I'm not sure how it is that Kairosoft does it, but they've managed to nail a gameplay formula that's so engrossing that seemingly everyone is more than willing to overlook the fact that all of their games are mediocre ports of feature phone games. I, for one, don't care at all, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time building game studios, racing teams, shopping malls, schools, and all the other things the guys from Kairosoft have put me in charge of.

For a limited time, Grand Prix Story [99�] and Mega Mall Story [$1.99] are on sale. As you probably guessed by the title, in Mega Mall Story you manage a shopping mall. We explain how it all works in details in our review. Similarly, our review of Grand Prix Story goes over all the ins and outs of your racing career.

My favorite Kairosoft game is still Game Dev Story [$3.99] and I really recommend diving into that first if you've yet to play a Kairosoft title as its premise is likely the most familiar to readers of TouchArcade. Regardless, all the games are tons of fun (although some are more confusing than others) and you really can't go wrong with any of them.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 (and the upcoming Windows Phone 8 ) have always been incredibly interesting platforms to watch for those of us into smartphone gaming. Just like Web OS, I really don't see Microsoft building up enough steam to become a serious competitor to either iOS or Android. However, also like Web OS, Windows Phone 7 and 8 are home to a whole host of cool features that I (likely somewhat foolishly) have my fingers crossed in hopes that they eventually dribble down into iOS somehow. Specifically, the way Windows Phone 7 integrates Facebook is really slick, and I promise if you spend some time with one of the devices you'll find yourself saying, "Huh, that's neat" several times. Adding Nokia hardware to the mix only makes things more interesting, although, again, we'll have to wait and see how the market reacts.

Sadly, one potential nail in Windows Phone 7's gaming coffin is the complete lack of Unity support. In a recent interview with Develop, Unity CEO David Helgason explained that Unity won't be making its way to Windows Phone 7 due to the closed nature of the platform, although support for Windows Phone 8 is being looked at. Windows Phone apps and games need to be either be based on XNA or Silverlight, and getting Unity on the devices would require an exemption to this rule, which Microsoft has decided against.

Just like Web OS, Windows Phone has seemed to be a promising candidate in turning this two horse smartphone OS race into a three horse one, but I'm not sure that's possible without Unity, as the engine has become a major player in mobile gaming. When you look at the best games of the Android marketplaces, they're almost all utilizing Unity. Take those away, and, well, you've got the Windows Phone Market.

I could get up on my soap box here and go on about how competition breeds innovation and all that jazz, but I think we're all well aware of that. In today's market, third party apps are vital to the success of any mobile OS, and it's sad to see Microsoft taking this approach with Unity. Windows Phone owning gamers are losing out, as are developers that have existing Unity projects that could be quickly and easily ported to the platform- Especially since quick and easy porting is among the greatest strengths of Unity.

[Develop via Pocket Gamer]

Surely you've heard of Words With Friends by now, haven't you? I figure, if my mom plays it, that's a pretty good benchmark for the entire world knowing about a video game. Well, if you haven't, here's the gist- Words With Friends is basically the game of Scrabble with a social cross-platform twist. Utilizing the magic of asynchronous multiplayer and push alerts, you can play games of Scrabble with friends across the world. Cooler yet, it doesn't matter if your friends have Android phones or are even playing the Facebook version of the game… It just works.

It's casual and simple enough that you could play with your grandma, while being classic enough that it's fun for even the most hardcore types who enjoy playing word games with their friends and family. Seriously, I can't say enough good things about Words With Friends.

I can say one bad thing though, in that the advertisements that power the free version can get a little obnoxious at times, especially if you have a hatred for interstitial ads… Which is exactly where today's sale comes in. For a limited time, you can get the ad-free version of Words With Friends for 99�. I can almost promise you'll get more than 99� worth of entertainment out of this game, but, if you're a cautious App Store customer you can always try the free version first. All of your games will transfer over if and when you decide to spring for the paid version.

I sat down with Blueprint 3D [$0.99 / HD] last night, planning to get a feel for it. When I got back up, I'd 3-starred every level and earned every achievement. It isn't terribly hard, and it's short enough to be completed in under an hour, but I'm not complaining. Rarely do you find a game that's so simply entertaining.

When you launch a level in Blueprint 3D, you're presented with an explosion of scribbles. With single finger swipes you rotate those scribbles until they start to line up into a recognizable image. Tweak and reposition it until it's right, rotate it with two fingers, and you're done. This only takes a few seconds once you get the hang of it.

You'd think that would make for an unsatisfying experience, but with unbroken music the levels flow together into themed packs of 35 or so. As you complete the levels in rapid-fire style, you earn stars and your completion time adds up. So instead of being per-level, the challenge is on a per-pack basis. Can you get your completion time under 5 minutes? Can you collect every star in a pack? Most puzzle games involve hitting your head against a wall at least a little bit -- Blueprint 3D is a much faster, smoother experience.

It helps that the packs are charming, with Da Vinci-esque devices to reveal in the Medieval pack and stuff straight out of Star Wars in the Space pack. I want more, though. The final packs are Tech and Transport, which left me a bit cold toward the end of the game. Bring on the niche packs, filled with geeky references. Or taxonomic drawings of plants and animals given this treatment. The possibilities seem nearly endless, and FDG Entertainment are eager for ideas. You can share yours with them in our discussion thread.

One of the things that makes Blueprint 3D so successful is its attention to detail. The game's theme changes to an appropriate style for each level pack, electronic for the Electronics pack, and more like something out of Metal Gear for the military pack. The desktops change too, and the blueprint styles and tools.

True, the game is simple. Once you figure out how to spin a blueprint around and line up one obvious spot or another, you'll rarely run into trouble. If you do, you are given five level skips (you can buy more, but you really shouldn't need to). But simple isn't always bad, and here it works beautifully. If you want a taste first, the team also made Starlight, a flash game with a very similar style of play. If you need a whole lot of bang for your buck, you might want to look elsewhere. If you're down with small and charming experiences, though, Blueprint 3D deserves a look.

You know how around Halloween you bought five bags of Fun Size Snickers to give out to trick or treaters, but somehow only three bags made it into the candy bowl and now you're feeling really bloated and gross and you really need to look good for upcoming holiday parties so you're eating grilled salmon three times a day and that would be fine, except all you can think about is how you really want to eat a bunch of donuts and cake and candy? Yeah, uh, me neither. However, it's obvious that the people at Com2uS were in throes of weight loss-related fantasy when creating their latest game, Chocohero [$.99].

Before we get too far, we need to establish whether or not you should play this game. Are you diabetic? Has your dentist recommended you stay away from sweet, delicious candy? If so, you shouldn't have a problem, because this is a video game and not real life, duh. You play as Chipster, the Chocohero the game is named for, who must save his Chocobit friends from an impending milk flood in the land of Smoresdom. These Chocobits (which look a little like bunnies, except better because they are candy) are trapped on delicious pastry ledges made of things called Cakems, which you must destroy or work around in order to rescue your friends before the floods come.

Basically, you're constantly falling and the faster you fall, the more likely you are to rack up points, Chocobits, and powerups before the milk catches up to you. You control Chipster's fall by either tilting your device or by using its one-touch control. The controls are perfect (though it's not like this kind of game demands precision), and the powerups that are available are simple and well-designed. You can stop time, attract nearby coins to you, and pick up the means to unleash Fever mode (where you act like a tornado and barrel down for a few seconds, breaking everything in your path).

The game gives you a seemingly endless stream of objectives to complete (rescue X Chocobits, destroy x Cakems, etc.) that unlock progressively longer capes as you achieve them. The longer your cape, the greater your falling speed and the more likely you are to avoid the milk flood long enough to rescue more of your friends and cause even more damage to baked goods. The beauty of this is that it both gives you an incentive to keep playing and the means to progress juuust a little further each time, ensuring the game never gets boring.

Chocohero is certainly not the only game of its type out there, but it's definitely one of the best designed. In addition to tight controls and well-designed levels, the art style and music are perfectly complementary (and, of course, super-adorable). For about a dollar, this is a really fun little diversion for pretty much any time you have a few minutes, especially when you're waiting for your next dentist's appointment.

This past April, Owlchemy Labs was set to release Smuggle Truck to the App Store, a game about transporting illegal immigrants across the border in a rusty old pickup truck. Due to Apple's sensitivity to the subject matter, however, what we ended up seeing released was Snuggle Truck [Free/HD], a game about transporting fuzzy stuffed animals across the border into the zoo. While initially being disappointed in the sudden theme switch, I actually found the colorful characters and complete silliness of the premise to be a bigger success than the originally intended idea. And as we noted in our review, Snuggle Truck was so damn fun anyway that the theme really didn't matter much at all.

Now for the first time, the developers of Snuggle Truck are offering both the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad versions of their game for free. While the decision to go free was to get more players trying the game and building their own levels using the excellent built-in level editor that was released in August, Owlchemy Labs does hope to be monetizing this freebie promotion by offering a selection of items in the new in-game DLC store.

First thing to point out is that not everything in the store is paid. All users will be able to download a pack of 5 brand new developer-created levels, and there is an additional 5 pack of new levels available for 99� as well. Also, a new time freeze power up is available in the store free of charge. Another new addition to the game is different truck skins. The first is a zoo truck skin that is available for a 99� IAP, with more skins planned for the future. You can also buy an augmentation for 99� that will make your next 100 power up items last 50% longer, and you can pay $1.99 to unlock all of the original 42 levels immediately rather than through normal game progression.

Finally, if you're just down to throw some money at the developers because you like their game a lot, or if you're the type who likes to have prestigious in-game rewards, their are 3 different developer support IAP options you can buy. For 99� you'll get the Indie Supporter badge which is prominently displayed on the main menu so you can prove to all of your friends that you dropped an entire dollar on it. Next is a $4.99 Solid Supporter IAP which gives you an even shinier main menu badge to cherish. Finally, the most interesting option is the $9.99 Hardcore Supporter IAP, which not only gives you the shiniest badge of them all, but you can also email in a photo of the badge to Owlchemy Labs and they will give you some sort of customized gift. What is it? I have no idea, but I'm tempted to buy it just to find out.

While the game being free is exciting and there is a bunch of cool new content in this latest update, it does come with a down side. Snuggle Truck is now ad-supported. If you purchased the game previously then don't fret, your game will remain ad-free. If you're new to the game and are just downloading it since the free promotion, then you'll have to deal with a drop-down ad every few levels or so. It's honestly not that annoying considering how much fun the game is, but tolerance to ads is definitely subjective. If you buy the $4.99 or $9.99 developer support IAP, then you can disable the ads, which is nice but it would have been much nicer if that applied to the 99� option as well.

At any rate, it's definitely a good thing for people who haven't tried out Snuggle Truck to be able to grab it for free, and given the new IAP options, it sounds like it will remain free for a while, possibly for good. If you're a previous owner, then definitely grab the new update for the additional levels and DLC options, as well as various other tweaks and enhancements. And don't forget the in-game level editor which has already produced hundreds of user created levels, all sorted by rating and easily accessible within the game. If you're new to Snuggle Truck, now is a great time to finally check it out with the new free ad-supported version.

OrangePixel have a few iOS platform games under their belt. Back in June, we reviewed Meganoid [$1.99] calling it a quality retro platformer with responsive controls. In September, our review of Stardash [$1.99] highlighted the challenging difficulty levels and Game Boy style presentation.�Plus they've released Super Drill Panic [$1.99] and Time Chaos [99�]. Now, OrangePixel has released their latest action platform game, named simply: INC [$1.99], which is probably my favorite of their releases.

INC uses a comic-inspired silhouette art style which immediately captured my interest. Your character is a square with legs and blinking little eyes who runs, jumps and shoots his way through levels that are intentionally pixelated with rough edges. The graphics are 8-bit and chunky, with backgrounds reminiscent of Canabalt [$2.99]. And there's a chip-tune soundtrack, which is always popular in any retro platform game.

Another distinctive feature is that when you fire your gun, the word "Ratatat" appears above your weapon, much like a comic description of a sound effect. And if you hold your finger down, the gun automatically fires and many Ratatat's appear. But if you fire too long, the gun overheats and the word "Click!" displays. These little text captions are also used to convey storyline, to show enemies abusing you and to display on-screen hints.

INC contains four different worlds, with forty levels in total, including boss fights against various machines.� To complete a level, you find and activate three signal boosters before entering the exit.� Sometimes the boosters are hidden in the terrain and only reveal themselves once shot, so part of the challenge is to locate them, which becomes harder in the later levels. Once a booster is activated, you can see its signal being transmitted.

This is another platformer with short levels, like Mos Speedrun [$1.99 / Free] where the goal is to complete each level within a limited timeframe. Although INC's levels are slightly longer and you're actually armed and dangerous. If you beat the target time you'll receive a one-star rating. The other two stars are awarded for killing all enemies and having extra lives remaining after completing the level.

Along the way you encounter trigger-happy robots, flying enemy machines, clusters of small aggressive spiders, falling objects to dodge, switches to activate and objects to blast into position. By collecting "Credz" (coins) for points, you can boost your ranking on the OpenFeint and Game Center leaderboards. There's two ranking tables covering high scores and number of kills, plus 12 achievements.� Your progress is stored in the cloud via OpenFeint to allow device swapping without restarting (a fix for this has already been submitted, which also resolves the "no bullets" bug). Cloud saving is increasingly becoming a selling point for games.

By activating boosters, collecting "creds" and shooting enemies, your character's level bar slowly increases. But if you die, your experience lowers and might drop back down a level. Your weapon has three levels of upgrade (although the developers indicate they may add more), which is particularly helpful in the later levels.

There are two main control options available. The default is "touch based", which features left, right, jump and shoot buttons. The alternative is a tilt and touch combination, with tilting to move and buttons for jump and shoot.� Personally, the default controls felt fine on the iPad, however the buttons are positioned differently on the iPhone with some members of our discussion thread finding their placement awkward. As always, the safest way to keep gamers happy is to let them position their own buttons. INC supports� iCade and iControlPad, plus it works with the Joypad [Free] app, if you'd rather use your iPod or iPhone as the controller.

In our earlier reviews for both Meganoid and Stardash we mentioned that the menu systems didn't provide quick access to other levels or the main menu. Unfortunately, this game has similar issues. The game-over screen has no "exit to menu" option, forcing players to start another game and then exit via the pause menu. The level selection screen requires you to scroll through each level to reach the later levels. And although INC lists the number of stars achieved for each level, it doesn't clearly stipulate which of the three objective(s) are outstanding.

OrangePixel keep releasing platform games, as if trying to evolve the perfect platforming experience and INC is another step in the right direction. We wondered if their next release will be another platformer?� They responded: "We plan to do a horizontal-shooter first, but we also have plans for more platform games, because we simply love them!" That's sounds good to us, because we are always eager to get our hands on another solid platformer.

Needing no introduction, Asteroids is one of those classic arcade games that everyone has played in some form or fashion. Atari looks to capitalize on that namesake with Asteroids GUNNER [Free], a modern upgrade to the Asteroids series which converts the game to a dual stick shooter complete with upgrades, unlockables, and IAP. While Asteroids GUNNER offers an adequate gameplay experience, the significant IAP barriers raises some questions as to whether the game is worth a significant play through.

Gameplay-wise, Asteroids GUNNER plays similarly to Space Miner with dual-stick controls instead of thrust-based movement. �Interestingly enough, Space Miner plays closer to classic Asteroids than Asteroids Gunner does. Everything from the controls to the plethora of asteroids to even the ability to customize your ships should feel familiar to any veterans of this genre. In fact, Asteroids' main problem is that it all seems a bit too familiar � the game does very little to differentiate itself from the pack in any aspects. However, as far as the basic gameplay goes, Asteroids GUNNER does hit all the notes, and doesn't do anything to detract from the generic dual stick shooter experience.

Despite these similarities, there are some differences. For one, the narrative in Asteroids GUNNER is non-existent; the game is divided into levels, and the goal is always the same, take out all the asteroids in each respective level as fast as possible with score bonuses for not damaging your ship. While I'm not going to ding an Asteroids game too hard for its lack of story, folks looking for a narrative shooter more akin to what is typically found on the App Store�will probably be disappointed.

In addition, while Asteroids GUNNER has several currencies that can be collected (or bought with IAP) for upgrades, the main focus seems to be centered on achieving high scores. The main game mode provides you with a few lives with the goal being to score as many points as possible before losing them all. Also, quite a few of the ship upgrades available are based around increasing score multipliers (and nothing else). The emphasis on scoring appears to be one of the few throwbacks to classic Asteroids gameplay, but it just seems out of place when the rest of the game is focused on currency collection and upgrades.

One of the 'modern' upgrades to the Asteroid gameplay found in Asteroids GUNNER is the incorporation of freemium and IAP elements. Unfortunately, I just don't think a lot of the freemium portions were incorporated well. While the first ship and first world are available free to all players, each subsequent world and different ship requires 'Space Bucks' to unlock. Space Bucks cannot be earned while playing the game - they can only be purchased as IAP.

This is a game design decision that I just don't agree with; freemium games should allow players to unlock all or most of the content by putting in enough hours in the game. The primary gold currency used for upgrading your ships and powerups is earned perpetually during play and can also be purchased as IAP, which is how I feel the previously mentioned unlocks should have been addressed. As it stands, restricting a whole 2/3rds of the game to IAP just seems a bit extreme and is going to turn off a lot of gamers.

Asteroids GUNNER is somewhat of an awkward game to recommend. While the game itself is free and a decent portion of the gameplay is available to peruse, you're going to have to spend some cash to unlock a majority of the content. Unfortunately, the lack of anything to differentiate itself from the rest of the dual-stick shooters means that there's a good chance that you won't bother with unlocking all the content. If you're looking for a quick-fix in the dual stick shooter genre, check out Asteroids GUNNER. However, if you're the sort of gamer that is a completionist, stay away from this new�Asteroids, as the IAP barrier is just not worth it.