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I'll set the scene for you youngsters out there– It's the late 90's, you finally upgraded your weird Motorola flip phone to a fancy looking new Nokia candy bar with amazing new features such as a clock, a calculator, interchangeable faceplates… And the best of all: Snake. You'd go on to quite literally spend the next few years of your life playing Snake, as well as discussing strategy, tactics, and top scores with friends who all shared the similar problem of having a state of the art phone with a single game on it.

Even though the game was made popular by these Nokia phones of the late 90's, the concept behind Snake itself actually had roots going all the way back to 1960 where it was originally played on an IBM 1620 at the Physics building at UC Berkeley. This ultra-primative version of the game was displayed on an oscilloscope. Derivative titles then went on to make their way into arcade machines, the Atari 2600 launch lineup, the TRS-80, the TI-99/4A, and tons other classic platforms.

Enter Snake '97 [99¢ / Free], an absolutely marvelous rendition of the classic Nokia Snake. It features multiple virtual phones for you to play on, as well as all the original sound effects and (as far as I can remember) shockingly accurate gameplay. If you've similarly invested years of your life into playing Snake on your old Nokia, this is something you simply must have on your iPhone.

There's both a 99¢ version with no limitations, as well as a free version which allows you to play to a top score of 200. If all you're looking for is a taste of nostalgia, the free version is fine… But for true hardcore Snake players, that 200 point ceiling is going to come way too soon.

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One hurdle when making games for the iOS platform is creating controls for an entirely touch screen interface. Often, the simplest approach is the best, and it doesn’t really get much simpler than single-tap gameplay. That is the approach taken in Space is Key [99¢] by ChrisJeff Games, which was recently released in the App Store. Space is Key started out as a popular Flash game, which is another platform that is well-suited to single-button mechanics. Because of this the game translates extremely well to iOS, and offers a fiendishly difficult but strangely captivating arcade experience.

Space is Key is a series of 43 single screen challenges distilled down to the basics of running and jumping. Your tiny square character handles the running part automatically, entering from either the right or left side of the screen. Your job is to tap the screen to jump at just the right times to clear the obstacles in each level and safely make it to the other side of the screen.

That may sound simple, but Space is Key is anything but. If your square so much as grazes an obstacle, you’re instantly killed. This is a game where you will die no matter what, and you will die often. There’s no avoiding it, and that’s really the point of the game. Your score is calculated as the amount of times that you end up dying after a straight run through all 43 levels. So yes, we're all going to die when playing the game, but let's see who can die the least.

The margin for error when trying to successfully navigate past obstacles is razor thin, and the difficulty can be erratic. A certain level you might completely nail in just a few short tries during one play through, then the next time that same level might take you a hundred tries or more (literally). This makes it difficult to get too excited even if you are doing particularly well, since it can all come crashing down at the drop of a hat, but that also adds an intensity to the game which I like.

This sort of masochistic gameplay ends up working because Space is Key is so darn quick and easy to play. Upon death, your restart is instantaneous and automatic, to the point that many times you haven’t even processed that you’ve screwed up before you’re already off and running into a new attempt. This means it's incredibly easy to just waste lives with reckless abandon when becoming particularly fixated with passing a certain level, and if you aren't careful, a potentially good score can slip away in the blink of an eye.

At first blush, Space is Key might look like nothing more than an early Atari 2600 title. That’s basically correct, but little flourishes like cool particle effects and a kick ass chiptune soundtrack give it a modern touch that would never been possible on that old hardware. Despite the retro aesthetic, the game has a lot of personality. This is mostly due to the humorous messages that pop up throughout the game that are designed to teach, praise, and pester you along the way.

The only downside to Space is Key is that it doesn’t have a whole lot of lasting appeal. I played it pretty obsessively for a few days until I’d achieved a decent score, but after that there’s not much reason to revisit it. A global leaderboard and 25 well designed Game Center achievements extend the experience, but I’d really like to see some more levels or possibly some additional modes down the line. Hints on the game's Facebook page lead me to believe that we'll see such things in the future.

While the gameplay on the whole is a bit thin, Space is Key is pretty entertaining for a 99¢ title. At times you’ll feel like breaking your device over your knee due to the difficulty, but completing the game is a fairly quick and satisfying experience. It’s hard to not want to keep replaying through the game hoping for that “one perfect run” where you get an insane score. As infuriating as it can be at times, when you do finally have a great run in Space is Key it makes all the pain worth it.

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When Traction Games first brought Stickman Skater [99¢/Lite] to the App Store, it was a bit of a surprise hit. With the release of its spiritual successor, Stickman BMX [99¢/Lite/HD] it's a question of how much of the core gameplay will change with the name while still retaining fans of the original.

Not much, it turns out. For better or worse — depending on whether you like Stickman Skater — Stickman BMX is essentially the same game. You'll get two buttons to use, one that controls your pedals and another that makes you jump. There is an advanced option that allows you to control your tricks as well, but although at a glance you might think Stickman BMX is about pulling tricks off, it has more in common with the likes of Canabalt than it does with anything else.

That's one of the main problems with Stickman BMX, it might have worked a bit better as a one-button game. The requirement to constantly hit the pedal button is more annoying than it is helpful and you'll rarely find yourself wishing you could slow down. Even with the advanced controls and scoring bonuses, the tricks still don't feel all that integral to the game, which means you'll spend most of your getting through the levels, not flipping over bars.

Even though they're not particularly complex, the levels do keep you on your toes. Stickman BMX cruises at a faster pace than Stickman Skater, so you need to pay a little more attention to what's coming up. While a lot of the time the game just throws objects in front of you out of nowhere, the fact you can branch through the levels in several different paths is an interesting take. There is also plenty of variety — sixty levels in four different zones are included in the game — with more available for in-app purchase if you can't get enough. As you'd expect, there are different medals you can get for getting different tokens and collecting stars as well as finishing without dying. Also available as an IAP is the ability to use a skateboard as in the first game, if BMX bikes aren't your thing.

As far as level design is concerned, Stickman BMX takes a lot of the ideas of the original and expands on them. The biggest improvement between the two is the design, where Stickman Skater was complacent in pushing you down a linear path toward a finish line, Stickman BMX at least offers you multiple ways to get there.

As you've probably already noticed from the screenshots, Stickman BMX doesn't have the best visuals in the world. The simple, cut-and-paste style aesthetics are certainly intentional, but they won't be turning heads. It would have been nice if they'd spent a little more time on the menu and button design too, because they're completely hideous. For what it's worth, the sound can get a bit aggravating as well and you'll likely find yourself muting it from the start. But this clearly isn't a game worried about its aesthetics, it's all about how it plays.

It might not be pretty, but if you liked Stickman Skater, Stickman BMX does a good job of bringing enough new content to make it worthwhile. As an overall experience, it doesn't offer much new to the table, but it does expand on the ideas of the original in a way that changes how you'll approach it.

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Taito’s Groove Coaster [99¢] is an experiential music and rhythm game that mixes fun, upbeat, and jazzy tracks with a psychedelic and retro-informed visual aesthetic. At its truly mechanical core, it’s just a tap game that has you drum on your iPad whenever a bubble crops up on a neon rail, sorta like a one-note Rock Band. While that’s not necessarily entertaining in the year 2011, Groove Coaster’s constituent parts manage to overpower its simplicity, making for a game that’s a pleasure to pick up and thrum alongside, lack of depth and flaws be darned.

It’s easy to be wooed by Groove Coaster’s striking vector graphics presentation in the same way that it was hard to look beyond another Taito title’s visuals in Space Invaders: Infinity Gene [$4.99]. But even without the trains of retro baggage behind Groove Coaster, it manages to feel aged, yet refined and re-imagined in the same way. It’s a unique approach that really adds a certain flavor to the action and adds to the experiential edge of the project.

The thick wire-frame rail guiding all the action, by the way, isn’t static: it zigs, it zags, it ducks, and it circles alongside a given music track’s ebb and flow. Your cursor, which can be an assortment of objects including Taito-branded characters, helplessly runs along these tracks, speeding up and slowing down with the beat as thematic particle effects, ranging from flowery explosions to plain ol’ particle-vomit, crop up all over the place. Groove Coaster is a music game, sure, but it’s also a visual treat in addition to an audio one.

In this vein, the backgrounds and their respective effects are cool, too, especially as they morph and throb thematically as songs change tempo.

It’s not all great — there’s an exceptionally fundamental flaw nestled within the visual design. Sometimes, instead of ratcheting up the intensity of a song and the beats you need to hit, Groove Coaster uses its presentation to conceal your cursor and thus hamper your ability to hit the glowing “beat” orbs. This comes off as a tactic to obscure its fairly rudimentary play, and a needless one at that. So, what? This game is easy to play. Who cares?

I’m not sure how to classify the music used in the game. There’s a mix of J-Pop, new wave, house, and other fast-paced highly electronic stuff. Most of it, actually, appears to be pulled from other Taito titles, but they all seem to fit with the visual stylings. In particular, Arkanoid DS’ “Happy Smiling – More Happy Mix” sticks out in my head as on of the best songs, as its thematic qualities and the music line up pretty well.

Most songs introduce some neat visual elements and mechanics to the fold. “Happy Smiling,” for example, is the first level to add a merry-go-round of beats that swirls and rotates as you hit (or miss) each one. As you move up in difficulty, new “beats” are added that make you do things like swipe and flick, or even hold and jiggle your finger. All of the songs seem to have a new mechanic, which makes for some compelling replay opportunities.

Oddly, but somehow fittingly, Groove Coaster features a fairly advanced “perks” system. As you beat levels in the game, you increase your own experience level. As you do, you unlock new avatars and upgrades that net you bigger bonuses or special in-game perks. It’s a pretty standard carrot-on-the-stick approach, but it’s effective. Additionally, you can purchase IAP items and avatars that do the same things these bonuses do, except they really push it to the max. I’ll stress that the IAP options feel entirely, well, optional.

Groove Coaster is a good game with a fundamental flaw. It also has a few nit-picky problems, too, like it’s spectacularly abrupt ending and horrible “How To,” but the strength of its presentation, music, and RPG-lite systems make up for anything that could sour the experience. I’m generally not too into music games, and for what it’s worth, I’m suggesting this one to whoever will listen. It’s fun, it’s sharp, and it’s an experience.

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Lavafish Studios' Squirmee and the Puzzling Tree [99¢] might look like another iteration on the tried and true one-screen puzzle game action of the App Store, but even though it initially follows the formula, it quickly turns into a brutally difficult game that will tax your brain and force you to rework your inner circuits to get through it.

You play as Squirmee, a blob-ish thing with the power to manipulate your environment as you attempt to rescue your sister from the top of a tree. To do so, you'll need to move along a track to get to a star at the end, the quicker you do so, the more stars you're awarded.

While it might not make sense until you've actually played it, Squirmee and the Puzzling Tree is a lot like Super Meat Boy flipped on its head. Instead of controlling an avatar, you're controlling the environment, but the same perfectly timed actions are required.

What sets Squirmee apart is its intuitive, albeit slightly complex control scheme. Each of the objects in the game – whether it's the buzz saws, the platform you travel on, the enemies, or the globs of goo – are color-coded. Each color behaves differently depending on the gesture you use. Some stop when you touch the screen or only move when you're not touching the screen, while others can be rewound with a touch and a slide. Each color has its own pattern and reacts depending on how you gesture. Because of the rewind slide, the universal app works a little better on iPad, but once you get the hang of the controls, both work well.

That's all well and good while you're working with only one or two colors, but when the game starts throwing three or four iterations at you, it becomes an incredibly complex, often brutal experience. That's not a bad thing by any means, but consider it a fair warning. Squirmee requires not just multi-tasking, but the ability to see multiple core game concepts at once and utilize them to get through a level. You'll often be required to stop time for a moment, flip it back and reverse it the next, all while keeping an eye on the buzz saw that only moves when you don't touch the screen. It's brilliant in much of its level design, but it's unforgiving in its difficulty.

Thankfully, the game features a skip button that lets you bypass frustrating levels. You'll be able to get through and experience most of the 75 levels even if you get stuck, provided you can at least beat the boss at the end of each level. It might seem like a cop-out, but Squirmee isn't as accessible as it might look, so the skip button is a conceit that works well here. It's a good thing controls work well as the game's frustrations don't stem from the feeling you're getting cheated, it's all about you and your ability to master each screen.

There's no cliché more apt as a description for Squirmee than "looks can be deceiving". The cartoon graphics and collect-three-stars system might sound like an indicator for simplicity, but the game complicates things quickly. It's by no means a bad thing, but it's certainly something to be aware of. Cartoon graphics aside, this is not your typical physics based puzzle game. There is full Game Center support for leaderboards, but it only tracks your time on each of the three worlds as a whole instead of each level. It might have been nice if the leaderboards included each stage, just to add a bit of an award system to keep you moving along.

If you've been itching for a complex, difficult puzzle game, you won't find much better in the App Store, but be forewarned, there is a reasonable chance you'll be tossing it across the room by the end of it.

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A free version of everyone’s favorite view-locked, Space Invader-y shooter starting a raptor with spider legs, Velocispider [$.99], is getting a free version soon. Creator Retro Dreamer blogged about it earlier this afternoon, announcing that it’s currently traveling through Apple’s certification bowels. This free version will include all of the content of the paid, premium version with the exception that it’s free-to-play.

This means that it’ll feature all the same levels and the Game Center achievements functionality that was just added in an update a few days ago. It won’t, however, share Game Center leader boards with its other iteration — according to Retro, the service doesn’t allow for that kind of connectivity.

You know how we said that we’d love to get our hands on more iCade titles? Well, both of these versions will support iCade in the future. Velocispider Zero will right out of the box, while the premium version will receive its own support in an update that’s currently clearing certification. Neat!

Velocispider is an exceedingly awesome game, so definitely check out our review if you’re interested in the game, or hey, just the concept behind it. And really, who isn’t?

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If you've played Call of Duty, you may remember the levels where you fly in an AC-130 and target the enemies below in a fantastic display of aerial firepower. Well, Zombie Gunship [$0.99] by Limbic Software is based on that idea. In the game, you look down over an apocalyptic landscape and wait for enemies to appear on your radar. Suddenly, a solitary human figure rushes from the shadows, trying to escape from hoards of brain-loving zombies. This is where you step in, to save the day. You must shoot the zombies below, before they eat the few remaining humans or reach the bunker. If one lifeless zombie reaches the bunker, it seals itself to avoid being breached and your mission is over.

There's heaps of defense-type games, but Zombie Gunship stands out because of it's stark realism. Your view of the terrain is provided via a grainy black and white night-vision display, just like using the targeting systems of an AC-130 (or as video games lead us to believe, anyway ). Also, because you're in a plane, your position and perspective slowly change, although this is so subtle you barely notice. There's no music or unrealistic sound effects, just the noise of the airplane engine, occasional military chatter on the radio and the sound of your own gunfire. Even the opening menus have no background music, which seemed odd initially, but now I really appreciate that this all adds to the realistic military feeling.

Weapon upgrades provide a strong incentive to keep playing. There's three different weapons, ranging from a gatling gun for picking off individual zombies, up to a crowd-destroying 105mm howitzer cannon. It's super satisfying to blast those zombies using the various weaponry, and it's even more fun once you start upgrading weapons via coins earned (or bought) in game to fire faster and cause more damage. You'll need that extra fire-power too because there's some bigger zombie "things", down there as well. But be careful, don't shoot too many civilians, or your mission will be aborted. Game Center is used for player rankings, but unfortunately there's no achievements, difficulty modes or career statistics available currently. Limbic has said they plan on supporting the game via updates, and it wouldn't surprise me to see these missing features being patched in first.

The developers have mentioned in our forums that if the game does well they'll look into releasing a iPad version (or potential universal update). The good news is, Zombie Gunship has rocketed up to #2 on the App Store charts, making iPad support seem fairly certain. While this success is deserved, the game definitely needs some more maps, to provide variation from the single landscape provided and it would be great if you could customize the controls, as I'd love to tweak the position of the fire button.

Limbic Software have done a fantastic job with Zombie Gunship. Also, per the iTunes description, the sound design is by the same person responsible for the audio in the Gears of War, so when you download this game (and you really should) be sure to play it with headphones to appreciate the effort that went into the audio. One last thing to keep in mind, Zombie Gunship has entirely optional IAP which only serves to allow you to unlock weapons faster. You never need to buy anything, but it's just something to be aware of if this kind of IAP ruffles your feathers. Now, I've got to get back to raining hell fire upon legions of zombies.

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If you'd told me that an iOS game about a pig with seasonal allergies and the monsters that love to eat his boogers would top my list of most charming games on the platform, I'd have laughed in your face. Then I had a chance to get hands-on with Gesundheit! just a few days before its release. Whaddya know, mucus can be charming after all.

I'm not a big fan of gross-out humor, but that's only a small part of what makes Gesundheit! stand out. For starters, it's completely gorgeous. The hand-drawn art style you can see in the screenshots is consistent throughout every level, cutscene and map. The game also sounds fantastic. The music might just rival Bumpy Road for twee charm, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Of course the gameplay is really where it's at. Gesundheit! is a top-down action puzzler. The goal is to lure all the booger-eating monsters into traps without getting caught — and if they see you, they'll come for you. You move your hay-fever plagued pig around by tapping where you want to him go, and control his sneezes with a billiards-style pull and release. This launches a snot ball, which monsters just can't resist. The whole thing seems super precise, which is helpful when you're running for your little piggy life.

I've only had a chance to play a handful of levels, but the combination of game mechanics works very well so far. There are puzzle aspects, while you figure out how to get the monsters to the trap and how to collect all the starfruit on the way. You also need to be stealthy, keeping out of site of monsters, sneezing and darting quickly out of sight. And you'll need good aim to bounce your snot-balls precisely where you want them. New elements, like teleportation pads and mosquito monsters, are introduced regularly to keep things tricky. I can't wait to see the rest of it.

Gesundheit! has come nearly out of nowhere, being revealed by Konami behind closed doors just last week at San Diego Comic-Con. But it's not exactly brand new. Back in 2008, Gesundheit! emerged at the Independent Games Festival as a student showcase finalist. It went pretty viral as a PC demo, but a full release never made it out the door. When Revolutionary Concepts started working with artist Matt Hammill, they found out about his pet project and collaborated with him to bring it to iOS. Looks like the results are worth the wait — this game feels right at home on a touch screen.

Gesundheit! will be released this Thursday for the introductory price of $0.99 on iPhone and iPod touch, and $1.99 on iPad (3rd gen devices and iOS 3.2 or higher). We'll bring you a full review of this sneezerific charmer once it's out. In the meantime you can join the anticipation in our discussion thread.

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If you're into following the business side of the mobile gaming industry, the Flurry Analytics blog just simply needs to either be in your RSS reader, or the daily rotation of sites you read. It's a fantastic information overload of charts, data points, and analysis which is the product of having their analytics package included in over 75,000 different iOS and Android apps. Not long ago we posted about some recent findings of theirs that showed that free to play was accounting for 65% of the total revenue that games are raking in compared to "premium" games which went from 61% of the total revenue in January all the way down to 35% a mere six months later.

Today Flurry expanded on these numbers, and revealed that of the 3.5m consumers they're tracking, the average transaction inside of a free to play game is $14. The breakdown of what makes up this $14 average is incredibly interesting as well. For instance, data shows that around 3% of consumers spend money in free to play games, of that 3%, 71% of the transactions that occur are under $10, but 51% of the total revenue generated from these games come from transactions over $20. Check out the chart:

Flurry gets even more in depth with that $14 average:

Let’s spend a moment on the $14 average, which may seem high to you at first blush. There are two reasons the average settles here. First, within the “under $10” bucket, most transactions cluster at the $9.99 level, followed by $4.99, and finally $0.99. In fact, in total, consumers spent $0.99 less than 2% of the time. Why then would so few consumers spend just $1 in freemium games when this price point is so popular among premium games (the pay-before-you-can-play model)? Because freemium games drive a different decision-making mindset for consumers. They simply are deciding whether or not to spend. Our data shows that around 3% of consumers will spend money in freemium games. A deep commitment to the game experience appears to influence their buying habits. The second reason the $14 average seems high is because the high-end of the spending spectrum is very high. Among all purchase price points, over 5% of all purchases are for amounts greater than $50, which rivals the amount paid at retail for top console and PC games

Also, interestingly enough, 30% of that top-tier $20+ transaction are actually over $50, making it beneficial for freemium developers to actually keep "whales" (as Flurry puts it) in mind when developing their games. Some other shocking figures from the same post include the fact that iOS and Android now make up 34% of the portable gaming revenue share, up from 1% in 2008. What's crazier yet is although Nintendo has taken every opportunity to dismiss smartphones, in that same time frame their revenue share shrank from 75% to 57%, even through the release of the 3DS.

With how quickly both smartphone gaming and the free to play model has taken over in the past six months, I can't wait to see the Flurry reports six months from now. Nintendo's shrinking revenue share also has me wondering just how much longer they're going to remain relevant in the mobile market if they don't produce something that competes with convergence devices, especially as smartphones get cheaper and more widespread.

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Stray Robot Games is a New Zealand based studio, formed late in 2010 who have just released their first iOS game: Wooords [99¢], a minimalistic word game, which involves sliding fridge-magnets around the screen. You've probably seen puzzles in newspapers (or on the App Store) which involve forming as many words as possible from nine letters. One of the letters is the "key letter" and must appear in each word, and if you manage to put all the letters in the right order, you form an elusive "big word" and earn bonus points.

In Wooords, instead of typing words in (or writing them in a newspaper), you simply slide fridge-magnets around to form words, anywhere on the screen. The letters don't have to be perfectly lined up, just adjoining, as the game is clever enough to detect when a word is formed and you'll be rewarded with a burst of stars, a happy sound and some points. An awful lot of effort went into this design decision, too.

For instance, as you move the fridge-magnets, they make little clinking noises as they collide with each other. If you drag a letter between two other letters, they ease apart to make room. And if you form a larger word, the letters subtlety decrease in size, so the word fits on the screen. If you shake your device the letters are randomly re-arranged. It's shocking how well this all works.

There's three game modes to choose from. In 'Classic' mode you have unlimited time to form words, which are rewarded by points and stars. Achieving one star unlocks the next puzzle (30 in total), but real satisfaction comes from obtaining the maximum three stars. This mode is about skill and persistence, rather than speed. The second mode is 'Daily Words', which is a daily competition to rank yourself against yourself, friends or the world. A fresh set of letters is released every 24 hours, which gives this game daily re-playability. And lastly, there's 'Word Jam' which places an emphasis on both speed and skill. The goal is to reach the target score within the word and time limit. This involves completing quick-fire rounds, so speed is definitely a factor here.

Wooords can be played casually for fun, but don't let the cute magnets fool you, this can also be a competitive game of speed, skill and strategy as you climb the Game Center leader-boards. The scoring in the old newspaper puzzles (and similar games) was based on the quantity of words found, with bonus points for nine-letter words. But in Wooords the scoring is far more advanced with multipliers, taking into account word complexity, the "IQ level" of a word, and more.

This cute little game has already become a part of my daily routine. It's fun to fling the magnets into words as quickly as possible and as the developer points out, you're also exercising your brain, by testing your "vocabulary, speed and concentration". Wooords is even a universal game, which sweetens the deal even further.

Even though you might already have a ton of similar word games on your device, the clever refrigerator magnet-powered gameplay feels surprisingly fresh, and makes the UI used in previously released word games flat out seem archaic in comparison. Before downloading, be warned: Wooords will make your actual refrigerator magnets seem unresponsive and far less interesting!

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