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To say details are sketchy right now on this game would be an understatement, but what we do know is that Japanese developer Media Vision has a job posting [Translated] up looking for developers for a new RPG for the iPhone coming in 2010.

French Final Fantasy fan site, Final Fantasy Ring via Famitsu noted the game is called Chaos Ring and also in their story [Translated] mention that the team behind it also created the Playstation RPG Wild Arms, a personal favorite of mine.

That's all we know right now, the rest is open to speculation. There is an awful lot of time left in 2010, and if Media Vision is only looking for people now, we might have a long wait in front of us to get our hands on Chaos Ring. Regardless, we're anxious to hear more on the game and will post whatever we can dig up from our Japanese sources.

In the meantime, you can swing by the Chaos Ring thread on our forums and join in on the excitement.

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Back in October we covered the 360iDev Game Jam, an all-night coding frenzy that challenged developers to create a playable (and, hopefully, interesting) game in just 10 hours. The results were impressive.

One of the developers who took up the challenge was Owen Goss of Streaming Colour Studios. Owen labored through the night and came up with an interesting title called UpDown.  As Owen described the game,

UpDown is a puzzle game. To complete a level, all pieces must be raised or lowered to level 0. However, you can only raise or lower pieces in the patterns dictated by the brushes. Strategy and intuition are required to master this simple yet challenging game.

While graphically sparse, the game was maddeningly difficult. What Owen had come up with was such a challenging formula that, when we spoke with him about the title last year, he indicated that he was considering building the prototype into a more complete game and releasing it through the App Store.

At GDC 2010, I sat down with Owen and he showed me LandFormer, his upcoming puzzle game that is the evolution of UpDown. And trust me, it's still maddeningly difficult.

The included screenshots show rather clearly how the game has evolved. LandFormer presents a five-by-five game-world grid with five different terrain levels for each block. The goal is to alter the terrain such that all blocks form a flat plane (the blocks with the little villages on them). To do so, you must pick a brush along the side of the playfield, tap a block on the playfield at which to center the action, and carry out a two-finger swipe up or down to indicate the desired direction of change.

If that sounds easy to you — well — it's not. The effects of one move are layered upon the next (and upon the next, and so on…) in such a way that you can pretty quickly develop a dread sense of having painted yourself into a corner, in a manner of speaking. I was having difficulty with the easiest few levels and could feel a growing desire to send Owen's test device into the wall of the Marriott lobby. But, despite my own frustrations, Owen assures me that all of the levels in the game can indeed be completed.

To enable players to torture their friends, the sinister developer has included a level editor that allows for the creation of custom maps, built using the same brushes used for standard play (so that all levels will be solvable). User made levels can be shared with friends via a web-link system, where all the data needed to describe the level is present in the link's CGI variables.

Puzzle addicts who enjoy having their brain crushed will want to run, not walk, to the App Store and grab LandFormer when it makes its debut in April. The game will be a free download including about 10 tutorial-difficulty levels (which is what I was playing at GDC…) and the aforementioned level editor, with additional levels available as in-app purchases.

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The developers behind Ravensword [$4.99] are very active members of our forums, and aside from constantly answering questions in the thread for Ravensword, they also recently used our forums to post the first images from Ravensword 2. Obviously it's hard to discern much about the actual gameplay at this point just by looking at character models and concept drawings, but I really liked the original Ravensword in our review, and there's not much reason to think the sequel wouldn't be just as good– If not better.

These details were revealed a few days ago, but due to the madness that was GDC, we're just catching up on it now. Here's what we know so far:

The Ravensword team is hard at work building a "massive library" of art assets, and with the help of Dicework Games are going to flesh out many of the RPG elements that the original Ravensword was missing. Ravensword 2 isn't coming out anytime soon, but they expect to have it on the App Store sometime this year.

They've also got a secret project in the works that is going to be announced soon, and you can expect to hear about it as soon as we find out more details. In the meantime, check out the Ravensword 2 thread where the Ravensword 2 team have posted a ton of images and have been actively answering questions from forum members.

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While out in San Francisco covering GDC 2010 I saw many games for many platforms, the iPhone among them.  And I'm happy to report that I didn't encounter a single "bad" iPhone game at any point during the week. The trip reinforced the fact that iPhone gaming is just huge — and it's growing. And iPad gaming, based on what I saw from numerous developers, is going to be amazing.

But of all the solid titles I spent time with, the one I'm most excited about is Sword & Sworcery EP which we took a brief look at earlier in the week. The game recently won an achievement in art award in the IGF Mobile 2010 competition. It's a stylized, artistic adventure developed by Superbrothers + Capybara Games + Jim Guthrie that dazzles with its rich and mysterious atmosphere established by a unique pixel art graphical presentation, an ethereal soundtrack that sets the mood for every screen, and sparse instructional cues on the outset that make you, the player, feel like a truly small entity in a large, alien world.

The designers call it "i/o cinema."

Right now I can't fully setup the scene for you, as the whole of the scene is still in the minds of the game's creators, not yet entirely implemented on the iPhone. What we were shown at GDC 2010 was meant as a teaser, a taste of the world that will be fully realized in the estimated three months between now and the game's App Store release. But what we did see was, in a word, moving.

In Sword & Sworcery EP, you control a female character exploring a mysterious world. Armed with sword and shield, you begin to explore your edenesque surroundings, tapping and holding in the intended direction of travel. You walk along paths, climb up and down stairs carved into the landscape, wander into the depths of the backdrop — even walk upon water. Brush a finger across a tree or bush and it responds to your touch.

But why are you here? What is your mission?

As you wander about this strange world you hear the chirping of insects, see various fauna dwelling in the bracken. Before long you encounter a strange being of obvious intelligence peering out at you from the wilderness. It retreats in response to your chase and gives little indication as to whether it is friend or foe. Eventually you follow it into its lair and are challenged to a fight. As you rotate your iPhone to enter the game's fight mode, you begin exchanging blows with this curious character. With some savvy you bring it to its knees, rendering it helpless, waiting for your final blow.

But…do you end this creatures life? Will you deal out death upon this helpless being whose world you have infiltrated? Or will you show mercy?

I will tell you that, in playing the game for less than five minutes, my feeling was that this strange creature was not an enemy. When it came time to deliver the killing blow, I very much felt that it would be wrong to do so. In the interest of fully demonstrating the game, however, I went ahead and ened its life. I regretted having to do so and found that, for hours after I set the game down, I felt guilty for having slaughtered what may have been a peaceful and benevolent creature. The experience absolutely saddened me.

This, from about four minutes of gameplay in a title that presently exists only as a teaser that presents but a portion of the creators' total vision. I consider my reaction to this experience to be highly telling. I honestly can't recall ever playing a game so emotive, so affecting.

Now, I don't mean to sound like an elitest gamer, or one that looks down my nose at other players, but if all you are interested in is button smashing and explosions, then Sword & Sworcery EP is probably not for you. (And, mind, I do, myself, enjoy a great many button smashers.) But if you are open to a game that can take you on an emotional journey, cause you to examine your own system of morality, and deliver an experience quite unlike anything you have known before, then Sword & Sworcery EP is probably worth your while. (And this is a game, not merely an artistic curiosity — discussion with the designers about what's to come assured me of that.)

The comment thread trailing from our initial look at the title is lengthy and rather polarized. People seem to either love what we've shown of the game, or hate it. The love points mostly mirror my own, presented here, while the hate points bemoan things like "unsightly", pixellated graphics, "lack of visuals", obviously "boring gameplay", "rehashed crap", and a misspelled title.

The pixel-art graphics serve a two-fold purpose, in my opinion. Use of such a graphical presentation necessarily adds a certain degree of vagueness to what the player is able to know about the onscreen avatar. This vagueness forces the player to become closer to the main character because the image of just what the character looks like exactly involves a bit of imagination on the part of the player. Additionally, the graphics style is a clear nod to Eric Chahi's 1991 classic Another World (a.k.a. Out of this World) which delivers a somewhat similar play atmosphere and was a major inspiration for this title, as designer Craig Adams of Superbrothers revealed to me. And so, if there's any "rehashing" going into Sword & Sworcery EP's equation, it's of Another World, which few would call "crap." And that's not to mention the fact that, as far as pixel art goes, in Sword & Sworcery EP it's original and very well done.

Wanting to share a bit more of the title than is revealed in the two videos released this week by the developers, we recorded some gameplay on the expo floor at the Superbrothers + Capy + Jim Guthrie booth in the IGF Mobile area. Thanks to Craig for the fingers.

All of us here at TouchArcade find Sword & Sworcery EP to be an amazing piece of work and are extremely anxious to get our hands on the final version in order to discover more about the nature of this mysterious game world. And, if you think what you see here holds little interest for you, well — you may be right — but if ever there was a game that might just take you by surprise, I'm guessing this is it. It's a situation that really makes me hope that the developers offer a free, lite version so the haters can at least give it a shot before passing it by.

At any rate, we'll take a very close look at Sword & Sorcerer EP when it hits the App Store mid-summer and let you know what we find.

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Back in May of last year a mysterious video appeared on YouTube showing a surprisingly full featured port of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for the iPhone. The next day, the developers clarified that while the game was running amazingly on the iPhone, it was unlikely to ever see the light of day. Disappointed, we eventually just game up on waiting for Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 to be released.

Here is a copy of the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 video, although since it was ripped from YouTube and re-uploaded, the quality seems to have taken a substantial hit:

As you can see in the screenshots, it seems that the controls have seen a major overhaul following the initial release of the video. According to Tony Hawk's twitter feed, the game is real, and is going to be available soon.

As someone who played the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 until I broke my Nintendo 64 controller, I cannot wait. We will post any other details we're able to dig up on the game in the future.

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At GDC 2009 we had chance to sit down with Engineous Games and have a look at their in-development iPhone game construction set, Sketch Nation Shooter.  The system was in a very early stage back then and has evolved notably, since.  We posted a demo video the developers released back in December.

Sketch Nation Shooter, as Engineous describes it,

…allows users to create their own games by drawing a player, enemies and a level on a piece of paper and taking a picture of the drawing with their iPhone camera. Users can then share their creations with their friends and other users. Our unique image recognition technology automatically detects the objects drawn and calculates collision boundaries. Sketch Nation Shooter is the only game to incorporate the iPhone camera in such a way. iPod Touch users can import their drawings through the Photo Library. After the drawings are imported into the game, users will be able to place enemies and powerups as well as set their properties in our easy to use in-game editor and then play with their unique creations.

Here at GDC 2010 a year later we had a chance to meet up with the developer once again and were shown a rather impressive demo of the app in its current state, in which he created a simple game in under two minutes and took us through the paces of several more complex games. Once created, users can share their games with other players online through their Facebook login and compare global high scores.

Have a look at the video we captured that demonstrates the system in action.

It's an impressive piece of work and we're anxious to see how much gaming goodness iPhone gamers can create with the system. Sketch Nation Shooter for the iPhone is expected to arrive in the App Store in early April. The developer indicates that an iPad-specific version down the road is likely.

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Apple has started accepting pre-orders on the Apple iPad for delivery in April. The Wi-Fi version of the iPad will be the first to ship by April 3rd while the WiFi + 3G versions will follow in late April.

Apple announced the iPad originally in January and represents a larger tablet-sized device running Apple's iPhone operating system. The iPad has seen a lot of excitement among developers with several planned game launches designed specifically for the device.

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During last night's iPhone Developers Union party, here at GDC 2010, I had the chance to sit down with Dan Bliss of BinarySquare and have a look at his new, retro-styled block elimination title Kerplinkus [App Store].

Now, many of you out there are surely thinking you need to see another block elimination game like you need a hole in the head, but Dan has managed to deliver a fresh take on the formula that's simple and highly challenging — in fact, it can be downright panic inspiring. It works like this: you start off with a playfield consisting of upwardly advancing rows of differing blocks. Particles that match the rising blocks fall from above and, in the case of a match, eliminate the blocks they hit (and any bordering blocks of the same design) or, if the shapes don't match, add a block to the column in question. The goal of the game is to see how long you can keep the tallest column from touching the top of the screen. The real strategy lies in the fact that you can swap any two of the advancing blocks by tapping one and then the other. The trick is to wisely determine which columns to focus on to keep the game going. It's a pretty frantic affair.

Like BinarySquare's earlier title, Space Out [App Store], the game features a highly-retro, pixellated graphical treatment that lends the title a distinctive look that some gamers (like me) will love. Old school music and sound effects, created using the Commodore 64's famous SID chip, are also featured.

While it's true that the App Store is flooded with block elimination games, Kirplinkus really does deliver a fresh twist on the formula. See BinarySquare's demonstration video for a look at the gameplay.

App Store Link: Kerplinkus, $0.99

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Namco held a press event last night where they announced the iPhone version of Pool Pro Online 3. This represents the 3rd in the franchise which originally began on mobile phones but is now extending to smartphones and even the desktop.

While the game may be of interest to those who enjoy pool, it also represents a few first of potentially a series of games using their UniteSDK which allows cross-platform online play. Jonathan Kromrey, general manager of apple games for Namco Networks, writes "This is only the beginning of where we are going as a company. Over the next several months, we will roll out a series of other features and games that are powered by UniteSDK, including tournaments for Pool Pro Online 3."

Pool Pro Online 3 will eventually be also available for PC, Mac, Android, Java, BREW, RIM and Windows Mobile, and will allow instant online play across all the platforms. UniteSDK also includes the usual friend lists, leaderboards and such that we've already seen in OpenFeint and Plus+. Namco is also opening up UniteSDK to 3rd party developers as well.

As for Pool Pro Online 3, it allows both single player and online play in 8-ball, 9-ball and Snooker. Players can also make in-game wagers against their opponents and use winnings to upgrade table felts, cue sticks and new pool halls. The 3d game allows you to rotate your view and pinch/zoom to line up your shot.

The iPhone version of the game will be released on Thursday for $4.99.

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We've arrived in San Francisco for the 2010 Game Developer's Conference. This year's event includes a two day iPhone summit which should attract many iPhone developers from around the world.

GDC also includes the usual other game related activities, booths and announcements. The IGF mobile finalists will be on demo with a final award ceremony later this week.

One interesting pre-announcement we were sent was from Steph Thirion, the creator of Eliss. Thirion will be introducing his next game Faraway at GDC.

Like Eliss, Faraway is an original concept, and is set in space, but the new game drastically increases the scale of the play area. While Eliss was about planets and space management in sectors, Faraway will be about constellations and infinite space travel.

Faraway will be one of six "one button games" that will be featured at Gamma 4 on Wednesday.

We expect there to be an avalanche of iPhone news coming throughout this week. If you are an iPhone developer in the area, come to the IUGO iPhone Developer Party which we are co-sponsoring. Or track us down via twitter (@arnoldkim, @hodapp, @blakespot) for after hour events.

The party is on Wednesday, March 10, 8pm in the Marriott Lobby Bar, right across the road from Moscone Center West. Drinks sponsored by Team Phobic, Touch Arcade, Venan Entertainment and IUGO.

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