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This afternoon, Fabrication Games rolled by TouchArcade HQ in San Francisco to show off its super hip upcoming iPad and iPhone side-scroller, Project Belle. Mechanically, it appears to be a fairly traditional shooter-style take on the genre. Players control a funny bear thing with four arms, each of which is equipped with a gun, and they unload those guns on a variety of cutesy, though dangerous, enemy robots. Interestingly, Belle also incorporates cave flying levels, as well as rail cart excursions.

What caught our all-seeing eye specifically is its moment-to-moment flow. Belle is controlled exclusively via swipe gestures, which keeps the shooting, jumping, and bouncing action rolling at a steady clip. Gorgeous art compliments this, as you’ll see from the screens just below:

Project Belle is expected to launch a little later this month as a $.99 Universal app. It’ll have free-to-play elements, too. In the game, you’ll be able to obtain a variety of different weapons, each of which will require in-game credits to upgrade. At launch, users will be able to buy these credits with actual cash.

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"Soon" means “timed to the theatrical release.”

Hunger Games: Girl on Fire sounds about as good as it looks. This afternoon, we nabbed a few in-game images of the runner-meets-shooter for our audience’s viewing pleasure. Girl on Fire, is of course, the “teaser” tie-in to the upcoming Hunger Games flick, which is based on the first book in a massively popular book trilogy. We’ve been advised that the events in this game will actually take place “towards the beginning” of the series.

Right, the images. Below, we’ve got an actual in-game look of lead protagonist Katniss Everdeen, as well as a shot of a level. Adam Saltsman, a member of the indie dream team heading up the title, describes Girl on Fire as a runner-y, shooter-y kind of thing. Like us, we think you’ll understand the categorization immediately after peering at the level specifically.

Katniss in 16-bit. Gotta love how Lionsgate decided to go indie.

We had a Pitfall flashback when we first looked at this.

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Working with someone else’s baby is hard work, but Mass Effect: Infiltrator isn’t Iron Monkey’s first rodeo with another company’s high-profile IP. Earlier in 2011, it busted out an amazingly true Dead Space experience on iOS. Horror, action, dismemberment: this thing had it all. “Soon,” Iron Monkey will release Infiltrator into the wild, as console fans prepare for the next the huge game in the Mass Effect franchise, Mass Effect 3. We don’t know yet if Infiltrator will feel as pure and focused as Dead Space, but we did get a chance to chat with the game’s design director Jarrad Trudgen to get a better idea.

Consider us stoked.

Oh, Geth. You're always messing things up.

TouchArcade: Could you give us the elevator pitch for Infiltrator? What are you trying to bring to the table here?

Jarrad Trudgen: Mass Effect: Infiltrator is the definitive third-person, cover-based shooter on iOS. We set out to faithfully recreate the look and feel of the Mass Effect universe, with a particular focus on combat, and raise the bar we set with Dead Space iOS for art quality, technical fidelity and touchscreen controls. We put a lot of effort into creating rich, immersive experiences employing the high production values typically associated with console games so sound design is another area where we try to innovate on the platform.

Infiltrator tells an original story with an all new protagonist (voiced by VO legend Jay Anthony Franke who played JC Denton in the original Deus Ex games, no less) that runs parallel to the events of ME3 and offers players a chance to see events from a different perspective. Ultimately, we want to make a game that appeals not just to hardcore Mass Effect fans, but also to anyone who enjoys quality mobile gaming.

Anyone else hate lasers? We hate lasers.

TA: What’s it like working with Mass Effect? We’re sure there’s pressure. Then again, you guys also handled a Dead Space title, which was no small task, surely.

JT: We’ve been incredibly fortunate to work on some high profile franchises in collaboration with very talented studios. It’s always daunting working on an IP that you’re a big personal fan of; there is a huge sense of internal pressure to not screw up as no-one wants to be a blemish on something they love. Luckily, both Visceral and Bioware are great creative partners — they had plenty of time for us and were always supportive and keen to collaborate.

TA: What’s the creative process like when you’re working with someone else’s baby? Do you have bounce builds and ideas back and forth constantly? I’m trying to get a sense of your work flow.

JT: We worked closely with executive producer, Casey Hudson, and Lead Writer, Mac Walters, to establish the high level goals for Infiltrator at the beginning of the project: what features to focus on, the setting, main characters and broad stroke narrative. Those guys are very passionate and hands on about the franchise. Once these defining goals were agreed upon they handed us the reigns and largely left us to fill in the gaps. We’d provide our latest draft of the script and fairly regular builds for feedback and there was always great support channels there for our questions and requests. Teams need to feel empowered to get the best out of them and we’ve been fortunate to build great relationships with IP holders so there is a level of trust to give us freedom within the universes they have created.

Sadly, this series keeps its characters from going full Robocop.

TA: How does your studio’s personal experiences with Mass Effect inform what you’re doing with this project?

JT: Already being a fan of something obviously makes it easier to work on it; you already understand the lore of the IP and hopefully have a good understanding of what makes it tick. However, there are risks too, especially when creating an entry for a radically different platform. You don’t want to just slavishly imitate as what works on console may not work on a touch device. For example, our combat is designed to satisfy in shorter bursts than on console – we employ a slow-mo chaining feature and a ranking system which results in a more arcade style experience that is really replay friendly. Again this ties into our goal to make a game that is deep and satisfying for Mass Effect fans but still accessible to players less familiar with the franchise or genre.

TA: What’s next?

JT: Next up, we’re planning to bring Mass Effect: Infiltrator to Android devices.  We don’t have any specific dates to share quite yet, but Android users can stay tuned for more news from us on that front.

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I personally never felt like I was good at shooters. However, being good at them and loving them are two entirely different things. While I marveled at friends that could blast through Ikaruga from start to finish without ever coming face to face with the game over screen, I plugged away at old classics like Konami’s Life Force and Sexy Parodius, hoping each time I’d improve by some miniscule increment. Practice makes perfect, they always say.

Seeing Orange Pixel’s latest title, Neoteria [$1.99], made me realize my days of shmup practice back in the day would be tested once again. A smart-looking little game with retro-inspired graphics, it foregoes deep story in favor of what we’re all here to do when it comes to shooters: blow things up.

You’ll start in easy mode, but don’t be fooled — there’s challenge to be had, even early on. Controls consist of an up and down arrow on your far left (there’s no forward and backward) and a single button for shooting on your right.

One thing I noticed during play is that my finger kept slipping north of the up button and I only realized it when my ship stopped moving (you drag your finger up and down to control these). Once I got a handle on how far up I could slide, though, this stopped being a problem.

It is worth noting about the controls that the arrows and shoot buttons become transparent as you play. Some people in the forums mentioned this and disliked it, others were not bothered by it. It never presented an issue for me, but its worth being aware of.

As you progress through Neoteria’s levels, you’ll see a map that plots out your path. At some point on each level you can choose one part of the route which takes you the high or low road. Regardless of which you take, you’ll be challenged quickly, as there’s lots of dodging and blasting to do. Enemies will leave behind little blue diamonds for you to collect, which will make your weapons more powerful if you pick them up. However, dying can cause weapons to downgrade, so keep it in mind as you go hurtling through space. You have infinite lives here, so that is a great plus.

You’ll have an option to score up to three stars on each level you play, and also get a readout on your accuracy and kills along with a score. You’ll get a single star for beating a level on easy, two for normal and three for hard. If you want to brag on your scores, OpenFeint and Game Center are built right in too, so you can do so with ease.

Fans of classic shooters like Gradius ought to get a lot of fun out of Neoteria. It comes up with plenty of challenge and gives the proper nod to the old games it’s clearly inspired by, but it delivers the action in bite size pieces and is easy to pick up and play at anytime. Even the bosses, wile not as epic of some of the shooters of yore, have a great feel and have you tapping that blast button at high speed just like the good old days.

TouchArcade Rating:

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The first time I booted up ZiGGURAT [$0.99], I was lying in bed, in the dark. I was hoping for something relatively simple  to unwind with, but the pulsing music and unending creep of monoptic aliens made that impossible. Just playing Ziggurat felt clunky the first time I tried it, forcing me to sit upright in bed.

There’s no pause button in Ziggurat, which speaks volumes about its design. Ziggurat demands attention.

Tim Rogers — a game designer under the Action Button Entertainment moniker and professional Kotaku.com word-puker — also demands attention, or at least an attention span. His reputation is for sharp criticism (his own reviews site is particularly brutal) buried under sprawling, maximalist writing, but Ziggurat is beautiful in its simplicity. In its own way, it reinforces all of the fundamental, paradoxical truth of the “endless” genre: infinite potential married to inevitable failure.

The best endless games give players just enough atmospheric window dressing to keep them wondering: where did those giant robots in Canabalt come from? What are they researching in that lab in Jetpack Joyride? Ziggurat’s pitch: You play a woman perched at the very top of the eponymous ziggurat, armed with a laser shotgun and nothing else. High above the swirling clouds, you can see other structures in the background, each one perhaps topped with another human fighter. It’s tempting to hope that, should you actually survive the alien horde, it might be possible to rebuild society in these pyramids, but it’s a false hope.

As the sun set behinds her, our soldier is trapped on a few bricks, with no place to go. The only things that move in Ziggurat are the bullets and the aliens; the soldier is firmly grounded. Even before the aliens start climbing up the pyramid, the soldier’s sprite falls into a little heaving motion, bloodstream pumped full of adrenaline like a cornered opossum or feral dog. The sprite work in Ziggurat is excellent — particularly on the iPad — and it’s packed full of small details that reinforce the design of the game.

The detailed sprites are functional, too. As the aliens climb up the sides of the ziggurat, their cycloptic heads swell and deflate; as the soldier charges her shotgun, the energy ball moves through three different phases. A fully charged bullet against a fully inflated alien face sets off a generously large explosion, which can catch other aliens in its blast. Ziggurat is about efficiency and timing, about shooting the least amount of bullets to set off the largest chain reactions possible, about imposing order on chaos by … unleashing enormous explosions.

The mechanics would be impossible without Rogers’ art direction in place, but they also tend to get buried in the explosions, the chiptunes, and the bullets. There’s no tutorial, but the game is paced so that players can subconsciously learn the design, even while they’re fighting for their lives.

Ziggurat might seem difficult or unwieldy until you realize how the explosions work, until you tap into the game’s internal rhythms. Some aliens jump, others climb, and still others just seem to float, but they all expand and deflate and explode all the same. The joy of Ziggurat, for me, is that cycle of tension and release. When the soldier dies — which happens when one stray bullet or alien claw touches her — the screen flashes red and a discordant guitar riff screeches out. In Gears of War, a guitar riff meant sucess; in Ziggurat, it means failure. In both cases, it means you can start breathing again.

And unlike other “endless” games, Ziggurat is designed tightly enough that I never felt like I was plateauing. I am undoubtedly bad at Ziggurat — my Twitter feed and GameCenter leaderboards make that clear enough — but I’m always getting better. This isn’t a game of masochism, it’s a game of evolutionary improvement, of making the last woman alive stronger and better, one death at a time. There will be good sessions and bad sessions, but my scores are constantly climbing upwards. The title, Ziggurat, doesn’t just describe the setting of the game, but the dominant metaphor: a series of steps, arduously climbed.

Thinking of a structural ziggurat might also the best way to conceptualize the game’s controls. Aiming the soldier’s gun is done by sliding your figure along a horizontal axis at the bottom of the screen, left to right. At the outer edges, the soldier aims her gun down, at an angle. As you slide closer to the middle of the screen, the reticule moves up, until it hits 90 degrees. Everything from the alien freaks to the bullets they shoot to the soldier’s own shotgun coalesces in one spot, at the top of the ziggurat.

(There’s another, Angry Birds-esque control scheme in which your gun acts as a slingshot, but it’s slower and more imprecise than the originals. It also forces players to tap and slide their fingers all over the screen, obscuring the action. And, frankly, it lacks the thematic cohesion afforded by the “precision” controls. Avoid it.)

My favorite thing about Ziggurat is that it dismantles the hardcore-casual myth that has so long plagued videogame culture generally, and iOS gaming specifically. An “endless” shooter with Peggle controls doesn’t make for good advertising, but Ziggurat is a game that forces its players to pay attention, to process and react to constantly shifting situations, to do the (literally) impossible. It’s got GameCenter and Twitter functionality that encourages pro-social competition and discussion without asking players to pony up for more bullets or a different-colored spacesuit. It’s judiciously designed and takes the platform seriously, and Ziggurat speaks for itself.

As I broke the three-digit mark for the first time and saw the sun sink below the clouds, an orange alien behind a force field sneaked behind the soldier and killed her. The screen flashed, a discordant note erupted from my speakers, and I started over.

I’ll see you at the top.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Definitely no stranger to dual-stick shooters, Chillingo is back with their latest one called Mafia Rush [Free], a (duh) gangster-themed addition to the action-oriented genre. While Mafia Rush doesn’t offer much in terms of innovative or unique gameplay, it still gets the job done and is free to check out.

As a dual-stick shooter, Mafia Rush’s gameplay is relatively simplistic. Missions are divided into four different scenarios: Robbery (grab sacks of money and take them to a getaway vehicle), Defend (protect said vehicle full of cash from baddies), Attack (find packs of C4 and bomb an armored cash car) and Survival (survive waves of enemies gunning for you). Missions only last several minutes each, with each completed mission earning you an ‘Ace.’ Collect enough aces and you unlock additional locales.

Players also earn money and experience with each level completion. The money can be used to buy new guns, ammo, and supplemental defenses like automated turrets and grenades. Weapons range from shotguns to flame throwers and actually add a bit of fun to the gameplay. Experience, meanwhile, is accumulated towards a leveling system which lets you increase attributes such as agility (shoot your gun faster) to Speed (move faster). Again, the attribute system is pretty simplistic, but at least offers some depth to the gameplay.

The ’simplistic’ theme continues with the visuals, which are colorful blocky graphics that resemble Minigore [$0.99 / HD] or Cowboy Guns [$0.99 / HD], another more recent Chilingo dual stick shooter. I had no problem with the visuals, and I particularly liked the smooth frame rate. The same goes for the controls, which are standard DSS controls that just work without trying to be too inventive. One complaint I had involved random crashes I experienced while playing the game. It wasn’t prevalent, but crashes are never a good thing to deal with.

I also appreciated the fact that despite its status as a free game, Mafia Rush doesn’t throw IAP in your face. Yes, you can purchase cash as IAP, but it is not necessary in order to succeed. You earn plenty of cash during missions (which you can replay as much as you want), and all levels can be completed with the stock weapons if you have enough skill. It’s a refreshing change of pace to see a free game that isn’t trying to paywall the player in some fashion.

Despite the different missions mentioned above, Mafia Rush just doesn’t have much in terms of gameplay variety. Enemies are all classified into four different archetypes, with palette swaps differentiating between stronger enemies in later levels. There’s also very little in terms of progression: later levels simply throw more enemies and more of the same objectives at the player without anything new added to the mix.

In this sense, I can’t help but think that they missed out on possibly weaving an interesting narrative around the mafia/gangster motif. There’re not a lot of good, original iOS games that delve into such themes, and it would have been interesting to have any kind of story mode. At the very least it would have expanded on the replayability (which is pretty short).

If Mafia Rush sounds a little basic, that’s because it is. However, it’s still a solid dual stick shooter that’s currently being offered for free. At that price, it’s certainly an offer you shouldn’t refuse, at least for fans of dual stick shooters.

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I came to Jeff Minter’s oeuvre late, around the time of the XBLA release of Space Giraffe. I mention this not (only) to display the depths of my ignorance, but to provide context: there’s more to love in Gridrunner [$0.99] than just nostalgia. For anyone who missed the heyday of the Commodore 64, Minter’s iOS titles might seem a bit unapproachable, but consider giving them a shot – they might surprise you.

Gridrunner wears its roots proudly, but it isn’t a dogmatically faithful recreation of the 1982 original. Or, rather, it isn’t only that: both the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 version of the title are present here as optional modes. The real fun is in the remake, which takes the things that made Gridrunner great from the start and runs with them. The grid and its cruel lasers, the little ship that faces them down alone, the flying droids and the missile pods they leave behind – all these things return. This time they bring along retina graphics, power ups, new foes and moments of bullet-pulsing glory.

This isn’t the first time that Minter has revisited Gridrunner—it’s the third in the last decade alone. Gridrunner++ was released in 2002 and Gridrunner Revolution came out in 2009. Both brought in big changes. They were trippy, colorful departures, introducing features like score multipliers and ship rotation. This new iteration hews a little closer to the original, but Minter has clearly brought in much of the game design wisdom he’s picked up in the interim. The resulting game looks and plays like the original – assuming your memories of the original come with a big helping of rose-tinted nostalgia.

This new Gridrunner is a great little vertical shooter, the classic turned on its side. There is only one potential problem standing in the way of enjoying it as much as any retroesque shooter on iOS – its controls. If you play on an iPhone or iPod touch, you might be in for trouble. If you play on iPad, have patience. Once you’re past the learning curve, things will be just fine.

The controls feel quite a bit like Mage Gauntlet’s [$2.99] Pro Stick. As with that game’s superb virtual joystick, you can put your finger nearly anywhere on screen and move your fingertip minutely to move your ship in any direction. This took some adjustment. Most vertical shooters I’ve played use 1:1 movement ratios, and emulating that had hilarious but wildly ineffective results. I had to learn to move gently, and to stop lifting my finger (for goodness’ sake). Once I got over that hump I was very satisfied with the precision of the controls, especially once I switched to my iPad. They’re equally precise on smaller devices, but I can’t find a spot to comfortably rest my finger without regularly blocking important stuff like my ship and the things coming to kill it.

After moving over to iPad, I could finally see what all the fuss was about. It’s hard to survive in the world of Gridrunner. As with any shooter, there’s a mess of enemies to deal with. Centipedes that travel back and forth and diagonally, blobs that travel erratically, shrapnel bombs, ships that hunt you—the list goes on. Some leave behind static pods that must be destroyed before they drop missiles (though those missiles are worth quite a few points if shot down…), and all the while a laser travels across the edge of the grid, firing downward every few seconds.

Defeating enemies is particularly rewarding in this iteration, as many drop rings that power up your shots. There are eight different powerups, and they can be stacked and combined in interesting ways. There are spread shots and directional shots that can speed up, spread out, last longer and ultimately explode into bullet hell when upgraded far enough. This lasts only moments, but it’s an incredibly satisfying few seconds while it does.

Without multipliers or any other finicky scoring mechanics to worry about, surviving is the only real mark of success. With so much out to kill you, you can’t afford to let your focus drift for even a moment. You’ll die a lot, but Gridrunner has that covered: at the end of each level it awards an extra life. This won’t always be enough. Eventually you’ll burn out your last life, and then it’s game over.

For players who are more concerned with seeing all the levels than earning the most prestigious scores, Gridrunner has a casual mode. This saves your best scores and life count every four levels and lets your restart there when you fail. Casual mode is ranked on its own leaderboard, but it’s still worth playing for those of us who need a little help progressing. For the hardcore, Pure mode is where it’s at.

As I mentioned, you can also play the original Vic-20 and Commodore 64 versions of the game. It took me a little while to find them, but I adore the way they’re accessed: just turn your device on its side. Either side will do, as each offers its own alternate mode. Cool, no? Also a bit opaque, but them’s the breaks when Minter’s involved. Similarly, the game is paused by tapping a spot in the middle of the upper half of the screen. There’s an invisible paw/heart shape there, I’m sure you’ll manage to find it.

There are more than a few other Minterisms to be found – odd text splashes as you progress, ridiculous kudos for passing each level, that sort of thing. Still, this is one of the more restrained games of his I’ve played, easy on goat breeding, llamas, wacky visuals and awkward sound effects. I rather miss those things, but I suppose we’ll always have GoatUp [$1.99].

Whether you have reason to be nostalgic for Gridrunner or not, it’s worth checking out. It’s a best-of-both-worlds sort of remake: faithful to its forebearers but filled with clever modern enhancements. If you’re dead-set on believing that the original is best, you can go ahead and play that instead. It even has its own leaderboard. Really, though, newer is better in this case. Hopefully we’ll see an alternative control set for the iPhone and iPod touch crew, but if you’ve got an iPad it’s all systems go. Enjoy, and pop by our forum thread to brag about your high score.

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After what seemed like an excessive period of silence between announcement and release, Battlefield 3 Aftershock hit the App Store this February. The silence and the fact that it hit many, many moons after Battlefield 3 proper were big hints that Aftershock wasn’t going to be the greatest game ever, and boy, was it not. Glitchy and laggy play defined the user experience, and its strange Act of Valor tie-in baffled us. Players bombarded it poor reviews immediately, while we questioned why it was even released in the first place.

Now, it’s gone. EA has removed Aftershock to “re-evaluate” the experience, and presumably, to ensure that Battlefield’s name isn’t completely sullied by this whole thing. Battlefield is an especially big brand for EA. It’s its flagship first-person shooter, and a franchise that it actively sets up to compete against Call of Duty.

IGN obtained the following statement:

“EA Mobile is committed to delivering mobile entertainment experiences that are on par with the content and quality users have come to expect from their favorite EA gaming brands.

To this end, we have decided to remove Battlefield 3: Aftershock from the App Store and are currently re-evaluating the app in response to the consumer feedback we’ve received. We thank all the fans who have downloaded the game to date.”

As IGN notes, another Battlefield 3 game is set to hit the App Store in 2012. We expect this one to offer more than multiplayer. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if it used a similar formula to Bad Company, which has been a hit with fans despite having more than a few of its own problems.

In the past, we’ve seen EA pull old apps to make room for sequels. Recently, it pulled Mass Effect: Galaxy in advance of Infiltrator’s release. We’ve never seen this before, but it seems like a good move. The app was broke and it needed some significant bug testing and tweaking. Here’s to hoping that it actually reappears.

[Via IGN, thanks qbanned!]

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