We've been following Tasty Poison Games' Pocket RPG thread in our forums for quite a while now, and Crescent Moon Games just announced their intent to publish the game. Crescent Moon has quite a bit on its plate right now with a massive list of both recently released games and upcoming titles, but it's hard to not get excited over the potential of Pocket RPG, especially with the Crescent Moon team onboard.

The name of the game in Pocket RPG seems to be complete randomization, and is designed for games to have between 20-30 minutes of randomized dungeon crawling before starting over again. Three classes are included, each with a different play style and user interface. The Blade Master turns the game in to a melee-heavy hack and slash, the Dark Ranger behaves more like a dual stick shooter, and the Battle Mage plays similar to Solomon's Keep [99�]. There's a combo system with damage bonuses that stack as you slay more and more enemies, and I've been told there is tons of looting.

The loot you equip changes your characters stats and weaponry, resulting in tons of different possible combinations. An example we were given includes a Blade Master picking up a fire sword with a vampiric ring, a ring of strength, and a ring of cone damage. After placing a rune of speed on the fire sword you would be swinging like a maniac, spewing fire everywhere, doing extra damage, and sucking hit points with every attack… That is, until you meet up with a fire monster. Then, attacking will heal them.

Pocket RPG, oddly enough, will likely launch first for the iPad. According to the developers, iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G caused too much of a performance hit for them to release the game without further optimization. Regardless, both versions of the game are still in development and they hope to launch before Christmas. I love randomized games like this, and really can't wait for the discussions on our forums regarding which magical effects are best to stack for each class.

<!-- PHP 5.x -->

This isn't the first time that the soundtracks from iPhone games have been sold on iTunes, but this is the first compilation of indie iPhone music that I've seen that has been sold as an album. Atomicon's 1337 Mobile Game Music! Volume 1, aside from having some seriously awesome album art, also has some pretty great tracks:

Rocket Ride from Spazzle II

Battle Against the World from StarDunk

Galcon Theme from Galcon

iBlast Moki Theme 1 from iBlast Moki

Abduction from Marblenauts

Compression Theme from Compression

GeoSpark Theme from GeoSpark

iBlast Moki Theme 2 from iBlast Moki

Lift Me Up from Super 7

Pork Pie In The Sky from Spazzle II

Training from StarDunk

All too often it seems that we just take the background music of these games for granted (or just flat out play with it off), and it's cool to see the musicians of these indie iPhone games getting a little extra recognition. The whole album is available on iTunes for $9.99 or as individual tracks for 99�.

<!-- PHP 5.x -->

In late August, first time iPhone developer vol-2 released their first game No, Human [$1.99] on the App Store. No, Human is a fun physics-based puzzle game where you harness the power of flaming asteroids to rid the universe of humanity. This clever premise is matched with loads of style and gameplay that kept me playing through the whole game in one marathon session. As I mentioned in our review, really the only down side to No, Human is that it only had 50 levels. An update which just hit the App Store mere moments ago adds an additional 30, making it even easier to recommend.

Check out the trailer if you haven't seen it before:

If you've since removed No, Human from your device, sync it back again to give these new levels a try. If you hesitated on purchasing while you waited for additional content, now is the time to slam your finger down on the "Buy Now" button if physics puzzlers are your cup of tea.

<!-- PHP 5.x -->

Back in June we caught up with Venan Entertainment at E3. At the time, they showed an ad-supported free version of Space Miner [$4.99 / Lite] called Space Miner Blast that took the core shooter gameplay of the original and applied it to a fast-paced arcade style mini-game.

Space Miner Blast will be supported by unobtrusive in-game advertising, with optional DLC which will add features to the game and disable advertisements entirely. Most of the original Space Miner has been stripped out in favor of a quick survival game with a very basic upgrade system. All you do is see how big of a multiplier you can keep going by blasting as much ore as you possibly can (while defending against enemies of course). Here is a few minutes of gameplay:

Back at E3 they were reluctant to get specific on the release date of Space Miner Blast, but assured me it would be available "soon". Recently Venan posted a bit of an explanation on their blog, and like quite a few projects that were in the works at the time by other developers, both iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 threw Venan a curve ball. Aside from apologies, a few interesting tidbits come out of the blog post. First off, Venan has developed a system to download high resolution assets from within their games while still staying under the 20mb ceiling of over the air downloads. With any luck, their implementation of this system will inspire other developers as how to support the high resolution displays of both the iPhone 4 and iPad while staying under the over the air download limit has been the topic of discussion of quite a few iOS developer threads.

Venan provided the following high-res screenshots of Space Miner Blast:

Also, Space Miner will be getting some Retina Display love:

Space Miner Blast is nearing submission to Apple, and next up is a Space Miner sequel. I loved the original Space Miner, and really can't wait for both Space Miner Blast, and Space Miner turning in to a proper game series.

<!-- PHP 5.x -->

We are mere days away from the release of the sequel to Samurai: Way of the Warrior [$1.99] by Madfinger Games. We thought the original was great in our review, and was one of the most gory games to be released on the App Store when it first hit. The sequel, Samurai II: Vengeance will be available on Thursday of this week (or, more accurately, late Wednesday night) and we can't wait.

We got the details on all the cool things this sequel will have back in August, and basically Samurai II will be bigger, better, and look even more awesome than the original. Check out the trailer that was released not too long ago:

The art style of the Samurai games is great, and looks fantastic in motion. I can't wait to see this game running on the Retina Display of my iPhone 4. We'll take a closer look as soon as it is released.

<!-- PHP 5.x -->

In a somewhat surprising move, Gameloft released its space combat game Star Battalion [$6.99] to the App Store earlier today. While Sunday releases aren't generally common, another interesting thing about Star Battalion is that it is the first game that I know of to offer online co-op using either Apple's Game Center or Gameloft's own Gameloft Live! service. Strangely, the local and online multiplayer options only extend to co-op play, as there is no option for head-to-head battles in Star Battalion.

The single player campaign features multiple missions of interstellar conflict, all of which can be played online with another player. When playing by yourself, two AI controlled wingmen play through the game with you. The usual gamut of Gameloft features have made their way into Star Battalion, including Retina Display graphics and gyroscope-enabled controls for 4th generation devices. Onscreen gestures perform barrel rolls and backflips while in the midst of battle, and there is an option for virtual control stick controls if you're not a big fan of tilting.

This lengthy preview video of the Japanese version of the game from AppBank gives you a great idea of the kind of gameplay found in Star Battalion:

Lots of player impressions have been pouring into our forums throughout the day. So far the major points covered are that the actual combat in the game is really fun and feels a little bit like Starfox (though not on-rails); the online co-op is cool but the lack of a versus mode is disappointing; the voice acting is painfully bad; and the overall game is fairly short clocking in at about 3.5 hours in one gamer's experience. However, the replayability is naturally a bit higher than this due to the online multiplayer, achievements, and leaderboards. If you're in the mood for a new space combat game with impressive graphics, and an interesting online cooperative component, then take a look at Star Battalion and be sure to share your thoughts in our forums.

<!-- PHP 5.x -->