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Well, this was unexpected. A day or so after launching a restaurant simulation game on Android, the simulation gurus at Kairosoft stealth-released Epic Astro Story [$3.99] across the iPhone and iPod Touch. From the look, it appears as if it’s melding the action-y soccer part of Pocket League Story with the city-building of its other recent releases, Oh Edo Town and Venture Town. The key exceptions being that it’s dripping with sci-fi buildings and homes, and the action-y part are actual battles with cutesy aliens.

We’re giving it a spin right now and will definitely deliver you something a little more specific in the near future. If you’re a Kairosoft fan, however, this appears to be the change of pace game you’ve been craving since the company began releasing its city building games on the App Store. Fingers crossed for awesome!

[Thanks, WakeBoardMan10!]

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If you’re not familiar, The Consumerist is a consumer affairs blog and watchdog organization which is part of the Gawker network. It’s a daily read of mine as they usually cover things that help you avoid shady things companies are up to, feel-good stories of customer victories, and other relevant things. Anyway, long story short, The Consumerist does a yearly reader poll to determine the worst company in America. In previous years, AT&T, Wal-Mart, and numerous banks were all contenders.

This year the final two companies were Electronic Arts and Bank of America. EA won with 64% of the vote, with The Consumerist citing EA’s overall “greed,” via excessive DLC, buggy games, and acquisitions. EA was quick to respond to the results, via Kotaku:

We’re sure that British Petroleum, AIG, Philip Morris, and Halliburton are all relieved they weren’t nominated this year. We’re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide.

Personally, I’m with EA on this one. How silly.

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We told you back in February that the newly-formed development studio Ninth Ninja in connection with Pom Pom Games was busy porting the popular PC title Mutant Storm to the iOS platform. Mutant Storm, in case you didn’t know, is a Robotron-esque arcade shooter that originally released for PC and Mac but is probably more widely known for its enhanced re-release as an Xbox Live Arcade title back in 2005 under the name Mutant Storm Reloaded.

While Mutant Storm coming to the App Store is exciting enough in and of itself, yesterday we learned via Twitter that Crescent Moon Games has jumped on board to publish the title. Also revealed is that Mutant Storm is running at 60 frames per second on the new iPad, and digging into the game’s forum thread developer Ninth Ninja goes into even more detail stating that it runs at 60fps on the iPad 2 and a respectable 30fps on the original iPad.

Considering how many crazy graphical effects can get going in Mutant Storm, that’s pretty darn good, and for new iPad owners the iOS version of the game will use the high resolution assets from the PC game to take advantage of the Retina Display screen. You can actually see comparison shots of the game at normal iPad resolution on the left and the Retina Display resolution of the new iPad on the right.

Mutant Storm for iOS is in the final stages of development, so it shouldn’t be much longer before the final version hits. Hit up the forums for some discussion and keep your eyes on this space for any more news related to the impending release of Mutant Storm on the App Store.

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The App Store is a great place to find seedy Minecraft apps. It’s also the best place to find the official Minecraft companion app. Studio 57Digital LLC’s Minecraft Explorer [$.99 / Free] now has the support of Mojang, which makes it a much more stomach-able buy. You can do a lot of awesome stuff with this, by the way, as it functions like an Internet wiki. From the app, you can browse all of the game’s item, enchantment, and crafting recipes, favorite items and server listings, view enemy information, and even watch videos.

… And now you can do more. Specifically, with this latest update, you can now share your character skins and design new ones. It’s also considerably less buggy, if the long list of fixes is to be believed.

Mojang managing director Carl Manneh drew our all-seeing eye to the product earlier today and it’s proving to be a cool tool. We’re thinking that it’ll be doubly useful for the impending Xbox Live Arcade version of the game, since dual-fisting a laptop and an Xbox 360 controller can be pretty rough. Check it out.

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In case there’s still a person out there who is shocked by the runaway success of the Angry Birds series, secure your monocle and try this news on for size: According to a recent tweet from Rovio, Angry Birds Space has been downloaded over ten million times in three days. Now, before you go multiplying that ten million by ninety nine cents, consider that Rovio has been historically vague with the platforms their download figures are from. Angry Birds Space launched as a 99¢ iPhone version, a $2.99 iPad version, and a free ad-supported Android version. Free versions of anything seem to be downloaded exponentially more than apps with a price tag, so it doesn’t seem that far out there to assume that a hefty chunk of those downloads came from the Android side of the fence, but still.

If you still haven’t downloaded Angry Birds Space for whatever reason, check out our review. The game is seriously just phenomenal, and as I’ve spent more time with the game I’ve been having an absolute blast attempting to three star the 99¢ IAP “Danger Zone” ultra-difficult levels. If anyone from Rovio is reading this, please keep releasing level packs like this. Heck, make ‘em more difficult, I dare you.

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On the heels of the release of Canabalt across PSP, PS Vita, and PS3, Semi-Secret’s Adam Saltsman is asking fans if they are interested in a possible 2-player mode for the phone versions of the often celebrated endless runner. “Would y’all be interested in seeing a 2-player mode in Canabalt [$2.99] on iOS and Android,” he asked, simply, on Twitter.

Speaking with us, Saltsman says that he’s trying to gauge if such an endeavor would be worth it. He wants Canabalt, which debuted in 2009, to stay relevant, but he also understands the risk involved with post-release feature additions, no matter how simple they are to implement. The time it would take to do this, for example, is time that could be spent on another of his fresher projects. He says that any input into this matter is invaluable. He also says that he has other ideas for content, and if this stuff takes minimal effort, it’ll probably be worth it.

For what it’s worth, we’re screaming “yes” to everything at our monitors right now.

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Adam Saltsman and Semi Secret’s moody and atmospheric daring escape runner, Canabalt [$2.99], will soon be available for download across the PSP, PS3, and PS Vita in the US. The studio, in collaboration with The Beatshapers, have launched a PSP Minis version of the game in Europe. A US version of the flash-turned-iOS-turned-Minis game will follow later this week, Saltsman has said on the Twitters.

We’ve been enjoying Canabalt on touch platforms for what feels like eons at this point, but that doesn’t put a damper on our desire to check it out on other devices. Canabalt and its infinite action is as timeless and as fast as a vampire with track shoes. Here’s a few screens and a trailer of this version:

[via Joystiq]

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One of the best and brightest, and unreleased, games we saw at GDC now has two clones on the App Store, according to the game’s creator. A false version of IGF-nominated student project, One and One Story, popped up earlier this afternoon to an appropriate amount of Twitter backlash. Its source code presumably draws from the Flash version of the game.

One and One Story’s actual creator, Mattia Traverso, has since contacted Apple and filed a DMCA complaint. “Yep, but these are clones,” Traverso said on Twitter. “They are other games. This is my game, without even a single change!”

When Traverso showed us the legitimate iOS version at GDC, it was very much a work in progress. He was in the process of tightening the controls and figuring out if he wanted to go with a different visual style that featured actual characters instead of silhouettes. Obviously, we don’t advise that you download this version.

One and One Story, by the way, looks to be a gripping platformer, as it tries to combine the Limbo look with Braid-like puzzles. The premise revolves around the relationship of the game’s two protagonists, and you need to control both interchangeably in a multitude of fascinating ways.

We look forward to digging in when it’s actually released.

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I think we’ve got our plate cleared of GDC stories. Yesterday’s Sega event was the last embargoed piece of news from the event for us to post about, closing the books on what might have been the busiest convention in TouchArcade history. Also, we got eight folks from the TouchArcade team together, and the best we could muster was a series of blurry iPhone photos. C’est la vie!

It goes without saying, but it was amazing seeing everyone at the event last week. Whether you were lucky enough to slide into an appointment slot with us or if you just had a few beers on us at the party, thanks to everyone involved. The massive community of awesome developers is what makes GDC my favorite event of the year.

For our readers who might have missed anything during the onslaught of GDC coverage, we’ve got all of our stories archived under the GDC 2012 category so, give that a look.

Our party this year was crazy, and I think we’re going to have to explore a different venue for next year if GDC 2013 is anything like GDC 2012. Here’s a few photos of the madness, courtesy of @sargonas:

If you’ve got your own photos from GDC, drop ‘em in the comments! As far as other conventions are concerned that we’ll be covering in the future, we might be at PAX East, following that the next big ones will be WWDC and E3 in a couple months.

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In early December we told you about a neat little iOS project called Rocket Bits [Free] from RegularKid Games. The idea behind Rocket Bits was that it started out as an extremely basic free roaming cave flyer but would evolve over time based on player feedback. Basically, the developer wanted ideas from fans to shape what kind of game Rocket Bits became.

Well, Rocket Bits received its 3rd update last week, and it seemed like a good time to summarize the progress that it’s made so far. It’s actually turning out to be a pretty cool little game. Originally, you could only boost around in your little rocket using left and right boosters and explore a randomly generated cave. And that was about it.

In mid-December, the first update to Rocket Bits added the ability to get out of your ship and collect gold pixels as a form of currency. What do you collect gold for? Who knows just yet, but it’s somehow still fun to grab as much as possible. You’re also able to place light beacons anywhere on the map, to either light a specific area or to mark it so you can find it again someday.

In January, the second Rocket Bits update was released and added even more complexity to the gameplay. Basic missions could now be found scattered around the map, and when outside of your ship your little dude now had his own jetpack to putt around with. You could also place bombs and blow up parts of the terrain, though it didn’t really have a purpose beyond just being destructive. An improved mini-map and UI accompanied the ability to randomly generate much larger maps to explore.

Finally, last week brought the 3rd update, and it further builds on the elements introduced in previous updates. There are now enemies who don’t do much more than very, very slowly move towards your position, but they can become a nuisance if you ignore them too much. There’s also a new mission type that requires you killing these enemies with strategically placed bombs.

Your spaceman has health now too, so if you get hit too much by an enemy, let your oxygen run out while outside your ship, or just plain blow yourself up with a bomb then you’ll end the game and will have to start anew. There are 3 save slots now so you can keep multiple games going or let other people play their own profile.

I can’t quite explain it but I love playing Rocket Bits, and so far it keeps getting better with each new update. It’s still free too so there’s really no reason not to at least check it out. I’m really interested in watching as it continues to evolve, and if you have your own ideas for the game then share them at RegularKid.com, over Twitter at @RegularKid, or email to bryan@regularkid.com

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