In The Lighthouse HD, you take the role of an all-seeing lighthouse operator helping ships get across hazardous waters. Tap anywhere on the screen to shine a light on that area. If you shine the light near a ship, it’ll alter direction towards the direction of the light (and will then continue straight on its new path). The game plays somewhat similarly to line drawing games like Harbor Master [$1.99 / HD / Free], with the difference being that you can’t directly alter the course of your ships and instead must use the light to indirectly manage your shipping lanes (rather than drawing routes).

The goal of each mission is to accomplish various objectives (which include goals like getting ships from one point to another and leading fishing boats to giant schools) before losing all your ships. In addition, you’ll encounter barriers such as rolling fog, ship-seeking sharks, and giant krakens looking to trap your ship. As expected, a lot of multitasking, coordination, and precision are required to pass missions and hit the highest scores. Overall gameplay is executed well enough, although I would have liked an option to speed up the map when I’m working with slower boats (considering the game is on a timer, I could see why this wasn’t on the top of the list).

The areas that The Lighthouse HD does a really great job with are its visuals and presentation. The game succeeds in conveying a moody, dark atmosphere at the onset of each mission. Weather effects such as rain, lightning and fog add even more to the general feel of the game, although there were a few times when the various effects made it hard to see some of the baddies swimming underneath the water (call it part of the cruelty of the sea, I suppose). As you get towards the end of each mission, the sun begins to rise, the music starts swelling and the whole map gives off a sense of seeing a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I rarely see a game succeed at achieving a play on emotion, but The Lighthouse HD does a good job of getting there.

Unfortunately, there are several areas in The Lighthouse HD that feel rough around the edges. Specifically, the game is filled with a lot of frustrating gameplay nuances that just seem out of place. For example, there are no on-screen notifications when ships are about to come into play on the map. Considering that several levels charge you with taking ships from one end of the map to the other, with both entrances also posing as exists, it can be very frustrating when you get close to an exit and a ship appears out of nowhere and collides with your existing ship, making you lose both in the process.

Another example deals with actual gameplay mechanics. One of the items available to you to make guiding ships easier is buoys, which force nearby ships to divert course automatically. The problem is I could never get the buoys to work correctly – I’d place one in a certain location thinking ships would divert one way and they end up going another way. Considering there doesn’t appear to be a way to remove them once they’re placed. This ends up being a waste of resources and can make or break a level.

Another concern is in regards to content. The Lighthouse HD offers 30 total missions, making the game good on content for at least three or four hours (depending on whether you like collecting objective medals). However, I imagine that most gamers will clamor that the game could use more missions, particularly at its current price point. The developer has stated in the forums that additional levels are coming, and I hope they arrive sooner rather than later.

Despite these shortcomings, The Lighthouse HD should appeal to fans of vehicle management games and line-drawers. Its nuanced changes to the standard gameplay and overall visual presentation do a decent job of differentiating itself. Assuming you can get past the relative lack of content and occasional strange gameplay missteps, I’d recommend The Lighthouse HD .

Flight Control is about as classic as games get for iOS. It not only has won a pile full of awards since it was released, it's single handedly responsible for popularizing the whole "line drawing" and "chaos management" family of games. Everyone needs to download it while it's free, which from the looks of it, is today only.

It’s a story as old as time itself: Two penguin buddies have to take to their Jeep (err, low-emission 4x4 of indeterminate branding, I should say) to save their sheep friends from being kidnapped and eaten by wolves. As these penguins race along the winding road, they must collect sheep, stars (ostensibly because penguins like shiny objects?), keys (to unchain locked-up sheep, of course!), and avoid stationary wolves, roaming wolves, chasing wolves – basically wolves of all kinds, all right?! You can run into fences (good) and trees (bad!), and the less road you cover to complete the level, the better.

Your finger acts as a simultaneous road-creating device and penguin-steerer. You drag your finger across the screen to create the path your penguins take. Ideally, you devise the shortest route possible to collect your stars and sheep friends, as this results in the highest score.

At first, it’s not particularly challenging because there’s no element of speed involved. However, as the game progresses, wolves start out on the road behind you, following your every movement, and if you dawdle too long you’ll be busted for sure. Additionally, things like oil slicks and trees get in your path which, if hit, cause you to swerve (at best) or force you to restart the level (at worst). Here’s hoping everyone was wearing their seatbelts!

The levels go by lightning-fast, so it’s perfect if you have a short attention span or a short period of time in which to play. The graphics are also pretty cute. However, as it’s a line-drawing game, the most important part is the drawing element. The worst part of so many drawing games is an imprecise, over-sensitive or otherwise less-than-ideal drawing mechanic.

Luckily, that’s not the case with Crazy Escape. The drawing was perfectly in-sync with my finger; at times, perhaps a little too in-sync, as I have shaky hands (particularly when being chased by hungry wolves). My only real complaint is that on an iPhone or iPod touch screen, it’s hard to see what you’re doing. My chubby fingers kept blocking my view, which made it difficult to navigate around the increasingly challenging obstacles the game threw at me as I progressed.

Still, despite my fat fingers, I found this game to be extremely fun. For only a buck, there’s really no excuse to not download this one. You get a seemingly-endless number of levels and a fun diversion, and it’s Universal to boot. Besides, you don’t want to find yourself ill-prepared for the fall penguin craze, do you?

Rescue City places you in charge of the police, firefighter, and ambulance services for a section of a city. As various incidents pop up, you must dispatch the appropriate emergency services by drawing a route to the location. Each incident has a countdown timer attached to it, and the game ends if you do not respond to the incident in time. In addition, the game also ends if any of your vehicles collide with each other while on the road.  Obviously, the crux of the gameplay becomes effective route management as you will be trying to respond to each incident as fast as possible while preventing any vehicle crashes.

As mentioned above, veterans of Flight Control will feel right at home with the gameplay and control scheme of Rescue City. However, Rescue City has some important gameplay tweaks that lead to a somewhat different experience. For example, the cityscape environment of Rescue City means that your line-drawing escapades will be restricted to the available streets, rather than the unlimited possibilities of sky navigation.

In addition, each service has different dispatch methods and vehicle stats, which add further depth to the game. For example, the ambulance incident begins at the location of need, and your job is to always guide the ambulance back to the hospital. The fire truck, meanwhile, always begins at the station and must be guided to the fire (and is much slower than the other vehicles). The police dispatch is the most interesting element: initial dispatch begins at the police station, but the car can resolve multiple police incidents without needing to return to the station. However, the police car gets its own timer, which must be reset periodically by returning to the station (and yes, the game will end if you don’t get your car back in time). The different vehicles are definitely what set Rescue City apart from other line-drawing games, and I think it’s a well-done addition to a genre that’s characterized as being full of stagnant clones.

Rescue City falters somewhat with its environment variety as well as its tough difficulty curve. Rescue City does do a good job introducing all the core elements in the first few levels, but it seems as if the difficulty gets turned up significantly once the tutorial period is over. Personally, I don’t have a problem with the difficulty (in fact, I thought it was a refreshing change of pace), but I imagine that some casual gamers may become quickly frustrated with progression. If you are one of those folks, the easiest way to succeed in Rescue City is to play the mission several times, memorize the locations of the initial emergencies (each level is fixed in that regard), and use the extra time to formulate additional strategies.

One other issue with Rescue City lies in its lack of variety in city settings. The overall game is divided into three cities with different graphic styles. However, within each city, maps get reused several times, which can make the game a bit drab and repetitive. More unique maps within each city would have gone a long way towards fixing this issue.  Also, while Rescue City scores each mission upon completion, it would have been nice if the game provided some sort of ranking system and leaderboard, as this would aid in potential replayability. Currently, once you finish all the missions, you really have no reason to return.

At its heart, even with the nice additions to the gameplay, Rescue City is still a pretty simplistic game (as are most line-drawing titles). As such, gamers looking for a particularly complicated or deep experience probably won’t find that here. However, casual gamers looking for a well-done take on the strategic line-drawing game should definitely check out Rescue City – especially since the first fifteen missions are free (the rest of the game can be unlocked as an IAP for $0.99).

Art Penguin [.99] takes the concept of drawing objects on the screen that then materialize in the game, and merges it with the tried-and-true auto-runner gameplay that iOS gamers are only too familiar with. A surprisingly smooth experience, the game offers the tension of twitch gesture input and a surprising amount of depth. As is wont to happen in game design, the title’s strengths also are the source of its greatest shortcomings. That being said, there are more than enough reasons to give this game a spin.

In Art Penguin, the goal is to complete levels by drawing objects that help the aforementioned penguin (who sports an adorable pompadour) to circumvent or destroy obstacles. While you can influence the rate of speed by tilting in one direction or another, the penguin is continually moving forward. As such, the two challenges of the game are to first select the right items to draw and then to execute the gestures before the poor little guy waddles headlong into the Grim Reaper’s arms.

The drawing controls are responsive and precise, which is important when looking at the variety of gesture the game features. You can draw 16 different objects, from items as simple as planks and ramps to more complex gestures that summon springboards, plants, and rainstorms. Each object is useful for navigating specific environmental hazards or for removing gang-banger enemy penguins and other baddies from the screen. Having such a variety of tools at your disposal makes the game challenging and fresh throughout.

The problem here comes in the form of the auto-running mechanic. Even when tilting to slow the penguin to its minimum speed, the game provides very little time to see obstacles, assess the proper object, and then input the gesture in time. While this is not a major issue in the first few levels, as the difficulty ramps you’ll be rapidly pushed into trial and error territory where you must know what is coming in order to survive rather than simply reacting to what the game is showing you.

This is truly a shame, because the exploration, experimentation and twitchy fun of the early game devolves over time into having to memorize entire levels in order to succeed. Games like Max and the Magic Marker circumvent this issue by pausing the gameplay while you draw, but Art Penguin can’t afford that luxury without sacrificing the auto-running mechanic that provides the game its sole challenge.

The art and production values here are surprisingly sharp; this is one pretty prinny. The characters and environments are colorful and expressive, and the music will consistently push your happy sunshine buttons. The user interface is intuitive and minimal, leaving the needed real estate open on the screen for gesture input. A handy guidebook icon is always on the screen for when you need to pull up a list of available gestures.

Art Penguin weighs in as a strong effort in a genre that is often poorly executed. It’s certainly worth the $.99 download, and if the memorization factor doesn’t rub you the wrong way (it wasn't an issue for some in the forums) you can drop an additional $.99 on IAP to unlock all the levels from the get-go. I certainly had my issues with the game, but the technical execution, precise controls, cohesive and fun production elements, depth, and variety of gestures make this one impossible for me not to recommend.

Pigs in Trees will easily draw comparisons to Flight Control [99c] or Harbor Master [$1.99], since you use your finger to draw the flight path for a vehicle, from a top-down 2D perspective. In this game, the piggy fighter-pilot is trying to eliminate the noisy incoming woodpeckers, before they reach the pigs tree-nest. One of the thread users described the line drawing controls as "smooth as silk" and that sums up my impression too. It's a pleasure to draw swooping lines and have the plane follow the path, while shooting at the tree-craving woodpeckers. The controls are spot on.

The combo system is clever, because once you lock onto a bird, by terminating your flight path on it, any secondary kills along the way earn combo points. Your combo is highest if you kill the strongest enemy last, which encourages you to choose both your target and approach carefully. Also, although the targeted bird remains targeted even though it's moving, the surrounding birds can move away from your line, so you need to swipe in front of the surrounding birds, as you head towards the target, for maximum accuracy and points. Or, just play casually.

The power-ups are cool as well. When a power-up icon appears, you tap it so it moves into your power-up slots at the bottom of the screen. You can then activate the power-up, when you choose, by tapping that slot, or save it till the end of the level, to refund for extra points. The power-ups include plane repairs, speed bursts and dynamite, but I won't give away the rest of them, as they're fun to reveal, although some are shown in the gameplay trailer:

The woodpeckers have a few tricks too. They come in different varieties, each with different sizes and strengths. Some can only be attacked from the front or back, while others must be approached from the side. There's little birds that drop bombs and others with a shield stuck on their beak! Pigs in Trees does an outstanding job of explaining the various enemies and power-up's by displaying a tutorial message when they first appear, at which point you can scroll back through all the earlier hints, if you need a reminder.

There's currently three campaigns (Summer, Fall and the snow-covered Winter campaign) with the Spring levels "coming soon."  That's a total of 45 levels. The campaigns are locked initially and become available once you earn enough medals, based on your scores in each level. Game center provides rankings and 26 achievements.

So let's see: The controls are excellent, the graphics are cute, the sounds great, the game-play is constantly engaging and interesting and it's  super enjoyable to play. The only negatives are that it's not universal and, like many games, the iPad version is more expensive, which is a common practice so there's no point dwelling on that.

Pigs in Trees only has one mode, based on a simple concept, but this drawing arcade game is so well delivered, that it deserves to be successful. We're already looking forward to the Spring levels.

If so, you won't go wrong with Chillingo and Infinite Degree's Pollen Count [$0.99 / HD]. It's a game that didn't sell me with screenshots or trailers -- the art is a bit clumsy -- but it comes through where it counts.

By drawing a line on screen from bee A to point B, you direct your bees to collect pollen from flowers and deliver it to the hive. They need to reach both targets without running into anything en route. Though the obvious comparison is Flight Control, this is more in line with Harbour Master [$1.99] - you're moving cargo from place to place with a limited amount of space to deal with. In this case, there are only a few flowers to go around, and often bees are forced to wait in the wings. Managing the scarcity of the flowers adds a layer of strategy to a familiar formula.

Pollen Count distinguishes itself in progression. Rather than throwing down a set of maps for players to challenge themselves on, Infinite Degree has put together a series of unlockable levels that give the game a more traditional difficulty curve. To unlock them, you need to earn at least one star in the previous level. This usually isn't easy, and even the most experienced Flight Control fans will find earning a full three stars a challenge on most levels. Unlocking stages also gives less experienced players something to work toward, if the top of the leaderboard looks completely out of reach.

So how do you keep 24 levels fresh when you're dealing with a single-screen drawing game? Pollen Count handles that challenge by bringing in obstacles, powerups and other clever elements. Spiders, birds and zombees are all out to get your bees. While you're busy guiding them to avoiding those enemies and deliver pollen, you'll find environmental obstacles to deal with. And some bees are just plain picky about the flowers they'll harvest. It all contributes to keeping the game from getting stale.

If you want more, Pollen Count includes Crystal and Game Center achievements to earn and leaderboards to challenge. The iPad version also includes local multiplayer, both co-op and versus, with configurable levels. If you're really dedicated, you can unlock two special modes -- a zom-bee survival mode and an odd 3D racing mode called 999mph -- but neither offers leaderboards.

I wouldn't write Pollen Count off as nothing more than a clone. It makes great use of an established mechanic, and I'd have a hard time holding that against it. Running with an existing idea is an App Store tradition by now -- the important thing is that it's been done well and it's been done respectfully. Pollen Count is a little rough around the edges, but it has the vital element covered: fun, and lots of it. Check it out, and give our discussion thread a buzz.

Enter DrawRace 2: Racing Evolved, the sequel to DrawRace that just looks awesome. How awesome? Well, if I had to pick one thing to criticize about the original DrawRace it's that the game was a little basic. The sequel has a new career modes, leagues, leaderboards, 180 challenges, 16 cars, and 30 tracks.

For more information on DrawRace 2 check out the official site which also has tons more screenshots, or swing by the thread in our forums. I can't wait.

In addition, the controversial rewind feature from Harbor Master HD [Free] has made it over to the iPhone version of the game. Unlike the iPad game, these rewinds aren't IAP, and are simply earned by playing the game.

If you haven't had Harbor Master on your device in a while, this is the perfect opportunity to give the game a spin as shooting for the achievements gives a fantastically tangible goal to a previously endless game. Similarly, if you haven't yet given Harbor Master a try, it's really worth at least checking out a free version of the game especially if you haven't dabbled in the chaos management genre in a while.

For those somehow unfamiliar, Flight Control turns you into an air traffic controller, routing helicopters and airplanes of various sizes and speeds into the proper (color coded) airports -- hopefully without incident. It's game that should handily dispel any aspirations you have to become a real-life air traffic controller.

Flight Control has been extremely well maintained since its release and now features leaderboards, achievements and online multiplayer via Game Center, local WiFi / Bluetooth multiplayer and, specific to the iPad version, shared (same device) multiplayer, both cooperative and competitive.

Flight Control brings a great balance of easy pick-up gameplay, ramping difficulty and that "just one more time" draw. If your iPad lacks Flight Control HD, now's the time to take care of that.

App Store Link: Flight Control HD, $0.99 (iPad Only)

One of my real iPhone favorites -- a game that I actually play for fun (a rare thing, given the number of titles we move through to find the gems among the chaff out there) -- is Imangi's Harbor Master [link], which The Independent recently dubbed the third best app in the App Store. And the iPad version, Harbor Master HD [link] is the best Harbor Master experience to be had, thanks to the device's large display. Happily, Imangi's v2.0 Harbor Master update, which went live just a few hours ago, brings some of that big-screen detail to the iPhone 4's Retina display.

Imangi lists the enhancements in this update:

• Completely remastered high resolution graphics for the iPhone 4.
• New level! We adapted Cargo City, our most popular map from the iPad version, for the iPhone screen. It has 3 cargo types, so it takes "multitasking" to a whole new level.
• iOS4 multitasking support.
• Fixed twitter support so you can tweet your scores again.
• Rotation support, so you can hold your device however you want!
• A ton of bug fixes.

Imangi's current graphics guy, Kiril Tchangov, reworked all of the game's original art from scratch, putting his own, more "painterly" spin on the design, the studio tells us.

I think most people will be most excited about the new level, Cargo City. Cargo City is our most popular map from the iPad version, so we really wanted to bring a version of it over to the iPhone. It works really great on iPhone. With 3 cargo types, you have to turn on another part of your brain to control all those boats. You'll really like it. Here is the iPad version right next to the iPhone version, so you can see how we had to change it around to adapt it to the smaller screen.

Touching a cat and drawing a line controls the path they take across the street, and arrows indicate which lanes oncoming cars will be driving down next. If you run in to problems, such as an unexpected car or a cat not going quite as fast as you were expecting it to, you can tap a cat to stop it, then draw a new line either back to the side of the street it came from, or on to the other side. Four different types of cats are included in the game, with each having slightly different characteristics such as speed and temperament. Learning the properties of each of the cats is important as you obviously need to allow for more time for the slower cats to get around cars, and you need to prioritize getting the aggressive cats across the street to avoid cat fights (which you need to tap to stop).

Cat Run includes some awesome obstacles you need to deal with as well. Obviously you don't want your cats to get run over, but if a skunk appears, you get rid of it by drawing a path out in to traffic for it to get squished by a car. These skunks can also explode, which cause nearby cats to go crazy from the stench. That's not all though, like any normal street there are sewers with manhole covers, which apparently are home to giant monsters who extend tentacles to grab your cats whenever the manhole opens up and one is nearby.

You can route your cats in four different environments, ranging from a normal street to space, and there are achievements linked to each. Cat Run also comes packed with OpenFeint for all kinds of OpenFeinty goodness such as online leaderboards, achievement tracking, and everything else. Scores are tracked both locally and globally for each environment, and like most games, the online leaderboards are already filled with scores that far exceed my capabilities.

Cat Run is a silly game that is a lot of fun to play. Perhaps my affinity to cats has something to do with it, but having cats flying all over your screen avoiding cars, while managing skunks, putting out cat fights, and avoiding mysterious tentacles is something I never saw myself doing in an iPhone game... Yet somehow, I'm incredibly glad that I finally am.

If this is the first time you've read about Sketch Nation Shooter, you're in for a treat as it's a fantastic idea for an iPhone game. Basically, Sketch Nation provides the building blocks to create simple shooters and avoidance games. You literally draw your ship and the various enemies that will appear in game, photograph them, then as if through some kind of magic the game is able to analyze these photos and import your individual drawings in to the game world. Even if you're terrible at drawing, this entire process is a ton of fun.

If you're not interested in creating your own game (or have an iPod touch and are obviously incapable of photographing your drawings) there is an absolutely massive database of games that other people have created, freely available. Because the designers of these Sketch Nation creations are limited by the tools offered by the sandbox of the game itself, a lot of them feel very similar, but the creativity that has gone in to many of them (particularly the higher rated ones) is often astounding.

For more information on Sketch Nation Shooter, check out our review. You can get a ridiculous amount of play time out of this game if you get sucked in to the creations of others as well as your own and this recent update added a few DLC art modules so you don't even need to be able to draw at all if you'd rather just use the pre-packaged art for your games. With Facebook dependence a thing of the past, and an enhanced interface for browsing user-created games, Sketch Nation Shooter is now even easier to recommend.

We likely won't get our iPhone 4's until we pick them up on Thursday (I'm going to be at the flagship store at 5th Ave in New York City... yeesh.) so if you're one of the lucky ones who managed to get an iPhone 4 we're looking for impressions on gaming on the device. Please shoot us an email at tips@toucharcade.com if you'd like to be an official TouchArcade test bunny.

Harbor Master HD is a free line drawing chaos management game similar to Flight Control, except you're managing boats and you need to not only dock them to unload cargo, but also guide them back off screen. Harbor Master HD launched for free with a single map, Treasure Island.

Pirate Passage is a map with three ports to drop cargo off at, and three cannons to fire in order to shoot the attacking pirates out of the water. Pirates spawn seemingly at random who then come to steal your cargo off ships and eventually sink them. Touching a gun and dragging it in the direction you want to shoot fires the cannon to defend your cargo.

Harbor Master HD is free to play with the Treasure Island map, and really is something you shouldn't miss if you own an iPad. Also, if you're annoyed by in-game advertisements, you're in luck as buying the DLC map completely disables them.