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Ah. Werewolves. One of the three components in the holy Hollywood trinity of monsters. They ordinarily come in two flavors: loud, ravenous and incapable of anything but wanton violence… or dark-eyed eye candy. The transmogrification-happy lupine of MacGuffin’s Curse [$3.99 / Free ], however, is neither of those.

Indie development studio Brawsome has MacGuffin’s Curse billed as a ‘comedy puzzle-adventure’, an appropriate description if there ever was one. Operating from a top-down perspective, MacGuffin’s Curse is rife with all the switch-flipping, block-moving, barrier-removing goodness that is standard of the genre and the silliness of a Terry Pratchett novel. Here, you play as the charming Lucas MacGuffin, a red-haired thief who dwells in a considerable destitution with his young child and elderly mother. He has something to say about pretty much anything and everyone, a peculiarity that may either have you rolling your eyes within the first ten minutes or chuckling away in appreciation. Take your pick. Either is applicable.

The game opens with Lucas on his latest heist. In order to pay the rent, you’re going to have to retrieve a certain amulet from the extremely lightly-guarded depths of the local museum. As you might have guessed already, one thing leads to another and you eventually find yourself bound to the cursed jewelry and gifted with the ability to transform into a powerful, red-maned werewolf whenever you choose to. No, I don’t know how this really is a curse either.

This, of course, is one of the game’s primary gimmicks. Each of your two forms has a different set of abilities and limitations. As a human, you’re capable of doing delicate things like operating doors and squeezing through windows. As a werewolf, you’ll be able to manhandle safes, blocks, enormous battery packs and dig for buried treasure. Most, if not all, of the puzzles will require you to make use of your dual set of talents.

Speaking of the puzzles, let me reassure those who have played through the lite version of one thing: they do get harder. While the game’s collection of mind-benders don’t really deviate from the standard ‘push this block here, activate that switch there’ formula, there is enough variety in the mix to keep you playing (even if you have to do it in chunks). I’m especially fond of one of the earlier ‘boss’ battles. Instead of doing the standard werewolf act where you charge headlong into your enemies and rip their hearts out, MacGuffin’s Curse will have you maneuvering from room to room as you attempt to close the distance by circumnavigating your enemy’s attempt to stall you.

Though best played by those who enjoy the idea of a combat-free Zelda, MacGuffin’s Curse is still something I would recommend to those who don’t. Well, if you enjoy the whole comedic narrative thing, at any rate. It’s true that MacGuffin’s Curse tries just a little too hard (it doesn’t so much nudge you in the ribs as it does grind them into a paste with its hypothetical elbow) but it does have heart. You see it in the details – in the way the comments change depending on the kind of skin you’re wearing, in the over-the-top characters, in how the game lets you slowly build up a half-decent apartment for Lucas’s family and the details of the setting. There’s a fair amount of side quests for you to indulge in as well, something that helps flesh out the Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere-esque undertones of the world that Brawsome constructed.

The only thing that I didn’t really like about McGuffin’s Curse is, perhaps, the controls. In order to move, you touch a finger on the screen and drag it in the direction you want Lucas to go. In order to push or pull blocks, you’ll have to use two fingers instead. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this and, for the most part, it works out decently well. Nonetheless, because of positioning, you sometimes find your fingertips blocking out vision, a phenomenon that makes me pine a little for a virtual d-pad.

Is MacGuffin’s Curse worth purchasing? Yes. Definitely. It may not extract the ‘Oh, god! This is ingenious!’ sort of reaction with its puzzles, but the relentless humor, intriguing setting, adequately-designed puzzles and faint Tim Burton vibe will make it a delicious addition to anyone’s collection of crate-puzzles.

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Jason Citron was among the very first game developers for Apple’s App Store when it launched all the way back in 2008, and most people associate him with founding the groundbreaking iOS social gaming network OpenFeint. Well, about a year ago, OpenFeint was bought by Japanese gaming giant Gree, and several months later Jason left the company to pursue a new challenge.

We’ve gotten the first word on what that new challenge is, as VentureBeat reports that Jason has announced his forming of a new gaming venture called Phoenix Guild. Right now the company consists of just Jason, but the current plan is to raise a round of funding to hire a team and get off the ground, and he thinks Phoenix Guild will be able to ship their first game sometime this year. In fact, he’s already started coding the project on his own.

For some insight into what kind of games Phoenix Guild would be interested in creating, Mr. Citron had a choice quote on the matter

“All of the gaming today is casual or mid-core. There is a huge bunch of gamers who can’t frigging stand this crap, myself among them.”

Sounds like the focus of Phoenix Guild will be towards meatier kinds of titles like those that you would find on home consoles, and given the background with OpenFeint a social aspect will also be a high priority. The studio will also be focusing development on “post-PC” devices, so tablets, smartphones, and similar devices.

We know Jason Citron is capable of great things given his previous work, and although this is just the very beginning stages we’re eager to see what will come from his new venture Phoenix Guild.

[Via VentureBeat]

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I’ll be honest, I’m wary of any games I download onto my phone these days that promise any sort of physics-based fun. I’m burned out on that scene, plain and simple. However, I do like cats, as you may know from my past reviews, and I like the idea of forcibly launching a cat out of a cannon (in safety gear, of course, folks). So I caved for Cannon Cat [ Free ], and I admit, now I’m really glad I did.

Cannon Cat has a flimsy premise, as most iPhone games do — something about skyfish being imprisoned in bubbles by a guy named the Evil Emu. I think that it’s cute fluff, but I didn’t pay it much mind before I jumped headlong into the game. We’re not here for deep stories, after all – I came here to put a cat in a cannon and rocket him across the skyline. I mean, who doesn’t want to do that?

Good news: that, my friends, is exactly what you are going to do, over and over. Cannon Cat is diced up into into two worlds, Kapalua Islands and Cedaria Reef. Apparently a third world called Stratos is coming soon as well. Each of these worlds holds roughly 40 levels to work your way through, which sounds like a lot, but if you factor in that each level takes you less than a minute to play, you could finish Cannon Cat in just a couple of hours. And I found that mildly frustrating, because I wanted to play more.

Each level contains a series of cannons, and your job is to guide Cannon Cat from one to the next, collecting the skyfish along the way. As you can imagine, this starts simple and becomes challenging with the addition of obstacles. Each cannon moves when you are inside of it, so you can choose the directions to send your cat flying in. Choosing alternate paths may mean collecting all the level’s fish, so you don’t always want to go in a straight line, as you could be missing out. You go through a ring at the end of each level to complete it.

When you finish each level you’ll be ranked on whether you got all the fish, and if you didn’t, you lose out on bonuses that would have improved your score. You also have a handful of cool powers at your disposal, such as a shield, an option to use “cannon time” (which causes slow motion), a boost that makes the skyfish bigger so they are easier to pick up along the way, and an autosave that automatically zips you back to the last cannon you were in before you failed.

These are all optional power-ups, and you can use an in-game currency called sparks to buy them. At first you’ll have some free ones, but if you use them all, you’ll need to spend some real life money to get more. It’s not at all necessary to enjoy the game, though.

I think the best way to appeal to a gamer who grew up in a time period when games were at their most challenging is to use some of the same structure in current games. It hooks us, and I admit that little touches like that really work on me. Cannon Cat is not radically unique, in fact it’s very similar to another iOS title Land-a Panda [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD)], but there’s something about the structure of it that also reminds me a bit of golden era platformers like Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog.

That’s probably because like those games, Cannon Cat is precise and easy to play, it’s fast, and it’s a lot of fun. Also, it’s free, and it looks like the developers plan to expand on it, so it’s well worth your time to grab this game and spend some leisure time sending your feline friend in search of flying fish.

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“Chariots of the Dogs,” [$4.99] the fourth episode in the Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space series is easily the best one so far. The Sam & Max series has always been tightly written and designed, but “Chariots” does two things remarkably well: it matches its narrative hook to its mechanics, and it ties the entire series together.

If nothing else, “Chariots” is remarkable for the way it brings almost all of the big questions from the first three episodes and ties them together: the Bosco and Stinky subplots are advanced, and previously off-screen bit roles come forward as major players in the series. This feels satisfying and rewarding for longtime devotees, and Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space’s episodic structure lends itself to weaving these disparate narrative threads together. Even the intro sequence feels tighter and more cinematic, suggesting a series that is maturing with each episode.

Episodes one, two, and three were generally self-contained, but “Chariots” provides the most solid narrative link in the series thus far: it picks up the immediate aftermath of “Night of the Raving Dead” [$4.99]and ends on a cliffhanger that propels the story into episode five [$4.99]

The Sam & Max series has always been, at its heart, based on inventory items, but Beyond Time and Space seems dedicated to refining and twisting that formula as much as possible: “Moai Better Blues” [$4.99] used portals to great effect; the previously mentioned “Raving Dead” included several dialogue trees and ambient aural puzzles. Without spoiling anything, “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses on time travel.

Incidentally, the time travel mechanic was first introduced in episode one, “Ice Station Santa,” [$4.99] when Sam and Max have to appease the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. (The Ghost of Christmas Future section actually foreshadows the end of “Chariots,” if you’re paying attention.)

The beauty of “Chariots” isn’t just that it’s an adventure game with a time-travel story; the time travel conceit shapes and informs every puzzle, becoming the tentpole mechanic in its own right. A lazier game would use time travel as a plot device and build a standard inventory game around it. “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses not just on matching certain items with certain solutions, but in exploring their effects through time. Like its predecessors, “Chariots” does a good job matching its story hooks with its mechanics, which makes each relatively short episode feel distinctive and full-featured.

The logic employed in “Chariots” is relatively straightforward: the Freelance Police can move forward in time to gather clues, which in turn allows them to travel backward in time to affect the future. There’s a nice gameplay loop there, and the game as a whole feels holistic and natural, each puzzle mechanic and story arc syncing perfectly.

It’s no surprise, then, that “Chariots” feels intuitive and fun throughout. Making its players feel smart has always been one of Sam & Max’s strong suits, but every episode until now has had puzzles that feel arbitrary or unfair. Generally speaking, the broad strokes of each puzzle or story arc are easy to grasp in “Chariots,” even if the step-by-step puzzle solution requires some tinkering and mental elasticity. For my money, this installment strikes the right balance of deductive reasoning and old-fashioned observation.

This is, I’m assuming, another of episodic game development’s bounties — after four games (not counting Sam & Max Save the World, the previous series of episodic Telltale games), it’s no surprise to find the writers and developers zeroing in on smart, intuitive puzzle design.

“Chariots of the Dogs”  is smoothly and tightly paced, and nothing feels misplaced or kludged together. It’s a charming, warm, and funny game, and it’s the best episode in an increasingly good series.

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We’ve been following F5 Games’ upcoming social RPG Pocket Heroes since we first saw it back at last year’s E3. The idea behind Pocket Heroes is to let players around the world build up a party online and play through an RPG-style game, taking turns asynchronously. For simplicity’s sake it’s been described as Dungeons & Dragons meets Words With Friends, which sounds like an exciting proposition.

In early April we got an update on the progress of Pocket Heroes which pegged the release date as May 10th for a price of $1.99. Well, in a new post on the developer’s website we get a bit of a good news/bad news scenario. The bad news is that Pocket Heroes won’t be hitting its intended May 10th launch date, but on the bright side the team feels confident that they will still see a release sometime during May or shortly after.

The good news is that the extra time has gone into making some significant improvements to where Pocket Heroes was previously at. First off is a huge overhaul of the UI, including getting rid of the placeholder font seen in the game’s preview trailer, which was a point of contention from some. As you can see in the following screens, the new UI is much more visually appealing while also allowing you to do more. It will also change dynamically to display the pertinent information to whatever you’re currently focused on.

Also seen in the screens above is the new chat interface in Pocket Heroes. It drives me nuts when online multiplayer games – especially turn-based ones – don’t have some sort of chat functionality. In an RPG however, discussing situations and strategizing with your party members will likely be a crucial component of success, so it’s nice to see it being handled well here.

Besides the new chat and UI work, the team has also been endlessly tweaking, balancing, and fleshing out the many details in Pocket Heroes to make sure it’s the best it can be. They sound confident that the game will be launching in May, and we look forward to checking out the full version then. Be sure to hit up our forums for even more discussion on Pocket Heroes.

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If there’s anything that could completely wreck my plans and productivity, it would be a Super Crate Box [$1.99] RPG. I’d say a quick prayer of thanks to Vlambeer for not going forward with that idea, but it’s too late. FireFruitForge and Everplay Interactive have something against letting me work in peace, I guess, because Spellsword [$0.99] is that perfect storm of quick, one-more-try gameplay and RPG mechanics I can completely lose myself in.

Spellsword isn’t a clone of Super Crate Box (thankfully—Vlambeer really could use a break), but it has a similar starting point. It’s an arena game that’s designed around rapidly collecting weapon spawns to kill baddies. But where Super Crate Box focuses tightly on that mechanic to the exclusion of everything else, Spellsword takes a more expansive road. Along that road you’re going to find levelling, loot, and a lot of new ways to play.

As a result, it’s not quite as clean as Super Crate Box’s more minimalistic approach allows. It has a few problems, and things get sloppy from time to time. I’m not saying you shouldn’t play it, though. It’s crazy-fun, and you really shouldn’t miss out.

You start out as a quippy hero with a spellsword. It’s not worth much on its own, but it can be enhanced with cards that litter the arena. Each one powers up the sword in some way—with fire, ice or poison damage, for starters—and each one also sets off some sort of effect. The ice card sends out wheels of ice, the fire card launches fireballs, and the poison card poisons every enemy on screen. And that’s just the start.

So while you can certainly run around killing things with your sword, it’s dangerous. Better to collect every card you can, and lean on those one-time effects to do the killing for you. This is where the game feels most like Super Crate Box, dodging enemies to get to the next card and never stopping to rest. Still, the differences are pretty huge.

For one thing, enemies drop rupees. In fact, the whole game is pretty much built around the rupee economy. Play well to earn more rupees, which you can use to level up your cards, your sword, and even your rupee drop rate. You can also use them to buy gear that adds to those same skills. And before you ask, no—there isn’t any IAP.

Mission mode is another big difference. Each of the three current arenas come with 20 missions. These ask you to do a bunch of different things. You might need to survive some waves, kill some baddies or collect some cards. In exchange you’re given big payouts of rupees, new cards and the occasional piece of gear.

Endless mode is more familiar, with nonstop waves of baddies until you burn through all your hearts. There are three difficulty tiers of endless mode for each arena. In them you’ll grind rupees, and you’ll also find the leaderboard competition.

When it comes to the little things, Spellsword goes the distance. The look is great, very much like Terra Noctis [$0.99], FireFruitForge’s other big title. The sound is no slouch, but it doesn’t really stand out. Love it or hate it, the real flavor rests in the hero’s quips. There’s one for every mission, and nearly ever single one is a reference to a show, game, or movie. They run the gamut from modern and obvious to old and seriously obscure. Me, I find ‘em charming.

As I mentioned, there are also some problems. The controls aren’t great, and on iPad they’re worse. There’s already a fix incoming for that—along with adding new control types, it will let you reposition the iPad controls. There’s also some clumsiness in the arena design. It’s easy to get caught on edges, or mess up platforms. There are also ways to abuse positioning and let enemies wander off to their own deaths. These things aren’t remotely dealbreakers, but they can be irritating.

Overall, though, the game is outstanding. The RPG mechanics add a whole new layer of compulsion to an already inviting sort of game. It’s not easy to call it quits, especially when there’s one more level to earn, or one more piece of gear you can almost afford. Those things make it less of a pure skill game—you’ll need to put in a bit of a grind to cap out— but they also add a bit of strategy. There is real value in carefully choosing your gear and putting your rupees to good use when leveling.

With some elbow grease and a good once over, Spellsword could easily earn a permanent spot on my iPhone. It’s really that good. And Everplay Interactive seems dedicated to hitting those heights, if the developer’s comments in our discussion thread are anything to go by. I don’t see how you could possibly go wrong here. This a game that’s fun, full-featured and ridiculously cheap, with a developer that’s working hard to keep fixes and content coming. Looks like a winner from here.

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Late last week Capcom surprised everybody by announcing an iOS port of their classic arcade fighter Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 [ $2.99 ]. In all honesty, I suspect this was a cleverly timed release to casually tie in with ‘The Avengers’ movie coming out next week, but whatever the motivation I’m not complaining. Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is one of the most beloved fighting games in history, and prior to the downloadable rerelease on XBL and PSN in 2009 it could be kind of a difficult game to play unless you owned the Dreamcast or the somewhat rare PS2 or Xbox versions.

With that said it’s fairly mind blowing then that today you can download the entire original game onto a device that fits snugly in your pocket (or to your iPad if you’d rather, since the game is Universal, though it’s extra snug trying to jam that in your pocket). The iOS version of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is really cool for what it is, basically a cheap nostalgic trip, but it’s plagued with several major problems that drag the experience down, making it feel more like a novelty rather than another solid iOS fighter.

The major sticking points in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are that it’s difficult to control compared to the other top iOS fighters, the 12 year old visuals have not aged gracefully, and the overall performance leaves a lot to be desired. However, the virtual control setup that Capcom has come up with for the game is pretty clever, and just having a classic like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 in my pocket is worth putting up with its shortcomings. It’s just a shame because with a little more care I think this port could have been a whole lot better.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 features a whopping 56 playable characters, 28 from the Marvel camp and 28 from Capcom. Only 24 are available from the start, with the rest being unlocked from an in-game store using coins earned through play, or for performing certain tasks like completing the arcade mode with different characters.

In the XBL and PSN versions of the game, all characters are unlocked from the start, but I far prefer having to unlock them on my own as it gives you a sense of progress and some goals to shoot for while playing. However, if you’re dying to download the iOS version and bust out some local Bluetooth multiplayer with a buddy (sadly there is no online) right out of the gate, then you might find it annoying to have to spend significant time earning enough coins to unlock your favorite characters. Surprisingly, there is no sort of in-app purchase option to unlock everything.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is all about 3-on-3 tag team matches where characters can be swapped in and out at will, there’s a crazy emphasis on battles in the air, and the combos and special moves are all outrageous and over the top. Unfortunately, the iOS version runs so sluggishly that much of those fun moments are turned to frustration. The framerate can be a bit choppy and the virtual controls don’t seem to respond as well as even other Capcom fighters available on the App Store. This makes pulling off elaborate combos and air battling nearly impossible.

Despite the controls being sometimes unreliable, the default controls that Capcom implemented to simplify the experience are pretty nifty. There’s just a single button each for punch and kick, then there is a special button for controlling teammates and another for special moves. Besides just tapping these special buttons, each one can also be flicked in 4 different directions in order to perform additional moves. For example you can simply tap the special move button to shoot out a hadoken (fireball), but if you flick it to the side instead you can instantly launch into a shoryuken (dragon punch).

It’s a really cool idea and when it works well it’s brilliant, but for some reason much of the time it feels like the special buttons don’t respond to many of your flicks. There is the option to go with the original arcade game controls, which means no flicking for special moves, and I found that this option is much more reliable but does require more work on your part.

The visuals in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are also a pretty big letdown. I expect a 12 year old game to look dated, but for some reason the iOS version looks worse than any previous version. Sprites are noticeably jagged and pixelated, something that is accentuated on the iPad’s bigger screen. On the bright side, the fully 3D animated backgrounds are intact here and actually look quite good, especially when you consider the boring static backgrounds used in Street Fighter IV Volt on iOS.

So, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 has a lot of issues, but nothing that renders the game completely unplayable. The controls work well enough but are far from as good as other iOS fighters, and definitely not good enough to fully pull off some of the game’s more complicated techniques. If you’re a fan of the game on other platforms and can accept the problems it has on iOS for the sake of having it in your pocket, then I think it’s definitely worth the $3 price of admission (or $5 when the intro sale ends). Personally, I’m having a ton of fun playing through the game again, even with the inherent frustrations.

If you don’t have any particular affinity for the original game but are just looking for a new iOS fighter, then Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is a tougher sell. The controls are passable, but nowhere near the likes of Street Fighter IV Volt [ $6.99 ], King of Fighters-i [ $6.99 ], or SoulCalibur [ $11.99 ] on iOS. It’s frustrating because those examples prove that Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 could have been such a better port, and it may be in the future after some updating, but if nostalgia isn’t playing a big role in your desire for having this game on iPhone then I’d suggest waiting to see how things shake out down the line.

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I like to think that Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead is an exploration of character and violence more than it is some grim zombie fairy tale. Its cast is as beastly as its undead. Action is sudden, terrifying, and distressing. Decisions are made in bursts of lust and blood, greed and anger, brains and preservation. This miasma is revealing: we’re not good people. This makes for interesting reading, as you get to glimpse into what makes us forget who we want to be, and become what we actually are.

The first episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead plays like a celebration of the comic and its themes. It adheres to the Kirkman’s vision, showcasing the series’ violence and grit, choice and character. You’ll make painful decisions, interact with broken people, and participate in some of the most brutal, real-world action that’s ever been shown in a video game. In under an hour of play with a Mac build of the title, I have become one of The Walking Dead’s characters: a liar and a monster in the face of danger.

You’ll play through a vehicle named Lee, a loosely defined character with a mysterious history and an innocence about him. The opening takes place right before the world goes to hell. Lee is in the back of a police car, handcuffed, talking to the officer driving when, suddenly, the officer strikes a walker with his vehicle. The crash is a stomach-churning, and the action after is intense. Lee survives, but finds himself in a world where the dead shamble and the living sprint.

Lee goes on to meet a few characters, including a little girl who becomes something of a companion. As you progress, you’ll make choices that each character will “remember,” perhaps coloring the events in later episodes as you jump in and out of alliances with others, react calmly or violently, or lie. Thus far, I don’t have a great sense of how anything that I’m saying or doing will play out, and that’s perhaps The Walking Dead’s biggest upcoming challenge: these choices need to feel meaningful one way or another.

Mechanically, the game controls like a cross between Jurassic Park and Heavy Rain: you manually move Lee in very specific environments, searching for items and clues that will inevitably lead you to the next story point. The Walking Dead doesn’t rely on puzzles as a bridge. Instead, it leverages Lee’s confusion and desire: you find things for people or for Lee. Action segments challenge you to react fast, as you line up reticules or tap buttons to complete QTEs. The dialogue system, on the other hand, presents multiple flavors of response and a timer forces you to make snap judgements and decisions.

I appreciate the intensity of the writing. The Walking Dead invites you to explore a grim and violent world spotted with people who actually feel like people and react in extreme ways under the pressure of survival. Being able to lie to cover things up or get an “in” with a group of better equipped survivors, or save one person over another are the game’s strongest points of narrative design. I’ve been swaying between unnerved or moved as I progress, and this emotional connection is what appeals to me the most about the game as a whole.

We don’t know how the iPad (or iPhone) version of The Walking Dead will control, though the expectation is that it’ll work similarly to how Jurassic Park did with its basic and functional touch, tap, and swipe controls. We’re also not so sure when we’ll see this episode on our devices of choice. Rumor has it that the iOS versions have been delayed beyond its planned May launch. We’re checking on that.

Regardless, you’ll want to keep up with its progress. Provided Telltale will continue is trend of launching really, actually good ports of its games on iOS post-Jurassic Park, this is something I feel like could be required play material.

All of the assets in this article are from the PC, Mac, Xbox Live Arcade, or PSN version of the game. If it means anything to you, we played the Mac version with medium settings and it still looked fantastic. We expect this level of quality, at least, on the new iPad.

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Eleven new sneak-tastic levels have been added to Spy Mouse [$.99 / $2.99] courtesy a content update, which also adds several new obstacles, new power-ups, a new item store, and a new breed of foe called the Jungle Cat. All of these news elements are being housed in a volcano-themed world that currently takes 150 points to unlock.

One note on the Jungle Cat: it uses poison darts. We’re not exactly sure how a tribal poison-slinging variety of jungle cat is able to even function in Spy Mouse’s new Volcano world, but we should probably pull over the Scrutiny Bus before we end up hurting ourselves. This is a game that revolves around a mouse who is also a spy, after all. Screens below!

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It looks like today is the day of really good updates for really good games that we really like a lot. Really? Yes, really. We were just treated to an update for our Game of the Year 2011 runner-up Anomaly Warzone Earth [ $1.99 ] that added support for the new iPad, and there was plenty of rejoicing.

Now, the rejoicing gets cranked up to 11 as our actual Game of the Year 2011, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP [ $4.99 ], has been given a similar treatment, bringing the visuals up to par for the beautiful Retina Display of the new iPad.

Sword & Sworcery has been on fire as of late, with a PC version of the game hitting Steam last week and then taking home no less than 5 awards against some stiff competition in the Canadian Video Game Awards show this past weekend. All this comes just about a month after the 1 year anniversary of the game’s release.

To celebrate the update, the developers have posted on their blog this awesome Sworcery wallpaper made specifically in high resolution for the new iPad (click for full size version).

If you’ve accidentally had your head buried in the sand for the past year and have no idea what Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is all about, be sure and read our full review of the game for the skinny. It’s one of the most imaginative and beautiful point and click adventure games around, and the soundtrack by Jim Guthrie is absolutely phenomenal.

It’s an essential experience for iOS gamers, and with today’s new update it’s the most gorgeous the game has ever looked. And much like Anomaly, if you aren’t an iPad owner but want to get in on the fun, you can check out the iPhone/iPod touch only version Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP Micro [ $2.99 ]

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