Last Thursday at Macworld 2011 I stopped by the booth for XMG Studio and had a chance to check out their latest game that should be releasing very soon. XMG is responsible for some incredibly popular titles on the App Store, like Drag Racer [$2.99/Free/HD], Little Metal Ball [$2.99/Free/HD], Cannon Cadets [99�/Free], and most recently Inspector Gadget's MAD Dash [99�/HD].

Their upcoming title is called Cows Vs. Aliens, and after spending some time playing it I think it has the potential to be another popular addition to their library. Cows Vs. Aliens is a casual title built on a super simple game mechanic. Waves of cows will spawn from the bottom of the screen, and it's your goal to herd them into the barn entrance at the top of the screen. Aliens will begin to show up in the herd, and you must scoot them off to the sides of the screen before they have a chance to get in your barn, in which case it's game over.

What makes Cows Vs. Aliens so fun to play is the interesting controls. Touching the screen creates a circular barrier of sorts, and you'll use your two thumbs to pinch and push the herd towards the barn. You can even use up to 5 points of multitouch on the iPhone (up to 11 on the iPad) to try and utilize different strategies for better results. The waves increase in size as you progress, with both more cows and more aliens providing a greater challenge as the game goes on.

Cows Vs. Aliens is one of those games that is really easy for anyone to play, but offers a real challenge when going for higher scores. Game Center integration with leaderboards and achievements adds to that allure. Cows Vs. Aliens should be submitted in the next few days, if not already, so be on the lookout for it soon. XMG also has roughly 6 new titles slated for the rest of the year, including some that utilize interesting licensed IP, so we'll be bringing you more information on these upcoming titles as it becomes available.

Last Thursday at Macworld 2011 I stopped by the booth for XMG Studio and had a chance to check out their latest game that should be releasing very soon. XMG is responsible for some incredibly popular titles on the App Store, like Drag Racer [$2.99/Free/HD], Little Metal Ball [$2.99/Free/HD], Cannon Cadets [99�/Free], and most recently Inspector Gadget's MAD Dash [99�/HD].

Their upcoming title is called Cows Vs. Aliens, and after spending some time playing it I think it has the potential to be another popular addition to their library. Cows Vs. Aliens is a casual title built on a super simple game mechanic. Waves of cows will spawn from the bottom of the screen, and it's your goal to herd them into the barn entrance at the top of the screen. Aliens will begin to show up in the herd, and you must scoot them off to the sides of the screen before they have a chance to get in your barn, in which case it's game over.

What makes Cows Vs. Aliens so fun to play is the interesting controls. Touching the screen creates a circular barrier of sorts, and you'll use your two thumbs to pinch and push the herd towards the barn. You can even use up to 5 points of multitouch on the iPhone (up to 11 on the iPad) to try and utilize different strategies for better results. The waves increase in size as you progress, with both more cows and more aliens providing a greater challenge as the game goes on.

Cows Vs. Aliens is one of those games that is really easy for anyone to play, but offers a real challenge when going for higher scores. Game Center integration with leaderboards and achievements adds to that allure. Cows Vs. Aliens should be submitted in the next few days, if not already, so be on the lookout for it soon. XMG also has roughly 6 new titles slated for the rest of the year, including some that utilize interesting licensed IP, so we'll be bringing you more information on these upcoming titles as it becomes available.

Last Thursday at Macworld 2011 I stopped by the booth for XMG Studio and had a chance to check out their latest game that should be releasing very soon. XMG is responsible for some incredibly popular titles on the App Store, like Drag Racer [$2.99/Free/HD], Little Metal Ball [$2.99/Free/HD], Cannon Cadets [99�/Free], and most recently Inspector Gadget's MAD Dash [99�/HD].

Their upcoming title is called Cows Vs. Aliens, and after spending some time playing it I think it has the potential to be another popular addition to their library. Cows Vs. Aliens is a casual title built on a super simple game mechanic. Waves of cows will spawn from the bottom of the screen, and it's your goal to herd them into the barn entrance at the top of the screen. Aliens will begin to show up in the herd, and you must scoot them off to the sides of the screen before they have a chance to get in your barn, in which case it's game over.

What makes Cows Vs. Aliens so fun to play is the interesting controls. Touching the screen creates a circular barrier of sorts, and you'll use your two thumbs to pinch and push the herd towards the barn. You can even use up to 5 points of multitouch on the iPhone (up to 11 on the iPad) to try and utilize different strategies for better results. The waves increase in size as you progress, with both more cows and more aliens providing a greater challenge as the game goes on.

Cows Vs. Aliens is one of those games that is really easy for anyone to play, but offers a real challenge when going for higher scores. Game Center integration with leaderboards and achievements adds to that allure. Cows Vs. Aliens should be submitted in the next few days, if not already, so be on the lookout for it soon. XMG also has roughly 6 new titles slated for the rest of the year, including some that utilize interesting licensed IP, so we'll be bringing you more information on these upcoming titles as it becomes available.

It was back in October that we began following the saga of Sarien.net, a retro Sierra adventure game portal setup by developer Martin Kool. In April 2009 his website began offering entirely web-based remakes of classic Sierra adventures, built entirely with HTML, CSS, and Javascript (though the project really began back in 2001 with a Sierra-inspired graphical chat client). Last year, Kool began creating versions of these web-based games with an interface and graphical treatment appropriate for the iPad and mobile Safari. The first iPad release to go online was Space Quest, which we previewed in November, followed by King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, earlier this month. These games were basically reverse engineered, ground-up remakes and were not licensed by Sierra. And, as such, last week's news of Sarien.net receiving a cease & desist letter from Sierra and closing its doors was sad, but not highly surprising.

It seems the Sarien.net story is not over, however. Kool has just revealed in a lengthy blog post that includes a fully history of the project that, in an unexpected turn of events, Activision has contacted him with a proposal offering limited official authorization to publish a subset of his remakes online.

Activision proposed to officially authorize Sarien.net to publish the first game of any series in its multiplayer HTML5 form. As it may generate interest in also playing the games' successors, Sarien.net will provide a link to Steam and other services that offer the full game collections. To me that sounds beyond "fair enough", and very reasonable. Also, as Activision may (or may not) choose to provide official releases of these games through the AppStore, they requested that all iPad versions of the games be removed.

Now even though it is based upon the same HTML5 technology I also find this request understandable, as I would probably have done the same if I were Activision. Then again, if I co-owned Activision instead of Q42, there might've been a World of Space Quest and worldwide free beers on Fridays, but right now this really is a huge step forward and allows games like Space Quest, Police Quest and King's Quest to be played by many people during work hours � err, I mean, in a browser.

And, so it seems that that Sarien.net and some of its web-based Sierra adventures will live on, though iPad gamers will not be enjoying the excellent custom treatment that they may be accustomed to � unless Sierra launches their own iOS versions of said classics. (Incidentally, the jury is still out on what will ultimately become of Leisure Suit Larry, as it seems Activision sold it to CodeMasters at some point in the past.)

Kool indicates that his first order of business is to restore Sarien.net to what it was (but with the approved list of games), with a redesign and additional functionality to follow. While it's less than we'd hope for as far as iPad adventurers are concerned, this is certainly good news for the gaming community in general. And we offer a "hats off" to Activision for their consideration to Sarien.net regarding these classics.