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Remember early last month when we posted a gameplay video for Cyan’s upcoming RealMyst? Well, they’ve since gone and released a second video, which is equally impressive.

Take a look:

RealMyst, in case this is the first time you’ve heard of it, is a remake of the original Myst. Only, instead of the whole game being pre rendered, it’s rendered in real time, and allows you to have complete control over where you go and what you look at. This is especially crazy when you consider back when Myst was originally released, streaming the pre-rendered video off your CDROM drive was considered cutting edge. Now we’re just rendering all that in real time on your phone.

We’ve still yet to get a release date more specific than “Spring 2012.”

Thanks, @Vragal!

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Late last month we mentioned that TouchArcade Game of the Year Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP [$4.99 / $2.99 ] had been nominated for nearly every category it could vaguely fit in at the Canadian Video Game Awards. If you follow the development team on Twitter, this was spoiled over the weekend when the actual award show was held, but here’s what Sworcery took home:

• Best Game on the Go
• Best Downloadable Game
• Best Indie Game
• Best Original Music
• Innovation Award

These awards are selected by a jury, with the exception of Game of the Year which was a public internet vote kind of thing. (Game of the Year was FIFA Soccer 12, by the way.) What makes sweeping this awards show so amazing is that S&S was up against “real” AAA titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Assassin’s Creed Revelations.

If you haven’t played the game yet, you’re running out of reasons. Check out our review for more details. Oh, and if you know someone who might be interested in the game but doesn’t have an iOS device, it was recently released on Steam as well.

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Back when Supermono released EpicWin [$2.99], its to-do list RPG, we spent some time contemplating whether adding game mechanics to productivity apps would really help people be more productive. That’s the question that rests at the heart of all discussions about “gamification”—do carefully tuned game mechanics drive us to perform tasks we might otherwise ignore? Has Farmville claimed so many man-hours because it’s fun, or because it’s designed to feed on impulses that could be better used for good?

Don’t count it as a blow against gamification, but, personally, EpicWin never quite clicked. I found the experience bars and loot rewards intriguing, but the work I had to put into maintaining my tasks outweighed the benefits. More recently I’ve found myself back in the world of gamified productivity with the help of a to-do app that doesn’t look game-like on the surface at all: Realmac Software’s Clear [$1.99]. Beneath all its lovely minimalistic design you’ll find the potential for a compelling game experience. With today’s update, Clear realizes some of that potential—and it brings a few easter eggs for the discerning iOS gamer along for the ride.

Clear launched with a bang, thanks to plenty of well-placed hype. Reviews at the time noted the simplicity of its design asthetic, the elegance of its colors. Those colors were customizable with a few built in theme options. Within a few hours of release, though, buzz started to build around secret unlockable themes people were finding tucked away in the app.

If you’ve ever felt the urge to master a game, to earn 100% completion on something, you might understand the effect that had on me. At first I only hoped to unlock a theme that was a little different because I wasn’t too fond of the baked in options. Then I had to have them all. The first two were easy—and I’m about to get into details, so stop reading and just grab the update if you want to go in unspoiled— one is unlocked for having Tweetbot [$2.99] installed. Another, Scorched, opens up if you follow any of the app’s creators on Twitter through the app’s menu.

The third is the one that made me realize gamification could work for me. The Socialite theme is unlocked by completing 100 tasks and then posting about it online. As soon as I heard that I starting using Clear obsessively. I added every important deadline, chore and errand and diligently checked them off. By the time I hit 100, I’d formed a habit. Sure, I unlocked the theme I’d been waiting for, but I also found myself more organized for it.

Then there was the letdown: with nothing left to unlock, Clear went back to being a pretty little to-do app that was great to use but not particularly game-like. Today’s update brings a return to that early entertainment with seven new themes to discover.

Three of the themes mirror the original set. There’s a shameless self-promotion option, which rewards you with a theme for gifting Clear when prompted. It’s called “Gifted.” The Path theme is a reward for having Path [Free] installed, just like the theme for using Tweetbot. And then there’s the self-improvement theme: Ultraviolet unlocks when you use the app each day for 7 days straight.

There’s a fundamental rule of any productivity system: you have to actually use it for it to do any good. Ultraviolet could provide that little tick of motivation someone like me would need to keep up the effort that requires, just like achievements might make you play a game longer than you might otherwise intend. There’s also a fourth unlockable theme, Night Owl, that encourages you to be productive after dark, between 12 and 3 a.m.

Now here’s the cool part, the part that reveals Clear’s affinity for games. Today’s update has within it the seeds of three other unlocks. Each one ties into a game: The Heist [$2.99], Temple Run [Free] and Bumpy Road [$2.99]. Those games will need to update before this works (The Heist’s update should come mid-week, and the others are on the way), but once they do we’ll get new themes in Clear for each of those games we have installed.

We’re pretty fond of all three of the games—hit the links to read our reviews—and any of them would be well worth the download with or without the theme. So far, the apps that accompany Clear themes seem hand-picked for quality, and these games are definitely no different. This update also brings in a selection of fixes and features, but the best thing here is using a to-do app that really is all fun and games.

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An iPad and iPhone game has jumped to PC, while a PC game is still set for a release on iPad. Earlier this week, Capybara’s experiential adventure game, Sword & Sworcery landed on Steam, while the dudes behind Legend of Grimrock [$14.99, Steam] continued to pound away at the long-awaited iPad version of the dark, atmospheric, and classic-style RPG.

Sword & Sworcery is currently $5.99 as part of a launch promotion that ends April 23. It’s a straight-up port so it doesn’t rock any new content, but it certainly looks prettier on our monitors than on our iPads.

The last time we covered Legend of Grimrock, developer Almost Human was thinking it had a chance of putting the game out to iPad by the end of 2011. Obviously, that didn’t pan out, but an iPad version is still very much in the works. An “iOS version is in the plans,” the developer wrote via its Twitter account the other afternoon. We’ve contacted Almost Human for a, uh, more specific answer.

Years ago, we wouldn’t have even thought this kind of movement was possible. Phone games were just… phone games. It’s incredible that these mobile experiences are becoming so much more than just time-wasters in such a short period of time. Wonder what kind of movement we’ll see within the next three-to-four years?

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Galcon [ $1.99 ] creator Phil Hassey, who also released the poultry-themed Galcon parody Chickon [ Free ] on iOS this past November, has revealed his latest upcoming project which is titled Dynamite Jack. In it, you play as a Space Marine who has been captured in battle and enslaved by your enemies to work in a mine. Naturally, you don’t take kindly to this, so you set out to break free from the mine and defeat your captors.

Gameplay in Dynamite Jack is top-down and in “glorious 2D”, and totally looks like a mashup of elements from the classic Bomberman and Metal Gear series, perhaps with a dash of Syndicate thrown in there for good measure. Basically, it looks just about as awesome as you’d imagine that combination of games to be, as you can see for yourself in the game’s trailer.

Right now Dynamite Jack is shooting for a May launch on Mac and PC, but as Phil told me over Twitter, a port of the game to iPad following the desktop version launch is extremely likely, and he even makes special mention of it having iCade support. In another tweet, Phil says he built Dynamite Jack from the beginning with the iPad in mind, so the porting process should hopefully go pretty smoothly.

I’m really loving the look of Dynamite Jack based on the video, and I’ll be anxious to check it out when it hits the Mac and PC next month. As for the iOS port, it sounds like it will become a reality, and I’m sure we’ll have more information on that in the coming weeks.

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This week on The TouchArcade Show, we do another stellar job staying on topic — for the most part. At the top, we spend a good amount of time to the latest releases: Epic Astro Story, Puncho Fighto, and Burnout: Crash eat up a lot of our games section. Topics like the recent Kickstarter explosion and Magic: The Gathering on tablets round out the show. We also answer quite a few user e-mails, which we always appreciate.

If you’d like to listen this week, go ahead and do so via the handy links below. If you would rather get these things the easy way, feel free to subscribe to us on iTunes or, hey, even Zune. The subscription is free and automatic. It’s a win-win. Or something.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-047.mp3, 42.2MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Burnout Crash! [ $4.99 ]
• Puncho Fighto [ $0.99 ]
• Epic Astro Story [ $3.99 ]
• Blast Ball [ $1.99 ]
• Infinity Blade 2 [ $4.99 ]
• Kitten Sanctuary [$0.99 / Free ]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• LoveCat [ $1.99 ]

FRONT PAGE

• ‘Magic’ Coming To iPad
• 2XL’s ‘XLR8′ Isn’t a Game, But it Makes Driving Feel Like One

Also, this owns, thanks @mikemeade:

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It was nearly a year ago that developer Juicy Beast Studio announced an iOS port of their popular Flash game Burrito Bison, so where the heck is it already? The team seemed enthusiastic about the port when we spoke to them about it shortly after the announcement, and Ravenous Games was on board to facilitate the porting process.

Well, according to a November blog post from Juicy Beast revealing the sequel to Burrito Bison, the developer stated that they felt that this new game, called Burrito Bison Revenge, would be an even better fit for the iOS platform, and thus decided to focus efforts on porting it instead. Then yesterday, Juicy Beast tweeted this teaser.

So, does that mean the iOS game is close? Are we getting the original Burrito Bison, its superior sequel Burrito Bison Revenge, or perhaps both? Or maybe something entirely different? These are burning questions which I’m sure will be answered in due time, but after a year of relative silence, and since I really enjoyed Juicy Beast’s previous iOS port of Gobtron [$1.99], I’m really looking forward to Burrito Bison hitting the App Store in one form or another soon.

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If you follow me on Twitter, which you totally should, you’ll know that I’ve been having what amounts to a full-blown love affair with a 2011 Prius for the past six months or so. The car is great, gets fabulous milage, is chock full of gadgetry, and really, is only lacking in one department. See, the Prius is a really quiet car. So quiet, that it’s even been the center of jokes on The Office. And, sometimes, you really just want to hear the throaty growl of a V8 engine.

That’s where 2XL Games’ XLR8 [ $0.99 ] comes in:

In a nutshell, you download this 99¢ app, plug it into your car stereo, crank it up, and throw your iPhone into a cup holder. Then, with some reasonable precision, it makes your car, truck, minivan, or whatever else you drive sound just like a sports car. The initial purchase comes with a generic V8 sounding engine, and additional engine sounds can be unlocked via IAP. It’ll even throw in burnout, braking, and drifting noises.

I imagine XLR8 would work better if you had an actual mount for your phone, as getting jostled around in the cup holder sometimes confuses it. Regardless, driving around in your non-sportscar with some fairly realistic engine noises of an Italian super car? Totally worth it.

Just, you know, drive responsibly and all that.

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If you’re still in the honeymoon phase with your new iPad, know this: Tilt to Live HD [Free] has joined the family of retina-supported titles, which has given it some fresh legs in yet another new generation of hardware. One Man Left tells us that it had to dig through all of its old assets and code to make this happen, but the end result of that work is paying off. The dots look so much more… red. And round.

For those of us looking ahead to One Man’s Outwitters instead, don’t worry about new iPad support. According to One Man, it’s currently in the process of upgrading all of its gorgeous assets for the device’s retina screen. We’re especially pumped for this one, if you couldn’t tell by our excited GDC 2012 ramblings for the new-look strategy game with a dab of StarCraft-inspired multiplayer.

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Let’s face it, kids: If you are going to become a giant, fire-breathing monster and take over a city by way of stomping on it, you want to do it right. In style. So if I play a videogame that puts me in the role of said monster, I have one rule — I want to have fun. Glorious, building stomping, people eating fun.

That’s why the original Rampage was such a bounding success. When I saw screens of Monster Takedown [$0.99], I thought I was looking at the same kind of thing. You get to be a big octopus or monster with too many eyeballs or whatever and fend off flying helicopters and incoming bombs. The art looked crisp and cute, and I thought if the gameplay hit the mark, we could have a winner on our hands here. Could. Maybe.

Unfortunately, I can’t report that, because Monster Takedown is pretty boring despite its good looks (and oh, haven’t we all fallen for that formula a few times).  It goes with a very pared down approach, which goes something like this: pick a monster out of five, find yourself splayed over a city doing basically nothing, and wait with a glazed look while helicopters and bombs fly in to attack you. You can’t even move, which really takes the fun out of being eighty feet tall with giant eyeballs stalks.

Seriously though, the lack of movement wouldn’t have bugged me that much had there been something more exciting going on. The helicopters and other flying stuff can be taken out with the touch of a finger, and that can get more complex as you go, although it’s nothing to complain to your friends about.

But the killer is when a nuke flies in from above, which you are supposed to be able to swipe away. I say supposed because no matter how much I swiped or in how many directions, I had trouble getting the game to be responsive when it came to this. It did happen a few times (try a quick left to right swipe), but considering that if that bomb touches your monster, you instantly die — well, let’s just say this little snag took quite a bit of the fun out of things.

You do start each level with one Slow power and one Bomb power, and you can guess what they do by their names. And that’s about all I have to tell you. Oh, except you can post your scores to Facebook and Twitter as well as the Game Center leaderboards, but I’m guessing you already figured that out.

Monster Takedown is completely mediocre, but I think what hurts here is that the look is so cute and you can really see they could have done a lot more with just a little bit of effort. Ah well, there’s always next time. For now, save your dollar, or put it towards a better game.

TouchArcade Rating:

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