workings of each level. It doesn’t add much, but it’s an extra bit of play. You can also paw through a sketchbook of concept art.

So there you go. Only you can know if you can be satisfied by such a brief encounter. If you can, Windosill is fantastic. It’s gorgeous, playful and feels like it was born to be played on a touch screen. But I wouldn’t blame you if the brevity is just too much. Bigger isn’t better, but Windosill leaves me wanting more, and there isn’t more to come. Delighted or disappointed? Stop by our discussion thread to share.

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To steal a line from Jon Irwin, “The platforming genre, once dominant, has now been relegated to counterprogramming.” Which is to say that the two-dimensional platformer has overtaken, like kudzu, much of the niche and indie landscape that isn’t dominated by games that involve shooting things in the face. For mobile gaming, that idea is more or less maintained  if you swap face-shooting for physics-puzzling or colored-block-sliding. But that kind of reductive generalization doesn’t leave room for nuance, and nuance is exactly what you need to talk about Terra Noctis.

At first blush, Terra Noctis [$.99] seems pretty derivative: the pits are inexplicably endless, the physics are rudimentary, and the enemies — pumped in straight from the Mushroom Kingdom — die if something lands on their heads. Even the narrative introduction seems particularly on the nose: Allen is a nightmare who isn’t scary enough to pass his monster exams. Desperate, he sneaks out of school to find a way to get scarier. The idea is never revisited.

It’s not long before Fire Fruit Forge starts to introduce new mechanics: shooting, power-ups, puzzles, three different types of currency, and a bat named Columbus who guides Allen to secret areas and sometimes, bafflingly, lets him ride around on his back. Unfortunately, these do little to dispel the first impression: some of the mechanics don’t really affect the core platforming, and the ones that do are one-note concepts that don’t add much.

There are three different collectible items that can be spent: blue fairies buy power-ups, red fairies unlock the next hub-world, and golden coins unlock bonus levels. It’s kind of weird that a game about crushing goomba skulls involves so many ways to buy stuff.

I like the idea in theory — collectibles have long been a staple of the genre, and Fire Fruit Forge are right to give Allen’s monetized pixie dust mechanical value. Because these items are hidden throughout each non-linear level, players are ostensibly motivated to explore. This, in turn, introduces a risk-reward element to Terra Noctis‘ points system and OpenFeint leaderboards: player score is based both on speed and collection, and climbing the leaderboards depends on managing both.

There are problems with the system, though. The power-ups add very little to Terra Noctis, and using them never become a regular part of my strategy. This devalues the importance of the blue fairies, which in turn makes collecting them less gratifying. It disrupts the balance of the entire system. Similarly, the red fairies and coins are too easy to find, and the levels they unlock are too cheap: not once was my progress impeded by a lack of funds. In other words, not once was I motivated to explore Terra Noctis in a meaningful way.

The other supplemental mechanics, like shooting and flying, simply aren’t creative enough to keep Terra Noctis moving forward. The first time I shot a bat to complete a puzzle was neat, but the shooting function hasn’t changed since. These things are largely tangential to the running, jumping, and head-stomping, but adding extra mechanics isn’t the same as using them effectively. It doesn’t help that the environments and level design change very rarely, despite there being four different hub-worlds to explore. Visually and mechanically, Terra Noctis is a static place, and the entire experience can tend to feel same-y.

Despite the lack of variety, Terra Noctis is buoyed up by its visual design. You’ll explore the same vague forest and cave designs over and over, but the backgrounds are a nice example of parallax scrolling, and the foreground has a lush, storybook feel to it. The animations are fluid and expressive — I especially like that Columbus, the helper-bat, manages to seem anxious and excitable, even though he’s basically just a set of eyes with wings. There’s an undeniable charm and innocence that runs through every piece of this game.

You’ll also hear the same four or five synthpop tracks during the course of the game, but the Herbie Hancock-esque score — no, seriously — is used judiciously to set the tone for each level.

It doesn’t hurt that Terra Noctis is so fun to play. Even disengaged from the high-level design choices, jumping up and down and stomping purple goombas is a treat, thanks in no small part to the game’s  controls: they’re simply the most sensitive and responsive virtual buttons I’ve encountered to date. They aren’t perfect, though, since the buttons are placed too closely to one another — I often find myself going left when I mean to go right.

(The other systemic bugbear in Terra Noctis is hit detection: Allen’s hitbox seems too big and he often finds himself stuck in a ledge or block. This might lead to a few unwarranted deaths, but the checkpoints are spaced evenly enough that it never becomes a huge issue.)

Still, the level design is generous enough to accommodate those lapses, and the most significant exploration is vertical, not horizontal.  Players sometimes get cut off from areas they mean to explore, but Terra Noctis is usually pretty good about expanding and bottlenecking appropriately. In all but a few exceptions, you can feel free to wander around, comfortable with the knowledge that you will eventually circle around toward the critical path.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Terra Noctis‘ more ambitious designs fall through — there’s a lot of fluff that distracts from the core. As it stands, the game’s fairy-tale premise evokes something akin to coming home for a long weekend. The game’s strengths are found in the understated joy of jumping through space, of seeing some unreachable ledge or platform and guiding Allen to it. Terra Noctis, through its intuitive controls and design, provides simple pleasure. This is comfort gaming — familiar, identifiable, and care-free. I’m ready to spend Martin Luther King Day in my pajamas, guiding Allen through the rest of his quest.  I’m pretty sure I know where he’s heading.

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Earlier this week, Certain Affinity announced the “impending arrival” of a “new” version of Age of Booty for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Being developed in a partnership with Chaotic Moon, Certain Affinity promises that the duo has taken what fans didn’t like in the 2008 original and has piled on new stuff, including fresh interfaces and visual flair, based on consumer feedback. Twitter and Facebook are also being jacked in, alongside new levels and new “strategic opportunities.”

Take note that this isn’t a true continuation or a follow-up. This is Age of Booty with new stuff (see above image), and hopefully some key improvements. And, hey, even though it’s not all-new, Age of Booty on iPad and iPhone sounds like a cool thing. We’re hoping to give you some impressions in the near future.

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So, in the madhouse that is CES, I managed to track down the IonAudio booth to get some hands on time with the new iCade Mobile.

The details remain the same as when we previously reported on it. The iCade Mobile will be priced at $79.99 when it launches. It’s got eight buttons, and a d-pad. Like the original iCade, it connects over Bluetooth.

What’s nice about the design is it supports both landscape and portrait modes. The iPhone or iPod Touch sits in a specially designed cradle that can rotate freely.

Of course, one side effect to this design is that it makes the whole device pretty big. You’ll be able to see in the hands on video that it adds a considerable amount of bulkage to your iOS device:

Unsurprisingly, control-wise it felt the same as the iCade. Some people seem to complain of a very slight lag in controls, but as you can see in the video, it’s pretty minimal. To my hands the controls felt nicely spaced out, though I didn’t really get a chance to test out the shoulder buttons in action. As with any of these accessories, it’s hard to imagine lugging one around with you everywhere you go, but the added convenience (over the original iCade) of being able to lean back in your couch is nice.

And here’s an official video from Ion Audio showing people having a hilarious time with it:

You too could look this happy. The device is coming this spring at $79.99.

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Breakout-style games can be tough to create. On one hand, their relative simplicity and timelessness offer gameplay that can be considered universally accessible. On the other hand, this simplicity challenges developers to incorporate new gameplay elements to avoid being classified as stale or boring. This is the exact problem with Transformoid [$0.99], the latest in a long line of Breakout clones. While the steampunk-inspired game does offer a different take on some standard elements, in the end there’s simply not enough to overcome what is otherwise a somewhat boring take on the genre.

As far as core gameplay is concerned, Transformoid stays very close to its roots. The game places you and your paddle at the bottom of the screen versus the blocks up top; there are no barriers or enemies looking to destroy your paddle or any other twists in the formula. In this regard, Transformoid doesn’t offer anything unique or innovated, although it does offer plenty of levels to play in, along with elements that seek to separate itself from the competition, particularly when it comes to physics manipulation.

Even though it’s a typical Breakout clone in most respects, Transformoid does incorporate a few interesting ideas in an attempt to differentiate itself. For example, one of the power-ups you can collect transforms your paddle into various shapes, each changing the way your paddle interacts with the ball. Some shapes make it easier to aim where you want the ball to go, while others make it a bit more erratic. Regardless, I thought it was a good idea and actually brought some variety to the game, assuming the physics were working as desired. I also liked the Steampunk motif that Transformoid uses, although I will admit that it’s becoming increasingly prevalent in more games. Still, the visuals are done well, and little touches like the backdrop subtly moving as you tilt your device back and forth add to the experience.

Another differentiator for Transformoid is the concept of wind, which can come in all different directions and can subtly change the direction of the ball. Unfortunately, wind is one of those gameplay elements that sounds good in theory but ends up being mostly annoying in practice. This is especially true when you’re at the end of a level and the wind is making it difficult to get your ball to travel anywhere, much less to that one spot in the corner with the last brick. Even worse, wind contributes to the fact that Transformoid is simply a very slow game – the ball moves slow, the paddles move at a set speed (on the slow side), and even power-ups that speed it up don’t do much. It’s not slow enough to be unplayable, but enough to be annoying.

Transformoid is also filled with lots of strange miscues that give the game a very rough appearance. There are a few typos across the menus that really stand out, for instance. In addition, there’s no scoring system to speak of or even Game Center support, meaning that there’s no external influence or motivation affecting replayability. Even little things like always resetting the map selection to the very beginning every time you play the game and not letting you cycle from the first level to the last quickly give the game an overall amateurish impression. Of course, none of these issues are game breaking, but they are significant detractors to the overall experience and do little to convince casual players to check it out.

You’d have to be a diehard fan of Breakout-styled games in order to check out Transformoid. The lack of any sort of progression system or leaderboard support means that you’re simply playing the game for the love of the genre. If you happen to fit this description, then Transformoid, with its somewhat interesting visuals and power-up ideas may be worth checking out at its current price. However, for anyone else, the inherent slow pace of the gameplay and uneven overall presentation mean that you should probably look elsewhere.

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I have a little confession to make: I’m directionally challenged. I know exactly where everything is, but ask me whether you turn right or left to get there and I’ll give you the correct answer about half the time. Not bad for a 50/50 chance, right? Because of this deficiency, Aetherium II [$0.99] has become my new nemesis. I know where I’m going, and I just need to tap one side of the screen or the other to get there, but somehow I still end up smashing into a wall most of the time.

I’ll not hold that against the game. My failings aren’t its failings, though it has several of its own. But man, if you like Snake, there are 100 levels here that will light up all the same bits of your brain, and four modes on top of that to boot.

Although every mode in Aetherium II plays with direction, there are three very different ways to play. You’ve got the main mode (and by far the best), Avoid the Edges, three different Maze modes and First Person, which is quirkier than it is successful.

Avoid the Edges is, um, pretty much what it sounds like. The edges are death – they can’t be touched. So you slip around each level avoiding walls and picking up stars, easy enough. But you can only turn left or right, and those directions are always relative while the controls are not. It gets pretty dicey as the passages get more complicated, the corridors get narrower and doors start closing in your face. And that’s before you start controlling two or three ships at once. It’s not all reflexes – later levels are positively puzzling.

The similarly puzzling Maze modes could be great fun, but instead they miss that target completely. Edges are fine, and you can navigate in any direction. The trick is to reach the end, and reach it quickly. The levels get downright huge, but are always contained to a single screen. It’s good, but could be better – the controls are a bona fide pain in the butt.

Traveling in all four directions using the edges of the screen is fine, but Aetherium II seems to lack any support for multitouch. So if you want to play with two hands, you’ll need to make certain to lift one finger before putting down another or you’ll careen right into a wall. Not cool, and hopefully fixable. It makes earning full marks for time pretty unlikely.

Otherwise the maze modes could be great. There are three varieties. Classic is as standard a maze as you could find. Tunnels mixes it up with passageways and shortcuts. Doors gives you a series of switches to puzzle through. All good fun.

First Person mode will test your memory and direction sense. Enjoy wandering through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike? You’ll love this. You know the exit of the maze is directly across from where you begin, but not how to get there. If you can manage to keep from getting completely lost, this will be fun. It’s not for me – every level feels like getting lost in the same neon closet – but I can see how enjoyable it could be to build up a map in your mind as you wander each level.

So that’s 200 levels that are mostly great fun, but the trappings that surround them are a little clunky. As I said, the controls are dodgy, and aside from that the menus are awkward and the sound design is pretty terrible unless you’re really into beeping. But more importantly, how do you feel about motivational tricks – achievements, locked levels, and the like? Because you won’t find any of that here. There are leaderboards to climb and stars to collect, but it’s a game built for casual poking around and not dedicated play.

I’ve gotta say, there are great ideas here. Aetherium II is just full of them. But they don’t cohere into any kind of immersive experience. If you want to test your sense of direction, it’s a fantastic game to mess around with. But to commit to? It’s not quite there.

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Just before the new year, we caught wind of Taito’s plans to bring one of its classic properties to the App Store. Originally released as RayForce in arcades in the early nineties, it made its way to the Sega Saturn with its name intact but due to trademark issues was released in various other international markets under different names, including Layer Attack, Gunlock, and Galactic Attack.

Now it’s once again been resurrected yet again as RayForce [$11.99] for iOS devices, and is now available.

Taito is touting this as a pixel-perfect adaptation of the arcade original, which while being true to the original also looks like it hasn’t been enhanced visually for the much more advanced iOS hardware. However, it does feature original arcade controls for purists as well as an easier iPhone control mode made specifically for the touch screen. Also, there are plenty of customization options so you can suit the play to your own particular style, and there is full Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements.

Since I never played much of the original RayForce back in the day, I’m really stoked to be able to finally give it some proper attention on my iPhone nearly 20 years later. Also, it will be interesting to see if Taito will bring the next installments in this trilogy, RayStorm and RayCrisis, to the App Store as well. As we dig into RayForce to see what it’s all about, you can grab the game with the link below or check out some player impressions which are trickling into our forums.

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Ayopa Games‘ and Drowning Monkeys‘ next title is a 3D, close-quarters strategy RPG with the usual trimmings: ghouls, ghosts, swords, sorcery, dungeon crawling, and leveling are all a part of the package. It’s as functionally classical as its name, Dungeon Crawlers, implies, and nothing mechanical I’ve seen seems to be breaking any mold.

There is this one thing, though. It’s kinda quirky. In the opening moments, one of the party members clearly references Ghostbusters. Roy, the healer, carries around a weapon called “The Unreturned Library Tome.” When you search the first weapon rack you find, it calmly tells you that while there’s tons of weapons here, none of them are indeed yours.

Dungeon Crawlers, which is due out later this month, is straddling a fun line. It’s the video game equivalent of a mullet, reserved and business-like, yet fun-loving and goofy. What makes it a strategy RPG isn’t messed with, but the story, the weapons, and even the item pick-ups are all tinged with a lightheartedness that I’m OK with seeing — especially since fantasy is so stale.

The business part is good, by the way. After putting some time into a preview build, I feel like I can lazily sum up the mechanics as “Shining Force Meets Diablo.” There’s a lot of traditional strategy RPG in the combat, but you also freely move around and explore a dungeon in-between fights.

A typical confrontation goes a little something like this: the battleground morphs into a series of tiles, all of which can be accessed through turn-based play; blue titles indicate a movement can occur, red alerts you to the fact that you can attack, and green lets you know that healing can happen. Simple taps activate the action, while swipes allow you to move fluidly through skill menus. Pop an enemy enough, it dies. Rinse and repeat.

Kill enough dudes, and you level up and gain access to new skills that, of course, allow for a wider range of tactical options. Cleave, for instance, hits in a three square arc, while magic missile attacks from four spaces away. The overall strategy boils down to a touch of structural awareness, a heavy helping of positional wrangling, and a solid understanding of skill sets and AI behavior.

There’s some wrinkles. Boss fights promise some more interesting situational content. In the first fight, for example, the goal is to reach a goblin king in his throne instead of delivering his head on a platter. Later, you’ll see some puzzles and solo action.

Speaking of characters, you start out with three knuckleheads: a womanizing barbarian, a nerdy sorcerer, and a gluttonous healer. Their banter is inviting, and the situation the trio find themselves in is something straight out of Ghostbusters.

Weird influence, right? I asked Drowning Monkeys what’s up, and I was relieved to find that I wasn’t crazy.

“… the actual idea for the story came while we were prototyping the game, and we had created our archetypes. We were designing the characters and noticed the similarities to Ghostbusters, so we ran with it and started creating a story around that basic element.”

“The idea that something ‘big’ was happening, and that the characters were initially motivated by money and not because of a ‘call’ to do great things. I think in the end though, we actually have created a story that is unique and keeps the player interested in seeing what happens next.”

Humor is subjective kinda like quality is, so it’ll be interesting to see how Dungeon Crawlers clicks with everyone. I dig it. More importantly, though, I think the game part of it is on the right track. In its pre-release form, it feels almost as good as any of the great games in the genre, and I’ll be excited to dive in for the haul.

If all goes well, Dungeon Crawlers will see a release this January 26 across iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone. We’ll definitely keep our eye on it, and I’m thinking you should, too.

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We have good news and bad news for you. The good news? Portable Pixel’s Tamagotchi-style game, Hatchi [$.99], is now available on iPhone and iPod Touch for $.99. The bad news? The star of our glowing hands-on preview of the neat title, Big Poppa Pump, is dead. He left this world just 24 hours after the write-up. We can’t quite let him go yet, so he’s currently rotting as we figure out how to keep moving on with our lives.

In case you missed the piece, Hatchi is basically Tamagotchi for mobile. You hatch a little monster, and then feed, bathe, play, and teach it. As the hours tick by, it grows and evolves into something of your creation. Hatchi requires some patience, but it’s a cool experience that our community really seems to dig.

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If iOS clones are your cup of tea, strap in for the clone-iest clone yet. The Shanghai Taomee Network Technology company just released Mole Kart [$2.99], a universal kart racer that makes no attempt at hiding the fact that just about everything in the game is lifted directly from Mario Kart. Take a look at the trailer:

It’s lacking a championship mode, as well as the different engine sizes found in Mario Kart. Also, to fully unlock everything in the game you’re looking at spending ten bucks between the initial purchase price and all the various DLC unlockables for tracks and additional karts. Forum members are going crazy for the game, and are encouraging everyone that’s interested to get in on Mole Kart before it gets pulled from the App Store.

Whether or not it’ll actually get pulled is another matter entirely. There are a lot of Mario Kart inspired games out there, but this one is by far the most blatant.

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