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Did you find yourself salivating at the massive list of EA sales only to discover that the balance of your iTunes account is 32¢ short of actually being able to buy anything? Well, the weekend is saved thanks to three generous developers!

geoDefense, Free – I have absolutely nothing but good things to say about the geoDefense series of games. If you even are vaguely interested in tower defense games, you need to download this one right away. If you like it, make sure to also snag geoDefense Swarm [$1.99 / Lite]

Gravity Hook HD, Free – From the makers of Canabalt [$2.99], here's a game that asks you to climb high instead of run far. You can also play the free Flash version online, but I'm not sure why you'd bother when this is also free!

Zentomino, Free – Little White Bear Studios is a puzzler with gameplay that's simple enough for kids, while still being capable of stumping adults. 200 levels in all are included, which should keep you busy for hours, days, or potentially even longer. If you like this one, give TanZen [99¢ / Lite a try as well. (Note: If this isn't showing up for free for you yet, give it a bit.)

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Swedish indie developer Eric Svedang has recently released a new game named 'Tri Tri Triobelisk' [99¢] for the iPad. I've been following Erik's work for a while, so was totally interested in checking it out. Any discussion of Tri Tri Triobelisk really begins with his earlier game, Shot Shot Shoot [$1.99], so let's examine that first.

In 2010, Eric released Shot Shot Shoot! for the iPad. It's one of those games you may not have heard of, however Frank Lantz (the designer of Drop7 [$4.99]), is quoted as describing it as "the first truly great game for the iPad. Essential."

Erik describes his game as a "Digital board-game" for the iPad; it could also be easily described as a top-down shooter. Two players sit facing each other, on the same iPad and each player has five squares on their side of the board. The goal is to destroy your opponents five squares before they destroy yours. Tapping on one of your squares fires a shot directly towards your opponent, but if you hold your finger down, you can optionally redirect that shot while it's traveling, allowing your bullet to swerve around other bullets or to change targets. This is best illustrated by watching a gameplay video:

Shot Shot Shoot is a game of strategy. Some players fire strategically, picking their shots, while others prefer to play offensively, mashing the buttons to overwhelm the opposition with a swarm of shots. If you fire like crazy, you'll end up defenseless, as you have a limited supply of bullets which take a while to regenerate. Alternatively, you can shoot at grey squares in the middle of the screen to collect bullets, but your opponent is seeking these too. Another strategic element is that the more shots you have active on the screen, the slower they all move. This means a single shot can travel faster and often zips across the screen to save the day. Many frantic and exciting games are won by a millisecond.

This month, Erik released Tri Tri Triobelisk which is promoted as a faster and more extreme remix of Shot Shot Shoot. Check out the trailer compared to the previous Shot Shot Shoot video:

The unusual title is named after electronic artist Triobelisk, who composed the energetic dance soundtracks. The minimalistic square graphics of Shot Shot Shoot are replaced with a space backdrop and triangles replace the squares, with shots now leaving different trails behind them. The game modes, basic gameplay and controls remain unaltered from Shot Shot currently, however Erik revealed in the thread on our forums that he's currently developing power-ups as a future addition to Tri Tri, which I can't wait to see.

While I'm a fan of both games, it's unusual to have two games with the same basic gameplay, from the same developer. People with Shot Shot already may be hesitant to buy the new game as well and would probably have preferred that game to be extended too via an update of sorts. Having played both games, I appreciate each for different reasons. Shot Shot has simple and clean graphics.  Tri Tri has more energy and more music and may have more widespread appeal.

If you're not sure which game to try, I recommend Tri Tri Triobelisk. The "introductory price" for Tri Tri is currently cheaper than Shot Shot and has potential to be updated. Erik plans to keep Shot Shot as the "minimalistic gentleman's game" with Tri Tri being the "crazy over the top version". If you specifically love artistic minimalistic games, get Shot Shot, otherwise Tri Tri Triobelisk seems to be the way to go.

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In late April, we took a look at Prose With Bros [$1.99 / Free] and were totally impressed by the incredibly unique idea behind the game. Evil Laugh Games successfully turned magnetic poetry into an asynchronous online multiplayer game, complete with players judging the best phrases put together by players.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side of the fence you're on, the game quickly turned into non-stop sexual euphemisms. Initially, they were amusing, but quickly grew fairly tiring for me as everyone I played with seemed to attempt to string together nonsensical nastiness. Will an injection of 300 new words to the game solve this problem? It's hard to say, but it seems worth updating regardless.

And hey, if weird sexual euphemisms with anonymous strangers on the Internet is your cup of tea, you just got 300 new pieces of innuendo ammo!

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Word game aficionados, allow me to draw your attention to a freebie you don't want to pass by. 7 Little Words [Free] is a new word game from the creator of Moxie [99¢ / Free] and Moxie 2 [$1.99]. Those games picked up big followings over time, and this should be no different.

7 Little Words uses a super-simple formula that works really well. It feels a bit like a crossword or anagram game, and it's got me pretty hooked. Each puzzle presents you with seven clues for seven mystery words, and twenty two- or three-letter combinations. Put the letter combos together to make words that fit the clues. Your goal in each puzzle is to use up all the letters to create seven words.

The nice thing about 7 Little Words is that it relies on elimination. If you don't know a 7 letter word for "New Hampshire Stone," complete all the words you can and then experiment with what's left. I've certainly been challenged by this game, but I've never felt out of my depth. If you're truly stumped, you can't get stuck – you're free to move onto any puzzle at any time.

The base game has 25 puzzles, and so far there are two packs of 50 puzzles available for 99¢ each, with more to come. As an added bonus, 7 Little Words is universal. If there are any other features you'd like to see, the developer has been hanging out on our forums.

The simplicity of 7 Little Words' gameplay is a strength, but the whole package might be a bit too simple. Don't expect a fancy interface, game center achievements or any other meta-game material. That said, I'm not really complaining. 7 Little Words is a challenging, creative word game that's definitely worth your time.

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Let's get this out of the way, Square Enix's Chaos Rings Ω [$11.99 / HD] is identical to the original Chaos Rings in more ways than one. In fact, its differences are so few, it's hard to differentiate the two and considering Chaos Rings Ω follows the original by a full year, that's going to be a bit disappointing to fans of the first game looking for something new.

By the nature of the narrative in the first game, there is little in the way of expanding the Battle Royale style storyline, which pits you in a fight to the death against a random collection of couples abducted to an arena for the sake of proving their battle-worthiness. Even though this is billed as a prequel, it's still not the "first" time this the tournament has gone down and it's clearly not the last.

Where the first game told the story from several different viewpoints, Chaos Rings Ω decides instead to tell the main story of Vieg (who you'll recognize from the first game, perhaps a bit younger looking). This might be a bit jarring to fans of the multiple viewpoints of the first game, but it does allow Chaos Rings Ω to tell a slightly more cohesive story.

The setting is the exact same and that goes for the dungeons as well. They're varied in layout, but considering the first games dungeon designs were essentially randomly put together screens, that's not really saying much. Since there are different characters, the narrative is tweaked slightly, including a ridiculous mother/child plot involving a not-at-all-pregnant-looking woman who happens to be your wife. Dialogue is on par with the first as well, which is to say, it reads like it's something closer to fan fiction. Because of that, there are plenty of inadvertent jokes — for instance, during a cut scene where your wife is giving birth, an ill-timed achievement called "Pelvic Pummeler" will pop up in relation to a boss fight you just completed.

But if you liked the style and story of the first game, you'll enjoy this one too. Without spoiling things, you'll seen connections between the two games and get a few explanations of how the Ark Arena works and where certain situations and characters from the first game came from.

Combat, movement, the menus; everything else is the same as the first. That includes the ability to turn off random enemy encounters or alternately, to force one into happening. The puzzles are back this time too, but you can skip them if you fail three times. Combat works on the same two-person tactic as the first, which offers entry level RPG fans a clear and simple system to go with and it's mixed with enough complexity that you can take it to some extremes to deal hefty damage, but the game doesn't really challenge you to do so as often as it could. There is also a ludicrously over-done tutorial system at the beginning of the game, which features a tutorial for how to use the "options" menu for no apparent reason.

The same goes for the graphics, which are, to be frank, identical to the first, oftentimes seemingly taking assets directly from the original and changing their color. While Chaos Rings had a bit of a shock-and-awe factor going for it, Chaos Rings Ω doesn't. The weirdly pixelated static backgrounds and poorly textured character designs look significantly dated now. It shouldn't really matter, but as a whole, it looks like they weren't trying too hard.

There are a flurry of post-release updates planned, including increased level caps and bosses (which only makes sense after you finish the game), but based on their descriptions alone, they don't really seem that interesting unless you're an absolute die-hard fan. If nothing else, it's nice to see Square Enix is coming around to the App Store update model, at least a little bit.

By the end of it all, Chaos Rings Ω is solely for diehard fans of Chaos Rings and with the first game currently on sale, you'll be better of starting there if you're just a curious passerby. It's not bad by any means, but it doesn't even pretend to offer anything different or new. More is more — so if that's all you're asking for, you'll be happy with the way the story fills in the gaps of the first, but if you didn't like the first or wanted new battle systems or combat, you'll be disappointed.

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Late last month we learned that Square Enix was readying two new entries in the Chaos Rings saga. The following day, we saw the Japanese trailer for one of those games, Chaos Rings Omega, which is a prequel to the well-received iOS exclusive RPG Chaos Rings [$3.99/HD] which released last year. Today, Chaos Rings Omega [$11.99/HD] has officially launched in the App Store.

We’ll be bringing you a full review of Chaos Rings Omega once we’ve worked our way through the game, but chances are that if you really enjoyed the story from the original and want to learn what happened 10,000 years prior then picking up Chaos Rings Omega should be a safe bet.

One nice thing is that an iPad native version is available right now, rather than having to wait months for one to release like the original Chaos Rings. Also, the game supports both Retina Display and iPad resolutions right off the bat, and there is an ambitious update roadmap detailed in the game’s description, which should give you something to look forward to post-release.

There are early game impressions rolling into our forums which you can check out, and we’ll be back soon with a full review of Chaos Rings Omega.

Update: To celebrate this release, Square Enix has put the iPhone and iPad versions of Chaos Rings on sale for $3.99 and $4.99 respectively. The sale will last until May 27th, so be sure to check out the originals at this discounted price. Links have been added directly below.

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You might just lose yourself in the caverns of Spoing [99¢ / HD] Chillingo's newest platformer is a moody affair that sees you playing the titular Spoing, a spiky ball with a lot on his mind. Someone's stolen all the rainbow diamonds on his watch, and he needs to gather them up and find the thief.

To solve this mystery, Spoing travels through long, dark caverns and seeks out friends to guide him. He travels by bouncing from one elastic platform to the next, with your help to aim him (similar to the mechanic in Parachute Ninja [99¢], among others). You can also collect green gems that let you create your own platforms. Sometimes the path will be laid out for you, other times you'll be forging your own way through the caverns. Occasionally you'll need to choose the best path from a few different options.

You'll need to choose wisely, because your performance is rated by how long it takes you to reach the rainbow diamond at the end of each level. You earn Level Points based on your speed. Getting one or two is pretty simple, but the third is often a serious challenge. To master a level you'll need to earn three Level Points and make it through the level without hitting a wall or a monster. You'll be well-rewarded for your success – each level has its own Crystal/Game Center leaderboard and an achievement for mastery.

If gameplay alone isn't enough to keep you going, the lonely environments and minimalistic music might draw you in. While the game offers four built-in music tracks and the option to play your own tunes, you'll be missing out if you don't plug in your headphones and play with the ambient track. There's no rhythm integration, but the music blends beautifully with the sparse piano-note sound effects. It's the perfect soundtrack to accompany your journey through the deep, dark caves of Spoing.

Despite all that, I can't help but feel that games2be, Spoing's developers, spent a too much time on building levels, giving us 50 to explore, while spending too little time differentiating them. The difficulty goes up and down by the level so there's no feel of steady progression. And the environments hardly change at all. This wouldn't be too bad, but you may find yourself grinding to hit experience and Level Point milestones to progress at times. Replaying levels only to unlock the next group of near-identical levels is disheartening

Spoing also suffers from a bit of a clumsy story. The dialog is clunky, so it's probably for the best that there's very little of it. Mysteriously, I also couldn't find the ending. Despite the long set up for a climactic showdown with the rainbow diamond thief, I finished all 50 levels and found nothing. No ending scene, no indication of what to do next, just an open invitation to keep playing. I played a bit longer, hoping to reach whatever milestone the game expected me to have hit, but I never found it. I don't know if this is a bug or if I just needed to keep replaying levels, but it was pretty disappointing.

When it comes down to it though, it's not story that will keep you progressing through Spoing's 50 levels, but solid gameplay and enticing (if repetitive) atmosphere. While I'd love to see more variety in the level dressing, I can't really complain. Spoing gave me hours of fun that always stayed challenging, and that's the core of a great gaming experience. Hopefully games2be will have the chance to improve the game around that core in future updates.

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This massive bundle of Wednesday release bundles has so many awesome games in it that I'm just going to order them alphabetically since I'm not even sure which game I'd want to list first if I were ordering them in order of which I want to play first. I think I want to play Bumpy Road the most, which works out well, because it's also first when sorting these games alphabetically!

If this is your first Wednesday as an iOS gamer, here's how this all works: Developers can either set their games and apps to be released the moment they're approved by Apple, or they can set a future release date. Since the App Store is a global market, games with a release date of 5/19 are released first in the first place in the world where it's the 19th. In this case, that's the New Zealand App Store. All of these games will slowly be available as it becomes the 19th in your area of the world, or, if you're in the USA, 11:00 PM Eastern tonight.

Bumpy Road, $2.99 – Forum Thread – Every now and again a developer comes along with gameplay that centralizes around a control method that makes you say to yourself, "Why didn't someone think of this before?" Bumpy Road is a platformer of sorts that is controlled by touching the screen which manipulates the ground which, as the title suggests, creates a bumpy road for a car to travel down. By creating these bumps, you're able to make the car bounce to other platforms. It looks really clever, and I can't wait to give it a try. Oh, and to make things better, it's even universal.

Candy Train, Free – Forum Thread – What's better than a PopCap game? How about a free PopCap game? Candy Train seems to have similar gameplay to a lot of other train routing games on the App Store, but if there's anything PopCap is good at, it's taking established gameplay and making it impossible to put down with a thick payer of… PopCap magic. PopCap has had such a great track record of awesomely fun games that I'd blindly download this game even if it weren't free.

Casey's Contraptions for iPad, $2.99 – Forum Thread – I've been anxiously anticipating this game since we first got a look at it at GDC. Since then, it's been a difficult wait as my Twitter feed has been filled with horribly teasing tweets from beta testers. Casey's Contraptions is a cartoony physics puzzle game that asks you to complete various puzzles with elaborate Rube Goldberg contraptions. Aside from a level creator, you can also see how your friends solved puzzles, as there doesn't seem to be a single solution for any of the included 70 levels.

CHAOS RINGS Ω, $11.99 / HD – Forum Thread – Square Enix's continuation of the iOS-exclusive game Chaos Rings. Aside from the irritating to type "Ω" character in the title, Chaos Rings Ω also comes packed with a whole new story which actually takes place 10,000 years before the previous game. Squeenix has a whole array of updates planned too, which are all outlined in the iTunes text. 7 monthly updates are scheduled, most of which add a "secret boss" and up the level cap.

Draw Jump, 99¢ / HD – Forum Thread – A jumping game by EA, which according to the iTunes description, is totally green. Instead of your character being powered by fossil fuels, he's apparently completely carbon neutral since he jumps using trampolines that you draw on screen. It seems like a weird angle, but I can still sink a stupid amount of time into jumping games.

Ink Ball, 99¢ – Forum Thread – The art style of this puzzle game is really cool, and I can't wait to see it in motion. Gameplay revolves around funneling the ink on screen back into a inkwell. It seems like you're able to draw lines on screen to modify the flow of ink on screen, and doing well involves using as few of these as possible.

iQuarterback 2, Free – Forum Thread – A free game that revolves around tossing footballs, as you might have guessed from the game's title. By earning fame in-game you can unlock a ridiculous amount of things ranging from items for your character all the way to full stadiums. A bunch of different game modes are included too.

Kung Fu Panda 2: Be The Master, 99¢ – Forum Thread – So what do you do if you've got what will likely be a mediocre sequel to a movie and you want to release a mobile game based on it? Apparently incorporate both Fruit Ninja and Mega Jump. Two shockingly familiar mini-games are included in the initial release, and it looks like two more will be coming with updates. I wonder what Jack Black thinks of all this.

Orions 2: The Deckmasters $2.99 / Lite – Forum Thread – The sequel to the original Orions is here. The first game had a considerable following on our forums, and it will be interesting to see how much of that transfers over since as many thought a significant amount of the changes and additions in the sequel were going to be updates to the initial game. Regardless, Orions 2 is a similar card-based battle game. There's full online multiplayer, hundreds of cards, and even a full single player campaign.

Storm in a Teacup, 99¢ – Forum Thread – Sure, there might be a lot of platformers on the App Store, but how many of them have you piloting a magical teacup around? None that I can think of! I'm digging the art style of this game, I just hope it controls well.

TNA Wrestling iMPACT, $4.99 – Forum Thread – To say that wrestling games on the App Store haven't been that great would be a bit of an understatement, but there's always time to turn things around, and TNA Wrestling iMPACT could be the wrestling game that fans have been craving. It's got the ability to create your own wrestler, and then enter a career mode with that wrestler… but why would you do that when you can just play as Hulk Hogan doing these crazy kicks like the above screenshot!?

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One of my favorite recent releases has been Mos Speedrun [$1.99/Lite] from developer Physmo. This retro-styled platforming game puts the emphasis on completing each of its levels in as quick a time as possible. Each of your failed attempts lives on as a ghost of your previous run, and many failed attempts in a row can lead to a screen full of little Mos characters all running and bouncing along at the same time. Mos Speedrun also controls exceptionally well on the touch screen, and there are goals beyond just speed running through levels like collecting coins, finding hidden skulls, and earning Game Center achievements.

A new update has hit that adds an additional 5 levels into the game. These levels also seem to be a notch above the rest difficulty-wise, so you’ll be in for a challenge collect all items and beat them in a timely fashion. Another new addition is a total time leaderboard for every world in the game. There are 5 worlds in Mos Speedrun that each have 5 levels, and you can now compete for the best combined completion time of all 5 levels in each world.

Along with this new update is a free lite version of Mos Speedrun, which lets you play through all 5 levels of the first world in their entirety, though there is no Game Center integration. If you even remotely like platforming games, you shouldn’t hesitate to give Mos Speedrun Lite a try. It will give you a perfect taste of how the game controls and what the gameplay is like, and you can even transfer your lite version progress over to the full if you decide to upgrade.

I’ve been having a great time with Mos Speedrun ever since we reviewed it in April, and the players in our forums have really been digging this one as well, so grab this latest update to check out the new levels or give the lite version a spin if you’re on the fence.

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Capcom has been a big contributor to the App Store. So when they announced a new smartphone-focused publishing arm last month, I was looking forward to seeing what they'd come up with. Beeline Interactive has now released its first two games: Who's That Flying!? [99¢], which we enjoyed, and Glo Flo [99¢ / ], a casual puzzle game created by Gametantra.

Glo Flo is a simple little game. The only goal is to connect matching glowing bugs on a grid by drawing lines. The lines can never cross, and there are often several groups of bugs to match. It's a nice mechanic, one we've seen as a mini-game or the foundation of other puzzle games. It's probably best suited to those roles, because once you've got the hang of Glo Flow, there isn't much challenge. What works when you're connecting two pairs of two bugs still works when you're connecting three triads. Though things get more complex as you move through the game, nothing ever gets terribly hard.

If you're into it, though, there are 60 levels to play and Game Center achievements to mark your progress through them. If you get stuck, Glo Flo offers a hint system that will show you how to connect one of the level's pairs. Playing through the Puzzle mode also unlocks different backgrounds for Time Attack mode.

Time Attack mode is the one area where Glo Flo shines. It gives you 100 seconds to get through as many screens as you can. It also twists the game's formula – the longer the path you make, the more points you earn. To compete on the leaderboards, you'll need to try to hit every point on the grid every time, because doing so gives you bonus points and an extra 10 seconds on the clock. It's a frantic game mode that's surprisingly fun.

All in all, though, Glo Flo is a bit too casual for its own good. If you like puzzle games but generally find them frustrating, this could be a great little time waster. But if you're looking for a mind-bending challenge, you probably won't find one here.

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