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Spellsquares [$1.99 / HD], an atmospheric word puzzle game from Benthic Games, hit the App Store with its iPad version back in June. We missed out on it then, but we picked the game up on its iPhone release this month. It's right at home on the small screen, maintaining an enchanting mix of exploration and challenging puzzles.

In Spellsquares' story mode, you find yourself wandering a castle with a mystery to solve. A mysterious stranger has left notes to guide you on your way (kind of him, since you're out to foil his nefarious plan). Each door, treasure and point of interest is blocked with a word puzzle that you'll need to solve. The puzzles are crafted like Sudoku for words. A square grid is laid out with a few letters already in place. A pool of available letters sits to the side. Your job is to use those letters to make words in every row and column at once — easy puzzles require three-letter words and the hardest require five. Solving them takes a little bit of logic and a touch of vocabulary. Once you factor in hints, you'll also need a dash of strategy.

As you explore the castle, you'll discover hidden coins in every room. Those can be taken back to the Oracle, a ghostly automaton that entreats you to pick a card, any card. In exchange for your coin, you'll receive one of three hint items to help you on your way: two that reveal correct letters in single squares, and one that will confirm every correct letter you've placed in a particular puzzle. The hints are plentiful, but they aren't unlimited. Conserve them, but don't go overboard. There's no benefit to making it through the game without turning to hints aside from personal pride.

I found the game challenging enough that I was pumping coins into the Oracle fairly often, but your mileage may vary. If you find the game too easy and you didn't choose the hardest mode, restart and push it up a notch. Rushing through on Easy and then replaying on Medium or Hard will be a disappointment. The puzzles are the same; they just give away fewer revealed letters, so you'll be redoing puzzles you've already solved.

Spellsquares' story barely deserves to be described as such, but I don't count that against the game. It's a familiar tale: evil wizard does something evil, and an anonymous hero comes to uncover the mystery and defeat the plot. It serves to add a sense of exploration and purpose to the puzzling, and does an admirable job of that. Exploring the castle wasn't a thrill, but it was a nice break to clear my head between puzzles.

The story comes to a conclusion after you explore 14 rooms and solve a few dozen puzzles. But the game isn't over at that point. Completing the game unlocks Quick Play mode, with 60 puzzles of varying difficulty. You're given no hints for these ones, so they'll add a dose of challenge if you're still hooked.

An excellent user interface rounds out the Spellsquares experience. It isn't flawless — I found trouble placing letter tiles in lower squares at times, for instance — but it has one feature that every similar game should learn from. You can walk away from a puzzle at any time, and when you return your tiles will still be where you left them. If you need to head back to the Oracle mid-puzzle or you decide to move to a different room and return later, your progress remains intact. Saved me a headache or two, that's certain.

With over 100 puzzles to work through, Spellsquares offers the word-puzzle fan a lengthy and entertaining experience. It won't last forever, but its well-crafted puzzles are a joy to work through once. If you missed out when the iPad version was released, now's your chance. While you're at it, pop into our discussion thread to share your impressions.

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Ever since the moment as a child where I first saw Kyle MacLachlan crush a metal-underpantsed Sting with the force of a single word in Dune, I’ve wanted a game that gave me that same feeling of power. Any time I re-watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the holodeck is featured, I find myself wishing that spoken controls were a bigger part of gaming. I mean, TNG accurately predicted the tablet computer, why can’t we have voice commands that work, too?

Discounting rhythm games like Rock Band where vocal input allows for no deviation, the only contemporary title I can think of that has tackled the problem with any degree of competency is Tom Clancy’s End War. Unfortunately, voice controls in games are essentially like tequila shots. They sound like the best idea in the world at the time, but a few hours later you just end up disoriented, frustrated, and violently nauseous. It was in such a cavalier mood that I chose to pick up Starglow Magic Spells [Free], and I am now paying the price.

The game puts you in the role of an apprentice magician who must learn five different classes of spells in order to graduate from wizard school. Each spell is a series of words and syllables, where you must determine the correct phonetic pronunciation and then speak the resulting Simlish-like gibberish into your phone. The game then spits back how many of the words of the spell you got correct. Thankfully, there’s a practice mode that allows you to suss out the correct emphasis and intonations prior to testing your diction with the teachers of the five classes of magic.

This game’s only saving grace is that once you figure out what pronunciation a given spell is looking for, the voice recognition part of the software works fantastically. The problem is that the phonetic rules are often difficult to decipher and don’t appear to remain constant from class to class (or even spell to spell). As such, you’ll find yourself rapidly getting angrier and angrier with the game. You know those new-fangled automated customer service systems that have you slowly over-pronouncing words (i.e. “Billing. Bill-ing. BILL-ing. Bill-ING. Billing! BILLING!!! ARRRGHEGGHGAHGAH!”) into your phone? That’s essentially the entire experience of playing Starglow Magic Spells.

Then there’s the issue of feedback and payoff. What’s my reward for practicing until I get a spell right? I get to move on to the next spell! There’s no reinforcement of success whatsoever. I just spent 5 minutes talking baby talk and you can’t even show me a static drawing of the wall of flame I supposedly summoned? That’s ca-ca.

I was done with the game after I completed two classes, which ended up being wildly convenient, as this is when the pay wall hit. In the interests of masochistic science, I attempted to hit the IAP to unlock the three remaining schools only to get an error every time. So, now I’m an involuntary magic school drop-out, and I feel like a better man for it despite the stigma I now face when socializing in professional mage circles. The game does have a multiplayer mode available to allow you to face off against other spellcasters, but unfortunately, I was never able to find an opponent to test my incoherent mutterings with. Maybe that’s because Arcane U is out on summer vacation?

My wife walked into the office where I was playing Starglow Magic Spells a few days ago. At first, she stopped and looked at me cockeyed in confusion. Then, she stared at me blankly, not believing. Finally she shrugged, and walked away snickering and shaking her head. I can’t think of a better summary of this game than that. I applaud the developers for trying to tackle a difficult game design problem and for the precision of their voice recognition work. That being said, I’d advise keeping your distance unless you like the idea of being that crazy vagrant outside the 7-11 who keeps arguing with his hand.

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Spacelings [99c] is the new 2d action-puzzler from Hotgen, who previously released To-Fu: The Trials of Chi [99c/HD]. As you might have gathered from the name, their latest game is set in space. The naughty mechanical Roborgs have abducted all the Spacelings and deposited them in over 100 levels around the universe.  Your spaceship, the 'Liberator', has no weapons, so instead of attacking you use your ships tractor-beam to try and recover your fellow Spacelings. This game is a rescue mission.

If the Spacelings stood in a polite orderly queue, directly below your spacecraft, things would be super convenient  – just activate the tractor beam, suck them straight up to your craft and then continue to the next level. However, the Spacelings are actually positioned all over the level, so the tractor beam must be swiped, to turn corners, until it eventually reaches a captured Spaceling to suck back to the Liberator.  Some levels are larger than your screen, so you can drag the background with your finger, to pan around and plan your approach.

You're given a limited supply of "deflectors", so the tractor-beam can only turn so many corners. This forces you to carefully plan-and swipe the beam's route through each level, to ensure you reach a Spaceling within the tractor beam's limited range. Fortunately, once a deflector has been deployed, it can also be re-used, allowing the beam to snake across the level for one recovery, then by moving the deflectors, head somewhere else for another rescue attempt. This game is all about turning corners at the right times.

There's other stuff in the levels too, like mines, beam switchers (reverses the tractor beam so it pushes objects), lazer-turrets, teleporters and disruptor fields (which the tractor-beam can't pass through). You'll be taught some tricks, like how to slingshot objects into each other to remove obstacles, enemies, bombs or mines. Be gentle with those bombs once they're in your tractor beam though, as they detonate upon contact, even if it's an innocent Spaceling. Definitely don't let the tractor-beam bring a bomb back on board your precious spacecraft either. And much like the classic movie Ghostbusters, you'll be advised never to cross the beams!

A new gameplay mechanism is explained at the start of each level. These hints and instructions are helpful initially, but towards the end of the game, the hint screen and a pop-up message both display exactly the same hint and requiring two taps to close before you can play. And the earlier hints start repeating. Perhaps the developers got sick of writing so many hints.

Each level is rewarded by medals based on the number of rescues, enemies destroyed and time taken. There's also a special medal for achieving all the medals in the same attempt. There's 393 medals to earn in total, plus Game Center support for 20 achievements and high-score / medal leader-boards. And it's universal, so it runs on all your IOS devices.

After playing Spacelings for a while, I started wanting more of a mental challenge as most levels are pretty easy, with the solution immediately evident, so it's just a matter of getting the timing right. There are some harder levels near the end of the game, although some of these are given away by the help page, or by marks drawn on the level telling you exactly what to do. It's unusual to see such hand-holding near the end of a game. Still, Spacelings kept my interest, right to the final levels, with it's tractor-beaming action.

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Most music-based games are based on the same premise: interaction with the rhythm or beat of the song in some form or fashion. That’s why Say What?! [Free] seems like such an interesting take on the genre; rather than interacting with the musical composition, the game challenges you to interact with the actual lyrics. While I think that Say What?! is definitely one of the more interesting takes on the genre that I’ve seen, a very limited selection of music coupled with a lack of gameplay diversity leaves it somewhat wanting.

The premise of Say What?! is simple: as lyrics to a song are displayed at the top of the screen various images scroll across the bottom portion from right to left. When portions of the lyrics light up, you must tap on the image that corresponds to the highlighted lyric.

On easier difficulties the relationship between image and lyric is simple. However, as the difficulty ramps up, the relationships become more abstract and require greater thinking and comprehension. This is further amplified by the fact that a lot more images start going by faster on the harder difficulties.

Make no mistake, while Say What?! may be classified under the music genre, this is less of a music-based game and more of a puzzle/word comprehension title oriented around music lyrics. Fans of Rappin' Granny [$0.99] will be somewhat familiar with this type of gameplay and should enjoy it, as well as anyone that can handle games that require snap thinking. However, for everyone else this game will probably seem like a frustrating exercise in futility.

Until you play it a few times, that is. One of the biggest issues I have with Say What?! is that the highlighted lyrics and images associated with them appear to be set pieces. This means that, assuming you play the same song enough, you should be able to memorize the patterns for each song and thus raise your score with ease. Sure, the surrounding wrong images appear to randomize each time, but if you know exactly what image to look for, you really won't care about the other 'noise' images.

This is further compounded by the fact that Say What?! only has three free songs, with a paltry seven more songs available as IAP for $1.99 each. The IAP seems a bit expensive considering that there's not even any way to preview the songs being purchases (although I suppose one could just search online for a preview of them). Finally, while I don't have a problem with the songs I tried, I feel that the limited variety of genres will be a turn off for some players.

While I did enjoy Say What?!, it's a game of limited appeal and limited content. If you're looking for an interesting twist on the puzzle/music genre, I'd say give Say What?! a try. Unfortunately, even if you enjoy the experience, it ends up being way too short. Hopefully the game will continue to expand and add more songs of various genres, which would be a good first step of creating a fan base around this interesting game.

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If you've never heard of Zombie Minesweeper [$0.99], you could be forgiven for thinking the combo sounds a bit dull. Minesweeper has been around the block a few times, and zombies have been overexposed for years. But as those who've played the browser version know, there's something special in the combination of zombies and minefields. This top-down action puzzler puts the two together to explosive effect.

Imagine Minesweeper as applied to an actual minefield. As you direct the game's heroine, Sally, from square to square, numbers pop up on the ground around her. As in Minesweeper, those numbers indicate how many mines are adjacent to a square. To survive the invasion of a variety of zombified animals, you'll need to direct Sally to safe spaces, flagging the spaces you think hold mines as you go, while the undead hordes breathe down her neck.

While this remarkably successful combination of logic puzzle and explosive violence has been available for free online for a while, the browser version serves as more of a demo than a complete experience. It offers a handful of levels in two modes that the iOS version eschews. On iOS, you'll find a fully featured campaign that extends this excellent gameplay over 31 varied levels. It isn't universally successful, but when it works well, Zombie Minesweeper is a fantastic experience. The visuals are great and the music adds a strong sense of tension. It's a lovely, gruesome package.

In each of the levels, you'll need to guide Sally safely through the minefield to an explosive trigger at its end. She'll move to any space you tap, and the mine markers are revealed around her. When you use those numbers to identify spaces where mines are present, you can select a flag and mark the spot. She won't path over flagged mines, but zombies aren't that bright. They claw their way out of the ground and amble toward her, hungry for brains. You can lure them into mines, or you can pull something out of your bag of tricks.

What those tricks include depends on the level. Most often you'll have access to bombs, which you can plant near zombies for time-delayed destruction. Sally also has her shotgun, and if you find some ammo you can tap zombies to blow them to pieces. Brains are littered around some levels — pick them up and plant them to lure zombies to their re-deaths. While you're coming up with creative ways to kill the undead, you're also trying not to get blown to bits in the minefield. It's a balancing act.

When you reach the end of a level, you trigger a chain-reaction that sets off every flagged mine. This will kill every zombie nearby, skyrocketing your score for the level if you've been vigilant about marking mines. That's where I ran into my first big problem with Zombie Minesweeper: the score you earn for the level doesn't matter. The level tracks your overall score, but that score doesn't ever become relevant unless you want to Tweet it. Instead, at the end of each level you're ranked with medals for zombie kills, your deaths, and flags that hit mines versus those that don't. Fair enough, but why show a score at all?

Perhaps the score is for the OpenFeint leaderboard, but the leaderboard never worked for me. The achievements are a bit better — they certainly add some challenge, but they don't always trigger correctly. On top of that, my game crashed several times. Together, that's more frustration than I'd normally tolerate. But the core experience of Zombie Minesweeper is so enjoyable that I was happy to take the bad with the good. Still, a few fixes and Game Center support are badly needed.

Those small issues are a shame, because otherwise the experience is very well designed. For instance, Zombie Minesweeper is never frustratingly difficult because you can't really die. Getting eaten or blown up just sends you back to the start of a level, with all your exploration and flagging intact. It's nearly impossible to get stuck, since enough persistence is usually enough to win through. If you want a greater challenge, though, you can compete for higher ranks — try making it through each level in one try, and there's little chance you'll find the game too easy.

Despite its issues, I'd recommend giving Zombie Minesweeper a shot. If you're not ready to commit, the browser version will give you a good introduction to the game's clever combination of puzzles and explosive action. If you want more, the zombies are waiting.

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Flick Soccer! [99¢] by Full Fat Games is a penalty-shooting soccer game. Games like this feel like mini-games. The type of thing you wouldn't necessarily play for hours, but might jump on for 10 minutes of casual game-play, while waiting for something.  This game has nice graphics of the pitch, goal and stadium, complete with a cheering crowd and a goalie who does warm up exercises. And it opens with a surprisingly  decent rock song complete with vocals.

To shoot at the goal, you simply swipe across the ball in the desired direction, with short swipes to keep the ball low, or longer swipes to aim high.  You can curve the ball with a curved swipe, or do a second swipe while the ball is in-flight to add after-touch. These curved shots are useful for confusing the goal-keeper, swerving around defenders,  trying to correct a bad shot or for targeting with more accuracy. And it definitely feels great to curve your shot perfectly between the goal keeper and defender for a perfect bulls-eye!

There's five different modes of play, with game center rankings for each mode plus 25 achievements. In Quick-shot mode you try to hit a target within the goal-mouth, which features a bulls-eye with two surrounding bands. You earn extra game-play time, depending which part of the target you strike. In this mode the goalie keeps improving, so it's best to make your initial shots count. The longer you survive, the higher the level you reach.

You're given three balls in Endurance mode, but each time you miss the target, you lose that ball. You get extra balls back by striking the bulls-eye. The goalie is not alone in this game, as some defenders will stand between you and the goal, wisely covering their privates for protection. And power-ups float across the goal-mouth, which can be stuck by the ball to earn extra points or extra balls.

Challenge mode is a slower-paced game, with emphasis on accuracy rather than speed. You get exactly five shots to achieve the score required for bronze, silver or gold medals, which unlock the next skill level. The aim is to gain promotions from 'Trainee', through the ranks, right up to 'Superstar'. This mode helps increase the replay value, as it's tempting to strive for the promotions.

The worst mode is definitely Crossbar mode, which requires constant long swipes to hit the top crossbar of the goal repeatedly, over and over and over, again and again. This mode requires less skill and quickly becomes repetitive and boring and could potentially lead to an iOS hand injury.

The final mode is Smash It, which is all about kicking the ball into panes of glass, positioned around the goal mouth, so they shatter. The most notable aspect of this mode is that the glass panes each display advertisements for the developers (FullFat) or their games. I didn't mind the product placements when they displayed their advertisements on every single banner in the background stadium and on the scrolling electronic billboards around the pitch, and on the loading screens, and on the pop-up which intrusively appears when the game starts and requires a click to remove, but… also placing their advertisements right there on the targets, in the very center of the screen as part of the gameplay, seems a bit cheeky, since we've paid for the game.

There are tons of flick-style soccer penalty-shot games in the AppStore, such as Flick Football [99c/Lite], Flick Kick Football [99¢/Lite], and even Full Fat's own Dead Ball Specialist [$5.99/HD], which has gotten rather pricey with the recent App Store pricing adjustments. These are 3 of our favorites in the genre, and Flick Soccer! is another solid – though not groundbreaking – entry if you're looking for something new and can put up with the somewhat obtrusive cross-promotion advertising.

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If you've never heard of Ragnarok Online, I'd have to assume that you've been living under a rock since about 2002. The popular Korean MMORPG came to American shores in 2003, but by that time it already had a rabid fanbase among Korean gamers (50 million players worldwide to date). The game originally started as a Pay To Play title, but a Free To Play version came along later down the line, which only amped its popularity. What more could you ask for from a fun little MMO like this? Why, to make it portable, of course … and with Ragnarok Violet [Free], that's just what you've got.

In Ragnarok Violet, you will play the young hero who hopes to become a knight and eventually gets drafted to stop the Dark Lord from reawakening. Okay, I know that that doesn't sound particularly new or creative, but hey, it's an RPG. Sometimes you just have to breathe your way through the cliches and get on with the gameplay. Speaking of, the game goes with the good old top down format that you'll fondly remember from so many Super Nintendo RPGs of old.

If you love grinding, leveling your character, boosting stats and doing the whole fight in the fields/go back to town schtick, Ragnarok Violet's got you covered. You'll be given quests right off the bat and soon be on your way to exploring. The control scheme works just fine, although the D pad on the left bottom corner of your screen is a bit large and will impede your vision on occasion. Slots for quick spell access on your right bottom corner are particularly handy and make it easy to start using those skills you're racking up.

Fighting is … well, it's pretty standard hack and slash stuff that consists of hitting the same button over and over. Leveling happens pretty quickly, which means you can start getting comfy with the stat and skill point systems. Unlike many of the retro titles that likely inspired it, Ragnarok Violet doesn't torture you to get your character stronger in the beginning, which is a blessing as far as I'm concerned. Who wants to be murdered by a slime before you even hit level three? That does not make you feel like a hero, I can tell you that.

Ragnarok Violet does feature one thing which most RPGs don't, and that is a pet system. You can tame these guys at a pet shop in town and they will offer little benefits to your quest, such as aiding HP or gathering items, as long as you remember to keep them fed. They also offer chatty commentary and are just generally cute. No doubt this feature is a great hit with fans of ultra cute characters in RPGs (in other words, all of Asia), but let's face it: If  you're playing Ragnarok Violet in the first place, you obviously already have a soft spot in your heart for cute stuff.

You can earn money in-game to buy stuff to beef up your arsenal, or you can hit a little shop button in your top right corner and make In-App Purchases with real money. A lot of the stuff is just for fun, like hats for your pet, but there are also useful items for sale like instant revives. I'm not a fan of buying items in games personally, but if you are, I think you'll find there's a decent selection of fun, inexpensive things to choose from.

There are a few major weaknesses in Raganarok Violet. Firstly, the skill tree is just kind of sad and underdeveloped-looking, and doesn't offer a lot of exciting skills to get. I also found the minimap more or less useless, as it just looks like a tiny sprite map with an icon of your head on it and does not really point you in the direction of any destination you might need to find. Lastly, the dialogue hovers somewhere right below average, and on occasions is downright awful. It feels really rushed, and I spotted a lot of misspellings. Also, our hero has an attitude that makes me want to kick him into next week, but that's just my opinion, mind you.

Regardless of any weaknesses, however, fans are sure to go rabid for Ragnarok Violet, even if it's based just on the nostalgia factor of having played Raganarok Online in the past. Although it has its flaws, it still offers a huge world to explore and plenty of solid (if not terribly innovative) gameplay. Some of that might make you pause and consider whether it's worth your hard earned dollars, but wait — it's free. No reason to hesitate now, yes?

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While some traditional publishers are resisting the trends towards lower-cost software in the handheld gaming space, others are actively working to figure out how to make these sorts of experiences work on their existing platforms. While not a shining beacon of success, the PSP Minis campaign does demonstrate a good faith effort on the part of Sony to cater to the direction that portable gaming seems to be heading. A few growing pains are part and parcel of adapting to a changing market, and there have been a few notable early wins scattered through the program.

One of the largest of these successes has been Frima Games’ A Space Shooter for Two Bucks, which recently reported a healthy figure of 150,000 downloads over PSN. Given the type of game they made, and its popularity on PSP, it’s no surprise that the developers worked to port the title over to the iPhone. Making its debut on iOS as A Space Shooter For Free [Free/HD], this game retains all the good elements from its PSP origin and joins a catalog of solid shmups available on the platform.

A Space Shooter For Free is the story of P. Jefferson, an optimistic and nerdy kid who is relentlessly tortured by bullies at school. Much like our own Brad Nicholson, Jefferson turns to obsessive weightlifting and unjustified xenophobia as a means of dealing with his repressed rage issues. Equal parts bravado and libido, he’s essentially a mash-up of Zap Brannigan and Duke Nukem.

However, unlike the Duke, this universe does not celebrate his misogyny or misbehaviors, making the character much more tolerable. The story and dialogue are snappily done in comic-book panel style, and Jefferson’s pathetic attempts to “court” the older woman who runs the upgrade store were just cheesy enough to keep me coming back to see if the idiot could pull it off.

Let me start off the gameplay discussion by stating that this game is no Cave title; if you’re looking to have your socks blown off by god-tier bullet hell action, this is not the one for you. That being said, Frima blends a cornucopia of strong elements into ASSFF that give the game tons of depth and replay value.

In standard vertical-scrolling space shooter fashion, enemies of varying types will converge on your ship from all directions. Memorizing their attack patterns and behaviors will be the key to your success, as will scooping up the power-ups that destroyed baddies leave on the screen. The usual suspects are all here: shields, missiles, and main gun bumps give your ship a temporary boost in fighting power. Some missions will be against standard waves of aliens, and some will feature boss characters to defeat. Clearing a boss stage will provide your ship with one of five special weapons that is persistent throughout the rest of the game.

Speaking of persistent, along with your temporary power-ups, you’ll be collecting scrap/currency that you can use in-between missions to purchase permanent upgrades to your ship. There’s a great deal of variety here, and the desire to grind out enough scratch to get the next upgrade kept me motivated to pew-pew bravely on. Adding spread to your main cannon, magnets to pull scrap in for you, devices to increase the power or reduce the energy cost of special weapons, and items that maximize the efficiency of temporary power-ups are all options.

Difficulty between stages can vary wildly, and so if you play solely in the campaign mode you’ll find yourself needing to grind in order to upgrade enough to tackle later sectors. This is the perfect time to take a break and check out the survival mode. It’s your standard wave-after-wave affair, but the high-score push is a draw, and Frima smartly allows any currency you earn in survival mode to carry back over into the campaign.

ASSFF falls into the same control traps that many iPhone shmups do. The touch controls feels right and auto-fire helps the cause, but especially when the difficulty begins to mount you’ll be covering vital parts of the action with your finger. The position of special weapons also make them difficult to activate without leaving your ship unprotected in a sea of murderous plasma bolts while you trigger them.

The game (as you’d rightly expect by the title) is free to download, and there’s more than enough content before the pay wall to help you make up your mind. If you find yourself sucked in like I did, a reasonable $.99 IAP will unlock the rest of the campaign content. Additional IAPs are available for those who want all the ship upgrades from the get-go. A Space Shooter For Free does a lot of different things, and juggles them very well. For the quality and quantity of shooter on display here, the value proposition is dynamite. For an initial price of free, I'd definitely encourage downloading and checking out this title.

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Let's talk about big money (no big prizes) for a second. Financial news site Bloomberg is reporting that Angry Birds creator Rovio Mobile is ‘considering’ taking a strategic investment from an 'entertainment company' to expand their wares to China and fund the upcoming movie. If it goes through, unnamed sources indicate that this investment would give Rovio the value of about 1.2 billion. I love it!

These mysterious sources aren’t indicating what parties are interested in investing. We agree with analyst superstar Michael Pachter when he suggests that EA, Zynga, or even Disney are the likeliest possible investors. All of these companies have a huge stake in the mobile space, and obviously wouldn’t mind getting a piece of the Angry Birds action. Disney definitely needs the most cred out of all of these publishers.

Fake, but you get the idea.

If you needed an indication of how popular Angry Birds is outside the world of the App Store or Android, look no further than your local Wal-Mart. Kiosks with Angry Birds plush toys are starting to appear. Also, several stores are carrying shirts with the iconic catapult games’ various winged mascots.

Love it or hate it, you already knew Rovio’s bird game is a powerhouse. I wonder how much longer this can last, though.

[Via Bloomberg, Joystiq - Image 1 via A Kid's Pencil, Image 2 via Gadget Sin]

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Since its debut in 1995, the Heroes of Might and Magic (HOMM) game series has been synonymous with deep, turn-based strategy gameplay. While some may argue that the more recent titles have somewhat strayed from their roots, none will argue with the general appeal and sheer depth of the classic titles in the series.

The multi-platform Palm Heroes series looked to capture and recreate the gameplay of older HOMM titles in portable form, and managed to succeed to some degree. Now, with Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe [$4.99/HD/HD Lite], it looks like the definitive version of classic HOMM gameplay has finally arrived on iOS. Featuring a ton of missions, factions, as well as a hot-seat multiplayer mode, Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe will satisfy any strategy gamer’s appetite for quite a while.

For those unfamiliar with the HOMM-style games, Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe is a game of resource management, military prowess, and tactical superiority. Players control heroes that in turn command a wide variety of creatures under their banner. In addition to moving about the overworld map and collecting resources, fighting baddies, and gaining experience for the hero, players also can capture cities which bestow a wide variety of benefits. Using the resources generated by the cities and captured on the field, players can then build additional structures in the city which either bestow abilities on the hero, generate new resources (which can then be used to build more structures) or recruit new creatures that can be assigned to heroes out on the field.

The end goal of every scenario is to conquer all the opposing heroes and conquer all enemy cities. For newcomers to this type of gameplay, the learning curve may be steep, as there’s a lot of gameplay elements to monitor and control. Also, while tutorials do exist, they only scratch the surface. If all this sounds complicated, that's because it is. But, that’s exactly what makes games like Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe incredibly compelling.

I’m amazed at the fact that Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe manages to cram all the gameplay into playable form on the iPhone. When fighting other heroes, combat is performed on a hex grid which would, at first glance, seem to be hard to control on the iPhone’s small screen. Yet, the developers took the time to implement iPhone specific controls to make sure that every move on the field is done correctly and accurately. An iPad only version of Palm Heroes 2 also exists and, in my opinion, controls better than the iPhone version. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that iPhone-only users can’t enjoy the game just as well.

For experienced HOMM gamers looking for those classic epic battles that take hours to complete, Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe features scenarios of all sizes and will certainly satisfy everyone’s tastes. In fact, the only complaint I have is the lack of a cohesive campaign mode. Instead, every map is self-sustaining and not part of an overarching story (if the map even has a story). This shouldn’t make a difference for most fans of this genre, as the gameplay itself is the compelling element and not necessarily any background text. But for some, I imagine it’s a disappointment. Also, while I’m grateful for the hot-seat multiplayer, I really wish some sort of online multiplayer could have been built in, as much of the fun in these types of games was in participating in long term epic matches with other people.

In addition to the twenty maps included in Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe, the game also offers a built-in store that offers over 100 different maps available as IAP. While some will inevitably argue that the extra content should be free, I think the game does a fair job of offering a decent amount of content while providing the opportunity of buying more maps at a reasonable price. In addition, a free iPad “non-deluxe” version of Palm Heroes 2 also exists, but it only comes with two maps, doesn’t offer as many maps on its in-game store, and it actually charges more for the maps that are on there. If you’re looking to preview the gameplay, I suggest checking it out. But, if you plan on making an investment into Palm Heroes 2, I highly suggest picking up the Deluxe version.

At its core, Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe does an amazing job bringing over classic turn-based strategy gameplay to iOS. Some folks may look at the simplistic graphics and immediately turn away, but they’ll be passing on one of the better strategy titles on the App Store. If you have any love at all for turn-based strategy games, and you're looking for a game that has enough content to keep you occupied for a good deal of time, check out Palm Heroes 2 Deluxe, you won’t be disappointed.

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