Venan Entertainment has been teasing us with their free spinoff of Space Miner [$4.99 / Lite] for months now. We first caught wind of the game at E3, and since then have been patiently waiting for their upcoming arcade twist on Space Miner. The basic premise of the game was explained in our preview:

Space Miner Blast will be supported by unobtrusive in-game advertising, with optional DLC which will add features to the game and disable advertisements entirely. Most of the original Space Miner has been stripped out in favor of a quick survival game with a very basic upgrade system. All you do is see how big of a multiplier you can keep going by blasting as much ore as you possibly can (while defending against enemies of course).

Unfortunately, along the way Venan hit some roadblocks. Namely the release of the iPhone 4, iOS 4, and all the other fun things that Apple sprung on developers between E3 and now. The good news is, Space Miner Blast was submitted to Apple a few days ago, and is pending approval before its unleashed to the masses on the App Store. In celebration, Venan released the following gameplay trailer:

In addition, they've provided some more details of what the game will include. Basically, it will be completely free to download and play with a few unobtrusive advertisements in menus, but nowhere when you're actually playing the game. Three different ships are available via a 99� in-app purchase that each have different bonuses to attack, defense, and mining. Buying one of these ships disables advertisements and unlocks Retina Display graphics which likely are part of their new content delivery system mentioned in the previous post to offer high-definition games while staying under the critical 20MB file size for over the air downloads.

Either way, we'll find out how it all works soon. We'll have a review of Space Miner Blast as soon as it docks with the App Store.

Back in the early days of March, we previewed an upcoming dual-stick shooter called Revolt. The video for Revolt showcased some very nice looking 3D visuals, destructible environments, and some incredible lighting. Even more impressive, however, was that Revolt was being created by just a three man development team. Revolt also looks to add a greater strategic element than what is found in most other dual-stick shooters, with careful weapon and ammunition management required to be successful.

Earlier tonight, Revolt [$1.99] finally went live in the US App Store. It features 8 story-based levels and a whopping 20 different survival arenas to blast through over 3 difficulty levels. A number of upgradeable weapons and armor are at your disposal to take out a range of different enemies and boss characters. In addition to these gameplay features, Revolt is a universal build with Retina Display support and Game Center/Openfeint integration.

Here is some early gameplay footage from a hands-on preview we did on Revolt back in March:

It should be noted that the developers don't recommend Revolt for owners of 1st generation devices, and warn that the game may not perform very well on anything lower than 3rd generation devices. Interestingly they also already have the first update completed for Revolt, as mentioned on their blog, and further versions will look to address performance on older devices as well as add new features to the game. We'll be taking a much closer look at Revolt once we've put it through its paces. Until then, you can check out the early impressions pouring into our forums that are so far fairly positive. Or you can just dive in head first and take advantage of the introductory price of $1.99.