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Square Enix has a billion Final Fantasy XIII spin-offs and a handful of new IPs in the oven set to hit a variety of handheld devices. One of these fresh and clean IPs, a card-based battle game that apparently goes by the name Demon’s Score, is coming to iOS and Android in 2012, the mobile arm of the publisher announced at its Tokyo Game Show presentation.

The Machine gods behind Google Translate isn’t helping us at the moment, but it appears as though the nitty-gritty given at the event begin and end at the genre and the fact that it’ll boast over 50 cards — a feature that means nothing to us at the moment because the game mechanic hasn’t been shown. Interestingly, Dengeki mentions that Demon’s Score will utilize Unreal Engine 3, so there’s that.

On the off-chance that Square shows off Demon’s Score at the show, we’ll be sure to update this and throw in some footage. As for now, we only have a singular image for you to gawk at. Eyes up, sirs.

[Via Dengeki, Pocket Gamer]

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We’ve been keeping a close watch on the PS Vita since its announcement and as we’ve followed up with it, we’ve become more and more convinced that it’ll be the one near-future portable device that’ll compete with Apple in a meaningful way in the games space. Yesterday’s press conference in Japan went a long way in solidifying this thought, as the handheld is poised to launch with a lot of big-name IPs and tech that should draw popular attention.

To be clear, Sony had nothing of substance to say about PS Vita’s launch outside of Japan at the event. It also didn’t get into game release dates. But it did share some news on games: Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Street Fighter X Tekken, Final Fantasy X HD, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Zone of the Enders HD Collection, Lumines, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, and several other releases are all slated to hit the PS Vita at some point down the line. In Japan, the device will launch on December 17 with a total of 26 games, most of which will presumably be big-ticket titles that won't ever be available on the App Store.

LUMINES!

I think it’s fair to speculate that when the device hits elsewhere in 2012, the rest of the world will experience a similar launch line-up and the promise of ridiculous launch window support. Over 100 games are being developed for the device in Japan, Sony said at the event. And let's not forget about the "apps" — Sony showed off the browser, multi-tasking, a photo viewer, and several less notables at the event. We've already said in the past that its non-game support is looking strong and, wouldn't-you-know-it, pretty phone-like.

A listing of what’s inside the PS Vita is now available at Destructoid. It’ll boast a ton of RAM and a 4-core A9 CPU, which is pretty hot. On the minus side, it’s only going to be able to sustain a maximum battery life of five hours of play before you need to plug it into a wall and re-charge for around three hours.

I guess it’s no surprise to see publishers like Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, and Tecmo Koei latch onto new technology, but it’ll be interesting to see if the big name properties each of these players — and several other notable western developers — are bringing to the Vita will be enough to push the platform into a legitimate position of strong competition with iOS. Apple is killing it in this space, so it’ll take a big push in both digital and retail for Sony to get people to jump over and carry around this bulky-butt thing. From this TGS event, it seems like Sony is willing to at least try for a mad dash at your wallet.

[Via Destructoid, Giant Bomb, 1UP]

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We’ve been keeping tabs on Madfinger’s Shadowgun since its first batch of ridiculously impressive images hit our message board. At times, we've speculated that it might not be as beautiful in motion as it is in images, but soon we’ll all get a chance to go hands-on with the supposed technical marvel and judge for ourselves when it hits the App Store on September 28. And to be clear: it’s hitting both the iPhone and the iPad at that time.

Shadowgun is a sci-fi shooter, inarguably inspired by slam-and-shoot third-person games like Epic's Gears of War. You'll play as a muscly bounty hunter tasked with taking out Dr. Edgar Simon, a geneticist who is creating his own personal army of mutants, cyborgs, and other genetically modified monstrosities. You'd figure by the year 2350 society would be able to identify the crazies before they construct fortresses and mutants, but here we are.

Hopefully, we’ll be getting our grubby hands on a build before release. Naturally, we’ll bring details as soon as possible if we do. As for now, marvel at those images and, hey, if you’d like to see the game in motion, check out this post or look above!

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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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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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If you missed out on our WWDC preview, allow me to calibrate your expectations about Tiny Heroes [$2.99], a new tower defense title from Simutronics Corp. You may have heard that the team behind this game was headed up by David Whatley, the developer of the outstanding geoDefense [$1.99 / Lite] and geoDefense Swarm [$1.99]. Already your brain may be whirring along, thinking about upgradeable towers and mazing. Stop that. You won't find those here. And you won't miss them, either.

In Tiny Heroes, you are the master of a dungeon rich with treasure. In classic Dungeons & Dragons style, where there is treasure, there are heroes. Are you going to sit back and let them take your treasure? Heck no! So you set up defenses in their way, and who can blame you if a few of those defenses are a touch lethal? You have liability insurance, right?

Once you push past the first few levels, which introduce you to the basics a bit too slowly, you'll find a game that has more in common with Plants vs. Zombies than geoDefense. The first clue is in the resource management: rather than profiting from killing heroes, you build mana stones that generate mana every few seconds. You use that mana to build your defenses, which are designed to block the oncoming heroes. Why politely leave a path for them to travel down when you can stop them in their tracks?

As you progress through the game, you unlock all manner of vicious defenses. Spike traps, catapults and barricades are just the beginning. You'll get so many that you won't be able to carry them all into battle. Instead, Tiny Heroes requires you to strategize and pick your poison before starting each stage. You'll need to learn how to combine your most brutal traps with static defenses and creatures to effectively guard your treasure, and you'll need to make sure you have the resources to pull your plan off.

But for each imaginative defense you set up, the heroes are ready to counter it. Knights march in with a single-minded appetite for destruction, thieves dismantle your traps from a safe distance and wizards take out your mana crystals, starving you for resources. Once you get a handle on defeating them, you'll find yourself facing epic versions of each. Your unbeatable combo may be able to take out basic knights with ease, but then an epic ranger will sweep in and keep things balanced.

It's the dungeon layouts and pathing that take Tiny Heroes from Plants vs. Zombies clone territory to something quite different, though. Each level has a unique layout, requiring an original strategy. The level layout can help or hurt the heroes, because they don't travel in the ways we've come to expect. In most tower defense games, enemies use basic pathing logic. They'll travel down the path that takes them to their goal most quickly, to hell with the consequences.

In Tiny Heroes, on the other hand, the heroes are a little more complicated. In their tiny brains they have a drive to explore, to find the best path based on what they can see. While this does occasionally lead to weirdness, like heroes wandering back and forth under fire, it also means that they put up a good fight — and that you can trick them.

For a game about the wholesale slaughter of friendly adventurers, Tiny Heroes is surprisingly adorable. Big goofy eyes can be found on the heroes and more of the defenses than you'd expect, and the animations are similarly charming. The only thing that's missing is music. I've spent hours on end with this game and haven't minded the lack, but if you're auditorially inclined you'll certainly miss it.

But otherwise, Tiny Heroes is a complete package. The two included campaigns are huge and challenging, and there's a third coming as a purchasable update. The Game Center/OpenFeint achievements are done beautifully: you're rewarded with new defenses for completing groups of them, adding quite a lot of replayability to the game. You can play through in Campaign Mode, and then replay individual levels for higher scores and achievements in Quick Play. There are also challenge levels to be had, and these put your skills to a serious test.

There is one in-app purchase available, but let me stress that it's totally optional. The Defense Expansion gives you four new defenses that aren't available in normal gameplay. They are very slightly overpowered, but this is by design: they're there to help people who find the game too frustrating. If you're stuck and you'd rather not pay, the developers have a series of walkthrough videos available on their website, and forums to discuss strategy.

iPad users are currently out of luck, but according to the developers an iPad version is planned. It's expected to have it's own set of levels that take advantage of the extra screen real estate, so it should be worth the wait.

I can't say enough about Tiny Heroes. It's a fantastic game, with few flaws to speak of. Challenging, but rarely frustrating, it had me returning to levels again and again to improve my score. By turning genre conventions on their heads, Tiny Heroes succeeds brilliantly. And you don't have to take my word for it alone — our discussion thread is packed with fans. Who wouldn't want to throw down against a bunch of greedy do-gooders, just this once?

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If you’re a regular listener of our TouchArcade Show podcast (and if you’re not, then really, shame on you) then you are most likely familiar with my Kitty Korner segment, where I break down games that can be either bad or good but will always at least feature a feline of some kind. This is my promise to you, the listener. During our episode 12 podcast last month, my kitty game du jour was a fun physics arcade game called Sushi Cat [99¢].

In Sushi Cat, the goal is to drop your kitty from the top of the screen and bounce him down through the level in a Peggle-esque fashion, collecting sushi along the way and eventually ending up in a bin at the bottom of the screen. As kitty eats sushi he grows fatter and squishier, which can make for an interesting trip through the many objects that make up a level. I really ended up digging Sushi Cat much more beyond the initial “it’s a cat game” infatuation. The gameplay is surprisingly fun, and I especially love the entire aesthetic and the humorous animated cut scenes that tell the story of Sushi Cat’s plight.

Today, I learned that a full blown sequel to Sushi Cat was released at the beginning of this year, and is available on the Armor Games website. I spent some time with it and it appears to include everything that made the original so great plus some added new features. First, there are new story cutscenes and levels to play through, as well as a new antagonist named Bacon Dog. Perhaps best of all there are now unlockable costumes for Sushi Cat, so you can adorn your fat furry critter in pirate gear and more should you feel the need (I felt the need).

Sushi Cat 2 grabbed me from beginning to end just like the original, but sadly, I can’t find any sort of information that it’s going to make its way to iOS anytime soon. Too bad, really, because if only Armor Games knew that if they brought Sushi Cat 2 to the App Store then I’d pimp it on Kitty Korner and it would literally fly off the shelves. Not literally, though, it’s digital. But we have heard other developer success stories of increased sales following an appearance on Jared’s Kitty Korner, sometimes in the several thousand percent range. How a company, who has millions of unique players across their impressive suite of free online games, could possibly turn down such a tantalizing prospect is beyond me.

For now I can just dream that we see Sushi Cat 2 on iOS someday. In the meantime, you should definitely check out the original Sushi Cat if you enjoy lighthearted physics puzzlers with a great sense of style. You can play the Flash version of Sushi Cat and its expansion The Honeymoon – both of which are included in the iOS game – for free on the Armor Games website if you want to try before you buy.

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King of Dragon Pass [$9.99] originates from what I consider to be on the tail end of the golden age of PC gaming, where developers focused more on depth and originality instead of texture resolution and polygon count. In fact, King of Dragon Pass is a fantastically extreme example of this as there's no polygons to speak of, and the graphics only really consist of a assortment of hand-drawn illustrations to accompany whatever event is taking place at the time. I think the easiest way to describe what the game is all about is to call it a largely text-based menu-driven mash up of a Civilization game and a Choose Your Own Adventure book. If you're the kind of person who requires flashy graphics, fast action, rock-bottom pricing, and online multiplayer, stop reading now. This is not the game for you. If, however, you can barely even fathom a more glorious conglomeration than Civilization and Choose Your Own Adventure, prepare to absolutely lose yourself in King of Dragon Pass.

The game is set in the fantasy world of Glorantha, created by Greg Stafford, and used in several other traditional roleplaying games, literary works, and even a board game. The universe was originally imagined in 1966, and is chock-full of things which have since become standard in fantasy-based worlds. The people of Glorantha are the pawns of an array of both new and old gods who offer various benefits in exchange for worship. Magic and supernatural occurrences play an important role in the world, and aside from the typical races found in most fantasy worlds like elves, dwarves, etc, Glorantha is also home to strange humanoid hybrids such as anthropomorphic ducks and scorpion-men.

It's in this world where your clan will settle. The game begins with a brief history of your clan, which goes all the way back to the "Godtime" where gods and people lived side by side. This part of the game plays very similarly to a Choose Your Own Adventure book, with the game tossing a hefty amount of backstory at you while offering you choices along the way where you decide things like your clan's main deity, how you feel about dragons, how much land you're going to take up, and other things like that. The cool part about this, which persists through the rest of the game, is that there's no wrong answers to any of these questions. You never hit a point where one decision you made caused the game to end, instead, the decisions you make have consequences, and a main part of King of Dragon Pass is how you deal with those consequences– But more on that later.

After you establish your clan's history, you come up with a name (mine have all been fart-centric) and decide if your clan is going to be peaceful, balanced, or focus on war. From there, you decide on either a normal or hard difficulty, with the main difference here being what your clan starts with. On normal, you're dropped into a reasonably well equipped settlement with existing trading partners and allies. Alternatively, on hard mode, the game basically treats your clan like you just wandered to a plot of land and decided to make it your home.

From there you can choose one of two victory conditions in either "short" or "long" games. In a short game, you win by forming a tribe with neighboring clans, getting one of your clan members elected to be the tribal king, and hold that position for ten years. In a long game, you'll need to take this one massive step further in convincing other tribes to form a kingdom, and lead one of your clan members' ascension to the position of King of Dragon Pass.

Accomplishing these goals is ridiculously difficult, and requires a serious understanding of the game's mechanics. King of Dragon Pass comes with a huge in-game manual (huge for an iOS game, anyway) which I seriously recommend reading cover to cover. The depth of the game leads to various systems which you'd never utilize or fully understand otherwise, which was the source of every single frustration of mine with the game initially. There's a small tutorial which helps you get started, but I think the best tutorial would have just been a huge button that says "No, really, read the manual."

These various mechanics involve everything you can imagine that would go into managing a fledgling clan trying to make it in the world. You'll need to keep an eye on your clan's population, the number of people filling various roles in your clan, and how many of them are sick or injured. Everyone in your clan has to eat, which requires either successful farming, or trading with nearby clans. Also, a clan without wealth can't really be taken seriously by other clans when forming alliances or trade agreements, so you also need to keep up your production of goods and establish trade routes to keep the economy flowing.

Exploring is also important to find new clans to engage with, who might not always be friendly… Which is where your clan's defensive and offensive capabilities come in. As I've played, I've chosen to take a defensive stance and really only attack when provoked, but you could just as easily be a warring tribe and let your proverbial fists do the talking when it comes to negotiating and taking what you want from other clans. There's so many more little ins and outs that I can barely even summarize them all, even after spending nearly a week with the game now I feel like I'm still finding new ways to approach challenges.

These random challenges are what initially attracted us to the game. They happen quite often, and always keep you on your toes. These random occurrences could be something like a surprise raid from a feuding clan. If you've got a force ready to fight, you could take them head on, or if you're vulnerable because you've sent most of your warriors to accompany a particularly valuable trade caravan you might opt to focus on evasive maneuvers and survival.

Explorers could stumble across a potentially powerful set of runes, but how you choose to deal with them could potentially result in upsetting your clan, the gods, and other things down the road. Refugees from other clans can seek admittance to your clan, and you can decide whether to greet them as equals, or take them as slaves. These random events can be completely ridiculous too– The best example I've seen of this is a ghost that potentially comes to haunt your settlement. Among other options, you can pursue legal action… And depending on how you've structured your clan and the strengths of your leaders, it can work.

What I like most about King of Dragon Pass is the seemingly infinite possibilities that the game has. The previously mentioned random occurrences are drawn from a pool of around 500, but none really ever have a "right" or a "wrong" answer. As you role-play your particular clan and play to its strengths, you could see the same problem pop up in future games, but the way it's dealt with and the outcome could be substantially different. Similarly, the simulation engine that powers the whole thing seems to completely embrace the whole "there's no wrong way" philosophy that permeates the entire game.

Success, it seems, comes from really playing the game making decisions as if you actually were a part of your clan. Just because there's not necessarily a right or wrong way to do things doesn't mean that your approach can't fail. In fact, you'll likely fail quite a bit as you get a handle on the game… But, understanding why you failed, and consulting the manual to learn what you could have potentially done differently to better manage the events that ultimately lead to your clan's demise is ridiculously rewarding.

Similarly, the flexibility of King of Dragon Pass doesn't make it an easy game either, even on the easy difficulty level. I think it most reminds me of playing a fairly realistic flight simulator in that you can realize your plane is going down, and you know you need to pull up, but there's also all these other buttons and switches that need to be hit at the right time and in the right order to make what seems like a simple maneuver actually transpire properly.

In King of Dragon Pass terms, you could have a random occurrence that suddenly leads to a disease outbreak amongst your farmers. The more time your farmers spend in bed sick, the less time they spend producing food for your clan. "Heal the farmers" seems like the obvious answer, just like pulling up in a flight simulator, but it's not that simple. To heal via magical means, you'll need to sacrifice to gods. If you're already low on resources, sacrificing even more can make the situation much worse. Alternatively, you could send out warriors to raid a nearby tribe to steal supplies from them, but the raid could fail, or worse yet, you could over-extend yourself and be defenseless if you get raided while your warriors are out on their raid. You could attempt to go out trading for food, but your caravan could be ambushed or not result in enough food anyway.

It's weighing all these options and executing the best potential course of events based on an entire dashboard of information on your clan has made what I initially thought was just a silly Choose Your Own Adventure style game into one of the most in-depth and strategic gameplay experiences I've had so far on my iPhone. I'm not sure how I'll ever tire of it either, as the replay value is through the roof because of how much variance there is in every different clan and every situation.

My only complaint with the game is that I wish it was for the iPad. The interface feels cramped at times, there's some weird text scrolling issues that wouldn't exist on a larger screen, but most of all– Games like this that I want to spend hours on end playing are just flat out more enjoyable on the iPad compared to hunching over your phone. There may be light at the end of the tunnel though, as the developers seem to be receptive of the idea and want to see how iPhone sales go first, but aren't ready to commit to anything yet other than bug fixes to the small-screen version.

Hopefully I've done a good enough job here explaining what this game is all about, as I think if you understand what King of Dragon Pass actually is, and you want it, there's no way that you won't love it. We try to avoid pricing discussion in our reviews, but I think in this case the $9.99 price point is totally appropriate. This is a deep game, and definitely targeted at a niche audience. That price point will make people stop and research what the game is before buying, then feel much more inclined to actually get invested and learn the game instead of tossing it aside like most of the other totally disposable 99¢ titles flooding the App Store.

I've had an absolutely fantastic time playing King of Dragon Pass. Its slow pace makes it a perfect mobile game. Nothing in it is real time, making it totally conducive to just open the game up, send a trade caravan off, then come back to it later without any negative consequences. Cultivating a successful tribe is totally rewarding, and the random occurrences always keep you on your toes so it never seems like you can just fall into a comfortable successful groove where your clan is just on cruise control. I'd love it for my iPad, but either way, I can't get enough of King of Dragon Pass.

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