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When I originally played the outstanding game Osmos [$2.99/HD], the unhurried gameplay and soothing music lulled me into a calmer state.  People have made similar comments about the relaxing effects of Zenbound 2 [$2.99] and Spirits [$2.99/HD]. It's been a while since another game had this effect on me, but Wisp: Eira's Tale [$2.99/Lite] by Triolith Entertainment seems to exert a calming influence. There's no timer or score, just a little glowing fairy (wisp) named Eira who's lost in the forest and needs your help to return home.

The controls are tilt-and-touch. Tilting your device moves Eira left or right. Tapping and holding the screen causes her to float upwards. Using these controls, you can search each level to discover three blue crystals and an exit portal. This is one of those games where you're constantly doing little taps and tilt adjustments to tweak your character's floating direction and speed. And there's nasty things to avoid. Apparently, an ancient creature named Fafnir is bleeding and his black blood is corrupting the forest with evil and monsters, which Eira mustn't touch. She has no weapon, so avoidance is her main strategy.

There are three elemental shrines which assist your journey, by providing temporary abilities based on earth, fire and ice. If you discover an 'Earth shrine' it lets you carry rocks to crush stone barriers, although they make Eira's movements slow and heavy. 'Fire shrines' allow you carry flames, to burn cobwebs that block your path. While 'Frost shrines' let you freeze any evil "corruption" , making it icy and passable, but if you fly into a wall while holding frost, Eira will shatter to pieces. Fortunately, plenty of save-stones are available, which save your position within the level, as a re-spawn point.

The game includes 3 worlds to complete, with 10 levels per world (30 levels in total).  There are 15 achievements via Game Center. The first world is fairly straightforward as enemies move predictably in fixed paths. In the second world, new more aggressive and intelligent creatures are introduced that actually pursue you. One of the best features is the wind effect, which carries you quickly around the level on a gust of air.

I haven't unlocked the third world yet. The developers advise that additional levels are planned, but a decision hasn't been made regarding pricing. Given that only 30 levels are provided initially and there's no incentive to replay levels for better scores or time, I wouldn't be surprised if the additional levels are eventually provided as free upgrades to boost the overall gameplay duration. Time will tell.

The graphics are beautiful, especially the images of a forest in mist, which forms a suitably ethereal backdrop for this fantasy game. The main menu includes a button to toggle between high and low quality graphics, if performance is an issue, although the high quality mode ran smoothly on the iPad 1. The 2.5d graphics are accompanied by nordic folk music and ambient bird and insect noises, which one might associate with an earlier age of faeries. My only complaint about the graphics is that if you introduce three "worlds", they should each appear distinctive, whereas the first two worlds (at least) share common graphics.

In our forums, the developers describe Wisp as "an ambient nordic-inspired puzzle adventure which emphasizes exploration and navigation rather than intense action".  That's a pretty good description, but don't expect "puzzles" in the form of brain teasers to solve – the puzzles they refer to relate to searching the level, avoiding danger and opening doorways, not solving brain-teasers. Also, although the title "Eira's Tale" implies a storyline about Eira's forest adventure, there's no cut-scenes or elaboration on the background story by the mid-way point.

Many modern games are characterized by frantic gameplay, bullets, killing, and explosions; but Wisp: Eira's Tale is intentionally the opposite. At least initially, as it does ramp up in difficulty as you progress. At $2.99 for a universal app and with a brand new lite version to try, this game is suitable for those who enjoy chillaxing with a graphically-appealing game, with tilt controls and no emphasis on score or best times. If that sounds like you, then Wisp: Eira's Tale is worth checking out.

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Bit Pilot [$.99] chose a bad time to be released on the App Store. The retro-influenced dodging game hit a week after One Man Left’s Tilt to Live [$2.99 / Lite / HD] graced the platform, drowning out the much of acclaim it would have garnered otherwise. Perhaps the update that just hit this morning will give Bit Pilot some fresh legs and some new eyes, as it adds a lot of new components to the core game, as well as some fresh tweaks.

Bit Pilot 2.0 adds a total of three new tracks as well as two new modes: Tunnels and Super Massive Mode, respectively. The latter has you gathering power-ups and getting larger in the process, while the former has you dodging massive, creeping space rocks.

The patch also adds new taunts, friends list rankings, Game Center support, cumulative score tracking for his stat pleasure, and most importantly, universal support for the iPad and the retina display.

If you’re more interesting in tackling a game like Bit Pilot with a mouse, or hey, even a Magic Track Pad, game creator Zach Gage will have your back. The game will soon launch on the Mac App Store alongside a demo version that gives you pretty much the full release. We'll grab those links respectively when the application goes live. It's expected to later today.

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Bumpy Road [$2.99] is a great game for a lot of reasons. Its art, sound, and controls fit snuggly together, establishing it as one of the most complete, whole, and well-refined games that we've taken a look at recently. And while there’s a bunch to do in the game, there’s even more as of now. A free update to the innovative physics-based platform game has been pushed out, adding 100 new level segments, the “gruesome and sneaky Break Gizmo,” and two new tracks for the “Classic Sunday Trip.”

Complimenting this, of course, are five new Game Center achievements, and some new leaderboards, which round out the experience nicely.

On the technical side — what’s an update without a band-aid — developer Simogo has tweaked the title so its start-up loading is faster. On the game’s blog, Simog reckons that it’s now “three times faster.” Good. I don’t like waiting.

Definitely give Bumpy Road a shot if you’re looking for a new game. As I referenced earlier, we do have a review for the title. Catch it!

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One of my favorite iOS games of all time is the dungeon crawler Rogue Touch from ChronoSoft. Here at WWDC 2011, I had a chance to sit down with the man behind the games, Kevin Hill, to discuss the latest on that great classic adaptation as well as some of his upcoming titles, including roguelike / RPG Dungeon Tactics: Spirit Hunter Mineko, which we first mentioned back in March of last year.

First off, Rogue Touch will be getting a major update sometime in July as it moves from v1.6, which arrived last summer, to version 2.0. Kevin worked am impressive series of updates to the game in its early days, but none of them have brought nearly as drastic a set of enhancements as the coming update.

Rogue Touch v2.0 will bring an entirely new set of tiles and monsters with much greater detail than those of the current release. What's more, the game will move to an OpenGL-based rendering engine (don't worry — it's still a 2D game), improving the visuals in several respects as compared to its current CoreGraphics-based engine. Game Center integration is also in the mix, as well as various, smaller tweaks and enhancements. I took a look at the tile and character sheets for Rogue Touch v2.0, and I can't wait to make the upgrade.

The coming Rogue Touch update isn't all that fans of the game have to look forward to. Rogue Touch EX is still on track to inject the dungeon crawler formula with a dose of arcade action. The game will feature pseudo real-time exploration, something akin to what we've seen in Solomon's Keep. Rogue Touch EX is expected to arrive as a Universal application for both iPad and iPhone, with Retina display support on the latter.

The biggest news of all out of our meeting with ChronoSoft is the preview I was given of Hill's upcoming Dungeon Tactics: Spirit Hunter Mineko. The game marries elements of the roguelike dungeon crawler with those of the traditional Japanese RPG.

We detailed the backstory in our first look but, in short, the game is the adventure of Mineko, a teenage girl and Spirit Hunter who lives with her family in a remote, mountaintop village. One night during a magical and terrible storm, she and her fellow villagers see a menacing castle materialize out of nowhere. The village council decides that her brother should be sent to investigate this new evil and Mineko, never one to mope about the house, follows after him to help save her village.

Hill has made a number of design decisions aimed at keeping the game experience as accessible and uncluttered as possible. For example, movement is a simple swipe with two swipes for an action. Stairs are automatically ascended / descended when encountered. Tidy inventory and potion selection panes can be swiped in from above and below. The entire system feels rather streamlined.

The game features multiple environments including houses, sewers, cellars, caves, forests and castles as well as an active weather system and day and night modes. In addition to weapons and potions, there is a magic system handled via glyphs on a scroll that can slide in from the side of the screen. Additional side areas become available upon completion of the main mission, allowing some bonus post-victory dungeon crawling fun.

I had a chance to play an in-progress version of the game here at WWDC and it seems extremely well put together. Have a look at a brief video of the game in its current state.

We can expect Dungeon Tactics: Spirit Hunter Mineko to arrive sometime this fall. After that, it's on to work on the next title for Hill, an as-yet unnamed, futuristic strategy game in the vein of Advanced Wars and Super Robot Wars. I took a look at the character sheets and they look quite promising.

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There's no way to beat around the bush on this. Even though many developers have gotten onboard the universal app train, a select few have implemented any cloud-based game save storage system to allow you to sync progress across devices. Of course most server-based free to play games already do this, but in your typical super-casual 99¢ time-waster, your progress is largely locked onto the device that you're playing it on. I can't really fault developers for this, as implementing such a system would largely be overkill for most games, and maintaining the entire online infrastructure to track cross-device progress in a game like Dungeon Raid [$2.99 / Free] would be silly for the developer to do by themselves. For them, there's not much benefit. It would take a heck of a lot of engineering, and servers cost can be substantial– But that's where Apple comes in.

Monday's keynote introduced us to iCloud, an entirely free cloud-based storage system usable by everyone who owns a recent iOS device, and every developer who wants to use it. So, while it might have been entirely unrealistic for the Dungeon Raid developer to do all this himself, Apple has made it nice and easy.

I've spent most of the day today discussing the prospects of iCloud with many of the developers around WWDC and really one word can describe the temperature of each conversation: Excitement. According to developers who have attended various iCloud-centric WWDC sessions, implementing iCloud-based storage of game saves will be nearly as trivial as dealing with gave saves stored locally on the device is now. This means that as developers inevitably work on tweaking their various apps and games to make them more iOS 5 friendly over the next few months, they'll also likely switch their storage methods over to iCloud, as there's little reason for them not to.

It's still early though, and we're really just scratching the surface of what's possible on the first day of WWDC. One thing I wasn't able to get a very solid answer on was how this was all going to work between standard and HD versions of games. For instance, right now Game Center works like this: If you release your game as a universal app, you can share Game Center leaderboards and achievements for that game across all iOS devices. However, if you release the same game as a separate standard and HD version, Game Center treats those as entirely different apps, and as such, keeps leaderboards and achievements for each app individually.

It's an interesting problem, and no one is sure right now if there's a real solution. Apple obviously seems to want developers to focus on universal apps, but developers vastly prefer two different apps due to pricing flexibility, chart advantages, and several other very valid reasons. If Apple is sticking with the same restrictions as they have for Game Center leaderboards, I hope this just spurs developers to continue the trend we've started to see in offering universal compatibility in the HD version.

This truly seems to be the best of both worlds, as developers can still retain pricing flexibility for two different apps, while providing universal compatibility and cross-device iCloud save syncing while still providing a lower-priced option for those who only own an iPhone or iPod touch.

Another potential snag might be in how game saves are reconciled across multiple devices that might not always be connected to the internet. For example, if you've got a non-3G iPad and an iPod touch, and play the same game on both before returning to a friendly WiFi network. Each game will have different amounts of progress, and the developers I've spoken to so far aren't really sure how things will shake out once these two different game saves hit the iCloud.

Surely this is something Apple has considered, and I'm almost positive we'll find out the answer to all these questions and more in the next few weeks as developers delve into iOS 5. One thing is for certain, holy cow am I happy that cloud-based game save storage will practically be a standard feature in the not too distant future.

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Remember Boost 3D? It came out in late 2009, and we absolutely loved it in our review. It's a tunnel racer with a sky high framerate and an elegant simplicity to it. The game is so simple, in fact, that we really didn't mind that it didn't get updated for close to two years. Some games are great just the way they are, and this was a perfect example of that.

When I first heard of this update which was so massive that it even required a name change to the whole game, I was completely apprehensive. I thought the game was perfect the way it was, and usually "massive update" means the introduction of power-ups, levels, and all kinds of other nonsense that would get in the way of the previously mentioned elegant simplicity.

Thankfully, this update manages to completely enhance the game, all the while maintaining everything we first loved about Boost 3D. Instead of a single game mode, there are now three: Time trial, survival, and even multiplayer which works via Game Center.

I've yet to be able to get a game going (since the update just launched, I assume) but here's how it's supposed to work– Players have 60 seconds to finish the race, at which point the player who has travelled the farthest wins. The blocks change color depending on your position in the race. Sounds awesome.

Aside from using Game Center for multiplayer, there is also total Game Center (and OpenFeint) for online leaderboards and achievements. Both the Retina Display and the iPad are now fully supported, and there are a number of other tweaks and fixes including a totally redesigned HUD.

Boost 2 is on sale for 99¢ in celebration of the relaunch. It was the best tunnel racer when it was originally released in 2009, and I'm having a hard time thinking of a better one that has been released since then– Especially with these new enhancements.

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Feed Me Oil [99¢ / HD], from Chillingo and HolyWater Games, is a game about petroleum. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas-tea. Bubbling crude. Your role is to guide the expensive black liquid from the broken pipe to the designated area, to clear each level.

Liquids are difficult to render realistically, so I wondered how well the oil effect would be delivered on-screen. And I wasn't disappointed. The oil looks and sounds like a thick, gooey, black substance, either flowing as a stream or breaking into separate globs. The oil is the main character of this title and it's depicted well. While there's other physics-based games out there, the gushing oil effects make this one particularly interesting. The rest of the graphics appear to be heavily influenced by the popular World of Goo, which features similar large-eyed cartoon creatures, shown in profile.

To control the oil, you place objects such as rotating platforms, fans, wind, windmills or oil-magnets in it's path. Each of these objects pushes or pulls the oil in a different manner, such as flinging it across the screen. Scores are based on the number of objects used to help the oil reach it's destination (three stars per level). In most cases, there's no single solution, since you can position objects in any order or location, even on top of each other. However, a hints system is available. Each hint causes a 30-second delay before the next hint can be utilized on that level. Alternatively you can pay to have all hints unlocked immediately, as an optional in-app purchase, although most players won't need to bother.

The gameplay and controls closely resemble Enigmo. You select one of the available objects, then touch the screen to position it. Each object can be rotated and some can be set to turn clockwise or anti-clockwise. A double tap deletes the object. Once you're ready, you touch the oil pipe and watch the sloppy black goop flow, often in the wrong direction via an unforeseen leak, but hopefully towards your target.

The next step involves multiple adjustments and corrections. This game requires trial and error, which is reminiscent of games like Cat Physics from Donut Games, which similarly involves setting objects in place, then adjusting and tweaking them until you're successful. Sometimes the slightest movement of one object can make the difference between level completion or watching your precious oil supply disappear off-screen. The controls in Feed Me Oil work well for making quick and frequent adjustments, then re-testing.

Feed Me Oil includes 49 levels. This includes three chapters, with fifteen levels per chapter. Each chapter is initially locked, until the previous chapter is completed. Four bonus levels are unlocked once 50, 90 and 130 stars are obtained or if you gift the game via the Crystal network. The bonus levels differ slightly from normal levels, but i'll leave that for you to discover yourself and of course, the developers have mentioned that more levels are coming soon. Chillingo has integrated their own social gaming network solution, Crystal, for 31 achievements and high scores which also piggybacks on top of Game Center like most of their recent games. Separate leader-boards exist for each chapter and for the bonus levels.

While the graphics and gameplay are successful, some of the music falls short. The music-box soundtrack became so irritating that I deployed the mute option. Another track is a few bars long and loops repetitively. Fortunately there's a few different sound tracks, some of which are relaxing and enjoyable, and better suited to the oily gameplay.

Overall, this game is definitely fun and it's always satisfying to watch your black oil slurp it's way into the mouth of a strange, big-eyed, oil-craving cartoon land-creature. Hopefully they deliver on the additional levels, but any game that mixes elements from Enigmo, World of Goo and Cat Physics is sure to do well.

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Minecraft for mobile phones is coming to Android first as an Xperia Play exclusive, the game’s developer Mojang confirmed to us in a brief e-mail exchange this morning.

This news comes on the heels of a rash of E3 invitations-turned-blog-posts. Yesterday, Play creator Sony Ericcson blasted out a digital invitation to a June 7 mixer to several members of the enthusiast games press. The invite was adorned with Minecraft art and, as if that didn’t do the trick, also referenced a well-known explosive enemy in the game.

With the surprise blown, Mojang is now able to confirm the project, which is formally called Minecraft – Pocket Edition. As you’d assume, it will have controls fitted to the Play’s touch pads, buttons, and d-pad, and will feature changes specific to the hardware and the, perhaps, less attentive audience.

“When playing on smart phones you will have a different screen size compared to PC, different hardware, different attention spans and thus the game needs to be customized to fit the mobile specifications,” a representative told us.

If you know Minecraft, you know Mojang doesn’t kid around with updates. The PC hit is updated a lot with the occasional game-changing overhaul, as well as standard tweaks, enhancements, and bug fixes. Mojang suggests this will be the case with Pocket Edition, too.

“The development process will follow the one we have for PC, release early and update frequently,” the same representative told us.

Apparently, more will be revealed about Pocket Edition during E3. As of right now, we still don’t know its price, release window, or possible cross-platform functionalities. If you read between Mojang's lines about this version of the game, however, the latter seems highly unlikely.

One thing we’d love to know is if Pocket Edition is a PlayStation Suite joint. If it is, then it's possible that this version of the game will work on the NGP as well as other Android 2.3 , PlayStation-certified devices. As reported eons ago, Sony plans to keep a hardware-neutral stance with the Suite platform, so cross-platform play is possible provided that Sony's device requirements are met.

We're not sure what this means for the iOS version of Minecraft in the short term. The studio still refers to this version as an actual project, but if this exclusive has a long-ish tail, you'll be waiting for awhile obviously. Will development slow or stop in the meanwhile? We'll ask.

The Xperia Play is available for purchase tomorrow in the US for $199 with a two year contract. I'm guessing that Mojang will be counting the days until this agreement is over if the desire for the Play's games is as poor in the US as it has been in the UK, Canada, Ireland, and Spain. Mid-month reports from sales in these regions indicate that under or around 1,000 units of each of the five PSOne classic exclusives have been purchased. That's not… good, to say the least.

Then again, Minecraft is a big deal. Perhaps it can push the platform? We'll see.

In-game image from the latest PC build of Minecraft.

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Let's get this out of the way, Square Enix's Chaos Rings Ω [$11.99 / HD] is identical to the original Chaos Rings in more ways than one. In fact, its differences are so few, it's hard to differentiate the two and considering Chaos Rings Ω follows the original by a full year, that's going to be a bit disappointing to fans of the first game looking for something new.

By the nature of the narrative in the first game, there is little in the way of expanding the Battle Royale style storyline, which pits you in a fight to the death against a random collection of couples abducted to an arena for the sake of proving their battle-worthiness. Even though this is billed as a prequel, it's still not the "first" time this the tournament has gone down and it's clearly not the last.

Where the first game told the story from several different viewpoints, Chaos Rings Ω decides instead to tell the main story of Vieg (who you'll recognize from the first game, perhaps a bit younger looking). This might be a bit jarring to fans of the multiple viewpoints of the first game, but it does allow Chaos Rings Ω to tell a slightly more cohesive story.

The setting is the exact same and that goes for the dungeons as well. They're varied in layout, but considering the first games dungeon designs were essentially randomly put together screens, that's not really saying much. Since there are different characters, the narrative is tweaked slightly, including a ridiculous mother/child plot involving a not-at-all-pregnant-looking woman who happens to be your wife. Dialogue is on par with the first as well, which is to say, it reads like it's something closer to fan fiction. Because of that, there are plenty of inadvertent jokes — for instance, during a cut scene where your wife is giving birth, an ill-timed achievement called "Pelvic Pummeler" will pop up in relation to a boss fight you just completed.

But if you liked the style and story of the first game, you'll enjoy this one too. Without spoiling things, you'll seen connections between the two games and get a few explanations of how the Ark Arena works and where certain situations and characters from the first game came from.

Combat, movement, the menus; everything else is the same as the first. That includes the ability to turn off random enemy encounters or alternately, to force one into happening. The puzzles are back this time too, but you can skip them if you fail three times. Combat works on the same two-person tactic as the first, which offers entry level RPG fans a clear and simple system to go with and it's mixed with enough complexity that you can take it to some extremes to deal hefty damage, but the game doesn't really challenge you to do so as often as it could. There is also a ludicrously over-done tutorial system at the beginning of the game, which features a tutorial for how to use the "options" menu for no apparent reason.

The same goes for the graphics, which are, to be frank, identical to the first, oftentimes seemingly taking assets directly from the original and changing their color. While Chaos Rings had a bit of a shock-and-awe factor going for it, Chaos Rings Ω doesn't. The weirdly pixelated static backgrounds and poorly textured character designs look significantly dated now. It shouldn't really matter, but as a whole, it looks like they weren't trying too hard.

There are a flurry of post-release updates planned, including increased level caps and bosses (which only makes sense after you finish the game), but based on their descriptions alone, they don't really seem that interesting unless you're an absolute die-hard fan. If nothing else, it's nice to see Square Enix is coming around to the App Store update model, at least a little bit.

By the end of it all, Chaos Rings Ω is solely for diehard fans of Chaos Rings and with the first game currently on sale, you'll be better of starting there if you're just a curious passerby. It's not bad by any means, but it doesn't even pretend to offer anything different or new. More is more — so if that's all you're asking for, you'll be happy with the way the story fills in the gaps of the first, but if you didn't like the first or wanted new battle systems or combat, you'll be disappointed.

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Even without Game Center support, Carcassonne [$9.99] was our runner-up Game of the Year last year. But now, with the release of a new update adding said support, what’s the GOTY Advisory Board supposed to do? Create a time machine? Nah. How about a “Missed Connections” category? Perfect!

While we figure this issue of great import out, play against some of your Game Center friends in one of the best board game turned video games on the planet. Also, enjoy some of the other perks of Version 2.20, which is sure as sure the last “big” update to the game until the first add-on graces the App Store. New leaderboards, 43 new achievements, score sharing, improved stability, chat time stamping, better power consumption, and an ELO bug fix are all a part of this free update that should see some significant hold-over until game creator The Coding Monkey hits fans with some rivers, Inns, and Cathedrals.

What I didn’t mention ever so slyly in the above is that these expansions won’t see the light of day for three billion years Standard Internet Time — The Coding Monkeys is cautioning fans that it’ll take a couple of months before “The River II” and “Inns and Cathedrals” hit. The good news, however, is that these will be quality bits of content as a result.

It’s hard to believe that someone still hasn’t checked Carcassonne out, but if you’re that dude, give this review a read. Seriously, this is a fantastic title. Just click “Buy app” already. Jeesh.

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