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There’s a lot of value, to me, in something I can confidently call “a happy little game.” Niko [Free] fits the bill, with a cute little dude at its center named Niko who is bound and determined to save the lives of his friends who just so happen to have been doomed to exile in some unknown world that lies beneath the forest.

We’ve heard all varieties of the backstory before, and surely this is just another of those, but you can’t deny that developer Sulake knows what they’re doing. After all, they’re behind the Habbo Hotel world, and the ten million monthly visitors there is nothing to shake a stick at.

So how have they applied their expertise to Niko? Well, it’s a game with a very simple approach, which seems to be a highly successful formula for other winners in the genre. So if you’re into that whole Aves with an anger problem thing, you might like this. Niko is an easy guy to control – you have a set of arrows on the bottom of your screen to move him back and forth and a button with his face to make him jump slingshot style (pull it back, see a trajectory appear, and fire away).

That’s it. Nothing fancy. Your job is to navigate a series of 30 levels, the first six of which are free to play. You’ll need to pony up $1.99 in order to gain access to the other 24, should you be so inclined.

Level design in Niko actually reminded me directly of retro Sonic titles like Sonic the Hedgehog 2, where you often find yourself flying at exhilarating speed picking up dozens of rings at a time, only to risk the danger of bumping into a beastie you didn’t see and losing them all. Niko opts not to include the painful part of this formula, merely letting you use bouncy pads and moving platforms in the air to propel yourself through its worlds.

There are enemies, but they don’t really make as much as an appearance until you get a bit further along. It feels like a proper platformer, and while the levels hold challenge, they never feel frustrating to complete, which is one of my gripes with a lot of portable platformers and puzzlers today.

Each level you play gives you the opportunity for multiple ratings, of course, with a total of three stars to earn based on performance and golden disks that are harder to find. A unique addition to replay value is also offered in the form of rewards that can be taken over to Habbo and used there. Badges, trophies, and a special surprise if you rescue all if Niko’s friends are all there for the grabbing, so that ought to come in handy if you are already a Habbo member (or are considering becoming one).

Well-made, clever and fun, Niko is definitely a platformer that’s worth your attention. If you explore the first six levels for free, and if you find you’re hooked, it’s pretty cheap to score the rest. Then you can slingshot, jump and fly through the air to your heart’s delight.

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This weekend was a big one if you’re a fan of NFL football, as the final 4 teams in the playoffs battled it out to see who’s going to the Superbowl this year. Sadly, I’m still feeling like I was punched in the stomach after my Niners played an amazing defensive game only to fumble a punt return in overtime and set up the NY Giants for a piece of cake winning field goal. It sucks to see two teams play such a great game only to have it end on such a sour note.

However, as bad as that was, it was far from the biggest blunder of the conference championships this weekend. Ravens fans, you know where I’m going with this. After taking the fight to the mighty Patriots all afternoon, the Ravens put together an impressive late game drive to put them within a short field goal distance to tie the game and send it into overtime. Seriously, this field goal was basically a chip shot that 99% of the time any NFL kicker could make blindfolded. Unfortunately for them, the Ravens kicker fell into the other 1%, when he shanked the kick and missed the field goal – sans blindfold.

So what’s all this sports talk have to do with iOS gaming you ask? Well, Full Fat Games has just released NFL Flick Kicker [99¢/HD], which, if you so choose, will allow you to reenact the biggest missed field goal of the entire NFL season. If you’re a Ravens fan, this sort of thing might be akin to rubbing salt in the wound. So, you can go the other way with it if you want – play as the Ravens and pretend he actually made that field goal, and then daydream your way to the Superbowl. You’re always a winner, as long as it’s in your mind.

Don’t worry, if you’re not an NFL fan there’s still plenty to enjoy here. Full Fat has basically perfected the flicking sports genre over the past couple of years, starting with Deadball Specialist [99¢/HD] back in 2010 and extending to many additional titles across several different sports since then. They’ve even previously utilized their NFL license on the opposite end of the spectrum with NFL Flick Quarterback [99¢/HD], which put you in the roll of the ball thrower rather than the ball kicker.

I’ve been having fun with NFL Flick Kicker so far. It doesn’t really do anything drastically different than previous flicking games, but it does have a nice character progression system and several different modes to play through, as well as Game Center achievements and leaderboards.

If you’ve enjoyed any of their previous games, chances are pretty good you’ll enjoy NFL Flick Kicker as well, especially if the official NFL licensing does something for you.

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The PixBits‘ Junk Jack [$2.99 / LE] is easily one of our community’s more celebrated games for two reasons: (a) it’s a fun game and (b) The Pixbits has demonstrated a clear commitment to making it a bigger and more fulfilling experience via frequent updates. The rub with the latter, though, is that it’s causing a slight delay with the iPad version.

Speaking to us about the eventual Universal update, PixBits tells us that it’s still being planned, but has been postponed in order to make the iPhone version as good as it can be beforehand. “We are really busy developing the new update that will include many new features like walking mobs, bombs, etc,” a studio rep says. “The iPad version is still planned, but we have delayed it. We want to make sure to have a stable and full featured game before doing that version.”

It’s a bummer, but you can’t argue with that logic, right? We’ve asked to make double-sure that Junk Jack iPad will still make it out at some point in 2012.

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To steal a line from Jon Irwin, “The platforming genre, once dominant, has now been relegated to counterprogramming.” Which is to say that the two-dimensional platformer has overtaken, like kudzu, much of the niche and indie landscape that isn’t dominated by games that involve shooting things in the face. For mobile gaming, that idea is more or less maintained  if you swap face-shooting for physics-puzzling or colored-block-sliding. But that kind of reductive generalization doesn’t leave room for nuance, and nuance is exactly what you need to talk about Terra Noctis.

At first blush, Terra Noctis [$.99] seems pretty derivative: the pits are inexplicably endless, the physics are rudimentary, and the enemies — pumped in straight from the Mushroom Kingdom — die if something lands on their heads. Even the narrative introduction seems particularly on the nose: Allen is a nightmare who isn’t scary enough to pass his monster exams. Desperate, he sneaks out of school to find a way to get scarier. The idea is never revisited.

It’s not long before Fire Fruit Forge starts to introduce new mechanics: shooting, power-ups, puzzles, three different types of currency, and a bat named Columbus who guides Allen to secret areas and sometimes, bafflingly, lets him ride around on his back. Unfortunately, these do little to dispel the first impression: some of the mechanics don’t really affect the core platforming, and the ones that do are one-note concepts that don’t add much.

There are three different collectible items that can be spent: blue fairies buy power-ups, red fairies unlock the next hub-world, and golden coins unlock bonus levels. It’s kind of weird that a game about crushing goomba skulls involves so many ways to buy stuff.

I like the idea in theory — collectibles have long been a staple of the genre, and Fire Fruit Forge are right to give Allen’s monetized pixie dust mechanical value. Because these items are hidden throughout each non-linear level, players are ostensibly motivated to explore. This, in turn, introduces a risk-reward element to Terra Noctis‘ points system and OpenFeint leaderboards: player score is based both on speed and collection, and climbing the leaderboards depends on managing both.

There are problems with the system, though. The power-ups add very little to Terra Noctis, and using them never become a regular part of my strategy. This devalues the importance of the blue fairies, which in turn makes collecting them less gratifying. It disrupts the balance of the entire system. Similarly, the red fairies and coins are too easy to find, and the levels they unlock are too cheap: not once was my progress impeded by a lack of funds. In other words, not once was I motivated to explore Terra Noctis in a meaningful way.

The other supplemental mechanics, like shooting and flying, simply aren’t creative enough to keep Terra Noctis moving forward. The first time I shot a bat to complete a puzzle was neat, but the shooting function hasn’t changed since. These things are largely tangential to the running, jumping, and head-stomping, but adding extra mechanics isn’t the same as using them effectively. It doesn’t help that the environments and level design change very rarely, despite there being four different hub-worlds to explore. Visually and mechanically, Terra Noctis is a static place, and the entire experience can tend to feel same-y.

Despite the lack of variety, Terra Noctis is buoyed up by its visual design. You’ll explore the same vague forest and cave designs over and over, but the backgrounds are a nice example of parallax scrolling, and the foreground has a lush, storybook feel to it. The animations are fluid and expressive — I especially like that Columbus, the helper-bat, manages to seem anxious and excitable, even though he’s basically just a set of eyes with wings. There’s an undeniable charm and innocence that runs through every piece of this game.

You’ll also hear the same four or five synthpop tracks during the course of the game, but the Herbie Hancock-esque score — no, seriously — is used judiciously to set the tone for each level.

It doesn’t hurt that Terra Noctis is so fun to play. Even disengaged from the high-level design choices, jumping up and down and stomping purple goombas is a treat, thanks in no small part to the game’s  controls: they’re simply the most sensitive and responsive virtual buttons I’ve encountered to date. They aren’t perfect, though, since the buttons are placed too closely to one another — I often find myself going left when I mean to go right.

(The other systemic bugbear in Terra Noctis is hit detection: Allen’s hitbox seems too big and he often finds himself stuck in a ledge or block. This might lead to a few unwarranted deaths, but the checkpoints are spaced evenly enough that it never becomes a huge issue.)

Still, the level design is generous enough to accommodate those lapses, and the most significant exploration is vertical, not horizontal.  Players sometimes get cut off from areas they mean to explore, but Terra Noctis is usually pretty good about expanding and bottlenecking appropriately. In all but a few exceptions, you can feel free to wander around, comfortable with the knowledge that you will eventually circle around toward the critical path.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Terra Noctis‘ more ambitious designs fall through — there’s a lot of fluff that distracts from the core. As it stands, the game’s fairy-tale premise evokes something akin to coming home for a long weekend. The game’s strengths are found in the understated joy of jumping through space, of seeing some unreachable ledge or platform and guiding Allen to it. Terra Noctis, through its intuitive controls and design, provides simple pleasure. This is comfort gaming — familiar, identifiable, and care-free. I’m ready to spend Martin Luther King Day in my pajamas, guiding Allen through the rest of his quest.  I’m pretty sure I know where he’s heading.

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You might not have downloaded it yet, but you’ve played Z-Day [$1.99] before. It’s the game you play in your head while reading The Walking Dead; you know, that game where you plot out where you would go and how you would operate during the zombie apocalypse? That one.

Would you take in that stranger you found on the road? Would you mug him instead? Would you break into a police station surrounded by zombies? With moans at your back, three kills to your name and a sledgehammer at your side, would you stop to take a bag of tools from a broken-down car in the middle of the road?

These are the questions Z-Day asks, and presumably, ones you’ve considered before if a z-day daydream ever popped into your mind. Z-Day is a graphic novel spin on the Choose Your Own Adventure, text-based game, except its presented on iPhone and iPad in all of its gory, high-resolution art glory.

Playing is simple, and the moment-to-moment content is strangely intense. You start in your house. A zombie apocalypse has begun. You decide if you want to run or grab a new weapon. Then, you decide, while zombies are coming to the door, if you want to dig for supplies like duct tape, fight the zombies, or get to higher ground.

All along the way, Z-Day gives you plenty of entertaining situational content. At one point, you’ll be asked if saving your best friend is worth a zombie attack. Later, you might bump into a roving band of gun-toting jerks robbing a pawn shop. Before that, you might meet your unfortunate end in the bowels of a police station, as a horde steadily infests it as you search for fat loot.

The most interesting thing about Z-Day is that it doesn’t pull punches; if you make a bad decision, you’ll probably die. Also, it puts you in horrible situations and then has you make uncomfortable decisions. As you play, you might notice things like empathy have vacated your brain in the face of so many horrifying scenarios.

Breaking this down mechanically feels like a disservice to the experience. In Z-Day, you’ll be presented with a variety of Choose Your Action text boxes, hand-drawn graphic novel scenes, and a description of situations. Pick an action, and then move on to the next moment. The goal is survival, but even if you die, you’ll be scored on a variety of elements, including your decision-making or the quality of your weaponry and items and the amount of survivors you brought along the way.

Z-Day doesn’t have unique content, so you’ll see the same situations over and over again as you restart. It’s really up to you to role-play it and see different outcomes. There are quite a few, too, in each given situation.

I’ve been having a blast with this since it’s essentially gameifies what runs through my head whenever I read or watch a piece of zombie content, but it’s also solid production-wise. I heartily recommend this to anyone that still has an itch for zombies, or even an appreciation of primarily text-based titles.

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Super Crate Box’s [$.99] five million crate update is now available as a free download for all of its crazed, crate-nabbing fans. Starting now, Vlambeer and Halfbot are giving us all the power to pick and play with our favorite characters. Also, it has added a total of five more to earn through rigorous killing and crate obtain-ation.

Another milestone-tied update is being teased in the game’s patch notes. According to the notes, at 20 million crates users will receive another update that’ll “unlock more iOS-exclusive content & features!” Oh, and speaking of exclusive, check out the game’s new virtual control functionality — it’s been tweaked and now allows for customization. Neat!

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Attention card geeks and all god slayers: the first expansion pack for the outstanding Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer [$4.99] is now available. After grabbing it via IAP, the cleverly titled pack, Ascension: Return of the Fallen, adds even more monsters, new characters, and even mechanics to the core play. Developer Playdek touched base with us on this the other day, and it seemed pretty stoked about how fans will react to it.

Not familiar with Ascension? We got your back. Earlier this summer, we reviewed the game and, obviously, explored its fundamentals. Here’s an excerpt:

The actual game of Ascension is a somewhat refreshing spin on fantasy-based card games in that instead of building a specific deck that you use in battles, you’re building your deck on the fly from game to game. Players start the game with identical basic decks of ten cards consisting of two militia cards which provide the “power” resource and eight apprentice cards which provide the “rune” resource. Using power and runes you’re able to interact with a common pool of cards to either acquire new cards for your deck or defeat monster cards. Most actions you do in the game award different amounts of victory points, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins.

You gotta love it when a sharp game sees the injection of a bunch of new content — and for a fair price. This expansion is $2.99, so grab it when you can.

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Some of you are unfamiliar with Vlambeer’s Super Crate Box. Let’s fix that real quick — and for the pleasant price of $0. Hit up this web site, download the client, give it a few minutes, and then come back to us. We’ll wait. We’re patient.

We on level, yet? If you were playing along with us, you’ve discovered that SCB is a quirky 2D side-scroller that has all the action of a Mario plus the fury of a frenetic shooter. Enemies spew from the top of an instance-based level, and it’s your job to evade or kill them while also collecting devilish crates that dispense weapons. The play is blazingly fast and chaotic, and the rewards — all the new guns, new levels, and new characters — come at a satisfyingly awesome drip. It’s hard to put down, to say the least.

We’ve asked for so much of your time up-front because what you saw is what you’re going to get in the upcoming iOS version — Vlambeer and co-developer Halfbot nailed it; this seems like nothing short of a great port, based on our hands-on with a final build.

Functionally, some things have changed. Touch controls — two buttons and two movement arrows — have replaced the keyboard inputs. I also think the action has seen the slightest dip in speed, perhaps to make up for users’ natural lag-time with the virtual controls.

Don’t take this the wrong way; the action is still oh-my-god fast in comparison and somehow, someway, the development duo managed to make it all feel good on iPad and iPhone. Your delightful little avatar, which is always random, responds sweetly to your nudges and frantic pulls. The shooting part of the equation, also feels pretty satisfying with the button.

It might take users a few minutes to get accustomed, but the buttons translate. The game’s formula also seems to, too. Got a few seconds? Great, because 90-percent of the time you won’t last that long anyway if you come across a disc launcher. Have some minutes? Play a ton of sessions, and unlock some new stuff to play around with the next time you’re able to pick up your device and give it a go.

Probably the biggest challenge SCB on iOS faces as it sees a release is the usual one: grabbing the attention of the casual base. The look is easy on the eyes, but its remorseless play is definitely geared towards the core crowd. It doesn’t seem to have an answer for players who want a little less chaos… or disc launcher.

This isn’t a problem with us, though, so whatever. We dig the arcade vibe. Super Crate Box will see a release on January 5th as a Universal app. We’ll have a full review around then, so stay tuned.

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With it being extremely doubtful that Apple will ever roll out any kind of official game controller for use with iPhone and iPad, it’s up to third-party creators and wizards to fill in the gap. 60beat is the latest we’ve seen to throw a hat into the ring, and its product, the GamePad, seems like a cool accessory.

In a nutshell, the $50 GamePad is a slick-looking, PlayStation-style kind of controller that connects, unlike many third-party controllers, to the headphone jack. No blu-tooth black magic — just seemingly straight-up plug-and-play connectivity.

It features of total of ten buttons, two joysticks, a d-pad, and ships with an audio splitter and a luxuriously long four foot cable. We haven’t had any hands-on with one quite yet — it’s in the mail — but creator 60beat has uploaded a video of the thing in action. Take a look:

Looks cool, right? The biggest hurdle for the GamePad — other than being a good and meaningful product, of course — will be grabbing the attention of the iOS development community. It apparently requires some game-side tweaks to work properly, so 60beat and its friends will have to collaborate. As of this moment, only two games support the device: Bugdom 2 [$2.99] and Aftermath [$1.99].

The official web site for the device says we’ll hear a lot more about games support in February 2012. Expect more from us on the device in the future, too.

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