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InMotion Software is here at GDC this week, and they stopped by our makeshift TouchArcade headquarters here in the Marriott lobby to show off an upcoming update for the Nickelodeon-published Monkey Quest: Thunderbow [99¢/HD] as well as tease a brand new title.

First off, Monkey Quest received a nice update in early February. We were surprised by how much we enjoyed the game in our review, and the February update added 20 new levels and a boss battle, as well as some new monsters, new weapons, and new control options. The upcoming update is set to add another 30 new levels and should be hitting before the end of March.

In addition to that update, InMotion has also announced a brand new game called Tiny Tails. At first blush, you might write off Tiny Tails as a Farmville clone or something similar. However, the team was vehement that they are not fans of timer-based games like that, but they do want to include a town building-style component for Tiny Tails.

Your main character is a mouse, so everything in the world is comprised of tiny items repurposed as other things. Like buttons attached to a sardine tin to create a wheelbarrow to store food in. While creating a tiny world gives you somewhere to play in, the bigger emphasis will be on actually crafting items, combat, and exploration.

Tiny Tails is still at a pretty early point in development, with nothing beyond some concept art and some early screens. But, the art style is fantastic and I’m curious to see how the crafting and combat pans out in the final game. InMotion is hoping to have the game released in the 3rd quarter of this year, and we’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on it as it gets further along.

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Oddly enough, even after all this time the App Store is still lacking a really solid Pokemon-like. There are a few out there that I’d describe as OK, or sort of similar, but if you’re looking to scratch that collecting and battling monsters itch that you can only get on Nintendo platforms, there’s not much out there. Or, not much before we saw Mirror Match Games’ My! My! Monsters.

The game is in a very rough (and early) state right now, but I like everything they told me that they’ve got planned. They’re trying to capture the essence of those nostalgic Pokemon games with all the exploration, collecting, and fighting that you expect but also with a hip social spin to enable all sorts of online community interaction.

The world map is delightfully pixel-y, and really fits in with the whole nostalgic theme they’re going for:

As mentioned, the game is in a very early stage right now so it’s hard to get into specifics when it comes to how large the world is going to be, how many monsters there will be to collect, and all the other social features. Mirror Match assured me they’re really anxious to hear community feedback, so if there’s some important features you want to see in a Pokemon-like, drop ‘em in the comments.

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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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Today at GDC 2012 we sat down with the folks from BulkyPix to have a look at a host of new titles they will soon be releasing, both internally developed and those from outside development groups.

The SandBox

The SandBox, which BukyPix co-produced with Pixowl, is a charming little pixellated 2D world-creation game — and, by world, I mean the space inside of a literal sandbox. The player starts out with the four basic elements and combines them in an on-screen sandbox to create vastly more elements — 40 or so — and, with those, worlds limited by the player’s own imagination (and the bounds of the iPhone or iPad screen).

There is both a story mode with ~30 levels (which serve as a kind of tutorial) as well as a free play mode, which is where the real creation can take place. Once a world has been created, it can be shared with others online, through the game. Players who download others’ levels can then have fun, oh, inserting TNT and other nice little items into them and watching the fireworks unfold. New element packs can be purchased with mana, the game’s virtual currency, which can be accumulated with skilled play or purchased for cash through the app.

The SandBox is being discussed in a lengthy thread in our forums and will be released as a freemium universal app in May.

Lightopus

“When the Gloom came, we were unprepared. They took away everything, including our homes and our young ones, the bulbies. They took away our light. Now the time has come to take back what’s ours. Go, Lightopus. You are the last of our kind. Go into the Abyss, save the bulbies and bring back the Light!”

Thus is the story of Lightopus, a game which challenges the player to steer a strange creature through an aquatic abyss on a mission to save the tiny bulbies in the face of an increasingly menacing enemy horde. The visuals and accompanying ambient audio are similarly eerie and deliver an ambience reminiscent of the PS3 title Flow.

Lightopus is expected to go live on Thursday of this week as a universal game at the price of $2.99.

Kung Fu Rabbit

Internally developed at BulkyPix, Kung Fu Rabbit is a cartoonish platformer that puts you and your on-screen rabbit on a quest for carrots. Carrots are the game’s virtual currency, and the more you grab, the more game perks you have access to, such as the ability to skin out the levels to entirely change their look. While carrots can be accumulated by standard play, they can also be purchased in-app for cash.

Kung Fu Rabbit brings the standard mix of platformer features — the ability to jump off of walls, enemies that can be crush with a jump (Mario style), and substances to avoid (a tarry goo and the like). The game is a universal app that features iCade support and is set to arrive on March 15 for $0.99.

Saving Private Sheep 2

Like its App Store forerunner which we enjoyed, Saving Private Sheep 2 is set to bring a silly / fun play experience to the iOS screen. The game’s challenge is one of trajectory, much like that of Angry Birds.

As it turns out, a wolf has eaten some sheep pals and it’s up to your sheep (and uneaten friends) to aim precisely and toss a (poor, little) hedgehog through various structural arrangements in order to whack the wolf and free the sheep that were recently a meal.

The game features a level creation tool that allows users to create their own set of obstacles to augment the 60 built-in levels and upload them for others to play. The catch, however, is that the player must be able to win their own level before they go online. Levels placed online can be ranked by other users, to create a curated set of challenges.

Aby Escape

In the area of 3D run-and-jumps, BulkyPix demonstrated Aby Escape, a title co-produced with Spanish game studio Pixel Ratio. The game puts you over the shoulder of a purple raccoon that has managed to piss off a bunch of locals who got into hot pursuit of the pesky varmint that is you. In a bid to escape with your hide intact, you must run, jump, duck, dodge, and slide your way to freedom, collecting coins on the way, in a fashion with which Temple Run fans will be quite familiar.

Aby Escape features a story mode with three different settings — a forest park, a city, and Route 66.5 — at 10 levels each, as well as an unlimited running play mode. Little in-game objectives surface during gameplay to mix things up in a manner similar to that of Tiny Wings. The game can be expanded with power-ups and environment enhancements using coins collected or purchased in-app.

Aby Escape will land as a universal freemium title, sometime in May.

Hidden Runaway

Building on the long-running Runaway point-and-click adventure series from Péndulo Studios, Hidden Runaway for iOS, which BulkyPix co-produced with Péndulo, brings a Monkey Island-like mystery to iOS. The game features a hidden object adventure dynamic, wrapped in a thick backstory, peppered with 12 different mini games.

The title will launch for iOS in May and will also be making its way to OS X and Windows PCs.

Yesterday

Another point-and-click adventure from Péndulo, co-produced by BulkyPix is Yesterday. This one is also a Monkey Island sort of game, and places you in the role of a depraved serial killer who must try and piece together just what happened over the last 24 hours. Unsurprisingly, it’s a very dark title, exuding an eerie ambience.

Yesterday, which offers around nine hours of play time, will arrive in the App Store in May and will arrive on the Mac and PC sometime beforehand. Price on this one is undecided as yet.

Gnu Revenge

Developed by Vaze and publishde by BulkyPix, Gnu Revenge is a cartoonish planetary gravity game that drops you into a universe of long-running galactic conflict between the gnus and the crocodiles. You, on the side of the gnus, must fire gnus from orbiting cannons with utmost precision in order to rescue your imprisoned ungulate brethren and knock out your despicable crocodile enemies.

Gnu Revenge is a universal title that will arrive at the end of March at a price of $0.99.

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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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Our Australian friends from Halfbrick are large and in charge at GDC this week, showing anyone willing to listen to their endearing accents the upcoming Jetpack Joyride [Free]. First off, we absolutely loved the game in our review, but since then it’s gone totally free and there’s absolutely no reason to not download it.

The new update is slated to land in April, and introduces a “gadget” system which works a lot like the perks system from Call of Duty and other similar games. Using coins, you can unlock different gadgets to equip on Barry which provide constant passive benefits. For instance, there are shoes that allow you to quickly jump to the middle of the screen before needing to use the jetpack. There’s a gadget that allows you to start while riding a vehicle, one that adds valuable gems to be collected in game, and so much more. There’s 15 in all, and two can be equipped at a time.

There’s also talks of more of these awesome trailers coming, showing off some more of the gadgets before the update hits.

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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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Before I get started here, let me offer two disclaimers: First off, the guys from NimbleBit asked me to make it very clear that this game is a work in progress and absolutely everything is subject to change. Traditionally, NimbleBit does extensive beta testing and implements tons of user feedback, Pocket Planes is nowhere near that stage left. Secondly, this is a very difficult game to describe, as I’m really not sure what to compare it to or what genre to classify it in. It definitely has elements of time management, but seems substantially more strategic than your typical time management game. Pocket Planes is definitely a much more “gamery” game, which even has NimbleBit a little worried with how the game will do as free to play games typically require a very large mainstream casual player base to be successful.

With that out of the way, let’s chat Pocket Planes.

At the highest level, Pocket Planes is a game of ferrying people and cargo around the world. Each city is home to its own airport, where players will find anxious passengers and cargo waiting to go somewhere else. You must manage your own budding airline, starting at the very small regional level and eventually expanding into a global empire of complete air superiority with planes flying to even the most exotic of locations.

You increase your fleet of planes using what we’ll call “Plane Bucks” for the sake of this article, although NimbleBit admits they’ve yet to decide on a witty name for the IAP currency. Also, since IAP is a bit of a sore subject around here for some of our readers, keep in mind that NimbleBit intends to balance the game just like Tiny Tower and Pocket Frogs, in that they aim to make the game fun, even if you never buy a single IAP item. Just like Tower Bucks, players will have plenty of opportunities to rack up Plane Bucks via various in-game goals, promotions, and other things.

The in-game planes are not only totally customizable via various options (such as color) but they’re also all based on real-world statistics when it comes to range, speed, capacity, and the other values under that make the whole simulation work under the hood. Of course they’re named something different, but aviation fans should find lots of very familiar planes to load their fleet up with.

With your planes, you’ll initially have access to a small pool of local airports. The world map is still in flux, but say for instance you could start off in Los Angeles, where you might initially have access to a few airports in the area, let’s say Tucson, Phoenix, and San Francisco. (Keep in mind these cities might not be in the final game, I’m just using this as an example.)

Starting in Los Angeles, you’ll have people and cargo that want to go to these different airports, the strategy of the game comes in with how you do this, as flying your planes cost coins the farther you go. So, you could potentially load your plane up with people who want to go to Phoenix and Tucson, potentially making the flight a better bang for the buck since you fly from Los Angeles with tons of people, then dump them off at two very nearby airports. Doing this would net more profit than just flying a couple people up to San Francisco, which is farther away.

As you earn more coins, you’re able to buy access to additional airports. Doing so not only unlocks additional destinations to pick up (and drop off) people and cargo, but will also open new flight routes through that airport. With this example we’ve been using, you’d eventually unlock cities across the southwest towards the east, then eventually get a flight path to Europe, where you’ll be able to start unlocking airports over there.

With each new airport, you’re potentially unlocking much more efficient and direct flight routes, allowing you to turn even greater profits by offering much more direct flights to destinations. It seems like you can get really obsessive too about your strategy with buying both planes with Plane Bucks and unlocking airports with coins. Also, the game will totally let you lose coins if you’re not playing smart and efficiently using your fleet. But, don’t worry, you can never go negative.

NimbleBit explained several different viable play styles, such as investing in large and slow planes and doing long haul flights trying to carve your niche in the world as an international airline. Alternatively (or additionally) you could have a fleet of small fast planes to carry passengers that want to go on a long-haul flight to a central “hub” of sorts, where you keep your huge slow planes to do a long-haul flight for tons of coins.

It’s surprising how deep this game feels, even at this post-prototype pre-beta phase. I’m sure it won’t be long before NimbleBit starts engaging the community and more information on Pocket Planes comes flowing out. If all goes as planned, Pocket Planes will be released sometime this summer.

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Games like Hero Academy and the new SSX are seeding the opinion that asynchronous play is THE way to do multiplayer. After catching a glimpse of One Man Left’s upcoming turn-based strategy game Outwitters today, we’re convinced that it is.

As One Man describes it, Outwitters is “a little like chess, but with spawn points and explosions.” Chess’ conceits have influenced quite a bit of the game’s development, as each of three team’s six pieces have wildly different movement and attack patterns. We assume high-level Outwitters users will take a similar thinking man’s approach to its action, which is what makes its asynchronous pop — you want to hang back and think, and you also want to compete. This style of play gives you both of those worlds. Outwitters is also launching with an online league system.

The three teams in order of appearance here: the Adorables, the Scallywags, and the Feedback

To be clear, though, this game couldn’t be any more different from Chess outside of its ideas. Outwitters‘ game board is divided into tons of hexes, the pieces are actually a collection of wildly vibrant characters with wide-ranging moves, such as ranged attacks to slaps to healing, and the objective of each game is to blow up the opposing user’s base. Also, each turn gives a player a certain amount of moves from a pool, and even give them the opportunity to spend those moves on building new troops. The character is amazing to behold: we were super impressed with how alive the game felt in our hands. This thing is oozing with all the right stuff.

Here’s a shot of your typical map, by the way:

You typical game. Check out the board.

We’ll have a lot more on Outwitters in the future. Keep your eyes on One Man’s web site and stayed tuned to us, too, as the game hurdles towards a Universal release in a couple of months. The plan is that it’ll launch free. Maps and additional armies will be provided via IAP.

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We met with Pixel Hero Games here at GDC who were showing off an extremely early playable build of their new action adventure title Spiral. Built using the Unreal Engine, the game is looking pretty nice even in its early state. I’ve always felt that most Unreal titles look a bit “samey”, kind of dark and gritty, and the Pixel Hero team made a conscious decision to try and make Spiral look a bit different from the rest. It has a more cartoon/anime edge to it, which not only makes it stand out but also ensures the game can run on 3rd generation devices and up.

The plan for Spiral is to release it episodically, with the first episode hitting in the 4th quarter of this year. They are still finalizing just how many episodes the entire game will have, but it will likely end up with around 4-5 episodes which will each run around 3 hours to complete. Aside form the episodic storyline, there will be an arena-like mode too for when you only have a few minutes and just want to jump into some combat action. In both the story and arena modes, experience is gained which can go towards upgrading your character attributes and weapons.

Another conscious decision from the team behind Spiral was to eschew virtual sticks and buttons for a native touch screen control scheme. I always appreciate games that feel like their built for the iOS platform, and despite a few quirks due to the early nature of the game, Spiral’s control feel fairly intuitive. Simply tap where you want your character to move, touch NPC characters to interact, and tap on enemies to attack.

The combat moves are context sensitive too, so if you’re fighting with an enemy that’s far away, your character will use a ranged weapon automatically. If they’re up close, it’s a type of melee attack. You can also choose to upgrade your characters in these various areas based on your preferred style.

We should be hearing more about Spiral as development moves along during the year, and keep your eyes peeled for a trailer which should be hitting soon as well.

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