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Earlier this month, Foursaken Media dropped their latest iOS title Sky Gnomes [ $0.99 ] into the App Store and we thought it was pretty great in our review. You play as a gnome hurtling straight down through the sky riding a homemade rocket collecting snowflakes, coins and items in an effort to reach a landing zone as quickly as possible.

While that’s an awesome enough premise on its own, what pushed Sky Gnomes to the next level was its fantastic daily tournaments that matched you against the ghost runs of like-skilled players in competition for the best race time. Throw in a ton of upgradeable items to trick out your rocket and Sky Gnomes came together to be one of my favorite recent releases.

Today, Foursaken is sweetening the pot with the first of many planned content updates for Sky Gnomes. The big addition in this update is two brand new characters to play as: Girly the female racer and Skinny the uh, skinny racer. Each come with their own set of unique stats for their rocket, offering a change of pace from the original racer Gnomey. These new racers don’t come cheap though, as each one will set you back 10,000 coins.

Speaking of coins, this update also lowers the costs of all first tier upgrades and trinkets for your rocket, making it easier and quicker for new players to start customizing their machine. There are also a myriad of tweaks and bug fixes, as well as an empty menu screen that serves as a teaser for another major addition coming to Sky Gnomes: 1 vs 1 battles. More new characters are also in the works for future updates.

If you haven’t checked out Sky Gnomes yet, now might be the time as today’s update adds even more cool features to an already great package, with more new stuff already on the horizon.

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Chillingo’s penchant for publishing dual-stick shooters returns with the release of Lock ‘n’ Load [ $0.99 ], a content-rich title developed by GameLab that hits all the right notes for the genre. While a lot of that content is initially locked away a bit tighter than I’d like, the gameplay, visual-style and presentation make up for that setback, leading to a game well worth checking out for the dual-stick shooter crowd.

Lock ‘n’ Load puts you in the role of a hockey-mask wearing protagonist taking on an evil magic-wielding girl whose minions trampled his garden bed. As you can imagine, the tone of the game is very tongue-in-cheek and does a great job making fun of itself. While the story obviously takes a backseat to the gameplay, I still enjoyed it more than most other dual-stick shooters, including the twist at the completion of the main campaign. Still, what’s more important is content, and Lock ‘n’ Load certainly has a lot of enemies to throw at you.

You’ll be taking on those hordes of minions with your choice of three weapons (you’ll have to unlock two of them) through mostly standard DSS gameplay. I say mostly because Lock ‘n’ Load does a great job spicing up the gameplay with good plot pacing and a variety of mini games. You’ll do collection quests, first-person carnival shooting – even a Space Invaders-inspired stint. Of course, there’s also a ton of opportunities to simply mow down the mobs. A second, harder difficulty is also available, along with a second unlockable campaign (and challenge missions) that focuses more on gameplay than story.

Visually, Lock ‘n’ Load looks impressive with a wide variety of backdrops and character models. I was particularly impressed with the assortment of environments used across the campaign, each with their own graphical effects. In addition, the game runs at a good frame rate and looked exceptionally nice on my iPhone 4S. Relatedly, I thought Lock ‘n’ Load did a great job with its auditory aspects, with the music setting the mood appropriately and decent voiceovers accompanying the story cutscenes and combat. It did get a little annoying hearing your character repeat the same catchphrases over and over but in general I thought the voiceovers did much more good than harm.

One of my few complaints about Lock ‘n’ Load is the way it handles unlocks with its in-game currency. Every upgrade and unlockable requires cash, which can be randomly dropped by enemies while playing the campaign or purchased en masse via IAP. As is becoming custom, while you can earn a decent amount of cash through a campaign run it won’t be nearly enough to unlock all the content.

Unfortunately, I think the amount of cash dropped in-game should definitely be adjusted. I ran through the entire campaign (with several restarts on some missions) and didn’t even earn nearly enough cash to unlock the first tier of upgrades. When you include all the challenge levels, skins, and second story mode, players will end up having to rerun through completed levels many times before they can earn enough cash to unlock everything.

On top of all that, unlocks don’t appear to transfer between iOS devices (unless you have the all-encompassing ‘premium pass’) meaning that simply spending a few bucks on cash to unlock extras isn’t going to cut it if you want to play on multiple devices. Also worth mentioning is a crash bug that’s affected some users. An update with a fix is already submitted, and in the meantime if this is affecting you turning on Airplane mode should work as a temporary fix.

Even if you have an adverse reaction to IAP, Lock ‘n’ Load still offers a decent amount of content with more that can be eventually unlocked (even if it takes a long time). When you combine that with the excellent visual style and content diversity, Lock ‘n’ Load becomes a highly recommended game. While we’ve had our share of good dual stick shooters, it’s rare to find one as well-rounded and content-rich (even if you have to unlock a lot of it). Gamers remotely interested in dual stick shooters owe it to themselves to check out this title.

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In a “good news/bad news” sort of situation, I always like starting with the good news first. Maybe it’s just me, but it makes the bad news easier to stomach. So, try this on for size: The Fighting Fantasy game books were originally first published in 1982, starting with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and blossoming into a full-blown series of gamebooks. What’s a gamebook? Well, imagine one of those choose your own adventure novels from when you were a kid (You do remember those, right?) except with more interactivity. Instead of simply turning to page 92 to to jump across a pit or turning to page 59 to go down the tunnel to the right, you need to roll actual dice to do a skill check to see if you can make it across the pit.

This adds a great element of randomness to things, and it feels more like you’re playing the book instead of just making arbitrary decision along various branching paths. I like ‘em a lot, and if you’re a fan of fantasy novels I’d go as far as saying this whole series is a “must-have,” especially considering at the current sale price of 99¢ you can buy the whole set for less than one dead tree version will run you.

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, $0.99 – Deep in the caverns beneath Firetop Mountain lies an untold wealth of treasure, guarded by a powerful Warlock – or so the rumor goes. Several adventurers like yourself have set off for Firetop Mountain in search of the Warlocks hoard. None has ever returned. Do you dare follow them?

Fighting Fantasy: Deathtrap Dungeon, $0.99 – Deep in the caverns beneath Firetop Mountain lies an untold wealth of treasure, guarded by a powerful Warlock – or so the rumor goes. Several adventurers like yourself have set off for Firetop Mountain in search of the Warlocks hoard. None has ever returned. Do you dare follow them?

Fighting Fantasy: Citadel of Chaos, $0.99 – The Citadel holds a dark and dangerous peril for anyone foolhardy enough to venture through its gruesome gates. And yet venture you must for your mission lies at the heart of the Citadel, with the dread sorcerer, Balthus Dire!

City of Thieves, $0.99 – Terror stalks the night as Zanbar Bone and his bloodthirsty Moon Dogs hold the prosperous town of Silverton to ransom. YOU are an adventurer and the merchants of Silverton turn to you in their hour of need.

Fighting Fantasy: Creature of Havoc, $0.99 – You begin this adventure not knowing where you are or who you are. All you know is that you are some kind of creature of instinct, understanding little. During the course of the adventure, it may be possible for you to begin to control your bestial nature, to find out more about yourself, and even to learn your destiny. But even if you know all this, success is by no means certain, for the traps and terrors of Trolltooth Pass are many … Are you ready — to become the Creature of Havoc?

It doesn’t matter what order you play them in, so just download and start with whatever sounds the most interesting.

Now, the bad news. Big Blue Bubble, the developers responsible for bringing these gamebooks to the App Store, are on the verge of having their licensing agreements expire. It doesn’t sound like they’re being renewed either, so once these are gone, they’re gone. This also means there won’t be any updates for any of them, so don’t expect any Retina iPad enhancements, or tweaks/bug fixes if future iOS upgrades break the apps.

We’ve yet to hear when the licensing agreement actually expires, but needless to say, you should jump on these sooner rather than later if you want them.

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A long time ago, in July of 2010 to be exact, a little iPhone game by the name of Prisoner 84 [ $2.99 ] from Hidden Games had me sleeping with a nightlight. See, Prisoner 84 is a 3rd person survival horror game, and despite being on the tiny screen of my phone, it managed to pack in one of the most creepy experiences that I’ve had on any platform.

Now, I don’t want to oversell anything here. At face value, Prisoner 84 is a fairly basic, slow-paced 3rd person action game. It can be completed in just a couple of hours (or longer if you really explore), the various puzzles in the game are pretty straightforward, and the graphics aren’t really anything to write home about.

However, don’t let any of that turn you off. Prisoner 84 absolutely nails one aspect of horror games, and arguably the most important one: atmosphere. Footsteps echo in the otherwise dead silent halls of the cellblock setting. Soft murmurs and growls suddenly sound off in the distance. Gruesome scenes of violence hint that there’s something out there responsible and those who came before you weren’t so lucky. It can be downright chilling.

I could go on and on about how much I love the mood of Prisoner 84, but you can just read all about it in our original review. Really, what I’m more interested in talking about is the substantial update that has just hit this nearly two-year old game. Prisoner 84 launched in 2010, and aside from a maintenance and bug fix update that hit shortly after release, it’s been untouched since. That’s why I was completely blown away to see an update waiting for me in iTunes just the other day.

The game is now Universal and runs at Retina resolution on the iPhone 4 models and the new iPad. Also, on iPads and 4th generation devices additional graphical flourishes and more detailed character models have been included. The original release of Prisoner 84 sported some really blocky characters, and post-update things have really been improved.

It also looks fantastic in Retina resolution, though there are plenty of low-res textures you’ll run into that remind you you’re playing an older game. Still, from where Prisoner 84 was at originally, the difference is night and day thanks to these improvements. (Trailer is from the old version, FYI).

Rounding out the update is multitasking support, an improved user interface, and various gameplay tweaks – all welcome additions. I love when developers spring new updates on their customers, even if a game is years old, and if you missed out on Prisoner 84 before then now would be a great time to check it out. Just keep in mind that it is very slow-paced, and because it’s an older game it’s not quite as cutting edge visually. But if you can appreciate a moody atmosphere that will creep your pants off, then Prisoner 84 is among the best on the App Store.

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Morphing drug pushers into plumes of viscera and leg parts has never been easier, thanks to the latest update to Midway Arcade. The arcade collection app, which features tons of classic arcade titles including NARC and Rampage, now features iCade support. We spent a moment or two in the app this morning and can confirm that the added support is sharp. We can also confirm that NARC is still the greatest game that has ever been made.

Version 1.0.1 rolls in a few more notable tweaks. The Spy Hunter looping theme bug has been fixed, d-pad support has been added for Root Beer Tapper, and that nasty DLC crash bug has finally been annihilated. Neat!

Midway Arcade still doesn’t have the greatest ports on the planets, but what it does offer works well enough for our needs. Check it out if you’re into Midway’s older stuff. Here’s a list of what it has as of this posting, and note that a couple of these are being sold across two $.99 DLC bundles:

• Spy Hunter
• Rampage
• Defender
• Joust
• Root Beer Tapper
• Arch Rivals
• Gauntlet
• Gauntlet 2
• Wizard of Wor
• APB
• NARC
• Total Carnage

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Being a fan of Diablo-style loot grinds, I was pretty excited to try DevilDark: The Fallen Kingdom [$0.99], Triniti Interactive’s take on the classic dungeon hack and slash. For the most part, DevilDark actually does a good job recreating the experience with nice visuals and a decent amount of weapons and armor. Unfortunately, simplistic gameplay combined with some general miscues hold the title back from stardom.

DevilDark follows the story of a wandering (and clueless) adventurer that sets out on a journey to save the world from being ravaged by an evil demon, who had been unleashed by a power-hungry king years beforehand. You’ll slowly accomplish this by doing a bunch of quests that involve fetching items and taking down hordes of baddies. An occasional boss battle permeates the monotony, but for the most part, DevilDark stays close to its dungeon crawling roots. While I realize that narrative may not be the priority in such a game, I would have liked something more than the intro cutscene and what little I can glean from quest texts.

One of the keys to a successful dungeon hack and slash is a robust inventory. While DevilDark doesn’t provide the limitless customization of say a Diablo, there’s more than enough loot to keep you occupied. Additional features such as bonuses for wearing groups of armor as well as elemental infusion do a great job adding some much-needed customization. The inclusion of a slot machine that has the potential to toss out some high-leveled gear is a nice touch, as well. However, I wasn’t a fan of the fact that some weapons and armor required currency that could only be purchased via IAP. Suffice to say, these special items aren’t required to complete the game – just expect to grind a lot more to pick up the normal currency items.

DevilDark’s visual engine is another standout feature in the game. The cell-shaded style looks great on Retina-enabled iOS devices. While Retina Display compatibility extends to the new iPad, please note that there’s currently a UI bug that’s been identified and should be fixed relatively soon. It’s also nice that items equipped on your character change his appearance. The music and character design do a decent job reflecting the overall tongue-in-cheek presentation, although the music does get a bit repetitive as you begin playing the same maps continuously.

Speaking of repetition, gameplay is quite simplistic, even for a dungeon hack and slash. There’s little in terms of additional abilities (which are tied to which weapon you wield) beyond simply attacking. In addition, DevilDark has a few quirks that, while hardly significant, still detract from the experience. For example, there are a lot of reused maps and assets which quickly become boring with the amount of grinding you’ll have to do. Navigation is also done via a static overworld map, which feels a bit disjointed.

Another annoyance is the fact that the game doesn’t warn you when you accidentally exit a map (and thus end the mission). Considering the camera angles can occasionally block the ‘world portal’ I had a few instances where I wandered into the exit and lost all of my mission progress. The lack of iCloud support is disappointing as well.

The pacing also feels a bit off. ‘Story-based’ missions seem to drastically jump in difficulty with the completion of each previous objective. While DevilDark offers plenty of optional missions to earn coin and experience in order to prepare for said story missions, I’m not a fan of the sheer amount of grinding necessary.

It seems silly complaining about excessive grinding when the goal of games such as DevilDark are to, well, grind. However, there’s a lot of ways to implement the grind that keep it interesting without messing with the core formula. If DevilDark had a more cohesive story accompanied by randomized maps and a little more complex battle system, it would be at the top of my list on iOS. As it currently stands, the visual engine and sense of progression are enough to merit a recommendation, but there is potential for it to be much more.

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Linux Tycoon, in case you’ve never heard of it, bills itself as “the world’s premiere Linux Distribution Building Simulation Game.” It’s got similar gameplay to the many other Tycoon-style games out there, with one gloriously nerdy twist. In Linux Tycoon, you’re not building railroads, managing hospitals, or anything like that, you’re trying to build the world’s greatest Linux distro.

You’ll analyze and select the software packages included in your distro, fix bugs, and manage both your volunteers and paid staff while trying to keep the file size of your distro reasonable… And much more. There’s even an online component, which will turn Linux Tycoon into the world’s first MMOLDBSG, or, for those of you playing along at home, that’s a “Massively Multiplayer Online Linux Distro Building Simulation Game.”

If all goes as planned, Linux Tycoon will be submitted to the App Store for approval sometime next week, and released as soon as Apple gives the thumbs up. Pricing is yet to be announced, but it sounds like it’ll be in line with what you’d expect.

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For the last couple days, I’ve been turning a dilemma around in my head. Do I tell you guys how fun Sky Gnomes [$0.99] is, and thereby increase the number of people who are likely to defeat me in a given tournament? Or do I just keep raking in the sweet, sweet prizes for my wins?

I suppose I’ll take the high road and let you in on it. Here’s how Sky Gnomes works: each day you face a new slate of players in a series of races. You launch a garden gnome on a little airship straight down at top speed, dodge storm clouds and ice balls, collect coins and snowflakes, and try to smash perfectly into the landing pad ahead of your foes. Do so, and you can turn your winnings into new parts and upgrades for your ships. Seriously, there is no way I could avoid getting obsessed with this game.

I’m not surprised it’s a solid title. It was developed by Foursaken Media, the folks behind the Bug Heroes titles. I expected it to live up to that pedigree. I just wasn’t expecting it to grip me so completely. I’m checking my phone several times a day to make sure I’m still ahead of the pack and furtively sneaking in extra rounds if I’ve slipped down the ranks.

The game’s tournament structure is brilliant, and it’s what drives my obsession. There are four race cups to compete in, three of which can be unlocked over time. Each one has its own theme, length and difficulty level. Each day you’re placed into groups based on your previous results, so everyone starts on even footing. You play against ghosts of your group mates, aiming for a quicker completion time than the rest of them—especially the one randomly assigned as your nemesis.

The more successful you are, the better you’ll be rewarded. After each race your performance is broken down by your placement in that race, the accuracy of your landing and the things you pick up along your route. You earn coins for those, and overall rank for your finish time. You also get a random part from a selection of nuts, bolts and gears. At the end of the day you’re compared against the rest of your group. If you place high enough you take home a big bag of coins, and if you beat your nemesis you’ll get even more.

There are other rewards, too. Each cup has achievements to earn, and earning a set of them bumps you up to a new tier. That unlocks the next cup and gives you coins and parts to mark your success. Each day also offers up a new, special goal. It might be something as simple as taking gold in a race, but it’s often something more esoteric like finishing with an exceptionally low time. Having all these different things to work toward makes it easy to enjoy yourself even when you’re not always winning.

In fact, even when you’re losing you’ll still have fun pulling in coins and parts. Then you can use them to upgrade your ship. Each upgrade costs a mix of things, usually a few thousand coins and a handful of assorted parts. The economy is most limited by the rarity of gears—you only earn one randomly every few races, and most upgrades cost one or two for the first tier alone. But those upgrades are so very worthwhile.

You can upgrade the engine of your ship, improving its speed, acceleration, afterburner and efficiency. You can unlock and rank up a host of powerups. You can also get yourself three slots for trinkets, and that’s where the real fun comes in. Trinkets can do all sorts of crazy things. They can magnetize your ship so you pull in coins more easily, they can improve your steering, or they can make it so dangerous obstacles like storm clouds can be used to boost your speed. They’re costly to upgrade, but they can make or break a run.

Choosing them is a strategic process, or at least it’s meant to be. You can check the weather before each race and adapt your plans, focus on speed or survivability or income. Unfortunately right now it seems like certain combinations outdo others significantly, but Foursaken is keeping a close eye on the trinket balance and plans to adjust it if necessary. Even if the popular combos are great fun to play with, it would be nice to have more viable options.

I should also give you a heads up: you can purchase coin and part packs. These aren’t quite your typical consumable IAP items since they’re used for permanent upgrades, but they feel pretty similar. The way your daily groups are selected keeps upgrades from offering a significant advantage, thankfully. They do offer a bit of one, though, since you can use your upgrades to boost your capabilities after you’re placed. At least the IAP packs are well balanced, so purchases won’t put people far ahead of the folks that are willing to grind. And frankly, the grind is pretty fun on its own.

That’s the thing of it: while it’s pretty obvious that Sky Gnomes is using a grab-bag of standard psychological tricks to keep players coming back every day, I can’t bring myself to mind. The racing is seriously fun. Once you manage to gear yourself up enough you can compete with players for top overall scores, hitting the Platinum league in each race and ranking at the very top of the daily leaderboards. If you get there, make sure to spend some time in our discussion thread—our forum users are dominating the charts. By the time you reach that point you’re travelling through races at insane speeds, sucking up coins and snowflakes, dodging obstructions like a champ. It’s a great time.

And that’s what keeps me coming back. There are small issues aside from trinket balance—setting your time early in the day isn’t worth much, and even at the highest ranks your success will be partially based on luck—but they are hardly a blip in the fun to be had. There might be an end somewhere in sight, a time where the grind outweighs the entertainment, but the hours of fun to be had in the meantime are well worth the initial purchase. Don’t miss this one. I’ll know, because I’ll be waiting for you out there on the podium.

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Let’s face it, kids: If you are going to become a giant, fire-breathing monster and take over a city by way of stomping on it, you want to do it right. In style. So if I play a videogame that puts me in the role of said monster, I have one rule — I want to have fun. Glorious, building stomping, people eating fun.

That’s why the original Rampage was such a bounding success. When I saw screens of Monster Takedown [$0.99], I thought I was looking at the same kind of thing. You get to be a big octopus or monster with too many eyeballs or whatever and fend off flying helicopters and incoming bombs. The art looked crisp and cute, and I thought if the gameplay hit the mark, we could have a winner on our hands here. Could. Maybe.

Unfortunately, I can’t report that, because Monster Takedown is pretty boring despite its good looks (and oh, haven’t we all fallen for that formula a few times).  It goes with a very pared down approach, which goes something like this: pick a monster out of five, find yourself splayed over a city doing basically nothing, and wait with a glazed look while helicopters and bombs fly in to attack you. You can’t even move, which really takes the fun out of being eighty feet tall with giant eyeballs stalks.

Seriously though, the lack of movement wouldn’t have bugged me that much had there been something more exciting going on. The helicopters and other flying stuff can be taken out with the touch of a finger, and that can get more complex as you go, although it’s nothing to complain to your friends about.

But the killer is when a nuke flies in from above, which you are supposed to be able to swipe away. I say supposed because no matter how much I swiped or in how many directions, I had trouble getting the game to be responsive when it came to this. It did happen a few times (try a quick left to right swipe), but considering that if that bomb touches your monster, you instantly die — well, let’s just say this little snag took quite a bit of the fun out of things.

You do start each level with one Slow power and one Bomb power, and you can guess what they do by their names. And that’s about all I have to tell you. Oh, except you can post your scores to Facebook and Twitter as well as the Game Center leaderboards, but I’m guessing you already figured that out.

Monster Takedown is completely mediocre, but I think what hurts here is that the look is so cute and you can really see they could have done a lot more with just a little bit of effort. Ah well, there’s always next time. For now, save your dollar, or put it towards a better game.

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After suffering a bite from the clone bug back in January 2011 from Capcom’s MaXplosion, everyone was curious if developer Twisted Pixel would layeth the smack down by officially porting their critically acclaimed XBLA platformer ‘Splosion Man to the App Store. The team seemed pretty soured on the idea after the whole MaXplosion thing, and they had their hands full with a sequel to ‘Splosion Man set to hit XBLA that summer. Fans of exploding iOS platformers collectively shed a tear.

That sequel, Ms. Splosion Man, did hit Microsoft’s downloadable game service in July of last year to much critical acclaim much like the first title. However, with that project out of the way, Twisted Pixel could focus more on what kind of options might lie ahead for their franchise. As they’ve just announced today via the awesome trailer below, Ms. Splosion Man is indeed heading to the App Store along with a version for Steam, Games for Windows Live, and Windows Phone 7.

What we know about these upcoming versions of Ms. Splosion Man is that the PC versions will be more or less direct ports with some additional features, but the iOS version “will be a unique experience built specifically for those devices with familiar content but all new features, objectives and gameplay modes” according to the developers. They note that they’re keen on taking full advantage of the iOS hardware and are already planning plenty of post-launch support in the form of updates with new content.

More details on pricing and a specific release date for Ms. Splosion Man will be coming soon, but the release window is slated for summertime. If you’re lucky enough to be at PAX East this week, then a playable iPad version of the game will be on hand for you to check out for yourself.

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