Freemium experiences on iOS just keep getting better. It wasn't long ago that gamers looking for a free game to play could choose from a variety of -ville and -war titles and very little else. Now, as free-to-play titles regularly hold the top of the charts, we're seeing freemium models worked into all sorts of games.

The latest to catch my fancy is Startales [Free], a darling game about a lonely star seeking the one he loves. Not only does Startales have engaging gameplay, borrowing the hook-and-swing mechanic of games like Hook Champ [$2.99], it also offers something of an emotional experience.

In Startales, you play a small star who has fallen in love. Tragically, you aren't bright enough to be seen by the object of your affections. She simply shines too bright. The other occupants of the sky dedicate themselves toward helping you win your lady love, lending their brightness to you until you shine bright enough.

In practice, this means that you hook your way from cloud to cloud, using your momentum to fling you forward and up into the night sky and collecting the other stars from the sky. Once you have enough, you have a chance to fly with your beloved. If you can keep close to her for long enough, you'll win her over and win the game.

After your first two attempts, which introduce you to the game with everything Startales has to offer, you are faced with a stripped-down version of the game. As you collect stars they're pooled together to act as currency. You can use them to activate a selection of power-ups that allow you to collect more stars, to build up your score or to fly with your love. You have to choose how you want to play � do you want to get the highest score and fly the furthest? Or do you want to win the heart of your love? You'll probably end up doing both, realistically, working on your high score until you have enough stars to fly with your love, and doing it all over again when you fail to win her over.

That was the point where my heart broke, just a tiny bit. I'd worked hard to shine brightly enough to find her, and then I only had a few moments to fly with her at my side. But it was hard to keep up with her and she got away. I followed the on-screen indicator to catch her, but tragedy struck. I launched myself badly and lost her. As I flew, the indicator grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared completely. She was gone. Defeated, I let darkness come up and claim me. I'll be honest � it was actually kind of sad.

If you can't stand the heartbreak, you can purchase extra stars and just keep trying. I prefer to earn my way into her heart, and it helps that the rest of the game is quite a lot of fun. You can choose power-ups that complement your strengths and keep using them as long as you earn enough stars to pay for them. While you're at it, you can use the game's robust multiplier system to work your way up the leaderboard (which will hopefully use Game Center at some future date).

Intrigued? Check it out � Startales is free, after all. And don't forget to share your impressions in our discussion thread.

Just a couple of months or so ago, we were properly confused by Bungie's mysterious "Crimson" trademark, its "Bungie Aerospace" trademark, and its move to put an official stat-tracking app (and more) on the storefront. Now, we feel a little bit better, as we've been piecing the puzzle together thanks to a reveal or two. Crimson is a game, Bungie Aerospace is a new label from within the studio, and that app was made to support games down the line.

Now that you're all caught up to, I'll hit you with this: Crimson, a co-production between the aforementioned label and Harebrained Schemes, is a pirate game slated to hit the iPad at $0 on September 1st. It'll hit the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android phones at a later date.

We know this because of a brand new�handy-dandy website dedicated to the game, which also makes note of the full name, Crimson: Steam Pirates. According to the blurb on the side of the page, Steam Pirates is a turn-based strategy game that somehow blends moment-to-moment action into the equation, too.

From what we gather, you'll control a fleet of ships across a total of eight possibly story-led "voyages" and use over a dozen different kinds of ships, "over 20 unique crew members" with special powers, and be linked into Bungie.Net's super slick stat-tracking.

If you get the itch to play more of the game beyond these eight missions, you'll be able to grab eight more on launch day for $1.99 (cheap!). Eight more voyages are being planned for a release later.

Harebrained Schemes has its own page for the game, too, which really fleshes out the story, the mechanics, and the game's systems. The FAQ, which is probably more relevant to your interests at the moment is located here. I link to that realizing it's really hard to come to grips with�precisely�how a strategy game play by reading about it in little chunks like this, so we'll definitely do our best to get our hands on it and bring you a cohesive write-up. My gut says this will end up being a sleeker, more controlled approach to Pirates! action.

An expansive new update is now available for Red Nova [$.99], the super-sleek survival-based space shooter that had us going gaga way back in the year 2010. Naturally, the headliner of the new stuff is a brand new episode (Mercy) that'll have you repelling waves of enemy fighters in a vehicle dubbed the "Raven Heavy Transport." This very vehicle has also been added into episode one of the game, too, if you're really into big ships. A new turret power-up, the Gun Pod, has also been added for big destruction opportunities.

This update also throws in your traditional tweaks and fixes. Specifically, load times have been improved and so has the performance of the rendering engine. The HUD has also seen some additional scrubbing, alongside the radar markers, which now scale for distance. Menu fixes have been introduced, too. Neat!

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If Red Nova is alien to you, you can check out our review. Also, take note that the game's creator is definitely into supporting his title. This is the second big update that we've covered thus far, and I'm fairly confident it won't be the last.

As the mega-fans of UNO recoil in horror and one-star the game's latest update, Gameloft is preparing a patch to address two of their core issues: the ads and the crashes. In an e-mail floated to us this afternoon, we get the impression that the development team behind the game has identified what the crash problem stems from. More importantly, though, it's fixing it.

The same goes for the ads, which were essentially links to other Gameloft titles. As of this upcoming update, they'll be removed from the main menu and the loading screen, which were the two places they appeared in the first place.

As for the IAP cards… well, apparently there's been a misunderstanding on the user end, as you can disable bonus cards before every match. We've also been told that the game doesn't allow you to use bonus cards that other players don't have access to, which makes a lot of sense from a competitive design standpoint, but has us scratching our heads over the reviews that game has been seeing post-multiplayer update.

As for an ETA on the fixes, we don't have one yet. We've touched base about that and I'd imagine we'll be able to get that to you at some point in the near future.

In this week's bonus edition of The TouchArcade Show, Eli and I chat with Graeme Devine, the creator of the newly released Full Deck Hold 'Em [$2.99]�for the iPad and iPad 2. Before sitting down to release games alongside his family, Devine was a designer and writer for several huge publishers and companies, including id Software, Apple, Ensemble, Atari, and Trilobyte.

We grilled Devine a lot about his resume and how that informs his work now. We also dug into what's next on his slate. I don't think you'll come away from this conversation without learning a thing or two and also becoming as enamored with the man as we are. Devine is awesome and a joy to chat with.

You can download or stream the podcast right below, or hey, you can also subscribe to us on our feeds at iTunes or the Zune Marketplace.

�

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-Bonus-010.mp3, 29MB

Music notes and all of that are included at the back-end of the episode. If you'd like to shoot us a note, feel free to do so at podcast@toucharcade.com. This week we're still looking for sound dating advice for our upcoming show this Friday, so don't be shy.

Telltale whiffed on the PC and Macintosh release of the first title in its episodic series based on Jurassic Park. Towards the end of April, the studio announced that the new series wouldn't be making its debut in that same month. Instead, these versions would hit alongside the console versions later this fall. This afternoon brings fresh word of firm November 15 launches for the PC, Mac, the disc-based Xbox 360 version, and the PSN versions. It also confirmed something that we wanted to hear: an iPad version is on the way.

We don't have a specific release date on the forthcoming iOS versions, unfortunately, nor do we have any indications if they'll pack in any extras. Legacy-wise, I don't think it'd be wise to suspect anything new or, heck, even tuned to the iPad, but I suppose anything is possible in a word that can morph cheese into peel-able strings.

One thing to note about the game in general, though, based on preview coverage, is that this series is remarkable for the studio: it'll combine action with Heavy Rain-ish mechanics, which is a step or two removed from the usual Telltale mold.

Actually, one more note: unlike the PC, Xbox 360, and PSN versions, it appears as though we won't be getting the entire series at once, which is seriously bumming me out. I think I need to go somewhere and sit down in the dark for an hour.

[Via IGN]

Video games industry consultancy firm EEDAR and the dudes from Penny Arcade are assembling an iOS app that'll tell you what game you should play next, and presumably, surprise you with a game or two you haven't heard about before. It'll be called the Decide-O-Tron and it'll roll out at some unspecified date in the near future for the generous price of $0.

"The Decide-O-Tron is essentially Pandora for games, that's about as clear as I can make it," Penny Arcade's "Tycho" wrote on the site's blog.�"It can very quickly build a library of the games you like and own, and then � just as quickly -� tell you what you should play next. It will be available for iOS devices, and it will be free."

In addition to being able to document your own library of games for use in the app, it'll also give you access to EEDAR's ridiculous-huge database that draws from just about every modern-ish platform, including the Xbox 360, the Virtual Console, and even the GBA and Gamecube. From what we understand, as it nails your likes and dislikes, it'll suggest games from this database. You'll also be able to browse celebrities' lists, too, if you want to play what all the cool kids are.

"We spoke at Digipen a super long time ago with a guy named Geoff Zatkin who was clearly way smarter than us, but he didn't make us feel bad about it," Tycho said in the post. "We kept in touch with him, and eventually he opened a consultancy called EEDAR that almost certainly pops up in your feeds from time to time."

"Geoff asked us if we wanted to do something cool with their database, and we did! We made Decide-O-Tron."

We're pretty into something like this, though we're pretty sad to see that iOS games aren't a part of the package. Sure, there's a lot of crap out there but for every eight or nine disease-ridden apples, there's a HungryMaster [$2.99]�or Mos Speedrun [$1.99 /�Lite], you know?

In case you're scratching your head and readying up a "why is this news" comment, hold back for a second and let me explain: we're into Penny Arcade, we're into discovering video games, and we're into iOS. This is a super combination of all of these things, so we're telling you about it. You can read more about the Decide-O-Tron at its Web site.

Duke Nukem Forever proved earlier this summer that if you find something ancient, non-functional, and barely relevant, with a minimal amount of effort you can turn a profit by selling it purely on the basis of historical curiosity. This is also the premise of the History Channel's Antiques Roadshow, where people bring in old items to experts hoping to strike it rich by stumbling upon rare and sought after pieces.

Namco Bandai, also no strangers to digging up cheap old franchises and pawning them off on unsuspecting gamers, decided to capitalize on the popularity(?) of the series by releasing Antiques Roadshow [$4.99] for iOS. After taking a monocled eye and a white gloved hand to this title from start all the way to laborious finish, how does it fare in appraisal? Let's just say it's going to take more than some wood glue and a certificate of authenticity to justify the price of this junk.

Antiques Roadshow attempts to do for collectible hunting what Indiana Jones did for archeology, by playing up the glamorous, mysterious, dangerous, and metaphysically profound lifestyle of an expert antique hunter. In the game, you play as Julia, an enthusiast who takes a job at an antique store to pursue her life's passion. The plot quickly thickens as her new boss presents her with a shred of photo featuring a mysterious item and a secret code inscribed on the back. Julia rushes off to find the item in a foreclosed farmhouse before anyone else gets their greedy paws on it.

I'll come back to the edge-of-your-seat storytelling in just a bit, but first let's talk about the non-stop action on tap here. Antiques Roadshow is essentially a skin for yet another photo hunt game; touch the hidden objects to cross them off your list. Then touch them again because only a tiny sliver of the object is visible and the touchscreen won't register your tap accurately enough. Repeat until the screen decides to be charitable or your bratwurst-like fingers grow skinnier due to malnourishment.

Most gamers, when confronted by a hidden object title, will quickly resort to turbo-clicking around the screen hoping to get lucky and circumvent some of the searching. This game tries to keep you honest by making it so that if you tap too many times in succession the screen becomes covered in virtual dust that you "stirred up" �by searching too quickly. You then must "wipe" the dust off the screen to continue hunting. The first few times were cool and novel, but when you factor in the sloppy input sensitivity, just trying to get a single item cleared from the screen resulted in a dust storm as often as not. By the end of the game, I began wishing the white powder was anthrax.

Meanwhile, the mysterious item Julia finds at the farmhouse contains another shred of the photo featuring another item which you must then go to another location to find, which leads you to another shred of the photo. It's a glorious rendition of "I'm Henery the VIII, I Am" that sends you back and forth to a small handful of scenes over and over and over and over and… well, I think I've made my point. It's truly rare that I wish an iOS game was shorter.

In addition to the story items and junk items that you can find, you will also stumble across other hidden items that can be taken to the Antiques Roadshow in between photo hunts.�These trips to the Roadshow represent the game's only deviation from the tap-a-licious core mechanics in the form of mini-games. Before presenting your items to the Roadshow experts, you must do the one thing that every Roadshow expert on television tells you NOT to: restore your found items yourself. That's right, Julia is a rebel, the nihilistic bad-girl of the antiques world. Priceless 1700's armoire falling apart? Just squeeze some wood glue in the cracks like a boss. One of a kind Civil War uniform looking a little frumpy? Then search through a pile of your old buttons to find matches for the originals and just sew them on!

You think I'm joking about Julia's penchant for mayhem, but don't let her conservative attire fool you. Beneath that Stepford Wives exterior lies the heart of a felon. Julia is constantly finding items that allow her to access previously blocked areas, and she is not afraid to use them. After getting her B&E on by using a sledgehammer to smash open the door to a shed, she later in the game opens a grave in an ancient crypt by shattering the marble in with another hammer, and blows open a century old chest with an M80 firecracker that she found abandoned for years in another location. Clearly, Julia takes the honey badger approach to the acquisition of historical artifacts.

Julia's story gets progressively more and more absurd, and not in a good Japanese development kind of way. The game climaxes in an Empire Strikes Back-like familial revelation, the discovery of a lost pirate stash, and a wildly presumptuous set-up for an Antiques Roadshow sequel. Let's put it this way. This plot's plausibility makes National Treasure look like a PBS documentary.

With the exception of infrequent trips to the Roadshow, there's none of the cool historical information that gives the television show its redeeming qualities. Throw in the painfully repetitive tapping, the abysmally unresponsive nature of all iOS hidden-item touchscreen inputs, the irritatingly unfair dust-on-the-screen mechanic, and a dash of insultingly simple mini-games and there's just no excuse. In the far flung future, however, this game may have great value; iPads with this game still on it will no doubt be rare beyond belief.

Retro gamers out there, especially those on the other side of the pond, have had a great resource available to them for reliving the 8-bit classics, in the form of Elite's ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection emulator series, which landed last October. While it had basically zero presence here in the states, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was probably the leading home computer gaming platform in the UK and various other parts of Europe during the early '80s.

Back in May, Jonathan Needle brought an iOS port of his popular Windows-based ZX Spectrum emulator, Spectaculator [link], to the App Store, bolstering the amount of retro gaming goodness that can be had on the platform. Spectaculator's arrival managed to slip by us at the time, but with Needle's recent release of a free version�(as in beer, and of ads), featuring a different set of bundled games, we're pleased to bring both of these Universal applications to our readers' attention.

The original, paid release features the following bundle of classic games:

• 3D Starstrike by Realtime Games Software
• Tau Ceti by Pete Cooke/CRL
• Dynamite Dan by Rod Bowkett/Mirrorsoft
• On The Run by Design Design
• Albatrossity by Jonathan Cauldwell
• The Fantastic Mister Fruity by Jonathan Cauldwell
• Battery's Not Precluded by Jonathan Cauldwell
• Jekyll & Hyde by Zenobi Software

The free version features a list of games written in more recent years:

• Alter Ego by Denis Grachev/Retrosouls (released 2011)
• Catch the Cash by Tom Dalby (released 2011)
• Crimbo by Little Shop of Pixels (released 2010)
• Flynn's Adventure in Bombland by Tom Dalby (released 2011)
• Gloop Troops by Little Shop of Pixels (released 2010)
• Kyd Cadet by Paul Jenkinson (released 2010)
• Kyd Cadet II by Paul Jenkinson (released 2010)

I suppose the thinking is that the free version gets recent, fan-written titles, which is a collection of perhaps less value than the classics of old. However, as a retro fan who did not grow up with the Spectrum and who owes the majority of his Speccy gaming knowledge to a certain magazine, I might be enjoying the new, free release more than the paid.

If there's a Speccy in your past, both of Needle's releases should be an instant download. If you're just a retro fan in general, at least grab the freebie and see what you think. As a member of the latter camp, I've had fun with both.

Readers are carrying on an active discussion regarding Spectaculator in our forums.

We had nothing to go on when EA announced its intentions to port Bullfrog's theme park simulation game, Theme Park, other than "Hey, a Theme Park game is happening." As usual, the big ticket marketing machine over at the publisher covered up some of the holes at an event. Earlier this week, EA debuted the title at gamescom in Cologne, Germany, revealing that it's a full re-make of the original game, complete with a new payment model, new look, new mechanics, and new rides involving EA franchises like Mass Effect and, somehow, even Dragon Age.

Digital Spy grabbed the first image we've seen on the Internet, and also had a few specific details. Take this one for example: not only will you be able to build your theme park with in-game money, but you'll also be able to purchase more in-game money with real-life money. Also, the rides you build will apparently be interactive; the report cites being able to move around pirate ships or prod air-filled castles. I have a feeling the interaction will be strictly limited to basic animations, but hey, I guess we won't know until we see a full build in some shape or form.

Speaking of builds, the game won't see a final release until this holiday, but it'll come with all that fancy Origin stuff we heard about earlier this year. Right now, it's slated to hit a $0, which makes us think that the F2P stuff is going to roll a lot deeper than in-game currency.

[Via Digital Spy, @robfunnell7]

There's some pretty neat box-rolling games on the App Store, like Edge [$2.99 / Review] and Beyond Ynth [$1.99 / Review] which are both outstanding. But the latest box-rolling game to hit my iPod is Cubes vs. Spheres [99�] by ShockPanda Games. It's a 3D physics-based, almost "tower defense" game, where you fight off waves of advancing cubes, which roll towards your circular base.

The retina graphics are minimalistic and stylized. It's a sterile white world with ledges, blocky edges and cool structures from which cubes pour down from. The first step is to determine which cubes to attack next (typically the closest, or biggest cluster), then select the most appropriate sphere for the job and finally, swipe the sphere in the appropriate direction, at the necessary speed and power, to smash the approaching cubes into flying fragments.

There's six different super-spheres to unlock and buy (with game money). The blue "Splitter Sphere" can be tapped mid-flight, to split into three or five sphere's, much like the birds in Angry Birds [99c], but presented in 3D. The "Boom Spheres" are, as the name suggests, explosive; "Homing Spheres" prefer not to miss, so they lock onto their target; while the popular "Decoy Spheres" attract the cubes, like bees to honey, so they pile up on top of each other � and then explode awesomely, blowing the unsuspecting cubes to bits.

There's also three different varieties of cube. Red cubes are the most common, with black cubes being stronger and the occasional ghost cube is intentionally harder to see. The cubes are all worth the same amount of points, with combos being key for larger scores.

The controls are pretty straightforward. There's six buttons to choose and activate the type of sphere, then tap or swipe towards an enemy to roll or throw the sphere. The longer and faster the swipe, the more power is used for the throw.� Be warned � this is not a slow or easy game, as you typically end up swiping frantically to eliminate the cubes, especially near the end of each level.

The cubes sneakily approach from both the front and sides, so you need to look around to see what's approaching. You can choose between tilt, swipe, or inverted swipe to scan the area. You can also tilt your device to look around the menu screens, but this only works while tilt-mode is enabled.

There's 30 levels in total, split evenly between easy, medium and hard levels. Each level is rewarded by a three-star scoring system, based on points scored. A perfect score ("P") is awarded if your score achieves 3 stars and no cubes reach your base. To obtain perfects for all levels, you may need to replay some levels after unlocking the more powerful spheres. You can score combos by destroying cubes in quick succession, with the score multiplier incrementing with each cube eliminated, up to a maximum of 5x. Chain reactions also occur, as exploding cubes destroy other cubes, which helps boost your score.

Cubes vs. Spheres is a universal game, so you can install it on all of your iOS devices.�There's Game Center rankings for easy, medium, hard and total modes, plus 37 achievements. The developers advise that on the first day, approximately 90% of the Game Center users were not paid users, which is a shame because this unique sphere-tossing game has awesome cube-explosions, and that's always worth paying for.