It's been so long since we've heard anything about Square Enix's iOS port of the PlayStation classic Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions that I was starting to wonder if they really did announce it back at E3 2010 or if I merely dreamt the whole thing up.

The last news we officially heard about the game was back in December when Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy Tactics, which had missed its intended September 15th release, was now slated for a much more vague "Spring 2011" date. Seeing as the end of Spring is fast approaching and there's been no updates on the title's progress, some have started to wonder whether the release of this highly anticipated title would slip once again.

Today Square Enix has finally broken their silence and announced on their Facebook page that yes, Final Fantasy Tactics likely won't be making its Spring debut as promised, but instead will be released shortly after in "late June to mid-July".

I guess if you're the ultimate optimist, it conceivably still could make Spring if it somehow hits on the very last day, June 21st, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Still, having a clearer idea of when the game will launch is appreciated. Plus, Square Enix have released a new batch of screens, which I'll go ahead and let you check out for yourself:

Another interesting tidbit that Square Enix has shared is that the game will be getting an iPad native release, and that one of their artists is actually redrawing much of the art in 1024�768 resolution so that it looks nice and sharp on the screen of the iPad.

Because of this extra work, you can expect the iPad version to launch sometime after the iPhone/iPod touch version. No word on if the artwork that is being redrawn in high resolution will also make its way to the smaller screen in the form of Retina Display support, though I would certainly hope so.

Mark your calendars and clear some free time in the "late June to mid-July" window for the long-awaited release of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, and drop by the massive thread in our forums to share in the anticipation with your fellow gamers.

Originally starting life as a PSP Mini, Flying Hamster from developer The Game Atelier made its way to iOS this past January. A horizontally scrolling shooter, Flying Hamster's gameplay harkened back to shooters of days past, with an unforgiving difficulty and strict arcade-style level structure. The old-school design offered no mid-level checkpoints, and losing all of your lives meant starting all the way over at the beginning.

That's not a bad thing at all though, especially if you like classic shmups, but it's not everybody's cup of tea. Aside from the gameplay, the strongest aspect of Flying Hamster was its adorable style and fantastic sound and visuals, which we noted in our original review. There's almost no end to the zaniness of the enemies, environments, and weaponry in Flying Hamster, and it really is a sight to behold. There's just something fun about playing this game that brings a smile to my face very time.

Now you can check out Flying Hamster for yourself for absolutely nothing for a limited time. Shortly after the iPhone release in January, an iPad native version was released, and that's free right now as well. In fact, the iPad version actually tempered the difficulty somewhat by virtue of showing more of the playing area thanks to its larger screen.

Chances are if you even remotely enjoyed watching the above trailer, then you'll get a huge kick out of playing Flying Hamster. It isn't the best shmup on the App Store, but it's certainly one of the wackiest. Definitely give Flying Hamster a try while you're able to grab it for free.

We've been pretty excited for the release of Casey's Contraptions ever since we posted the first trailer a couple of weeks ago. This colorful physics puzzler has you building up machines in order to collect lost items for young Casey across over 70 levels in the game. You can then take these collected items and use them in a level editor to create your own puzzles, sending them to friends via email for them to solve.

Another intriguing aspect to Casey's Contraptions is the ability to share solution replays for each of the levels with friends on Game Center. Yesterday, the developers behind Casey's Contraptions, Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut Games, posted some new screens and information in our forums on how this system works (click any image below to enlarge).

This screenshot on the left shows one of the early levels in the game, where you must get down a soccer ball that is trapped on top of some pipes. Upon completing the level, you're show the screen on the right, which tells you how many stars you earned on that level. Along the bottom of this screen are the 3 most recent solutions that your Game Center friends have shared, and clicking on one will allow you to see their final setup or even replay the level so you can see exactly how it worked.

You'll notice that among the choices of replays there is one that has a Casey icon in the corner. Casey himself will actually be a friend to everyone in the game, and he wants to share his solutions to levels with you too. The screen above on the left is one of Casey's solutions for earning 3 stars on that level. The way Casey goes about solving levels is often very direct with no frills, but the beauty of Casey's Contraptions is that there are many ways to solve every level. The screen on the right shows the solution to the same level, once again earning 3 stars, but using a completely different tactic.

The ability to share solutions like this sounds like one of the most appealing aspects to Casey's Contraptions. With the somewhat open-ended ability to create solutions to each level, I can see it being incredibly fun sharing a particularly crazy or elaborate solution for all your friends to see, and challenging them to try and one up it. Besides showing the 3 most recent friend solutions after completing a level, you can also expand this and see both your own solutions for that particular level plus all the shared solutions from your entire Game Center friends list.

Casey's Contraptions is scheduled to launch this Thursday (or rather, Wednesday night in the US) for the iPad at a price of $2.99. An iPhone version is in the works as well, though no date is set for that at this time. You can drop by the upcoming thread in our forums for discussion of the game, and we'll have a full review of Casey's Contraptions when it launches later this week.