There’s just something about word games that make you feel like you’re accomplishing something in your free time. You’re not simply killing time; you’re expanding your very mind. Perhaps this is why games like Text Twist and What’s My Word have gone down in the annals (uh, it's a real word, which you would know if you played more word games, you pervert) of my favorite apps of all time. And just when I had given up hope of finding another worthy addition to that club, Spuzzle, Inc.’s Word vs Word [$.99] has earned its way onto the list. Felicitations all around!

I’m not going to sugarcoat it – this game is going to frustrate you. But if you’re like me/into punishment, you’re going to love it. It’s not only because the words are particularly challenging (finally, another chance to use that SAT dictionary!), but because this is really a logic game disguised as a word game. Words With Friends this ain’t.

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Ah piracy. Forget the days of violence, scurvy and the constant threat of hanging. We're talking about the freedom of the high seas, questionable fashion choices and incredibly anachronistic language, savvy? Plunder and the open ocean, that's the pirate's life for me.

Powder Monkeys [$0.99] goes blessedly light on the pirate-speak, but otherwise it's the perfect pirating experience. You can travel the seas, hunt down rivals, capture towns, plunder to your heart's content and dress up your ever-more ludicrous ship. And you can do it all as a, erm, monkey.

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Starbase Orion [$4.99] is a space-based 4X strategy game from Chimera Software, the makers of Starbase Command [99c] . If you're not familiar with the 4X genre, it stands for "explore, expand, exploit and exterminate." You navigate your space fleet around the galaxy (on a map) exploring various star-systems and colonizing planets. Your planets can be customized with buildings, farmers, scientists, and/or workers. You research new technologies, spy on other races, design new spacecraft, and engage in space combat. Phew! There's plenty of stuff here for strategy gamers to totally geek-out on!

Two game modes are provided. There's a single player mode against AI players, or asynchronous turn-based multiplayer modes (1 vs 1, 2 vs 2 team-play, or free-for-all). It uses the cool new iOS 5 Game Center features to manage the asynchronous play, letting you play against an online opponent, each taking turns at different times during the day (or night) without necessarily being online at the same time. The game will automatically quick-match you with an online opponent or you can invite a specific friend to a custom match. It also supports the new iCloud functionality, so you can switch your iOS device and keep playing from where you left off. Starbase Orion does run on iOS 4, but without multiplayer or iCloud support until you're on iOS 5.

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Yesterday, TouchArcade attended EA's Naughty or Nice game event in New York and spent time with a number of just-announced titles on the way from Chillingo. Perhaps the most stand-0ut game of the lot is Zombie Wonderland 2, sequel to the June 2010 release Zombie Wonderland [App Store]. As in the original, the upcoming sequel puts you in the shoes of Chuck, the renowned Zombie Cleaner of the pleasant little '50s Americana town, Niceville. While, before, your task was to keep the homes of your clients as clean and as zombie-free as possible, your new order of business is a bit more complex a proposition.

Now, while we aren't allowed to get into to many details as far as the storyline goes, just yet, I can tell you that the rooms you will be defending (and cleaning) are, this time around, spread throughout time. From the local museum, which serves as a kind of time-hub, you will be traveling to medieval castles, ancient Egyptian crypts, Viking halls, and ancient Japanese dwellings -- all riddled with zombies that make terrible stains when dispatched.

Some of the tasks that must be completed involve several stages set in different locations and / or times. For instance, one of your clients, Vlad the vampire, has given up drinking blood and moved over to milk. So you must travel through time to get him a glass of milk by milking a cow in a zombie-swarmed barn. Each of the temporally far-flung locales features its own mini-boss that appears and drives the zombies into attack frenzies that make the task of keeping the rooms clean and zombie-free quite a challenge.

While the original release featured four locations, four weapons, and five types of zombies, Zombie Wonderland 2 delivers 25 locations, 25 weapons, and 22 types of zombies, as well as a mega-boss zombie. Some of the weapons available are special bullets, medusa bullets, gnawers, turrets, lightning bottles, killer grass, the brain toy -- even a Roomba(-like robotic vacuum). Weapons can be damaged by zombies, but can also be repaired. New weapons can be quickly bought via in-app purchases or unlocked through dedicated gameplay.

Some areas of the town's museum are visibly under construction, and serve as placeholders for additional areas that will arrive in updates, down the road.

We'll take a closer look at Zombie Wonderland 2 when it arrives sometime before Christmas, but, however we rate it, it's sure to is sure to take the crown as far as number of genres represented. This survival cleaning, time management, tower defense zombie shooter will be priced at $0.99.

We first caught wind of the Crescent Moon Games and Blowfish Studios collaborative effort Siegecraft [99¢] back in July with some early screenshots, and got our first glimpse of it in action the following month with a brief teaser trailer and an intended release date of early October. And, just as promised, earlier this week Siegecraft went live in the App Store.

Siegecraft is something of a fixed-turret tower defense game, but with a more hands-on approach than your typical title. Your job is to defend against approaching enemies by firing on them with various weaponry, like arrows, catapults, and more. You accomplish this by simply touching and dragging on the weapon to set the speed and/or trajectory of its ammunition and letting go to fire.

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For many gamers, especially those in their late twenties and early thirties, the first experience with gaming on an Apple computer would have to be with the iconic The Oregon Trail. I know that that was my own personal first experience with an Apple computer, as we were allowed to play the edutainment title in my early grade school years in the computer lab on our modest collection of Apple II machines (not before we had finished up our math learning programs, of course).

In early 2009, Gameloft brought an updated take on the classic game to the App Store with their modernized The Oregon Trail for iOS. The core gameplay of the original was kept mostly intact, but with brand new visuals and an assortment of touch-centric mini-games added into the mix. Despite the huge potential to alienate a countless number of fans who have emotional ties to the original game, this new The Oregon Trail was actually quite well-received and paid proper respect to its roots. Even 30 years later, the core concept was still pretty damn fun.

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I used to love strategy RPGs but as age has warped my enthusiasm so has it stolen my patience for all the genre’s clutter, meandering UI constructs, same-y production values, punishingly difficult fights, and oftentimes tedious leveling systems. The Game Bakers’ Squids [99¢] is a great change of pace. It’s a kinetic, clean, charming, and particularly streamlined entry in an aging genre that has a ton of character, fun, and unique constructs to share. I'm not particularly turned on by its free-to-play functionality, but it's an otherwise solid game.

Squids' setup goes a little something like this: in a troublesome period of squid life, you’ll be tasked with stopping an evil black ooze that threatens to destroy civilization with its ooziness. To accomplish this great deed, you’ll need to assemble a team of eclectic and multiple-armed things, all with different abilities and varying degrees of awesome, and take the fight to the core of the conflict. (more...)

Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense [$1.99] from Image & Form is a clever and innovative game which let's you control an ant colony, which is being attacked by various predatory insects. It's a real-time strategy game about insect warfare. You act like a general, overlooking a creepy-crawly battlefield and dictating the strategy for the colony's survival by gathering food, engaging in combat, and collecting artifacts.

You start by drawing a straight or curved line with your finger, which originates from your ant-hill.  This represents a pheromone trail for ants to follow. Once you've finished drawing a line, you specify if the new route will be used by workers, soldiers or spitter ants.

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Anomaly Warzone Earth [$1.99] just became an even crazier-good proposition for iPad 2 owners: 11 Bit Studios has just released an update for both versions of the already fantastic-looking game, adding in an extra layer or two of graphical awesome specifically for the platform. New blur and glow effects, as well as enhanced shadowing, contrast, saturation, and much more dynamic environmental touches have been added in addition to bug fixes and Universal support.

Outside of the new iPad 2 eye candy -- and to be clear, the game still looks great post-update -- 11 Bit has added that new Squad Assault Rearmed map and also fixed that pesky Commander Trials issue that has plagued the game since release. Oh! And Facebook posting is now better.

As if that wasn't enough Anomaly news for your eyeholes, we've got some sale details to spill: the game is currently available at $1.99 for a limited time. We can’t be friends anymore if you don’t buy it at this price (since it’s so good and all).

Free-to-play and I don’t get along too well. If it’s not the embedded ads turning me off, it’s the oddball paid power-ups and the off-kilter balance and experience boosters. In the worst cases, it's the lack of fun because a developer pulled it out  and made it a paid feature to sponge revenue. I’d rather just pay up-front and get the entire experience from the get-go. It saves me time and frustration.

Steambirds: Survival makes F2P an exceedingly easy pill to swallow. It looks sharp, it seems to function just fine on a mechanical level, and its fun without needing to immediately pump money into it. In the early going of our preview build, at least, it appears to have all the functionality and fleshiness of a paid game, minus the paid part. This is what this new-age of free-to-play is supposed to look like, right? (more...)

A new turn-based iteration of aerial combat game Steambirds [$1.99 / HD] is on the way, and get this: it’s a free-to-play venture headed up by the original crew behind Steambirds, Spry Fox, AND the video game gurus over at Fruit Ninja [$.99 / Lite / HD]creator Halfbrick. Talk about a mash-up.

Phil Larsen, Halfbrick’s potential Hollywood movie star and marketing wizard, calls Survival the “ultimate dog-fighting tactical aerial combat game” and he’s probably right. I mean, what other game manages to fall under that description? This is why he’s a wizard, folks.

We’ve seen preciously little of Survival thus far, but we do know that it’s a turn-based combat joint similar to Spry’s original game in look and vibe. It’ll hit later this October with eight planes and 64 missions at launch with the promise of more to come. We’ll definitely try to get this in our e-office soon and give you the skinny from a hands-on perspective.

The creator of the fantastic space shooter Red Nova [$.99], Celsius Game Studios, is set to follow up with another space combat joint called Drifter. The studio made a few waves the other day on Twitter with the official unveil, which has us thirsting for more information.

As the teaser suggests, this is indeed an open-world exploration game, but it’s a bit more. Celsius’ Colin Walsh tells us that it’s something of a passion project that’s inspired by games he grew up such as the venerable Frontier: Elite II. His twist is the combat and the joining of trading game. You’ll be able to be wander the galaxy as a merchant or put on the thigh-high space boots of a “cold-blooded mercenary” charged with “ taking out the scum of the galaxy.” We added the thigh-high part, there, because, frankly, we like thigh-highs.

The map in the game is the biggest point of interest for us so far: it’s procedurally generated and will contain 100,000 light years worth of space crap like, say, planets and star systems. The ultra-ambitious Drifter doesn’t have a release yet, but Walsh hopes it’ll hit before the end of the year.

It’s not often that a game comes around that can be considered both a deep, strategy-heavy game, and a vertical-scroller. Yet, that’s exactly the sort of game that Elemites [Free] claims to be. Dubbed as a “Real-time Scrolling Strategy (RTSS),” Elemites combines the forced movement of a vertical-scroller with the inherent strategy of minion management and wraps it all together with a robust spell and upgrade system. It certainly sounds like an odd game, but Elemites manages to nail this combination and should definitely be on the list of any strategy fan.

In Elemites, you play as Relph, a wanna-be wizard that stumbles upon a magical book of summoning. In addition to teaching Relph how to summon Elemites, golem-like creatures that will attack anything in front of them, the book also convinces Relph to go on a rampage, destroying every village in the land.

So how exactly does a real-time scrolling strategy game play? Relph stays at the bottom of the screen, slowly moving forward (you can only control whether he goes left or right). Meanwhile, tapping anywhere on the screen conjures up Elemites at that location, which will slowly move forward attacking peasants, fences, buildings – anything in front of them. Summoning Elemites uses mana, however, which also doubles as Relph’s shield. Your goal, then, becomes to micromanage your mana by summoning Elemites at the right place and time, while recouping mana earned by downed foes and avoiding enemies gunning for Relph.

Relph also has access to a wide variety of spells that are progressively unlocked throughout the game. Spells range from damage boosts to your Elemites to life drains to chain lightning. In addition, each spell (as well as Relph and the Elemites) can be upgraded numerous times throughout the game by cashing in ‘Vengeance’ points, which are earned every time an enemy is killed or building is destroyed. Even though there are 16 total spells that are unlocked, you can only take five into battle, which means that choosing which spells to upgrade becomes that much harder.

The beauty of Elemites is that there are tons of different ways to play the game. Sure, summoning your minions is going to be a big part of your strategy regardless, but spell selection definitely affects the way you use them. Will you focus more on resource management and keep your active Elemites out there longer with healing and defense spells, or will you take matters more into your own hands with spells that directly affect your enemies? The upgrade system also opens up the door to a variety of strategies, as you’ll have to decide whether to make your spells more potent or invest more heavily in resource management upgrades.

Of course, variety wouldn’t mean much if the game didn’t play well. Thankfully, Elemites takes care of that as well. I appreciate the way that the developers have managed to boil the controls for what could be a complicated game down to simple touch-based mechanics. In fact, the controls may be too simple occasionally; if you don’t pay attention, you could easily exhaust your mana conjuring up Elemites. However, I’d rather the game be hyper-responsive than plagued with delayed input.

Another aspect I loved about Elemites was its overall presentation. The artwork in particular deserves a special mention, as everything from the menus and story illustrations to even the enemies are just well done. It’s obvious that a lot of effort was put into the overall visuals and it definitely shows. One minor complaint involved some strange graphic artifacting that would occasionally show up while playing, but it did little to detract from the gameplay. I even enjoyed the story writing, which does a good job of weaving the tale while not taking itself seriously. My only gripe is with the banner ad at the top of the screen that is present even while playing the game. Granted, the ad gets removed if you purchase the whole game (as a $0.99 IAP), but it still detracts from what is otherwise a great experience. I would have also liked a universal version of Elemites as well, as I think the gameplay would work well on the iPad.

Considering that Elemites is available for free with the first world unlocked, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be checking this out. It’s simply an entertaining game that manages to test both your reflexes and strategy IQ and offers enough diversity to distinguish itself from the pack.

I can't help but want to think that Calibre Games' Hunger Calls [99¢ / HD] is meant as a metaphor for fast food culture. The purpose of the game is to shove as much food into people's mouths as you can, as quickly as possible, then after they overeat, you have to either hit them with some Alka-Seltzer or they die.

At first, I thought Hunger Calls was just going to be some kind of resource management game in the vein of Diner Dash, then after a few minutes, I was worried it might be a clone of the Flash game, Sweatshop, but it's neither -- the only way I can think to describe Hunger Calls is as a reverse tower defense game.

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King of Dragon Pass [$9.99] originates from what I consider to be on the tail end of the golden age of PC gaming, where developers focused more on depth and originality instead of texture resolution and polygon count. In fact, King of Dragon Pass is a fantastically extreme example of this as there's no polygons to speak of, and the graphics only really consist of a assortment of hand-drawn illustrations to accompany whatever event is taking place at the time. I think the easiest way to describe what the game is all about is to call it a largely text-based menu-driven mash up of a Civilization game and a Choose Your Own Adventure book. If you're the kind of person who requires flashy graphics, fast action, rock-bottom pricing, and online multiplayer, stop reading now. This is not the game for you. If, however, you can barely even fathom a more glorious conglomeration than Civilization and Choose Your Own Adventure, prepare to absolutely lose yourself in King of Dragon Pass.

The game is set in the fantasy world of Glorantha, created by Greg Stafford, and used in several other traditional roleplaying games, literary works, and even a board game. The universe was originally imagined in 1966, and is chock-full of things which have since become standard in fantasy-based worlds. The people of Glorantha are the pawns of an array of both new and old gods who offer various benefits in exchange for worship. Magic and supernatural occurrences play an important role in the world, and aside from the typical races found in most fantasy worlds like elves, dwarves, etc, Glorantha is also home to strange humanoid hybrids such as anthropomorphic ducks and scorpion-men.

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