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"Soon" means “timed to the theatrical release.”

Hunger Games: Girl on Fire sounds about as good as it looks. This afternoon, we nabbed a few in-game images of the runner-meets-shooter for our audience’s viewing pleasure. Girl on Fire, is of course, the “teaser” tie-in to the upcoming Hunger Games flick, which is based on the first book in a massively popular book trilogy. We’ve been advised that the events in this game will actually take place “towards the beginning” of the series.

Right, the images. Below, we’ve got an actual in-game look of lead protagonist Katniss Everdeen, as well as a shot of a level. Adam Saltsman, a member of the indie dream team heading up the title, describes Girl on Fire as a runner-y, shooter-y kind of thing. Like us, we think you’ll understand the categorization immediately after peering at the level specifically.

Katniss in 16-bit. Gotta love how Lionsgate decided to go indie.

We had a Pitfall flashback when we first looked at this.

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I personally never felt like I was good at shooters. However, being good at them and loving them are two entirely different things. While I marveled at friends that could blast through Ikaruga from start to finish without ever coming face to face with the game over screen, I plugged away at old classics like Konami’s Life Force and Sexy Parodius, hoping each time I’d improve by some miniscule increment. Practice makes perfect, they always say.

Seeing Orange Pixel’s latest title, Neoteria [$1.99], made me realize my days of shmup practice back in the day would be tested once again. A smart-looking little game with retro-inspired graphics, it foregoes deep story in favor of what we’re all here to do when it comes to shooters: blow things up.

You’ll start in easy mode, but don’t be fooled — there’s challenge to be had, even early on. Controls consist of an up and down arrow on your far left (there’s no forward and backward) and a single button for shooting on your right.

One thing I noticed during play is that my finger kept slipping north of the up button and I only realized it when my ship stopped moving (you drag your finger up and down to control these). Once I got a handle on how far up I could slide, though, this stopped being a problem.

It is worth noting about the controls that the arrows and shoot buttons become transparent as you play. Some people in the forums mentioned this and disliked it, others were not bothered by it. It never presented an issue for me, but its worth being aware of.

As you progress through Neoteria’s levels, you’ll see a map that plots out your path. At some point on each level you can choose one part of the route which takes you the high or low road. Regardless of which you take, you’ll be challenged quickly, as there’s lots of dodging and blasting to do. Enemies will leave behind little blue diamonds for you to collect, which will make your weapons more powerful if you pick them up. However, dying can cause weapons to downgrade, so keep it in mind as you go hurtling through space. You have infinite lives here, so that is a great plus.

You’ll have an option to score up to three stars on each level you play, and also get a readout on your accuracy and kills along with a score. You’ll get a single star for beating a level on easy, two for normal and three for hard. If you want to brag on your scores, OpenFeint and Game Center are built right in too, so you can do so with ease.

Fans of classic shooters like Gradius ought to get a lot of fun out of Neoteria. It comes up with plenty of challenge and gives the proper nod to the old games it’s clearly inspired by, but it delivers the action in bite size pieces and is easy to pick up and play at anytime. Even the bosses, wile not as epic of some of the shooters of yore, have a great feel and have you tapping that blast button at high speed just like the good old days.

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So this is pretty weird. Last week, the classic Japanese role playing game from Atlus, Shin Megami Tensei [$13.99], appeared in the App Store.

Originally released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the game was re-released for the PlayStation and the Game Boy Advance about a decade later, but the game has never been released outside of Japan (though unofficial English-translated versions do exist around the web). The original Shin Megami Tensei has spawned tons of sequels and spinoffs, and the entire series has an extremely dedicated following.

Now, when I first saw Shin Megami Tensei in the App Store, I was almost certain it wasn’t a sanctioned port. In this line of business, unauthorized ports or ripoffs of popular games appear fairly often, especially as of late it seems.

The iOS version of Shin Megami Tensei definitely did not look legit. It had an atrocious virtual control overlay that took up more than half the screen, and the app description sounded like it had been carefully reworded from the Wikipedia entry on the game.

Oh, and the entire game was still in Japanese only. Let me repeat that: the game is entirely in Japanese with no English whatsoever.

So based on that, and given the fairly hefty price tag, I was ready to write Shin Megami Tensei off as just another unauthorized cash grab. Except, upon further snooping, it’s not.

It’s published by Index Corporation, the Japanese company that bought Atlus several years back. A tweet from Atlus Japan’s Twitter account confirms that they are officially behind this iOS version. It appears to be a bare-bones emulated port of the 2003 Game Boy Advance version, with no special care put into translating it to iOS. But hey, it’s Shin Megami Tensei on your iPhone, I guess.

If you know Japanese and can deal with a no-frills port, then this is likely your dream come true. For anybody else, this is probably just a frustrating example of what could have been. A proper, English-translated port of Shin Megami Tensei that has been carefully crafted for the iOS platform would make a lot of people happy, and although I don’t think it’s likely, I’m holding out hope that Atlus is considering something like that for the future.

For now, if you are down to drop $14 just so you can carry around the original Shin Megami Tensei in your pocket, then I won’t judge you.

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What’s this? Rovio Mobile has something else new up its sleeves? In a recent interview with AllThingsD, Rovio CEO Mikael Hed shared a lot of “stay calm, don’t panic” thoughts on Rovio and how heavily tied its success is to Angry Birds, noting that Rovio’s fingers are in more than just video game jars. He also revealed that his company is in production on a yet-to-be-revealed game set to hit in the next couple of months. AllThingsD says this title is a “non-Angry Birds-themed game,” which leaves a lot of room for interpretation as to how Angry Birds-less this new title could be.

If this is a new IP… boy, does Rovio have some shoes to fill. Angry Birds is on stores shelves and clothing racks, as well as pretty much on anything with a chip in it. You can’t help but to think that, unless this game somehow exceeds the popularity of Angry Birds, it’ll be considered anything other than a failure. We can think of worse problems, though. Like hammer toe. Bet that’s the pits.

[via RoyalePost]

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Robot Entertainment is making good on the promise of more Hero Academy [Free] content, and it sure delivered the other day. In an update, Robot unleashed the game’s third team, the Dwarves, for a one-time $1.99 in-app purchase. These undersized big men specialize in the fine art of explosives and gunpowder, kinda like the Squat in Warhammer 40K except without the exo-armour and all those Land Trains.

Robot has an awesome blog post up that details each of the new classes that the Dwarf army is bringing to the fold. It also spills the beans on all the contents of the new update, which brings about some needed chat bug fixes and several neat tweaks, like auto-forfeiting. Hit it up if you’re especially curious, and check out our review if you still don’t know why everyone is buzzing this. Hint: it has something to do with the amount of little dudes equipped with stabby things.

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When I unlocked a moustache and created Ron Swanson Pizza Bagel (Ron to his friends), I fell a little bit in love with Pizza Vs. Skeletons [$2.99 / Lite]. I mean, how many games let you play – and customize – a 10 foot tall pizza that’s out to crush every skeleton it finds? And it’s not all skeleton crushing, oh no. We’ve also got Pizza Rescues Trapped Puppies, Pizza Balances on Rolling Skulls and a hefty handful of other games in here, taking full advantage of everything a giant pizza can do.

The common thread is the pizza (or tire, or moon, or…), and its three capabilities: rolling, jumping, and pounding the ground. You roll by tilting your device, jump by tapping the screen once and hit the deck by tapping again. Any of those moves can crush skeletons, which simply can’t stand up to the weight of a giant pizza. If you’re worried about the tilt controls, give the free version a try. I can tell you they’re better than most, easily calibrated, and fit perfectly with the gameplay, but try for yourself to be sure.

Now obviously this game gets a little crazy, right? At first it seems that all you do is roll back and forth, crushing waves of skeletons and avoiding their spears by jumping sometimes. Of course that’s not all; that wouldn’t be nearly strange enough. There are traditional platforming sections where you roll your pizza to ski or rescue puppies (you crush their cages, see, and then they stick to your cheesy surface while you take them to safety). Among other oddities, we also get into castle crushing levels, levels where you bounce of brains for maximum board-breaking impact, and my personal favorite, a Feeding Frenzyesque survival-of-the-fittest sim that takes place under the sea. It could come off as too wacky, but I played most of the game with a stupid grin on my face.

There is one thing I really don’t dig about Pizza Vs. Skeletons. There are 100 levels, which is rad, but that means you’ll be playing each game type quite a few times. They don’t all hold up to this repetition. With pizza-skiing, for instance, you have to deal with tiny platforms and explosions and things as you get to higher levels, but all of them pretty much look and feel the same. They just get longer, and longer, and eventually stop being all that novel.

But you’ve gotta remember that you’re doing these things as a giant pizza, and that your fellow skiiers are skeletons wearing Santa hats. That absurdity goes a long way. That time when I was on the moon, knocking skeleton cherubs out of the sky? Still fun, even though I did something similar a few times already.

If you like messing around with customization, Pizza Vs. Skeletons is a dream. You pick up coins while you play, and you can use that money to unlock new bases, faces, hats and toppings. Not that into pizza? You can play a rolling jellyfish with a Stetson, gems for eyes and a beak. Why shouldn’t you, aside from the boundaries of good taste? Oh, and before you ask, no, you can’t buy extra currency with real cash. In this game, you’ve gotta earn your rewards, or at least win ‘em on the Wheel of Pizza that pops up after every level.

You’re free to earn your cash and play the game pretty much any way you want, skipping any levels that aren’t to your taste. You only need to earn 165 stars out of a possible 300 to open up all the levels across 10 chapters. It’s your usual three star, three goals system, but you can’t earn them individually. So if a level’s goals call for you to beat a timer, collect a certain number of coins and not get hit, you’ve gotta do that all in one go. But if you don’t want to grind, settle for two—it’ll still get you comfortably to the end.

In other words, don’t let boredom get to you. It’s possible to grind the fun right out of this game, but if you stick to playing modes you enjoy and challenge yourself with three stars when you want to, there’s no reason this skeleton-crushing simulator should lose its charm. For a little extra spice, try finding (and wearing) the ten secret ingredients. They’re hidden in ten unnamed levels, but you might be able to join forces in our forums to hunt them down.

If you’re on iOS 5, and you can live with music that can’t be disabled (it’s good music, at least), give this one your time. Riverman Media has infused Pizza Vs. Skeletons with a ton of humor, and it goes well with a side of creepy-cool art. Whether you’re sumo-fighting for supremacy or squashing skeletal spikies, it’s going to look good and feel great. It sounds like the developer has lots of plans for the future, so we’ll be looking forward to plenty more things to crush and new ways to crush them.

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George Washington’s birthday is coming up soon, and in our neck of the woods, this means one thing: sales. Check the list of notables below if you’re into saving some dough.

Ever wonder what’s up with these holiday sales? There are a couple of good reasons. The biggest of which is that Apple generally doesn’t bother with coordinated “sale” events like Valve does with its platform, Steam. So, App Store publishers target holidays to do their thing instead since they’re notable days on the calendar anyway.

And now for that list:

• Dead Space – $6.99 – $.99
• Reckless Racing HD – $4.99 – $.99
• FIFA Soccer 12 for iPad – $9.99 – $.99
• End Night HD – $2.99 – $.99
• Plunderland – $1.99 – Free
• ASH II: Shadows (Gold Edition) – $4.99 – $2.99
• Grand Prix Story – $3.99 – $.99

This is just a Cliff Notes version of what’s out there and on sale, by the way. The usual suspects like Telltale and Gameloft, for example, are slashing prices across the board. Check out their respective publisher pages linked above.

[killer image via lustidrike on deviantart]

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Tim Tebow is a starting NFL quarterback who throws just about as well with his hands as he does with his feet. But he wins games, and he wins them in some of the most dramatic ways you’ll ever see on a football field. His fourth quarter heroics resonate with people. USA Today correctly called him a “one-man cultural blitz” this season.

He also does this thing called “Tebowing,” which probably has a larger hand his cultural blitz-dom than his game-winning drives. Basically, whenever Tebow accomplishes something awesome like, cap off a game-winning touchdown drive or successfully put Gatorade in his mouth, he gets on one knee and bows his head. It’s turning into the new planking, basically.

Since Tebow is so hot and so different at the same time, we suppose it’s only natural that he’s now been further immortalized in an iPhone and iPod Touch game. Developers Ethan Dunlap and Kenneth Kunkel recently debuted Tebit Time [$.99], a game that seeks to capture the essence of Tebow with four in-game mechanics or less.

Yep.

It’s an endless runner that stars a Tebow look-a-like and prominently features a looping 8-bit rendition of the FOX Football theme. With a touch on the screen you can hurdle over an object or opposing player, stiff-arm, or even take a moment to Tebow on the field. Doing this at specific times adds a modifier to your overall score. There is no throwing mechanic, which is probably a good thing.

This is an exceedingly simple game played entirely on a cutesy lo-fi field with a seemingly infinite amount of opposing players and NFL junk to jump over. Scoring revolves around yardage; the more you get, the better. Our best score is 128.

In a lot of ways, this seems like more of a gag than a game. But in a conversation with us, Dunlap seemed genuine about his admiration for Tebow when we asked, simply, why Tebit Time is a game on the App Store.

“I have been in athletics for a great portion of my childhood, football in specific,” Dunlap told TouchArcade. “Despite being on a rather good team, we never managed to win a championship. We made it every year, but always suffered a heartbreaking loss. Even now in my college years a close group of childhood friends and I play in a flag football league and struggle to achieve success, our record is currently 0-8.”

“At first I didn’t buy into the whole Tim Tebow buzz, but after watching a few of his comebacks he started to appeal to me. I saw a player struggling to be successful, but his desire kept him going. After watching him beat Pittsburg on the first play in over time, I knew that I wanted to do something to pay tribute to him.”

“And that is pretty much where the idea came from. I was already working on a runner and just needed to switch a few things and get the graphics in place. Besides, who wouldn’t want to “Tebow” in a video game?”

Who wouldn’t? Whether this was its purpose or not, Tebit Time is worth your time for the laughs alone. On the other hand, it’s also not so great in the most important places; the hit boxes on players and on-field obstacles need some work, and the menus freeze randomly. Buy knowing this.

Also, we can’t shake the feeling that this project is probably destined to earn Dunlap and Kunkel a cease and desist notice. Here’s to Tebit Time flying under the radar in a very un-Tebow-like fashion.

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It’s 2012, and I’ve had a few years to conjure a snappy explanation of what Eufloria is and how it rolls. I haven’t. So, before I even get into how much I dig it on iPad, I’ll let my main man Rudolf Kremers — one of the handful of dudes behind the original release — do the talking. In our latest “bonus” podcast, he cheekily broke it down like this:

“Eufloria is a game of space, conquest, and exploration based on themes of plant life and flowers rather than space marines and spaceships.”

That’s the thing about Eufloria: it’s an RTS that goes against the grain. It doesn’t have any big dudes in big armor smashing space orcs in the face with apartment-sized space maces. It also doesn’t subscribe to any particular feel or taste, or really, any action-y RTS conventions. It’s a minimalist strategy game that has some cool, laid-back creative touches, and it’s all wrapped up in a sensitive production overhead that conveys the game’s core design ideals and gentle pacing well.

This much has been proven in past iterations. And for the most part, what you’ve seen is what you’ll be getting Day Zero on iPad. Eufloria on iPad still looks gorgeous, it still runs as smooth as ever, and all the little technical touches on the movement, placement and execution phases of the game have made it over. But, on the other hand, I’m not seeing a major adjustment on anything anyone has complained about before — the balance appears to be still a little touch and go, and in some of the levels I’ve been playing, the pacing is brutally, brutally slow.

What the iPad port does bring, though, are new ways to interact more intimately with the experience. Pinch and zoom can be used liberally to explore every little nook and cranny of each level. Satisfying drag, hold, and swipe gestures take care of the rest. It’s all good stuff.

I asked Kremers after the show to explain what he was shooting for with this version’s controls. He said that the main idea was to strip “all barriers between playing the game and the device you play it on.” Mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned. This is appears to be as much of a lean-back experience as ever before, and delightfully so.

Here’s a breakdown for those of you just seeing Eufloria for the first time. This is a game about asteroids, trees, and tiny, winged seedlings. In almost every scenario, the goal is to take these seedlings to an asteroid, build a tree or two, and then usher even more seedlings on to other asteroids. The tech tree is simple: trees build seedlings and asteroids have one of three different effects on seedlings, either making them strong or fast or energetic. As trees age, they become more potent and harder to kill. Eventually you’ll see some variations on unit types as well as a defensive tree that’ll keep enemy seedlings off of your rock.

The strategy factors into the picture in a variety of ways. You can’t hit up an asteroid unless you have an asteroid connected to it. Also, most asteroids are inhabited, so you’ll need to kill the enemy seedlings and then destroy their trees, which are jacked into that asteroid’s core. Cracking the core boils and tearing down an impromptu space settlement boils down to a numbers game: basically, whoever has the larger wad of dudes wins. Much later in the game, you’ll be given very specific tasks, like say, defending or finding a path through a system.

On our show, Kremers explained where these ideas came from. Eufloria proper is based on a proof-of-concept called “Dyson,” which is named after a british physicist who theorized that you could explore space by growing mechanical trees on asteroids. It’s neat to see this crazy idea living on in a game.

The beauty of Eufloria is in its simplicity; it’s artfully stripped of graphical clutter and is fairly bare-boned on the UI and sound front. It’s also strikingly easy to play for a strategy game since most of the action happens on a macro-level: clicks, drags, and drops compose all you’ll need for galactic takeovers. This type of game feels great on iPad, and it seems like Team Eufloria and Tunatech pulled it off.

My time with the preview build, for reasons of avoiding anything other than modest scrutiny at this phase in its pre-release form, has been artificially shortened, so I don’t have a verdict for you. You’ll get that later at some point this month when the game sees a release across iOS at an unannounced price. We’re expecting more details to roll in shortly. Fingers crossed.

All the screens in this write-up are from the PSN version of the game. I can’t tell a difference between the two in picture-form.

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