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Everybody’s favorite fruit slicing arcade game Fruit Ninja [$0.99 / Free ] originally launched back in April 2010, and to celebrate its two-plus year anniversary on the App Store the Halfbrick team are currently touring around Australia in search of the best Fruit Ninja high score and they have a big new update releasing for the game later this week.

In the animated trailer below, we meet the merchant Gutsu and his piggy sidekick Truffles who will offer new powerups in exchange for Starfruit, the new in-game currency. These items will allow you to do things like swat away bombs, add additional time on to a game, and cause massive berry explosions.

The Fruit Ninja update is set to hit this Thursday the 24th, and it’s pretty crazy to think of how well Halfbrick has supported the title over the past 2 years, and how far it’s evolved from its initial release. It sounds like they don’t plan on stopping any time soon either, with more new content planned for the future.

As mentioned, Halfbrick are currently jetting around their homeland holding several high score competitions for a chance to compete in a finals tournament in Sydney at the end of the month. Some crazy scores are getting set already, and you can follow the team’s exploits as they post photos and blog about the tour on the Halfbrick website.

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If there was a list of things that I never expected to be talking about today, Duke Nukem 3D [ Free ] getting an update would probably be right near the top. But that’s just what has happened as MachineWorks has issued a new update for 3D Realms’ classic first-person shooter that looks to address the long-derided virtual controls in the game.

For a quick backstory, Duke Nukem 3D launched in the App Store way back in August of 2009. Id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D [$1.99 / Free ] had hit iOS several months earlier and received critical acclaim, mostly centered around how well their controls worked. With a Doom [ $4.99 ] iOS port also on the horizon, having Duke Nukem on my iPhone seemed like the greatest news in history for a long-time FPS fan like me.

However, the initial version of Duke had possibly the worst controls I’ve ever encountered. I mean downright unplayable. To the developer’s credit they quickly issued an update about a month later with a bunch of new control options, but sadly it did little to help. Sure, some people could find a scheme that was workable for them with some heavy tweaking of options, but the controls still felt pretty bad and have remained that way ever since.

Until today that is, closing in on 3 years after the last update to Duke Nukem. Surprising to say the least, but unfortunately it’s also a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that the controls are actually quite decent now, offering an improved (but still lackluster) dual-stick option as well as a very good “drag anywhere to aim” scheme which really nails it. It may have taken a long time (that’s an understatement) but I can finally enjoy Duke Nukem 3D on my iPhone. Also, it appears that the visuals have been cleaned up considerably, and actually look quite good for a 16 year old game.

Now for the bad news. The update is full of bugs, one of which can render your controls unusable. You can avoid causing this by going into the control options before loading or starting a new game and selecting and then deselecting the dual-stick controls, but that will erase whatever custom scheme you might have previously created by dragging the virtual buttons around the screen. Basically, it’s not much of a solution.

In addition, there’s also a bug that silences the sounds from the game which I’ve only been able to fix by saving my game and killing it from the multi-tasking screen and then starting it up again. Also, for some reason the end-level stats screen is upside down and they’ve disabled the mirror reflection effect in the game. Finally, advertisements have been inserted into Duke Nukem 3D which will pop down when you first start the game and when wake your device from sleep with the game running. Lame.

As delighted as I was to see a surprise update to one of my all-time favorite games, unfortunately this latest update for Duke Nukem 3D is a complete mess. If they can sort out the bugs then I really believe the new controls are a huge improvement, and bring the game more in line with the newer FPS games on the App Store. However, given the lack of attention paid to the game the past few years that seems like a pretty big “if”, especially since the iPad version Duke Nukem 3D SE [ $0.99 (HD)] hasn’t been updated at all. Also, I’m not crazy about ads being put into a game that I previously paid for.

At any rate, Duke Nukem 3D is currently free right now, so if you didn’t have it already you might as well grab it just in case they do sort out the bugs. If you could manage just fine with the controls the way they were before, then you’ll probably want to hold out on this update altogether until (and if) they can fix this situation.

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This past December PopCap gave their iOS version of Bejeweled 2, which had been around since the early days of the App Store, the heave-ho in favor of a new version of the game simply titled Bejeweled [ $0.99 ] and a second separate app for its spinoff mode Bejeweled Blitz [ Free ].

Both new games were arguably better than their original unified iteration, but for some strange reason Bejeweled Blitz was Universal while Bejeweled proper got left out in the cold in regards to iPad support.

Today PopCap addressed this by releasing Bejeweled HD [ $3.99 (HD)], an iPad-native version of the world’s most popular match-3. While it’s sort of a bummer to not see a Universal version, Bejeweled HD does support the new iPad’s Retina Display and looks simply fantastic in that high of a resolution. It also comes equipped with the very same modes as its smaller iOS counterpart, which you can read all about in our review.

It’s crazy just how much fun Bejeweled still is after all these years. It proves that just utilizing the same mechanics in a game isn’t enough to emulate its success, it’s all about execution. There are a ton of great match-3s in the world (and even more really terrible ones) but there’s really only one Bejeweled, and now iPad owners have a version to call their own.

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London-based design studio ustwo created a heck of a game in Whale Trail, but it’s failing as a commercial entity. It’ll never hit the App Store top 10. The face of its bubbly and wide-eyed mascot, Willow, will never grace products like panties or fruit snacks. And at its current pace, it’ll be awhile before it generates a decent profit.

The studio has huge expectations that aren’t being met, and just based on trends, it’s clear that Whale Trail will continue not meeting them. It’s a failure in this life. But will it be one in its next? Again, ustwo is spending money on Whale Trail, giving it a second wind via creative mouth-to-mouth. It’s retooling and redesigning the oddball flying game as a free-to-play title in a high-bandwidth effort to attract the casual audience that the original version failed to reach, but managed to brush.

The hope is that this model, alongside some fresh content, will finally put the game over the top and onto hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of phones and tablets across the world. It’s a crazy plan. Crazy, however, is kinda its project lead’s thing.

On Conversion, Failure, And Journeys

I’ve been speaking with ustwo co-founder Mills about the upcoming transformation. Mills is like a bizarro Clint Eastwood. In the face of adversity he has the same grit and air of determination, but instead of a cowboy hat and a killer squint Mills rocks a long, flowing red wig and eyeglasses with thick, black frames. When he talks to you, even via e-mail, you feel his warmth, energy, and passion. He’s funny, too, and you see a lot of his brand of humor in his game. As we talk, he refuses to call the original Whale Trail a failure despite being able to produce evidence indicating as much. Instead, he calls it a “succailure” and the process of making it a F2P title a “journey.”

“Whale Trail was our first proper game release,” Mills tells TouchArcade. “Full heart, full passion. The launch was a success for our studio, showering loads of eyeballs on us but something didn’t quite click. Although we were hitting 12,000 downloads a day at launch, it tailed off pretty quick.”

In fact, Whale Trail has just hit over 188,000 total sales, and it shifts around 250 units a day across Android and iPhone and iPad. These kind of numbers would be enough for a lot of studios, but ustwo spent oodles of cash on the game. It needed Whale Trail to be up there with the Angry Birds and Fruit Ninjas and the Cut the Ropes of the world.

How those titles manage to stay up top is a matter of debate. Mills doesn’t believe that featuring, reviews, or exposure brings in new downloads. He thinks that word of mouth is now driving sales. As evidence, he notes that the game’s trailers still get around 500 new views a day and the music video for the theme used in the game drives interest, too. Riding on a wave of featuring, however, Whale Trail managed to light up the charts for a short period. Mills shot us the following handy chart, for those of you into the numbers:

Learning about why the game didn’t keep selling at its initial, breakneck pace is an important component of its upcoming transformation. Mills is soaking up everything he can. He frequently frames this entire ordeal as a learning experience.

“We went back to the drawing board and dove deep into the blue waters to understand why Whale Trail wasn’t quite able to take off. We had made a wonderful experience but there wasn’t enough ‘replay’ value in the current game. The new challenge levels added in iteration release two and three helped, but we needed more. Much more,” he adds.

The new version of the game is, indeed, functionally different. As you collect bubbles and travel, you’ll collect an in-game currency called Krill. With Krill, you can buy new powers, “useable treats,” costumes for Willow and its five new playable friends. If you want this stuff without the grind, you can buy Krill straight-up.

“The game is so much better. Players are now in full control of their destiny and each play rewards them. This was missing before,” he says.

If you’ve already purchased Whale Trail, Mills says you’ll receive a “BIG” bag of Krill when you update to the new version. Additionally, you’ll receive a message designed to make you feel “special.” Mills worries about how the current install base is going to react to this massive change, since the regular version will essentially die after this update. Perhaps that’s why this message to fans will be “like finding a bag of money in your house that you can use to pimp it right up 50 style” or “like finding a bag of candy that is so sweet, yet so sticky.”

When I bring up failure, Mills says I have a point, but he describes the experience so far as a “journey.” His studio has had opportunities to sell off the IP or actually make money, but ustwo as a whole is more interested in learning at this point.

“You can look at it as a failure, but I see it as journey,” Mills says. “Each iteration of Whale Trail has created a new buzz and has engaged the players more. It’s been a big lesson for me especially in regards to releasing something I wanted and releasing something that the majority of players want. We were very successful at creating buzz, we were very open about the whole experience and the story of Whale Trail will now be told via Penguin,” he tells us. He means the publishing company, not an actual penguin.

“We had two Whale Trail acquisition offers for the game as it currently stands now, but we were not interested in money. We were interested in better understanding what we could do to make the game better. I couldn’t walk away from it now, knowing it was not the game we wanted it to be. The game we have since built and are testing now with players is the game we should have released back then but didn’t realize it at the time.”

Even though the Whale Trail flopped, Mills notes some positives. It gave his studio new business opportunities, a higher-profile in the development community, and a lot of good will. These things, however, aren’t going to make new Whale Trail sail. A balance of IAP and fun mechanics are the only thing that’ll save it.

“I want to know more about free-to-play,” Mills says. “We are not being aggressive with the monetization potential. Players need never spend, but the joy they feel should allow the game to be pretty viral. We get a small social virility through Twitter right now, but the potential at the higher numbers is unreal. I guess the plan is for Willow to find some real Whales!”

We’ll have to see if the new version of Whale Trail hits the heights that Mills thinks it can reach. Regardless if it does or not, it’s going to be hard to call this iteration a failure. To Mills, success is all about what you do as you try to succeed.

“We didn’t set out to make something generic. Success is about crafting something you believe in and telling that story, granted it may never be a smash hit as the very concept of a little fat flying whale called Willow who lives in a psychedelic land is too far out for many to stomach, but we made something we are so proud of.”

We’ll have hands-on impressions in the near future.

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When you truly adore a game, sequels can be a scary thing. Sure, it’s more of what you love—but what if they mess it up? What if they abandon all the things you love for the sake of novelty? Well, Defender Chronicles [$1.99 / $2.99 / $4.99 (HD)] fans, let us put your fears to rest. We’ve had a chance to spend some time with Defender Chronicles II, and it seems to have everything the original had to offer. And every little bit of it is bigger, better, and sexier.

I spent the summer of 2009 consumed by the original. I had a brand new 3GS and pages of games, but Defender Chronicles – Legend of the Desert King was the one that devoured my time. Its mix of vertical tower defense and RPG conventions was completely irrestistable, and Gimka Entertainment and Menara Games propped it up with massive updates that added to its already substantial content. Defender Chronicles II is looking like it will contain that same potential for time investment, so you might want to clear your schedule in advance.

This game is leagues beyond its predecessor in terms of visual appeal, and that’s an achievement—as we pointed out way back in our review, Defender Chronicles was a looker in its time. But now every unit is more detailed and every animation is more fluid. And crisp—Retina support is in for iPhone, though apparently not for iPad. The game lives up to the rose-colored vision you may have of the original, but it’s much more refined, more up-to-date.

The gameplay has been similarly preserved. You’ll still spend your time turning flags into guilds and upgrading them through tiers of units, archers to rangers, squires to cavaliers. Strategy seems more important than ever before, with enemy units that take advantage of every potential weakness in your defense. Height and range are the biggest considerations as you scroll around massive, multi-tiered 2D maps. There are quite a few of those this time around, and they hit an almost Escher-esque level of complexity pretty quickly.

There isn’t much that’s changed outright, really. Voice actor George Ledoux returns to impress us with his Sean Connery impression, though he also pulls off an impressive lizardman. Heroes Melwen and the General return, but this time they’re accompanied by two new friends: Lovell and Elwyn, an archer and priest. The brand-new story of the heroes and their defence of Athelia against the Orcs and Forsaken is told through gorgeous comic-book cutscenes once more.

From our brief time with the game, it really seems like you’re going to be able to put in a ludicrous numbers of hours. There’s so much here for the player that wants to go deep, with heroes to level up and customize, hundreds of artifacts to locate and five difficulty levels and game modes to work through. The difficulty curve also feels a bit steeper, so if you’re already familiar with the game you shouldn’t be underwhelmed. If you’re feeling particularly cocky, you’ll be able to challenge yourself with a huge list of Game Center achievements and leaderboards.

Ultimately, it seems like Defender Chronicles II will be the perfect sort of sequel. It updates already excellent gameplay for a new generation of devices, and brings in all sorts of improvements in the process. It’s hard to imagine any Defender Chronicles fans being disappointed, and folks that are new to the series should be in for a treat. We’ll be taking a closer look at the game over the next couple weeks, and we’ll be back with our review after it hits the App Store on May 24th. In the meantime, the developers are posting regular previews in our discussion thread, so take a peek if your appetite isn’t already whetted enough.

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Big Pixel Studio’s Off the Leash [ Free ] hit earlier this year, and basically did for tilt-based avoidance games what Jetpack Joyride [ Free ] did for the cave flyer. By that I mean it took a tried-and-true gameplay mechanic and fleshed it out to the max by dropping it into a game with attractive visuals, a mission-based progression, and tons of unlockable items and upgrades.

Yesterday a big update hit for Off the Leash that added some welcome new content to the game. The big ticket items are a brand new track and field themed location to perform your evasive dog actions in, and a new character named Charlie the Man Dog. Yep, Man Dog. He’s a man dressed up in a dog suit in case you didn’t gather that from his name, and he cracks me up to no end. He’s also the fastest out of all the characters in the game.

The more minor additions in this update include a new baseball cap and an awesome Land-a Panda [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD) / Free (HD)] hat to buy in the store, a set of new missions bringing the total up to 99, and a couple of wallpapers to trick out your device. Off the Leash was loads of fun before, but new goodies are always a welcome addition. If you haven’t checked it out yet you can grab it for free in the App Store, and be sure to check out our original review.

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From the very first time I launched Pandemic 2.5 [ $0.99 ], I was out to obliterate humanity. My implement of destruction was a virus I called “Iloveyou”—named for a classic. Iloveyou started its life in South Africa, a humble disease with a single carrier. He probably didn’t even know he was sick. At first, we were asymptomatic.

Iloveyou had room to evolve, with 8 EvoPoints to grow into. I spent them carefully. I enhanced our heat capacity, so we wouldn’t die out in the desert. I developed our first symptom: rhinorrhea, the runny nose. A little mucus can go a long way toward spreading a cold, I reckoned. I hoped to spread out to insects, but we weren’t yet advanced enough. I threw in dysuria and photophobia for good measure—not enough to kill our hosts by far, but enough to cause a little discomfort and hopefully improve our spread.

Then we began. The number of infected grew quickly, then stalled out. I had a few more EvoPoints to work with at this point, so we brought in our insect friends. Even with a few more symptoms, Iloveyou didn’t make it much further than that; we were too slow and our infection vectors just sort of got better. But I learned from that first experience. On our next outing we made it to the next tier of symptoms, picking up a cough. Then our victims began to suffer fevers. We lost a few of the infected early on, but we were finally on our way.

And so it went. At first we refrained from killing our victims. Hosts are more important than corpses. We spread across borders before anyone knew to shut them, took out hospitals before anyone knew what was going on. Once most of the world was within our grasp we took the next step and became fatal.

When people started dying, they knew they had a problem on their hands. They mobilized quickly, developed a vaccine almost before we could react. It was too late for most of them, but it was also too late for us: the people that were left were cured, and we would never see our dream of total global destruction come true. Granted, it was quite the morbid dream. It made me a bit queasy to see the number of living humans dwindle, sure. But it’s never nice to lose.

If all this sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve played Pandemic 2. The Flash game has been around for years—it even has its own popular meme. Pandemic 2.5 is a complete overhaul for the mobile crowd. With a new interface and a few improvements, it’s decent port of the desktop classic.

Decent, mind you, but certainly not great. There are little problems, like awkward text fields and introductory text that flows right off the screen. Bigger issues include things like a complete lack of tutorial, and a news ticker that flies by too quickly to read if the game is in anything but full-on sloth mode.

The biggest issue of all is that the game can be agonizingly slow. It’s simply not ideal for a mobile platform in its current state. Playing Pandemic involves a lot of waiting, especially if you’ve already lost the ability to win and just want to get your final score. Normally I’d pull out my phone while the slow parts passed, but, well, you can see the problem with that.

Here’s the thing, though: Pandemic in this form is just as compelling as it’s ever been. Some of the bigger problems with the Flash game have even been worked out. The meme is outdated, as Madagascar is no longer ludicrously paranoid unless you’re playing at the top tier of difficulty. There are also traits (and associated achievements) you can unlock by completing hidden requirements, something that builds a sense of overall progression. If you can ignore the interface problems, this is the best take on the subject matter yet.

So consider this a cautious recommendation. If you can stomach the mild horror of obliterating humanity, if you can handle a somewhat clunky port, it’s pretty great to have Pandemic on the go. It sounds as though Dark Realm Studios is already working on fixing some of the game’s problems, too. Me, I’m working on a new strategy. With luck, we’ll take the island nations, wipe ‘em all out before they know what hit them. Awful to contemplate? Sure. But Pandemic makes a convincing argument: isn’t it time we gave the bugs their turn?

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The awesome match-3 city builder Triple Town [ Free ] from Spry Fox has received a bunch of updates since we first reviewed it this past January, including a juicy update late last month that added two brand new maps to play. One played much like a standard 6×6 grid game but with the added challenge of a body of water right in the middle that you’d need to work around, and the second new map was a smaller 5×5 grid that was devoid of the risk of bears or ninjas and played like a casual freeplay mode.

Today another new update has hit Triple Town adding yet another new map for owners of the game who have unlocked the unlimited play IAP. The game is free-to-play with a limited number of turns, which also regenerate slowly over time. You can purchase coin packs to buy additional turns with or you can pay a flat fee, currently $3.99, to unlock unlimited turns in the game.

I appreciate how the game tries to offer a lot for those who don’t want to pay any money, but I find the usage of consumable IAP kind of confusing, and I’d suggest treating the free game as a limited trial and if you like it then go for the one-time unlimited turn purchase rather than muck around with buying turns. This is especially true if future content updates are only going to come for those who have purchased that option.

Anyhoo, as for the new map it’s actually really great. It’s called Bear Attack and is a 5×6 grid that plays mostly like a normal game except for one huge change: there’s 50% more bears. This obviously requires a certain amount of new strategy to deal with but can also result in some huge scoring opportunities with trapping bears and converting them into churches. Like the 2 new maps before it, Bear Attack tweaks the core formula of Triple Town just right in order to offer a completely different take.

And speaking of tweaks, there’s also another round of tweaks and fixes in this latest update as well. If you have yet to try out Triple Town, definitely give the free download a try as it’s easily one of the most refreshing matching games to come along in a long time and it continues to improve with each new update.

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The folks at Halfbrick had been teasing their much ballyhooed Gadget update for Jetpack Joyride [ Free ]for the past couple of months, and just last week it finally landed in the App Store. And it was awesome. However, Halfbrick must have still had some gas left in the tank after that massive update because over the weekend they released yet another update for Jetpack Joyride, this time adding support for the Retina Display of the new iPad. Check out some screens from the newest build (click to enlarge):

In addition to the graphics upgrade on the new iPad, the visuals have also been improved for the previous generation iPads as well as the iPhone 4. Loading times have also been improved across the board as well as a whole bunch of minor tweaks and fixes. I was really impressed with the Gadget update that hit for Jetpack Joyride last week, and with this latest Retina Display update the entire package has really been fully fleshed out.

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