The fans have answered, too. In under ten hours the project has received well over half a million dollars in backing. And with over 30 more days to go still, you almost have to assume that Double Fine will be forced to use dollar bills as toilet paper to rid itself of all the extra cash it's going to receive.

The project doesn't have a real name yet. It also isn't exactly slated to hit iOS -- the initial pitch was for the development of a PC point-and-click "utilizing modern touch technology." Double Fine says that if it raises more than what it's asking for, as the project has, it might put the game on Mac or iOS.

This seems like a big deal for Double Fine: it's a small, but notable studio that's triumphantly shedding the typical publisher / loan shark model that it usually uses to make something that it has complete creative control over. But, this is also a studio that has been OK with funny funding deals. It let a dude pay for several PC ports in the past, and it's apparently currently in talks with Minecraft creator Notch about funding Psychonauts 2.

So, when will you be able to play this game? It'll be awhile. Provided everything goes as planned, it might appear on Steam as early as October 2012. However, backers will see the game as it's being developed -- this entire experience will be documented by 2 Player Productions and private videos will be released on an ongoing basis.

You just can't pitch this game to a major publisher. This will never be a blown-up, $60 retail title. It's too free-wheeling, too idealistic. It's too ... different.

I've had my paws all over a pre-release build for the last week or so, and I'm OK with saying that it's looking every bit as awesome as its name implies it will be. Sure, it might not have any ultra-familiar trappings to draw connections to, but that's kind of the point: this thing is bananas, man. It's as far-out as a quasar.

Take the mechanics, for example. In the game, you control a house-sized pizza that can roll, stomp, and jump. Rolling requires a simple tilt of the device. Tap the screen and the pizza jumps. Tap again while in the air and the pizza unleashes a devastating stomp.

Rolling automatically obliterates enemies into plumes of grave dust -- provided they aren't hoisting an over-sized, pizza-skewing spear in front of their bodies. If this is the case, a physics-bending jump and stomp will do the trick. As you play, you'll start running into a few enemies that twist this basic combat model. There's a flying skeleton that requires a bit more touch, as well as other minor iterations on this specific idea.

If that was the game, I'd still be as into it since, you know, you'll be controlling a giant, grimacing pizza on a quest to kill all the skeletons ever. But that's not all there is. Pizza vs. Skeletons is like a conga line of levels and different systems, each one bolting onto the back of the last and making the stream stronger and crazier.

In the first chapter, you'll be introduced to a skiing mini-game that doesn't task you with killing. Instead, the objective is to hit the ramps perfectly in order to collect the most currency possible. Later, you'll be balancing the pizza on the top of a huge skull while crossing a pit of spikes, pummeling telltale Angry Birds structures into oblivion, or even bouncing on rocks in a timed adventure that has you knocking skulls off of the tiny platform you'll be forced to work with.

There's a lot more, and I won't spoil it all. I will say, though, that nothing I've been doing is striking me as particularly interesting. Everything in the game exists in the service of fun, kinda like a Rock Band. You're just playing to act out weird power fantasies, and that's cool.

Also, while there's a level of schizophrenia inherent in this kind of design, Riverman ties all of the bits and bobs together into a coherent whole; the sound design is as kooky as the game, and the art direction? It's like something Tim Burton would do if he could (a) draw and (b) chill out every once in a while. The game is bent, but lightly so; its style and its tone fits well with the oodles of off-the-wall content.

There's a good story about this game's design in this week's show. Riverman is composed of two brothers, Jacob and Paul Stevens. Jacob, the art dude, dreamt up the scenarios. Paul, the programmer, then had to figure out a way to not only make it work technically, but also make them fun.

The prototyping phase took awhile and the duo had a lot of back and forths on the subject of dreams vs. the reality of having to make solid, fun-to-play content within the technical parameters of the game.

"There are a few levels that have the theme of your sort of crushing a structure in a way like how you fling birds in Angry Birds at something and destroy it. We thought could we make that fun as a pizza? Well, if you actually physically control your character and just crush, say, the Great Pyramids, that could be interesting." Paul told us earlier this week.

"Jake's ideas probably come from a totally different place than mine do. In mine, I was thinking what's fun being a huge, powerful character? Crushing structures."

Another fun thing that comes hand-in-hand with the conceit of driving around a huge pizza is topping customization. As you beat levels, you earn currency which can be dropped into extra vegetables or meats, new faces, new glasses, and even hats. Each is lovingly animated, and most are pretty hilarious. I'll go on record here and say that nothing comes close to being as cool as a 10-foot tall pizza with a top hat.

I've held back my progression in the game so I wouldn't get too review-y in this, but I think it's pretty obvious that I'll be embracing the game with open arms when it hits a little later this month on the 16th. We'll be bringing you more around that time, too.

For now, though, keep your eyes on this and Riverman. The studio has never attempted a game this ambitious, this out-of-the-mold, and it seems like it has hit a new stride in the process. I'm excited, and I think you should be, too.

You can bet we'll be all over Beat Sneak Bandit like fingerprints on touch screens when it surfaces next week, and until then there's a discussion thread you can check out in our forums.

Ignite features 3 different modes, 35 circuits across 7 locations, and a ton of different configurable cars to burn rubber with. Oh, also, it's absolutely gorgeous. Let's not forget that. There's no clear release date for Ignite on iOS just yet, but the developers stated that the porting project just started in January and that the game is already up and running in a playable state. More videos and screens are said to be coming soon, but it sounds like it shouldn't take too long to get the game on the App Store. We're intrigued, and will definitely be checking out Ignite when it comes to iOS in the (hopefully) near future.

So, Mass Effect is returning to the iPhone. At a recent EA event, the publisher passed around a pamphlet announcing Mass Effect Infiltrator for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. In a nutshell, it's a third-person shooter featuring universe's trimmings, and it will apparently tie into Mass Effect 3's Galaxy At War component.

EA also announced a companion app called Mass Effect Datapad, but revealed nothing about it except its platform: iPad.

On to what we know then. In Infiltrator , you'll "help free prisoners from a hostile Cerberus base" and receive rewards as you gather evidence of Cerberus' crimes. All your rescues and your discoveries will feed into Galaxy At War's "Galactic Readiness rating," which informs events in the game's single-player.

As if the latter wasn't enough to get you to check it out, the app will also offer users exclusive weapons to use in ME3.

Infiltrator's announcement is pretty hot off the presses, so the details are pretty vague. On the other hand, it seems like it is passing through certification as we write this -- if EA is using the term "soon" in regards to its release traditionally -- so, the wait to see what's actually going on should actually end shortly.

UPDATE: Fun fact: this is being developed by Dead Space iOS devs Iron Monkey Studios. This can only be a good thing, we think.

UPDATE 2: IGN has nabbed the first screenshots for Mass Effect Infiltrator:

[Via Shacknews, Joystiq, IGN]

Now Johnny Two Shoes has unleashed a brand new trailer for Prevail, and it's looking insanely bad ass. It's a 2D side-scrolling action game similar to their previous release Plunderland [$1.99/Lite], but cranked up to 11, with a vast open universe to explore and tons of activities for the game's inhabitants to partake in. Not to mention an engrossing story that unfolds as the game progresses. Check the trailer and see for yourself:

As pretty huge fans of Plunderland, both for its fantastic aesthetics and novel gameplay, we're pretty pumped for Prevail. This new trailer increases that level of pumped-ness several notches. Tons of planets? Multiple vehicles? Deforming terrain? Huge arrow battles? I'm totally in. Prevail is looking at an early 2012 release, which could be now or even a couple of months from now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for sooner rather than later, and we'll let you know if any new information surfaces.

If this is the first time you've heard of Corpse Party, Joystiq's JC Fletcher put together an awesome description of what the game is all about. In essence, it's your typical 16 bit JRPG that jumps the rails in a big way. You quickly find yourself in a nightmare dimension where no one can see each other, doors don't work, windows are blocked by human hair, and evidence of countless child murders are everywhere. (Making you wonder how this is getting by the App Store approval department, eh?) There's a cast of characters who are subjected to the torture of this environment, and you sit by and watch what unfolds.

What interested me about this crazy game is that there's tons of "bad endings," like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I've always really liked games that divert from a linear roller coaster ride to letting you screw up, and then showing you the consequences. The PSP version is even constructed with selectable chapters to allow you to go back and explore all these different outcomes.

According to Andriasang, Corpse Party will be hitting the Japanese App Store this week for ¥2,200 which in US App Store pricing would be $29.99. No word yet on a localized English release, but I figure if the game will be available for iOS devices with Japanese text, an English adaptation can't be that far off, since presumably the translation already exists from the PSP game.

Fingers crossed, anyway.

[Famitsu via Andriasang via Joystiq]

Check out the recently released trailer for the sequel:

I'm digging the new art style. February 15th can't come quick enough.

Today Cave announced over Twitter that Dodonpachi Blissful Death is set for release this week on February 9th. Of course, due to the magic of time zones, that means late Wednesday for the App Store here in the US. It'll set you back $4.99, but you'll need at least 4th generation hardware or an iPad 2 in order to play. Also, look for Dodonpachi Resurrection to be going on sale for somewhere around $5 the weekend following release.

In Raid Leader, you'll be taking a knight, a mage, and an archer, against a variety of damage-eating, MMO-like bosses that all appear to have special mechanical hooks. For example, there's a yeti-like monster with a freeze spell that turns its target into a block of ice. In order to break out, you'll have to tap on the screen. There's also a worm that, much to the archer and mage's chagrin, spawns mobs of life-sucking blood leaches all over the battlefield.

Now you can see all this in action in the recently released trailer:

Per the trailer, it's on track for a release next week. Stay tuned for a full review once the game actually hits.

Ghost Trick first saw a release on Nintendo DS around a year ago. This isn't its debut on iOS, though. A couple of months after the DS release, Capcom dropped a Universal version of the game on the Japanese App Store. Now, the rest of the world is finally getting to see a version of this port tonight.

And it seems like it's OK from a technical standpoint. In my modest amount of time with it, I haven't seen any port-specific issues like stuttering or flickering. It controls pretty well, too, and caters to your finger just about as well as it did to the stylus.

There's some stuff still bothering me. The assets aren't as high of a resolution as I would like. Also, a good sixth of the screen is covered by a thick layer of UI that, it seems, is simply there to keep the pixel density high. It's weird.

In case you missed out on Ghost Trick, it breaks down like this: Sissel is often charged with reversing people's deaths and he has to use his powers to do so. Each death is like a puzzle, basically, that has you opening doors, spiritually oozing to adjacent objects, and otherwise setting up Rube Goldberg-ian scenarios that'll change that person's fate.

In most cases, you're watching a death, infesting that person's body in order to rewind time, and then actively trying to disrupt that sequence. The solutions to puzzles seem to be mired in weird video game logic, but the saving grace here is that there is a single and true solution to every puzzle. You just gotta find it, you know?

I've been having a blast so far, by the way. This is a pretty thoughtful, if not challenging game with some insane, but fun-to-discover solutions. And while the minutes of overly long exposition is starting to wear me out, I'm digging the characters and the humor. Just wait until you meet dog, man. Wait for it.

We'll definitely continue on with Ghost Trick, and try to give you something much more definitive than this in the near future. This is a free release, though -- the first two chapters, which take about 60 or 70 minutes to complete, are what you'll get with a $0 download, so that should give you a good indication of what you're getting into. Our gut says grab it. Here's some more screens:

"Eufloria is a game of space, conquest, and exploration based on themes of plant life and flowers rather than space marines and spaceships."

That's the thing about Eufloria: it's an RTS that goes against the grain. It doesn't have any big dudes in big armor smashing space orcs in the face with apartment-sized space maces. It also doesn't subscribe to any particular feel or taste, or really, any action-y RTS conventions. It's a minimalist strategy game that has some cool, laid-back creative touches, and it's all wrapped up in a sensitive production overhead that conveys the game's core design ideals and gentle pacing well.

This much has been proven in past iterations. And for the most part, what you've seen is what you'll be getting Day Zero on iPad. Eufloria on iPad still looks gorgeous, it still runs as smooth as ever, and all the little technical touches on the movement, placement and execution phases of the game have made it over. But, on the other hand, I'm not seeing a major adjustment on anything anyone has complained about before -- the balance appears to be still a little touch and go, and in some of the levels I've been playing, the pacing is slow (unless you manually crank up the overall game's speed).

What the iPad port does bring, though, are new ways to interact more intimately with the experience. Pinch and zoom can be used liberally to explore every little nook and cranny of each level. Satisfying drag, hold, and swipe gestures take care of the rest. It's all good stuff.

I asked Kremers after the show to explain what he was shooting for with this version's controls. He said that the main idea was to strip "all barriers between playing the game and the device you play it on." Mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned. This is appears to be as much of a lean-back experience as ever before, and delightfully so.

Here's a breakdown for those of you just seeing Eufloria for the first time. This is a game about asteroids, trees, and tiny, winged seedlings. In almost every scenario, the goal is to take these seedlings to an asteroid, build a tree or two, and then usher even more seedlings on to other asteroids. The tech tree is simple: trees build seedlings and asteroids have one of three different effects on seedlings, either making them strong or fast or energetic. As trees age, they become more potent and harder to kill. Eventually you'll see some variations on unit types as well as a defensive tree that'll keep enemy seedlings off of your rock.

The strategy factors into the picture in a variety of ways. You can't hit up an asteroid unless you have an asteroid connected to it. Also, most asteroids are inhabited, so you'll need to kill the enemy seedlings and then destroy their trees, which are jacked into that asteroid's core. Cracking the core boils and tearing down an impromptu space settlement boils down to a numbers game: basically, whoever has the larger wad of dudes wins. Much later in the game, you'll be given very specific tasks, like say, defending or finding a path through a system.

On our show, Kremers explained where these ideas came from. Eufloria proper is based on a proof-of-concept called "Dyson," which is named after a british physicist who theorized that you could explore space by growing mechanical trees on asteroids. It's neat to see this crazy idea living on in a game.

The beauty of Eufloria is in its simplicity; it's artfully stripped of graphical clutter and is fairly bare-boned on the UI and sound front. It's also strikingly easy to play for a strategy game since most of the action happens on a macro-level: clicks, drags, and drops compose all you'll need for galactic takeovers. This type of game feels great on iPad, and it seems like Team Eufloria and Tunatech pulled it off.

My time with the preview build, for reasons of avoiding anything other than modest scrutiny at this phase in its pre-release form, has been artificially shortened, so I don't have a verdict for you. You'll get that later at some point this month when the game sees a release across iOS at an unannounced price. We're expecting more details to roll in shortly. Fingers crossed.

All the screens in this write-up are from the PSN version of the game. I can't tell a difference between the two in picture-form.

UPDATE: We didn't mention the game's 3X speed setting in the original write-up.

We're told that Tobe & Friends will stroke arcade desires, as well as provide a ton of differentiated play in its space. A total of four unique characters that offer unique hook, er, shotting abilities, as well as four different worlds and 20 pieces of equipment dot the game's landscape. In a blog post, Secret Base notes that there's more to the game like, say, "power ups, monsters, themes and chirpy musics" and more will be revealed later. Catch your first look in the trailer below:

Dragon Island has you exploring a huge world, battling and collecting over 200 different species of monsters. Each one can be evolved several times, and you can even collect recipes which will allow you to combine two different creatures to create a new hybrid version. Also, you'll be able to battle bosses and claim their spirits in order to summon them in future battles.

Another interesting feature is that there are no healing spells or items in the game. You can return to the main town hub to heal, but if you're out in battle and one of your creatures dies, then they're gone for good. I kind of like this as it adds an element of suspense and risk, and should affect how you go about tackling battles and completing the many dungeons in the game.

To balance this, even though you can only battle with 3 monsters at a time, you'll be able to bring more than that with you as you play. So if you do end up losing one, another monster from your queue will take its place. As you level up in the game, you'll gain the ability to carry more and more monsters with you.

An example of 3 evolutions of a dragon

The world which you can explore in Dragon Island is massive, with tons of points of interest to discover. These include towns, forests, random battles, and dungeons. When you come upon a dungeon, it is randomly generated and turns the game into more of a rogue-like, and there will be one infinite dungeon where you can grind and discover monsters and items, as well as compete on a leaderboard for how many floors you can descend.

Finally, the battle system will be a traditional 3-on-3 turn-based affair. Each monster can have up to 4 skills, each assigned a special swipe gesture. Although your character doesn't get involved in battles himself, you can still level him up as you would in a normal RPG, and then his stats will extend to the monsters under his control. In this way you can influence how you will play the game despite the massive number of different monsters in the game which are actually the ones doing battle.

I was blown away when I saw Dragon Island in action. The amount of creatures in the game, coupled with the ability to evolve them and level up your own character has the potential for just a ridiculous amount of customization and strategy. Along with a huge world to explore, a storyline, tons of items and abilities, and even an infinite dungeon, there will be plenty to keep you busy in Dragon Island. Be on the lookout for Dragon Island to hit in the coming months, or check out the thread in our forums for even more discussion on the game.

Sky Gnomes looks like it's going to be a ton of fun, and I'm really digging how you'll be able to race against the ghosts of other players. Also, it's a really attractive game to look at, something that doesn't quite show through as well in the above video. Further down the line, Foursaken is also in the beginning stages of a sequel to their first iOS title N.Y. Zombies [99¢]. They're aware of how overdone zombie games are in the App Store, but they also know that the original game has quite a following of fans, and they're eager to put everything they've learned through their last several releases to work on the N.Y. Zombies sequel.

Sky Gnomes is just being wrapped up, so shouldn't be too long of a wait, and beyond that keep your eyes out for the sequel to N.Y. Zombies to hit sometime in 2012.