Words With Friends [2.99 / Free / HD] has dominated the multiplayer word game genre on the app store for a long time, but recently some new competitors have elbowed their way in: Kalimat [$2.99 / Free] and Wordfeud [Free]. We've loved Words With Friends since way back when, but it can't hurt to see what the competition has to offer.

Both games are Scrabble-style word games with asynchronous multiplayer � Kalimat through OpenFeint, and Wordfeud through its own system. Both also have free, ad-supported versions to try (Kalimat's cripples some features). But there are a few things that set these games apart from each other.

Wordfeud beat Words With Friends to Android earlier this year and then made its way to the App Store. It's not pretty, with its muted colors and plain interface, but it's quick. I ran into a few small bugs, but nothing game breaking. Currently, it supports six dictionaries, including Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and both English tournament dictionaries (TWL and SOWPODS).

Screenshots of Wordfeud

You also have the option of using a randomized board. I've had a good time with randomized games since I've been playing Wordfeud. For example, things get pretty tense when you're trying to keep your opponent from making a word that lands on a clump with two triple-word scores and a double-word score. Meanwhile, the regular board layout is the closest to the traditional Scrabble layout I've seen.

Kalimat, on the other hand, will probably become my new game of choice. It includes Pass & Play (a feature Wordfeud lacks), Open Feint/Game Center achievements and an Arabic dictionary. But what I really love is Remix mode.

Remix mode rewards quick play. If you make your move within one minute of starting your turn, your points triple. Within two minutes, you earn double points and after that, things go back to normal. You can also swap letters once per turn without penalty, and one hidden square on the board awards bonus points.

Screenshots of Kalimat

It's a gimmicky mode, but it can be a lot of fun. Scores inflate like mad. Thanks to a ridiculously lucky move (all seven letters on multiple double-word squares during the first minute of my turn), I managed to get over 1500 points with one word. It was hilarious, but my opponent missed the humor of the situation somehow.

There are two things that keep me from recommending Kalimat wholeheartedly. One is the board layout. It's easy to land on multiple high-scoring squares in a single turn early on, resulting in huge leads even in normal mode. I've also had a lot of difficulty finding random people to play with. I'm not sure whether the problem is the size of the playerbase or the way Kalimat makes matches, but there have been times when I could only find one other player.

Unfortunately, neither game has the missing feature a lot of Scrabble fans are looking for: stat tracking. They both keep track of wins and losses with a list of previous games, just like Words with Friends, but neither keeps a detailed profile with stats. If that isn't a deal breaker, both Wordfeud and Kalimat mix up the Scrabble formula enough to keep things fresh.

It's difficult to think of an appropriate way to describe the success that Nintendo has seen with the Pokemon series. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006, and basically seems to endlessly print money for Nintendo through an endless stream of video games, movies, cartoons, toys, and other merchandising. Part of the reason Pokemon has done so well is because the core gameplay just works so incredibly well for a portable game. So much so, that I've been scratching my head for years now wondering why someone hasn't made a great Pokemon-esque game for iOS, assuming that it just has to be on a to do list on a whiteboard at Gameloft.

Indie developer Fuzzy Professor Head decided enough was enough, and has thrown their hat into the Pokemon clone creation ring with Puppysaurus. Details on the game are incredibly vague right now aside from the few snippets that have been posted in the thread in our upcoming games forum but they have released this teaser trailer:

Puppysaurus is still a few months off according to the developers, but I'd be lying if I said my interest wasn't seriously piqued. I just hope you can move on a diagonal because every Pokemon game ever has been ruined for me because of that. Either way, if Fuzzy Professor Head succeeds in making a competent Pokemon clone, I can't even imagine how popular it could be, especially if it leverages all kinds of online functionality that would never be possible with a Nintendo game.

IKAROS [$.99] creators Riverman Media has an interesting new title up its sleeves. Earlier in April, the studio revealed Pizza vs. Skeletons, a game that'll pit two favorite things of mine against each other in one convenient iPod Touch and iPhone app.

I wish I could give you a good idea of what kind of game Pizza vs. Skeletons is slated to be, but even Riverman is struggling to pitch its concept or vision. "How do you hype up something that has no clear genre, a nonsense plot, and a main character that's a thirty foot tall conglomeration of cheese and tomato sauce," the post asks.

In a nutshell, Pizza vs. Skeletons will have you moving a monstrous pizza wheel through a bevy of skeletons across 100 � or so � 2D levels of bone-smashing destruction. Apparently, Riverman will be implementing level-based mechanics, so in one level the focus will be crushing, the other rolling, the other "sumo wrestling," and more. The studio plans to keep switching up how you'll re-kill the undead to avoid repetition. Also, there's a significant focus on the feeling of being a gigantic pizza � whatever that means.

I reached out to Riverman to get further clarification on how these mechanics will fit together specifically, but if I'm reading into the original posting on its blog correctly, chances are that there's no rhyme or reason for the existence of any of this stuff, which is sort of the point of the over-the-top game.

"We've had a lot of false starts and thrown it on the back-burner several times now," the post says. "For awhile it was looking like it would be totally un-fun. However, recently we've finally started to make some real headway."

Good! I can't wait to show some skeletons what's up… with a gigantic pizza. In the meantime, if you're hungry for more details on this game, stop by the thread in our upcoming games forum.

At a glance, one might think Unit9's2�Nano Panda [99� / Free] is a not-so-subtle copy of Big Pixel Studios'�Land-a Panda [99�], but other than a striking similarity in the look of the icons and the existence of barrels in both games, they're wholly different experiences. Still, that one commonality � adorable animals existing in obstacle based puzzle games is an App Store trademark to say the least � but thankfully,�Nano Panda rises above the clichés and offers something new.

Stylistically, it's a shoe-in for success based on its collect-three stars system, its adorable visuals and its single-screen puzzles, but even though it looks the part of so many games before it,�Nano Panda offers enough innovation in its gameplay to keep if from disappearing among a sea of clones.

It might have been nice to get an absurd story to explain why you're tasked with launching pandas out of barrels and into evil atoms, but the game instead drops you immediately into it with little explanation as to why you're doing what you're doing �which is rocketing pandas to their death, either by accidently sending them flying into spikes or by tossing them into the atoms, which will complete the level for you.

There are two core systems at play here: a simple physics function where you launch the panda and it goes flying, and a magnet mechanic, where when two or more pandas are launched at once they'll attract each other and whirl around the screen with a slightly unpredictable rubber band effect. Sending the corpulent pandas on a suicide mission into the nasty atoms will net you a completion screen, but you'll also want to snag up as many stars as you can along the way. The more stars you collect, the more chapters you can unlock.

The main innovation is the magnet mechanic and when it works, it's a challenging, but entertaining play on the physics game. The problem is that for a large chunk of the levels you won't feel like you're solving puzzles so much as getting lucky. There is certainly a consistent system at work here, but you might not ever feel like you understand it well enough to use it predictably.

As the game progresses, more modifiers come into play and it starts to get a bit overwhelming. You'll have to quickly touch, slide and move objects on the screen to get good results, which on an iPad works well, but on the smaller iPhone screen things start to get a little difficult to handle. The fourth and final chapter in particular feels entirely based on luck.

Even with the trial-and-error style gameplay,�Nano Panda does a good job of taking the increasingly standard, single screen, star based physics puzzler and adding in enough innovation to keep you entertained. It's well produced too, so for those who like small graphical touches, you'll find a lot of quirks throughout the game to keep you happy. Like many before it, the game features a mystery final chapter with a note that more levels are on the way, so if you manage to three star all 64 levels in the game and collect all the Game Center achievements, you can expect more in the coming months. Of course, if you've ever found yourself at a "Save the Pandas" rally, you might want to steer clear here, unless you happen to be cool with killing hundreds of adorable red, white and blue pandas.

The first major content update to Order & Chaos Online [$6.99] is coming down the pipe, so says a new thread on the World of Warcraft-like MMO's official message board.

Details on the complete patch and its eventual release are still cloudy, but we do know a number of key fixes, tweaks, and enhancements that it'll package in. Foremost, expect to see a number of new quests in "the last two high-level regions" and a new teleport in the Greenmont region of world. Also, forget about killing dudes in cemeteries � with the arrival of this patch, these zones are to become hands-off, non-PVP areas.

Of course, there's more. The ever descriptive "additional content and … fixes" has been promised and game creator Gameloft is still teasing new dungeon, PVP arena, and level cap add-ons.

"We'll notify you as soon as possible about the complete details of this update and its timing," the post reads. "Be sure to check back regularly if you want more info about the progress that our development team has made."

Sure, I'll check back regularly, but only if there's a new mount in it for me. Gameloft gives out mounts, right? It should. For the record, I want a space snapping turtle with rocket boots. Make it happen, Gameloft. Make it happen.