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This evening Rovio Mobile released a Halloween themed supplement to the original Angry Birds [99¢ / Lite / HD] with the somewhat obvious title of Angry Birds Halloween [99¢ / HD]. There's not a whole lot to say about it other than it's another 45 levels of Angry Birds set in a Halloween theme. There is a new spooky theme, ghost pigs, and pumpkins to smash everywhere.

I'm not sure what else needs to really be said about this. Angry Birds has been at the top of the iTunes charts for quite some time now, and even complete strangers at gas stations who see me fiddling with my iPhone seem to know about the game. We posted a review back in December of last year when the original game first came out, and since then its been updated a ridiculous amount. It's hard to say if this special Halloween edition is going to see the same update love, but both the original Angry Birds (if you don't already have it) and Angry Birds Halloween will likely be the best $1.98 you've spent today.

If you at all enjoyed the original Angry Birds, you need to download this Halloween special.

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If you're lucky enough to live in New Zealand, these games are already all available. Otherwise, as the world turns and it slowly becomes Thursday in your neck of the woods, all of these games should appear for download on the App Store. For those of us who get our games from the US App Store, this means 11:00 PM EST tonight, or earlier if you're east of us.

Reckless Racing, $2.99 [Forum Thread] – We've had our hands all over Reckless Racing when it was previously known as Deliverace. The project got picked up by EA Mobile, and has seen several substantial improvements including multiple gameplay modes and even online multiplayer. Reckless Racing HD [$4.99] is also coming to the iPad, if you prefer your racin' on the big screen.

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Angry Birds Halloween, 99¢ [Forum Thread] – Rovio Mobile is apparently abandoning Chillingo with this self-published Halloween themed version of Angry Birds. 45 levels are included along with a new story of the golden egg of terror, and there's plenty of pumpkins to smash. Much like the original Angry Birds an iPad version is available in a separate download as Angry Birds Halloween HD [$1.99].

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Samurai II: Vengeance, $2.99 [Forum Thread] – This universal ultra-gory hack and slash is also being released tonight, and with how great the original looked, I really can't wait to see this game in action on the iPad. They're even promising 60 FPS frame rates at Retina Display resolutions on newer devices.

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Other games being released tonight include Gameloft's Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus HD [$9.99] and a sequel to Namco's Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima [$4.99 / Lite] cleverly titled More Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima [$4.99]. Keep an eye out for more coverage and reviews on these games later this evening.

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We've been following Tasty Poison Games' Pocket RPG thread in our forums for quite a while now, and Crescent Moon Games just announced their intent to publish the game. Crescent Moon has quite a bit on its plate right now with a massive list of both recently released games and upcoming titles, but it's hard to not get excited over the potential of Pocket RPG, especially with the Crescent Moon team onboard.

The name of the game in Pocket RPG seems to be complete randomization, and is designed for games to have between 20-30 minutes of randomized dungeon crawling before starting over again. Three classes are included, each with a different play style and user interface. The Blade Master turns the game in to a melee-heavy hack and slash, the Dark Ranger behaves more like a dual stick shooter, and the Battle Mage plays similar to Solomon's Keep [99¢]. There's a combo system with damage bonuses that stack as you slay more and more enemies, and I've been told there is tons of looting.

The loot you equip changes your characters stats and weaponry, resulting in tons of different possible combinations. An example we were given includes a Blade Master picking up a fire sword with a vampiric ring, a ring of strength, and a ring of cone damage. After placing a rune of speed on the fire sword you would be swinging like a maniac, spewing fire everywhere, doing extra damage, and sucking hit points with every attack… That is, until you meet up with a fire monster. Then, attacking will heal them.

Pocket RPG, oddly enough, will likely launch first for the iPad. According to the developers, iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G caused too much of a performance hit for them to release the game without further optimization. Regardless, both versions of the game are still in development and they hope to launch before Christmas. I love randomized games like this, and really can't wait for the discussions on our forums regarding which magical effects are best to stack for each class.

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Back in June we caught up with Venan Entertainment at E3. At the time, they showed an ad-supported free version of Space Miner [$4.99 / Lite] called Space Miner Blast that took the core shooter gameplay of the original and applied it to a fast-paced arcade style mini-game.

Space Miner Blast will be supported by unobtrusive in-game advertising, with optional DLC which will add features to the game and disable advertisements entirely. Most of the original Space Miner has been stripped out in favor of a quick survival game with a very basic upgrade system. All you do is see how big of a multiplier you can keep going by blasting as much ore as you possibly can (while defending against enemies of course). Here is a few minutes of gameplay:

Back at E3 they were reluctant to get specific on the release date of Space Miner Blast, but assured me it would be available "soon". Recently Venan posted a bit of an explanation on their blog, and like quite a few projects that were in the works at the time by other developers, both iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 threw Venan a curve ball. Aside from apologies, a few interesting tidbits come out of the blog post. First off, Venan has developed a system to download high resolution assets from within their games while still staying under the 20mb ceiling of over the air downloads. With any luck, their implementation of this system will inspire other developers as how to support the high resolution displays of both the iPhone 4 and iPad while staying under the over the air download limit has been the topic of discussion of quite a few iOS developer threads.

Venan provided the following high-res screenshots of Space Miner Blast:

Also, Space Miner will be getting some Retina Display love:

Space Miner Blast is nearing submission to Apple, and next up is a Space Miner sequel. I loved the original Space Miner, and really can't wait for both Space Miner Blast, and Space Miner turning in to a proper game series.

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Czech development studio Cinemax has recently released a rather unique sort of role-playing game for the iPad. Designed to feel like an oldschool video game machine, Journey of Fortune: Dragon's Fire [App Store] seeks to turn your iPad into a digital board game. And here, it succeeds.

The game, which can be played solo or against up to three other people on the same device, puts you in the role of a mage (or magic user) on a perilous journey to kill the dragon and save the princess. Your journey is marked by an illuminated indicator somewhere among the 67 "lights" that make up the meandering path to victory. The lights are set in an illustrated, vertically scrolling "board" that artfully indicates what perils and actions / bonuses lie where, along the way.

Journey of Fortune is a dice-driven game, but the roll-of-the-die mechanic is handled via an illustrated wheel that spins with a finger-swipe. You progress forward along the board the number of paces indicated by the die face on the indicated wheel segment. You may end up landing on an uneventful spot along the path, but more likely you'll encounter a beastie to contend with, a bonus of some sort, or a teleporter that sends you many paces back whence you came (which, though frustrating, mixes up and extends the gameplay nicely).

When an enemy is encountered along the way, it's time for combat, and that's also handled via the spin-wheel dynamic. In combat mode, artifacts of both offense and defense become illuminated along the wheel, and a spin determines what your next combat move will be. These consist of:

• Melee Attack: Magical Dagger and Sword
• Attack Spells: Fireball, Lightning, Wall of Fire and Poison Strike
• Defense Spells: Heal, Heal II, Shield, Shield II, Mana, Mana II and Fear

In standard RPG fashion, your character has a certain level of Hit Points and Mana at any moment. Sustaining a monster attack drains Hit Points, and casting spells saps your Mana. Both can be recovered by Defense Spells on the wheel and by landing on certain bonus spots on the board. The combat wheel also allows you to indicate how much Mana the next attack should use, the more the mightier your attack, of course.

While I enjoy spending a bit of time with a nice RPG, they're really not my forte. I just don't have the time to put into them. And I've never really spent any time with RPG-style board games. But Journey of Fortune is strangely appealing to me. The single-player game (how I've spent my time here) hits the ground running and moves things along at a pace that seems well suited to play on a mobile device, where you're not really looking for a game consisting of hours upon hours. And, for a title that strives to deliver a digital board game experience, what device is more ideal than the iPad? It's a game that feels quite "right" for the platform, but this first release is not without a few issues.

The game takes a little while to get the hang of, on first approach. The title screen provides a brief list of play rules, but it doesn't send you into the game feeling very well educated. Gameplay is a fairly straightforward affair, however, and a sufficient comfort level shouldn't elude most gamers for very long. The developers, who are active in our forums, indicate that they'd like to improve the help / hint system in a future update, but prefer not to employ any sort of window overlay, which would shatter the board game feel of the title. Another criticism I might raise is the lack of a save feature; when you jump to another app, the game is gone for good. However, the developer indicates this will be remedied in the game's next update. Global leaderboards and a choice of difficulty level for the single-player mode are also on the way.

That said, Journey of Fortune: Dragon's Fire has quite impressed me. I've found it to be surprisingly engrossing to play and a title I would reach for to demonstrate the iPad to a friend unfamiliar. It's an experience I can recommend to any iPad gamer, even if RPG's aren't their thing.

If all this sounds appealing, today would be the day to jump, as Journey of Fortune: Dragon's Fire is on sale (today only) for $.99 — 75% off the standard $3.99 asking price. A brief video of the gameplay can be seen here.

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Martin Kool describes himself as "'just some guy' with a family at home with 3 kids to take care of (and one coming up) and a day job" who also happens to have an insatiable love for old school Sierra adventure games. That day job he mentions involves doing "kick ass things with the web," as he put it, so it's not much of a surprise that when looking for tools to bring these old games to modern platforms he settled on completely cross-platform HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Currently, nine of these classic adventure games including the Kings Quest series, a Leisure Suit Larry game, and others are playable on his web site Sarien.net.

This all would be cool enough by itself, but Martin is hard at work on the final touches of adapting his web game engine that all these games run in to be (as he put it) "a real kick-ass iPad experience". When finished, these games will have their own special URL's users will be able to navigate to, then save as icons via the add to home screen functionality that already exists on the device without any jailbreaking, emulation, or anything else. These games will be entirely touch friendly, and require no typing. Check out the video he put together:

When Kool approached us about this, I definitely thought this was something that needed to be on TouchArcade, but had to ask the inevitable question of whether or not he was ready for the attention he will get. (Specifically, from Activision's legal department.) To him, this is a labor of love. He's running these games at his own cost, without ads. So far he's had over 2 million players stop by his site. He said he'd stop immediately if Activision sends him a cease and desist– but more than anything he just hopes that Activision either grants him a noncommercial license or somehow involves him in republishing these games in HD like he has.

Sarien.net is an outstanding tribute to these old school adventure games, and if all goes as planned, the site will have iPad friendly versions of the included titles within a month. It's no secret we love retro gaming around here, and we'll post more information on this project as soon as we get it.

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Last month we previewed some screenshots from the upcoming real-time tactical strategy RPG Battleheart from developer Mika Mobile, of Zombieville USA [$1.99/Lite/HD] and OMG Pirates! [$1.99/Lite] fame. Battleheart is unique in that it uses an interesting line-drawing mechanic to control players during the real-time combat. You'll tap a character from your party to select them and then drag a line out to a location that you want them to move to, or drag to an enemy that you want that particular character to attack. With multiple enemies attacking at once, you can send off a character to attack one of them and while they are battling select another member of your party to take on one of the other enemies.

It sounds like an easy enough mechanic to use, and should provide for some frantic battling during the game. This first gameplay video of Battleheart does a great job at demonstrating the battles in action:

There are some other details about Battleheart that Mika Mobile has divulged in the upcoming games thread in our forums. You'll choose a party of 4 characters from a selection of 8 different classes. Each class will have a selection of abilities that you assign your character based on damage, survivability, control, or a mixture of abilities. In addition, there will be passive traits for your characters in what Mika describes as a simplified "talent" system. Each class will have about a dozen powers of traits of which you'll be able to select roughly half for each character.

Another interesting part about the party system is that while your party will consist of 4 active characters at a time, you will have the ability to keep additional characters in reserve as well as encounter new party characters throughout your journey that can be swapped in and out of your party. Only the active party members will gain experience and level up though, so it's mostly in your benefit to keep the same core group active in your party, but the option to mix things up will be there too. Enemies will include various melee, ranged, and support type enemies to battle, and bosses are something that is currently being worked on as well. The enemies will also encompass a simple priority system in how they attack you, so your most powerful and heavily armored party members will generally be the first ones they focus on.

Battleheart is currently about 99% finished, with all of the major functionality of the game already complete. Now Mika Mobile is just focusing on adding content like additional enemies and spells and polishing any rough edges in the game. They are shooting for a December release, though will only release the game once they feel like it's 100% complete and ready to go. Also of note, the game will feature universal iPad support and graphics made for the Retina Display. We're definitely looking forward to the game, as are many players in our forums, and we'll bring you any new info on Battlehearts as the game pushes towards its tentative December release.

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A couple of months ago we reviewed Big Bucket Software's The Incident [$1.99], a fun, pixel-art packed spin on climbing games. That same review explained the basics of the game:

The game is controlled by tilting your device right or left to move, and tapping on the screen to jump. You're able to move objects around by walking in to them, and sometimes you can flip falling junk around with a well timed jump underneath whatever you're trying to move. Seven levels are included in the game, starting with the street and ending in space. Each level consists of its own height goal, and you just need to stay on top of the falling pile of junk to climb upwards. This sounds simple enough, and the first few levels are fairly easy, but it doesn't take long until things are falling so fast that you will have your fingers crossed that a health powerup spawns or a checkpoint is near.

The main drawbacks of the original were lack of any kind of online scoring to speak of, no endless mode (an odd omission given the nature of the game), and even though it was universal, the tilt controls left a little to be desired on the iPad. All of these things have been fixed in this update. A new endless mode has been implemented, scores sync to Game Center, and they've even implemented a new controller mode to use your iPhone or iPod touch as a controller with the iPad:

There's also some new objects to avoid, the game has been enhanced for the Retina display, and there's even a whole pile of tweaks and fixes. Overall this is a fantastic update to an already great game. If you already own The Incident, download this ASAP. Otherwise, I'd seriously consider checking out our review and giving it a try.

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Tokyo's Apple Store was recently host to a "Game Nights at the Apple Store" event where EA presented a slideshow with a surprising amount of information regarding upcoming titles for both the iPhone and iPad. We've known some of these have been in the works for a while, but this is the first time for many that we've either seen any kind of screenshot or any solid release information. Japanese iPhone site 4gamer.net was in attendance, and provides the following photos of the slideshow:

First off, Reckless Racing, formerly known as Deliverace is a game we were following quite a bit before it got picked up to be published by EA. Since then, we haven't heard much about the game aside from wondering when it was finally going to be released.

According to the above slide, it's slated for this month. EA almost always releases their games on Thursdays, so we're likely either looking at a release late at night next Wednesday, or the following week. Next up is NBA Elite 11, a 5 on 5 fully licensed basketball game that takes advantage of the Retina Display:

A client for EA's free flash game portal pogo.com is also on its way. The slide mentions the game will be ad supported, with additional content available via a subscription. We'll have to see how this plays out on the device, and if the subscription they're referring to is Club Pogo or something that will be exclusive to the iOS app:

Much like Reckless Racing, I expect the above two games that EA has listed as October releases to pop up late next Wednesday or the following Wednesday. Moving on to November releases comes Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. We've been increasingly impressed with the Need For Speed series on the App Store, and I'm thinking Hot Pursuit will continue the tradition:

Next up is Pictureka!, an iPad game that sounds like a fast paced version of Where's Waldo? [$2.99 / HD]. It comes with pass and play local multiplayer for 2-4 people, and promises an art style that's both truly engaging and wacky. I'm not one to pass up on anything wacky:

Monopoly is finally coming to the iPad, which is allowing me to cross off yet another board game from my list of games I want on the device. The iPad exclusive features sound really rad, such as the auto-rotating tabletop mode… And I can't wait to see what in the world the new "cheating" mode entails. A mini game where you steal money from the bank while the rest of the players are getting drinks or going to the bathroom? We'll have to wait until December to find out:

EA Sports Active has been popular on consoles, and now is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch. The following slide isn't really clear how involved the app will be, but hopefully it includes some cool GPS or accelerometer integration for tracking your performance instead of being yet another calorie/workout logging app. The features list upcoming post-launch gyro support, so we'll have to see how that all works:

Last, but certainly not least by any means is Dead Space 2. This confusingly named third person shooter is apparently going to bridge the story between Dead Space and its sequel, making this something more along the lines of Dead Space 1.5 than Dead Space 2. (This confusing sequel numbering reminds me of the Angry Video Game Nerd episode on the subject.)

I can see Dead Space being absolutely amazing on the iPad, and if they do it right, an iconic example of just how good and immersive an iPad game can be. It's not entirely clear from the slide if the game is going to be iPad exclusive, or for the iPhone as well since the header mentions the iPhone, but the bulleted list below mentions it being graphically enhanced for the iPad. Either way, Dead Space on the XBOX 360 was incredible, and I have a feeling it's going to be either just as awesome on iOS devices, or just as disappointing as Mass Effect Galaxy [$1.99]– I'm not sure there's much room in between.

Of course, we will post more as soon as we get any more information on any of these games.

[via 4gamer.net]

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iPhone mega-publisher Chillingo has announced earlier today that their casual physics-based puzzler Cut the Rope [99¢] has reached the one million paid downloads mark worldwide. This news comes just ten days after the game's release, and according to Chillingo this makes Cut the Rope the fastest selling iOS game to date.

Although they don't specifically mention details, it's assumed that the one million number is inclusive of both the iPhone and iPad versions of the game. But really, that's just nitpicking. The rate at which Cut the Rope has risen to the top is simply incredible. When we said during our original review that “Cut the Rope is one of those games that you could tell was going to be something special…” I don't think that we imagined it would be the kind of meteoric rise that we've seen in the past ten days.

Chillingo and developer ZeptoLab have noted that they are currently working on new updates for Cut the Rope that will add additional content to the game. Currently Cut the Rope is the #1 overall paid app in the US App Store, as well as most other major markets around the world. It rocketed into that spot within just the first couple days of release, knocking App Store phenomenon Angry Birds [99¢] from its perch at the top. If you have yet to pick up Cut the Rope, we really cannot recommend it enough as it's one of the most engaging puzzle experiences on the App Store and suits the platform perfectly. We'll be keeping an eye out for the promised updates to the game, and are anxious to see just how far Cut the Rope can ride this current wave of success.

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