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Mirror’s Edge [Free /HD] for iPhone and iPad are dangled at a discount quite a bit, but today’s deal is way too juicy for anyone without either to pass up. For a limited time, both games are now free. All you have to do is hit download on either or both, and then you’ll be jumping around in the mobile iteration of one of EA DICE’s most clever and colorful titles ever, for zero dollars.

This deal, by the way, is brought to us by EA’s new Daily Deals program, which we’ve mentioned in a past post earlier this week and is offering more than just the aforementioned. Dead Space for iPad [$4.99], for example, is also being offered up on the cheap today. It’s now $4.99 instead of its usual $9.99. You can read more the gory, ultra-atmospheric title at this convenient link right here.

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We first heard grumblings of long-time console and PC developer Paradox Interactive’s newest title Defenders of Ardania back in February of this year, with a new trailer and release date being revealed just last month. Now, Defenders of Ardania [$4.99/Lite] has finally hit the App Store and is available for purchase as we speak (well maybe not speaking, since I’m typing and you’re reading, but you get the point).

We briefly got to check out Defenders of Ardania in an extremely early state at GDC this year, and based on the trailer released last month it’s made a ton of progress since then. As you can see for yourself, the visuals look quite splendid, but it’s the twist on the traditional tower defense formula that excites me the most. You see, you set up your defensive towers in the most strategic way possible in order to fend of the oncoming hordes of enemies, but you’re also able to send out waves of your own troops to get down and dirty with the enemy up close and personal in the battlefield. It’s the type of subtle twist that might really make Defenders of Ardania stand out from the pack.

We’ll be diving into Defenders of Ardania to see if it’s as good as the trailer would have us believe, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling about it. If you’re the “live life on the edge” type and don’t want to wait around for our review, or if you’re already sold on the pedigree of Paradox Interactive and would like to support their very first iOS effort, then feel free to mash away at the link below. Don’t forget that there’s a lite version to try first and you can also scour the game’s forum thread for player impressions.

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The App Store is home to a ton of unique ideas, and we’ve seen all sorts of games come along that started out one way and evolved into something entirely different due to content updates that are often spurred by feedback from gamers in our forums. It’s one of the neat aspects about iOS gaming, and something that sets it apart from most other traditional gaming platforms.

However, Bryan Perfetto, creator of the awesome endless high scoring game Kitty Up [99¢] (the second title this morning that has previously been featured on the Kitty Korner segment of our podcast) is taking the app updating facet of the App Store to the extreme. He has just released Rocket Bits [Free], his latest game that’s not really much of a game at all… yet.

The idea behind Rocket Bits is that he’s soliciting any and all ideas from users and will try to implement them into the game the best he can. Right now, the game isn’t much more than an extremely basic cave flyer with very little to do. You can control the dual thrusters of a tiny rocket by touching either side of the screen, and putt around an expansive randomly generated map, bumping into walls and… that’s about it.

But just because there isn’t much to do in Rocket Bits doesn’t mean it’s not off to a pretty good start. The thruster controls feel great, the retro-styled pixel art is quite nice, and the chip tunes in the game are fantastic. Since the game isn’t much right now, it’s being offered for free, and eventually after some updates have fleshed out the experience then Bryan plans to raise it to “the outrageously expensive price of one dollar.”

If the concept of Rocket Bits intrigues you, you can send your game ideas via email to bryan@regularkid.com, on Twitter at @RegularKid, through his website www.regularkid.com, or just blurt them out in iTunes reviews for the game. The plan is to update the game weekly, though that will depend on how difficult the ideas are to implement and Apple’s review process. If he uses your idea, you’ll get your name forever emblazoned in the game’s credits section.

It’ll be interesting to see how Rocket Bits shapes up over time, and how well the developer will be able to use the ideas given to him. We’ll keep our eye on its progress, and there’s no reason not to grab the game for free to check it out and send along some ideas of your own.

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We put incredibly powerful devices in our pockets and on our laps daily, but rarely do we see games that utterly embrace this like Infinity Blade has. It’s a showcase piece; a technically and visually gifted game that consistently delivers eye-popping stuff.

Infinity Blade 2 is a step a step or two beyond what was accomplished in the original, adding in layers and layers of next-level environmental and character texture detail on top of a ton of fantastic ambient touches — sharper shadows, stronger lighting, and a glut of atmospheric effects bolster what’s already a visual delight, especially on iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

In the game’s opening, you’ll be whisked to a Japanese garden where pink petals tenderly fall into a pond filled with koi. Later, you’ll find a fountain with gurgling water creeping over two titanic figures, a crypt filled with gigantic, ragged rocks with glowing glyphs imbued into them, and you’ll even observe plenty of nature again, as the game’s new fortress has plenty of aerial life and environmental effects to share.

The added oomph of the presentation is a convenient parallel to what’s going on under the hood. Design-wise, this is more Infinity Blade, except expanded. Beautiful vistas and artfully designed and detailed hallways compose that game’s more expansive fortress; the “guided” walking scenes are always punctuated with many more items to loot and fights to be had against increasingly bigger and more complex opponents; also, the mystery as to who you are and why you’re undying is unraveled more coherently, as the writing is now presented with confidence — it actually wants to tell you a good story.

The story element in particular makes Infinity Blade 2 a more cohesive game. As in the first, you’ll be once again stuck in a cyclical play loop, forever walking the halls of this new fortress as you puzzle out what it has to offer. But now the protagonist is as aware of his plight as you are, and you’ll be doing things in this new place with this knowledge in tow. There’s a sense of momentum and honest-to-Crom progression since not every re-birth is a simple game “reset;” plus, not just battle death triggers these this time around.

Combat has been expanded, too, and its constituent parts tweaked. Dodging, for example, is now monitored by an endurance bar. Dodge too many times in succession, and you’ll take tick damage from narrowly avoided blows. Parries seem much more accurate, now, as well, and are much more encouraged by virtue of the dodge nerf. Oh! And say “hi” to weapon gems. In most cases, they act as weapon modifiers that add elemental damage to attacks. In others cases, they add bonus effects like, say, increased Titan Damage Upon Blocking. Gems can be found or purchased and attached to weapons with matching slots.

The game’s currency system is still tied integrally to the combat. Buying new weapons is the key to leveling up, and you’ll need to keep pumping your quarters into the virtual machine in order to compete since each re-birth sees the addition of more powerful enemies. Since you can straight-up buy gold via IAP, this element might turn you off, but in our play, we’ve yet to feel like IAP was anything more than optional.

More importantly, dual weapon and heavy weapon wielding have been added to the combat model and they do meaningfully change your combat approach. Two swords eliminates blocking from the equation and rely on your ability to chain together combinations flawlessly. Heavy weapons trade speed for power, but require a sure-hand. I’m not much of a fan of either of these new styles, but they work as they should.

The enemies you’ll bludgeon not only look fantastic, but also boast, in most cases, more sophisticated routines and trickier blows to block, dodge, or parry. Just as an example here, let’s talk about the monstrous dog-like thing you’ll meet. Its heavy and blinded by the spiked cap covering its head, but its sluggish attacks are consistently hard to peg, as it feints with the aplomb of the nimblest creatures. Also, it has vicious quick-time-y attack where it attempts to swallow your dude whole. In order to stop this, you’ll need to tap frantically to keep his vice-like maw from impaling your meaty bits.

Sometimes I’m tempted to see what’ll happen if I let it take my dude, simply because of how awesome Infinity Blade 2 looks. Does your guy’s head and torso explode into a plume of blood and bone? Probably not (for a variety of reasons), but what I’m absolutely certain of is that Infinity Blade 2 is awesome.

It’s a consistently well put together visual feast that shows off what Unreal 3, and now your new devices, can do. And it’s great that the core gameplay structure and action model still deliver. Basically everything that Infinity Blade does has been expanded on for Infinity Blade 2. There’s so much more to do — so much more to explore and see and learn as you hack-and-slash like a champ through a winding and much more complex environment. Straight-up, it’s a great game.

As a side-bar here, while nothing is confirmed, the UI elements and Chair’s track record with the original hint at many updates to come including a cool social twist to battle. We’ll be keeping our thumbs and fingers at the ready for some time.

International App Store Link: Infinity Blade 2, $6.99

Infinity Blade 2 will be available in the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern.

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Have you ever secretly wanted to live the life of a taxonomer, pouring over the details of new species to discover their histories? No? How about blocks — do you like to play with blocks? You might need to fall somewhere within that spectrum to really appreciate Gua-Le-Ni [$4.99], my new favorite taxonomic game. It’s a rapid-fire puzzle game with a fantastical approach to the vagaries of animal kind.

From moment to moment you’re tasked with the categorization of brand new animal hybrids. While you might be familiar with the dreaded CA-MEL or TI-GER, would you recognize a RAB-HOG on sight? How about a WART-DOR-PUS-STER? Anything goes in Gua-Le-Ni, and you’ll need to be quick enough to go along with it.

You do this with a collection of blocks, like children’s alphabet blocks. Each face of each block possesses one syllable of an animal’s name, and a section of that animal to go with it. So a “Ti” block face would have a tiger’s head, and the “Ger” would have its rear.

The blocks can be turned, spun and moved around to form whatever fantastic beast steps across your screen. You’re given two to start, a reasonable number for learning, but when you’re tired of the fifteenth variation of “Lob-mon” or “Rhi-ster” it will be time to move on.

You can do so at your own pace, more or less. In Fiction mode, you can add or remove blocks at will. Four-sectioned creatures may strain your taxonomic talents (and your speedy fingers), but they’re a worthy challenge after some practice. Once you’ve practiced to your heart’s content, you can move on to Non-Fiction mode.

Non-Fiction is no less imaginative than Fiction mode, but the beasts are more beastly and hungry. Some are herbivores, some carnivores, so you’ll need to be on your toes to feed them correctly. There are meals to be made with each combo of three feedings, and bonus points to be earned for them. Feed the animals the wrong foods, however, and it will ruin your combinations.

An odd bit of extra-terrestrial muck can be fed to the animals as well, mutating them into bigger and odder forms. But you must choose to do this — difficulty is not generally forced upon you. The developers at Double Jungle apparently tested the game for biometric reactions in order to ensure that the difficulty curve was appropriate and the cognitive challenge was always sufficient, and this attention to detail shows. Gua-Le-Ni is difficult enough to keep players strung along without indulging in pointless frustration.

Or at least that’s mostly true. The controls are just shy of perfect, and I have found myself occasionally stymied in a playthrough by a block refusing to turn or rotate as needed. The two-fingered twists and lifts are intuitive, but when they don’t register correctly the joy of playing is lost. Hopefully this will see a tweak or two in the days to come.

Despite that bit of friction, though, I find myself continually drawn back into Gua-Le-Ni. Much of its appeal is aesthetic. The scrap paper creatures are partly horrid in their combinations, but partly gorgeous too. The sound is catchy, and the tome-like interface is elegant and entirely usable. The narration particularly stands out, delightfully dotty as it is.

But the gameplay is no slouch, either. Part of the challenge lies in memorization — the blocks you use are always the same, so once you know where to find the “Ti,” you’ll likely never lose it. But managing meals complicates matters, as does the growing speed of the beasts that pass by. Your speed matters too — you earn more points for an animal classified quickly than one that takes time.

Your successes add up into high scores, ranked on two Game Center leaderboards. One is for total score, as could well be expected. But one is cleverer: the time it takes you to earn a Two of Four. That’s two full animals classified with four blocks each in Non-Fiction mode. It’s good inspiration to move up to four blocks as quickly as you can — lingering at fewer blocks slows down your scoring, and knocks off any chance you have of ranking on that leaderboard. There are also a selection of achievements to earn, some clever, but a few too many focused on sharing or rating the game.

Many players will find Gua-Le-Ni a bit steep for what it offers, the rather simple puzzle game at its heart. But for those of you who, like me, are drawn in by its gallimaufry of nonsense creatures, the game will be nearly impossible to resist. Give in – Gua-Le-Ni follows through with charm and plenty of fun. The joy of taxonomy may fade in time, but you’ll always have the knowledge that you were the one to identify the humble Lob-hog-bit, and that’s a memory that will last. Share it in our discussion thread.

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One thing about this week: you’ll save some money if you’re looking to stock up for a big drive or just content to use as “Ignore Family” fuel. The worldwide leaders of Sonic games, for example, is holding a fairly comprehensive sale, so if you were in the mood for a, uh … more historic afternoon of App Store appreciation, then get your download fingers ready.

The big ticket items, as usual whenever Sega holds a sale, are its Sonic series games. It seems like the general fan audience is mixed on the quality of these, but at prices like one dollar, it’s hard to feel too conned by the much-beloved, yet also heatedly criticized publisher. Also, of note? The oft-featured Monkey Ball games have been lowered to a buck.

• Altered Beast - $2.99 → $.99
• Gunstar Heroes – $2.99 → $.99
• Samurai Bloodshow – $4.99 → $.99
• Sonic Spinball – $1.99 → $.99
• Sonic The Hedgehog – $3.99 → $1.99
• Sonic The Hedgehog 2 – $3.99 → $1.99
• Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 – $4.99 → $2.99
• Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing – $2.99 → $1.99
• Super Monkey Ball – $2.99 → $.99
• Super Monkey Ball 2 – $2.99 → $.99
• Super Monkey Ball 2 Sakura Edition – $4.99 → $.99
• Streets of Rage – $2.99 → $.99
• Streets of Rage 2 – $2.99 → $.99
• Streets of Rage 3 – $2.99 → $.99
• Virtua Fighter 2 – $1.99 → $.99

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Raccoon Rising [99¢] from Romper Games is a delightful game about a sleepy raccoon trying to survive when his forest is invaded by an army of robots and their deforestation machinery. After watching the trailer (below), you might expect an endless-vertical jumping game, as it resembles NinJump [Free/HD]. But, it’s actually more like a vertical platform game, because you’re not constantly jumping and can find places to stop and plan your approach upwards, through the obstacles. Also, it’s level based, so you’re not always restarting from the very beginning.

The little raccoon’s simple story is told through comic-strip cut-scenes as he journeys through four worlds, including a temple, Tanuki forest, a ship called the ‘Salty Sprocket’ and finally, a city. Each world features different graphics, music, enemies and obstacles, but the goal is always to progress upwards until you reach a gate, which shuts behind you.

Each time you reach a gate you’re given a three-star rating for your performance on that section and a checkpoint is saved as a re-spawn point when you die. There’s over seventy gates (sections) in total and as you unlock them in the main story, they become available in Time Trial mode. Each section may only require a few jumps to pass through, but it typically takes multiple attempts to determine and execute your route. However, because there’s only a short distance between gates, dying and re-trying isn’t the end of the world.

The gameplay controls are simple and effective. Just  tap anywhere to make your coon jump in that direction, or hold down your finger for a power-jump, which enters slow-mo mode for targeting and smashing obstacles with flying kicks. If you’re jumping upwards, a second tap sends your raccoon leaping to the side of the screen, depending which side you tap. The real challenge is to time and aim your jumps well, as you often need to land in tight spaces, wedged between two death-causing obstacles, which may both be moving. However, the pause button (which is a slider) is not always that responsive and sometimes stops working altogether, meaning it must be closed form the iOS task bar.

The robots have deployed a range of machinery, so as you journey upwards you’ll face spikes, tree-crushers, band-saws and cannons. There’s punching cushions which repel you, hovering platforms, gun powder-barrels to explode and helicopter drones to jump on for a quick ride upwards. And once you reach the end of a world, there’s a boss fight waiting for you.

The 3D art and animation by Pixelnauts is appealing. In particular, the special effects – such as timber or the coon flying straight at the screen – look great. And the little raccoon character, with his blackened raccoon-eyes and wagging bushy tail, gives this game a feel-good atmosphere. However, although the end-of-world bosses were satisfying to reach, they don’t look quite as vibrant or visually appealing and the comic images also fall a bit flat. The initial loading times for worlds are also a little longer than most games, but there’s no such delays between stages (gates).

There are credit-card chips (”credits”) to collect within each world, because you “may need them in future”. If you click on the credits icon on the main menu it says “coming soon”. It’s a little unusual to ask players to collect in-game currency which has no current function, but trust me, the credits will be used for something cool in a future release: – but that’s still a secret, so we can’t share it yet. But we can confirm that the developers are keen to expand this game further.

Romper Games have fixes coming for a couple of technical issues: There’s a glitch whereby the third level (Ship) doesn’t always unlock when you reach it. I replayed the final stage of world two and it unlocked successfully, however another user in our discussion thread have had the same issue, but replaying it hasn’t helped. Crashes have been reported for older 1g / 2g devices. The developers are participating in our forum discussions so they’re aware of these two issues. They may release reduced graphical assets for older devices and are working on a fix to resolve the level unlocking glitch.

Racoon Rising is a neat variant on jumping games, which I’m throughly enjoying despite the jumping genre being so saturated. The combination of vertical platformer and jumping game works a treat. And the core graphics, varied worlds and short re-playabe levels make this game easy to recommend, but if you’ve got a 1g / 2g device, you may prefer to wait for the update.

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It’s the little things that matter. You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s not the bacon that he brings home, it’s the breakfast he wakes you up with. It’s not the fact that Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion [$2.99] is probably going to be one of the definitive names in turn-based strategy for the iOS, it’s the way the commanders bellow at their troops to merit their wings.

Food metaphors aside, there’s a lot to like about Witching Hour’s debut title. If you’re anything like me and have spent some amount of time bemoaning the paper-thin worlds that populate the App Store, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion is going to make your heart beat faster. The setting is exhaustive. Every character has a detailed biography, every unit type a set of statistics and a matching description. There are social hierarchies, self-serving matriarchs and imperial ranks. There is history. There is substance.

Paradoxically, the actual plot itself feels a lot less deep. You can blame it on a childhood diet of Ursula K. Le Guinn and Terry Prachett but I can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen it all before. The first part of the game, for example, is centered around the soft-spoken Calius Septim. Determined to make his way up the ranks, he must deal with things like an overprotective older brother and a superior officer who loathes him. It’s a familiar story, one that has been related a thousand times before in various forms. Nonetheless, that doesn’t make the tale any less compelling.

Delivered in a visual novel-esque manner, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion’s greatest strength lies in the fact it is not pretentious. The protagonists are not larger-than-life heroes; they’re men. They’re people we can empathize with. While it is doubtful that the dialogue will win the Pulitzer prize anytime, it’s still some of the best I’ve recently seen. You will care about them, regardless of whether you intended to or not.

But let’s get to the real reason you’re reading this. An exquisitely-crafted world is good and all but is Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion fun? The answer to that is: it depends. Did you want something you could fiddle with and forget while you’re on the bus or the loo? If so, you’re not going to be very happy with what the Witching Hour has to offer. Ravenmark, to put it succinctly, is heavy stuff.

Utilizing a rock-paper-scissors (swordsmen beat spear-men, spear-men trump cavalry, cavalry wins over archers and archers have the edge over swordsmen) sort of approach to things, battles in Ravenmark are played out through a series of turns. Each round consists of two rather self-explanatory phases: the Command Phase and the Battle Phase. In the Command Phase, you give orders. In the Battle Phase, you watch as they’re carried out. Units will move. Abilities will be used. If they find themselves within range of one another, they will attack; an action that consists of nothing but some artwork sliding around and numbers dwindling where appropriate.

Simple as that might sound on paper, the reality is significantly more complex. To begin with, you’ll never have enough Command Points. You’ll also have to ensure that you’re constantly aware of the order in which the various units will move. One false move and you might find your foe neatly eluding your grasp even as you beat your head against the wall. On top of all that, you’ll also have to worry about being flanked and whether your army’s current Formations are sufficient for its needs. Do you break up a Formation into Daggers to allow for greater mobility or do you make use of the raw strength that such a contingent can offer?

If that wasn’t enough, you’ll also have to take geographical constraints into consideration, worry about active skills and passive abilities and give Standing Orders whenever appropriate. The Standing Orders battle system is a stroke of minor genius, by the way. With a Standing Order, you’ll be able to command a unit to pursue an enemy till it or the foe dies, or to rest until it has recovered much-needed HP.

It’s an absolutely glorious mess of details. The in-game tutorials are informative and well-done. The controls are exquisite; the large buttons and concise radial menus make me want to name my first-born child after the UI designer. The gameplay, once you’ve mastered its nuances, is a complete and utter joy; Ravenmark gives me honest-to-god, no-hyperbole-intended hope for serious iOS gaming. Sure, you’re going to find yourself beating your head against a wall in frustration whenever you find yourself outmaneuvered by the infuriatingly clever AI, but the satisfaction of a hard-won victory is incomparable. Ravenmark probably would have benefited from a few customization options or even just the ability to select what kind of troops you want to bring into battle but those are minor quibbles. Nitpicking, if you will.

I seriously couldn’t be happier. Witching Hour’s maiden project Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion is almost everything this iPhone-touting strategy game aficionado could ask for, and as long as you’re a fan of its somewhat hardcore nature, I will eat my fuzzy hat if you don’t find yourself thinking the same.

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You know how around Halloween you bought five bags of Fun Size Snickers to give out to trick or treaters, but somehow only three bags made it into the candy bowl and now you’re feeling really bloated and gross and you really need to look good for upcoming holiday parties so you’re eating grilled salmon three times a day and that would be fine, except all you can think about is how you really want to eat a bunch of donuts and cake and candy? Yeah, uh, me neither. However, it’s obvious that the people at Com2uS were in throes of weight loss-related fantasy when creating their latest game, Chocohero [$.99].

Before we get too far, we need to establish whether or not you should play this game. Are you diabetic? Has your dentist recommended you stay away from sweet, delicious candy? If so, you shouldn’t have a problem, because this is a video game and not real life, duh. You play as Chipster, the Chocohero the game is named for, who must save his Chocobit friends from an impending milk flood in the land of Smoresdom. These Chocobits (which look a little like bunnies, except better because they are candy) are trapped on delicious pastry ledges made of things called Cakems, which you must destroy or work around in order to rescue your friends before the floods come.

Basically, you’re constantly falling and the faster you fall, the more likely you are to rack up points, Chocobits, and powerups before the milk catches up to you. You control Chipster’s fall by either tilting your device or by using its one-touch control. The controls are perfect (though it’s not like this kind of game demands precision), and the powerups that are available are simple and well-designed. You can stop time, attract nearby coins to you, and pick up the means to unleash Fever mode (where you act like a tornado and barrel down for a few seconds, breaking everything in your path).

The game gives you a seemingly endless stream of objectives to complete (rescue X Chocobits, destroy x Cakems, etc.) that unlock progressively longer capes as you achieve them. The longer your cape, the greater your falling speed and the more likely you are to avoid the milk flood long enough to rescue more of your friends and cause even more damage to baked goods. The beauty of this is that it both gives you an incentive to keep playing and the means to progress juuust a little further each time, ensuring the game never gets boring.

Chocohero is certainly not the only game of its type out there, but it’s definitely one of the best designed. In addition to tight controls and well-designed levels, the art style and music are perfectly complementary (and, of course, super-adorable). For about a dollar, this is a really fun little diversion for pretty much any time you have a few minutes, especially when you’re waiting for your next dentist’s appointment.

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OrangePixel have a few iOS platform games under their belt. Back in June, we reviewed Meganoid [$1.99] calling it a quality retro platformer with responsive controls. In September, our review of Stardash [$1.99] highlighted the challenging difficulty levels and Game Boy style presentation. Plus they’ve released Super Drill Panic [$1.99] and Time Chaos [99¢]. Now, OrangePixel has released their latest action platform game, named simply: INC [$1.99], which is probably my favorite of their releases.

INC uses a comic-inspired silhouette art style which immediately captured my interest. Your character is a square with legs and blinking little eyes who runs, jumps and shoots his way through levels that are intentionally pixelated with rough edges. The graphics are 8-bit and chunky, with backgrounds reminiscent of Canabalt [$2.99]. And there’s a chip-tune soundtrack, which is always popular in any retro platform game.

Another distinctive feature is that when you fire your gun, the word “Ratatat” appears above your weapon, much like a comic description of a sound effect. And if you hold your finger down, the gun automatically fires and many Ratatat’s appear. But if you fire too long, the gun overheats and the word “Click!” displays. These little text captions are also used to convey storyline, to show enemies abusing you and to display on-screen hints.

INC contains four different worlds, with forty levels in total, including boss fights against various machines.  To complete a level, you find and activate three signal boosters before entering the exit.  Sometimes the boosters are hidden in the terrain and only reveal themselves once shot, so part of the challenge is to locate them, which becomes harder in the later levels. Once a booster is activated, you can see its signal being transmitted.

This is another platformer with short levels, like Mos Speedrun [$1.99 / Free] where the goal is to complete each level within a limited timeframe. Although INC’s levels are slightly longer and you’re actually armed and dangerous. If you beat the target time you’ll receive a one-star rating. The other two stars are awarded for killing all enemies and having extra lives remaining after completing the level.

Along the way you encounter trigger-happy robots, flying enemy machines, clusters of small aggressive spiders, falling objects to dodge, switches to activate and objects to blast into position. By collecting “Credz” (coins) for points, you can boost your ranking on the OpenFeint and Game Center leaderboards. There’s two ranking tables covering high scores and number of kills, plus 12 achievements.  Your progress is stored in the cloud via OpenFeint to allow device swapping without restarting (a fix for this has already been submitted, which also resolves the “no bullets” bug). Cloud saving is increasingly becoming a selling point for games.

By activating boosters, collecting “creds” and shooting enemies, your character’s level bar slowly increases. But if you die, your experience lowers and might drop back down a level. Your weapon has three levels of upgrade (although the developers indicate they may add more), which is particularly helpful in the later levels.

There are two main control options available. The default is “touch based”, which features left, right, jump and shoot buttons. The alternative is a tilt and touch combination, with tilting to move and buttons for jump and shoot.  Personally, the default controls felt fine on the iPad, however the buttons are positioned differently on the iPhone with some members of our discussion thread finding their placement awkward. As always, the safest way to keep gamers happy is to let them position their own buttons. INC supports  iCade and iControlPad, plus it works with the Joypad [Free] app, if you’d rather use your iPod or iPhone as the controller.

In our earlier reviews for both Meganoid and Stardash we mentioned that the menu systems didn’t provide quick access to other levels or the main menu. Unfortunately, this game has similar issues. The game-over screen has no “exit to menu” option, forcing players to start another game and then exit via the pause menu. The level selection screen requires you to scroll through each level to reach the later levels. And although INC lists the number of stars achieved for each level, it doesn’t clearly stipulate which of the three objective(s) are outstanding.

OrangePixel keep releasing platform games, as if trying to evolve the perfect platforming experience and INC is another step in the right direction. We wondered if their next release will be another platformer?  They responded: “We plan to do a horizontal-shooter first, but we also have plans for more platform games, because we simply love them!” That’s sounds good to us, because we are always eager to get our hands on another solid platformer.

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