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Yesterday, the Mac and iOS worlds were surprised by the release of The Heist [$0.99], a puzzle game by tap tap tap that promotes the team's MacHeist bundles of discounted software goodies. After a few moments of panic while people worried that MacHeist had given up on its Mac bundles and moved on to iOS giveaways (they haven't, a new MacHeist bundle is still coming), I started to dig into the game.

What I found is a fun puzzle game that can be approached in two different ways. As we mentioned in our coverage of the announcement, The Heist includes a special PC/Mac software giveaway from MacHeist. You can certainly look at it as a cheap promotional game with a free reward at the end. And that's a selling point, but it's really not the best way to approach this game. The merits of the reward (which I'd rather not spoil, though I'm sure it will be discussed in the comments) are being debated, with some folks disappointed it isn't cooler/newer/more valuable. To this I say that The Heist isn't just about the destination; the journey is plenty of fun too.

So instead of approaching this game as if it's a loot pinata and you're the one holding the big stick, consider picking it up for the puzzle game that surrounds the gimmick. I wasn't expecting much; call me cynical, but promotional games often fall a little flat. So I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that The Heist is slick, clever and challenging. MacHeist has set up a few Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) to promote their bundles in the past, and this game takes brings in a couple unique features that I'd love to see brought to bear in a serious, large-scale iOS ARG. Those aside, a simple story sets you on the task of penetrating the vault that contains your reward. To do so, you'll first need to complete a series of puzzles.

There are four puzzle types in The Heist. None of them are completely original, but they're all nicely done. The first is a sliding block puzzle that asks you to extract a microchip. Slide the blocks back and forth in two dimensions to free it. The second is a puzzle that's very reminiscent of Sudoku, but with abstract symbols in place of numbers and a less uniform grid design. The third is a modern take on Sokoban, a classic game that involves pushing boxes around a maze. The final puzzle type is a simple sliding puzzle – a grid with one empty space that you rearrange into a complete image.

Each category has 15 individual puzzles of increasing difficulty. Your success will depend a lot on your aptitude with each puzzle type. To unlock the vault, you'll need to complete about 60% of the total puzzles, and they have to be well-divided between each category. I found many of the higher-end puzzles quite difficult, but enough experimentation will get you through each of them eventually.

All of the puzzles in The Heist are controlled with taps, but those controls aren't perfect. In the box-pushing puzzles, I grew increasingly frustrated with imprecision as my little pusher robot wandered back and forth to either side of the box I was trying to get him to push. And I would love some way to mark a tile that is definitely correct in the Sudoku-style puzzles. But by and large, everything plays quite well. The game also looks good, with a nicely designed vault-cracking theme for each puzzle -  although I'm not quite sure how the zen garden stylings of the Sudoko-like puzzles relate to cracking vaults. Innovative security measure, maybe?

With 60 puzzles total, The Heist offers a good amount of game for your buck. There are also 19 Game Center achievements to unlock. Some you'll pick up in the ordinary course of the game, some require a completionist streak, and some are just for fun. I'm hoping to see more from this game, or from tap tap tap in the same theme. While the reward for playing The Heist isn't to everyone's taste, it's pretty cool to be given the chance to play a good game and get something extra out of it. If MacHeist wants to keep us thinking about its bundles with regular content updates and new rewards to be earned, I'd certainly be pleased.

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Drop whatever you’re doing and head over to the App Store to download Super Stickman Golf [Link] which is currently free. Super Stickman Golf is a physics puzzle game wrapped in the veil of a golfing game. Gameplay involves choosing the trajectory of each shot as try to land your ball in the hole in a minimum amount of tries. With 29 nine-hole courses to play and plenty of ball types that grant special abilities, Super Stickman Golf is one of the most robust, challenging, and fun experiences in the App Store.

Even better than the single-player offering in Super Stickman Golf is the fantastic real-time online multiplayer that was added to the game this past April. We covered this new online mode pretty extensively, and found it to be insane amounts of fun. The goal is to be the first to land your ball in the cup, and since up to 4 players can play at once you get to see your opponents efforts as you play. Things get frantic as you try to get your ball in the cup with everybody else breathing down your neck.

With the game going free, the online component is only bound to get even better as more people are playing. It’s never really been an issue finding a match anyway, but it should be easier to get full 4 player random matches with an increase in the player pool.

As an interesting aside, about 30 editors from various gaming publications have gathered for pre-E3 events down in Los Angeles, and Super Stickman Golf has been the subject of furious multiplayer battles amongst them. I can’t even count all of the tweets I’ve seen from people at these events who are loving Super Stickman Golf, and I'd expect we'll hear more about the game during coverage of E3 next month. At any rate, it's pretty cool to see an iOS title become the talk of the town at what is the biggest event in the entire game industry.

Be sure to grab Super Stickman Golf while it’s free, as it’s an easy recommendation at its regular $2.99 price point and is a total no-brainer for free.

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Say, have you heard about this whole “planking” business? I’ve just become aware of it in the past few weeks myself, but planking is the latest ridiculous thing that is sweeping the internet. It involves lying face down on an object, stiff as a board with your arms at your sides, like a plank, and then being photographed in the act. The stranger the location you perform your plank, the better. For example here is some folks planking in a tree, or some Apple employees planking inside of an Apple Retail store. But be careful, you don’t want to end up like the man who fell to his death planking on a seventh story balcony railing.

So yeah, planking. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I totally don’t see the appeal. Thousands of other people do see the appeal, however, and if you yourself are a planker you’ll soon be able to get your plank on while on the go in the upcoming game Plank’d. Not being a fan of the whole planking phenomenon, I wasn’t immediately interested in having a game version. But after actually trying the game, I’ve found that it’s completely absurd and actually a ton of fun.

You can try out the game for yourself on the Plank’d website for free, just make sure you have the Unity browser plug-in installed. Basically, you get to control one of three characters using an awkward physics system as you try to lie flat on practically any object you can see. This includes cars, street signs, mail boxes, old ladies, and more. You earn points based on how well you hold your plank, and can string multiple planks together for combos. It’s the sort of thing that’s so strange that I can’t help but like it.

Plank’d is only available as a web version currently, but an iOS version is coming “very soon” according to developer N3V Games. There’s a thread in our forums for discussing Plank’d, and we’ll keep an eye out for this one to hit the App Store soon.

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Last year, ThinkGeek may have outdone themselves on April Fools' day by announcing the iCade, a miniature, upright arcade cabinet complete with joystick, buttons, and a coin slot. You just slip your iPad into it and — wham — it's game time! It was well done joke, but it got a huge response from readers and that got the awesome folks at ThinkGeek thinking. And before long, we heard the epic news that the net's best geek-toy vendor was teaming up with ION Audio to bring that little box of goodness to market — for real — and with Atari as a games partner. (Like they did with their 2007 8-bit Tie. Those guys are unstoppable.)

Yesterday, after leaping to pre-order and waiting a long and anxious month, the iCade was delivered unto my door. Readers that follow us on Twitter might have seen the informal and rapid unboxing and assembly photos I took along my hopeful journey to arcade bliss. So, now that I've spent some real time with the unit — was it worth the wait?

The iCade comes packaged unassembled. The box contains the main control unit, two side panels, a back panel, a handy flip-up top panel with instructions printed on the inside face, a lovely red joystick knob, screws, batteries, and a set of instructions. Getting the unit together with the help of the illustrated assembly sheet is about 5 to 10 minutes' work. Once assembled, the first thing you'll notice is that the iCade is heaver than you might have imagined. The unit's panels appear to be vinyl-coated particle board, which accounts for much of the weight. The control unit is housed in a plastic shell and the sides of the cabinet are nicely illustrated. The assembled cabinet has a very solid feel with an impressive overall fit and finish. The weight of the unit combined with four rubber foot pads keep it from budging while the joystick and buttons are being manhandled.

Speaking of the joystick and buttons, I'm happy to report that it's a quality situation going on at the control deck. The buttons — all eight of them — feel exactly like those that you'd find on an old Defender cabinet. The stick feels rugged and substantial, if somewhat less "stiff" than some you might find in an arcade. It has substantial directional travel and issues a tactile "click" with each movement, sounding quite like the old Epyx 500XJ that some of you may have used in the past. I might have preferred if the actual control panel were also coated particle board to give a more textured feel, but the plastic shell surface does the job.

Yes, I mentioned batteries. The iCade's control unit interfaces with the iPad wirelessly, via Bluetooth, and so power is required. Two AA batteries come with, and the light-up "coin slot" on the front of the cabinet flashes when the batteries are low. There is an AC adapter jack built into the unit that can be used with a power adapter sold by ION, if changing batteries sounds like a nuisance. (I've not had the unit in my hands long enough to speak of battery life, unfortunately.) There's no power switch; after the initial Bluetooth pairing process, any stick movement will wake both the iCade and the iPad, and after a period of inactivity, the iCade's control system will go into sleep mode awaiting the next tug. I wish the iCade did sport a power switch, though, as it presents itself to the iPad as a Bluetooth keyboard, and so when it's awake and paired with the iPad, any attempt to do text entry on the unit in the vicinity of the iCade results in no onscreen keyboard. You need to disconnect the iCade in Settings to break free, which is a nuisance.

Ok, we're six paragraphs in and no mention of the games — how does it play?! Glad you asked.

When ThinkGeek announced the iCade, they mentioned that Atari was partnering, to provide support for the device in "a huge suite" of classic games. When the excellent Atari's Greatest Hits [App Store] landed, featuring up to 100 games, we assumed that this was the iCade's magic bullet app — and we were right. Nearly every game in the collection supports the iCade's controls, without even having to update the app. (Sentinel for the 2600, for example, does not, as it's a "light gun" game with a virtual tap screen area.) A control legend sheet comes with the iCade that shows how the various arcade and 2600 titles in Atari's collection map out on the unit's eight buttons.

I found tearing through these classic games on the iCade to be everything I'd hoped it to be. On the whole, it's just an awesome experience. Holding the stick in your hand, hearing the switches click open and shut, and mashing the fire buttons is absolutely the way these classic games were meant to be played. A proper stick in your hand beats a virtual D-pad every time.

But Atari's Greatest Hits implements many other control systems as well. There's the "roller" used in Tempest. The trackball found in Centipede and Missile Command. The "thrust rotation thing" used in Asteroids. For almost all of these games, I prefer the tactile experience that the iCade provides over the onscreen controls. The only exceptions might be certain virtual trackball-based games where the "momentum" of the virtual ball feels pretty right. Centipede and Millipede are good examples of this. Of course, you're still mashing a virtual button which doesn't compare to the real thing. (And yes, it is possible to lay the iPad down on the table and go "half and half" on the onscreen and iCade button controls — if you're flexible.)

Some of the control configurations are pretty interesting. As can be seen in the video above, Black Widow is a dual stick game that utilizes the iCade's joystick for movement and an inverted-T arrangement of buttons for aiming / firing. It sounds quite obscure, but works well.

The iCade has obviously been designed with a portrait orientation of the iPad in mind. And most of the games in the Atari collection are so oriented. To setup for these games you just flip up the cabinet lid and set the ipad down in a dock-like stand that has a hole in the bottom for a charging cable. A few of the Atari titles are landscape, however, and for these the iPad can be removed from the portrait area and placed in a groove that runs the width of the control deck, leaning it back against the angled front edge of the side panels. The landscape arrangement does look a bit precarious, but testing the balance of the iPad so fitted, I've no concerns of it tipping out. The whole thing just looks more tidy with the iPad in a portrait arrangement, which has the added bonus of significantly amplifying the volume of the fairly boxed-in iPad, thanks to audio reflection.

iOS devices with their multitouch displays, accelerometers, and gyroscopes have brought a wonderful array of fresh and innovative games to the world. But some games just want a joystick and proper buttons. The iCade delivers all that, and with an epic dose of retro arcade styling. And with an API on the way to allow other game developers to jump on board (Manomio has already confirmed upcoming support for C64), the goodness here is just going to grow.

As far as I'm concerned, the iCade (along with Atari's Greatest Hits [App Store]) is an absolute must-have iPad accessory for the serious retro gamer.

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In late April, we took a look at Prose With Bros [$1.99 / Free] and were totally impressed by the incredibly unique idea behind the game. Evil Laugh Games successfully turned magnetic poetry into an asynchronous online multiplayer game, complete with players judging the best phrases put together by players.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side of the fence you're on, the game quickly turned into non-stop sexual euphemisms. Initially, they were amusing, but quickly grew fairly tiring for me as everyone I played with seemed to attempt to string together nonsensical nastiness. Will an injection of 300 new words to the game solve this problem? It's hard to say, but it seems worth updating regardless.

And hey, if weird sexual euphemisms with anonymous strangers on the Internet is your cup of tea, you just got 300 new pieces of innuendo ammo!

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If you're not a Mac user, you likely have never heard of MacHeist, which is really too bad because it's one of the coolest ways to get a bucket full of software on the cheap. The gist of the whole MacHeist promotion is somewhat similar to the various Humble Indie Bundles or Steam bundles, but with a unique twist involving all sorts of puzzles, generally set in a high tech almost hacker-ish safe cracking theme. Like most bundles, there's usually one or two really awesome pieces of software that make it totally worthwhile, then a handful of other stuff that you've never heard of that actually turns out to be pretty useful.

The Heist [99¢] is MacHeist's first foray into the App Store. This 99¢ game comes with 60 different puzzles to solve amongst four different types of puzzles. These puzzles all involve familiar mechanics, with three hinging on sliding blocks around in different ways and a fourth that's a strangely abstract version of sudoku. Solving the puzzles disarms a vault's defense system, allowing you to get to the prize inside.

But what's the prize? Well, since the game came out mere moments ago I haven't had a chance to completely beat it yet. However, I've been told that players who successfully complete the game will be rewarded with a Steam code for a PC/Mac game with a value substantially higher than the 99¢ purchase price of The Heist. We'll have a full review up shortly, but in the meantime, this seems like a ridiculously cool idea for a game. Just the included puzzles easily seem worth the price, and the promise of an actual prize with real-world value on it rewarded for completing the game is just icing on the cake.

Also, I'm not about to spoil it, but The Heist comes with a really cool feature to add some immersion into the game that I can't believe got past the Apple approval process. You'll know what I'm talking about when it happens.

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Yesterday, we asked what was up with Knights: Spiral Island. It was a promising FPS headed to PC with potential spin-offs set to hit handheld devices like, say, the iPhone and iPod Touch. Game creator Playground State had attempted to fund the development of Spiral Islands via the might of Kickstarter's Internet crowd sourcing, but when the studio failed to gather the capital it desired, we thought the project was in trouble.

I’m still not sure about how well the studio fares post-funding failure, but I do know this: an iOS spin-off title based in the Knights universe is still in the works right now. It’s just a week old, yet the final build projected to hit in about five weeks. It'll be using the UDK.

“… as of the past [seven] days, we have been developing an iOS-specific version of the game Knights called Jump Knight Missions,” studio co-founder and lead artist Barry Collins confirmed to us via an e-mail response to our original inquiry about the project.

Collins shot us a slice of the Jump Knight Missions design document. Jump Knight is an objective-based FPS that combines conventional genre action to “touch tasks,” a phrase that describes the little things you’ll be doing when you’re not killing dudes or exploring the world.

According to the document, about half the game will be composed of these tasks ranging from ‘defuse the mine,’ to ‘hand food to the soldier,’ to “give a high-five” to a soldier who “killed 20 zombies and saved 30 women and children.” The other half is action.

You’ll get points for accomplishing these minor objectives and even more if you can do it without flaw or within a set time limit. Each Mission will have around ten of these tasks, with the first and second missions sharing over that amount.

I’m told that a lot of progress has been made within this super short time frame. I get the sense that the first two missions are very close, or already, content complete. And here’s the cool thing about them: they’ll be set in totally different places, which makes me think that the team isn’t ready to drop the bite-sized, one-style-or-place-per-content-chunk idea that made Spiral Islands so appealing in the first place.

Considering that the project is a mere week old, I wouldn’t be surprised if anything that you’ve read changes in the coming days before final release. We’ll be keeping in contact and watching development from our desk chairs, though, so stay tuned.

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Developer HotGen Ltd is getting set to release a new action puzzle game into the App Store called To-Fu: The Trials of Chi. In it, you play as a little cube of tofu that can stretch and get flung across the screen. You can stick to certain surfaces and bounce off of others, and you’ll use this to make your way to the end of the 100 included levels in the game. To-Fu: The Trials of Chi is a game that is best explained by its trailer:

There is something about a piece of tofu doing kung fu that totally brings a smile to my face, and the visuals in To-Fu look really charming. The stretching and flinging mechanic looks like a nice fit for the touch screen as well. Of course, it remains to be seen how well the game plays, but we’ll be finding that out very soon as To-Fu: The Trials of Chi is set to launch this Thursday at an introductory price of 99¢. It will be available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and have support for Retina Display devices. Game Center support will follow shortly in an update.

We’ll be taking a look at To-Fu: The Trials of Chi when it releases, and in the meantime you can check out the upcoming thread in our forums for game discussion.

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Here at TouchArcade, we are not shy about our love of cats. That’s what makes the upcoming Techno Kitten Adventure so exciting – it features not just a cat, but a kitten, and that kitten is wearing a jetpack. Along with the jetpack kitten are other amazing things like rainbows, unicorns, and techno music. Indeed, Techno Kitten Adventure contains more ironically cool internet memes than you can shake a stick at.

Techno Kitten Adventure has been available as an Xbox Live Indie title since last year, and now developer Elite Gudz is bringing an improved version to the App Store. Gameplay is similar to the many iCopter games that have been released, which you can see in the following teaser trailer. Unfortunately, the man in the cat suit is not representative of in-game graphics:

So, as I mentioned, the version of Techno Kitten Adventure that is coming to iOS is an improved version of the current game. Basically what you see in the trailer isn't what you'll be playing on your device, but I just couldn't resist posting that video. Those MS Paint-style graphics might have a certain campy charm, but the screens of the updated version available on the Techno Kitten Adventure Facebook page show much more pleasing visuals.

If you look closely, you'll notice such stellar additions as dolphins wearing top hats, a pterodactyl with a bow tie, a flame shark, and a snowman in Hell. If those things don't get you excited, then I just don't know what will. This revamped version of Techno Kitten Adventure is set to hit the App Store on June 7th. If you like cats, unicorns, rainbows, or any other matter of silliness, then it’s one you’ll want to keep an eye out for. We’ll take another look at Techno Kitten Adventure when it’s released.

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The iCade is here. It started as an April Fools joke and became a reality. We got ours this evening and wanted to share a few unboxing photos. Its Bluetooth controls work right out of the box with all 100 games in Atari's Greatest Hits [App Store] and so far it's been a blast to play with.

We'll post our full review of the system tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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