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If you rewind the App Store clocks to around a month and a half ago, there was absolutely nothing out there hotter than Draw Something [$1.99 / Free ]. OMGPOP went from some Flash portal social game company I’d never heard of to releasing a game that even the most extreme non-gamer type friends of mine were relentlessly harassing me to take my turn. Draw Something’s popularity was so explosive, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s mentioned in several GDC talks this year as other developers try to divine the secret sauce that caused the game to go so incredibly viral.

What almost instantly followed the success of Draw Something was $210m acquisition by Zynga, spawning all sorts of entirely too predictable Zynga hated across the internet. You’d think that the might of the Zynga empire backing the game would only cause its popularity to grow, but Develop did some digging into some figures published by AppData, who believe that Draw Something’s popularity is in a steady decline, already losing five million daily active users.

Even after this decline, I’m not sure you’ll find too many game developers out there that’d complain about retaining ten million daily active users. What about you guys? Are you still playing Draw Something? Did you delete it after the Zynga purchase? If you’re still playing it, do you notice as many of your friends still at it?

[Develop via VG24/7]

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New iPads are popping up all over Asia, and aside from a variety of unboxing and comparison videos, it seems that the first set of GLBenchmark 2.1 [$4.99] results have come in.

MacRumors explains:

Benchmarking the graphics performance of the new iPad also showed significant improvement over the iPad 2, with benchmarking tests boosting performance from 90 frames per second (fps) to 140 fps in the GLBenchmark 2.1.1 Egypt offscreen test and from 146 fps to 250 fps in the GLBenchmark 2.1.1 Pro offscreen test. Similar data had previously been uploaded to GLBenchmark’s site, although its authenticity has not been confirmed.

If these results turn out to be true, the new iPad could be a absolute beast in the gaming department. Ever since the announcement of the new iPad, our community has been justifiably worried about the graphical performance. I really hope these benchmarks are real, because, wow.

Keep in mind, like most benchmarks, take these alleged results with a grain of salt. We’ll have to wait to get our iPads on Friday to see how the actual real-world on-screen performance actually is.

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When news hit last month that social gaming giant Zynga decided to release their own clone of Tiny Tower [Free] on the App Store, we were all over it. NimbleBit has a massive fan following in our community, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to see each subsequent story generating so much interest. Well, Dream Heights [Free] is now out of its Canadian “beta” stage, and is available for free on the US App Store if you want to see what the fuss is all about.

Unsurprisingly, so far the game has been met with overwhelmingly negative iTunes reviews as users who are wise to this whole fiasco post their feelings on the game. Not everyone hates the game though. Zynga Senior User Experience Designer John Lerma mentions in his iTunes review:

Meanwhile, Zynga Producer Matthew Ott writes in his review:

Now that you no longer need to be a Canadian (or a “Canadian”) to download Dream Heights, what do you guys think? Is it as bad as you thought, or, like Zynga employees, do you find yourself “loving it”?

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Eli and Jared are Hurdle Turtle [$.99] fanatics. It’s a documented love affair beyond that of mortal bounds. And while the either of the duo would love to be the one to pen this blockbuster of a post, they can’t. They’re… unwell after a botched duel to the death over the rights of authorship. It’s with a leaden heart and a rejuvenating tinge of anticipation that I bring you this Hurdle Turtle update news: competitive multiplayer is coming soon.

Version 2.1.0 of Hurdle Turtle will usher in real-time, actual competitive multiplayer to the core game using Game Center as its service. The creators of Hurdle Turtle tell us that you’ll be able to play against friends, foes, or random dudes alike via the support, which should be coming very soon since the update is in Apple’s hands right now.

As you’d expect, Hurdle Turtle multiplayer will support friends play as well as auto-matching, and it plans to make this easier on your end: after picking a match, the game will assign the match a random level where you’ll be able to select your character before it begins in truth. No flashiness, just raw-dog Hurdle Turtle action.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must tend to Fearless Leaders’ wounds. Jared’s Beard of Woe is a powerful weapon indeed.

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If you haven't heard of it yet, Kickstarter is currently the largest funding platform to creative projects in the world. It's the kind of site that you can sink hours into looking at all the incredible proposals people have. If you find something you like, you can "kickstart" it by throwing some money at the project. Each project has rewards to thank those who fund the project and one of the lower-rungs of the funding ladder usually involves getting a copy of whatever game/movie/product/etc is being proposed. It's a great system, and I really recommend looking into it if you've got some extra cash and want to support some great projects.

Anyway, something that caught my eye today was a project called "Tweet Land – The first set of games that play with reality!". It's a really cool idea, and it's already well on its way to meeting its funding goal. The basic premise is to release a series of iOS (and web) games that use tweets to create events in the game:

The game works really simple. Every time someone in the world tweets something, his or her tweets could affect the gameplay of Tweet Land by triggering certain action-keywords. It could be a "car accident" in your racing game, it could be your hate-gun gets reloaded in the action game, it could be anything.

I think what sounds so cool about this is that I've been a huge fan of randomized games on the platform. Various roguelikes, endless runners, and others games that are different every time you play them really appeal to me. Using the real world as a "random" event generator seems like such an amazing idea. Although, thinking about it, the real world really is far more random than any random number generator ever could be. Chew on that for a bit.

The down-side of all this Kickstarter business is that since we're essentially being pitched a concept, it could take quite a while for that to actually materialize into a game. Regardless, I'm excited.

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If you're at the point where your frog breeding factory in NimbleBit's Pocket Frogs [Free] is running at 110% capacity and you're looking to get your next freemium fix, I've got just what the doctor ordered. Ian and David Marsh, twin brothers behind Pocket Frogs has been hard at work on their next game, titled Tiny Tower. They haven't even started beta testing their game yet, so details are still being worked out, but here's what we've been told:

Tiny Tower tasks you with constructing and managing a tower populated with bitizens and businesses. Put your bitizens to work and keep your businesses stocked to earn enough revenue to expand your tower skyward. Unlock and collect one hundred plus floor blueprints that will make your tower stand out from the rest.

Check out the screenshots from an early development build of the game:

What made Pocket Frogs so awesome was that NimbleBit designed the game from the ground up to be a fun game first, and a freemium money maker second. There never really was a stopping point in Pocket Frogs where you had to pay to continue, unlike far too many freemium games where it's entirely too easy to spot all the time sinks and "optional pay walls which rarely feel optional on any level. We've been told Tiny Tower is going to be the exact same way, and I can't wait to give it a try.

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I’m clicking rewind on our post-GDC 2011 coverage in order to… cover some stuff we weren’t quite able to at GDC 2011! Here’s the deal: During our partying at GDC, we kept running into Paul from Tag Games. On top of being able to hold his brew like a champ, the dude can design games with the best. He took the time to chat with us about Car Jack Streets 2, and as I hinted just a second ago, it’s sounding mighty good.

To rewind a little further, Car Jack 2 appears to be a faithful follow-up to the original Car Jack Streets [$3.99]. It’s like Grand Theft Auto, if the name didn’t ring a bell. To quote from our original review of Car Jack Streets:

Randal's [the protagonist] money-making options are many and fall on both sides of the law. While, as one might expect, money can be earned by jacking cars for chop shops, helping with bank robberies, delivering "merchandise," and knocking off or protecting thugs, there are also legit ways to bring in the cash, such as driving taxis and buses and delivering pizza. A pizza pays a bit less than a hit, however…

As you’ll notice from the forum post, CJS 2 has an unusual art style, also, if you’ve been following the App Store, you already know that it’s hitting AFTER Rockstar put out a full and really good Grand Theft Auto game for the iOS. So, what’s the ace up Paul’s sleeve? Word on the street is that Car Jack Streets 2 is free-to-play with oodles of social features.

We’ll let you know when we know more stuff about the game. But, hey, just wanted to put it in your mind. Looks like a winner, and we're really curious to see what can be done when you combine social gaming with a genre that typically always been single player.

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We first reviewed Big Blue Bubble’s Burn the Rope [Link] back in late December, and really enjoyed the unique gameplay despite a few minor complaints. Among these were the lack of Retina Display graphics or Game Center, and an annoying bug that made it difficult to burn a rope around tight corners, thus making it harder to 100% a level for a gold medal. Then last month, Burn the Rope received a substantial update taking care of most of these complaints. Game Center was integrated with leaderboards and achievements, that nasty bug that prevented 100% completion on levels was fixed, and 16 brand new levels were added to enjoy.

I had previously said when the last update came out that the only thing left that I wanted to see out of Burn the Rope was support for Retina Display, and with today’s update my final demand has been met. The Retina Display support really makes the graphics pop, but Big Blue Bubble didn’t stop there. This update also contains another 16 brand new levels, as well as 3 new insects to deal with and new bonus rounds to complete.

The first new bug is the firebug which will explode when ignited by your flame and burn everything within its blast radius. Next are electric bugs which travel in pairs and once one is ignited it will shoot a bolt of electricity to its partner that will start an additional flame burning in a different area of the puzzle. Finally, water bugs will extinguish a flame that comes into contact with them, so you must make sure to have another flame burning somewhere before encountering them.

Also new in this update are bonus rounds which can be played upon completion of certain levels in the campaign. Here you’re given a puzzle that is crawling with a ton of bugs and the goal is to try and burn as many of them as possible before a short timer runs out. These levels are a fun break from the normal ones that can require some intense strategizing.

Burn the Rope was a fun puzzle game to begin with, and it got even better with these past two updates. Now that Retina Display support has been added, I can’t really see how it can be improved any further aside from just adding more levels to play through. There are now a total of 112 levels including all the new ones, so Burn the Rope is definitely a good investment for the amount of content it contains. The game is currently still on sale for 99¢ though the developer has stated the price would to up to $1.99 with this latest update, so it can change any time. If you have yet to grab Burn the Rope, now would be a great time to do so with so much content added since the initial release.

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In October of last year we first caught wind of Martin Kool's loving homage to retro adventure games, Sarien.net. Nearly a month later, we got a hands on preview of Space Quest, the first game Martin ported from its previous web-based browser state to an iPad-specific version that was custom tailored for both the screen and input of the device. Not long after that, Space Quest went live. While I'm not entirely sure how many people played the web-based version of the game to completion, it sure was awesome to have, and was a great tech demo for just what was possible via a web app on the iPad.

Today we got word that the rest of the Sarien.net catalog has been ported over, and in addition to iPhone support, the whole site is now hosted via Amazon's content distribution network to make loading even faster. Most of the games have even been extensively tweaked to be easy to play on the touch interface.

I'm not sure how much more detailed I need to get on this because, well, all the games are completely free to play and don't require any kind of installation beyond navigating your iOS device to sarien.net, tapping the game you want to play, adding a bookmark icon for it, then launching it. The single down side (if you'd even call it that) to all this is that since the games are played online via a web browser, you need an internet connection, but that seems to be a decent tradeoff to being able to instantly play such fantastic vintage adventure games for free on your iPhone or iPad.

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A few weeks back we reviewed Burn the Rope [99¢], the puzzle game with the sort of familiar sounding name but really unique gameplay. In Burn the Rope, you ignite a single point of an elaborate picture made out of rope with the goal of burning as much of it as possible. The catch is that the flame will only burn upwards, so you must twist your device around as the flame burns along the contours of whatever picture you are burning. It's a clever game and quite a lot of fun too.

Yesterday developer Big Blue Bubble released the first update to Burn the Rope. One of our biggest gripes with the game in our review was the inconsistent way the flame would burn around sharp corners in a picture. Even if you swear you burned around the corner properly, the game had a tendency to leave just the tiniest bit of rope unburned, thus preventing you from getting 100% completion and a gold medal on the level. It was frustrating to say the least, but this issue seems to have been completely squashed as I have yet to encounter it since updating. Also, it appears that you no longer need a complete 100% to earn gold, so even if you do leave a tiny portion of rope unburnt then you can still manage to get a gold medal.

Besides this much needed fix, the new update also contains a new area with 16 brand new levels to play through. Game Center is now integrated with online leaderboards for each area and 30 achievements to obtain. The ability to play music from your iPod library has been added, as well as your choice of 3 additional flames to pick from which are unlocked by doing things like rating the game in iTunes or “liking” its Facebook page. The flames are cosmetic only, but I actually really like being able to mix up which one I use. My personal favorite is the one that sparks like the fuse on a stick of dynamite.

Burn the Rope was pretty awesome initially, and this new update has fixed most of my issues with the game as well as added a lot of new content. My only request now would be for Retina Display graphics, and the developer has said in our forums that this feature should be coming sometime down the line. A lot of other folks seem to be enjoying Burn the Rope too, as since our initial review the game has skyrocketed into the #2 position overall in the US App Store. If you have yet to check out Burn the Rope, now is a great time to grab it as the game is currently 99¢ but should be jumping up to $1.99 with the next update.

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