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This week’s Freebie Alert is brought to you by wind. Not the kind that shakes acorn from limb or screws up your hair. Fake Wind, like the kind seen in Spaces of Play’s Spirits [Free / HD], which makes the award-winning puzzle game possible.

If you’re not catching my drift, both versions of Spirits are free on the App Store this afternoon, meaning you can download the games right now without a care or a thought as to the health of your wallet or your children’s dwindling trust funds. What a deal, right?

Spirits is a neat game in which you are tasked with guiding several fungus monsters to an end goal, all the while transforming them into a variety of environmental objects needed to traverse the game’s winding, art-fartsy hand-drawn pathways.

As you should have seen in the above, Spirits is a beautiful game with puzzles that require some measure of thought. Control is indirect much like a Lemmings joint, so thinking around obstructions is necessary. Plus, wind plays a huge role in the direction and flow as both barriers and pathways.

For what it’s worth, we gave it high marks in our review. But you’re already grabbing it for the price of $0, right? I mean, really, it’s zero bucks. Just do it!

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When it comes to campy, over-the-top horror movies that should theoretically make good games, nothing really tops Army of Darkness. Despite its seemingly perfect fit, its cult following and its pedigree, there have been very few games based on the Evil Dead universe. Thankfully, Backflip Studios took on Army of Darkness: Defense [99¢ / HD] with their own spin on the castle defense genre slapped with a thick layer of fan-service paint.

At its core, Army of Darkness Defense is a casual castle defense title with light RPG elements. Despite those RPG elements, you're not going to get a very deep experience here, but if you're a fan of the series you'll probably be happy with the end result. Most notable among the fan-fodder is the massive collection of voice clips found throughout — something around the ballpark of over 100 different clips from the movie are included and scattered randomly about. Even with that many clips in the mix, they do get a bit repetitive as the game moves on, but that's what the mute button is for.

Visually, AoD Defense stays true to its inspiration as well. Where Army of Darkness ran with the slapstick elements from Evil Dead II, the game uses a cartoonish look to convey the same feeling. The same can't be said for the menus and UI overlay, which aren't exactly the most pleasant things to look at, but they function well enough.

The twist on castle defense comes in the form of allowing you direct control over Ash, the main character. It seems like a big step in the right direction, but considering you can only move him left or right and have little control over what he's actually doing, it ends up being more of an exercise in keeping your brain entertained while you're calling on backup troops than a big innovation. That's especially true considering you're basically stuck on a two-dimensional plane.

That plane is the cause of another slight problem in the game, balance. Since your troops will basically just walk forward and form a single-spaced, stacked wall, regardless of their type, it doesn't matter much which troops you're using. There are no counter-tactics at play here and if you happen to upgrade one of the early, cheap units to its maximum level, you can spam it against every enemy you run into with little trouble.

The game doesn't push you to do otherwise either. There are probably certain units that are better against certain waves than others, but for the most part, an upgraded unit will do fine against anything it runs up against. Because you're restricted to the 2D plane, you can't stack units or coordinate a complex defense and for the most part, the combat feels slightly random.

If you're especially lazy, you can utilize the in-app purchases to upgrade your units at your fancy, but as mentioned above, it's not particularly necessary. At no point during the 50 waves did I feel the need to grind or like I didn't have enough gold to upgrade my eleven different units enough to get through it. On top of standard unit upgrades that up the health and attack power, you can also upgrade Ash, his weaponry, a few different special skills and your castle's defenses.

A standard wave pretty much goes like this: you'll start with the intro screen where you'll see the units that are part of the oncoming wave, you'll pick your defensive units, then your skills and you'll pop into the game. You'll control Ash by touching the left or right of the screen and he fires automatically when you're near an enemy unit. Your smithy will be forging iron, which can be used to call-in new units to your defense.

From there, it's pretty much just making sure you've got enough backup to deal with the waves and waiting for the completion screen. It gets a bit repetitive over time and it would have been nice to see more diversity in the environment or the enemies, but the campaign is short enough (around two to three hours) that you probably won't really notice.

By the end of it all, fans of the film won't be disappointed with how Backflip Studios handled the IP. They are clearly admirers of the film and were able to create a game based in the AoD world that looks and feels like its inspiration all while including enough Easter eggs to appease fans but not so many that casual players will be turned-off. The RPG elements certainly add a layer of depth, but it's too bad there is no real strategy to using them. At a glance it seemed like Army of Darkness Defense was going to offer more strategy and RPG than the usual castle defense titles, but it ends up being a bit shallow. It's still an entertaining title and you'll likely enjoy your time with it as long as you keep your expectations in check.

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Last month we told you the news that Donut Games would be revisiting their entire back catalog and updating each of their games with universal iPad support, Retina Display graphics, and Game Center integration. Just a couple of days later, the first of these updates hit the game Traffic Rush [99¢] and beyond adding the mentioned goodies it also contained an entirely new game mode called Rail Rush.

Now the second game to receive such an update is Rat On A Skateboard [Free], and Donut Games has dropped the price to free in order to celebrate. Rat On A Skateboard launched last November, and offers 2 different randomly generated endless modes as well as 30 challenge levels each with a 3 star grading system. This new update also includes an additional 10 new levels to play through in challenge mode. Here is an excerpt from our full review of Rat On A Skateboard:

The basic gameplay has Ratty moving automatically from left to right across the screen on his skateboard. Tapping the screen makes him jump (or ollie, to be precise) and tapping the screen while he is in the air performs tricks. You can perform up to four tricks in the air based on how many taps you can pull off before Ratty hits the ground. These tricks in order are a kickflip, a 360 flip, a triple kickflip, and a master flip, and you'll earn more points by executing multiple tricks in one jump. This adds a slightly more strategic element to the game where you can effectively earn more points by performing a lot of in-air tricks during well planned jumps, rather than only having your score increase solely due to collecting items or traveling a long distance.

Suffice to say, Rat On A Skateboard is a must-download during this free promotion. The Retina Display graphics look beautiful on my iPhone 4 and the game plays really well on the iPad too. One thing to note about all 3 of Donut’s universal titles is that while playing on an iPad the game doesn’t completely fill the screen. This is likely so they didn’t have to redraw all the artwork to fit the iPad’s larger screen, which I can totally understand. It definitely doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the games, but hopefully all brand new titles going forward will be formatted to fit the iPad screen properly.

Make sure to pick up Rat On A Skateboard while it’s free, and if you have an extensive collection of Donut Games titles on your device like I do then keep your eyes peeled for more updates adding universal support, Retina Display graphics, and Game Center in the coming weeks.

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Capcom has been making good on their promise of adding new titles to their wonderful little emulator app Capcom Arcade [Free], and a new update has just hit that adds two new classic titles to the package. They’re both winners, too.

The first game is Super Ghouls’n Ghosts, the third title in the original Ghosts’n Goblins trilogy. Interestingly, Super Ghouls’n Ghosts was never an arcade game at all, and first appeared on the Super Nintendo back in 1991. That’s not a bad thing at all though, as it was easily one of the finest action-platformers from that system.

It’s also hard as nails, just like the previous games in the series, and the virtual controls don’t help matters any. They’re totally workable, but these games were brutal even with the precision of physical controls, and if you’re able to beat Super Ghouls’n Ghosts on iOS then you have won my admiration and deserve some sort of major award.

The second new title is Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, the competitive gem matching game that features chibi-style characters from Capcom's various fighting games. Considering how many quarters I pumped into this game in arcades back in the day, I’m ecstatic to now have a full version that fits in my pocket. It features 3 different single-player arcade modes against AI opponents, but best of all it also has local Bluetooth multiplayer for two players. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is decent fun solo, but is absolutely fantastic with a real life competitor.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo also controls pretty well on the touch screen. There’s an option for having a smaller screen size with onscreen virtual buttons around the border so as not to cover up the action. Or, you can go full screen and use simple swipe and tap gestures to control your gems. Both options work fine, though the swipe method can be a bit imprecise when the action speeds up in the game.

As we detailed in our review of Capcom Arcade, the game is initially free to download with 3 free tickets given out per day that are each good for one play of any game. You can also buy token packs as IAP which give you a single play per token, or you can just outright buy an entire arcade machine which gives you unlimited play of that game. To celebrate this latest update, you can currently get Street Fighter II, 1942, 1943, Ghosts’n Goblins, Ghouls’n Ghosts, and Commando for the sale price of 99¢ each. The rest of the games, including these two new ones, can be purchased for their regular price of $2.99.

I really like Capcom Arcade, and was overjoyed when they added Final Fight last month, one of my all-time favorite games. I’m glad to see them following that up with another set of solid titles, and with the extensive catalog of excellent games Capcom has under its belt I can’t wait to see how Capcom Arcade will grow and expand in the future.

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The BAFTA-nominated Home Sheep Home [$.99] began its life as a free Flash game. Now, after 80 million impressions, it can be found on the App Store for 99 cents. I tend to dig what indie houses do with their Flash ports. There are some sloppy ones, sure, but as a whole, small studios tend to push out phenomenal, detail-oriented variants of their core game on touch devices. Home Sheep Home doesn’t deserve this level of praise, however it is still a sharp puzzle game with the right amount of content, color, and character.

The setup is simple: Home Sheep Home gives you control of three sheep, each of which has different attributes based on its respective weight. The goal is to take all three sheep from one side of a level to the other while navigating a physics puzzle molded around the fact that one sheep is small, the other medium, and the other huge.

Perhaps this is a kickback from its mobile roots, but Home Sheep Home's puzzles are designed with few variables; in fact, the game as a whole is casual-focused and linear, so don’t expect to cranium-busting challenges. On average, I get the gist and start executing on the correct solution within a minute or so of viewing a level.

For what it’s worth, I never feel like the design robs me of “A-ha!” moments despite its for-the-browser simplicity and breeziness. Each of the game’s 15 levels features a unique challenge with different obstructions, so that helps, too.

I imagine the fact that you're 'only' getting 15 levels might rub some the wrong way, and I get that, but I see it as a strength; Home Sheep Home has a focus and each of its levels has a unique vision — there’s little regurgitation, recycling, or repetition.

I’d like to think that the activity required also adds to the overall value. You switch sheep constantly in order to fiddle with various triggers, push environmental objects, or simply reach the other side of a chasm. You’re doing a lot even though the solutions are clear.

Art is a real feature in Home Sheep Home as you’ve probably noted. It features a hip washed out, scribbled kind of look that informs the light-hearted puzzles and gives the sheep, which would be otherwise flat, some actual character. Plus, doesn’t the art just give off the vibe that this is a friendly, calm, and whimsical world?

You can check out this video of the Flash version of Home Sheep Home to get an idea of the gameplay, but be warned that this is a walkthrough video and will spoil the solution to all 15 puzzles. Watch at your own discretion:

While the puzzles are tight and the art is great, Home Sheep Home does stumble with its control implementation. Movement is forced via a little slider at the bottom that can be hard to nail when attempting to juggle multiple actions. Also, the response times seem to be off, though that might just be a fault of the physics engine, which can at times be a bit too low-gravity. These issues are nothing you can’t get over, but you’ll note them.

Rare do I come to enjoy a puzzle game in such a small wrapper, so I’m thrilled to be able to share my thoughts on this game with you. There is a thread in our forums for discussing Home Sheep Home, and if you’re in the market for a quick, cute, and warm puzzle title with a fun mechanic and a few fun twists, give this a shot.

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Remember back when Freeverse used to make traditional games instead of freemium titles? The ngmoco acquisition and the shift to free to play almost seems like ancient history with how fast the App Store moves, but Warpgate [Free / HD] was one of the final gamer games released by the studio. How long ago did Warpgate come out? Well, our review is centralized around it being an original iPad launch title. See, I told you, ancient.

Warpgate is a space trading game, and a damn fine one at that. There's tons of content to delve through, and the dynamic in-game economy is something that can basically keep you busy for eternity if you get immersed in it. In addition, there are 35 star systems to explore, 172 different ships, and over 100 main quests. It's also had graphical updates since the initial release to add antialiasing, making Warpgate look even better than before.

Be sure to snag Warpgate and/or Warpgate HD while it's free. It's not for everyone, but if it gets your hooks in you, you can dump hours into the game without even realizing it.

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It's Wednesday again, which for me means another week where I debate drafting up a template to use for these weekly New Zealand release posts instead of coming up with something new each week. Work smarter, not harder like Scrooge McDuck always says… But, I digress. This week's releases include a couple highly anticipated HD versions of iPhone games, as well as Army of Darkness Defense which, like all things to do with Bruce Campbell, seems almost too awesome for words.

If this is your first Wednesday with an iOS device, or if this is the first Wednesday that has come since you discovered TouchArcade, the App Store works a little something like this: Developers can set a specific release date for those apps, and they then get released worldwide in each region as it becomes that day in that particular region. New Zealand is the region nearest to the international date line, so they get their games first. What does this mean for us Americans? All of these games should be available at 11:00 PM Eastern tonight:

Army of Darkness Defense, 99¢ / HD – Forum Thread – I've had a preview version of this game on my iPad 2 for a couple weeks now, and if you're even close to being an Army of Darkness fan, or just a general Bruce Campbell fan, you need to buy this game the instant it appears. It's a hero-based castle battle game, and while the gameplay is fairly run of the mill for the genre, Backflip Studios have basically redefined fan service in an iPhone game. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that a good 90MB of the 100MB file size consists of movie quotes and other official sound effects.

Bee Farm, 99¢ – Forum Thread – There have been line drawing games that put you in charge of managing all kinds of things from planes, to boats, and now bees. Even though it seems like there's a million of these games out there now, I still like trying out new ones to see if they've managed to add anything new or exciting to the genre. And hey, who doesn't like honey?

Bohnanza, $3.99 / HD – Forum Thread – I'm woefully naive of a lot of crazy board and card games, so it didn't really surprise me to find out just how popular Bohnanza actually is. There's an entire Wikipedia article on the game which details the ridiculous amount of expansions it has had. I'm not sure Bohnanza will be a mass-market success on the App Store, but like most of these semi-obscure board and card games, I'm sure it's release will make some people very happy.

Catch The Candy, 99¢ / HD – A fun little physics game we got a sneak peak of a while ago puts you in charge of a curious little purple creature with a long tongue that's used to reach candy. 53 levels are included, with more on the way via updates.

Chromanoids, 99¢ – [Forum Thread] – The iTunes description of Chromanoids is fairly vague, but I'm intrigued by the screenshots. I'm making an educated guess here in that the gameplay might involve some kind of color-coded Missile Defense-like gameplay. Am I wrong? Am I right? I suppose we'll know in a few hours.

Golden Axe 3, $2.99 – Forum Thread – Same old song and dance here from Sega. Golden Axe 3's release makes for an App Store trilogy of Golden Axe games, which is great if you're just mad about Golden Axe. Hopefully once Sega gets releasing all of these arcade-style games out of their system they get back to releasing some more RPG's from their insanely massive back-catalog.

HECTOR: Ep1 HD – We Negotiate with Terrorists, $6.99 – Forum Thread – We like the iPhone version a lot in our review, and this seems to be the same game, just up-scaled to the iPad. I've greatly preferred these kind of point and click games on the iPad, and Hector is a great one. Hopefully this leads to those followup episodes fans of the iPhone game have been waiting on…

Spoing, 99¢ / HD – Forum Thread – This game looks a lot like Parachute Ninja, except you can control where you put the various slingshots to shoot your dude around. The trailer has definitely piqued my interest, and I look forward to giving this game a spin.

StarFront: Collision HD, $6.99 – Forum Thread – We had positive first impressions of the iPhone version of StarFront, and we're expecting the iPad version to be even better since the increased screen real estate really lends itself to an RTS game. As an aside, am I the only one who is amused by the fact that Gameloft not only has cloned StarCraft, but they're also duplicating the commentary-laden game replays like the above video? Alright, I admit, I'm totally stoked to fire this game up on my iPad 2.

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Released in July of last year, Villain’s Archetype [99¢] was easily the most robust online first-person shooter available on the App Store at the time. It featured smooth Team Deathmatch multiplayer for up to 10 players over WiFi, 3G, or EDGE connections. We really liked the game in our review, and in the months following release Archetype received several updates adding Capture the Flag and Free For All modes, new maps and game types, and loads of other enhancements. An iPad native version, Archetype HD [$2.99], was released as well.

While other FPS games have since offered similarly impressive online multiplayer functionality, Archetype has remained a popular choice among fraggers on the go. Now you can test drive the game for free with the recently released Archetype Cadet [Free/HD]. Archetype Cadet gives you access to 5-on-5 Team Deathmatch on 2 available maps, Invidia and Pride Rocket Arena. Check out our gameplay video of the release version of Archetype to get an idea of the gameplay:

The full version of Archetype has you creating a persistent profile that is tied to your device. Archetype Cadet simply assigns you a generic gamer tag that is unable to earn experience or rank up in any way, so there’s no hassle with trying to sync profiles between the two versions if you decide to upgrade to the full. If you’ve been wondering what all the fuss is about with Archetype but haven’t yet been able to pull the trigger on purchasing the game, then grab Archetype Cadet for a free glimpse of the gameplay.

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You may recall back in November when Beeline Interactive (formerly Capcom Mobile) released Smurfs’ Village [Free] into the App Store. It was a Farmville-like freemium sim game that was themed after the popular 3-apple high blue folk many of us remember from our childhood. We actually quite liked Smurfs’ Village in our review, noting that it did incredible fan-service to fans of The Smurfs and had gorgeous Retina Display graphics that brought everything to life.

Unfortunately, the freemium aspect sucked a lot of the joy out of the Smurfs' Village. Crops would wither and die if you weren’t constantly attentive of them and purchasing the IAP Smurfberry currency was basically required to obtain some of the cooler items in the game.

The IAP currency didn’t just suck the joy out of the game, though, but also sucked the money out of many unhappy parents’ bank accounts. The IAP system in Smurfs’ Village allowed you to make multiple purchases with just a few clicks, and in the weeks following the game's release Apple had a huge number of requests for refunds by parents whose younger children had accidentally bought hundreds of dollars of Smurfberries in the game.

Part of the problem was the loose way that Beeline had implemented the IAP functionality, and the other part of the problem was that Apple’s own iTunes account system would keep users logged in for up to 15 minutes after entering a password and making a purchase in a game. This led to parents entering their password for one reason or another and then handing their device off to their kids who would fire up Smurfs’ Village and click away recklessly buying Smurfberries.

Apple was not very pleased with Beeline over the uproar of angry customers, and it turns out that the government wasn’t very pleased with Apple’s in-app purchasing system either, and launched an investigation into how that system works this past February. This led to Apple changing how IAP is handled on devices, requiring a password to be entered every time a purchase is being made from within an app as of the iOS 4.3 update.

Now Beeline is taking this a step further with their latest update to Smurfs’ Village. There is now a cap on in-app purchases which only allows a max of 5 to be made within a 15 minute time frame. I’m curious to know whether Apple required Beeline to add this type of restriction in or if it was of the developer’s own volition, as I haven’t yet heard of any other case where Apple limited how much can be purchased through their IAP infrastructure.

At any rate, there are also a few new items and additional levels to earn in this new update. If you’re a fan of Smurfs’ Village, update your copy of the game and take comfort in the fact that at most you’ll only be accidentally spending $500 every 15 minutes on Smurfberries.

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Last month 2D Boy’s World of Goo [$2.99] finally arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch following the highly successful launch of World of Goo HD [$4.99] for the iPad this past winter.

The World of Goo experience translated surprisingly well to the smaller screen, but due to an unfortunate bug that slipped in at the last minute the game didn’t support Retina Display graphics as intended. Today 2D Boy has issued an update to correct this problem, and the game looks fantastic on the Retina Display.

If you’re somehow wondering “what is this World of Goo you speak of?” then be sure to check out our original review of the iPad version, as not only is World of Goo one of the most critically acclaimed indie titles on Mac and PC but it actually feels and plays even better utilizing the iOS touch screen.

Both the universal World of Goo HD and the iPhone/iPod touch only World of Goo have received the Retina Display fix, so be sure to grab the latest update to give your eyes some high-resolution love.

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