Surprise! Infinity Blade has made a lot of money. The other afternoon, Epic Games announced that, overall, the franchise has earned $30 million since the debut of the original Infinity Blade [$5.99] in December 2010. An astounding $5 million of that comes from the earnings of Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99], which released November 30th, 2011. A month or so ago.

Here's some boilerplate for your eyeholes:

“The success of the Infinity Blade franchise is testament to our talented team who is devoted to making games we want to play, all while using Unreal Engine technology to redefine what is expected from games on iOS devices,” Epic Games President Dr. Michael Capps says in a statement. “We have so much more in store for players, and will continue to make great content for Apple’s evolving platforms.”

The thing to take away from this isn't exactly "wow, that's a lot of money." Nah, it's that big-budget, AAA-quality releases on the App Store can make money. Not everything needs to be $.99 and require a razor-thin development budget to see ridiculous returns. Also, there's a significant audience out there who wants to play great, deep games with superb visuals -- and for us, that's the most heartening news.

Zeboyd Games radical 16-bit parody RPG, Chtulhu Saves the World, is coming to mobile devices this year. And sooner than you'd think. On Twitter, lead designer Robert Boyd says the studio held this announcement until work was almost finished, and he expects the game to hit at some point this quarter. Nice guy!

Meaningful details, like, how this version will control, if it'll include any extras, or its price point aren't being discussed at this time. A note on the game's blog does say that more information is coming in the next few weeks, but since we're so nosey we've reached out to Zeboyd for more anyway.

If you've played Breath of Fire or an old-school Final Fantasy, you'll be able to get your head around Cthulhu's systems and mechanics pretty quickly. The awareness of what genre its in, the sharp improvements it makes, and the humor is what makes it pretty great. Here's hoping the mobile ports rock just as hard.

If you've been listening to our show, you already know that Rocketcat Games has plans to release a free-to-play RPG based in its Mage Gauntlet [$2.99] universe. Earlier this morning, Rocketcat dropped another first-look at a class for that game on its Facebook page. It even threw out some information on what it's shooting for with the title.

"The Spellsword is essentially the same as Lexi from Mage Gauntlet. Anti-magic dash move, finds randomized single-use spells, while also being very strong in melee. However, he has low health compared to almost every other character."

"Despite the similarity to Mage Gauntlet mechanics, we'll be taking a lot of time to improve things with the Spellsword. The heart system will be replaced with a health bar system, allowing for things like armor that actually reduces damage.

We're also looking into altering the equipment a bit. Some ideas include making some of the swords change what your charge-attack does, the spell-critical robes being replaced with new effects, and the spell trinkets adding secondary effects to the specific spell."

In brief, Rocketcat's Next Game will be a randomly generated dungeon crawler that jives with the spirit of Mage Gauntlet. Players will have different classes to choose from, and other classes to unlock via an in-game gem currency system. Since it's free-to-play and all, those gems will be also be available as optional IAP downloads.

Rocketcat seems pretty serious about sharing stuff for this title on its Facebook, so go give that a follow if you're into what it's doing next.

Two favorite franchises of the TouchArcade forums, Dungeon Hunter and Zenonia both had sequels drop during the Christmas flurry of releases. Both the good news and the bad news is that these games are totally free to play. Depending on which side of the free to play fence you're sitting on, this is either great news or horrible news. I'm not sure there's any wiggle room in between, if arguments on our forums and in iTunes reviews are any indication. In my opinion, regardless of how you feel about the whole free to play thing, both Dungeon Hunter and Zenonia come from a pedigree of games that are worth giving the benefit of the doubt to. They're free to try, and who knows, you might not find their respective free to play mechanics that offensive… So I say, no harm in giving them a spin.

Dungeon Hunter hit in mid-2009 when we were still totally willing to overlook Gameloft being, well, Gameloft with their highly "inspired" games and were just beyond happy to get a great 3D dungeon crawler on the App Store. Dungeon Hunter 2 hit over a year later and improved upon the original in every way imaginable, most notably, adding online co-operative play.

Dungeon Hunter 3 [Free] departs from the traditional Dungeon Hunter formula in that it abandons all semblance of a story in exchange for a hoard mode which has become a surprisingly popular secondary game mode for all sorts of console games. Choose a class, kill everything as fast as you can, repeat. Like many "premium" games that make the "freemium" leap, progression feels artificially limited and grindy, unless you feel like opening your wallet. Still, if all you're looking for is to bash some monsters faces in, Dungeon Hunter 3 will do the trick.

Similarly, Zenonia hit the App Store in early 2009, and even though the Korean RPG formula leans heavily on grinding, there wasn't anything else available that came close to the gameplay offered. Iterative improvements were made both over Zenonia 2 and Zenonia 3 with new art, sound, classes, monsters, and more added with each jump in the series.

The recently released Zenonia 4 [Free] follows this trend, with a free to play mechanic sandwiched in. The controls feel just as clunky as every other Zenonia game, but just like previous installments, don't take long to get used to. Zenonia 4 is the best looking Zenonia title as well, as it comes packed with full Retina Display graphics. Progression doesn't feel any slower than other titles (which were never very fast) and the free to play mechanic hinges on a constant pressure to buy ZEN points which can be used to improve your character in basically every way you can imagine.

I just wish both of these games were available as a single purchase game, tuned to provide a fun gameplay experience from beginning to end instead of goading me to open my wallet or play for eternity. This seems to be the case for most of these "premium" games that make the free to play jump, so it's not like the shift in gameplay should be news to anyone. Regardless, they are free to try, and we still likely won't see any new games until next week...

Final Fantasy Tactics [$11.99] on iPhone and iPod Touch has inspired numerous, uh, passionate e-commentaries since its release earlier this year. One of the components we've seen the most bickering about has been addressed: Tactics' latest update zeroes in on the port's decidedly unspectacular visuals on retina devices and supports the screen.

To be clear, the text is still tiny on iPhone 4S, for example, but it's apparently much less blurry overall. Also, the UI is noticeably sharper, and various assets like facial graphics and icons have been updated to mesh with the retina support. This update also rolls in some nebulous "bug fixes."

Off-topic, here, but we definitely want to note that Tactics is available at the lowest price it has ever been since its August release: as of December 19, it's $11.99 instead of $15.99. Still steep in comparison to other App Store games, but better.

If you already own the game and choose to update, note that you'll lose your auto-save data in the process because, reasons.

Just over a year ago, SRRN Games released Ash [99¢/Lite], a fun role-playing game that attempted to be a modern throwback to RPGs of the 16-bit era. It succeeded remarkably well at it too, offering simple but fun RPG gameplay with an interesting story tying everything together. We liked it a whole bunch in our review, and even our complaints about the difficulty and the controls were rectified in a later update.

Sadly, one thing that didn’t seem likely to get rectified was the generic look of the game. Ash was made using assets from RPG Maker, a build-your-own-RPG program of sorts. This made everything look kind of patchwork-ish and cookie cutter, which contrasted poorly with the high quality of the dialogue and storyline. However, it wasn’t anything so off-putting that you couldn’t enjoy the game, it was just the biggest part of the game that could use improvement.

Now, surprisingly, SRRN has actually gone and redrawn all of the artwork to Ash and released it as a free update. The new sprites, backgrounds, and character art all closely mimic the previous version, so it’s not like you’re dealing with entirely new characters, but they’ve all been redrawn or remade beautifully. The game is much more colorful and brighter, and everything has a more cohesive look like it all belongs together. It’s definitely a very welcome improvement. Aside from the new artwork, they also fixed some bugs and toned down the frequency of random encounters.

If you haven’t checked out Ash already, the lovely new artwork is just one more reason to give it a look. For those that already own and have played through Ash, this update is reason enough to dust off that app and give it another run through. If you’re thinking of picking up Ash, right now wouldn’t be a bad time as it's currently on sale for 99¢ and there's a lite version to try which has also been given the visual improvement.

Rocketcat Games's utterly fantastic action RPG, Mage Gauntlet [$2.99], is now bigger, better, and much more Universal. In a brand new update, Rocketcat has added Universal support and rolled in fancy new flip-screen functionality to one of our most favorite RPGs of the year. On top of this, it's rolled in various tweaks: some spells have been changed around, the rabbit's foot now increases hat drops by five times, revives grant a free spell, save files can now be exported via iTunes, and some levels have received some shortening to make them better.

Surprisingly, that's not all -- bug fixes and a few other notable changes have been introduced. If you're particularly curious about what's up, check out the game's new patch notes here or on iTunes. It's a long list. Also, if you're still somehow on the fence, definitely give our review a read. You don't want to miss this game.

Easily one of my most anticipated games this year, and I'm sure many of yours out there as well, is Warballoon Games' Star Command. In case you aren't familiar, Star Command can most simply be described as Game Dev Story meets a Star Trek-like science fiction theme, though from what we've seen of the game thus far I'm not totally sure that does it justice. Game Dev Story was beautiful in its simplicity, but Star Command appears to take those simplistic game mechanics and add all sorts of depth on top, creating what we hope will be a deep strategy affair that's still not too convoluted for anybody to jump in to.

We first learned of Star Command this past March, and originally the game was slated for a summertime release. However, that didn't quite pan out, and in August we got a look at some new screenshots for the game but we haven't really heard anything since then. Today Warballoon sent over a quick update on the status of Star Command, along with a slew of new screenshots to check out. It sounds like they are really interested in making the best possible game that they can, rather than trying to rush something out just to hit a planned release date. This latest set of screens is to demonstrate a bit of the work they've put into tightening up the overall user interface.

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Hey guys! Here's a surprise, Chrono Trigger [$9.99] just came out of nowhere. Well, not entirely out of nowhere, since Square Enix had mentioned that it was coming this month… But after the rampant delays that Final Fantasy Tactics saw, my hopes that they'd hit this release window could be best described as "cautiously optimistic."

My first impressions are fairly positive so far with this port, mostly because Square has re-rendered all of the text and game UI to actually be legible, unlike Final Fantasy Tactics! We'll offer a more thorough review in the not too distant future, but in the meantime you can swing by the thread to check out forum user impressions as well.

I have a confession to make: I never played The Bard’s Tale [$6.99] when it hit consoles back in 2004 (nor did I ever play the original 1985 version on PC). So, when the game made its recent debut on the App Store, I welcomed the opportunity to check out the quirky action-RPG. As it turns out, not only does The Bard’s Tale make a smooth transition to the small screen, but the great tongue-in-cheek story still works for folks that are looking to try it out for the first time, assuming they can get past the simplistic (and somewhat stale) gameplay mechanics.

For those that haven’t played it before, The Bard’s Tale follows the story of the unnamed protagonist as he gets swept away in a story rife with RPG clichés and humor.  Even though the game hardly ever takes itself seriously, the writing and humor remain well done and are the stars of the game. The voice acting also deserves a special mention, with Cary Elwes (of Princess Bride fame) as the voice of the bard. There are some that may roll their eyes at the sarcastic humor, but I believe that it's actually a big part of the appeal as too many games take themselves way too seriously these days.

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That Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99] fix? It's out. Earlier last week, droves of users with fourth gen iPod Touches and first generation iPads were reporting nasty crash issues with Epic and Chair's stellar follow-up. Epic was quick to say, "Hey, we're going to fix this thing" and it appears as though the duo has with version 1.01., if reports from our message board are a good indication.

Unfortunately, there's still some rare bugs out there that this update hasn't squashed. Some of our readers are still having problems with frame rate and game transitions in a post-patch environment, while others are still reporting a dreadful-sounding save file glitch that consistently resets progress when the game is restarted. We're all pretty confident that, again, Epic and Chair are really interested in hammering out an update for these things in short order, but we're checking in to make sure.

Regardless, if you or a loved one is having any of these issues (or another), feel free to check out the game's message board thread. There's a couple of solutions in there that seem to be working out for those having problems.

UPDATE: Chair shot us this statement about the upcoming update:

"We are working to resolve an issue impacting some users who are running Infinity Blade 2 on iPad 1 and iPod touch 4 devices. We have already released one update to address some of the issues and another is on the way. We will continue working through this until its resolved."

As a lot of you are already aware, Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99] has some crash issues on iPad and iPod Touch. Thankfully, Chair Entertainment and Epic Games have already identified the culprit and are speedily working on a fix to address the problem. "For some users, IB2 seems to be running out of memory on heavily-laden iPad and iPod Touch devices," Epic's Mark Rein wrote on the publisher's message board. "We're working on a quick fix and will submit an update to the store as soon as possible," he continued later.

Rein explained that the game wasn't tested on machines with a "massive" amount of apps. He suggested a user-end fix for the meanwhile. "When apps run out of memory at loading times, that is something often fixed by restarting your device. I recommend that people try restarting their device to see if that solves it for them."

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Hey, here's a thing: both Space Miner [Free] and Space Miner HD [Free] are totally free right now. Back in February of last year, Venan Entertainment released Space Miner to the masses and pretty much took everybody by surprise with the amount of depth, humor, personality, and most importantly stellar gameplay found within the title. It was almost as if they took the core mechanics of the classic Asteroids arcade game and built a fantastic, fully realized universe around it with copious amounts of RPG elements, space shooting, and a gripping storyline. In fact, that's exactly what they did.

We loved Space Miner in our original review, and Venan kept the love flowing during 2010 with a huge update in April which enhanced the visuals for the then top-tier hardware and added a hardcore difficulty mode. With the arrival of Retina Display devices, Space Miner eventually jumped on board the high resolution gravy train and in December of last year an iPad native version of the game was released. All of this post-release attention didn't go unnoticed either, as we chose Space Miner as our iPhone Game of the Year for 2010. In fact, if you ask Brad Nicholson, he'll tell you that Space Miner is an even better game than Game Dev Story [$3.99/Lite]. That's high praise!

Now, to celebrate the release of their latest title Book of Heroes [Free], Venan has gone and not only made the Space Miner games free through the weekend but have actually made their other games free as well. Don't hesitate to jump all over Ninjatown: Trees of Doom! [Free/HD] while you're busy mashing away at the download button on Space Miner.

The Space Miner games have seen several sales during their time on the App Store (and really what games haven't), but this is the first time it's ever gone completely free, although there is a free-to-play version called Space Miner Blast [Free] which is a more arcade-focused affair and is also totally worth a download as it offers a slightly different experience. But seriously, while you have the chance, grab the real-deal Space Miner for free during this weekend. I don't want to sound like a jerk or anything, but if you don't own Space Miner, we totally can't be friends.

You wanted it, and now it's here: The Game Bakers's beautiful real-time strategy RPG, Squids [$1.99], is now on the iPad. The team dropped the support as Universal, which means if you already own it, you can now play the game on iPad for $0. Otherwise, you can pick up the iPad and iPhone version for the usual $1.99.

During review, we got a chance to see Squids on the big screen, and even that non-optimized state, we were really impressed with how it looked and technically played. But here's some things we didn't get to see: the new 3D "anaglyph" version of the Halloween map, which has been rolled into this update on top of screen rotation functionality, new bug fixes, and new localizations including Russian, Japanese, and simplified Chinese.

If you've got some of those silly 3D glasses, give the Halloween map a spin and tell us what you think. We're currently digging around in TouchArcade's toy box, but we've been coming up empty.

You don’t have to be an app hipster to be a little affronted when your favorite app hits the big time and everyone starts playing it. Really, are there many things more annoying than logging into Facebook only to see that your 11th grade lab partner has posted five hundred achievements from what was previously your favorite game? Instead of making passive aggressive comments on their status updates (“Wow, at least being unemployed gives you the opportunity to really master Angry Birds!”), channel that righteous anger into downloading Princess Punt [Free], a game that you are certain to be the first (and perhaps last) person on the block to be playing.

Before getting into the game itself, a warning is in order. There are plenty of things you will hate about this game. Endless popups after every level urging you to post every inane achievement to Facebook and Twitter, the out-of-place slot machine minigame that’s basically an in-app purchase cash grab, the agonizingly long loading times. Oh, and the eleven (eleven!!) in-game updates that have to download before you can begin (lord help you poor saps using a 3G connection to download them; wi-fi is definitely recommended!). Also, the default language is Japanese, so keep an eye out for the language options after installation—not that it really matters, because the loading screen text and tutorials don’t make any sense in English, either.

Long story short(ish): It’s confusing and difficult to get into. Why, then, is it worthy of a review?

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