Well, we kinda know what “VidRhythm” is now. Chatting with Gamasutra about the mysterious trademark spotted by Internet sleuths earlier this July, Rock Band creator Harmonix confirmed that VidRhythm is a real project and it’s coming to iOS soon-ish. It also divulged that it’s more app than game, but stopped short of delivering mechanical or system-level details. Neat.

"It will actually be our first iOS release as a studio, coming out relatively soon," Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos said in the interview. "I can't say anything yet about what it is, but in parallel with all these huge console game productions we have underway, we're commencing our first iOS development project." (more...)

Old-school RPG enthusiasts have something to look forward to coming soon on their iOS devices. Indie studio Geppetto Games is currently in production on Descend, a grid-based first-person role-playing game that is influenced by classics like the Dungeon Masters and Eye of the Beholder series.

If the mention of those two classics has stirred up some excitement in your belly, keep in mind that Descend is merely influenced by them, and will look to do some things differently than those titles. The combat will be fully turn-based, similar to Doom II RPG [$2.99], and feature a party system. Also, instead of the typical flat textures and faux 3D scaling techniques used back in the day to make games appear three dimensional, the world of Descend will actually be rendered entirely in 3D.

I’m excited to see how Descend ends up turning out, and what kind of impact modern visuals will have on the old-school game design. Admittedly, I wasn’t ever that into games like this growing up, but I did have a blast with Undercroft [Free] which appears to be the closest analog to Descend that’s currently available in the App Store. The game is slated for release sometime next month if everything goes smoothly, and until then you can drop by the thread in our forums for some discussion on Descend.

My mom's experience with videogames largely consists of watching me play Final Fantasy IX and X and offering such helpful advice as, "Why don't you just cut his head off with that big sword?" and, "Don't you have a gun? You could just shoot him and be done with it." Her own gaming career came to an abrupt halt several years earlier when she learned that jerking the controller left, right, up, and down doesn't actually make Sonic move. There's a level of abstraction necessary to make the correlation between a button-press and on-screen action, a bridge we were never able to cross together.

The impulse to cross that bridge is currently driving the home console market and has been doing the same in the mobile gaming space for years. In a blissful marriage of concept and execution, it's an impulse that Esquilax Games have nailed with Climber Brothers [$0.99/Lite], a delightful little puzzle-platformer in which players are tasked with guiding the titular brother-climbers to safety through a set of increasingly difficult physics- and momentum-driven levels.

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While in the mood for anything but productivity the other morning, I stumbled upon Dino Run SE [$2.99] on the Mac App Store. Dino Run is another lo-fi runner with a seriously bent and brilliant artistic direction. It started out as a web-based game. This version, according to creator PixelJAM, is an ‘expanded’ offering on the flash title, as it boasts new hats, new levels, and a fancy-schmancy new full-screen mode that I think makes the entire Canabalt-meets-Jurassic Park For Babies experience pop.

Since I write about iOS games, the first thing that popped into my head as I raced my little yellow dino through a land of the lost rife with flaming rocks, head-butting triceratops, side passages, and swooping pterodactyls, was if it would ever see the light of day on the iPad or iPhone. After an ill-timed e-mail, I learned that it is. (more...)

It's no secret to anyone that the App Store is crammed with word games -- they're hard to miss. Considering how simplistic the genre is and how it appeals to such a wide variety of different types of gamers, it's no surprise everyone wants to make the word game that people can't seem to stop playing. To do that, you either have to execute the original formula very well, or find a way to give it a twist. With DooWaru [99¢/Lite], it's the latter, and I'm happy to report that the experiment was a great success.

As with most word games, DooWaru makes it simple to jump right in and play. You'll start off with a grid of letters and a field up top which acts simultaneously as the space where the words you type appear and as the button you submit your word with. Your score racks up in the bottom right corner, and your time ticks away in the bottom left. As you successfully spell words, you fill up a progress bar at the top, and once it's full, you've completed a level. It's all standard, actually ... so what's the twist?

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Word Fighter is a cool upcoming -- wait for it -- word fighting game from the wonderful dudes over at Feel Every Yummy. We went hands-on with an alpha build earlier this year at GDC, and now you can see the game in its more finished glory. Feel Every Yummy has just released a new look teaser showing off its next-level Street Fighter-Meets-Scrabble action and also a few of its new-look characters. Depressingly, none of them are TIME-award winning Brad Nicholson, but what can you do, eh?

In case you missed our earlier coverage, basically the game goes like this: you spell a word from jumbled letters on a 5x5 grid over the course of three timed and turn-based rounds. Letters have point values, so the more points, the more possibility that you’ll live through the man-on-man conflict. (more...)

It’s not very often that I manage to play a game that not only offers an enjoyable and compelling gameplay experience, but also manages to make me laugh at the same time. FlyBoy [$0.99 / Lite / HD / HD Lite], a whimsical skydiving simulator, manages to do just that.

Gameplay in FlyBoy is relatively simple: you choose from one of six different stages (and three different difficulties), stabilize your iOS device, and then use the accelerometer to steer your skydiver past a variety of barriers while racing against the clock towards the finish line. Tap on your screen to dive and shave off a few seconds at the cost of control. Should you go splat by hitting something, you are taken back to the last checkpoint, which definitely loses  you valuable seconds.  In addition to avoiding obstacles, a variety of power-ups are littered throughout the path which can do everything from give you a burst of speed to making you temporarily invincible, allowing you to dive right through any barriers. At the end of every level, you are rated based on your completion time.

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When Mighty Fin [$0.99] first hit the App Store back in June, it was a fun but flawed experience. The levels were bleak and a bit samey, the music was repetitive and the endless levels were dull, dull dull (something that was fixed in the game's first big update). Still, we enjoyed what there was of it at the time, so learning that Launching Pad Games is releasing a major update this week that addresses literally every remaining concern we had is, well, pretty awesome.

The game is going Universal, so all you iPad owners can finally get in on the fun. Mighty Fin looks fantastic on the big screen, and its one-touch control works just as well on whichever device you choose. New music has been added for each area, all in keeping with the game's original sound. Oh, and I should probably mention that the game's level count will literally double when the update hits, and the new levels are super cool. Interest piqued?

Where the game's first eight areas were largely dark and gloomy, this new batch is exploding with color. I suspect Shady Sal slipped Fin some high-grade hallucinogens to brighten his vacation up, because the little dude ends up swimming through places with names like Candy County, Ninjaville and Tomorrow Town. Ninjaville looks like something right out of Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa. It's glorious. And no worries about the game being too easy -- these levels are vicious. Regular mode is tough enough, and Survival is downright killer.

Seriously, if you haven't picked Mighty Fin up yet, you should mark this Thursday, August 18 on your calendar. If you have it, pull it out again. If new levels alone aren't enough to reignite your interest, then think of the costumes -- 32 new ways to dress Fin up. Could we ask for anything more?

EA has made another move to better its position in the casual and mobile space. Fresh off a $750 million (or more) acquisition of PopCap, the publisher has acquired Bight Games, the creators of a few notable iOS IPs, the Facebook free-to-play and iOS resource game Trade Nations [Free], and the helping hands behind a gaggle of licensed titles, including NBA JAM [$.99 / HD] port and Legends of Wreslemania [$2.99].

While this acquisition comes as a surprise of sorts, the space EA continues to buy itself into shouldn’t. EA has acquired numerous social and mobile developers over the last year or so, cementing the fact that it wants in on the emerging digital market in a bad way. (more...)

While Nintendo hilariously won’t admit that its struggling Nintendo 3DS is competing against the mobile market in addition to the traditional handheld one, Sony made it clear this afternoon that phones are, indeed, real competition for the PS Vita. How so? By confirming tons of support that is typically reserved for phones. Twitter, Skype, Foursquare, Facebook, and Internet browsing will be available as tack-on apps eventually via PSN. In a more convincing move for us, the publisher confirmed plans to put every single game that comes to the Wi-Fi and 3G-enabled platform up for download.

This news comes on the heels of news that Sony was loaning PS Vita dev kits to indie devs, which for us at least, indicates that its somewhat serious about courting the same kinds of developers that flourish on the App Store. (more...)

Whether or not you realized it, chances are you're already familiar with COPPA, or the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. If you've entered your birthday to access something, or have ever checked a checkbox to verify you're over 13, you've seen COPPA in action. In a nutshell, it's a fairly outdated set of guidelines that need to be abided by online when dealing with children. When it was first drafted in the late 90's, the Internet was a vastly different place, and the existing laws have been more or less shoehorned into dealing with all the new technology and types of Internet-enabled applications that no one even dreamed of in 1998.

Broken Thumbs Apps' parent company W3 Innovations recently found themselves under the legal hammer and (so far) is the first company to be investigated for mobile apps. Their "games" include Zombie Duck Hunt [Free], Emily's Dress Up & Shop [Free], Pocket Home [Free] and more. In the complaint, the FTC alleges that W3 Innovations "collected, maintained, and/or disclosed personal information" via these kid-targetted apps. Specifically, W3 Innovations is said to have kept a list of over 30,000 email addresses as well as personal information gathered from both Emily's games.

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A new trailer for Fish Labs’ graphically gifted new-fangled version of Galaxy On Fire 2 [$9.99] has surfaced on the Inter-webs. As we’ve reported previously, this new sheen is presumably the result of Fish Labs’ Tegra 2 versions of the game, except ratcheted up for the Mac and the all-powerful iPad 2. It looks amazing.

Sadly, Galaxy On Fire 2 Full HD -- that's its real, full name -- is still set to be a stand-alone product. In an old message board post, Fish Labs told our community that this decision allows for a different pricing model and keeps consumers from being confused with the new screenshots and videos. Also, a new game means the studio won’t have to mess with any conflicting version bugs, especially in the game save arena.

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In case you're not aware (and we can't blame you) chain surfing is an "extreme" street-sport which involves balancing on a hanging chain-fence strung between two posts, for as long as possible, whilst possibly performing tricks.

Words can't do this strange activity justice, so check out the clip below, for a little introductory chain surfing demonstration:

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This morning Time Magazine released their yearly feature, "The 50 Best Websites of 2011," where they "honor the scrappy newcomers and established players that make the Web so useful, entertaining and just plain indispensable." I'm not sure if we're technically a scrappy newcomer or an established player, but it's awesome to see TouchArcade getting this kind of recognition.

TIME cites our reviews, the forums, and our recently rebooted twice-weekly podcast The TouchArcade Show as reasons for inclusions. (And speaking of podcasts, this is probably a good time to subscribe if you haven't already.)

Anyway, I suppose this is an excellent time to thank the whole team here at TouchArcade who work their collective butts (fingers?) off wading through the ever-thickening jungle that is the gaming section of the App Store. We've got some awesome people at work here between Jared who stays up all night like an old bearded man in a light house, Brad who takes time out of his busy weightlifting schedule to manage and produce the podcast, as well as our team of freelancers both new and old who tirelessly crank out reviews all week long. So seriously, thanks guys, and thanks to everyone who makes the forums an awesome place to hang out.

[via TIME]

In this week’s bonus edition of The TouchArcade Show, I do my best not to embarrass Eli in front of Unity CEO David Helgason. Helgason walks us through the formation of Unity, how it operates currently as a powerhouse engine company, and gives us a glimpse into the future of the engine across every platform, not just iOS. If you’re into the nuts and bolts, or just want to know a little bit more about the engine that powers just about every game you play, this is definitely the show for you.

As usual, you can listen by streaming or downloading the podcast just below. If you’re into subscriptions, we encourage you to grab us on iTunes and the Zune Marketplace. Feel free to shoot us a glowing review or three while you’re at it, too.

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