Numberlys

We don't usually review interactive stories or children's games, but Numberlys caught our eye due to it's stylish artistic quality ...and, for the record, it does include mini-games.

In a colorless world filled with numbers, five of the citizens wanted a change and set about inventing the alphabet. The story is told through beautiful black and white animated graphics which are clearly inspired by the classic sci-fi film Metropolis, but with a modern touch.

It's a children's story, but adults can enjoy the wonderful presentation, music and sound effects. Text cut-scenes are displayed, like old-fashioned subtitles (just like Metropolis) and the story is also conveyed verbally by a narrator, who has the perfect voice and accent for this particular tale.

During the animated film, items appear in red if they're interactive. For example, touching a red light-bulb above a character will make them say their line. Or pressing a red button might trigger the next piece of animation. Sometimes you turn or swipe an object, to help construct the next letter of the alphabet. There's only one pathway through the story, so your actions don't really change the outcome. However, although the interactive component is limited, it does help you to feel involved.

There are eighteen "mini-games" to play, like tapping the five main characters to create the "ayyyyy" sound of the letter "A", but there's no passing, failing or scores (which was an intentional design decision). It's more about interacting with the characters and story world. The mini-games are easy and can generally be completed within a minute, but again, they're not intended to be challenging or drawn out. It's more about the experience.

Other mini-games include brick-breaker and whack-a-mole variants and aim-and-shoot games, which all sounds quite cheesy, but they're actually presented with a stylish quality that's consistent with the rest of the app.  Although, some of the mini-games are repeated, with the jumping game appearing a few times.

I watched Numberlys in a quiet room, on a comfy couch and enjoyed the 28 scenes within an hour. Afterwards I watched some of their behind-the-scenes footage, from which it's clear the development team are proud of their work.  I've enjoyed and savored Numberlys, but like any film, I probably won't watch it again for a while, but it could be a recurring treat for a young child.

The story opens with little Toku asleep on the grass, but once you swipe him awake, there's a lovely layered platform world to explore, with pink trees, waterfalls, caves, villages and other characters to discover. Just tap the screen to walk in that direction, or hold your finger down for a second to keep moving automatically.

On the first level, you discover Enril the wind spirit and gain the ability to generate gusts of wind with a finger swipe. So if you swipe a plant it sways in the breeze, swiping a tree causes it to shake and rustle, while swiping a waterfall splashes water around. You can also swipe at objects - like large rock balls - to move them, or swipe burning fires to fan or direct the flames. These abilities help your search for the evil Balasar, so you can lift his dark curse.

You can also use your new wind-generating abilities to help Toku explore. Swiping upwards through Toku causes him to jump upwards, carried on a gust of wind. And as you progress, you unlock the ability to use double-gusts to blow him further. Toku can ascend to even greater heights by climbing inside a poyak plant, which spits him skyward, or by gusting him downwards into a large mushroom, for a trampoline effect. Alternatively, you could burn a poyak plant and take it's seed to plant strategically somewhere else, as a new jumping point.

There are enemies to avoid, including glorbs which cling to you and must be swiped away before they deplete one of your four lives. However, by swiping the background vegetation, blue birds fly into the sky and tapping enough of these eventually restores a life. Along the way you discover and activate statues which act as re-spawn points when you die.

With three game save slots, Game Center integration, innovative game-mechanics, a storyline, lovely graphics, interesting levels with multiple exits and a chilled-out soundtrack which I haven't tired off, Lost Winds was heading towards an easy five-star rating, however: As I mentioned at the start, this game rates highly in almost (but not quite) every way.

Sometimes the controls are frustrating. Especially when there's a series of double-gust jumps in a row, where a single failure causes you to fall and restart. After numerous attempts I walked away from my device in frustration, a few times. Other players in our discussion thread have described the wind controls as  "unforgiving", which is a suitable description. Apparently the Wii version had a tiny pause before the jumps, which is missing from the IOS version, which could be a factor (as discussed in our latest TouchArcade podcast).

However, the jumps do get easier with practice. My two pro tips are:  Run off ledges to automatically jump, rather than jumping off ledges manually and always swipe from directly below Toku in a straight line. That helps, a little.

Lost Winds is such a delightful game in all other regards that I'm still enjoying it, but the controls have tested my patience. If you're not a fan of swipe controls, you may want to wait and see if the developers make them more consistent, more responsive and more forgiving. As it stands, the controls are - at times - part of this games challenge. Yet, for large parts of the game, the controls are fine.

The sequel to Lost Winds, Winter of the Melodias, was released for Wii in 2009, so hopefully that will be ported that to iOS too, as it allows players to strategically switch between summer and winter and includes a new cyclone ability. In the meantime, keep an eye on our thread for any updates on the controls.

There's six different mountains to conquer, including 36 different multiple-branching down-hill runs. The first slope is 'Glacier' which has six runs and you can unlock the other peaks - like Mt. Payne and Angel Peak - by winning medal points (3 points for gold, 2 for silver or 1 point for bronze). You can choose which valley to enter and each route contains different gates, with blue for time bonuses and red for a score multiplier, so it's worth exploring.

After choosing to be male or female, you start with $1000 and can earn money in the game, which is handy for buying tricks, such as the ability to tilt the device for air-control. There's a decent assortment of tricks available, such as flips, rolls and tail grabs. Doing tricks earns time bonuses and points as you fly down the mountain towards the finish.

When you leave the ground, six new buttons conveniently appear on-screen for performing tricks.  You can press one button for a simple trick, two buttons for a trickier trick or hold and slide your finger to extend the move, for the trickiest of tricks. Two landing buttons appear when you're about to hit the snow and these can be pressed to level-out the board for a safe landing, or to stop a spin, roll or flip.  These trick buttons only appear when needed and then disappear to keep the screen uncluttered, so you have a clear view of the terrain.

The main navigational controls are rather unusual. A two-thumbed split steering-wheel is used to turn left or right. For example, to turn left sharply:  The left thumb moves down, while the right right thumb moves up simultaneously like using a virtual steering wheel of sorts. This control scheme wasn't immediately intuitive to me, however, I persevered and after five minutes I was carving the snow quite happily. So, potentially be prepared for a little practice time at the start.

Some highlights of the game include finding massive jumps on the side of the course or jumping off a cliff, onto a small snow-coated plateau, then immediately off a ramp for some big air. There's also caves and a deep rocky ravine to jump across, with a turning landing required on the other side. These "hell yeah" moments really add to the experience and make this game a lot of fun.

You can spend your game money on a variety of snowboards, for improved performance. There's six decks, ranging from the entry-level "basix" up to the "pro board". Each board has different attributes for air-time, air-control, acrobatics, speed and toughness. Plus, there's over 20 skins to buy: Perhaps you want a zombie ape on your deck, a tiger shark or a stylish green cyclops.

Your runs are scored based on tricks performed and time taken. SummitX connects to the Com2uS gameHub, but pleasingly, it also supports Game Center for leader-boards and 15 achievements and games are automatically saved to iCloud. The music is great, featuring over 20 licensed rock soundtracks, which play in a slow-motion effect when you're aerial. Alternatively, you can pump your own iTunes playlist. There are in-app purchases (IAP) available, to unlock features, however so far it hasn't felt intrusive or necessary which is good as Com2uS have been criticized for heavy-handed IAP in the past.

SummitX Snowboarding only has one game mode and I haven't seen any other boarders to race, however, this is a cool looking and sounding snowboarding game, with peaks, runs, boards, skins and tricks to unlock, plus a variety of routes down each run, which ensures there's plenty of replay value. Unfortunately, after downloading their update v1.01 and installing it on both devices, I lost my medal points and progress, which has dented my otherwise positive impression. If you're downloading the game for the first time, this obviously won't be an issue for you.

That's not too bad as far as release date pushes go. And besides, it's not like you'll have trouble finding something to bide your time with while you wait. As you've noticed by the look of our page the last couple of days, there are a lot of games, and a lot of new updates, to dig into. Go get'em Cowboy!

In this case, that's Hide & Seek and Big Pixel Studios. They've come together to make a sweet and compelling mini-game compilation about the life backstage at the opera house.

Apparently, life backstage at the opera house is crazy. As stage manager, your job is to put out every (proverbial) fire that crops up, and they are everywhere. The performers can't dress themselves without your help, the sets are falling apart, the music has gone flying, the props are all mixed up and the lights are just barely running. It's all you can do to keep the whole thing from falling apart.

So off you run, from department to department, saving the day. Each department has its own mini-game. Managing costumes takes a good memory and good reflexes -- you're shown costumes, and then you lead the corresponding performer around the room, dodging falling clothes until you find the pieces you need, then repeating. Props are pure memory. You're shown the dollies they ought to be on, and once you've memorized them you're put on a timer to place them correctly. More and more props are added as you progress.

Preparing the sets requires a neat little stacking game with elements of physics puzzles, especially as they grow more difficult and your stacks grow ever more precarious. Managing music is a bit like Canabalt -- you race over rooftops collecting music, dodging chimneys and trying not to fall down any holes. And the lights... managing the lights is a difficult task. You can see the paths your performers will take across the stage, and its your job to light their way without wasting any precious power. It requires precise timing and no small amount of multitasking.

These mini-games are wrapped in an absolutely darling opera simulation. There are four shows in Performance mode -- The Marriage of Figaro, Swan Lake, Carmen and The Nutcracker -- and each has its own little tale of disaster to cope with. At the end of each you're treated to a short performance of the show, which succeeds or fails relative to your success in the mini-games. I have to admit that while I wanted to see the shows succeed, there was a (large) part of me that wanted to play again just to see how badly they could fail.

Once you work your way through the performances, you can pay to unlock Score Attack modes for each of the mini-games. The costume score attack mode is included, but the other four are a dollar a piece. I do have a small quibble with this, as the app description really doesn't make the need for these purchases clear, but I bit the bullet so you don't have to. It's fun to play endless versions of the mini-games, but the real charm is in the aforementioned Performance mode.

Another question stands out, though: why so little music? The included songs are provided by EMI, but there are only a few of them. Given that the one of the purposes of this game has to be to raise awareness for the Royal Opera House (and to sell a few albums to boot), shouldn't it be brimming with music? This is a missed opportunity, and it smells a bit like a licensing snafu from here.

Otherwise, The Show Must Go On is thoroughly impressive. The art is cute and welcoming and the games are fun, with quite a range of difficulty levels. The music that is included is, of course, great. There's even a broad selection of Game Center/OpenFeint achievements and leaderboards to extend your playtime. I'm not sure it will create any new opera fans, but it certainly shows that there's more to opera than meets the eye, especially when you approach it with a light heart and good cheer.

The name of the game is derived from the fiction's ancient sea monster who "terrorizes" the World of Uncharted Seas. You'll play as a "nameless hero" tasked with killing this monster and saving his sister. In order to accomplish these things, you'll need to explore the world in boat and on foot, and undoubtedly plunge into some puzzle-y areas filled with treasure.

We don't know about you, but we can't help thinking about Wind Waker whenever we look at the art and consider Cornfox & Bros's pitch for Oceanhorn. Bring it on, we say, because the world needs more of these games.

UI and effects not final or missing, FYI.

Cornfox & Bros, one of the gaggle of developers responsible for Death Rally if you didn't know, is expecting Oceanhorn to hit at some point in 2012. This reveal first appeared to our forums and the studio says it'll continue updating its thread as it reveals new information. There's also a blog, too, which is revealing some other cool mechanics. For example, apparently Oceanhorn can attack "at any time" while you're sailing the high seas in your upgradeable boat. So excited!

Poker Pals is not a regular poker game. There's no chips in the middle of the table, no antes and no calling, raising or bluffing. This is actually poker redesigned as a board-game and it resembles a mixture of poker and Scrabble, which works really well. It's reminiscent of Sword and Poker 2 [$3.99 / Free], which also presented poker as a board-game, but included RPG elements.

The idea is to lay down poker hands, like a three-of-a-kind, straight, flush, etc. But as in Scrabble, you can only play your cards if they interconnect with one or more existing card(s) on the board. In Scrabble, if your tiles form two new words, you score points for them both, and Poker Pals works in the same way. So when you slam down a full-house, you might also intersect with existing cards, forming a pair and a straight at the same time, scoring combo-points for all three, which is super satisfying.

The points range from a lowly pair (10 points) to a royal flush (90 points), plus a 10-point bonus for each card you placed. Although a pair of threes scores the same as a pair of kings, as it's based on the hand type, not the face value. Anything less than a pair doesn't score. It would be even better if the face value of cards was taken into account when scoring, as occurs in real poker.

In the four corners of the board, there are wildcard jokers. If you place your cards against these, the joker defaults to the most valuable card for your current hand. For example, if you have two aces it might become an ace, giving you a three of a kind. The game continues until the 7x7 play-field is fully populated with cards, at which point the highest scoring player wins. And the games are often close and exciting.

The game modes include single player (against the computer AI, with 3 difficulty levels), online multiplayer, which includes an option to play a random online opponent. There's also a "pass and play" option for sharing the device with your family at home, although you should probably let them complete the in-game tutorial first.

The free lite version contains all of the game modes, but you're limited to three simultaneous games in progress. If a fourth person invites you to play, they must wait for one of your three active games to end. However, once upgraded, you can play unlimited simultaneous games as well as freeing yourself of in-game ads and unlocking a higher single-player difficulty level.

Leaderboards and achievements are handled by Crystal, with Game Center also storing the achievements, except a bug is currently stopping the Game Center achievements from appearing correctly. Overall I've been having a fantastic time with Poker Pals, I just wish it were a little less cumbersome to switch between existing games and it really needs in-game chat functionality.

Poker Pals delivers a fun interpretation of poker, with desirable asynchronous play and random match-ups for people without many online friends. It has a high replay value and should come with a warning about time-consumtion, due to the constant, but pleasurable interruptions when it's your turn. After trying the free version initially, upgrading to remove the ads was an absolute no-brainer.

The idea is to make a sandwich by collecting ingredients from around the platform level. You can start with a basic cheese sandwich, but, you can add non-standard fillings like burgers, apples, oranges or hot-dogs. And then, what the heck, let's throw in: Wine bottles, flowers, tins, potted plants, beach-balls, and much much more. Each time you add another filling, your sandwich gets taller, until you're carrying around a giant towering treat filled with the craziest ingredients. A sandwich meter of sorts lets you know when your sandwich has grown large enough to please your alien master.

Soon, Gourmo starts placing more specific food orders: "Bring me ...1 sandwich with a cat!"  The particulars of his order are displayed as icons at the top of the screen which are ticked off you collect them.  To find the ingredients, you must explore the busy levels, which include buildings to climb, bouncy roofs, clothes-lines to cross and water hydrants to smash so you can ride the gushing water into the air. There's dissolving clouds, larger items to push around, locked sections that need a key and even hidden areas to discover. And all this time, you're still carrying around a massive sandwich, which expands and contracts depending where you are.

Once the food is prepared, you take it to a waiting alien representative, who transports it up to the obese invader Gourmo, who devours it hungrily. There's an indicator on the screen which always points towards the alien, so it's easy to find. As the game progresses, you're put to the task of building multiple sandwiches as well.

When you make a second sandwich, your slice of bread gets larger, so you can dump bigger fillings on it, like crates, televisions or satellite dishes. Apparently Gourmo isn't too fussy about his nutritional intake. When you make a third sandwich, you're given a VERY large slice of bread, which allows even larger fillings, like say, a fridge. I won't keep listing the ingredients, but according to the "Food Journal" in the main menu, there's heaps of fillings to discover.

After a while Gourmo starts asking for other things to eat; like cake. But food's not the only thing to collect. There's also 29 alien spaceship parts to discover (one per stage) and presumably these help you reach "the mysterious Planet Nuzz" mentioned in the iTunes description. There's also special pick-up items like the alien rocket pack for double jumping, or a food-magnet to attract out-of-reach items.

It''s not always easy to walk around with a towering sandwich. Birds and dogs are attracted to it and a protesting hippie might hit you with his protest sign, knocking  some fillings off your bread. Naughty children might fire slingshots at you and beware of dogs and nasty little girls on pogo-sticks. These hostile characters can all be slapped onto a large piece of bread and fed to the alien. Problem solved.

After being hurt five times, such as falling into a hole, your health meter is depleted and the stage ends. Although you can restart from a checkpoint, with the same score, stage time and sandwich percentage you possessed back at that point. Discovering a red heart will restore some health. Or, If you collect 50 coins, you earn one heart. With all the sandwich making, it's easy to forget this is also a platform game.

There are four chapters to play (USA, Mexico, Italy and Japan) with 29 stages in total, including four auto-scrolling stages which play like an endless runner in a platform game. Each chapter has one bonus stage to unlock. The chapters are all uniquely themed. For example, the Mexico chapter has a desert setting with prickly cacti and kicking donkeys, with Mexican-style music, bandits in sombreros and Mexican food items to collect, like tacos. The last stage in each chapter is a larger level, which can't be by-passed with the skip level function. Plus there's a special final chapter, at the very end of the game which you need enough spaceship parts to unlock.

Instead of a star-scoring system, three slices of gold bread are awarded for each level, based on specific targets for score, time taken and number of food spills. These three goals can each be achieved in different runs, which provides an incentive to replay levels. Although just by reaching the end of a level, you unlock the next level, even if you fail the time, score and spill targets.

Three control options are provided, including tilt, touch (choose one half of screen for running and the other half for jumping) or buttons. The developers even get bonus points for implementing buttons that can each be individually re-positioned on the screen. Although strangely, when the game starts you're presented with two control options to choose from, as this wonderful button option is not mentioned. Although it's available, in the options menu. My only criticism is that the jumping is a bit awkward when bouncing off someone's head, sometimes requiring multiple attempts. Apart from this the controls work perfectly fine.

We gave the last wacky game from Adult Swim, Monsters ate my Condo, a five star review, and Sandwiches!! is another quality well-constructed release, with similarly vibrant graphics. It's amusing, varied, highly entertaining and excellent value for a dollar.  Also, for you hopeful iPad owners out there, while an iPad version isn't available (and also isn't currently in the works, per the developers) it also hasn't been ruled out as a future possibility.

But warping to the top of the screen doesn't necessarily ensure your safety, as the aliens can shoot upwards too. Some enemies have shields and can only be hit from one side, which necessitates warping up and down to get a clear shot. By collecting the gems dropped by destroyed aliens, you can charge up segments of your super-fire meter, then briefly shoot anything, even if it's shielded.

The warp drive is an interesting twist, as it forces you to pay attention to both parts of the screen. The developers blog mentions that they once considered having enemies move like another classic arcade game, Galaga, but they decided against this as it interfered with the warping. Still, it would be nice to see some different movements or perhaps a boss appear. That said, the game  throws 19 enemies and more and more bullets at you, until it almost feels like a bullet-hell scenario, which works really well.

Periodically, a UFO flies across the screen, which is another familiar concept from Space Invaders. The flying saucer drops a power-up when destroyed. For example, it might drop a bubble shield or slow-down the enemies movements. To collect a pick-up you simply warp across it. Unfortunately the pick-ups aren't super exciting and it doesn't announce what they are when collected.  Although the bubble-shield is very handy amongst all those bullets.

The game has a fast and exciting pace, with wave after wave of vector-graphics style enemies. There's a camera tilt effect which displays the entire game on an angle which changes each time you warp. You can select high or low angle tilt, although I personally found the angled perspective off-putting and turned this option completely off, so it's great that these options were included.

After every five waves of alien attack, your ship is repaired and you're given the opportunity to upgrade it using the points you've acquired. The upgrade system works really nicely. There are ten upgrade categories, including:  Armor, speed, shot frequency / power, firing rate, shot spread / speed, super power, super segments and gem magnetism. You can also downgrade these categories mid-game and re-allocate the points to different abilities. An auto-upgrade option is available, but it's fun to customize it manually.

Super Crossfire offers hundreds of control options (or to be more precise: 9). This includes 3 button, 3 tilting  and 3 slider lay-outs, with additional options for multi-touch. Unfortunately, none of these control options felt nice on the iPad, as the left and right buttons are too far apart. If you're going to put that much effort into controls, it's probably better to let the user customize the button positions themselves. Fortunately, it's far more comfortable, enjoyable and cheaper to play on the smaller iPhone or iPod touch screen, where the buttons are closer together.

The main menu has an "Unlockables" section, listing nine items to unlock with earned victory points. For example, the "doubler" makes enemies and gems worth twice as much, "Musician" enables the music-player option on the main menu, with sliders for tweaking filter and pitch, while "perfection gives you extra victory points for each perfect wave.  The most expensive unlockable is "Super Blast" which gives you a wider superfire.  You can also use your victory points to unlock chapters early. And you can buy victory points as in-app purchases.

There are five chapters to play through, with 150 unique enemy waves and three difficulty levels to unlock. The leaderboards are managed using Chillingo's Crystal as well as Game Center, along with 16 achievements. There's high score tables for 1-life and composite scores, plus a leaderboard for each of the five chapters. When you die, you can continue an infinite amount of times, without needing to restart from the very beginning, thankfully.

Personally, I didn't enjoy playing Super Crossfire on the iPad as the main left / right controls are too far apart. However, after switching to the smaller iPod screen, it was an enjoyable classic-feeling arcade experience. After 33 years, shooting space invaders is still fun! The developer advises the first update will include the "Dark Chapters", delivering some even faster-paced action and offering higher upgrade points, with an alternate background color scheme. The first update will also include additional leaderboards and achievements.

At any rate, the very first screens of The Dark Meadow [$5.99] had me foaming at the mouth, and rightfully so -- it was a first person perspective exploration game with pieced-together baddies, a super atmospheric setting, and best of all, powered by the rather esteemed Unreal Engine, which is still winning awards to this day. It had all the makings of a truly standout game on the iOS platform, and I wont deny that my hopes were very high for it.

Speaking of atmosphere, when it comes to making the setting appropriately spooky and weird, The Dark Meadow has it down to a fine art. The game itself looks terrific, and the music is dark without being overpowering or ridiculous. You will navigate your way around with simple touch controls and by moving from spot to spot, which foregoes the need for a directional pad. And I truly appreciated how little clutter there was on the screen -- Phosphor Games wanted this to be a clean, immersive experience for the player, and the attention to detail is evident.It's easy to get lost in this world.

As you explore darkened hallways, you'll come across baddies that you'll need to clear out in order to progress. My first few go-rounds with them, I was pretty pleased with the way combat worked. They always appear at a distance, so when you first see them you'll be armed with a crossbow (and later down the line, other weapons will be available.) You'll use your finger to aim and you'll let go when you want to fire, which feels smooth and makes the experience pleasant overall, at least initially.

Once your enemy is really close, you'll switch to melee. The fights are designed so that you can slash with a finger swipe and dodge by tapping an arrow to the right or left. The game is good about telling you when to act, so if you pay attention, you can really get the rhythm of fights down. For instance, after a dodge, if the game prompts you to "attack now!", it's time to get your slashes in, but if not, there's another attack coming, so wait for it. It works a little like a toned down version of Infinity Blade [$5.99], although missing most of the finesse and feeling fairly basic comparatively.

Keep up your fights, and you'll keep gaining experience, and the game makes sure you know it. After each fight the game grinds to a halt, at which point the game tallies your experience while you wait, which not only feels really unnecessary, but also hurts the pacing of the game. When you hit a level, you'll be able to assign experience points how you please. Enough of these and you'll gain new weapons as well, so know that your efforts will be rewarded.

You aren't completely alone on this journey, either. There's an old man you'll meet in the beginning who will communicate with you via radio and give you advice on how to survive in this dark world. His advice can be quite handy (and in addition, it's pretty decently voice-acted, too). In fact, if you die a few times, he will tell you different things, and some of it is pretty hilarious - -bravo for the writer or sticking in bits of tongue-in-cheek humor! You can also find scraps of paper and notes that will shed some light on the world you're in and divulge its backstory. It adds some nice detail, some of which will factor in as you get further into the game.

If The Dark Meadow has any weakness, it's that the fights eventually begin to feel a bit rote, and I found myself wishing creatures would stop popping up so I could just explore my surroundings and progress through the story without hinderances. On the other hand, I'm sure I'd feel the same way if the situation were real, but hey, there's some pains in the ass in every dark and twisted universe, and this is one of them. As long as you don't mind the grindy feel to the combat, then you really shouldn't be bothered by this much.

Overall, The Dark Meadow is a standout in almost every way. From look to setting to the touch-centric gameplay, it shines, and you can tell this title was crafted with much love from its developers. Any horror fan will be thrilled by it, especially if your traditional iPhone fare is stuff like that wretched Silent Hill game [99¢] (even this fangirl couldn't swallow that.) It's quite a bit more expensive than the usual iOS title, and it's worth every bit of the money you'll spend. It doesn't quite hit the note of perfection largely becomes of the combat mechanic, but it edges damn close -- and even at that distance, it's well worth your time and money.

Reading further into this move by Apple, it seems reasonable to think that this might be the end of the iconic click wheel line of iPods. MacRumors notes that there haven't even been any new releases in the click wheel iPod game library since 2009. The click wheel iPod wasn't updated in last year's iPod event either, casting even further doubt onto the fate of the device. With Apple pushing so hard into cloud-based services and the shocking array of media streaming apps available for iOS devices, it seems reasonable to think that the company feels there's no longer a place for the non-iOS large-capacity traditional iPod.

Seriously though, back up those games.

Here's the story: Jo-Jo the curious chimpanzee tried to snatch a precious jewel, which was clutched in the hands of a giant gorilla statue. Unfortunately for Jo-Jo, the statue came to life and wasn't impressed with the little furry kleptomaniac. The thieving monkey fled upwards, into the trees, with the agitated ape in hot pursuit. ...And that's where you step in.

To help Jo-Jo escape the ape, you draw lines on the screen, which instantly become trampolines, bouncing the mischievous monkey higher.  There's nothing for Jo-Jo to land on, just the trampolines which you draw. If you can predict where the monkey will fall and draw a line in the right spot, you'll do well, bouncing him increasingly higher. The trampolines can be drawn on an angle, to bounce Jo-Jo sideways, so he can collect items such as jewels and bananas, or avoid obstacles.

If you fail to draw a trampoline for the monkey, or draw it in the wrong place, he'll fall back down into the arms of the chasing ape, ending your game. This means you have to swipe a trampoline every couple of seconds, because each bounce only takes Jo-Jo a little way up the screen, after which your trampoline disappears and he falls back down.

The "chase" aspect of this game adds excitement, as the trees start shaking and dropping leaves when the ape draws closer. Eventually, the ape's head and arms appear at the bottom of the screen. This is the time to draw some quick trampolines, or if you've gathered enough yellow bananas you can tap the full glass of fresh banana juice to perform a bigger life-saving bounce, to get ahead and gain some breathing room.  Oh, and if Jo-Jo collects an unripe green banana, his banana juice supply is depleted.

Another way to get ahead of the ape, is to perform a combo-jump. This is achieved by doing three "cool" jumps in a row, which seems to be awarded if Jo-Jo bounces perfectly in the middle of the trampoline without hitting any obstacles (although I'm not 100% certain of this, as it doesn't always seem to work and isn't explained). When a super combo-jump is executed, Jo-Jo flies upwards in a burst of stars, with his fist in front, like Superman.

Branches occasionally jut out, which slow your momentum on the way up, but if you land on top of a branch it bends and catapults the monkey higher. Or, Jo-Jo can grab hold of a red helium balloon, to float upwards. During the balloon ride, tilt controls are used to maneuver left or right, while collecting additional balloons prolongs the ride.

You can tell how high you are during the game, as birds periodically display signs stating the altitude. As you get higher, the background view changes and new obstacles appear. There's cobwebs which ensnare you like a cocoon, requiring some quick left-right swiping to break free before the ape catches you. And there's lamps, which - for some unexplained reason - make you grow in size, turning little Jo-Jo temporarily into an over-grown pixelated monkey who fills the screen and grabs all the jewels quite easily.

The jewels you've gathered can be used to buy items in the store. This includes stronger banana drinks which give more lift, trampolines which look thicker and give more bounce and the "Midas Touch" which increases the likelihood of a jewel appearing. The first upgrades for these items are quite affordable, but it will take quite a few games and jewels to upgrade these items to level 3. Although, of course, you can optionally use IAP to purchase jewels online.

Your final score is the number of meters climbed. Com2Us use their own online hub for leader-boards, requiring you to sign-up at their website, so there's no Game Center connectivity provided, but 30 achievements are available in-game.

Escape the Ape has been interesting to play over the past couple of days, and the game trailer (above) is quite amusing, so I've definitely got my 99 cents worth of entertainment, but the novelty of swiping trampolines every couple of seconds is wearing off, especially given the large gaps between upgrades. Although, admittedly, I'm still curious about what happens to Jo-Jo and the Gorilla at the top, assuming there is a top to get to, of course.

With Forever Drive, Supermono Studios is taking a way smarter approach to user-created content design: instead of asking players to shape entire experiences, it asks that they mold a fraction of a blip of an infinitely expandable super-highway. By managing expectations before you even start creating, Supermono is freeing you from failure and the game’s players at wide from having to filter out tons of garbage. Most user-created content leaning titles, including Media Molecule’s venerable series, don't enforce any kind of control or creative constraint, which makes Forever Drive unique, and as we’ve been discovering, pretty fun.

Forever Drive is built by you and everyone else. There are no curated races, no lifeless campaign, and no attempts at narrative. Supermono is shooting from the hip and guessing that its approach to user-content will be enough to keep everyone interested in the racing part, which by the way, is more about the journey instead of the destination or wins. It's some next level stuff.

“What we've tried to create is a very streamlined experience — something a little different from the "load a track, do 3 laps, stop, repeat" gameplay that's become almost universal in driving games,” Supermono’s Dave Ferner told us earlier this year.

“We're trying to create something that feels more like an epic journey, with that feeling of discovery and wonder you get driving fast into an unfamiliar land…”

I recently gave the level editing portion of the title a go and I’ve been surprised by how deceptively simple it is and how graceful most of your projects end up being, even if you’re just goofing around and attempting to make something phallic. You’ll probably never make a level on par with 1-1, but you’ll make something that works and fits with the game.

Basically, there are two parts to the creation process: track editing and environmental editing. The former editor lets you build a small swathe of track from one end of the editor to the other, while the latter gives you the power to add scenery. Other tools give you the power to raise or lower the track where you please, as well as make fine adjustments on the turns you may or may not choose to have.

It’s not rocket science and I think that’s important: executing on the design concepts floating around in your head at any given time is about as hard as drawing your bedroom realistically from the mental picture you see when you close your eyes. By making the editor simple and keeping the bar low with the amount of content you’re responsible for, Supermono is constricting the scope of your ideas, but not their potential.

And while whatever you make will probably be gold, there are tricks to making a good track, as I’ve learned from Dave. He suggests paying attention to the actual curvature of tracks, how a straight benefits the overall design, other high-concept-y things. He also suggests checking out this article by Luke McMillan called A Rational Approach To Racing Game Track Design, which is crazy good read if you’re into design or production.

"One of the main barriers to mainstream acceptance of user-created tracks is the complexity of the editors -- we didn't want a PC style professional tool with a million hotkeys, we wanted a super-streamlined editor which was fun to use," Ferner tells us. "We honestly spent months on that thing -- it takes a lot of work to make something simple out of something complicated!

"And because our game relies on users to create the content, we aimed to create an editor that was almost a mini-game in itself -- there's even some unlocks which you can only get by building popular tracks, and we may even put a highscore table for track creators... it's all a big experiment, but hey, you never know until you've tried it!"

If a section of track somehow manages to suck, you’ll be able to down-vote it. After enough, it’ll be removed from the rotation.

The track I made while farting around (after the no-no shaped one, that is) was a simple “S”-shaped joint. The game automatically integrates in spots where players can drift to earn XP (which is currency used to purchase upgrades, cars, and more stuff for the editor) and it also auto-scaled the height in order to accommodate some lackluster building placement. The actual placement was a simple as dragging and dropping or pinching to zoom to smooth out the rough spots. You’ll see a few images of it if you look around this write-up.

We still haven’t seen the full-full game -- you know, the one with the potentially hundreds of thousands of user-created sections of tracks, so we haven’t really dug into the core of the experience. We’ll definitely do that when the game goes wide later this October.

On that note, this is definitely a game that’ll live and die by its audience. It’s a title that will rely on a community and a vast one at that, so we’ll have to wait and see how people react to it when it hits and how long they’ll stick with the user-creation component in a post-release environment. Provided there is an audience, Forever Drive has the potential to fulfill the promise of its insane conceit, and really, we can’t wait to see if it can manage.

If you don't generally follow upcoming releases of robot-centric movies with lots of explosions, this trailer will get you up to speed:

Shockingly enough, even though the premise of the movie couldn't possibly be more ridiculous, huge robots fighting other huge robots makes for a good video game. The core of the game revolves around tournaments where you choose one of four robots initially available, then fight against seven robots, one-by-one, with increasing difficulty. To win the tournament you must reach and defeat the final robot, Midas, the gold-blooded killer. But first you'll do battle with fighting machines like: Aquabot the diver robot, Six Shooter the electronic sheriff and Noisy Boy, the manga mangler. Each robot has it's own entry animation, fighting style and signature special moves. Low blows and knees to the robo-guts are acceptable.

Like most fighting games, if your health bar hits zero, your robot is defeated, although you can repeat a tournament level until you eventually win. Once victorious, you're awarded an upgrade token and can choose to upgrade your robots armor, power or speed attribute, ready for the next round in the tournament.

Robot upgrades sound pretty cool, but these are statistical attribute upgrades only, so unfortunately there's no visible hardware add-ons for the robots. Also, your robotic upgrades don't appear in sparring or practice modes and once you exit a tournament your upgrades are lost altogether. Basically, the upgrades are only good for the current tournament.

However, if you manage to win the entire tournament, four additional robots are unlocked (making eight in total) and "hard" difficulty mode appears, whereas initially only easy and medium difficulties are available.

In 'free sparring' mode, you select a robot for yourself and your opponent (device), choose one of four locations and select a difficulty mode. The venues include a parking lot, the zoo, a saloon and crash palace. After that, the fighting is the same as tournament mode. In 'practice mode', the opponent doesn't move or strike back, allowing you to beat up some unresponsive hardware without any risk of damage. I wanted to completely thrash this defenseless opponent, but you can't destroy the metallic practice-dummy as it's health always quickly auto-restores back to full strength.

The touch controls include a virtual pad, plus four action buttons for left and right punches, block and special move.  There's a couple of combo moves available, such as landing four sequential left punches for a jab combo or pressing [Punch, Special] for a special move. Some users have commented online that the controls are unresponsive and I experienced this myself, until the developers explained that the first punch in a special move must actually make contact before the special button is pressed. This isn't explained clearly in the game, but knowing this makes a big difference to your competitiveness and enjoyment.

Each time you attack, your power bar depletes, so you need to pace yourself and frequently block, so your power reserves can regenerate.  Each of the 13 attacking moves has a different point value, ranging from a basic jab (150 points) up to special moves (400 points). There's also points for the amount of health remaining at the end of the match, for ripping the opponents artificial head off or for completing a perfect round. Your scores are captured in six Game Center leader-boards and there's 24 achievements to nail.

When you're ready for the final kill-shot, the "special move" button is replaced with a red "RIP" button, for the finishing-move. Your opponents are always keen to do special moves on you too, such as Metro using his large sledge-hammer fists to decapitate my poor robot's head.

Movie tie-in's can sometimes be terrible games, rushed out to promote a movie, but this near-future robotic boxing game is reasonable-- Mostly because robots fighting makes for a decent game. The robot animations are pretty good, even if the background graphics seem a bit lifeless. Real Steel is currently the same price as Fight Night Champion [$4.99 / Review] which is a regular boxing game with more features, but if you're excited for the movie and enjoy the idea of robot-on-robot combat, this is the only official game for the movie.

Our job is to guide the water to Swampy's bath, by swiping tunnels through the dirt, to direct the water's flow. Along the way the water can collect three rubber duckies to unlock subsequent worlds and levels. Your score is based on the time taken to full the bath, number of rubber ducks collected and a bonus for water overflow.

Where's my Water? is similar to Feed me Oil, as you need to ensure enough drops of water reach the destination (bathtub), but instead of positioning devices on the screen to divert the flow, you're digging out water-channels with your finger. The liquid physics are not quite as impressive as Sprinkle or Feed Me Oil, with the water looking pretty lumpy at times, especially at the surface or when the water separates, however it looks reasonably good and does flow where you'd expect.

There are 80 levels, split across four worlds, with new gameplay mechanisms regularly introduced.  The first forty levels are pretty straightforward, with the solution being immediately obvious. It's easy to score three ducks ("tri-duck") on the first two worlds without much thought. Fortunately, some harder levels pop up in the third and fourth worlds. If you make a mistake, or miss one of the three ducks, there's a handy restart button to quickly reset the level.

By collecting sets of hidden objects scattered around the levels - such as a lucky loofah and a toothbrush - you can unlock an additional 8 bonus levels. These feature different types of game-play, including some tilting to move the water.

Of course, there's various obstacles to overcome, such as noxious green algae which grows if it comes into contact with your water-stream, pools of acid which absorb your water and water-activated switches which cause other blocks to move. You'll also encounter yellow toxic ooze, which eats through the dirt and destroys Swampy's precious rubber ducks, forcing you to act quickly.

There are pipes which accept water (or acid) and squirt it out the other side, mines which explode and water/acid hoses to activate, so there's plenty to keep you entertained.  Sometimes you need to draw two tunnels at once, which involves swiping simultaneously with two fingers to split the flow. But be careful, or your precious water might  drain away, off the side of the screen. H2O isn't the only liquid you move around. You also swipe tunnels to shift or drain the acid. The powerful corrosive attributes of the acid are useful for destroying any algae which blocks your way.

Although this game is really enjoyable, the screen navigation is not perfect. Some levels are slightly larger than one screen, so a scroll-bar is provided for panning up and down, which seems a little old fashioned. The scroll bar is awkwardly positioned on the left side of the screen, forcing right-handers to reach across the screen to scroll, unless you use your thumbs, which is an odd design decision. Luckily you don't need to scroll too much. Regardless, I've had a ton of fun playing through Where's My Water, and I really hope Disney keeps the updates flowing.