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.