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It's amazing to see the success of Doodle Jump [99¢], especially when you consider the meager beginnings of Lima Sky, which essentially is little more than two brothers building simple games for the iPhone. Igor and Marko Pusenjak announced this afternoon that since its release, the game has been downloaded over 5 million times, which they believe is a first on the App Store.

Since its initial release, Doodle Jump has become somewhat of a pop culture phenomenon. It's been mentioned on the show Big Bang Theory, spoofed on the Jimmy Fallon Show, and the doodler himself has even been spotted on stage with Lady Gaga.

Doodle Jump like so many other games built in one or two man teams perfectly embodies the indie spirit of the App Store. It's hard to say what really made Doodle Jump take off like it has, but it's unreal to think that the $99 a year Lima Sky pays for their iPhone SDK license has given them access to their pool of 5 million customers, and even more remarkable to think that this is barely 5% market penetration, per the "over 100 million devices" figure Steve Jobs quoted in his latest keynote address.

The Pusenjak brothers seem to be planning to keep the regular updates coming, with an underwater Doodle Jump theme in the works. After winning an Apple Design Award this year at WWDC, I'm confident that Lima Sky will keep the updates rolling for some time to come. Either way, it's no secret that we love Doodle Jump around here. If you haven't yet, give episode #10 of our podcast a listen, we interviewed Igor regarding the game and his company a few million downloads ago.

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WWDC 2010 wrapped up this past week, and we have almost recovered from the activities.

Of course, the big Apple announcements that were made last week included the announcement of iPhone 4 as well as details of the iOS 4 launch. For gamers, the new iPhone 4 represents a few notable changes.

A much higher resolution display (640×960) and faster A4 processor should be able to deliver a much better experience — for games that bother to take advantage of it. Also included in the iPhone 4 is a new gyroscope that promises much more accurate spacial positioning. While a combination of compass and accelerometer controls have been able to provide similar data in the past, I've been told that the gyroscope input is a significant improvement. It also should be able to handle extreme positions — such as laying in bed while playing a tilt-game.

But, if experience has taught us anything, the new features won't become mainstream for some time. The biggest iOS 4 feature that the rest of us should be waiting for is Game Center – Apple's leaderboard/acheivements system. Apple was talking about Game Center at WWDC, but only behind closed doors to developers. Apple had originally announced the release of Game Center for "this fall" and hasn't publicly revised that timeframe yet.

Prominent iPhone developers, of course, were on the scene. Pictured above are Igor Pusenjak of Lima Sky (left) and Alexandra Peters of Firemint (right) during the TouchArcade developer mixer. Both companies were honored during Apple's WWDC 2010 Design Awards for Doodle Jump (Limasky), Flight Control (Firemint) and Real Racing (Firemint).

Limasky is working on an iPad version of Doodle Jump while Firemint is working on brand new games. Neither company was ready to talk about details, however. Korean developer Gamevil mentioned that they were hard at work on Hybrid 2, but weren't yet ready to release screenshots or video just yet. We did manage to talk to a number of other developers throughout the week and posted articles on their upcoming games. A few more WWDC stories may still trickle in over the next few days as we prepare for E3.

E3 kicks off on June 15th and TouchArcade will be there. Based on early info, the iPhone's presence at E3 has increased dramatically from last year. We expect announcements/demos from a number of major companies including Square Enix, EA, and SEGA.

Developers looking to meet up with TouchArcade should email us for details.

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Gamelab, creators of Roswell Fighter [$.99 / Free / $1.99 HD] and Probably Nuts [$.99], have released their newest game yesterday. Published by Chillingo, Pirate's Treasure [$1.99], is a 3D dual-stick shooting adventure game.

Pirate's Treasure is a game similar to Minigore [$.99] with two on-screen joysticks to control the game. The right controls where you shoot and the left handles your movement. Unlike Minigore, however, Pirate's Treasure has a campaign mode that sends you on a quest to recover your gold. The game has over 50 stages, each with different missions to unlock the next.

In campaign mode, you must defeat each stage by completing a certain goal to receive a key to unlock the next level. For example, staying alive for 40 seconds or killing 20 monsters will unlock the next stage. These missions get progressively harder as you get farther in the game. As you collect more keys, you are able to access different areas of the island and play in different themed environments.

You also get gold coins from beating stages that you can use at the shop to upgrade your character. By purchasing upgrades you are able to do better as the levels get harder, advancing you through the game. You can upgrade attributes such as your fire rate, movement speed, chance of getting a flame thrower, and increasing your special ability.

There is also an endless survival stage to see how long you can last and compete on the online leader boards. Be sure to upgrade your character before entering this stage though, as the enemies are much tougher. It's better to play through the campaign some before trying to compete in this stage. Chillingo's Crystal social gaming network is used in Pirate's Treasure to track your high scores in survival mode and award achievements for tasks completed throughout the game.

The campaign mode certainly sets this game apart from most other dual-stick shooters, which tend to be just endless survival games. Upgrading your character along the way and having different missions for each stage makes Pirate's Treasure a fun and intriguing game that is said to have over 6 hours of gameplay. If you were a fan of Minigore or Guerilla Bob, you should definitely check out Pirate's Treasure. The game is being extensively discussed in our forums with some people having crashing issues.

App Store Link: Pirate's Treasure, $1.99

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At GDC 2010, one of the games we got a secret sneak peek of was Imangi's upcoming dual stick shooter Max Adventure. Imangi is finally ready to start revealing some details about their most ambitious project to date.

While Max Adventure is yet another dual stick shooter, Imangi's Natalia Luckyanova promises it brings more to the table. She writes, "There will be plenty of the action-packed survival shooting that you expect from a dual stick shooter. But unlike other dual stick shooters, Max Adventure will also have open exploration in non-linear levels, diverse missions, puzzle elements, and story-driven progression."

They've released this epic trailer which shows some gameplay towards the end:

We played an early build of the game at GDC and were pleased to find it capture great controls with a fluid feel. This smooth dual-stick "feel" is something that games like MiniGore have gotten so right while games like Garters & Ghouls have gotten so wrong. Max Adventure is targeted for release at the end of summer.

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The remarkably popular Doodle Jump [99¢] is officially coming to the iPad, according to Lima Sky's Igor Pusenjak. They've actually been hard at work on the iPad version since they first got their hands on the devices, but instead of simply rushing a high resolution version of the same game to the App Store, the Pusenjak brothers are experimenting with all kinds of different graphics sizes, screen orientations, and features for a truly great Doodle Jump iPad experience.

In other news, Doodle Jump has been downloaded over 4,000,000 times so far, easily making it one among the very best selling games on the App Store. Lima Sky also has updates planned over the next three months to add even more awesome stuff to the game.

If you're somehow unfamiliar with Doodle Jump, you simply must check it out. Doodle Jump is an extremely simple tilt-controlled jumping game that is both easy enough to be fun for casual players in the early game, and challenging enough to allow for a hardcore ceiling of online high scores that reach in to the millions.

App Store Link: Doodle Jump, 99¢

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Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Vertigo Rogue [App Store] is a helicopter combat game with a huge 3D city and missions that are reminiscent of the Grand Theft Auto games. While not as highly detailed or in-depth as GTA, the lively city, impressive graphics, and brilliant controls makes for a highly entertaining game that stands out as being extremely impressive coming from an indie developer.

The story goes like this. As the protagonist, you are a mercenary helicopter pilot that has landed himself in jail. You've saved up enough money to give up this sordid life, and settle down quietly with your five year old daughter as soon as you're released. Unfortunately, your cellmate knows your background, and has a different plan for you. He has kidnapped your daughter and, in order to get her back safely, you'll have to be a pilot for his mafia family, your first mission being to help him break out of prison and get to safety.

The story is told via text cutscenes before missions, and pressing on the screen fast forwards them. It's a slightly cliché plot, but it can also largely be ignored if you choose. Vertigo Rogue has 37 different missions to complete, each one advancing the plot a bit more. The missions themselves are very GTA-like, although most boil down to finding and destroying certain people or vehicles (including tanks and fighter aircraft) from your eye-in-the-sky vantage. A handy waypoint system points you in the direction of helpful powerups like health, fuel and weapons, or towards the target(s) you must take out. While the missions get a little repetitious, it doesn't really matter as they merely serve as a means for flying around a city and blowing stuff up, which is a great time and truly satisfying.

As mentioned, the control scheme for maneuvering your helicopter is excellent. It's a dual analog setup and functions very similar to controlling a tank. Both sticks forward moves you forward, moving just one stick rotates you, and moving both either left or right at the same time allows you to strafe. Pulling the sticks apart from each other raises you into the air, while pushing them together lowers you towards the ground. A tap on the left stick switches weapons, a tap on the right fires. It's fairly simple and just makes sense. After a slight learning curve you will find you have incredible control over your copter.

All this would be pointless however if there wasn't somewhere interesting to fly to. Thankfully, this isn't a problem as Vertigo Rogue features a fairly lively and expansive 3D city to explore. Everything is rendered beautifully below as you fly high above, and at any time you can smoothly descend for a closer look. There's always a decent amount of cars and pedestrians going about their everyday business on the ground below, and trees sway from the downforce of your propeller as you get close to them. The detail isn't staggering, but the city definitely feels alive and looks gorgeous. What's most incredible is that everything is rendered so smoothly while the game runs at such a solid framerate. There's even a stereoscopic 3D mode, which causes the game to run much slower on older hardware, but works as advertised and is fun to check out if you have a pair of red/cyan glasses laying around.

I can't think of the last time I've had this much fun playing a game I've never heard of. What's even more impressive is that, according to the credits, the entire game was developed by just one person. If helicopter combat in a large open world sounds like something that interests you, give BrainPhant's Vertigo Rogue a look.

App Store Link: Vertigo Rogue, $4.99

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It seems that Mountain Sheep just can't catch a break with Minigore [App Store]. According to their blog, they are suggesting users skip the 3.7 update, as both forum members and iTunes reviews are reporting data loss upon updating.

If you value your Minigore game data, it's best to hold off until an updated version hits the App Store. Since unlocking everything in the game can take weeks, if you know anyone who is a Minigore addict, it might not be a bad idea to tip them off about the 3.7 issues as well.

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On Saturday, Apple released their latest device that runs iPhone OS — the iPad. The iPad joins the iPhone and iPod Touch in Apple's lineup of mobile touch-screen devices. As expected, the first thing that many iPhone/iPod Touch developers have ported their games over to the new device to take advantage of the higher resolution graphics and larger screen size of the device. For brand new iPad device owners, the question becomes — is there any reason to upgrade my existing game to the iPad-specific "HD" versions.

Eli, Blake and I have been trying out nearly all of the HD versions of existing iPhone games over the weekend to see how they fared on the iPad. Overall, I'd say we were very impressed with iPad gaming as an experience. The larger screen size really does add a lot of immersion to practically every game we've tried. Enough that if you are an iPad owner, as a rule, you are going to want to buy the HD version of new games going forward. While pixel-doubling of existing games works reasonably well, they simply don't live up to the experience of playing a native full-resolution version. Beyond the obvious graphical improvements, in many instances, developers have made adjustments to on-screen controls to accommodate usage patterns on the iPad.

For those iPad owners who already have an extensive backlog of iPhone/iPod Touch games, however, the upgrade decisions tend to be more difficult. Is it worth spending money on upgraded versions of your favorite iPhone games? That's what we're hoping to answer here. Here's our general rule of thumb though:

• Don't own it yet? – You need the iPad version if there is one.
• Hated it on iPhone? – With few exceptions, an iPad version isn't going to magically turn your opinion on a game. Most games are very familiar to the originals with only a few visual tweaks and controls.
• Loved it on iPhone? – If you absolutely loved a game on iPhone, it's worth upgrading. Practically all games gain some benefit from an increased sense of immersion that hardcore fans of a given game are going to appreciate. But, if you've already finished a game on iPhone, the incentive is less to upgrade depending on what's the developer might have included in the iPad version.

Fall somewhere in the middle? Here's our Part 1 list of recommendations on upgrading.

Recommended Upgrades

Creeps HD ($3.99)
iPad Features: All new Maps.
Tower defense games really benefit from the larger screensize. Everything is easier to see, tower placement is easier and more accurate, and for Creeps HD, you also get brand new maps. So even if you've played through the original, there's more to enjoy in this sort-of-sequel.

Flight Control HD ($4.99)
iPad Features: Three new HD airfields, Co-operative multiplayer on single device, Split-screen vs mode, 3D (magenta/cyan) mode.
A larger screen isn't just a pretty picture for Flight Control, it really changes the gaming experience. Full-size maps add new dimensions to the game, while it also comes with existing levels. This is more than just a simple upscale.

Zen Bound 2 ($7.99)
iPad Features: New levels, new gameplay mode (paint bombs)
For such a visual game to begin with, the iPad version of Zen Bound 2 benefits greatly from the larger form factor of the iPad. The graphics and effects are much enhanced making the experience nicer. Note, however, there are a few performance and control glitches in the game in the initial release. This is a side-effect of developers not having units in hand until now. We've heard from Secret Exit that iPads being Fedexed to them as we speak to address these issues. So, we have confidence updates will come.

Not Recommended

Sword of Fargoal Legends ($7.99)
iPad Features: None
Sword of Fargoal plays much nicer on the iPad's screen given the extra real estate, but given the zoomability, you can replicate the views on the pixel-doubled version. If you're a Fargoal addict, it's going to be worth it, but for everyone else the gameplay of the pixel-doubled version seems pretty identical. Screenshots: iPad, Pixel Doubled

iBlast Moki HD ($4.99)
iPad Features: None
Despite the larger screen, the game doesn't play very differently between the iPhone version. Perhaps a testament to the good zooming mechanism in the original. In fact, aside from a few jaggies, the game plays quite well in pixel-doubling.

Fieldrunners for iPad ($7.99)
iPad Features: None
Without new features, it's hard to recommend upgrading this one, even though the larger screen size makes it feel nice. But here's a tip: you can play with the same size/perspective using the pixel doubled version.

Angry Birds ($4.99)
iPad Features: None
iPad resolution allows you to more precisely line up your shots and everything still looks nice when zoomed out, but without new levels, you're just playing the same levels again.

Soosiz HD ($4.99)
iPad Features: None.
While we absolutely adored the original Soosiz, the iPad version of Soosiz HD doesn't bring much new to the table. The gameplay is identical and the levels are the same, so beyond the novelty of playing on the iPad screen, there's not a whole lot of reason to come back. Video: iPad, Screenshots: iPad, Pixel Doubled

Glyder 2 for iPad ($4.99)
iPad Features: Touch controls, enhanced map / navigation system, 3D world viewer.
Glyder 2 benefits from the iPad's larger screen in helping to convey a more immersive sense of flight than the iPhone version, but again, unless you were absolutely gaga over the first, there's not a lot new to see.

Minigore HD ($4.99)
iPad Features: Premium (iPhone in-app purchase) characters included, Touch controls
Upscaled graphics look great, but the controls actually take a hit on the larger form factor of the iPad. The developers have added touch screen controls as an alternative, but we still prefer playing this one on our iPhones. Video: iPad

Part 2 coming soon.

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Solomon's Keep is a casual dungeon crawler that places you in the role of Sirius, a student at wizard college who's on the brink of graduation. For your final exam you're tasked with defeating the evil wizard Solomon Dark. It utilizes a dual stick control system and plays a bit like a watered down Diablo, and it's incredibly fun.

The dungeon itself is 10 floors high and is randomly generated with each new game. The enemies get tougher and increase in quantities as you ascend. There's usually quite a few enemies onscreen at once, and they come after you much like the enemies do in Minigore. You can get swarmed if you aren't constantly backpedaling in the available open space. Some of the enemies are stationary and fire at you from a distance with arrows, fireballs, or stun spells. There are two bosses to fight on the way to the final battle with Solomon on the tenth floor.

The combat with the enemies is pretty satisfying, mostly due to the interesting magical attacks at your disposal and all the different ways you can upgrade them. Your main weapons are magic missiles, fireballs and lightning. These are fired off in whatever direction you aim with the right stick. In addition you can equip up to two sub-abilities that range from large offensive attacks to strategic moves such as teleporting. When your character levels up, you're randomly given 3 options for upgrades which can include increasing your offense in different ways or boosting stats such as life and mana.

There are treasure chests spread throughout the dungeon that are filled with gold, and occasionally special items. You can travel back to town and spend your gold on things such as potions, rings, and staffs. Gold can be traded for experience points and also be used to upgrade some of your abilities without the need to level up. In your possession is a magic key that can transport you from the dungeon back into town at any time. Once you're finished, it places you back into the dungeon right where you left off.

The only thing that really mars an otherwise great experience are the many technical problems currently present in the game. I've experienced lagging, freezing, and music/text glitches. There's also an incredibly odd bug that has everything running in fast forward upon waking your device from sleep mode while the game is running. The developer has acknowledged the problems and is hoping to address them in updates. Even with these issues, the game never once lost any of my progress and the problem was always fixed by exiting the app and restarting.

Playing through Solomon's Keep is a blast. It's geared more towards the casual side, but that actually works to its benefit being on a mobile platform. If you're the type that needs a ton of different kinds of armors and loot, and enjoy grinding, there's a chance this type of game might not satisfy you. It can be beaten relatively quickly, and it's a decently challenging ride, but with the amount of different attacks and upgrades available it's impossible to do everything on just one trip through.

The game is so much fun you'll want to go through it multiple times, which gives you a chance to expand your character in different ways each time. If the developer Raptisoft can squash the bugs that made it into this current version, as well as add a little diversity in the way of enemies and dungeon interiors, this can be one of the top dungeon crawlers on the app store. Even as it is now, Solomon's Keep is still a highly entertaining game and is recommended.

App Store Link: Solomon's Keep, $0.99

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Lima Sky's Igor and Marko Pusenjak were profiled in the New York Times today as part of this weekend's iPad launch.

With the U.S. release of the iPad on Saturday, most developers have had no chance to test their games on the iPad prior. Only a handful of developers were given early access to the iPad, which left many developers scrambling to get iPads in hand as soon as possible. The Pusenjaks were uneasy about submitting an iPad version of Doodle Jump without first testing it on the units, especially since it heavily relies on the accelerometer. They got to work on the new version of Doodle Jump right after buying the iPad on Saturday morning in New York City.

“Plenty of people will see a nice spike in downloads today, but we’re more concerned with the long-term stability of our application,” Igor said. The brothers estimate that it could take a few days before they were satisfied with the game.

App Store Link: Doodle Jump, $0.99

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