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We've been following Tasty Poison Games' Pocket RPG thread in our forums for quite a while now, and Crescent Moon Games just announced their intent to publish the game. Crescent Moon has quite a bit on its plate right now with a massive list of both recently released games and upcoming titles, but it's hard to not get excited over the potential of Pocket RPG, especially with the Crescent Moon team onboard.

The name of the game in Pocket RPG seems to be complete randomization, and is designed for games to have between 20-30 minutes of randomized dungeon crawling before starting over again. Three classes are included, each with a different play style and user interface. The Blade Master turns the game in to a melee-heavy hack and slash, the Dark Ranger behaves more like a dual stick shooter, and the Battle Mage plays similar to Solomon's Keep [99¢]. There's a combo system with damage bonuses that stack as you slay more and more enemies, and I've been told there is tons of looting.

The loot you equip changes your characters stats and weaponry, resulting in tons of different possible combinations. An example we were given includes a Blade Master picking up a fire sword with a vampiric ring, a ring of strength, and a ring of cone damage. After placing a rune of speed on the fire sword you would be swinging like a maniac, spewing fire everywhere, doing extra damage, and sucking hit points with every attack… That is, until you meet up with a fire monster. Then, attacking will heal them.

Pocket RPG, oddly enough, will likely launch first for the iPad. According to the developers, iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G caused too much of a performance hit for them to release the game without further optimization. Regardless, both versions of the game are still in development and they hope to launch before Christmas. I love randomized games like this, and really can't wait for the discussions on our forums regarding which magical effects are best to stack for each class.

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The guys over at Retro Dreamer released a new gameplay video of their upcoming puzzler Linkoidz today, and much like their other game Sneezies [99¢ / Lite / HD], it looks like it's going to provide some awesome classic puzzle gameplay. Somewhat similar to Magical Drop Touch [$2.99], the name of the game in Linkoidz is to suck up the differently colored Linkoidz with your gravity gun then shoot them back at similarly colored groupings to fire off massive chain reactions of Linkoidz destruction. The only thing protecting you from certain doom is your energy shield which can withstand stacks of Linkoidz, but begins to get weakened as too many pile up. However, clearing Linkoidz powers up your shield potentially resulting in being able to withstand massive stacks as long as you can keep the matching gravy train rolling.

According to the Retro Dreamer Blog, Linkoidz is in review and currently they're aiming at a release date of October 26th. We liked Sneezies (and the other Retro Dreamer games) quite a bit, and I expect Linkoidz is going to be just as good. Look forward to a closer look at the game as its release date approaches.

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It's Labor Day Weekend in the U.S. and most every retail sector in the land is offering major product sales — and the App Store is no exception. So, without further ado, the following games are available for a reduced price through this three-day, holiday weekend.

Namco

• BurgerTime Deluxe $1.99 → 99¢
• Garters & Ghouls $1.99 → 99¢
• Ms. PAC-MAN $4.99 → 99¢
• PAC-MAN $4.99 → 99¢
• PAC-MAN Remix $2.99 → 99¢
• PAC-MAN (iPad) $4.99 → 99¢
• Pole Position: Remix $2.99 → 99¢
• Pool Pro Online 3 $1.99 → 99¢
• Rolling 5 Dice Poker $4.99 → 99¢
• Solitaire: Deck of Cods $4.99 → 99¢
• Star Trigon $1.99 → 99¢
• Tamagotchi: 'Round the World $4.99 → 99¢
• Lt. Fly Rise of the Arachnids $1.99 → 99¢
• Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima $4.99 → 99¢
• Galaga REMIX $2.99 → 99¢
• Dig Dug REMIX $2.99 → 99¢
• PAC-MAN Championship Edition $2.99 → 99¢
• I Love Katamari $4.99 → 2.99
• Ridge Racer Accelerated $4.99 → 2.99
• …among others

Sky Burger, Free (down from $1.99) NimbleBit’s Sky Burger is a fun exercise in burger stacking that’s seen a great deal of success since it recently went free; presently it’s sitting at #6 free title in the App Store. Now’s the time to grab it.

Glu Mobile

• Build-a-lot $1.99 → 99¢
• Transformers $1.99 → 99¢
• Build-a-lot 2 $2.99 → 99¢
• Mini Golf $1.99 → 99¢
• Transformers G1 $1.99 → 99¢
• Deer Hunter: African Safari $6.99 → $2.99
• Jump O'Clock $1.99 → 99¢
• Stranded: Mysteries of Time $1.99 → 99¢
• Deer Hunter 3D for iPad $4.99 → 99¢
• Glyder 2 for iPad $1.99 → 99¢
• Super KO Boing 2 for iPad $2.99 → 99¢

Robot Unicorn Attack, $0.99 (down from $2.99) If there’s any game in the App Store that is double rainbow all the way, it is without question Adult Swim’s Robot Unicorn Attack. It’s got unicorns!!

Electronic Arts

• Boggle $1.99 → 99¢
• CLUE $1.99 → 99¢
• Littlest Pet Shop $2.99 → 99¢
• MONOPOLY $2.99 → 99¢
• MONOPOLY Here & Now: The World Edition $2.99 → 99¢
• RISK: The Official Game $4.99 → $1.99
• THE GAME OF LIFE Classic Edition $2.99 → 99¢
• Trivial Pursuit $2.99 → 99¢
• YAHTZEE Adventures $2.99 → 99¢

I Dig It HD, $4.99 (down from $9.99) InMotion Software’s I Dig It HD is an iPad take on the iPhone original that we — and most everybody else — loved. On the bigger screen, it’s bigger action and all the fun of the iPhone version.

The titles listed here represent a pretty good highlight of what's out there for less this weekend, and additional deals are being discussed in an active forum thread.

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The human intellect is a remarkable beast. Just when we think that all possible Zombie concepts have been duly wrung out from our collective minds, developers renderPaz go and throw us a curve-ball. Picture this: you're driving down the post-apocalyptic interstate, weaving through abandoned vehicles strewn everywhere– when you see a hitch-hiker. Naturally, this being post-apocalyptic America, the rule of thumb (think Zombieland) is to just keep on driving. In Zombie Highway [99¢] you aren't afforded that luxury.

The object in Zombie Highway is to just keep on driving– pedal to the metal, you have only one speed– faster. That's not to say you're get very far, as zombies don't generally take kindly to your brains being cocooned inside an SUV's hard exterior. And unlike the variety in Zombieland, these zombies are willing to work to get them.

Zombies in Zombie Highway will pounce on your car's side rails as you speed past them, doing all they can to bring the car to a stop– generally by using their superhuman undead strength to wrestle it till it topples over. There are 7 types of zombies all up, from the skinny fledgling variety, to the stronger, health-regenerating, weightier monsters that do a world of hurt to your center of balance. As zombies stack up on one side, this is only compounded, with your only recourse being to get the buggers off as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, your own driving prowess and an arms dealer friend in the back provide all the tools you need to get through the zombie horde…at least for a couple of miles. Zombies can be exited from the vehicle by tilting your device to sideswipe them onto one of the many ruined cars littered across the highway. Each zombie has a health bar, and whittling that to zero will ensure they won't be sticking around. To help, your aforementioned friend riding shotgun (ho ho!) has a formidable arsenal that is gradually unlocked as you accumulate collective mileage across all your games. Weapons are fired by touching the corners of the screen– if a zombie is on the right near the front of your car, tapping the top right area will fire at it.

It's a straightforward formula that creates a fun and remarkably gratifying zombie slaying experience. It's also quite challenging, as zombies are super aggressive, and your car's physics are fantastic. For instance, don't expect to steer out of a lean by driving the other way– it'll only tip it further. Instead, a bit of load balancing and fast firing fingertips are required to keep the rubber on the road.

Our only gripes with the game are that for all the great 3D models and presentation there is a notable lack of any real sound effects. Your car is effectively muted until it's being weighed down, and then the creaks it makes are whisper quiet. Not hearing the engine at all detracts from the experience dramatically. In fact, the only sound you'll really hear from the car are the squeaks of your tires as you slide around the road. There is absolutely no music to be found either, which would have done a world of good to further build atmosphere and character.

We're also not quite sure why the developers didn't stick with Openfeint or a similar platform for its social functions, as their current Twitter implementation is rudimentary at best. And though the Facebook option results in a neat competition feature where you can track your friends, those who keep their gaming separate from Facebook are left on the curb. Thankfully neither of these platforms are required to access high scores.

Still, it's hard to stay disappointed with these drawbacks for long because running from hordes of zombies is just so much fun. The further you get, the more obstacles are thrown in your path, until you are eventually wrestling your device to fend off zombies, dodge roadblocks and keep your SUV from going belly up as you're two wheeling back and forth. It's a singular experience seemingly lifted right from classic zombie films and as such is effortlessly recommended. We just hope the developers look at the sound issue, as well as maybe add an achievements system ala Monster Dash [99¢] to pad out the survival game replayability.

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Graveyard Shift [$2.99/Lite] is a new physics puzzle game where you are literally working a graveyard shift in a graveyard putting back skeletons that have inexplicably decided to pop out of their coffins. It features a charming art style that's Retina Display ready, a multitude of levels, and best of all some great level designs that are hard not to appreciate. It also doesn't hurt that the game is universal, and there's a lite to try before you buy. If you like games like Saving Private Sheep, Angry Birds, and Ragdoll Blaster, then Graveyard Shift should be right up your alley.

The premise is that you're a boy looking for a job to earn some extra cash, and you come to find that the local graveyard is hiring. For some odd reason, the skeletons from the graves have popped out of their coffins and perched themselves precariously amongst objects throughout the graveyard. It's your job to use the different properties of these objects and the physics in the game to get the skeleton back into their coffin homes. Some blocks can be touched to make them disappear, some must be touched by the same type block to eliminate them, and some just can't be removed from the level at all. There are also boxes of TNT that can be used to launch objects or the skeletons themselves to aid the task of getting them back to their eternal resting place.

The graphics in Graveyard Shift are nice, with lovely hand drawn backgrounds and crisp in-game elements that look especially great on the iPhone 4. The music is also very catchy and fitting, but the thing that really stands out about the game is the excellent level designs. Some levels are very straightforward, with the skeleton on top of stacks of blocks that must simply be cleared in order for him to fall into the coffin. But others are more complex, and almost Rube Goldberg-esque in their execution. For example, you may pop a box of dynamite that sends a ball rolling down an incline, that will then cause a latch that is holding back a giant pendulum to disappear. Gravity will then cause the pendulum to swing, and once it hits it's apex another box of dynamite is used to blast the pendulum further upwards into a platform where the skeleton resides, catapulting him into the nearby coffin. There's plenty of examples of situations like these during the game's 72 levels, and I certainly had my fair share of laugh out loud moments as I stared in amazement while the level played out.

As much as I enjoyed playing through Graveyard Shift, it's not without a couple problems. The biggest issue is the extremely finicky physics system. While it does create for some hilarious moments with the ragdoll skeleton, it can also cause objects in the game to behave wildly different from one play to the next. As a result, some of the levels can be frustratingly hard as you try to get things to do what you want them to, and completing each one is more luck than anything else. Somehow this doesn't really hinder the enjoyment though, and levels are easy to instantly replay at any moment, which you'll be doing often. The other issues with the game are very minor glitches where sometimes graphics don't display properly or levels load without any objects. These are easily fixed by simply reloading a level, and the developer is already working on an update to iron out these kinks.

Minor issues aside, I had a ton of fun with Graveyard Shift. The moments of figuring out how a level should work and then executing it, all while the ragdoll skeleton is flailing about the screen, brought a smile to my face every time. As an added challenge each level has a par for completion time and taps used, so beyond just completing each one you can also shoot for these goals. Unfortunately there's no sort of social network like OpenFeint to tie these accomplishments together, but at the very least it still adds replay to the game. If you are a fan of these physics games you should definitely try out the lite version of Graveyard Shift, and join in on the forum discussion for further player impressions and developer responses.

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Dedalord Games has recently unleashed their crazy puzzle game Pyschoban into the App Store. Psychoban is a Sokoban variant that manages to incorporate a lot of personality and style.

The game opens with in a hospital ward with you under the direction of a mad scientist after having gone through a "procedure". You are walked through the basics of the game. If you've ever played Sokoban, you'll be pretty familiar with the gameplay. The goal is to move blocks to their proper locations. However, you can only push blocks and there has to be a space for you to push from. So if you back a block into a wall, you won't be able to pull it away. So it goes, and your job is to puzzle your way through each level to accomplish each goal. Unlike plain vanilla Sokoban, the game allows you to hop up and down levels, and also allows for stacking of boxes. This keeps things a little more interesting as you make your way through the game's 50 levels.

Game controls are intuitive with a single tap to select the box and a subsequent tap to determine its destination. Your character then automatically goes through the motions of pushing the box. Fortunately, there is a "fast" mode that allows him to run a bit faster, though there still will be times you are just waiting for him to finish.

Here's a video shot by one of our forum readers:

Due to the isometric view, there are sometimes perspective issues that can cause some initial confusion to the level designs, but an issue one you can learn to work around. For good or bad, the game seems to fall a bit on the easy side (at least until the final 10 levels so I'm told). Otherwise, the game is very well done with great artwork and amusing dialog. All this combines to a really great experience.

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If our App Store Gaming Guide that we posted yesterday wasn't a big enough list of awesome games worth checking out on your new iPhone 4, it would appear Apple has thrown their own hat in to the game listing ring with their The Best Games You've Never Played list.

50 games are included in said list, and while they cover quite a bit of games that we hit in ours, there are quite a few games we left out. Here are just a handful of the games from the Apple list that we think are worth checking out that we haven't already mentioned in either the recent App Store gaming guide or our 2009 buyer's guide:

Critter Crunch – This game was released all the way back in 2008, and I only discovered it recently as it's made by some of the same guys behind Sword & Sworcery. Critter Crunch reminds me of classic Neo Geo stacking puzzle games, and gameplay amounts to feeding smaller critters to larger critters to score massive combos and clear the game board. (Review, App Store)

Dungeon Scroll – Developed by the same person responsible for the classic BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon, Dungeon Scroll is a marvelous twist on word finding games. In the game, you crawl through dungeons fighting monsters by casting spells. The strength of the spell you cast is directly related to the word you spell from your random tiles, creating an awesome amount of strategy as you save big words for tougher enemies and work out smaller words for weaker ones. (Review, App Store)

HECTOR: Badge of Carnage Ep1 – This point and click (point and tap?) adventure game really pushes the boundaries of the App Store approval process. Filled with dirty humor and raunchy references, Hector won't take you more than a few hours to beat… But those few hours will be amazing. (Review, App Store)

Pix'n Love Rush – I really don't think this game could come packed with any more stylized pixel art. With graphical themes ranging from the classic Gameboy to the Virtual Boy that change on the fly depending on your performance in the game, Pix'n Love Rush is a high scoring game that not only looks great, but is really hard to put down once you get going. (Review, App Store)

Robot Unicorn Attack – An iPhone port of Adult Swim's extremely popular free Flash game, Robot Unicorn Attack preserves everything from the original, including the fantastic Erasure soundtrack. If you like survival platformers, you need to at least give the Flash version a spin. (Review, App Store)

These are just five of the fifty games included in Apple's listing, so be sure to load that up in iTunes and give it a peek if none of these games suit your fancy.

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While the Apple A4 processor and higher resolution screen of the iPhone 4 will be fantastic for gamers, what likely will cause the biggest splash in future game development is the addition of the electronic gyroscope buried inside of the device. This additional orientation sensor will likely add a similar dimension to gameplay as the Wii Motion Plus, an addon that also utilizes a gyroscope for incredibly accurate motion tracking.

While on stage during the keynote today, Steve Jobs showed a brief demonstration with a Jenga game that was able to rotate the stack of blocks while utilizing the gyroscope in addition to the accelerometers. When only using the accelerometers like games on today's devices use, rotating the stack of blocks worked, and was fairly precise, but once the gyroscope was enabled the difference was remarkable.

Here is a brief video of the gyroscope portion of the keynote, the quality is mediocre but you can easily see how the phone is able to track Steve's various movements then translate it to the game world:

The game that immediately sticks out to me that would benefit the most from this extra degree of control would be a game like Zen Bound [$2.99 / Free], as I imagine manipulating the objects you wrap could be even easier with yet another degree of control. It's not hard to think of other games that could be enhanced by the extremely precise motion tracking, especially if you've ever used a Wii Motion Plus and have seen just how much the addition of a gyroscope can improve how accurately a game can track your movement.

Like anything on the App Store, it's up to developers to implement these new features. All we can do is wait and see what they come up with once they finally get the device in their hands.

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The amount of post-launch support Spacetime Studios has given their free MMO [Free: iPhone Universal / iPad Only] got even more impressive lately with the release of Pocket Legends 1.2 which adds three main features to the game:

PvP – In team deathmatch arenas vaguely similar to World of Warcraft's arena system, players choose sides and battle the other team. The various arenas have different sizes, player limits, and even power-ups. Points are awarded for killing other players, and when the score limit is reached a scoreboard displays showing the match standing.

Secure Trade – Inspecting other players now give you a new option to securely trade items, gold, and potions. Just like any MMO, a trade window will appear for both players to confirm the trade before the transaction is complete.

Elixirs – Using gold or platinum players can purchase a number of different elixirs which do things like increase movement, experience gain, damage, and even armor. Elixirs last for five minutes and don't stack on top of each other. Also, they can only be used in the story mode so players don't have to worry about buying elixirs to be competitive in PvP.

Spacetime Studios released a new trailer that shows the new PvP arenas:

If you haven't tried Pocket Legends yet, there's really no reason to keep resisting at this point. The game is free to try, and is one of the more impressive realtime multiplayer experiences available on the App Store.

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Capcom's Phoenix Wright [$4.99] started its life as a Japanese Gameboy Advance game all the way back in 2001. In 2005, a touchscreen-enhanced port of the game made it to the Nintendo DS and the rest of the world. Five years later, and the game is here on the App Store at a fraction of its original DS price.

We described the basic premise of the game following its announcement late last year:

Phoenix Wright games are a strange mixture of a visual adventure game that play a lot like mixture of a hidden object game and a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. The game is segmented in to two portions, the investigation and the trial. While investigating, you visit various location and gather evidence by looking around and interviewing anyone who is around. When you're finished with that, you go to court where you cross examine witnesses, present evidence, and object to the arguments presented by the prosecuting lawyer.

Even just from looking at screenshots alone, it is amazingly apparent that this is a fairly direct port from the DS game, with the output of the two screens just stacked on top of each other on the iPhone. When playing through the game, the bottom half is loaded with all kinds of buttons and menus depending on if you're investigating or arguing in court, and these UI elements seem to be reworked from the original to be finger-friendly instead of built around the Nintendo DS stylus.

All of the Phoenix Wright games are a fun, and often silly adventure through crime scenes and court rooms. Successfully completing the game requires a keen eye both when gathering evidence and when arguing your case in court. Because so much of the game is based on finding/noticing little things between hidden evidence or inconsistencies in testimony, Phoenix Wright has little if any replay value.

Five cases from the original game are included, and each case should take you a few hours to go through depending on how quickly you read or how much you goof up in court. Phoenix Wright is an insane value at its launch price of $4.99, as when it first launched on the DS it was the kind of game you couldn't find anywhere in stock, and when you did, it was at least $40.00 because of how rare it was.

It would have been nice to see Capcom do more to the game in its port to the iPhone. It seems like Phoenix Wright would be the perfect kind of game to offer with a single case for free to act as a lite version of sorts, with the rest of the cases (and cases from other games in the Phoenix Wright series) available as individual DLC packs. Regardless, I'm just glad the game is finally here, as it was one of the best and most creative games I played on my DS, and a fantastic fit for the iPhone.

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