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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I’m sure there are a lot of folks out there that took a quick glance at Millipede Creative’s Bullistic Unleashed [$0.99] and just kept moving. After all, the screenshots are filled with crude humor, the trailer a repository for irreverence, and there’s more lewd imagery and graphic violence than you can shake a stick at. However, if you look past all the window dressing, you’ll quickly discover that Bullistic Unleashed is an excellent game that combines several different genres successfully.

Bullistic puts you in the role of a bunch of cocky bulls that decide to demolish a shopping mall as well as all its inhabitants. You’ll accomplish this through 20 different levels, each with their own obstacles and layouts (including the now literal bull in a china shop). Cause enough damage in a level, and you’ll unlock the next. You’ll also unlock seven different bulls available for use by collecting hidden coins in each level. Each bull has their own special moves and physics attributes.

While it’s easy to describe Bullistic Unleashed as a simple physics-based title, it’s a bit more complicated than that.  Yes, you slingshot animals (bulls, in this case) across levels in an effort to cause as much havoc as possible. But, while similar games pit you against specific enemies, Bullistic wants you to simply cause as much damage as possible. Also, the game is littered with accelerators, elevators and barrels which have the potential to greatly extend the life of your bull after the initial shot. Also featured are bumpers and various obstacles that can put your bull out of play.

With all these elements, Bullistic plays like a hybrid of Angry Birds, Peggle, and pinball. That may sound like a strange combination, but it works surprisingly well. While the initial physics and slingshot are obviously important (and can make or break a level), the additional level elements are always in play and add an element of chance that keeps you coming back even when a level seems impossible. There’s a certain amount of timing and precision that provides additional rewards to the patient gamer. Levels are also compact, making this an easy title to play on the go.

All of this leads to a game that is widely accessible while providing incentive to gamers that want to put forth more effort. Furthermore, it’s also simply a blast to play. The wanton destruction never gets old, and there’s a ton of different ways to complete levels (especially when you start unlocking the different bulls). Later levels also have a surprising amount of strategy, and finally hitting 100% destruction on a level is an extremely satisfying experience.

In addition to the well-executed gameplay, Bullistic also gets a lot of the supplemental elements done right. The retina visuals are clear and detailed (for better or worse), with very little slow down. There’s enough content to keep most gamers satisfied (although I would like to see more levels in a future update). Even the presentation is top notch, with amusing menus and IAP shops. One minor complaint is the game’s excessive pushing of social network features and IAP, although neither is required to succeed at the game.

Let’s talk about humor, because Bullistic Unleashed is one of the most hilarious games I’ve ever played. Relatedly, it’s also one of the dirtiest games I’ve encountered in the App Store. You slingshot the bulls across levels using, well, their balls. Also, there’s a lot of gratuitous violence and screen-filling blood splatters as your bulls massacre the mall inhabitants (launching your poor bull into a meat grinder is certainly a sight as well). Let’s not forget the cows either, as your bulls will immediately stop the destruction if they get anywhere near their bovine companions (I’ll leave you to figure out why).

However, it’s not all juvenile jokes. Bullistic has a lot of enjoyable wit, especially with the various descriptions of the different bulls, as well as the general story. There’s enough pun-play involved that you know that the developers attempted to strike a balance between wit and crude humor – but then decided to go all out on the latter at some point.

There’s no doubt that Bullistic Unleashed isn’t for everyone. The over-the-top violence and humor will simply not work for some people. However, I implore anyone on the fence to bite the bullet and check out this title. It strikes that hard sought balance of accessibility, appealability (again, for some more than others) and enjoyability with very little in terms of detraction, and it’s certainly one of the better physics-based titles that I’ve checked out.

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It’s been sort of a slow news day, so while we’re busy plugging away at busting out reviews from yesterday’s release onslaught, here’s two great deals you should be aware of. Actually, before you get either of these you should take a good long look at Ballistic SE [ $1.99 ] as I’ve been having a blast with it since it came out last night. But, anyway, on with the show.

Smash Cops, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Normally $2.99 and free for a limited time, Smash Cops is a really cool driving game where you (get this) play a cop, and smash into other cars. It’s worth checking out for the controls alone, because the way you drive the car is by “pushing” it with your finger. It’s hard to explain, and feels a little weird as first, but once you get into it you’ll wonder why more top-down games don’t employ similar controls.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Normally $4.99 and recently slashed to 99¢, Ascension is a deck building fantasy-based card game. I had some small gripes with the mechanics of the actual game itself in my review, but as far as a paper card game to iOS port, Ascension is flawless and worth checking out just to see how well it translates. 99¢ is also a stupidly good deal considering the physical version retails for $39.99. An expansion with new cards is available in game for $2.99, which sells for $29.99 in the real-world paper version.

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Most puzzle games would have you believe that fun only lies under a pile of rigid rules. That doesn’t seem quite right, when kids have the most fun playing without any rules at all. Whitaker Trebella’s Polymer [ ] isn’t child’s play, but it only demands one thing: a shape can’t have unfinished edges, or it’s not a shape. Everything else is fair game, and that sure feels freeing.

To create shapes in Polymer, you slide rows of pieces back and forth, columns up and down. When you’ve found a stopping point and slid your last piece into place, tapping the shape destroys it. With that, poof, your hard work is gone. In its place you’ll find a fresh canvas and a big pile of points to soothe you.

Polymer’s first mode serves as a good introduction. Called “Two Minutes,” it gives you that much time to create anything you like. A hundred tiny shapes in a row, cascading into ever multiplying combos? Sure. A few carefully crafted behemoths? Go ahead. Quality generally scores over quantity, but your masterpiece won’t be worth much if you can’t finish it in time.

“One Polymer” mode does what you might expect: it gives you as long as you need to create the ultimate shape. Each piece that you manage to add to it rockets your final score to new heights, but there comes a moment when your shape is so large and complex that every move you make will damage the surrounding structure. The most important skill you can learn here is how best to delay that moment.

“Bombs,” the third and final mode, adds, well, bombs to the mix. These are pieces with timers and four unfinished edges. Working them into a shape doubles its score, but the game ends if a single timer runs down to zero. More and more bombs are introduced as the game progresses. Here you need to know your limitations—how complex of a shape can you make within each time limit?

You’ll begin playing Polymer with only the first mode and two kinds of pieces, a rounded corner piece with two free edges and another that caps ends. Reaching a certain accumulated score unlocks the next piece, and then the next mode. It’s a good system, ensuring that you fully understand how to play with what you have before things get more complicated.

Unfortunately, this same system might prove frustrating for some players. Since the scoring scales on a steep curve, players who can’t pull off large shapes will find themselves pecking away at unlocks for much longer than necessary. There are two ways out of that hole: improve, or pay your way out. Each unlockable can be bought if you don’t have the patience to earn it. It’s a little too easy to see this as a push to make extra purchases.

Better to put your wallet away, though. The game is more fun when you have something to work toward aside from achievements and leaderboards, and playing without pushing yourself won’t get you far. Not only that: it’s entirely possible to get ridiculously high scores without the unlockable pieces. At the highest tier of play, you’re probably going to need them. Before then, though, they can actually get in the way, making the board too complicated for beginners. If you find yourself in over your head, you can toggle the more complex pieces off for as long as you need.

As mentioned in our preview, music plays a big part in the Polymer experience. The mood of each mode is enhanced by its soundtrack, cheery, studious and tense in turn. The tones created when you destroy a shape are equally fitting. This is one of those games you’ll want to play with the sound on.

The visuals are somewhat less appealing, at least at first. The look is clean and minimalistic, but when the pieces are all strung together they start to look a little sausage-like. It’s not the most pleasant association. I forgot all about that slight distaste after making a few complex shapes. I’ve saved pictures of a few of my successes for later, and been tempted to tweet more than one. If waiting to acclimate to the look doesn’t work for you, try one of the unlockable color schemes. Some are quite striking.

The thing that keeps me coming back isn’t color or music, though. It’s not even the selection of game modes. The game draws me in because it lets me be creative. It’s freeing to play a puzzle game that lets the player decide when a piece is finished. It’s great to have the choice to create something pretty, or huge, or sophisticated. Polymer cuts away all but the most necessary of rules, and the game is all the better for that. Take a look, and share your best creations in our forum thread.

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Earlier this month, Foursaken Media dropped their latest iOS title Sky Gnomes [ $0.99 ] into the App Store and we thought it was pretty great in our review. You play as a gnome hurtling straight down through the sky riding a homemade rocket collecting snowflakes, coins and items in an effort to reach a landing zone as quickly as possible.

While that’s an awesome enough premise on its own, what pushed Sky Gnomes to the next level was its fantastic daily tournaments that matched you against the ghost runs of like-skilled players in competition for the best race time. Throw in a ton of upgradeable items to trick out your rocket and Sky Gnomes came together to be one of my favorite recent releases.

Today, Foursaken is sweetening the pot with the first of many planned content updates for Sky Gnomes. The big addition in this update is two brand new characters to play as: Girly the female racer and Skinny the uh, skinny racer. Each come with their own set of unique stats for their rocket, offering a change of pace from the original racer Gnomey. These new racers don’t come cheap though, as each one will set you back 10,000 coins.

Speaking of coins, this update also lowers the costs of all first tier upgrades and trinkets for your rocket, making it easier and quicker for new players to start customizing their machine. There are also a myriad of tweaks and bug fixes, as well as an empty menu screen that serves as a teaser for another major addition coming to Sky Gnomes: 1 vs 1 battles. More new characters are also in the works for future updates.

If you haven’t checked out Sky Gnomes yet, now might be the time as today’s update adds even more cool features to an already great package, with more new stuff already on the horizon.

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I’ll be the first to admit, when the discussion first started on giving Zach Gage’s SpellTower [ $0.99 ] five stars in our review last year, I distinctly remember raising an eyebrow and saying, “Guys, it’s a word game.” Truth be told, until then I hadn’t spent much time with SpellTower, but once I did… I was hooked. So hooked that this simple looking word game wound up as an honorable mention for our game of the year.

Nissa explains what the game is all about:

SpellTower isn’t bogged down with complicated rules or conditional abilities. The tutorial is only a handful of screens expressing a handful of simple rules. You can make a word as long as it’s in the game’s dictionary and it’s at least three letters long. Words that are five letters or longer clear letters all around them. You can’t make the same word twice, and if a letter has a number on it, it needs to be used in a word of at least that length. Finally, uncommon letters like Z, J, Q and X clear their rows if they’re used in a word.

Those rules will carry you through SpellTower’s four game modes, which change up how the board is presented. Tower mode gives you 150 letters to earn the best score you can. Puzzle mode adds a row to the board each time you make a word, and if any column hits the top your game will end. Extreme Puzzle mode follows the same rules, but requires longer words faster and more often. Rush mode adds new rows over time, putting you on the clock.

A fifth game mode was added in a recent update, introducing local multiplayer. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but, spoilers, it’s even more fun than just playing SpellTower by your lonesome. This update has also revitalized my love for this game, and I’ve spent the past week absolutely engrossed in SpellTower.

Since the update landed, SpellTower has been rocketing up the iPad charts, and to attempt to push the game over the edge and take on Angry Birds and Draw Something, its price is being slashed to 99¢. If you’re even vaguely interested in word games, you need to pick up SpellTower. Heck, if your mom has an iPhone, tell her to get SpellTower, I bet she’d love it, and maybe love you a little more in the process for recommending an awesome video game.

Tell her TouchArcade sent you.

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Morphing drug pushers into plumes of viscera and leg parts has never been easier, thanks to the latest update to Midway Arcade. The arcade collection app, which features tons of classic arcade titles including NARC and Rampage, now features iCade support. We spent a moment or two in the app this morning and can confirm that the added support is sharp. We can also confirm that NARC is still the greatest game that has ever been made.

Version 1.0.1 rolls in a few more notable tweaks. The Spy Hunter looping theme bug has been fixed, d-pad support has been added for Root Beer Tapper, and that nasty DLC crash bug has finally been annihilated. Neat!

Midway Arcade still doesn’t have the greatest ports on the planets, but what it does offer works well enough for our needs. Check it out if you’re into Midway’s older stuff. Here’s a list of what it has as of this posting, and note that a couple of these are being sold across two $.99 DLC bundles:

• Spy Hunter
• Rampage
• Defender
• Joust
• Root Beer Tapper
• Arch Rivals
• Gauntlet
• Gauntlet 2
• Wizard of Wor
• APB
• NARC
• Total Carnage

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Plants vs. Zombies for iPhone [$2.99] and iPad [$6.99] both received some content loving while you were in bed last night. Plants vs. Zombies iPhone received Vasebreaker Endless mode, which packs in a total of nine levels. The iPad version, on the other hand, now supports Zen Garden, Vasebreaker Endless, “I, Zombies” mode, and four new mini-games: Slot Machine, Portal Combat, Beghouled Twist, and Zombiquarium have been included. The Plants vs. Zombies wiki has delightfully ridiculously in-depth looks on each of these modes, if you need to know exactly what you’ll be getting into before updating.

It’s notable that PopCap is continuing to push the free-to-play aspect of Plants vs. Zombies mobile. As Kotaku reports, only the first levels of Vasebreaker and I, Zombie are available from the get-go. The rest of these game’s respective levels, and the other mentioned modes, need to be purchased with in-game coins, which of course can be earned or purchased straight-up.

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The very first post on TouchArcade was over four years ago now, which, for those of you playing along at home, was before the iOS App Store even launched. (Heck, back then it wasn’t even iOS yet, and wouldn’t even be iOS for another two years.) We’ve been hard at work on our own app with the help of Flexibits and Bartelme Design for what seems like forever, and with it being unleashed to the world next week, I figured now was a great time to lay out the features and functionality of the app.

First off, the main screen (seen below and to the left) is what you see when you launch the app. It has a featured story, which usually will be whatever our last review was, or any other story that deserves some kind of special attention. To the right of that is the “Hot Games” list, which is a killer feature of the app. What you’re looking at here is a realtime display of the games that have generated the most interest in our community.

There’s a whole bunch of behind the scenes wizardry taking place to compute this list, utilizing tons of different data points to create a surprisingly accurate display of what the hottest games at the time are. The cool thing about this is that the list is constantly being updated. If you want to know what the most popular games amongst our community are at this exact moment, look no further than the hot games list.

The other views of the app share a similar look, and you’re able to really drill down on reviews for all the games we’ve looked at via a set of drop downs. So, for instance, if you wanted to see reviews of free action games posted in the last month. Totally doable. The “News & Reviews” function gives you a quick glance at all the content on the site. Oh, and if you decide to, you can even get push alerts when we post a new story.

Our forums are (obviously) huge for our community, so we’ve included forum integration in the app. Each thread display also features all the information you’d need about a game at a glance, with ratings from both the actual App Store as well as amongst our own users. You can even assign your own ratings just like you can on your browser. See the little slider with the binoculars? Things with the app get even better.

The watch list, much like the wish list in the AppShopper App [ Free ] is my favorite feature. By flipping the toggle switch seen above, you can add any game, regardless of whether or not it’s released. From there, you can see any stories that have been posted about that specific game. Also, if the push alerts for everything we post is a little too much for you, you can set the app to only send you alerts when articles that pertain directly to your watch list are posted.

So, if we post a preview for a game that interests you, all you’ve got to do is add it to your watch list, and you’ll get alerts for when it’s released, when we post a review, and potentially even if it ever gets updates or a price drop and we cover it.

The app also has tons of information about all the games on the App Store. Once you get into the actual details page of any game (which is accessible by numerous methods within the app) you’ll see our own review scores as well as the rating from out community, and you’ll be able to jump into any forum thread that pertains to the game. Also, obviously, any associated trailers or screenshots are there along with the iTunes text and anything we’ve posted about the game.

We’ve put a ton of work into the TouchArcade app, and we’re all really proud of what we’re about to release. There’s a number of other little features and settings that you’ll discover as you’re using it, but this is the core functionality of the app. We’ve been using it for months now to discover games to cover on the site, and we’re confident that it’ll become your go to app to find the latest and greatest games the App Store has to offer.

If everything goes as planned, it will be available for free, globally, next week.

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We’ve been looking forward to Ravenous Games’ upcoming Burger Cat since it was announced in late March. Not just because it’s a game featuring an adorable cat, which is reason enough to be excited in my book, but also because it looked like a clever puzzle platformer that was a casual-focused departure from the grittier League of Evil series.

In our hands-on preview of Burger Cat, we found the gameplay very approachable but still with a nice progression in both challenge and depth of each level. Plus, since it’s a complete overhaul of the original Flash version, the production values in Burger Cat are second to none. Definitely give the preview a read for the full skinny, and check out the first trailer for Burger Cat which Ravenous has recently released.

We’ve also learned that Burger Cat has been pushed back from its original release, which would have been this week, but we won’t have to wait long since it’s already rescheduled to hit next week on April 19th. Good thing too, I can already hear my cat’s stomach growling.

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