A good story is hard to find. I'm not pointing any fingers, but many iOS developers will leave huge, obvious gaps in their games rather than try to delve into story writing. So when I downloaded Monkube's 6th Planet [$0.99] after its most recent update, I was pleasantly surprised to find not just a game with a story, but a story that's both well-executed and compelling.

If I hadn't been going in blind, I wouldn't have been surprised. The game's comic-book cut scenes were created in part by Vivifilm, an Oscar-nominated production company who worked on, among other things, Les Triplettes de Belleville, and the colorist has long worked with Marvel. This pedigree shows. In the near-future tale of 6th Planet, Saturn has changed. The governments of earth are left scrambling to discover why, and two trained chimps may be the only ones who have a chance to decide the future. This story is compelling, the dialog is sharp, and while the characters are cliched, they're cliched in a forgivable, comic-book sort of way.

The story's quality actually creates some dissonance early on, because the gameplay (while also quite good) doesn't match up well with the serious tone of the cut scenes. Aside from its story, 6th Planet is a fairly standard lander-style game. The thruster physics feel great, the level design is excellent, both in looks and layout, and it all works very well, but it doesn't quite mesh with the story. Just as I was getting grumpy about this problem, the game dealt with it in a very satisfying manner. I won't spoil it, but this dissonance definitely isn't worth worrying about.

Otherwise, 6th Planet is tight. There are two on-screen buttons that control the lander � tap one to go left, the other to go right (and these can be inverted) and both to thrust upwards. Like any lander game, you've got a limited amount of fuel to burn, and you've got to get to the landing pad safely and slowly enough to avoid crashing. The levels, which often have sci-fi neon and elegant flourishes, throw obstacles in your way, like asteroids, walls, gates and the occasional martian. Your performance is rated on your fuel conservation, and you can replay levels for better scores.

Story Mode is easy, but with a good reason. When 6th Planet was first released in February, Monkube found that most players were getting stuck early on and missing out on most of the story. Rather than let that stand, they reworked the game, creating 30 new, easier levels for story mode and moving the existing 50 levels to a Master Levels mode. The new story levels are smaller, taking up no more than 3 screens. The Master Levels can be up to 12 screens, and they're meant to pose a serious challenge to experienced players. In that, they definitely succeed.

The 1.1 update also added Retina support and an in-game store where you can buy the ability to skip levels and purchase faster or more armored ships (neither of which is necessary to complete the game). Normally I'd hope for Game Center support in a future update, but 6th Planet has 80 levels, each with its own leaderboard. Until Game Center can support more than 25 leaderboards, the game's OpenFeint support will have to do.

6th Planet ends with a cliffhanger, after two full comics worth of story. I'm looking forward to the next installation, which should be coming later this year in 6th Planet II: Mission Earth. Looking forward to an iOS game's story is a rare enough treat, but 6th Planet also has great music and game design too. If you've skipped over it until now, the 1.1 update offers a great chance to jump in.

A new RPG is hitting this summer and it appears to have all the makings of a solid third-person, narrative-led hack-and-slash. Swords and an odd world? Check-check. Spiders and other monsters? Check-check. Simple click-treat action? Check. Muscles? Check. A dry, weird name? Yeah, Emissary of War passes that test, too, I think. But does it have the leadership and vision to see the promising project through? It might.

Former BioWare lead Tobyn Manthorpe, and now owner of Cedar Hill Games, creators of Emissary, is credited in an assortment of hardcore RPGs, including the oft-lauded Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and a personal favorite of mine, Dragon Age: Origins. He has the chops… but we also need to stick a caution flag in here: we've seen many a mobile splinter cell studio drop the ball after abandoning big budgets and AAA production lines. We're not saying that this is doomed to be middling or lackluster, but it's best to be cautiously optimistic about these smaller, yet still as ambitious mobile projects.

As you can see in the video, Emissary will be voiced and shows flashes of the story-driven style that has served BioWare so well in the recent past. If there's one spot iOS studios have whiffed on repeatedly, it's this. So, fingers are crossed.

If you're wondering what's up with the not-barbarian, that's Hassock, an alchemist who will travel with the barbarian Ghent as he mucks through a "diplomatic mission that goes horribly wrong." Hopefully, the issue isn't as simple as breaking the seal on a letter. We'll see later this summer.

DrawRace [Free] just dropped to the low, low price of free for the day. This means one thing: If you don't already own it, you should download it immediately. DrawRace is a racing game that hinges around a remarkably clever line drawing mechanic where you draw the racing line for your car, and the speed that you do it at controls your car's accelerator and brakes.

My absolute favorite part of the game has definitely got to be the pass and play mode. Up to four players can play at once, taking turns drawing their racing lines. When everyone is done, the cars all race based on each player's input, and whoever managed to draw the best racing line wins. The drawing-based input method is so simple that you can play with total non-gamers and other people who otherwise would likely never be interested in a racing game, making DrawRace a great game to just keep on your phone. There's even a sequel on the way.

Seriously, if you don't download DrawRace I'm not sure we can be friends. Unless of course you've already downloaded it, in which case, hey buddy.

Before I get started with this, let's get folks up to speed that might not be aware of what cocos2d is- Cocos2d is an extremely popular totally free framework that provides core functionality for developers to use to build their games. The basic idea behind cocos2d and other similar projects is to provide easy to use tools to do things like handle sprites, sounds, physics, and more so developers can focus on building their games instead of, for example, investing time into writing their own text rendering or texture handling.

For examples of the kinds of things I'm talking about, check out the following demo video for cocos2d:

As of yesterday, cocos2d went 1.0.0. This is the product of 2600 commits to the codebase from 140 different contributors, with the first commit taking place just a little over 3 years ago. Cocos2d even saw 63 releases before it officially went 1.0.0.

It's been a long road too, cocos2D started as a Python project by Ricardo Quesada with some friends of his in the Argentinian town of Los Cocos, hence the name. The coconut logo comes from the spanish meaning of "cocos," although Ricardo admits that when it was originally named they didn't exactly have coconuts in mind. Oh, and check out the original roadmap as it was sketched out, emphasis has been placed on the original planned 1.0 release in February of 2009:

Even though cocos2d took forever to hit the 1.0.0 mark, it's easily among the best frameworks out there for iOS developers to use, and chances are you already have several games on your device(s) that utilize it. Ricardo estimates that more than 2500 iOS games are using it now, along with 50 or so on the Mac App Store. Feed Me Oil [99�], League of Evil [$1.99], heck even FarmVille [Free] uses it.

Congratulations on turning 1.0.0, cocos2d team!

As a huge fan of both action-platforming games and endless runners, I'm pretty darn excited for the upcoming game Roboto from developer Fenix Fire. Roboto looks to blend aspects from both of these genres. The levels in the game are heavily designed for running and jumping through quickly like an endless running game, except you aren't moving automatically and you still have full control of your character. This means you can stop to turn around if you happen to miss an item, or engage in a quick gunfight with an enemy during your run towards the finish line.

There's also a gravity flipping mechanic in Roboto, similar to Gravity Guy [99�/Lite] or the gnomey level in Hook Worlds [99�]. As you're running along, passing through certain gates will trigger a gravity flip, and you'll run upside down along the ceiling as if it was the ground. The core gameplay elements in Roboto all work together really well, as you can tell for yourself by playing the first 3 levels of the game via the free web demo on the Fenix Fire website. And here's a free tip: the web demo plays wonderfully with the Joypad [Free] controller app paired with its desktop client.

While the gameplay is indeed quite nice, what I'm really liking the most about Roboto are its striking visuals. The game is bright and colorful, with a sort of cel-shaded look to it. The backgrounds are rendered in 3D which gives the game a great sense of depth and movement as you're running through a level. The whole thing gives me a bit of a Viewtiful Joe vibe, which certainly isn't a bad thing. Check out the trailer for yourself:

The release date for Roboto is vaguely set for sometime this Summer for both the iPhone and iPad. It will feature more than 30 levels including several mini-games, one of which is playable in the web demo and is a fun little riff on Space Invaders. I'm really impressed with what I've seen and played of Roboto so far, and there's a lot of commenters in our forums who seem pretty stoked on the game as well. We'll keep a keen eye out for pricing details or a release date for the iOS version of Roboto, and in the meantime make sure you give the web demo a try.