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Yesterday we made a post listing several titles that have gone on sale for a limited time. We wanted to pass along a heads-up on a few more sales and price drops for titles we think readers may enjoy.

Soosiz, Free Ahh, Soosiz. [ review ] Touch Foo's rotational 2D platformer is one of our very favorite iPhone games, and is one of the first titles to which we gave a five-star rating. Soosiz is a stylized cartoonish platformer that challenges your brain to keep up with all of its twists, turns, and inversions. It's incredibly well executed with excellent controls, has a ton of content and is a lot of fun. And it's free this weekend (regularly $1.99). There's no excuse for missing this one.

Need For Speed™ Undercover, $1.99 [ review ] Electronic Arts' Need for Speed Undercover (down from $4.99 for a limited time) is the studio's first iPhone release in their long-running racer series. It's a mission-based racer (as opposed to the "'round the track" variety) that puts you in the role of an undercover wheel man infiltrating a series of street racer / chop-shop gangs to try and bust an auto theft ring wide open. It's a very well-done title that, at the time of its release, was perhaps the most visually impressive game on the platform.

ROCK BAND, $4.99 [ review ] EA's Rock Band, which recently hit the 2000 downloadable song mark, is one of the most immersive rhythm games in the App Store. The game sets you behind a guitar, bass, or drum kit, or lets you take the lead vocals in playing through any of the myriad songs available through its in-game song store. The game features 32 free songs and offers Facebook integration to help jam with your friends. Rock Band is, for a limited time, down from $6.99.

Rogue Touch, $0.99 [ review ] ChronoSoft's Rogue Touch (normally $2.99) is an iPhone adaptation of Rogue, the classic dungeon crawler that dates back to 1980. It's highly faithful to the feel and mechanics of the well-loved early platform releases, but has expanded the game nicely. It's my personal favorite iPhone dungeon crawler and is one of our long-time favorites here at Touch Arcade.

Worms HD, $2.99 [ review (iPhone ver) ] First there was Worms for the iPhone [ link ], then came Worms HD for the iPad. Well, actually, first there was the Worms for the Amiga, which Team 17 released back in 1995. Whichever way you look at it, it's classic turn-based artillery action in the Scorched Earth vein. And the iPad version has been reduced in price, from $4.99.

2XL TROPHYLITE Rally, $0.99 [ post ] 2XL Games' 2XL TROPHYLITE Rally (down from $4.99) is a highly impressive looking desert rally racer featuring 15 different races, WiFi and Bluetooth multiplayer, multiple vehicle views, five control schemes, and leaderboards. The iPad version has also been reduced in price ( $7.99 down to $.99 ).

Enigmo, $0.99 Pangea is running a sale on all of its multiplayer titles, physics puzzler Enigmo (down from $2.99) being one of the three games affected. Starting its life as a Mac game, Enigmo is a physics puzzle game that was voted Best iPhone Game at WWDC in 2008. In the game you move various objects around the game board to direct water droplets to their destination. Levels start easy and get so hard you will be desperately searching Google for the solution.

Nanosaur 2, $0.99 Another Pangea multiplayer title on sale is Nanosaur 2 (down from $2.99). Also starting as a Mac game, Nanosaur 2 was ported to the iPhone in late 2008. It hasn’t aged very well compared to Pangea’s other games, but the premise of piloting a massive dinosaur from the future who is equipped with a massive arsenal of weaponry couldn’t get much more ridiculous and/or awesome.

Cro-Mag Rally, $0.99 [ review ] One of the early iPhone cart racers, Pangea's Cro-Mag Rally (down from $2.99) won the 2008 Best App Ever Award for Best Racing Game. Cro-Mag Rally puts you behind the wheel of a caveman's cart in a bid to cross the finish line first through nine different race tracks, using 11 different vehicles with nine types of power-ups there to help you. The multiplayer system was recently entirely rewritten to ease the auto-matching game process.

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With the iOS 4.1 update that added Game Center out in the wild today, we're seeing an avalanche of new updates for older games that are utilizing these new features. Previously we've only seen games that received achievements and leaderboards, but now it seems that three games from Pangea Software are the first to offer real-time multiplayer. Here is the information for each game provided in the press release from Pangea:

Nanosaur 2, $3.99 Nanosaur 2 is a 3D action-adventure game where you pilot a time traveling pteradactyl from the future.  Previously, Nanosaur 2 was just a single player game, but new in version 2.0 are six new levels and three new multiplayer modes including Capture the Eggs, Battle, and Race.  Thanks to iOS 4.1, users with Game Center enabled devices can now play against each other by inviting friends or using Auto-Match to play against people around the world.  In Capture the Eggs mode players are on teams, and they have to retrieve all of their team’s dinosaur eggs before the other team.  Battle mode, on the other hand, is pure excitement as players collect weapons and blast each other out of the sky.  The race mode also involves a lot of heat seeking missiles, blasters, and cluster grenades, but your primary goal is to race around a track.  Up to four players can play together in Nanosaur 2, and the game uses the Voice Chat feature of iOS so you can smack-talk your opponents while you unleash a barrage of firepower on them.

Cro-Mag Rally, $2.99 Cro-Mag Rally is Pangea Software’s caveman racing game where you race primitive vehicles such as the Bone Buggy, Geode Cruiser, Logmobile, etc. around prehistoric and ancient racetracks.  The new 2.0 version of Cro-Mag Rally now supports multiplayer networked racing thanks to Game Center, so up to four players can race against each other using any of the vehicles in the game.  Additionally, version 2.0 is now a Universal Binary app so it runs on the iPhone / iPod Touch and the iPad.

Enigmo, $2.99 Enigmo is one of the all-time best selling iPhone games with well over a million units sold, and it is the winner of an Apple Design Award for Best iPhone Game.  Enigmo is a physics based game where you try to direct flowing streams of liquids to solve puzzles.  Version 4.0 of Enigmo adds a new multiplayer mode where up to 3 players can compete to solve puzzles.  Like Nanosaur 2 and Cro-Mag Rally, Enigmo also supports Voice Chat.

We've had a chance to try out these new multiplayer features and are really happy with the results. Connecting into an online game is incredibly simple as you can choose to search out a game against random people or very easily invite one of your Game Center friends. The voice chat also works really well, and trash talking while racing against forum moderator Zincous in Cro-Mag Rally was a ton of fun indeed. Voices are clear and there is a mute button if you get tired of hearing how badly you are getting beaten by your opponent.

We didn't experience any lag while playing, but this could be due to Game Center being so new, and it will be interesting to see how the experience holds up in the coming weeks as more and more games get online multiplayer. As of right now, the Game Center integration in these three titles breaths new life into the experience, and they are definitely worth checking out for the multiplayer and voice chat functionality. We'll be anxiously awaiting to see what other titles receive the Game Center online multiplayer treatment down the line.

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Austin, Texas based iPhone developer Pangea Softwarehave been making video games since their inception in the late 80's. Originally targeting the Apple IIGS, Pangea has been hopping to each new Apple platform as they're released, this time tweaking their existing iPhone games to run at the native 960×640 resolution of the iPhone 4's Retina Display. As mentioned in our first impressions post on gaming with the iPhone 4, increasing the output resolution of existing games doesn't really add to gameplay at all… But it sure does look good.

Noteworthy games that have been updated include:

Enigmo – Starting its life as a Mac game, Enigmo is a physics puzzle game that was voted Best iPhone Game at WWDC in 2008. In the game you move various objects around the game board to direct water droplets to their destination. Levels start easy and get so hard you will be desperately searching Google for the solution. (App Store)

Enigmo 2 – This sequel takes the same basic gameplay of the original and adds a third dimension to the puzzles, which makes things even more difficult. Before long, you're not only routing water droplets around, but also laser beams. Both games are worth having, although you should probably start with Enigmo before adding the complexity of moving puzzle pieces in 3D in Enigmo 2. (Review, App Store)

Warheads – Warheads is basically Missile Command combined with one of those oddly elaborate 3D fireworks screensavers. The gameplay is classic Missile Command with four directions to defend from instead of just one. The eye candy combined with the frantic camera shaking as missiles are exploding make for a pretty cool experience, especially on the iPhone 4. (Review, App Store)

Nanosaur 2 – Also starting as a Mac game, Nanosaur 2 was ported to the iPhone in late 2008. It hasn't aged very well compared to Pangea's other games, but the premise of piloting a massive dinosaur from the future who is equipped with a massive arsenal of weaponry couldn't get much more ridiculous and/or awesome. (App Store)

I'm glad to see so many iPhone 4 Retina Display updates coming along, especially this soon after the launch of the device. These are just my favorite games of theirs, they have many other iPhone and iPad games on the App Store that are worth checking out as well.

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During WWDC this week we met with Glu to get a peek at their upcoming game lineup, along with the not entirely surprising news that they're going to be shifting towards the freemium market towards the end of this year. In the meantime, they showed us four of their upcoming games, which will all be coming out in the next few months.

Escape From Nom – A physics-powered puzzle game where you have to aim a colored circle (named Alan) to get to the bottom of the water at the bottom of the screen. You can control where you drop Alan, and levels often involve either using existing or placing new gizmos in to the game world to bounce off of to avoid being eaten by the Noms, multi-colored blobs which are either stationary or moving about.

Much like Enigmo, later levels require a quite a bit of thought and manipulation of various objects to bounce Alan about. Some levels even have Alan starting out as a different color than the water, at which point you must have him bounce off an appropriately colored bumper in order to change to the correct color to complete the level.

Escape From Nom also comes with a full featured level editor which will allow you to create and share new levels. Aside from user-generated levels, the game will come with 30 pre-made levels of increasing difficulty across 3 different game worlds. Escape From Nom will be released soon, potentially even before the end of June.

Build-a-Lot 2 – This is a sequel of the original Build-a-Lot, which came out in early 2009. We liked the original in our review, and it sounds like the sequel is more of the same with additional enhancements. There are new blueprints to unlock, and a new curb appeal system that adds another level of depth to the game as curb appeal increases as a house is built closer to a playground and other desirable structures.

Tons of other parts of the game has been tweaked, and it's safe to say if you enjoyed the original you will also like the sequel. Build-a-Lot 2 is expected mid-July and Glu is also working on an iPad-optimized version of the game.

Deer Hunter African Safari – More of the same Deer Hunter action, this time set in Africa. You'll be able to do 3 different hunts in 4 separate locations and shoot exotic game like lions, zebra, kudus, elephants, and other virtual African animals begging for your bullets. Like the other Deer Hunter games, there will be DLC to purchase additional equipment and other fun hunting toys to allow you to more efficiently cleanse the land of life.

Deer Hunter African Safari will be available mid-August.

Deer Hunter 3D for iPad – The original Deer Hunter 3D is making its way to the iPad, with 16 different hunts in 4 different locations. 7 different types of animals are packed in to the game, and there are 13 different weapons to shoot them with. Everything is up-scaled to 1024×768, and the game looks just as good as you would expect on the iPad.

Deer Hunter 3D for iPad is coming in early July.

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Rock Pocket Games' latest title, The Package [99¢], hit the App Store a little more than a week ago. As soon as we saw the screenshots in iTunes, we had to give the game a try. Truthfully, The Package had been on our list of games to review since then, but every time I'd sit down to write about the game I'd end up loading it up on my iPhone and toiling away trying to solve the 20 included levels instead of actually reviewing the game.

In fact, how long this review had been in waiting should serve as a great indicator of how much I've been enjoying the game. Some of my favorite games on the App Store are similar physics puzzlers, and they all work very well on the device because they don't require any kind of quick movement, and all of them can be put down for a few moments if you need to attend to something else without really even needing to pause the game.

If you're also a fan of these kinds of physics games, the premise of The Package will instantly be familiar to you. Taking place in some kind of crazy futuristic warehouse, you must get the package from the start to the green zone at the end of the level. This goal is accomplished by positioning various items in the game world such as fans to blow the box, ramps for the box to slide up, springs for the box to bounce off of, and other things.

The 20 levels increase in difficulty quite nicely, and much like Enigmo, it didn't take me long to get stumped to the point of experimenting for an embarrassing amount of time moving the different puzzle pieces around to get the box to where it needs to go. If you're an over-achiever, there are even golden packages for you to collect in game for additional bonuses. Also, the graphics of The Package are some of the best looking I've seen from a game like this, with third-generation device enhancements that are enabled if you're playing on a device that supports them.

The controls work well, although after being spoiled by the massive touch areas of the puzzle pieces in Enigmo Deluxe for the iPad, I can't help but hope they eventually release an iPad version of the game. The Package shares similar issues with all physics games in that in once you advance to levels that require complicated positioning, grabbing and manipulating the correct pieces can get tricky, but it never caused more than a few easily fixable mistakes.

At the launch price of $3.99, The Package was a little hard to recommend as there are tons of other games with far more content and very similar gameplay available for much less. However, at its current sale price of 99¢, this should be an instant-purchase for any fan of physics puzzlers, especially if you have an iPhone 3GS or 3rd Generation iPod touch.

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Originally released in late 2008, Pangea Software's Enigmo [$1.99] is about as close as you get to a classic App Store puzzle game, even though it started its life as a Mac and PC game all the way back in 2003. The original Enigmo has won numerous awards including "Best iPhone Game" at Apple's WWDC in 2008 as well as winning the 2008 Austin GDC Independent Games Festival Showcase. In other words, Enigmo for the iPhone is great, and its sequel, Enigmo 2 [$1.99] is just as good if not better. So, it stands to reason that their iPad game, Enigmo Deluxe [$6.99] is also in line with what we've seen in the past from Pangea.

If this is the first you've heard of the Enigmo games, the basic gameplay mechanic involves placing different things in the game world to route liquid from the origin dropper to the jar of the same color. This can mean placing a platform to change the angle the liquid is falling, then placing a bumper to bounce the liquid higher, then placing a sponge to collect the liquid and drip it in to the jar.

The farther you get in to the game the more and more elaborate these puzzles become, until you eventually just get stuck and find yourself hopelessly pouring over Google search results for hints if you're anything like me. As I already mentioned, I liked the original Enigmo a lot, but levels that required tons of different items to solve almost always involved some frustration with the controls as you're always zooming in and out to accurately grab and maneuver things around the game world.

Among the other improvements of the iPad version, having the extra screen real estate to never really need to fiddle with the zoom level too much while always being able to manage the pieces in game has made playing Enigmo a lot less frustrating. Fat-fingering the wrong item and breaking your wacky Rube Goldberg machine of liquid redirection was always a little irritating, and this seems to be a thing of the past on the iPad.

Other improvements include an impressive level editor that allows you to share your creations with any other version of Enigmo via the File Sharing functionality in iTunes. These level packs are even cross-platform, so you can send your levels to a friend who has the PC version or vice versa. A number of third party level packs are already included, and if you're the kind of person who gets in to creating and trading custom created levels, I could see really getting sucked in to Enigmo Deluxe.

If you loved the iPhone version of Enigmo and see yourself getting involved with the custom level packs, Enigmo Deluxe is worth the upgrade. However, if you missed Enigmo the first time around, and enjoy challenging physics puzzles, look no further than Enigmo Deluxe for the iPad.

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Earlier today, multiple reports have revealed the early iPad App Store offerings currently sitting on Apple's servers. The iPad App Store appears live and ready for use for anyone with a device. Of course, this makes sense given the fact that Apple has likely delivered early units to reviewers ahead of the April 3rd launch.

From our perspective, we are most interested in the new iPad games that the leaks reveal. Several have already been pre-announced or previously spotted, but some of the recognizable games include:

• Flight Control HD – $4.99
• Labyrinth 2 HD – $7.99
• Real Racing HD – $9.99
• Bugdom 2 – $9.99
• Cro-Mag Rally – $9.99
• Otto Matic for iPad – $9.99
• Enigmo Deluxe – $9.99
• Igloo Games Arcade – $6.99
• Sparkle HD – $2.99

Pricing for these recognizable games are, of course, higher than their iPhone counterparts, but are likely to represent improved graphics and even added gameplay elements in many cases. $9.99 still appears to be the ceiling price for gaming even on Apple's new device.

Firemint was able to officially confirm Real Racing HD:

I still can't say much about this, but you may have seen some posts about this so I thought I'd drop in and give the official word: yes, we are working on Real Racing HD for iPad, and yes, it will be awesome

[via AppAnnie, MacRumors]

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