It's pretty clear the first time you load up Delusion Studio's House of Mice [99�] that one of the developers is a big fan of Hanna-Barbera cartoons. It's not just because you're playing as a group of mice hell-bent on destroying a cat, it's also because the game features some of the slickest animation you'll find in a puzzle game.

Unless you've never booted up the App Store in your entire life, you're going to recognize House of Mice right away. It's a one-screen puzzle game that requires you to get from one point to another while grabbing onto three tasty pieces of cheese. The game certainly looks the part of Cut the Rope or its countless iterations, but the gameplay takes a different, albeit familiar approach.

House of Mice is essentially billiards with mice that turn into bombs. To complete a stage, you need to flick one of three mice through a set of obstacles and into a cat that bears a striking resemblance to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Along the way you'll want to pick up pieces of cheese to improve your score, but if you're struggling with a particular level, killing the cat will suffice.

The game currently features 80 levels spread across four different areas and as you progress through them, new obstacles are introduced. Boxes will block your path that require one or two mice to destroy, pipes will transfer you over to another part of the level and fans and magnets will alter your pathway. You'll oftentimes have to bounce a mouse off a wall and into a box to sacrifice it so another can pass through to kill the cat. The quicker you do so, the higher your score.

As of right now, you'll only be competing against yourself for those high scores, but as noted in the forums, Game Center and Facebook integration is coming in the next update (as well as a Lite version). That's lgoing to help offer more in the way of replayability for anyone obsessed with high scores, as it's not just about grabbing the cheese and exploding the cat, but how quickly you can do it.

While the gameplay is far more original than it looks on first glance, the real appeal is its visual style. Not only is the premise derived from classic Tom and Jerry cartoons, but the entire look of the game is. It's a beauty to behold and the visuals look like the hand-drawn animation cells of '40s classics. There aren't a whole lot of moving parts in the game, but when there are, you'll be wishing you were playing on an iPad just to get a closer look at them.

If you needed more proof of the games visual importance, you can click through the "Extras" screen to watch the opening video, the credits and the ending video again. They're short, but they're well worth watching for their style alone. The fact they're included at all is an indication of their merit.

It might sound a bit like this is a case of style over substance, but while House of Mice's wrapper is certainly its most delicious part, the gameplay inside still gets by as an enjoyable, easy to grasp concept that offers enough of a challenge to keep it interesting. If you enjoy puzzles with a heavy emphasis on light-geometry, you'll love what House of Mice has to offer, but even if you don't end up getting into the gameplay, it's hard to deny how great it looks.

If you are amongst the millions of iPhone owners who also happen to have PS3's, I've got the perfect app for you. Behold, PSN Status [Free]. This free app will tell you both quickly and easily whether or not PSN is up. Sure, it would have been much more useful last month, but it will be handy to keep around if/when PSN goes down again.

Oh also, on the subject of PSN being down, if you're like me and really only use your PS3 for watching BluRays, don't forget to claim your free games. Even if you weren't really affected by the downtime in any real way, you're still eligible for two free PS3 games and two free PSP games. The selection is surprisingly decent, too.

On a somewhat related note- If you're a proud PS3 console warrior and your pride has taken a substantial hit over the last month as you were the brunt of countless "PSN is down" jokes from your Xbox 360-loving friends, don't forget to also download i360Emu [Free]. It's a shockingly accurate emulator of early Xbox 360's, or, it was, before they changed the power-on animation.

Swedish indie developer Eric Svedang�has recently released a new game named 'Tri Tri Triobelisk' [99�] for the iPad. I've been following Erik's work for a while, so was totally interested in checking it out. Any discussion of�Tri Tri Triobelisk really begins with his earlier game,�Shot Shot Shoot [$1.99], so let's examine that first.

In�2010, Eric released�Shot Shot�Shoot! for the iPad. It's one of those games you may not have heard of, however�Frank Lantz (the designer of Drop7 [$4.99]), is quoted as describing it as "the first truly great game for the iPad. Essential."

Erik describes his game as a "Digital board-game" for the iPad; it could also be easily described as a top-down shooter. Two players sit facing each other, on the same iPad and each player has five squares on their side of the board. The goal is to destroy your opponents five squares before they destroy yours. Tapping on one of your squares fires a shot directly towards your opponent, but if you hold your finger down, you can optionally redirect that shot while it's traveling, allowing your bullet to swerve around other bullets or to change targets. This is best illustrated by watching a gameplay video:

Shot Shot Shoot is a game of strategy. Some players fire strategically, picking their shots, while others prefer to play offensively, mashing the buttons to overwhelm the opposition with a swarm of shots.�If you fire like crazy, you'll end up defenseless, as you have a limited supply of bullets which take a while to regenerate. Alternatively, you can shoot at grey squares in the middle of the screen to collect bullets, but your opponent is seeking these too.�Another strategic element is that the more shots you have active on the screen, the slower they all move. This means a single shot can travel faster and often zips across the screen to save the day. Many frantic and exciting games are won by a millisecond.

This month, Erik released Tri Tri Triobelisk which is promoted as a faster and more extreme remix of�Shot Shot Shoot.�Check out the trailer compared to the previous Shot Shot Shoot video:

The unusual title is named after electronic artist�Triobelisk, who composed the energetic dance soundtracks. The�minimalistic square graphics of�Shot Shot Shoot are replaced with a space backdrop and triangles replace the squares, with shots now leaving different trails behind them. The game modes, basic gameplay and controls remain unaltered from�Shot Shot currently, however Erik revealed in the thread on our forums�that he's currently developing power-ups as a future addition to Tri Tri, which I can't wait to see.

While I'm a fan of both games, it's unusual to have two games with the same basic gameplay, from the same developer. People with�Shot Shot already may be hesitant to buy the new game as well and would probably have preferred that game to be extended too via an update of sorts. Having played both games, I appreciate each for different reasons.�Shot Shot has simple and clean graphics.� Tri Tri has more energy and more music and may have more widespread appeal.

If you're not sure which game to try, I recommend�Tri Tri Triobelisk.�The "introductory price" for�Tri Tri is currently cheaper than�Shot Shot and has potential to be updated. Erik plans to keep�Shot Shot as the "minimalistic gentleman's game" with�Tri Tri being the "crazy over the top version". If you specifically love artistic minimalistic games, get�Shot Shot, otherwise Tri Tri Triobelisk seems to be the way to go.

Hey it's Wednesday again, which means after a cursory not-entirely-too-witty introduction I'll explain that developers can set future release dates for their games on the App Store. When they do, they appear in international regions of the App Store when it hits that date in that particular area of the world. This means that all of these games get released in New Zealand first due to their proximity to the international date line, then they slowly become available in Asian markets, then European countries, then the USA at 11:00 PM Eastern time.

Wait, explaining how Wednesdays work was my witty introduction? Man, things are really slipping around here! To make up for it, here's a fabulous list of games to look forward to tonight, in alphabetical order!

Anodia, 99� � Forum Thread � When developers boast about how they've re-invented a genre it invokes a nearly-instictive eye roll… But I think this might be the first game I've seen in quite a while where the claim actually holds water. Anodia takes the brick breaker formula, adds all kinds of moving blocks, crazy power-ups, and more. With over 50 levels, Game Center, and universal compatibility this seems like an easy way to spend a buck.

Back to the Future Ep. 3 HD, $6.99 � Forum Thread � Have you played the first two installments of Telltale's Back to the Future series of adventure games? Well, here's the third one, continuing where the second left off. In a game like this, it's likely not best to jump in mid-series, so if this is the first you've heard of it, give the other episodes a look first.

Demolition Dash, 99� / HD � Forum Thread � Sidescrolling running games have been stupidly popular on the App Store, as have games that involve rampant destruction… So why not combine the two? It's a solid plan, and exactly what's happening here. 24 levels are included currently spread across 8 real-world cities, and there's even an endless mode coming in a planned update.

Kami Retro HD, $2.99 � Forum Thread � The iPhone version of Kami Retro [99�] hit the App Store a few months ago, and we thought it was rad. Now, if you're an iPad-owning purist who refuses to run things in 2x mode, Kami Retro HD is here. I wish it was universal though, as I'm really digging the recent trend of making "HD" versions universal!

Max Damage, 99� � Forum Thread � We got a look at this game back at GDC, and it seemed cool then, and is still cool now. Based on the free Flash game of the same name, Max Damage is a cannon game where your focus is reaching a set amount of financial damage on each level. It's clever how this works out, and how damaging each in-game item is worth a different amount.

Red Ball 3, 99� / HD � Forum Thread � A physics-based platformer with 20 levels. Red Ball 3 gets a thumbs up from me for making the HD version universal, but if you want Retina Display graphics on your iPhone, you'll need to upgrade to the HD version. The standard 99� game only comes with low-resolution graphics, which is kind of a bummer.

Star Blitz, Free � Forum Thread � If you like reskinned freemium games, Glu had totally got you covered this week. Star Blitz, similar to Men vs Machines seems to be a total reskin of Gun Bros, this time with a space theme. If you're just nuts about Gun Bros-style gameplay, give this one a shot.

To-Fu: The Trials of Chi, 99� / HD � Forum Thread � I'm actually pretty excited for this one. It seems like To-Fu combines fling-centric jumping to an almost Super Meatboy-like spike-laden platforming game? I guess that seems like the best way to describe it? Either way, the trailer looks great.

Touchgrind BMX, $4.99 � Forum Thread � I'd consider absolutely every Illusion Labs game a must-have for an iOS gamer, and I expect Touchgrind BMX to be the same way. It seems that they're taking the same style gameplay from Touchgrind [$4.99 / HD] applied to the world of BMX biking. I just hope Touchgrind BMX has a lower difficulty curve, as it took a bit to get to the point where you were doing more than bumping into things in Touchgrind.

Tower Defense: Lost Earth, $2.99 / HD � Forum Thread � You may have played tower defense games, but have you played the officially trademarked Tower Defense?! I'm excited to give it a try, as the trailer sure seems cool. They've also made the HD version universal, which, as mentioned a billion times already, I totally get behind.

MADFINGER Games has proven in the past that it nail visuals. Take a gander at its last release, Samurai II: Vengeance [$2.99]. The gameplay was incredibly repetitive, but the overall fidelity and rock sold 60 fps framerate were inspiring. It caught eyes on its look factor alone, and I'm thinking the studio is shooting for a similar kind of clamor for its latest game, the just-announced Shadow Gun.

Shadow Gun is a third-person shooter with a focus on "tactical action." You'll play as the grizzled bounty hunter John Slade in the bombed-out, future world of 2350. The task is to find and "hunt down" a geneticist who must have done something vile to warrant having such a large man on his tail.

Wait, perhaps he's in trouble because he's playing god in his fortress. Like a cyber Dr. Moreau, this geneticist is breeding mutants, cyborgs and other 'enhanced' humanoids.

Is this thing on? The visuals are still clogging your synapses, aren't they? And with good reason � this game looks stellar. MADFINGER says its 'ushering in a new visual standard for handheld gaming,' after all.

But, I've got some doubts about these shots. The perspective shown is pulled a little too far and to the right to be of any use to the player. Also, there's a certain sharpness that I have yet to see in any iPad or iPhone game. MADFINGER tells us that it, as we're guessing, didn't pull these images directly from the target device. However, it also says that these are indeed indicative of what you'll see on your platform.

We've followed up for more clarification.

Regardless, we'll be keeping our eyes on Shadow Gun � as a whole, that is � and will probably give you some impressions down the line.

No price or release date (other than a '2011' window) has been announced at the moment.

Minecraft for mobile phones is coming to Android first as an Xperia Play exclusive, the game's developer Mojang confirmed to us in a brief e-mail exchange this morning.

This news comes on the heels of a rash of E3 invitations-turned-blog-posts. Yesterday, Play creator Sony Ericcson blasted out a digital invitation to a June 7 mixer to several members of the enthusiast games press. The invite was adorned with Minecraft art and, as if that didn't do the trick, also referenced a well-known explosive enemy in the game.

With the surprise blown, Mojang is now able to confirm the project, which is formally called Minecraft � Pocket Edition. As you'd assume, it will have controls fitted to the Play's touch pads, buttons, and d-pad, and will feature changes specific to the hardware and the, perhaps, less attentive audience.

"When playing on smart phones you will have a different screen size compared to PC, different hardware, different attention spans and thus the game needs to be customized to fit the mobile specifications," a representative told us.

If you know Minecraft, you know Mojang doesn't kid around with updates. The PC hit is updated a lot with the occasional game-changing overhaul, as well as standard tweaks, enhancements, and bug fixes. Mojang suggests this will be the case with Pocket Edition, too.

"The development process will follow the one we have for PC, release early and update frequently," the same representative told us.

Apparently, more will be revealed about Pocket Edition during E3. As of right now, we still don't know its price, release window, or possible cross-platform functionalities. If you read between Mojang's lines about this version of the game, however, the latter seems highly unlikely.

One thing we'd love to know is if Pocket Edition is a PlayStation Suite joint. If it is, then it's possible that this version of the game will work on the NGP as well as other Android 2.3 , PlayStation-certified devices. As reported eons ago, Sony plans to keep a hardware-neutral stance with the Suite platform, so cross-platform play is possible provided that Sony's device requirements are met.

We're not sure what this means for the iOS version of Minecraft in the short term. The studio still refers to this version as an actual project, but if this exclusive has a long-ish tail, you'll be waiting for awhile obviously. Will development slow or stop in the meanwhile? We'll ask.

The Xperia Play is available for purchase tomorrow in the US for $199 with a two year contract. I'm guessing that Mojang will be counting the days until this agreement is over if the desire for the Play's games is as poor in the US as it has been in the UK, Canada, Ireland, and Spain. Mid-month reports from sales in these regions indicate that under or around 1,000 units of each of the five PSOne classic exclusives have been purchased. That's not… good, to say the least.

Then again, Minecraft is a big deal. Perhaps it can push the platform? We'll see.

All in-game images from the latest PC build of Minecraft.

Yesterday, the Mac and iOS worlds were surprised by the release of The Heist [$0.99], a puzzle game by tap tap tap that promotes the team's MacHeist bundles of discounted software goodies. After a few moments of panic while people worried that MacHeist had given up on its Mac bundles and moved on to iOS giveaways (they haven't, a new MacHeist bundle is still coming), I started to dig into the game.

What I found is a fun puzzle game that can be approached in two different ways. As we mentioned in our coverage of the announcement, The Heist includes a special PC/Mac software giveaway from MacHeist. You can certainly look at it as a cheap promotional game with a free reward at the end. And that's a selling point, but it's really not the best way to approach this game. The merits of the reward (which I'd rather not spoil, though I'm sure it will be discussed in the comments) are being debated, with some folks disappointed it isn't cooler/newer/more valuable. To this I say that The Heist isn't just about the destination; the journey is plenty of fun too.

So instead of approaching this game as if it's a loot pinata and you're the one holding the big stick, consider picking it up for the puzzle game that surrounds the gimmick. I wasn't expecting much; call me cynical, but promotional games often fall a little flat. So I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that The Heist is slick, clever and challenging. MacHeist has set up a few Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) to promote their bundles in the past, and this game takes brings in a couple unique features that I'd love to see brought to bear in a serious, large-scale iOS ARG. Those aside, a simple story sets you on the task of penetrating the vault that contains your reward. To do so, you'll first need to complete a series of puzzles.

There are four puzzle types in The Heist. None of them are completely original, but they're all nicely done. The first is a sliding block puzzle that asks you to extract a microchip. Slide the blocks back and forth in two dimensions to free it. The second is a puzzle that's very reminiscent of Sudoku, but with abstract symbols in place of numbers and a less uniform grid design. The third is a modern take on Sokoban, a classic game that involves pushing boxes around a maze. The final puzzle type is a simple sliding puzzle � a grid with one empty space that you rearrange into a complete image.

Each category has 15 individual puzzles of increasing difficulty. Your success will depend a lot on your aptitude with each puzzle type. To unlock the vault, you'll need to complete about 60% of the total puzzles, and they have to be well-divided between each category. I found many of the higher-end puzzles quite difficult, but enough experimentation will get you through each of them eventually.

All of the puzzles in The Heist are controlled with taps, but those controls aren't perfect. In the box-pushing puzzles, I grew increasingly frustrated with imprecision as my little pusher robot wandered back and forth to either side of the box I was trying to get him to push. And I would love some way to mark a tile that is definitely correct in the Sudoku-style puzzles. But by and large, everything plays quite well. The game also looks good, with a nicely designed vault-cracking theme for each puzzle -� although I'm not quite sure how the zen garden stylings of the Sudoko-like puzzles relate to cracking vaults. Innovative security measure, maybe?

With 60 puzzles total, The Heist offers a good amount of game for your buck. There are also 19 Game Center achievements to unlock. Some you'll pick up in the ordinary course of the game, some require a completionist streak, and some are just for fun. I'm hoping to see more from this game, or from tap tap tap in the same theme. While the reward for playing The Heist isn't to everyone's taste, it's pretty cool to be given the chance to play a good game and get something extra out of it. If MacHeist wants to keep us thinking about its bundles with regular content updates and new rewards to be earned, I'd certainly be pleased.

Drop whatever you're doing and head over to the App Store to download Super Stickman Golf [Link] which is currently free. Super Stickman Golf is a physics puzzle game wrapped in the veil of a golfing game. Gameplay involves choosing the trajectory of each shot as try to land your ball in the hole in a minimum amount of tries. With 29 nine-hole courses to play and plenty of ball types that grant special abilities, Super Stickman Golf is one of the most robust, challenging, and fun experiences in the App Store.

Even better than the single-player offering in Super Stickman Golf is the fantastic real-time online multiplayer that was added to the game this past April. We covered this new online mode pretty extensively, and found it to be insane amounts of fun. The goal is to be the first to land your ball in the cup, and since up to 4 players can play at once you get to see your opponents efforts as you play. Things get frantic as you try to get your ball in the cup with everybody else breathing down your neck.

With the game going free, the online component is only bound to get even better as more people are playing. It's never really been an issue finding a match anyway, but it should be easier to get full 4 player random matches with an increase in the player pool.

As an interesting aside, about 30 editors from various gaming publications have gathered for pre-E3 events down in Los Angeles, and Super Stickman Golf has been the subject of furious multiplayer battles amongst them. I can't even count all of the tweets I've seen from people at these events who are loving Super Stickman Golf, and I'd expect we'll hear more about the game during coverage of E3 next month. At any rate, it's pretty cool to see an iOS title become the talk of the town at what is the biggest event in the entire game industry.

Be sure to grab Super Stickman Golf while it's free, as it's an easy recommendation at its regular $2.99 price point and is a total no-brainer for free.

Say, have you heard about this whole "planking" business? I've just become aware of it in the past few weeks myself, but planking is the latest ridiculous thing that is sweeping the internet. It involves lying face down on an object, stiff as a board with your arms at your sides, like a plank, and then being photographed in the act. The stranger the location you perform your plank, the better. For example here is some folks planking in a tree, or some Apple employees planking inside of an Apple Retail store. But be careful, you don't want to end up like the man who fell to his death planking on a seventh story balcony railing.

So yeah, planking. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I totally don't see the appeal. Thousands of other people do see the appeal, however, and if you yourself are a planker you'll soon be able to get your plank on while on the go in the upcoming game Plank'd. Not being a fan of the whole planking phenomenon, I wasn't immediately interested in having a game version. But after actually trying the game, I've found that it's completely absurd and actually a ton of fun.

You can try out the game for yourself on the Plank'd website for free, just make sure you have the Unity browser plug-in installed. Basically, you get to control one of three characters using an awkward physics system as you try to lie flat on practically any object you can see. This includes cars, street signs, mail boxes, old ladies, and more. You earn points based on how well you hold your plank, and can string multiple planks together for combos. It's the sort of thing that's so strange that I can't help but like it.

Plank'd is only available as a web version currently, but an iOS version is coming "very soon" according to developer N3V Games. There's a thread in our forums for discussing Plank'd, and we'll keep an eye out for this one to hit the App Store soon.