And the bonus is back. On this week's bonus edition of the TouchArcade show, I go solo and speak with Infinite Dreams co-founder Marek Wyszynski about the creation of Jelly Defense [$2.99], his co-studio's past and present, and how it approaches design as a whole. I really love the way this studio does its art, so that's a pretty big theme throughout.

I'm not completely solo in this one, I should note. President-in-Chief Eli Hodapp joins me for some particularly insightful intro and outro segments. As always, you can give us a listen via the links just below or subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune.

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iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
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Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-Bonus-025.mp3, 20MB

We'll be back next week with another bonus edition, as well as this Friday with a regularly scheduled TouchArcade Show. Have fun!

One of Skyrim's greatest strengths is its ridiculous amount of content. But that also ties into one of its biggest weaknesses: unless you're insane, you're going to have to pass on some of what the game has to offer in order to retain a measure of focus. The in-game map functionality adds to this pain since doesn't let you jot down notes or throw up readily identifiable markers for areas you'd like to go back to.

An unofficial companion app, Dragon Shout, is looking to provide just that -- and more down the road. Dragon Shout is basically a fully interactive Skyrim map that allows for annotated markers for anything, including even alchemy components. In later updates, it'll become a social hub, of sorts, for Skyrim adventurers, as it'll add in marker sharing, party or app-wide chats, pictures, and more. It's an ambitious project.

To be clear, here's what's in the first release, which has just been submitted to Apple.

"The first version of the app contains an interactive map where you can drop annotated markers / journal entries down," the developer told us. "For example, yesterday I played Skyrim and left a bunch of dragon scales and bones on the side of a mountain because they were too heavy.

I will come back and get them some other time so I marked it on the map so I know where it's at in the future. Another example is I'm always looking for the right ingredients for potions, so when I come across an important ingredient, I mark it on the map so I know where to get it next time."

Dragon Shout should be out within the next couple of days on iPhone and iPad for $0. You can follow its progress on the app's website or this handy-dandy forum thread the creator started.

Scribblenauts developer 5th Cell isn't one-and-done with iOS. In a recent interview with Game Informer digital, studio CEO and creative director Jeremiah Slaczka said 5th Cell has several games in the pipeline, one of which is an unannounced iOS game set for release�within the next month or so.

Slaczka was understandably light on details, but he did describe the game as "completely new." As vague as that is, it seems important to note, as it implies that 5th Cell's next go at the App Store won't be something like, say, Scribblenauts Remix [$4.99], which had a lot of recycled content from previously released games in the series. We've contacted 5th Cell for a few more details.

[Via Game Informer]

If you don't own an iPad 2 and you're about to skim past this post, let me interrupt you for a second. You can play most of Rebuild [$2.99] right now for free, as the Flash game Rebuild 2. And you really should. While the iPad 2 version comes with a few extra bells and whistles and plays gorgeously on a touch screen, this is a game that everyone should play whether they have the newest, shiniest gadget or not. Just be prepared to lose a few hours of your life to it when you do.

I don't wave around non-words like "unputdownable" often, but Rebuild deserves it. Though it's not an especially deep strategy game, it has the perfect mix of exploration, danger and difficulty to hook anyone for at least an hour or two, and maybe much longer. And yes, yes, we're up to our necks in zombie games, but this is a zombie/strategy/city builder and that's not something you see every day.

So here's the premise: you are the leader of a tiny outpost of survivors in the midst of a city overrun by zombies. Your few city blocks aren't enough to sustain your people for long, so you need to branch out. But danger lurks all around. Throughout the game you can explore the blocks around you, rescue survivors, scavenge for food and supplies, and reclaim land � all while defending against waves and hordes of zombies.

But first you need to establish your scenario. You can build a character, male or female, with an odd but broad selection of faces, hair styles and accessories. You can name your town and pick a piece of starting equipment. And then you can define the difficulty. Your town can range from small to huge, which establishes the length of the game. The difficulty ranges from very easy to impossible, and those are pretty accurate descriptions.

So you set out with your merry band on your few small squares of land. Each turn you can send your fellows out on missions. You might scout a nearby block. Following that, you might send a few guys to clear out the zombies so you can claim it as part of your town. Rebuild is a numbers game -- stack enough of one stat against an appropriate challenge and you will be guaranteed to overcome it. The game will even inform you of your odds.

But there are several stats to balance, and things become more complex as your city grows. And while it might seem like a good idea to keep everyone busy, you never know when Zed will attack. If your city is undefended, an attack might leave you with fewer survivors and more dead.

As you progress through the game you have to strike a balance between recruiting enough survivors to keep progressing, having enough housing to keep them, and finding or growing enough food to stave off starvation. Random events happen at the end of most turns, and they might make things easier or more difficult. As leader, you'll often be called on to make difficult choices.

These choices often tie in to the multiple available endings, and they're often intriguing. Do you act in self-interest or work for the good of the group? Do you let religion take hold, or attempt to stamp it out? And ultimately, once you've found a way to survive do you take it or do you keep going, trying to find something better?

These decisions feed into your final score. You're ranked on how long it took you win (or lose), how much you did with your time in zombie land, how difficult your game was and how many endings you found in one go. It's a great way to inspire players to keep trying for all the endings, keep playing, keep exploring. Be warned, however, that there's no way to track your success. There are no leaderboards, local or otherwise, so you won't have the chance to compare your progress through different runs. It's a serious oversight, but one of very few.

Otherwise, Rebuild is a treat. It comes with charming art, although its character portraits border on the surreal. The soundtrack is creepy and ambient, a perfect accompaniment to the bleak world the game inhabits. It's good enough that it makes me forget how tired I am of zombies. Rebuild probably won't satisfy fans of intensely deep strategy, but for anyone interested in a few hours of light strategy fun, it's quite the catch. Check it out, and share your thoughts in our discussion thread.

Paul & Percy [$2.99] is a great little platform-based puzzle game for the iPad, released by Danish developers�Kipper Digital.� When they discover someone has stolen their butter biscuits (or "cookies", if you're American), Paul and Percy set-off on a mission to recover their delicious snacks. The two main characters look identical, so perhaps they're twins. Otherwise, they're just two dudes who live together, dress alike and share butter biscuits.

The interesting thing about this game is that the screen is split down the middle, with Paul on one side and Percy on the other. It's like taking two platform games, turning them sideways and then placing them against each other. Each character has their own separate platform level to walk around.� But, they can stomp on certain brown blocks to push them through to the other character's side.� So, when Paul stomps on a block, it becomes a step for Percy (and vice versa). By helping each other, they can both reach their teleportation portal and escape the level.

This is one of those games where you stare at the screen for a while and then suddenly experience a wonderful eureka moment when you spot the solution. Of course, once you rush ahead with your brilliant plan, you invariably discover that Paul or Percy is stranded and needs an extra block to climb somewhere. Luckily holding your finger down reverses time, so you can back-track your movements � even right back to the start � and try again (or just hit the restart button).

Once you complete one of the fifty levels, the adjacent levels on the world map are unlocked. However, to score a medal (gold, silver, bronze) you need to complete the level within a certain number of moves. Each step, jump or character switch counts as one turn. So, don't absently walk your character around while you're pondering, because the gold medals require a perfect solution, without any unnecessary moves.

As you progress, other game elements are introduced. There are statue pieces to push into position, slug-like "snails" which can be pushed to the other side, but may come out somewhere different than expected.� Stomping on bells will make snails appear or disappear from the blocks.� Every few levels, there's a cut-scene to progress the storyline. And, of course, there's hot (as in stolen) butter biscuits to recover.

You can complete the game and solve the mystery without picking up any delicious biscuits, but they're required for achievements if you want an extra challenge. On the world map, levels with uncollected biscuits have a faint white glow. Once you recover the biscuits, that glow disappears. I didn't notice this explained in the game and it's easy to miss, but is quite handy to know.

The controls are mostly swipe-based and work fine. You tap once to switch character (Paul or Percy), swipe to make them move, swipe downwards to stomp or upwards to jump. You can push a brown block by walking into it,� providing there's nothing on top of it or blocking its path. Sometimes you need to stomp a block while the other character is standing directly opposite, to hoist them higher, so they can jump onto an otherwise out-of-reach platform.

You can try Paul & Percy on your computer, as a free online version is available, but it really feels much better on an iPad. This game delivers decent puzzle-solving entertainment, with 50 levels and 15 local in-app achievements. The levels require some brain-activity to solve, especially if you're shooting for gold medals and all the biscuits, so it's really satisfying when you beat a level for a gold medal. I'm not certain who stole the biscuits yet, but since one character is shown alongside the associated achievement, I've got a hunch who it might be!

Tower defense games are a dime a dozen these days and Wild Defense [99�/$1.99], in spite of its zesty-fresh tropical flavor, doesn't bring anything really new to the table. Still, that doesn't stop it being a moderately entertaining affair. Less a game for the casual enthusiast and more for the hardcore fan, this one is for those who just have to have another tower defense game on their phones.

Functionality-wise, Wild Defense will be rather cut and dry for tower defense aficionados. Your objective is a simple one: protect your fortress from the enemy waves. To accomplish this, you'll have to drag and drop your units onto strategic locations in the map, all the while trying to maintain a proper composition of troops to ensure that you can deal with the various enemy types. In addition, you'll also have to do things like purchase weapons for your army, work with bombs, cast spells, defeat bosses and occasionally play the Wild Defense equivalent of Russian Roulette.

I'm especially fond of the last, by the way. Though still essentially the same tower defense game, there's also a random element of luck: you'll only be able to use whatever the RNG has selected for you be it a tamer (she's a rather scantily dressed chick with a whip, one capable of lowering defenses with every blow she renders) or extra currency. It's a small twist but it provides a refreshing touch.

That said, Wild Defense isn't quite the sure-fire formulaic success that it should have been. Though it has a lot going for it, Wild Defense is also plagued with small flaws: the jagged difficulty curve, the pause button that sends you to a menu instead of halting the action so you can adequately plan your next move, and bare bones plot (a crying shame given that the setting is all kinds of awesome) are but some of them.

All these would have been forgivable, however, if it wasn't for the fact the interface is painfully clumsy. In theory, the whole drag and drop thing should have worked fine. In practice, it's a lot less effective. For one, it's impossible to tell the range of a unit prior to setting it down and by then, it's a little too late. This, in turn, wouldn't be so bad if things could be sold for a decent value. You can see how it all adds up.

Don't get me wrong. Wild Defense isn't bad, per say. The flaws I've mentioned? You could probably fix them with a patch. If anything, Wild Defense is actually pretty decent. Nonetheless, those who are looking to dip their toes into the genre should probably try their luck with another title.

No one can deny that the advent of Angry Birds made a permanent change to the way people saw iOS gaming. Since its debut in December 2009, the simple bird-launching game has made approximately 27 boatloads of money, and continues to rake it in with merchandise sales such as plushies and more. Naturally, other designers were bound to try to imitate the formula and appeal to the gamers who were hopelessly addicted to hurling birds at pigs. And with that, clones were born.

Snappy Dragons [99�/Lite/HD/Lite HD] is an Angry Birds clone, through and through. But I have to clarify, because at this point in the post-Angry Birds landscape, there are many different categories of clones, so it's essential to explain what exactly you're getting into. Well, aside from throwing stuff at other stuff.

Snappy Dragons has a very simple premise, just like the game it's inspired by: Evil wizards have kidnapped adorable baby dragons, and it's up to you to save them. To do so, you'll need to progress through a series of levels (80 in total across four different worlds) that present the basic challenge of taking out the wizards and saving the baby dragons. Luckily, you have a handful of fireballs at your disposal, so that helps your quest considerably. You also get to choose which dragon you play out of four, which has pretty much no effect on the actual game but hey, you look cool.

As you progress through the levels, new challenges will be introduced such as dragon cages which you can destroy for extra points. Controls are responsive when it comes to aiming your fireballs and trying to nail the perfect arc, and its still fun to make your way through the levels. It all feels familiar, which is probably because the formula is shamelessly copied from Angry Birds, but if you crave more of that gameplay, you will certainly enjoy making your way through Snappy Dragons.

There are also bonus levels sprinkled throughout the game too, which help to break up the level-by-level formula and let you go on a wizard-killing rampage. It's strangely satisfying to never run out of fireballs, as they are limited in all the regular gameplay levels.

The game has a cheery feel and the art style is perky, with wide eyed dragon babies blinking innocently while they wait for you to save their lives. It's nothing that you'll rave to your friends about, but you will likely enjoy it in that way that a familiar thing can be rewarding (kind of like my shaming and horrible addiction to all Zuma games). It also has built in Facebook and Twitter support, so while you may not need to rave about how unique Snappy Dragons is, you can at least brag about your high scores to your friends. And since bragging seems to be a golden quality among most gamers, it's sure to please those of you who enjoy doing so.

Today I saved the citizens of Metropolis from a missile launched from an unknown location. I flew into the sky and intercepted it in midair, then beat it to pieces. It exploded harmlessly over the city. But no time to wait for thanks -- a car full of criminals was escaping down the stretch of road in front of the Daily Planet. I handled them with my laser vision, if you know what I mean. Then that dastardly Lex Luthor unleashed a bunch of sticky bombs in the city. While I was gathering those up, fires started up on a nearby building. Then the meteors fell.

But hey, Superman [$0.99 / HD] can handle all that. All in a day's work, as they say. It's just too bad he couldn't be doing it in a better game. One that plays a bit less like The Hero, by Traplight Games, perhaps?

It's not that Superman is a total knock-off of The Hero. The Hero has style, charm and humor, and Superman has laser eyes, optional retina assets and the ability to beat up missiles while riding them. But the similarities are abundant.

This is the basic gameplay for both games: you fly around a two dimensional city putting out fires both proverbial and literal. You control your flight with a virtual joystick on the left, and a boost button on the right. You have special abilities you can use to do your job better -- those also hang out on the right side. You go through waves of enemies and crises while a top bar ticks down as you harm the city or allow it to come to harm (because Superman would never harm something himself). You have to finish each level before the bar runs out, and you're scored on the things you destroy or save in the meantime.

Superman adds a score multiplier to that formula. It builds up as you succeed, and falls when Supes gets hit by an otherwise harmless projectile or lets a target get away. At the end of each level, you're ranked based on the score you manage to earn.

But even if it weren't so very similar to The Hero, Superman wouldn't be a very good game. It has its positives -- the flight control is nice, and the control that handles your laser vision is conveniently contextual, changing to the control that punches dudes or picks up cars as needed. And you get to play Superman, if that's your thing.

The negatives just pile on, though. The missions are long and samey. Save a plane from dropping on Metropolis? Cool, you'll do that ten more times over the course of the game. You'll shoot up the same Luthorian police force every few levels. And it's not like the things you're doing ever really make any sense. You need to destroy these cameras/bombs/comets/fires around the city because, whatever, Lex Luthor, am I right? Unless Lois Lane telling you there are criminals on the run is your idea of a great reference to a beloved property, there just isn't much to love.

A couple levels manage to rise above the rest of the familiar, boring schlock. Those with boss fights can be fun, although they highlight the limitations of the controls (flying and shooting moving targets at the same time gets extremely awkward). And there are a handful of time trial levels peppered throughout, which just let you fly and fly and fly. Those are the good times.

Ultimately, if you love Superman and you miss the days when arcade games didn't bother with all that story nonsense and just let you get straight to beating stuff up, you might get something out of this game. If not, it's certainly a fun diversion at times. But if you'd like to see the same game done better, get The Hero. It's starting to show its age, but even so the love with which it was crafted still shines through -- more than I can say for this take on the Man of Steel. Either way, drop by our discussion thread and let us know what you think.