Early last month we took a look at Bug Heroes [$1.99], a dual stick shooter of sorts that borrows gameplay elements from many different genres. In the game, you play as one of three bugs, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. You must switch between them to protect your pile of food, and dish out punishment to the invaders looking to steal it. We went in to detail in our review:

The bulk of Bug Heroes takes place in the Adventure mode. Here you battle in 4 different environments using a combination of three different characters as you defend a stockpile of food from an onslaught of hungry insect enemies. Money is collected as you defeat enemies which can then be used on various types of upgrades. You can add several different types of turrets to your food pile to protect it while you are away, or you can buy better weaponry to increase the offense of each character. Gameplay involves exploring each environment to collect additional food to add to your stockpile while simultaneously fending off enemies. The game ends when all three characters die or your entire food reserve is depleted. …Read More

The 1.1 update landed mere moments ago which adds new abilities, makes a whole bunch of balance changes, a ton of bug fixes, and… adds universal compatibility as well as Game Center.

Bug Heroes was an absolutely fantastic game in its original 1.0 release, and now that it's received this hefty update, you're really running out of excuses to not give this game a try. The way it blends dual stick shooter, castle defense, and RPG elements is really clever, and I still stand by what we said in our review: Bug Heroes makes it very difficult to go back to playing a standard dual stick shooter.

It's really not an every day occurrence that a puzzle game piques my interest, and while I've yet to get my hands on RoboSockets, I really can't wait to try it. According to the preview material, instead of being a simple match three, RoboSockets also mixes in gameplay from both Tetris and pipe games. Instead of typical tiles, you're working with robots, and each robots needs to connect to a chain of five or more to be cleared. Doing so gives you energy, which plays in to the story of the game where you're attempting to revive the robot civilzation.

Check out the trailer:

RoboSockets is due for release on February 22nd for 99�. For more details on the game, take a look at the game's thread in our forums.

This has been a crazy week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. I saw a ton of different kinds of mobile phones, tablets, and other devices running all sorts of non-iOS apps and operating systems. Overall, it was really interesting checking out what the competition has to offer. Unfortunately, it was rather difficult to truly gauge the relative gaming performance of these new phones and tablets, as curiously enough, most were just loaded with a smattering of ports of last year's Gameloft games (or older, in the case of Shrek Kart) and Angry Birds. When asked, despite superior hardware, most developers still seemed reluctant to invest too much time or energy in to building games for these new devices, really making me wonder how much longer this "wait and see" approach will persist.

Anyway, the reason I was even in attendance at Mobile World Congress in the first place was to participate as a judge in the International Mobile Gaming Awards. The whole process was incredibly elaborate, with everyone involved taking the whole thing very seriously. It was great deliberating games with an international pool of judges, and seeing what people from particular regions tended to prefer. I hope to play a bigger role in the event next year as well, and hopefully can get some more developers to submit their games for judging than we saw this year.

Oddly enough, even though all mobile platforms were allowed entry, iOS games swept the awards:

Best Casual Game: Plants vs. Zombies, $2.99 � [Review / Forum Thread]
Best Real World Game: AR Invaders, 99� � [Forum Thread]
Best Sports Game: Snowboard Hero, Free � [Forum Thread]
Excellence in Design: Infinity Blade, $5.99 � [Review / Forum Thread]
Excellence in Game Play: Beyond Ynth, $1.99 � [Review / Forum Thread]
Most innovative Game: Papa Sangre, $6.99 � [Review / Forum Thread]
People's Choice Award: Perfect Cell, $4.99 � [Review / Forum Thread]
Operator's Choice Award: Snowboard Hero, Free � [Forum Thread]
Grand Prix / Game of the Year: Beyond Ynth, $1.99 � [Review / Forum Thread]

I'll try to raise more awareness to the IMGA when entries for 2012 are starting to be accepted as after I posted about the nominees being announced, I got confused instant messages from quite a few developers who weren't even aware they could enter. Regardless, some great games won, and hopefully we can get some even better games submitted next year.

If you weren't paying attention to iOS gaming last Summer, then you may have missed a total gem called Pix'n Love Rush [99�]. The best way to describe Pix'n Love Rush is to say that it's the platforming genre's answer to WarioWare. The goal is to run, jump, and shoot your way through various bite-sized platforming sections that appear quickly one after the other. As you scored well and built up your multiplier, the "skin" of the game would change to one of 7 different retro-gaming themes.

The action was frantic and fun in Pix'n Love Rush, and we really enjoyed the game in our review from last June. We also recommended it as a game to get in our 2010 Buyer's Guide, I chose it as one of my personal favorites of 2010, and Apple even recognized it as one of "The Best Games You've Never Played".

So while pretty much everyone had been enjoying the heck out of Pix'n Love Rush, it never really got any of the updates that had been talked about by the developers in our forums. It was updated last September with Game Center achievements and leaderboards, and a native iPad version called Pix'n Love Rush DX [$1.99] was released in December that included a few additional features, but none of the promised additional modes were ever added to the timed 5 minute and endless modes in the game.

Now, more than 8 months after the initial release, the iPhone version of Pix'n Love Rush is finally getting some update love. The big new addition in this latest update is an endless runner type of game called Cursed Rush. Here you automatically move to the right as you jump from platform to platform as they disappear from under your feet. There are five difficulty levels in this new mode, each with their own set layout of platforms. Scoring is based on the percentage of the level that you complete, so in this way it doesn't really seem "endless" though I'm not totally sure what happens when you reach 100%.

Besides the Cursed Rush mode which is proving to be a ton of fun, there are a number of other welcome additions in this update. The menus have been redesigned and are more streamlined, and the long-awaited ability to flip the screen has finally been added. Also the controls feel much tighter, and you can now pause the game and move the virtual buttons around to better suit you, which is fantastic as I've always felt the jump and shoot buttons were too far apart. Finally, and best of all, there are two blank options on the mode selection screen that hint at additional modes to come soon (and one "not so soon"), so I'm really excited to see what's in store next for Pix'n Love Rush.

If you already own the game then hurry to your iTunes and grab this latest update. If you've never heard of Pix'n Love Rush, it comes highly recommended if you like platforming games, high scoring challenges, or awesome retro graphics.