Crescent Moon Games made a huge splash with their entrance on to the App Store with Ravensword: The Fallen King [$2.99 / Free]. Since the success of Ravensword, Crescent Moon Games has been extremely busy, both on developing their own games and positioning themselves as a publisher for other indie developers as well. These projects include the recently released Rimelands: Hammer of Thor [$4.99], UltraKid: Mystery of the Mutants, and others. Much like the recent dramatic before and after trailers of Aralon: Sword and Shadow, Crescent Moon's involvement in Mobile Game Garage's Gears seems to be a similar extreme graphical makeover.

Check out the before and after:

Gears is going to be a ball roller based heavily on Steampunk influences filled with puzzles that involve turning gears, growing vines, and other fantasy-based elements. The game is going to launch with full Retina Display support sometime before Christmas along with the other games Crescent Moon Games has in production. There have been a ton of ball rollers released on the App Store, mostly because the games work so well with the tilt controls of the iPhone, but I'm always excited to see familiar game types taken to new levels.

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Martin Kool describes himself as "'just some guy' with a family at home with 3 kids to take care of (and one coming up) and a day job" who also happens to have an insatiable love for old school Sierra adventure games. That day job he mentions involves doing "kick ass things with the web," as he put it, so it's not much of a surprise that when looking for tools to bring these old games to modern platforms he settled on completely cross-platform HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Currently, nine of these classic adventure games including the Kings Quest series, a Leisure Suit Larry game, and others are playable on his web site Sarien.net.

This all would be cool enough by itself, but Martin is hard at work on the final touches of adapting his web game engine that all these games run in to be (as he put it) "a real kick-ass iPad experience". When finished, these games will have their own special URL's users will be able to navigate to, then save as icons via the add to home screen functionality that already exists on the device without any jailbreaking, emulation, or anything else. These games will be entirely touch friendly, and require no typing. Check out the video he put together:

When Kool approached us about this, I definitely thought this was something that needed to be on TouchArcade, but had to ask the inevitable question of whether or not he was ready for the attention he will get. (Specifically, from Activision's legal department.) To him, this is a labor of love. He's running these games at his own cost, without ads. So far he's had over 2 million players stop by his site. He said he'd stop immediately if Activision sends him a cease and desist� but more than anything he just hopes that Activision either grants him a noncommercial license or somehow involves him in republishing these games in HD like he has.

Sarien.net is an outstanding tribute to these old school adventure games, and if all goes as planned, the site will have iPad friendly versions of the included titles within a month. It's no secret we love retro gaming around here, and we'll post more information on this project as soon as we get it.

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The guys over at Retro Dreamer released a new gameplay video of their upcoming puzzler Linkoidz today, and much like their other game Sneezies [99� / Lite / HD], it looks like it's going to provide some awesome classic puzzle gameplay. Somewhat similar to Magical Drop Touch [$2.99], the name of the game in Linkoidz is to suck up the differently colored Linkoidz with your gravity gun then shoot them back at similarly colored groupings to fire off massive chain reactions of Linkoidz destruction. The only thing protecting you from certain doom is your energy shield which can withstand stacks of Linkoidz, but begins to get weakened as too many pile up. However, clearing Linkoidz powers up your shield potentially resulting in being able to withstand massive stacks as long as you can keep the matching gravy train rolling.

According to the Retro Dreamer Blog, Linkoidz is in review and currently they're aiming at a release date of October 26th. We liked Sneezies (and the other Retro Dreamer games) quite a bit, and I expect Linkoidz is going to be just as good. Look forward to a closer look at the game as its release date approaches.

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One of the lowpoints of the Fifa World Cup this year was all the blatant minimal-contact theatrical performances players attempted� usually with one eye on the referee too, to gauge his reaction. Distinctive Developments has taken it upon themselves to reinject some testosterone into the world game, through its newest iOS creation, Bonecruncher Soccer [99�], an obvious take on Backbreaker Football: Tackle Alley for the round ball game.

Much like Backbreaker, in Bonecruncher Soccer, your ultimate goal is to run the field of opponents with the ball at your feet; evading them with your athletic ability and speed. What Bonecruncher brings to the table (besides only a mildly creative title) is what happens when you do reach the goals at the other end. Borrowing from the basics of other casual soccer titles, your player lines up his kick and waits for a flick of your finger to direct his shot.

The running mechanic in Bonecruncher is very heavily borrowed from Backbreaker and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. They've clearly learned what makes these types of games fun; with a series of challenges divided into different difficulty classes offering solid gameplay progression. Each level you face off against a growing number of violent defenders with you squarely in their sights and not a moment's consideration of where the ball is. There's certainly no call for diving here, as defenders are more than willing to provide all the incentive you need to end with your face eating dirt and minus a working limb or two.

You get around these juggernauts with both your dribbling ability and speed. A side-step maneuver and the more elaborate Roulette spin is performed in either direction by swiping vertically or horizontally on the edges of your screen. Holding down anywhere else on your screen causes your player to run, and tilting your device affects the direction of your sprint. The dribbling is straightforward and fun, though we wish it showcased more of the impressive skills of the Peles and Ronaldhinos of the game than just these two.

Though that would likely result in less of the spectacular tackles that lends the game its name. You wouldn't think that soccer could compare with some of the more bone-jarring spear-tackles of Backbreaker but Bonecruncher pulls it off. Slide tackles fly in from behind or beside you and care not whether they hit man or ball first (or whether studs are flashing). So long as they knock you on your rear, defenders will hit you full force with very audible, dare we say it, bone crunching force. The fact that it's replayed to you (though without the replay controls of backbreaker) makes it all the more gruesome.

To extend and vary the gameplay further, Bonecruncher implements several gameplay features in the latter levels that are again reminescent of Backbreaker. Gates to aim for and barriers to avoid all offer their own challenges once the basic evasion moves are mastered. In fact, the game becomes so saturated with players and obstacles in the later two Pro and World Class levels, that the 5 lives you're given to complete each level will soon seem less than fair. Make no mistake, Bonecruncher is no pushoever, and it'll take quite a while (and many a knee-reconstrction) to work through all 40 levels and Game Center achievements. Furthermore, once that's done there's a timed shootout mode available which lets you play just the goal-scoring element.

Bonecruncher Soccer is a lot of fun that should prove a winner for fans of the only remaining football game that keeps the ball at your feet. It looks and sounds terrific and thankfully supports the Retina display right out of the box. Though it borrows unashamedly from Backbreaker, it has added its own touches with the addition of the shooting mechanic and a host of customizable players and kits. We still think the gameplay could have done with more flip-flaps, step-overs and drag-backs, but maybe it's something to look forward to in future updates. That said, Bonecruncher is an effortless recommendation to both Flick Football fans and Backbreaker fans who don't mind a bit of soccer on the side, too.

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The App Store is home to some seriously weird games. Whether you're playing a bear driving a car around the forest in Enviro-Bear 2010 [99�] or a cat inside a ball shooting at a giant cup of noodles in Meow Meow Happy Fight [99�/HD], there are many strange experiences to be found on the iOS platform. The latest one that I've come across is called Font Monsters [$1.99/Lite] from Japanese developer Muu Muu, who have previously released the similarly strange and generically named Block Guy [$2.99/Lite] to the App Store. Font Monsters is a text-based shooter (literally, you shoot text) that has a really wacky style, with interesting character designs and catchy music, and it requires some fast reactions to engage in its challenging gameplay. It's also completely unlike anything else available on the App Store.

In Font Monsters, a series of monsters comprised purely of different keyboard characters come marching towards your first-person perspective. You defeat the monsters by shooting fonts at them one by one using your keyboard until there is nothing left of them, and the text characters you shoot must be the same type that the monsters are made up of. If you shoot a character at them that's not a part of the monster, they will fire back a random character at you that must be quickly typed to shoot it down before it hits you. If the monster gets to where you are then he (or she?) starts beating on you mercilessly, deducting life from a gauge at the top of your keyboard.

It's a totally odd concept, but also satisfying and fun to play. There are 5 levels to play through in Font Monsters, each one more difficult than the last. In each level you must defeat a certain number of monsters in a row to complete it, from 15 in the first level all the way to a whopping 50 in level 5. If you fail to beat a monster and they deplete your life gauge to zero, you must start the entire sequence over again. The monsters also become more difficult with each level. In level 1 they approach you in a fairly straightforward manner, allowing you to inspect them pretty easily to see what font characters you should shoot at them. In later levels they start to flip, stretch, and skew all over the place making it much harder to tell what fonts they are made up of.

You earn a score for defeating each monster which goes towards a cumulative score at the end of each level. Although it's not explained in the game, it appears that the quicker you beat a monster the better score you earn. Unfortunately, the top score for each level is only saved locally, as this would be a perfect game for online score tracking using Game Center.

One of my favorite things about Font Monsters is how cleverly designed all the enemies are using just font characters. There are 60 different monsters in the game, some fairly basic and some quite complex but all of them are interesting. A very cool feature in the game is a catalog that lets you view all of the different monsters that you've faced and even select them individually to do battle against them in one of the 5 difficulty levels. The catalog is definitely a nice touch and gives you incentive to keep playing and "collect 'em all" for future practice or admiration.

One big problem with Font Monsters that is kind of unavoidable is that as you keep playing you start to recognize what font characters make up the different enemies. Once this starts happening, the game can be a bit easy as you face these monsters over again. I was originally pulling my hair out shooting "O"s and "I"s at a particular monster before I finally figured out it was actually the percentage sign (%) I should have been shooting. Remembering this the next time I faced him, he was much easier to defeat. It's still a challenge to figure out the monsters the first time you face them though, and even if you recognize them they can be difficult to kill on the later levels.

Font Monsters is one of those quirky titles that must be experienced to really understand. Luckily there's a lite version so there's no risk in at least checking out the game to see if it appeals to you. I found that I was having way more fun playing the game than I though I would after just watching the video, and players in our forums are liking the game as well. Sure, it could definitely use some kind of online high score mechanism, and possibly even a greater variety in monsters. What would really be cool is if you could create your own monsters using the available keyboard characters and have them be added into the regular rotation in the game. But even as it stands now, Font Monsters is a totally unique experience that offers a good challenge with plenty of content.

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