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The first major content update to Halfbrick’s relentlessly awesome Jetpack Joyride [$.99] [Universal] is exactly what we wanted from an inaugural attempt to make the game better. Version 1.1 packs in a new fire-breathing robot dragon vehicle dubbed Mr. Cuddles, a fruit-spewing jetpack that makes a jolly mess all over the lab, and addresses several issues relating to achievements, missions, and other things like coin bankrolls.

Most importantly, it adds the studio’s own person wizard Phil Larsen, the most amazing Australian I’ve ever shared a crab cake with, to the core game. Tragically, he’s only making this single cameo appearance as of this moment, but I suppose it’s only a matter of time until he succeeds Barry Steakfries in future games, right Halfbrick?

All of these improvements have been rolled in as a free update to the game, and it’s totally up for grabs right now. If you’re unfamiliar with Jetpack Joyride, go read our review and do the right thing: buy it.

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Sometimes I'm the mood for a puzzle game, and sometimes, I'm in the mood for a word game. Or the rare occasion that I'm in the mood for both, I don't have a lot of choices on my iPhone, but I believe Chillingo has fixed that with the addition of Gum Drop! [$0.99 ] to their library. A hybrid of both genres, Gum Drop! is a very attractive game that I believe will have staying power with kids and adults alike.

Like a lot of other Chillingo titles, Gum Drop! has a great look. Pastel colors and jazzy music will usher you into the title menu, which is so basic that there aren't even any instructions before you begin to play. This could be slightly disorienting if you're used to being instructed in the games you play, but really this one is so self-explanatory you hardly need it.

A stack of gumdrops sit on the far left corner of your screen, and the rest of it is dominated by a series of squares with pictures on them. A closer look at the gumdrops will show that each has a word on it. As you see the word represented by a picture on one of the squares, you touch it with a finger, and it vanishes. The gumdrop with the word on it deflates, and you take out as many as you can in order to drop another set of them and proceed to the next level of squares.

Simple, right?

Gum Drop!'s challenge begins as you make progress. To begin, you only have nine squares to match, and the gum drops don't expand too quickly. It's when you hit level 7 and the blocks increase to sixteen on a grid that things get tougher. It's also around this time that the items you have to identify on the blocks all start coming up one color, like yellow or blue. Let me tell you, this is where the game starts to become a total pain (albeit in a really challenging, kind of throw your phone at the wall kind of way). You'll have to speed up to keep going. If you make a mistake and stab a block with an image that is not represented by one of the gumdrops on the left, guess what happens? One of them expands, doubling in size. Isn't that super?

One thing you can use to your advantage is keeping an eye out for the items on the level above you. As you take blocks out, eventually, the upcoming level that's above you will fall. You'll be able to see one row of the blocks coming, and if you can match one to a word on a gumdrop, it takes out everything in the current level and moves you immediately to that one, which earns you a sweet little points bonus. It deflates the gum drops too, so you have a precious few moments of time to get your bearings on the new level. And believe me, you're going to need them.

In addition tot he basic gameplay, you also have 25 achievements to dig into and Game Center functionality to brag about your scores. There's a Facebook button too, so you can easily let people know you're digging the game and encourage them to check it out too.

I like how simple Gum Drop! is. Typically iPhone games are pretty easy to learn to play, but this one is so effortless that it reminds me a little of the "jump in and play" mentality of games from the early retro era. I miss that sentiment, and while obviously many wonderful games are in the world that require a bit of instruction, on occasion it's a breath of fresh air to play one that lets you jump in and play basically on instinct. It's an elegant formula, and it works. Now if I could only get a little better at the levels where all the items are the same color…

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Developer Fractiv just introduced a new mechanic and a new character in a free and fresh update to its arcade racing game Lane Splitter [$.99]. New version 2.0 — which the studio says is the game’s most comprehensive update yet — adds Ricky, a character “who looks cooler than you because of his sweet [blue] chopper. Also, police. Yep! For the first time ever, you’ll be asked to avoid the long arm of the law as you switch lanes to and fro at silly speeds. From our tests thus far, escaping the police seems to simply boil down to "just keep driving fast," a conceit that jives with the whole game.

New animations, tweaks, and optimizations are also a part of the  free update. Interestingly, the studio has also added four more characters, but only as IAP. You can grab them one a piece for $.99 or in a bundle for $1.99. The latter is an introductory price for the moment.

Lane Splitter is stupid fun and we certainly got into it earlier this March. If you’d like to learn a little bit more about the crotch-rocketry that fuels this game, you should definitely give our review a read.

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GRL Games’ awesome word game, Word Chat [$.99], has just received a brand new game mode and a few other select tweaks via a free update. The new mode is Word Solitaire and it’s basically what you’re envisioning — you pull tiles from the columns to make new words and then the tiles on the upper reaches of the board are revealed until you clear the level. Designer Graeme Devine tells us that this was, at one point, an entirely fresh game, but he soon decided to roll it into Word Chat as a mode instead. How nice!

As far as new mechanics, Devine added in a power-up for use in Word Solitaire that allows you to change out letters. As for tweaks, there’s a few: tiles are now smoother on old devices and you can also shake your phone to alter the bubble background in the game.

More updates like this are coming in the future, according to Devine. He wants to update a lot with a ton of meaningful content, which is an approach we can certainly get behind.

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jAggy Race [99¢] arrived on the App Store without much fanfare, but this kart-racing game is an impressive debut release from Swiss developers SevenOnly. The goal is to race your little kart around the track within the allotted time. That sounds pretty easy, except the tracks are totally crazy.

They curve down-and-under, so your vehicle ends up racing upside down with 360-degree gravity. You can do massive jumps on the track which send you flying for ages, even around corners, or to other sections of track. If you've ever played the snowboarding game iStunt 2 Insane Hills [Free] the tracks are just as crazy, but here you're on wheels.

There's no other karts in this game, as you're solely racing against the clock and trying to avoid crashing. A timer starts beeping if you're running out of time, which really gets the adrenaline going, but If you take the corners too quickly you'll fly off the track altogether. Fortunately, there's mandatory checkpoints which illuminate as you pass and act as a re-spawn point if you wipe-out. This is a game of skill and timing as you can't simply hold down the accelerator.

To makes things trickier, there's obstacles to jump, laser barriers in the air, and large rotating saw blades to avoid. If you ram into an obstacle at full speed the kart bounces back, using up precious time, although you can slam on the brakes and speed forward again. And this game delivers a great sensation of speed, on tracks which grow much longer and more complex as you progress.

There's 5 tutorial tracks, followed by 3 worlds of five tracks each. When you complete a level, the next level unlocks and you can unlock an additional 3 bonus tracks by scoring three gold wins per world (making 23 tracks in total).  But be warned: It's not easy to achieve gold results at first, and obstacles can sometimes appear too quickly to avoid if you're not familiar with the track yet. In jAggy Race, memory and quick reflexes come in handy.

The track is only one-lane wide (as wide as your kart) so there's no swerving left or right. Instead, there's buttons to drive forward and backwards on each side of the screen. Or tap both together for braking. Some tracks require a combination of driving forwards and backwards, but there's always arrows conveniently located  to show you which way to race.

Jump buttons are available on both sides of the screen. While you're mid-air, you can optionally tilt the device to do flips. If your kart tips over, or is racing along on two wheels, you can shake the device to upright it. Once you've mastered the controls, there's an option to remove the buttons altogether if you choose. The controls in general work really well, and your fingers never obscure the action.

The retina graphics look great and the "camera" panning is super smooth, starting with a wide view of the track and background, zooming in on the car at the starting post and then tracking the car nicely, despite the rapid turns, drops, jumps and loops.

If you look closely, you'll notice some attention to detail. The kart wheels rotate and Jaggy (which is the name of the driver) looks over his shoulder when in reverse and even blinks occasionally. And the backgrounds are layered with details. There are sheep grazing beside (or sitting upon) the track.  And when the voice says "Ready…go!" at the start, you can accelerate quickly to turbo.

jAggy Race is a fun casual game, but it's also an exciting and challenging game for competitive gamers who want to familiarize themselves with each track for better results. Game Center leader-boards are provided for each track, plus 46 Game Center achievements. jAggy Race is already a good deal for a buck, but the developers advise that new tracks, additional features and a universal version are being worked on already, which will make this game an even better deal down the road.

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Chillingo is pretty reliable when it comes to fun mobile releases, so I went into my experience with Fruit Roll [99¢/HD] expecting to enjoy my time with it. A cheerful, colorful title with a cartoon-inspired style, Fruit Roll foregoes a complex approach in favor of a simple one, which really makes it easy to pick up and never want to put back down.

You play the game as a wide eyed, adorable fruit that must go rolling through sidescrolling levels, jumping through the air in pursuit of stars and other fruits and avoiding creepy-crawlies such as caterpillars and giant red frogs. The game is on rails, so you won't need to control your movement, only take actions as it's happening, such as jumping. You have a single jump and a double jump, controlled precisely by a tap or two from your fingertip. Movement is fluid and comfortable to use, so you never have any moments of stabbing at the screen with your finger trying to nail a jump.

There's more than meets the eye when it comes to gameplay, though. When you begin, you'll notice a little bar on the far left of your screen with three slots. As you progress through levels, you'll not only see stars and enemies, but also fruit you can roll over to pick up. Each one you pick up will be added to this queue, and when you want to, you can tap one of them and become that fruit. This would be fun if it was just for the hell of it, but it actually has a purpose.

By color-coding, you can then take on enemies of a corresponding color by rolling over them, and as long as you are the same color, you'll knock them out. This lends an element of strategy to the game, as you have to be on your toes to change colors appropriately, all while moving and avoiding enemies of the wrong color (and the game speeds up as you progress through levels, so you'll have to work hard to keep up). The end of each level also contains a large area of stars that you can double jump your way through to suck up extra points.

Another option is to collect three fruits of the same color, which will transform you into some sort of monster fruit that can barrel past all enemies and grab twice the amount of stars for a short period of time. This is key to making it through some of the harder levels, not to mention it's a lot of fun to transform into a wacko version of yourself that can take out anything in its path.

One thing I'm not nuts about with Fruit Roll is that all the levels are strung together, creating an endless flow of play until you die by being hit by an enemy of the wrong color. It does help that the terrain changes each time you play, but I couldn't help but feel it would have been cool to bookmark your progress or finish levels. Fruit Roll is more about racking up points and speed running than it is about level completion, though — your goal will just be to see how far you can make it and how many points you can get in the process.

The game is Game Center enabled and also works with the Crystal network, and it's definitely the kind of thing that casual gamers will want to come back to over and over to see if they can nudge that high score just a bit further along. It's a pleasant gaming experience in every way (including the price!), so if you dig great presentation and consistent, engaging gameplay, I think you'll get a lot of fun out of this one.

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By the unspoken law of videogames, a sequel tends to follow at least a full year after the original, but in the case of HotGen's To-Fu: The Trials of Chi [99¢/ HD], it has been less than six months before we're seeing the follow-up, aptly titled, To-Fu 2 [99¢]. You wouldn’t think much could happen in just those few short months, but what To-Fu 2 lacks in artistic changes, it makes up for in level design chops.

In a lot of ways, it would have been easy to pull a Madden 12 on To-Fu 2 because, for the most part, this is the same game as it was before. The art, music, sound effects, and everything else are pulled from the original. That is, except for one single new feature: you can now charge To-Fu and send him rocketing through wood blockades.

Other than that and a couple environmental hazards, the basic design remains the same. You pull To-Fu in the direction you want him to go, then watch as he flies across the screen. Your goal is to get to a pink fortune cookie at the end of a spike or chainsaw riddled stage. This time around, the game comes packed with 100 levels, but unlike the first one, the levels are more diverse and far more difficult.

Like the first game, you'll have three objectives in each level: finish it, get all the blue orbs, and do it in a set number of moves. In most cases, you'll need to replay a level twice to get everything. The first To-Fu was challenging, but never really displayed any levels that could be called memorable. To-Fu 2 pushes the difficulty up, making it much twitchier, complicated, and ultimately a more memorable game.

There are essentially two reasons why the game is harder this time around. First off, the level design is, to put it bluntly, better. Levels have several tiers and they're mixed up in a way where they don't get stale. Getting all the orbs and completing the level in a set number of moves feels like two distinctive objectives, and totally changes how you get through each stage. The side effect of that is that they're wildly inconsistent. You'll blaze through three or four levels before getting stuck on a particularly hard one. It's not a building process from simple to hard, it's more of a random scattershot of levels thrown together.

They're also a lot tighter. Where the first game would give you a bit of leeway in you movements, this time around, To-Fu will die on you if he even gets close to spikes. It makes the game considerably more tedious and oftentimes annoying, but for the most part, it keeps things interesting by requiring a pinpoint precision with everything you do.

Unfortunately, it retains some of the problems from the original. The game assumes you're willing to trial-and-error your way through certain sections. Since the levels are often rather large, it also means you'll be flying blind a lot, especially during the parts where you have to fly out of teleporters at an exact angle. The screen real estate is made a bit better on an iPad, but during a lot of the sections, To-Fu 2 suffers from the same problem as Angry Birds where you feel like you're kind of flinging him in the general direction of where it needs to go, but never being certain of what the results will be.

Calling To-Fu 2 a sequel seems a little off. While it's not just about the game's artistic direction, To-Fu 2 doesn't offer enough new stuff to really make it feel like anything but an expansion pack to the original. It's a good thing the first game was good and the core  formula is certainly worth repeating, but don't expect anything new or special here.

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Boiling down the themes of uber-profitable App Store games yields a single undeniable fact of the universe: animals are lazy. The birds can be as angry as they like, but they don’t seem to do a thing about the pigs on their own. It’s only when you launch them out of slingshots that they take action. The gormless Om Nom would starve to death if it weren’t for you rewarding his horribly sedentary lifestyle with candy by cutting the rope. Let’s face it. You’re all a bunch of enablers.

However, since your co-dependent tendencies aren’t likely to change any time soon, it’s as good a time as any to take a look at yet another creature lacking motivation in Swing the Bat [99¢]. Published by Chillingo and created by Deadbug, the game draws in numerous elements from many recently successful iOS games.

While most bats are unable to survive without the power of flight to help them acquire food, this bat has developed a bit of a unique evolutionary adaptation. Rather than actually learn how to use the anatomy it was born with, he has developed the ability to launch his legs out like a grapple-gun, attach to trees, and swing to get around. It’s a cybernetic augment that would make even Adam Jensen jealous.

The first cue that Deadbug takes from the winning lazy animal formula is one-touch controls. Tap and hold to launch your leg and attach it to a surface and swing, then release at the optimal point in the arc to launch yourself forward. A handy guide is present to show you where to release for maximum momentum, but once you’ve got the hang of it you can decide to remove the training wheels and gauge your swings on your own.

There are two main modes in Swing the Bat, Dusk ‘til Dawn and Night Fire. Dusk ‘til Dawn is essentially Tiny Wings [99¢] in reverse, where you race to see how far you can get before the sun rises. As you advance, different animals will appear in the bamboo and attempt to stall your progress. Points are rewarded for perfect swings and for gathering food such as fruit and moths. Gather enough food and your bat will be inspired to actually fly for a short time.

While the main objective of Night Fire is still to get as far as possible, this second mode forces you to get more strategic. A fire at the base of the trees will continue to grow, and popping balloons to release buckets of water on the blaze is the only way to ensure you’ll have the time needed to push forward. It’s less speed and more precision focused than the other.

The second major cue it takes from Tiny Wings (and more recently, Jetpack Joyride [99¢]), is the implementation of an extensive achievement/objective system where completion will unlock new bat costumes. While the objectives never really force you to play the game much differently, as they do in the aforementioned games, they do add some needed spice to a fairly vanilla core. The unlockable costumes along with character design and general art direction all have a fun cartoony feel to them; the game’s got a nice look about it.

My biggest complaint about Swing the Bat is that while it brings in many of the mechanics of a Tiny Wings, it’s missing the same sense of arcade-like fun. The swinging controls are precise and easy to master, but it lacks the sense of speed and fluidity that makes other successful entries in the genre so enjoyable.

Even when you’re hitting every swing perfectly, the plodding pace of the swings means there’s no point where you get enough momentum going to really feel like you’re flying through the levels. The other animals that are there to provide a needed difficulty curve unfortunately also rob you of really ever enjoying a good run of swings.

The flying mechanic also is a bit under-baked. Once you eat enough fruit to temporarily unlock this ability, you should be able to take advantage of it to avoid those pesky pandas (who are strangely less lazy than the bat). However, the game does a poor job of indicating when you’ve activated this mode, so by the time you realized why you aren’t swinging any more you’ve wasted half the time you had to fly.

Deadbug has clearly paid attention to what works in the genre and brought some solid design to bear for Swing the Bat. The game has a warm colorful look, and the objectives and controls give this $.99 title a decent store of longevity and enjoyment. It never quite breaches the level of pure fun and action of the titles it so clearly draws inspiration from, but it lives up to the Chillingo standards we’ve come to expect. It’s worth the buy for those hungering for more one-touch objectives to get lost in and another cute, helpless animal to spoil rotten.

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Ever have one of those games that you desperately want to hate but can’t? You know there are better games on your phone and that by all definitions you’re essentially wasting your time by playing it, yet you can’t seem to escape the grind. That’s Pygmies-Hoglet [$.99]. It’s the digital equivalent of a menthol cigarette: it’s in no way what you originally planned to smoke, but the flavor is weird enough to see you through while you get your fix.

I don’t want to come across too harshly, but in good conscience I need to spell out up front that this game may quickly turn off some folks. That disclaimer behind us, this game has an innocent, playful charm I can’t seem to shake and some simple tweaks to classic RPG mechanics that kept me from dwelling on its shortcomings. If you liked the movie Rudy even ironically, you may consider giving this scrappy underdog (underhog?) a try.

Looking at the iTunes description and the art style, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this game was some sort of iOS Tomagotchi app. The main character, an adorable low-fi hedgehog, must regularly be fed and made to sleep in order to survive. But, that’s as far as the comparison goes.

The story is as simple and thin as it is cute. The hedgehog is sad because he has no friends, and so he sets off in search of other spiky things to make friends with. Much like me in junior-high, he is constantly rejected, and so must push on from area to area to put his heart out there again and again. This hedgehog is not daunted, however, and tries to bond with everything from cacti to a super spiky boss enemy who proceeds to attack him.

So, if you haven’t guessed by now, this game is full of all the usual quirks you’d expect from a localized Korean game. If you enjoy the sorts of anachronistic and linguistic oddities that go hand in hand with such titles, as I do, then you’re in for a treat. While some random encounters in this game result in battles, many will find you face to face with some ridiculous characters.

Collected baubles can be traded to Jewelry King, a pimped out monarch with a goatee who apparently is comfortable with setting up his throne in the middle of the wilderness. Excess food can be donated to a homeless man, who will stubbornly reject anything but the finest foods. Oh, yeah: Santa Claus. Whether in the mountains or jungle or desert, jolly ol’ Saint Nick will periodically show up and ask if you have any items for the kids for Christmas.

The art style plays into the quirkiness perfectly, with a Game Boy-esque approach that fits like a glove on top of the old-school RPG simplicity. It was easy to get pulled back in time with Pygmies-Hoglet, and when I finally emerged from the blocky grey and black world, all the colors on my phone suddenly seemed vibrant and new in a way they weren’t before. The game takes the reception bars, battery meter, and time display from your phone and renders them at the top in the same style, which was a really nice touch.

The core gameplay has you moving around on a gridded map, with encounters marked along its surface. Travel to a dot, and an event will ensue. This might be a simple item pick-up resulting in food, baubles, or medals being added to your inventory. This might also be an encounter with one of the aforementioned NPCs, or an enemy may attack. Once you’ve encountered a spiky thing in the world and tried to make friends with it, you’ll be able to travel to the next area.

The RPG elements couldn’t be any simpler. XP earns you points to sink into HP, damage, and dexterity ratings. If I might offer a word of advice to new players, get your dexterity raised early on. This is because dexterity controls how quickly your attacks come and will make the difference between life and respawning in many cases.

The fighting is an active-time battle system, where you and your opponent have meters that fill up. Once the meters fill up, your attack is released. A blocking system is implemented that allows you to reduce the damage you receive and even reflect some of it. However, whenever you are blocking your own attack meter will stop progressing. This forces you to keep an eye on both meters and use your block judiciously, giving the stripped down combat a fun element that keeps you from entirely zoning out.

While the basic mechanics are satisfying, there are a few elements of Pygmies-Hoglet that make advancing the game an occasional exercise in tedium. If this game were a set of teeth, it would have to wear a mouthguard to bed at night; the grinding is excruciating at times. Raising damage and dexterity stats are reasonable, but every time you put enough ability points in to raise your health you are rewarded with a measly single HP increase. Travelling is an additional drain on the experience, as the time it takes to get from dot to dot on the map can be significant.

Damage is healed by allowing your hedgehog to sleep, and while it’s initially cute to watch the blocky Zzzz’s waft up from the sprite it quickly becomes frustrating. When you only have a handful of HP to restore you won’t notice, but when you are waiting a minute or more to restore your health later on it can really wear on your patience. Given that combat is the best way to accumulate precious XP, this mechanic really exacerbates the grind.

Despite the periodic time-suck doldrums, I found myself playing the game much longer than I ever expected. Pygmies-Hoglet is that dog that always gets into the food, but you just can’t bring yourself to stay mad at them because they are so full of personality. At $.99, it’s worth giving it a go if you have the patience to milk the cute and fun out of the experience. I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you don’t, however. I’m just weird like that.

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Earlier this summer, Limbic Software did what I thought couldn’t be done: it created a zombie game with a unique mechanic in its inaugural Zombie Gunship [$.99] [Universal]. Since release, the developer has yet to take its foot off the pedal — it has dropped two updates since July, the latest of which is pretty newsworthy.

Version 1.2 introduces brand new audio commentary to the game, a noteworthy improvement since it mixes up the bland and once-super repetitive speech. It has also dropped in a new inverted controls setting, bug fixes, and a headline-worthy in-game “upgrade” that doubles the amount of friendly fire casualties you can have in a single round. Brad Nicholson doesn’t play when he’s in an AC-130, so people — undead or not — tend to die in droves. No doubt, this will extend his playtime by minutes, if not hours.

We reviewed Zombie Gunship when it hit and, yeah, we dug it quite a bit. If you still haven’t given it a try, check out that write-up and see what you think about it after the fact. It’s definitely worth your time.

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