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Be-Rad Entertainment gained notoriety on the App Store with Lame Castle [99¢/UHD/Lite], a game inspired by Sony’s advertising jab at iOS gaming, and more recently with the well-received Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack [$1.99/Lite]. At GDC this week, they were showing off their newest iOS title, a strategic matching game based on the movie ‘WarGames‘.

‘WarGames’, if you aren’t aware, is a classic early 80s hacking tale where a young computer enthusiast inadvertently hacks into a military missile strike system. He thinks he’s merely playing a game, but in reality, he is setting off a series of events that will eventually lead to World War III. When he realizes what has happened, it’s a mad scramble to reverse what he has done. Here’s a short teaser featuring clips from the ‘WarGames’ movie itself:

In the WarGames iOS game, you’ll play as the WOPR computer system. As a computer who merely wants to carry out its orders, you’re constantly battling against the people who are trying to shut down the missile launching process. You’ll battle against 6 characters from the movie in matching gameplay that is highly reminiscent of the excellent RPG puzzle title Dungeon Raid [$2.99/Lite].

WarGames isn’t just a Dungeon Raid clone, though. There isn’t a huge focus on persistent RPG leveling, but the drag-to-make-matches mechanic is basically the same. You battle against each of the movie characters by making matches to earn cash, replenish your health, increase experience, and of course deal damage. Certain items on the board with a circle around them will act as your opponents offense if you don’t match them quickly enough, adding a highly strategic layer to the gameplay.

There are other aspects like unlockable power-ups that can increase what you earn for matches or deal additional damage to your opponent. Be-Rad also hopes to implement even more fan service directly from the movie, like sound effects and voice samples. I expected a WarGames game to be more along the lines of The Hacker [99¢] which we recently really enjoyed, but I was pleasantly surprised by the matching game and I think it works really well with the movie IP.

Be on the lookout for WarGames to be hitting sometime in the next couple of months.

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Conceptually, it’s hard not to fall in love with this one. Graeme Devine, and his studio GRL Games, are working on a… spiritual successor of sorts to dance game Space Channel 5. It’s called Dance City, and it’s looking to leverage story, attitude, and dancing. In our meeting with Graeme today, he expressed his extreme love for narrative-led games, as well as quick-to-play titles with “one more time” hooks. Extrapolating, we’re guessing Dance City is going to try to have all of these things.

It’s early, so we don’t know much. On the other hand, we do have the following image, which clearly reveals that Dance City will feature a strong protagonist, and a dance-for-followers mechanic, which should be pretty radical:

We’ll keep our eyes on this as it hurdles to release and bring you much more as soon as possible.

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We had a chance to sit down with the folks from 99Games (creators of WordsWorth [$1.99 / Free] and The Jim and Frank Mysteries [$0.99 / HD], among other apps) and took a look at the games they have coming up in the next few months.

First up, WordsWorth HD [$2.99] has a big update incoming. The main thing to expect is a new single-device multiplayer mode. Where the game’s online multiplayer is a strategic asynchronous affair, the head-to-head (or side-by-side) single device mode is frantic. Both players have their own copies of a shared board, and letters disappear as your opponent uses them. Looks like it’s going to be a really great time.

Up next is Night Club Mayhem. 99Games has played with the time management concept before with Prison Mayhem [Free]. Night Club Mayhem brings those lessons back to a setting that might have slightly more crowd appeal. It’s nice to see a solid time management title that doesn’t run on IAP currency. The cool thing here is that the developer has put a lot of love into the accompanying mini-games, with a rhythm-style DJing game and a surprisingly complicated bartending simulation in the mix.

Night Club Mayhem should be out soon— 99Games expects it to be one of the first new games to fully support the Retina iPad, and it will hit Mac and PC at some point too.

A little further down the road iPhone users should be seeing the adorable physics puzzler Tito’s Shell. The version we took a look at was still under heavy development, but it’s looking good so far. Each timed level separates Tito the turtle from his shell, and the player has to use the environment to put them back together. Just about any part of the level can be connected to anything else within a tight range, so the solutions get increasingly experimental in a sort of Rube Goldberg machine way. It looks like it’s coming along well, and will certainly make a place for itself in the world of cute animal physics puzzlers.

There’s one more game up on 99Games’ slate: Dream Star. If you’re into the idea of a IAP-currency supported movie star simulator, keep your eyes open for this one when it comes out later in spring.

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Pixile Studios is a new two-man development team working on their first iOS title called Pixel Wars. The gist behind Pixel Wars is that it offers a competitive tower defense game for two players on one iPad. Each player gets one side of the screen and can place various towers to defend against the other team’s forces breaking through your gate. While you’re setting up your defenses, you’re also choosing offensive units to send over to your opponent’s side, trying to break through their array of towers and into their gate.

Each player has 20 hearts as their life supply, and each creep who makes it through your gate will take off a single heart. The first one to lose all of their hearts loses the game. It’s a really simple concept actually, and I’m surprised nobody has thought to do it before. I’m a big fan of same-device multiplayer on the iPad, and Pixel Wars is a fun and strategic way to compete against a friend face-to-face.

There are 3 different teams in Pixel Wars – a technology team, a nature team, and a mutant team – and each will have their own array of defensive tower choices and offensive units. There will be 3 maps to play at launch, with more planned for updates down the line. There’s also the possibility of more teams, tower types, and units that could materialize post-launch to further flesh out the experience.

Just because Pixel Wars is a same-device multiplayer game doesn’t mean you can’t play alone, though. There will be a single player campaign where you face off against an AI opponent, and there will also be a challenge mode that tasks you with winning against the AI under special circumstances. Pixel Wars was a ton of fun while I had a chance to play it, and it’s a clever take on tower defense with a competitive edge. Pricing is still up in the air, but if all goes according to plan Pixel Wars should be hitting the App Store sometime next month.

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Get Set Games, creators of the tremendously successful Mega Jump [Free], have a booth here at GDC where they’re showing off their follow-up title Mega Run. Just like the endless vertical jumper that Mega Jump is, the auto-running genre is certainly nothing new. But like Mega Jump, Get Set has injected a ridiculous amount of variety and personality into the formula.

Mega Run is not an endless runner, rather it’s level-based with 3 different worlds each consisting of 16 levels. There is a stupid amount of coins, power-ups, special items, and more literally littered throughout each level. My favorite thing about Mega Run is that each level is very non-linear, despite the fact that you’re hurdling to the right towards an end goal. The levels have many branching pathways and hidden areas to discover, and with 3 hidden gems in each along with a 3 star system and time goals there is plenty of reason to go back and explore every square inch.

Mega Run is still a couple of months out from release, but it feels great already and I had a hard time pulling myself away from the demo build on the GDC floor to give other people a chance to play. We’re looking forward getting the release version of Mega Run in our hands soon, and you would be wise to keep an eye out for it too.

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TUAW’s Kelly Guimont has spotted some interesting language in yesterday’s iTunes Terms And Conditions update. Here’s the text in question:

Certain paid In App Subscriptions may offer a free trial period prior to charging your Account. If you decide you do not want to purchase the In App Subscription, turn off auto-renewal in your Account settings during the free trial period.

Guimont speculates that this could indicate that Apple is preparing to offer developers an easy way to offer time-limited trials of their apps, like game demos. This would be a fantastic change. Developers wouldn’t need to support extra lite versions of their titles, non-game apps could finally offer quick peeks at their content, and the rest of us would have a chance to try before we buy.

Now, while it seems at least as likely that this functionality is meant for magazine publishers, the new terms address that specifically:

Certain In App Subscriptions may be designated as “Newsstand” products, in which case they will appear only within the Newsstand application on your device after download.

Sounds like there will be some support for non-Newsstand apps to take advantage of free trial periods, which (intentionally or not) may open the door for other app developers. We’ll keep an ear to the ground and let you know if anything comes of this

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We were lucky enough to piggy back on the back of the tiny press event at GDC for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD, which is this really fabulous remake with a conglomeration of content from the first two Tony Hawk Pro Skater games set to be released sometime this summer as a downloadable title for both the Xbox 360 and PS3. Jared and I are massive fans of both Tony Hawk and the Tony Hawk series of games, so we totally fanned out. How hard did we fan out? This hard:

We had a great chat with Tony, and learned that it was actually him that pushed through the iOS port of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 [$1.99] after seeing the original fan video we posted which turned out to be totally real. He’s really excited to potentially see the rest of the Tony Hawk series on iOS devices, but openly admits that at the end of the day it all comes down to Activision. With the success Sega saw with the similar fan-made Sonic CD [$4.99] we’re hoping Activision wakes up and smells the coffee sooner or later that there’s a whole group of gamers out there hungry for these classic THPS games on our iPhones.

And if Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD ever got ported? Jared and I would be in heaven.

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We’ve seen a lot of endless runners at this year’s GDC, but none so far have iterated on the Jetpack Joyride model as well as Super Squawk’s Crash Cam. In the title, you control an overeager director as he hurdles through several Hollywood-themed levels, including a backlot. A power meter on his camera stand functions as a time mechanic. As you play, it steadily drains. To refill it, you’ll need to collect orbs scattered about.

The thing that caught our eye is the game’s reverse power-up. Grabbing one switches the director’s direction from the traditional left-to-right setup to right-to-left. It’s a small tweak, but it really gives the game a new-look kind of pacing. Crash Cam will also feature a full compliment of goals and perks, as well as accessories.

The build you’re seeing above in the screens is a work in progress. Crash Cam isn’t expected to launch on iPhone and iPad for another two-to-three months.

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