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At GDC 2012 we got a preview of two upcoming titles from Scottish game studio Digital Goldfish, the guys behind Bloons.

Chip Trippington and the Kwiff Frizz Quiz

One of the most unique and perhaps even bizarre titles I saw at GDC this year was the upcoming point-and-click adventure Chip Trippington and the Kwiff Frizz Quiz for iPad and iPhone.

The game is the story of poor Chip, the office Liquid Rejuvenation Manager, who has a big heart but is more often than not the butt of his officemates’ gaffs. Chip just wants to be one of the guys, and so joy it was when he got an invite to the company party. Sadly, when he went to get ready for the big night out, Chip discovered he was out of Kwiff Frizz, the structural component that holds his mighty hair aloft. Out to the shop then, goes Chip. But, little does he know that the quick run to the corner store is about send him through a series of unimaginable events that just might put the fate of the world in his big, clammy hands.

Chip Trippington starts out with the simple challenge of getting Chip to make a cup of coffee for his co-workers, but then the quest for a hair product begins, and it’s one adventure after another. Gameplay involves point-and-click puzzle solving and multiple-choice text interactions. In the few minutes I spent with the title, I came to love its sometimes warped sense of humor.

World’s Strongest Man

Another coming game that the Digital Goldfish folks showed us was an iOS take on the TV license World’s Strongest Man. The game will be an iPhone-specific release that challenges you to be come the world mightiest athlete. Getting that done involves balancing Energy and Morale levels during visceral competitions such as Keg Toss, Overhead Lift, and Truck Pull.

In preparing for The Big Day, there’s much training to be done in the game’s training area, building strength and improving skill. These involve seven different mini-games (with an eight coming in an update after launch), all designed to push muscles to the max.

Getting to the glory seat requires a bit of strategy on top of the raw muscle element. Career choices factor in, such as determining which promo events to take on, and just how to structure training to maximize your build.

The game features a Career mode that is a 10-year run to become the World’s Strongest Man, as well as a Free Play mode that is conducive to quick-play sessions.

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Today at GDC I spent some time with retro strongman Dan Bliss of BinarySquare, who showed us his latest creation, Puzzle Bebop.

Puzzle Bebop is wonderfully pixellated falling block, match-four puzzle game wrapped in virtual CRT scan-lines, with chippy 8-bit audio to boot. As falling block games go, the core game mission is nothing too new. It’s in the control system where the real innovation of this game lies.

Instead of utilizing on-screen rotation buttons or a virtual D-pad, Puzzle Bebop makes use of TouchCircus, a system of touch control algorithms designed by Bliss, himself. As blocks fall into the game area from above, the player can rotate them by drawing large circles anywhere on the screen with his or her fingers. This approach feels much more natural for rotation than the control systems I’ve seen used in every other App Store falling block game I’ve tried.

The unique control mechanic, the lovey retro aesthetic (standard stuff for BinarySquare), and the lavish, pixellated visual effects that fill the screen during combo eliminations and the like make Puzzle Bebop a game well worth a look. And, stay tuned for more innovative control mechanics from Bliss — he’s spent some real time thinking outside the box about controls, and I saw a taste of his coming games that did impress.

Puzzle Bebop is a universal app (for both iPhone and iPad) that support the iCade controller device. It has recently been submitted to Apple and should be available shortly at a price of $0.99.

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Be-Rad Entertainment gained notoriety on the App Store with Lame Castle [99¢/UHD/Lite], a game inspired by Sony’s advertising jab at iOS gaming, and more recently with the well-received Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack [$1.99/Lite]. At GDC this week, they were showing off their newest iOS title, a strategic matching game based on the movie ‘WarGames‘.

‘WarGames’, if you aren’t aware, is a classic early 80s hacking tale where a young computer enthusiast inadvertently hacks into a military missile strike system. He thinks he’s merely playing a game, but in reality, he is setting off a series of events that will eventually lead to World War III. When he realizes what has happened, it’s a mad scramble to reverse what he has done. Here’s a short teaser featuring clips from the ‘WarGames’ movie itself:

In the WarGames iOS game, you’ll play as the WOPR computer system. As a computer who merely wants to carry out its orders, you’re constantly battling against the people who are trying to shut down the missile launching process. You’ll battle against 6 characters from the movie in matching gameplay that is highly reminiscent of the excellent RPG puzzle title Dungeon Raid [$2.99/Lite].

WarGames isn’t just a Dungeon Raid clone, though. There isn’t a huge focus on persistent RPG leveling, but the drag-to-make-matches mechanic is basically the same. You battle against each of the movie characters by making matches to earn cash, replenish your health, increase experience, and of course deal damage. Certain items on the board with a circle around them will act as your opponents offense if you don’t match them quickly enough, adding a highly strategic layer to the gameplay.

There are other aspects like unlockable power-ups that can increase what you earn for matches or deal additional damage to your opponent. Be-Rad also hopes to implement even more fan service directly from the movie, like sound effects and voice samples. I expected a WarGames game to be more along the lines of The Hacker [99¢] which we recently really enjoyed, but I was pleasantly surprised by the matching game and I think it works really well with the movie IP.

Be on the lookout for WarGames to be hitting sometime in the next couple of months.

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We had a chance to sit down with the folks from 99Games (creators of WordsWorth [$1.99 / Free] and The Jim and Frank Mysteries [$0.99 / HD], among other apps) and took a look at the games they have coming up in the next few months.

First up, WordsWorth HD [$2.99] has a big update incoming. The main thing to expect is a new single-device multiplayer mode. Where the game’s online multiplayer is a strategic asynchronous affair, the head-to-head (or side-by-side) single device mode is frantic. Both players have their own copies of a shared board, and letters disappear as your opponent uses them. Looks like it’s going to be a really great time.

Up next is Night Club Mayhem. 99Games has played with the time management concept before with Prison Mayhem [Free]. Night Club Mayhem brings those lessons back to a setting that might have slightly more crowd appeal. It’s nice to see a solid time management title that doesn’t run on IAP currency. The cool thing here is that the developer has put a lot of love into the accompanying mini-games, with a rhythm-style DJing game and a surprisingly complicated bartending simulation in the mix.

Night Club Mayhem should be out soon— 99Games expects it to be one of the first new games to fully support the Retina iPad, and it will hit Mac and PC at some point too.

A little further down the road iPhone users should be seeing the adorable physics puzzler Tito’s Shell. The version we took a look at was still under heavy development, but it’s looking good so far. Each timed level separates Tito the turtle from his shell, and the player has to use the environment to put them back together. Just about any part of the level can be connected to anything else within a tight range, so the solutions get increasingly experimental in a sort of Rube Goldberg machine way. It looks like it’s coming along well, and will certainly make a place for itself in the world of cute animal physics puzzlers.

There’s one more game up on 99Games’ slate: Dream Star. If you’re into the idea of a IAP-currency supported movie star simulator, keep your eyes open for this one when it comes out later in spring.

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It’s hard not to gush about Tiny Thief. Earlier this morning at GDC in San Francisco, 5 Ants, a freshly assembled studio based in Barcelona, gave us a quick peek at its initial title, which merges stealth with traditional point-and-click. Simply put, it’s gorgeous, and has the kind of mechanical pop that we all want for The Next Big Thing.

As the game’s titular Tiny Thief, your job is to steal treasures like diamonds without betraying your presence. Thief can hide in wardrobes and crates, hang on chandeliers or medieval banners, and even sneak into bed next to a sleeping sheriff’s wife. This is all in the name of avoiding conflict, of course. Thief is the world’s smallest burglar, and as such, he doesn’t have the means to defend himself.

In addition to hiding, Thief can also freely use items around his immediate environment to accomplish his goals. In one level, for example, Thief needs to use a cuckoo clock to wake a sleeping feline and its owners long enough for him to sneak closer to his goal. These solutions are never readily apparent, as each level boasts a number of interactive items, and the game logic keeps the utility of them rather fuzzy.

In our short demo, we were impressed by the sheer amount of interactive objects in the levels, as well as the hand-drawn visuals. This thing is dripping with cutesy, as you’ll see in the trailer below:

Tiny Thief is split into five themed chapters, all of which have five levels. This kind of structure in particular is intriguing: Tiny Thief relies on a lot of trial-and-error as you try to find the right combination of actions and hiding, but its instanced action seems to keeps the puzzles small and, you, as a result, focused and not annoyed.

Game is due out in the next three months. We’ll be following this one pretty closely as it hurdles towards release. Stay tuned.

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Back in January we brought you the news that Semi Secret Software, the studio behind Canabalt [$2.99], was working on a new game with Greg Wohlwend, best known for his work on Solipskier [$0.99]. We’ve had the chance to get our hands on an early build of the game and can give you some of the details.

First up, Hundreds is a minimalistic puzzle game. As you can see from the screenshots, it has a stark black, red and grey look, one that’s carried through every part of the game. It plays something like Surfacer [$0.99] or similar titles: you have a series of circles, and touching them makes them grow until you hit a certain goal. In this case each circle counts up toward 100, the total you need to hit between them all.

But that’s where the similarities to other titles end. The circles move around each level, and as a general rule of thumb they can’t touch anything while you’re touching them. The play style is reflexive— it’s vital to time touches for the moments they aren’t about to path into an obstacle. Over time you’ll need to use all your fingers, and while it isn’t an official mode the game is surprisingly fun to play with a friend.

We’ve run through several of the game’s levels, and they get ridiculously complex. There are so many different pieces that interact with the circles in different ways, and learning how each of them work seems like it’s going to be quite rewarding. It looks like the game going to get very difficult, and Semi Secret’s Adam Saltsman tells us that one of his goals is to create a game that may not be completed by every player, but will reward the ones who stick it out.

That may just be the coolest thing about Hundreds: for dedicated players, it will be two complete (and completely different) puzzle games in one. We haven’t had a chance to see this in action, but the overarching narrative will be portioned out in a very novel way. Much of it will be revealed through obscure ciphers and codes, fleshing things out for players who are willing to really dig in and maybe even cooperate with others to work through them. This adds a whole other level of gameplay on top of the usual Game Center meta-layer and what sounds like some very cool community-wide statistic tracking.

Semi Secret isn’t ready to announce a release date, but the company currently aiming to release Hundreds before this summer. It will launch on iPad for sure, and the company is currently considering whether it will also be suitable for smaller devices.

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Here’s a hip one that might interest puzzle game fans. Trigger Happy Labs is close to releasing its first title, a casual color-based matching game called Colorgon. Like a 2D version of a Rubik’s cube, the title has its users rotating colored blocks to form a chain of perfect pairs. The faster the better.

We saw the game earlier this afternoon, and were impressed with its UI direction. This specific element is as stripped down as the rest of the game, which, conveniently was the point of the entire project. Designer Mikael Tyrsen wanted a simple and beautiful, as well as time-wasting type of title. Mission accomplished so far.

Colorgon is slated to hit at some point within the next four weeks. It’ll launch as a Universal app, and incorporate Game Center and Facebook.

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Mattia Traverso’s soon to be IGF award-winning student project, One and One Story, is set to hit iPad and iPhone within the next four or so weeks. Traverso gave a short demo earlier this morning, and we couldn’t be happier with his progress on the project and the implementation of its touch control scheme.

The elevator pitch would go something like this: One and One Story is an experiential side-scrolling puzzle with a Limbo look and Braid-like brain twisters. It’s minimalist and moody, but also strangely, warming. The premise revolves around the relationship between a shadowy boy and a girl and it explores the themes of this relationship mechanically and structurally. Each chapter riffs on different aspects of this relationship, including periods of loss and love.

For example, in the loss levels, the boy losses his ability to jump. In the love levels, players have to control both characters and have them meet in the middle of a puzzle. Chapters are bookended with tiny bits and pieces of narrative, each vague enough to allow the user to draw his or her own conclusion.

To get a better sense of this mechanically, check out the flash version here. The iPad and iPhone builds will incorporate, possibly, a bonus mode, a refined look, a new song, and levels playable by two people simultaneously. Multiplayer is specifically something that Traverso wants to focus on.

It’s important to note that these screens aren’t final. Traverso is thinking that he might change up the characters’ looks, as well as iterate on the backgrounds. We’ll be keeping in touch moving forward, so expect more soon.

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My last meeting of day on Monday, here at GDC 2012, turned out to be a real treat. Alex Houdent of GlobZ, a studio formed in 2000 that develops primarily Flash-based games, let me spend some time with his upcoming iPhone arcade puzzler Twin Spin.

In Twin Spin, you control two little smiley blobs (one red, one yellow) connected on a line. Your goal is to move your pair of blobs around the checkered playfield, bumping target balloons, stepping on target spots, negotiating platforms that slide and spin, skidding on ice, dodging spike balls, and contending with various other trials and tribulations. The real trick of the game, however, is moving your smiling duo around. While one blob is firmly planted on the ground, the other orbits about it. A single tap swaps things out, and the other blob takes to orbiting. In this fashion, you can move (stagger, really) about the play area — or try; it’s a pretty tricky thing to get a handle on.

Twin Spin sounds simple, and looks it, too, but trying to time things perfectly and negotiate the hazards to get across the board to pop the right balloons (some of them are color-coded to require a whack from a particular one of your twins) gets madding, and fast.

The one-tap control mechanic, requiring precise timing and a fast reflex to keep out of trouble, makes for a unique and fun game experience I’ve not encountered before, and one that works perfectly for short, one-handed play sessions on the go. I think I played through 20 levels of Twin Spin before I let Alex get on with his presentation. There’s definitely goodness on the way, here.

Twin Spin for the iPhone has been submitted to Apple and should be landing shortly. An iPad version (or a universal update) will follow.

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