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Just yesterday, we learned that developer Zeptolab had a sequel in the works for their astoundingly popular physics puzzler Cut the Rope [99¢/Lite/HD]. Given the huge success of that game, a sequel doesn’t come as a surprise at all, but the teaser images did pique our interest as to what changes the developers would be adding to their winning formula. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t any solid information to go along with the screens.

Now, TechCrunch has learned straight from Zeptolab themselves some new details on the title, which will be called Cut the Rope: Experiments. The premise this time around is that main character Om Nom arrives on the doorstep of a mad scientist, and like everybody who has played the original game, he wonders just what the heck Om Nom is. So, in order to get to the bottom of things, he begins performing various experiments on Om Nom, which we would presume act as the levels themselves.

TechCrunch has the first trailer for Cut the Rope: Experiments, which is a total teaser and doesn’t show any gameplay, but does reveal that the game is already launching on August 4th, which is basically later tonight here in the US. And indeed, the game is now live in the NZ App Store and early impressions are rolling into our forums. Interestingly, Cut the Rope: Experiments isn't being published by Chillingo as the first game was, and rather it's self-published by ZeptoLab themselves. If you remember, another popular Chillingo published title, Angry Birds, did the same thing with their two follow-up titles. I guess when you become practically a household name, it doesn't make sense to fork over part of your earnings to a publisher.

But more importantly, I'm curious to get my hands on Cut the Rope: Experiments tonight to see how it stacks up to the original, and you can bet we'll be back to let you know what we think of the title.

[Via TechCrunch]

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If you like the RPG genre, you’ve likely spent lots of time exploring old worlds populated with critters out to get you, unexplored bits of terrain mysteriously populated with treasure chests no one else has gotten to yet, and serious quests (Save the princess! Save the world! Save your mom!). And yet, there’s something endlessly appealing about the formula — it’s kept us playing for decades, after all. Nothing wrong with the serious formula, of course, but that’s not what you’ll get when you go for Quest Runner [$1.99], an cute little action RPG from Trident 3D that goes with cartoon-inspired 2D graphics and humorous writing to tell the story of your adventure to protect the town of Torma and keep its citizens safe and sound.

Quest Runner starts out allowing you to pick your own character and customise it a bit, which feels a little limited when it comes to options. You can only play as a male (boo! Where’s the ladies at?), but at least you can choose some cool costumes, and in homage to retro games, you can even wear costumes that you may remember some of your old favorite characters donning back in the day. In fact, the game is peppered with tongue in cheek references to lots of wonderful classic games such as Zelda, Sonic, Prince of Persia and more. The developers wanted you to know that they’re loved videogames for a long time, and it shows — it’s a little dash of fun that put a smile on my face.

Gameplay is easy enough to navigate. The action is sidescrolling, and there’s no directional pad to clutter up your screen, which seems like a good idea but left me feeling as if my fingers were blocking the action more than I’d like. You just tap the direction you want your hero to move in and off he goes. The bottom of the screen offers easy access buttons for your potion supply, basic attack and special attack, all accessible with a single tap, and tiny icons on the top right keep track of your quests and your current status. They did a good job with managing the tiny bit of screen space offered on the iPhone, and there’s no excess clutter, making the action easy to enjoy — as long as you don’t mind peering around your fingertips a bit.

It won’t be long before you make your way into town and realize how many options are at your disposal. Sure, there’s the usual merchants and vendors, but what makes Quest Runner really cool is the ability to hire mercenaries to assist you in your quest. These are colorful personalities, and you’ll find yourself wanting to try them all out. As the difficulty ramps up, you’ll find these guys to be truly helpful to your cause too. You can also get pets to help you, but you’ll need to remember to feed them or they won’t stick around. Don’t be a neglectful hero — feed your four legged friend!

You’ll get basic quests from NPCs in town that will guide you along in your adventure, allowing you to explore the terrain as you go and gain levels in the process. Your interactions with these characters remain consistently funny, and you’ll find yourself giggling as you complain about the lazy commander who can’t be bothered to give you a hand. What a jerk.

Quest Runner is Game Center enabled as well, so you’ll be able to get achievements for your gameplay time, which makes it a bit more challenging and gives you some goals to meet. A total of 35 are available, and many focus on killing a quantity of monsters, so you may want to spend some extra time in the field instead of hurrying to your next quest if you want to get them all.

Quest Runner has that great casual feel, so it can be played in bits and pieces whenever you have free time for it, and it’s easy to come back to the adventure at anytime. There’s a bit of grinding involved, but if you’re the type that hates having to spend hours in the field just to be at the right level to buy that one sword, you won’t have to cope with that type of thing in Quest Runner.

Overall, it’s a fun experience, and players in our forums seem to be enjoying it as well. While it doesn’t break any startling new ground in the genre, it executes the humorous action RPG formula very well. If you want to laugh while you play an RPG instead of furrowing your brow and trying to shoulder the weight of the world, this one’s for you.

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My most anticipated title of the year for the iPad, 11-Bit Studio's reverse tower defense game Anomaly: Warzone Earth, will hit the US App Store within the next one-to-two weeks, a rep from publisher Chillingo revealed to us via e-mail.

The wait has been crazy long. Anomaly first appeared on Steam and the Mac App Store in April this year to huge and well-deserved acclaim. We’ve gone hands-on with the touch-focused iOS iteration of the same game a couple of times since and have always come away impressed with how the port was being handled from a technical perspective. It looks great and it plays great, too, if those alpha or beta builds can be taken as a solid indication of the final product.

I’ve been begging for a pre-release build for months now, so hopefully we’ll be able to bring you some much more fleshed out opinions of the final game leading up to its release. At any rate, you’ll definitely be able to get your hands on it soon. Yay! Finally! I'm peeing at little but thats cool because I'm excited I think!

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Supermono Studio, the same studio who achievement-ized standard non-game tasks like chores and scrubbing behind your ears in the stupendous Epic Win [$2.99], are close to releasing its next game, Forever Drive. Forever Drive, if you didn't know, is a futuristic racing game, complete with track building and neat customization elements, sorta like ModNation Racers. The coolest element, on paper at least, is its online, perpetual city. Supermono describes the game as “Outrun-meets-SimCity-in-the-future-online,” if you need some analogues.

Of course, it also dropped some screenshots. There’s probably a great word for this kind of art style, but because my brain doesn't work so great all the time, so I’ll just say it looks great (in a TRON kind of way) and let you tell me my business in the comments.

If you’re familiar with this project, you might be wondering why it’s now called Forever Drive instead of "Drive Forever." According to Supermono, there’s a legal reason for the flip. It didn't go into the details in the official blog's latest post, probably because the story would be REALLY boring.

It also didn't discuss release date. We've got in touch and hope to bring you that information and more in the near future.

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Binary Square's Flick Rocket [$.99] is a gesture-based amalgamation of Missile Command, Centipede, Asteroid, and Space Invaders that has you firing rockets from a centralized turret into a swathe of vertical space occupied by roving beasts nabbed from its source material. Where it has the most bang is in its over-the-top presentation, which assaults your senses with its lo-fi, retro-infused arcade sound effects and vector-stylized world. Where it fails is in its lack of precision and content. As far as flaws go, those are pretty fundamental, but I feel like the rudimentary action mechanics and even the stilted content to some degree are almost perfect for a pick-up-and-play game. If you rock Flick Rocket in bursts, you’ll get something out of it, which is a vague way to say that you’ll probably get those basic, visceral thrills that all of the classics its based on have provided for eons.

As of right now, Flick Rocket boasts three different styles of play that can be accessed in either its pick-a-level campaign or its arcade score-attack mode. The most satisfying of the trio is its Space Invaders mode, which simply has you hammering a squadron of roving crabs with unlimited missiles that you flick out of your turret with a swipe. The other two styles of play are basic riffs on Centipede and Asteroid: one has you battering a squirming worm that drops a mushroom for every segment you explode, while the other has you pummeling space rocks. You get infinite ammo in all the modes, as well as access to power-ups that allow you to stop time and do fun stuff like bounce your rockets off walls.

The goal is always to protect the city underneath the action. The foes, whether its from straight-up attacking or from secondary flack, can easily obliterate the eight or so buildings you’re charged with protecting if you're not on the ball, so you're asked to stay on your toes. Overall, it’s a simple enough play formula, and its satisfies in that overly basic and cozy kind of way. Oddly, you never really feel like you have total control over where the rockets go, despite that being the central conceit of the game.

I also kinda think that the enemy spacing is a tad too close and the explosions from rocket-to-enemy impact are just a smidgen too weak. Despite the fact that you’re firing rockets half the size of the enemies, you don’t really get a solid sense of empowerment, and I think the precision factors into that, too.

But, again, this is a really simple, retro-infused title. I feel like I’m saying that Pac-Man is broke or something whenever I criticize Flick Rocket. So, to be perfectly clear, the core concepts and the mechanic at work in this game are entertaining, though these are fleeting feelings. I like Flick Rocket as a lunch break-type of game, where you just go in and get your kicks and get right out. It doesn’t have the substance to hold your attention for long anyway, but I don’t think it really needs to.

It’ll be interesting to see this game expand in the future. The campaign mode leaves several, several bubbles open indicating that new mechanics are coming. My gut doesn’t says this was a horrible choice; games that feel content-light shouldn’t really advertise the fact that they are indeed content light, but it’s nice to know  that more is planned, I guess.

Anyway, if you’re in the mood for some old-school action, Flick Rocket is definitely a good place to start looking for action. It’s entertaining enough for what little it is. Check it out if you’re intrigued, though, or need another good time waster.

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Ever since the success of Death Rally [99¢] earlier this year, there has been somewhat of a resurgence in isometric racing titles with an emphasis on weapons and destruction. And why not? There’s nothing cooler than setting up a shot in your souped-up racer and blowing apart the leader right before taking the checkered flag. Mad Wheels [99¢/Lite/HD] attempts to ride on this wave of enthusiasm and success and, while the title does a decent job nailing the core gameplay, its lack of any real customization definitely hurts replayability.

Simply put, many aspects of Mad Wheels are, well, simple. There are only two single player modes: a ‘Championship’ mode that has the player race through 25 tracks across four “regions,” and a randomized Quick Race option. In addition, there is no story to speak of; the only motivation to continue playing is a progression bar that goes up every time a race is won or objective is met. While Mad Wheels offers a half dozen cars to choose from (with three more as IAP), each vehicle has fixed weapons and stats, with no options for upgrades or improvements. This drastically decreases any potential replayability, as once you go through each track and nail all the objectives, there’s nothing else to play towards.

In addition to the concerns above, there are some glaring omissions in Mad Wheels that definitely detract from the overall experience. For example, there are no save states or ‘multitasking’ support within this game. In other words, if you’re playing on your iPad, and you decide to exit out to check your email, you’ve just lost any progress you had on your current race and need to start over. This lack of any save state is almost unacceptable in this day and age. In addition, Mad Wheels only uses the Crystal social network system and doesn’t even integrate Game Center. This isn’t necessarily a big deal, but still surprising considering how Game Center is poised to be the primary gaming service once the next version of iOS comes out.

Not everything is bad, however. Mad Wheels has decent graphics with a stable, fast framerate (with a visual style that makes me wish Blast Corp was on iOS). In addition, the game controls pretty well, emulating Death Rally and providing an overall decent gameplay experience. While the weapons are predictable, they are implemented nicely and preserve the enjoyment of blasting apart your opponents. Furthermore, Mad Wheels also incorporates a Wi-Fi multiplayer mode, allowing gamers to join and host multiplayer races.

Despite its issues, Mad Wheels still manages to preserve some of the fun involved with these types of weapon racers. If you’re looking for a simple, weapons-based racer with multiplayer and don’t care about customizability or excessive replayability, then Mad Wheels may be a title worthy of your attention. If you’re looking for a game with more substance and depth, then Death Rally still remains the perennial favorite and recommended title.

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In this week’s bonus edition of The TouchArcade show, we sit down and have a chat with CEO of Cedar Hill Games, Tobyn Manthorpe. We’ve covered his studio’s latest game, Emissary of War, pretty well so far, so I’ll spare the pitch in this post, however, I will say that we spend a good deal of time talking about the streamlining process which went into it. We also discuss his background at BioWare and how his experience informs Cedar Hill, Emissary of War, and his studio in general.

If you’d like to give this a listen, you can stream it or download it just below. You could also subscribe to our podcast feed and get these episodes without having to click a single thing! Its like “One Click” check-out minus the click, what a deal!

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-Bonus-007.mp3, 20MB

Music for this episode is from Overclocked Remix. Specifically, we picked two up-tempto re-mixes of traditional RPG tracks:

• Baldur's Gate 'Child of The Murder God'
• Neverwinter Nights 'Kara-Turian Nights'

If you’d like to get hold of us, feel free to drop us an e-mail at podcast@toucharcade.com or hit us up via the Twitter and the Facebook. We’ll be back later this week for another regular show. I wonder what cat game Jared will pick up next?

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Spiderweb Software, the studio behind the fiendishly old-school isometric, turn-based dungeon crawler Avadon: The Black Fortress [$9.99], have announced a new game that looks like a pretty faithful follow-up to that aforementioned title.

The new game is called Avernum: Escape From the Pit, and it’s being billed as the “first chapter” in an RPG saga. This one in particular will span around eighty different towns and dungeons filled with, of course, unique races, magic, mystery, foes, and artifacts to discover.

One of the coolest things we know about the title so far is that it’ll support plot branching of some sort. Spiderweb says that there are three distinct “game-winning quests” in which you will either be given the opportunity to escape, seek safety, or get revenge.

It appears as if the Mac version of the game is the lead sku. So, Avernum for Mac will see a release much later this year, while the iPad port will see Q1 2012 release shortly after. I guess the best part about waiting, though, it that it’ll give you enough time to travel Avadon again. Game is, like, mad huge and complex. Also, a bit dry, but hey, this is a niche title.

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Every time I dip my head into the hardcore world of chess I feel like an idiot that has stumbled into a Mensa meeting. I'm not referring to actually playing the game of chess, but all the crazy competitions and other events which surround the game to take it to whole new levels. Today, I'm specifically speaking of the World Microcomputer Chess Championship, the World Computer Chess Championship, the World Chess Software Championship, and the World Computer Speed Chess Championship. All of these events are different flavors of the same type of event where hardcore Chess AI developers all bring their electronic chess-playing babies to compete for fame, fortune, and I assume a heck of a lot of bragging rights amongst certain circles.

Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, seen in the photo above, first brought Shredder Chess [$7.99 / Lite / HD] online in 1993, and since then has placed first at twelve of the various world chess software tournaments, doing particularly well at the speed-centric variety. The iOS version is no slouch either, with tons of functionality that will both provide some significant challenge if you're adept, as well as help you be a better player if you've got a smarmy older cousin like me who always insisted on beating you at every family gathering with a chess set nearby.

It does this through a shockingly adjustable AI engine that adjusts its strengths to yours, calculating your Elo rating along the way. If you're just starting out, you can even move the difficulty slider all the way down and Shredder will even make deliberate novice mistakes. Aside from that, there's a coaching functionality which allows you to analyze your games to see and learn from the mistakes you've made. My favorite feature is the little gauge at the bottom (seen in the screenshots) which shows what Shredder thinks the current winner will be, with some crazy accuracy, regardless of how hard I try to prove it wrong.

In addition, there are 1000 different chess puzzles, the ability to load and save games, and even export these games via the open "Portable Game Notation" format which is email-centric, and can be opened in full-fledged versions of Shredder. Also, by buying the iOS version you get a $10 off coupon which can be put towards the Mac/PC/Linux version which sells for €49.99 or €99.99 depending on whether you spring for the standard or the "Deep" variety.

Sure, there's tons of cheaper (or free-er) chess apps available on the App Store. And really, if all you want to do is play some casual games with friends, Chess With Friends [Free / $2.99] fits the bill perfectly. However, if you're a expert in need of a challenge or a novice actively looking to improve your game, Shredder Chess is where it's at, and has a shelf full of real-world trophies to prove it.

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Kids vs. Goblins is an upcoming tactical action RPG being developed by Stolen Couch Games and being published by Crescent Moon. The crux of the gameplay revolves around controlling the 3 different main characters in the game and utilizing each of their unique sets of magic spells. There will be more than 80 spells in the game, and different situations that arise as you travel across the 7 locations in the game will call for the use of specific spells or tactics.

Stolen Couch has said in our forums that they took a cue from Mika Mobile’s Battleheart [$2.99] in regards to controls in Kids vs. Goblins, with what appears to be a similar line drawing-esque approach to moving and dishing out commands. Since Battleheart is one of the finest games around, I fully endorse this decision. It also employs similar real-time combat, and I’m looking forward to seeing just how deep the magic system is and how extensive the RPG elements are.

At the very least the 3D graphics are sure looking nice, and I’m really liking the general art style and character design used in the game. The developers plan on releasing Kids vs. Goblins in September, and I’m sure we’ll be bringing you plenty more details about the game in the weeks to come.

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