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While the App Store may be entirely overrun by terrible games and apps focused around varied levels of toilet humor, there are some definite diamonds in the rough if you're willing to search for them. Bad Air Day [99¢ / Lite] is one such instance of a game centralized around managing farts, which you would naturally just assume to be terrible that actually turned out to be a surprising amount of fun. The basic premise amounts to you taking the roll of a bellboy at a tall hotel who just got finished chowing down at some kind of all you can eat taco buffet. Well, now you've got a case of the furious farts, but your life depends on the inhabitants of your hotel not getting a whiff of them.

As you ride the elevator, your stomach will gurgle, and you'll emit a giant green puff of gas which must be managed. At its most simple, this just amounts to swiping on the screen to waft the fart in a particular direction. You can either blow it around until it dissipates on its own or direct it up to one of the exhaust fans at the top of the elevator to get sucked out. These vents randomly open and close, which often force you to get creative with managing your farts, particularly with a full elevator.

On each floor, hotel clientele get on and off. There are a wide array of elevator passengers from little old ladies who just stand there to clowns bouncing on pogo sticks. Each person seems to have a different fart tolerance as well, so while you might be able to accidentally squeeze one by a briefcase carrying businessman, an angry dog might not be so tolerant. When a part of the gas cloud approaches someone's nose, a red circle fills up in small segments. If it fills all the way, that person turns in to a skeleton and you lose a life. Also, after each floor, passengers get off the elevator and you score higher based on how little of your farts they smelled.

While all this is happening a, for the lack of a better term, fart fairy shows up who awards bonus points if you keep them enveloped in your stinky green cloud. It all gets incredibly hectic, and it won't take long before you're dealing with an entire elevator full of people, multiple farts, and a greedy fart fairy anxious to get a sniff. All of this is set to perfectly suited fart-centric music as well.

Bad Air Day has everything a good iPhone game should have. It's universal from the start, comes packed with Game Center for achievements and online scoring, and has a gesture-based control system that works fantastic. The art style is cute, the music couldn't be better, and the game is built on a funny (yet entirely cliche) premise. Don't let the fart app stigma scare you away from giving Bad Air Day a try, especially if you're the kind of person who can appreciate the silly side of the App Store.

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This past week Bravo Games, who brought us Touch Racing Nitro, released Volcano Escape [App Store], a game that combines elements of several different genres to create what's best described as an "endless platformer" title.

As the game starts off, you choose one of six different characters to play, some of whom are locked initially, and one who is a $0.99 download as he sports five lives (two extra). And then that character is pitched into an active volcano. Luckily, the volcano in question is arrayed with platforms the whole way down. You land on the bottom platform, just above a pool of lava, but there's no time to gather your wits — the lava is rising. The task at hand is to flee the molten menace by escaping upwards, jumping from platform to platform as nimbly as possible.

Complicating your flight are various tiki men and monsters that you must avoid or kill, and in the higher reaches of the volcano you'll need to use their blasted corpses as floating platforms to continue your ascent. Luckily there are various weapons and power-ups such as spring-loaded boots and even rocket packs to help you along the way — but watch out, some of the items you'll find can do you harm.

One might assume that the driven ascent mechanic would require small, simplistic platform arrangements. And, if the developer's goal were to create a relatively easy game, it would. But Volcano Escape is definitely not an easy game, but one requiring serious skill to rank on the online leaderboard. A significant portion of the challenge in the game is due to the elaborate platform arrangements and the various types of platforms you'll encounter. In addition to nice, solid slabs of stone, you'll find rocks that crumble, hinged surfaces, slabs of fire, and even bear traps. These you must quickly identify and negotiate, all while the searing lava rises to meet you. And, as mentioned previously, at times there are sections without platforms that must be traversed with the help of corpses bobbing in the lava. It's a daunting scenario, but at least you can double-jump and wall-jump like Mario. A nice touch is the random presentation of one of a few different platform arrangements when a new game is started, which helps to avoid monotony.

Volcano Escape borrows — and borrows well — from a number of games I can point to. Like Doodle Jump and its ilk, you are bound endlessly upward, but along the way you have to tap into your basic platformer skills. Unlike the typical endless jumping game, however, you set your own pace of ascent with the encroaching lava as a motivator, similar to the use of fluids in games like Flood and The Killing Game Show / Fatal Rewind.

I found the game highly challenging and extremely difficult to put down in the (many) hours I've spent with it over the last few days. But, in that time, I've identified a few areas that could use some improvement. One issue that is more noticeable as you're just getting a feel for the game is the onscreen control placement. There are two D-pads in the lower corners of the screen, one for movement and one for aiming / firing. (The controls can be rendered invisible in the options screen.) The jump button is positioned on the right edge of the screen, about 60% of the way up towards the top, and that placement, initially at least, feels a bit awkward. An alternate control layout or, better, the ability to customize the control layout would be nice to see in an update.

The "2.5D" graphics in Volcano Escape look downright gorgeous on my iPhone 4's Retina display, with all sorts of nice environmental effects like falling rocks and background tremors. But, perhaps due to its lavish scenery, the game suffers from frequent framerate studders on that device. In my experience, it doesn't significantly get in the way of gameplay, but it is an annoyance, and is something I've heard echoed by folks in our forums.

Volcano Escape really does have a whole lot to offer. Its combination of play mechanics from various genres is beautifully executed, its challenge is immense, and it's got just a whole lot of personality. There are a few issues that I hope will be addressed in a future update but, even so, I'd be quick to recommend Volcano Escape as a "don't miss" title to any iPhone gamer that enjoys a steep challenge.

Disclaimer: Bravo Games is a current advertiser on this site. While we firmly believe this does not influence in any way our review or coverage of the company and their titles, you should be aware.

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Back in January the folks at Team Phobic, the developer responsible for the excellent platforming games Bounce On [$1.99/Lite] and Bounce On 2: Drallo’s Demise [$3.99/Lite] as well as the puzzle platformer GravBot [$1.99/Lite/HD], announced their newest iOS title called Undead Island. Undead Island is another platforming game but is more action-oriented than any of Team Phobic’s previous efforts, and still features their colorful art style and solid level designs.

Just last week Team Phobic released the first trailer for Undead Island which shows off a good amount of gameplay, and so far is looking fantastic:

I’ve had a preview copy of Undead Island for the past week and have been enjoying it a ton. It really brings me back to those classic side-scrolling action games from the arcade and 16-bit eras. Undead Island will feature 16 levels on release with attractive graphics built for the Retina Display. Game Center will also be included for high score and achievement purposes. The game has been submitted already and Team Phobic hopes to have Undead Island out in time for GDC, which starts at the end of the month.

There’s currently a discussion about the game in our forums, and if you’re a fan of any of Team Phobic’s previous iOS efforts, or just a fan of solid action-platforming games in general, then you’ll be in for a treat when Undead Island releases sometime in the next couple of weeks.

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"Once more, the angels descend upon Gilverado…"

On Friday we reported that Cave announced that their 2007 arcade danmaku / bullet hell shooter DeathSmiles, which made its way to the Xbox 360 in 2009, would be coming to the iPhone this Spring. The studio has followed up with a press release providing additional details as well as a trailer video showing the action to come.

Enter the world of Gilverado, a kingdom plagued by hideous monsters and tortured souls. Choose from four angels with unique demonic familiars and battle against a storm of enemies pouring out of Hell's gates! Fight your way out of tight spots as you are surrounded by enemy units and bullets from both sides of the screen. The unique left and right shooting mechanic of Deathsmiles will keep you on your toes as you dodge and weave through complex enemy fire, beautifully crafted by the modern masters of shmups, CAVE.

DeathSmiles is a side-scrolling, gothic horror-styled shooter that sends hosts of enemies your way from all four sides of the screen, delivering highly intense onscreen action. It offers a choice of the order in which its various stages are tackled as well as of the character you play: Windia, "the foppish English girl;" Casper, "the sassy German;" Follett, "the cautious French girl;" or Rosa, "the California valley girl."

The Xbox 360 version features three play modes: a straight port of the arcade version, an "arranged" mode that offers independent control of a second on-screen character, and a graphically enhanced mode offering more lavish visuals.

Cave has also announced that their excellent Mushihimesama Bug Panic [App Store] will receive an update in March bringing Bluetooth and 3G/WiFi multiplayer, a choice to turn the Autobomb feature on or off, a choice of Attack Modes (lock or direct), as well as an update to the "lite" version [link], enabling players to play through all stages in the first world and also the Score Attack Mode.

Cave, who has produced 48 danmaku shooters over the past 16 years, has recently been recognized as "the most prolific developer of danmaku shooters" by the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer's Edition.

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If you’re looking for some acrobatic reptile fun this weekend, head on over to the App Store where Hurdle Turtle [Link] has gone free for today, Saturday the 19th, only. Hurdle Turtle is an endless running game with cute pixel graphics and retro chip-tunes that launched last November. The initial version of Hurdle Turtle was fairly bare bones, with just one environment to run in and one character to play as. Still, something about this silly turtle doing double front flips over hurdles while running faster and faster down a track captured the hearts of both myself and fellow TouchArcader Eli Hodapp.

Then in December, Hurdle Turtle was updated to version 2.0 with a ton of new features, and the whimsy of this game could be ignored no more. We promptly reviewed version 2.0 which featured 3 different environments and 11 turtle characters to choose from. These were tied to a clever unlock system based on distance ran, which gave a more compelling reason to continue playing beyond just reaching a higher score. Game Center and OpenFeint are used in tandem for online leaderboards and achievements.

Check out this new trailer developer Holmade Games put together that shows off the new features of Hurdle Turtle 2.0:

With today’s free promotion, Holmade Games is running a contest over on their blog that will result in Hurdle Turtle swag for some lucky winners if the game can reach the top 50 free games chart. While the allure of free Hurdle Turtle gifts is strong, at the very least everybody should give this game a download while it’s free. It doesn’t do anything drastically different from your average endless runner, but it’s well put together, cute, silly, and most importantly fun. There’s a discussion thread in our forums for the game, and make sure to grab Hurdle Turtle while it’s free for the rest of today.

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This week, TouchArcade attended EA's "Swing Into Spring" game event in in New York and had a chance to spend a bit of quality time with some upcoming titles from both EA and Chillingo. And, while we can't (yet) talk about everything we saw, here's the goods on the open-for-discussion titles.

• Fight Night Champion from EA

Fight Night Champions is the first installment of the Fight Night series, which debuted on consoles in 2004, to appear on iOS. Incidentally, the Fight Night series is the successor to EA's 1998 console series Knockout Kings.

Fight Night Champions is a boxing title set for a simultaneous iOS and console debut on March 1st. The game presents a virtual boxing match, rendered in 3D with four possible camera angles (sorry folks, no photos allowed). You can create your own highly customizable boxer or rebuild a legend like Iron Mike and use this boxer to move up the ranks — fight to fight, ring to ring.

A very cool aspect of the game is its control system. The screen is invisibly divided into quad hit-zones, where a tap in each zone executes a different move, and a swipe from zone-to-zone triggers additional, directionally keyed moves. And there are hidden moves to — illegal moves. These you can specify for your character in its configuration screen, but you have to figure out the gestures on your own. How awesome is that?

There are several venues in which to compete: the Staples Center is for real, and the rest are fictional, some of which are rather elaborately arranged. Matches across these stadiums can be customized as far as number of rounds, round length, difficulty, etc.

Local WiFi and Bluetooth multiplayer is provided. But not so with online leaderboards.

Fight Night Champion looks awesome and is structured such that gamers that are a little more casual on the sports side — like me — can get enjoyment out of the title.

• Battlefield Bad Company II from EA

Not much to say here, but the game got an update last week that corrected various multiplayer bugs and upped the multiplayer games from four to six players.

We posted a hands-on with this one back in December.

• Ultimate Mortal Kombat III from EA

An iPad version launched last week (iPhone version came pre-Christmas).

We reviewed the iPhone version of this one back in December.

• High Speed 3D from Chillingo

High Speed 3D is a new racer on the way for both iPhone and iPad (universal) that offers glossy visuals and a variety of playmodes to mix up the action across 20 tracks in all. As far as playmodes, there's the standard Career mode, in addition to a number of Quick Play modes, including Get The 1st Place, a quick race to the goal; Drift King, a chance to paint the track with rubber; and Crash Them All!, a destruction derby of sorts.

We are told that there's about another month of performance tuning and polishing on this one before it lands in the App Store. Even so, High Speed 3D played very well and looks to be a fun time for fans of arcade style racers.

• Collision Effect from Chillingo

Collision Effect is an iPad game that puts celestial objects of various colors on the screen and it's your task to merge the like colored balls together. In Action Mode, the balls are moving, and a collision between two blobs of differing colors is a bad thing. In Puzzle Mode, they start off stationary, and your tap upon one ball begins the gathering of its like-colored kindred — but clever strategy and timing is needed to keep balls of different colors from colliding. It's a simple, yet challenging, mechanic done up with nice particle effects.

We should see Collision Effect arrive sometime next month.

• Play Kalei from Chillingo

We took a look at this clever graphical matching title last month at Macworld and really liked what we saw.

The basic idea in Play Kalei is that you’re presented with a high quality photograph and a random point of the picture is highlighted in a circular window in the upper corner of the screen. The catch is that the window highlighting the point in the photograph is shown as if you’re looking at it through a kaleidoscope, and you must find that particular point by matching the kaleidoscope view in a second window by sliding your finger around the screen.

Play Kalei is set to arrive in mid-March.

• Food Processing from Chillingo

Here's one for the iPad that takes inspiration from Fruit Ninja, but adds a bit of complexity and a dose of whimsy to the formula. The game puts you in front of a conveyor belt ferrying food across the screen and its your job to slice it up properly — and properly is the twist. Each item must be sliced in a particular fashion, a skill you'll need to learn along the way. And, all the while, a hard rock soundtrack keeps you bouncing.

Food Processing should hit the App Store later this month.

All of the Chillingo titles listed here will feature Crystal integration for score and achievements tracking.

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Last month we reviewed Mad Skills Motocross [99¢], a fast-paced 2D side-scrolling motocross racing game. We enjoyed the title quite a bit as it had sharp graphics, plenty of different tracks, a nice online challenge system through OpenFeint, and above all else a stellar physics system. One problem many players commented on though was the immense difficulty of completing the single player campaign. The game started out simple enough as it eased you into the gameplay mechanics, but about a third of the way through the career mode the difficulty ramped up pretty quickly, and due to the requirement of completing every race in a division before unlocking a new division many players found themselves unable to progress.

Developer Turborilla heard these cries for help, and have rushed in to save the day with the latest update to Mad Skills Motocross. There is now an Amateur difficulty setting in the options that offers an easier AI opponent to race against, and your bike can withstand more damage before breaking as well. If you liked the original difficulty don’t worry, as the Pro option keeps things the same as they were before. Also, a previous update made it so you only needed to beat all but 2 of the races in a division to unlock the next, thus making it easier to move on if you got stuck on a particularly hard race.

Besides these difficulty tweaks, Turborilla has added an interesting new feature that adds to the competitive nature of Mad Skills Motocross. Before, you could set a time on a race and then send off a challenge to one of your OpenFeint friends for them to try and beat. Now, you can actually choose any of the scores on the leaderboards and take a crack at beating that person’s ghost. Or you can simply watch the replay of how that score was attained, possibly gleaning some tips from how they completed the course. This new functionality is a really nice addition to such a score-focused game, and it makes competing with the best players in the world more accessible to everyone.

I liked Mad Skills Motocross before, but I do admit I had my fair share of moments where I felt like throwing my iPhone across the room due to the difficulty. The new Amateur mode makes things significantly easier, and consequently more fun, and the Pro mode is still there for when I feel ready to take on that challenge. The new ability to challenge ghosts from the leaderboards adds a whole new layer of competitiveness to the game, and I even enjoy just watching some of the top times and marveling at the skill of those elite players. With these past two updates, Mad Skills Motocross has easily become my favorite racing game of this kind, and if you haven’t checked it out yet now is the perfect time as it’s currently on sale for just 99¢ for a limited time.

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Early last month we took a look at Bug Heroes [$1.99], a dual stick shooter of sorts that borrows gameplay elements from many different genres. In the game, you play as one of three bugs, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. You must switch between them to protect your pile of food, and dish out punishment to the invaders looking to steal it. We went in to detail in our review:

The bulk of Bug Heroes takes place in the Adventure mode. Here you battle in 4 different environments using a combination of three different characters as you defend a stockpile of food from an onslaught of hungry insect enemies. Money is collected as you defeat enemies which can then be used on various types of upgrades. You can add several different types of turrets to your food pile to protect it while you are away, or you can buy better weaponry to increase the offense of each character. Gameplay involves exploring each environment to collect additional food to add to your stockpile while simultaneously fending off enemies. The game ends when all three characters die or your entire food reserve is depleted. …Read More</a

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It's really not an every day occurrence that a puzzle game piques my interest, and while I've yet to get my hands on RoboSockets, I really can't wait to try it. According to the preview material, instead of being a simple match three, RoboSockets also mixes in gameplay from both Tetris and pipe games. Instead of typical tiles, you're working with robots, and each robots needs to connect to a chain of five or more to be cleared. Doing so gives you energy, which plays in to the story of the game where you're attempting to revive the robot civilzation.

Check out the trailer:

RoboSockets is due for release on February 22nd for 99¢. For more details on the game, take a look at the game's thread in our forums.

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