Masters of the pixelated career simulation Kairosoft are back at it again on iOS with their just-released Sushi Spinnery [$3.99] which dropped on the App Store early this morning.

As you might be able to guess if you're familiar with Kairosoft's ways, Sushi Spinnery is all about running a sushi restaurant. In fact, a main feature of your restaurant is a motorized "sushi boat" which spins around and offers customers a selection of your delectable menu items from the convenience of the rotating conveyor belt. It's the future of eating!

It appears that Sushi Spinnery is your standard Kairosoft fare, which is always great from a gameplay standpoint but brings a few recurring disappointments like lack of iPhone 5 widescreen support, no Game Center, and kind of half-hearted iPad support, though the title is Universal.

Still though, Kairosoft games are some of the most engaging simulations around, and if you're a fan of their brand of games then you'll likely enjoy this latest release, which has been out on Android for nearly a year. Stop by our forums for even more Sushi Spinnery impressions from our community.

Last month we told you, rather breathlessly, about Wadjet Eye Games' plans to bring Gemini Rue to iPhone and iPad. Depending on how closely you followed the point-and-click adventure scene a few years ago, you may know Gemini Rue as a gritty, futuristic detective story about a spacecop named Azriel Odin and an amnesiac named Delta-Six. We now know that Gemini Rue will hit the App Store on April 11 and cost $4.99, though the game will be discounted to $3.99 for early adopters for the first few weeks.

And those early adopters are going to be important: Gemini Rue is Wadjet Eye's first iOS game, and it will serve as a test case for whether or not the indie dev brings more of its back catalog to iPhone and iPad. "If people buy this, then we could justify porting everything else," Wadjet Eye co-founder Dave Gilbert told Joystiq during PAX East. "If it does badly then there's really no point, because this is our best-selling game on the best-selling platform, so that's the best way to gauge to see if it's worth doing."

Wadjet Eye's "everything else" include point-and-click adventures like Resonance, the long-running Blackwell series, and Wormwood Studios' Primordia, all of which seem delightful in their own way. Primordia in particular is gorgeous, if nothing else -- let's go ahead and find a way to get that on a Retina display.

Anyway, point-and-click adventure games tend to do well on iOS as a rule, critically if not always financially. It's a good match for the platform, and Wadjet Eye have taken steps to make the game make the game as "touch-screen friendly as possible," says Gilbert.

While originally built on the open source Adventure Game Studio engine, the Gemini Rue conversion has taken about eight months and has largely been the work of Wadjet Eye chief technology officer Janet Gilbert. Upgrades and improvements include enlarging and improving the hotspots for selectable items in the game.

Wadjet Eye were kind enough to send over a review code, so look for our thoughts as we get closer to release.

[Joystiq]

It seems like an eternity since King Cashing [$1.99] came out of no where in 2011. Combining a strong slot-machine battle system with a loose RPG system, King Cashing was a little rough around the edges from a presentation standpoint but absolutely nailed its combat mechanics, making it a sleeper hit amongst our forums. That same mechanic returns excellently preserved in King Cashing 2. With a refined leveling system, new characters, a wealth of weapons and items and a story told with an excellent visual novel style, King Cashing 2 addresses every issue I had with the original, making it a game that begs to be played.

If you're unfamiliar with how an RPG with a slot-machine battle system works, I'd encourage you to check out our review of the original King Cashing. For everyone else, the same combat system that we loved before makes a return with some minor improvements. Players still participate in battles with cherries as the currency of choice for spinning the reels with the goal being to match up characters and weapons against enemies to cause damage. One new twist is the ability to eventually purchase a power-up that will a selected reel for one turn during a battle. Otherwise King Cashing 2 focuses less on innovation and more on simply adding to an already excellent system.

With only three character types and corresponding weapons, simplicity was the name of the game in the original King Cashing. King Cashing 2 looks to up the ante with a lot more variety. Players eventually unlock 7 characters, each with their own preferred weapons and critical bonuses. Weapons also continue the hit/damage trend of the previous game, meaning that the stronger the weapons is the lower its hit attribute is (meaning the less likely it'll show up on a slot reel).

Some of the new weapons and characters are also pretty unique, such as the Necromancer, a relatively weak character that converts a 'Miss' reel into a 'Human' weapon with each hit. Another interesting addition is the potion weapon class which offers a wide variety of effects ranging from damage-over-time poison to armor damage, to enemy 'bait' (which temporarily adds more enemies to the reel). There's also a wealth of new secondary bonus items which can be equipped to modify the slots even further. These new additions and options lead to a lot more different ways to play the game and go a long way towards formulating new strategies, especially as later enemies start to become resistant (and immune!) to more and more weapons.

The most impressive improvement that Productions Multimage has made in King Cashing 2 is in its visual style and narrative technique. Taking on an entirely different theme than its predecessor, King Cashing 2 employs a slick graphic novel style that does a great job of telling its tale. It also doesn't hurt that everything simply looks amazing, with the game taking full advantage of retina visuals which are pretty essential for any game attempting to emulate comic-book visuals. King Cashing 2's story, meanwhile, is infinitely better than the original, telling a tale of an undead king awoken from his slumber and searching for gold. One minor complaint is the lack of full iPhone 5 support (borders fill out the extra space on the elongated device), but the game still looks great nonetheless.

Most importantly, like its predecessor, King Cashing 2 is simply fun to play. Battles are streamlined and offer players the ability to play the game as one of chance or to focus on memorizing and individually stopping reels. Incredibly difficult enemies return as 'side quests' that offer quite a challenge. Achievements, ranking systems for each battle, and leaderboards that track how fast you complete 'issues' all return, adding some extra replayability. While the story itself is a bit short, the system in place makes it easy to add new 'Issues' with a future already being promised.

As I mentioned in the review for King Cashing, a slots-based RPG is certainly not for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be folks that can't (or won't) grasp the unique battle system. However, for folks that can, King Cashing 2 is the definitive title for the genre. Where the original at times felt like a nicely implemented tech demo, King Cashing 2 is an excellent game in its own right, improving on nearly every facet over the original and well worth checking out.

I was in a panic. An actual panic.

The forest around me was changing, and I couldn't find my way back to my cottage: I was hoping to methodically explore the map, hoping to impose logic onto a shifting, supernatural landscape. It was dark, I was lost, and the Swedish snow was falling interminably -- my heart beat a little faster, I was sweating despite being in bed under a blanket, and I became upset enough to close Year Walk [$3.99] and browse Twitter for a while. It got in my head.

Granted, I was playing Simogo's latest horror-puzzle-exploration game in ideal conditions. It was dark, it was raining, I had was wearing headphones. But, Year Walk has an undeniable sense of place. It's a gripping, somber, atmospheric, and elegantly-designed game, and everyone should play it.

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When we first heard that Square Enix would be releasing a new retro-based Final Fantasy, I was excited to see if we'd end up with another adventure similar to Final Fantasy: Dimensions [Free]. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy: All the Bravest [$3.99] is as far away from such a title as you can possibly imagine. Focusing entirely on simplified battles, Final Fantasy: ATB is less of a game and more of a blatant attempt to extort cash from a weary fan base for a brief glimpse of nostalgia.

You'll find no story (other than a generic intro narrative screen), character development or meaningful interaction in All The Bravest. Instead, players bounce from stage to stage set in one-screen locations vaguely reminiscent of overworld locations across various Final Fantasy games. Each stage typically consists of several rounds of enemies also extracted from a wide range of previous games in the series. Players battle those enemies, earn experience, gain party level-ups and also earn gil, although there are no gil-based shops to speak of. While this description alone feels suspect for a Final Fantasy, this is only the tip of the iceberg for ATB's troubles.

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Hey, it's that time again when all the international releases from out weekly Coming Tonight post have finally gone live in the US App Store. There were some good games in this week's batch of new releases, so be sure to check out that post to see if anything strikes your fancy. Probably the two biggest releases this week are the sequel to Temple Run and an interesting new Final Fantasy game, both of which we took a look at earlier today and we'll go ahead and provide the links for you here in this post.

Temple Run 2, Free - [Forum Thread] - [TA Plays] - This is basically the Temple Run you know and love, but bigger and better in every way. Better visuals, smoother performance, upgradeable items, four playable characters, and new environmental items like zip lines and mine cart rides. Just like its older sibling Temple Run 2 is free to download and play, so if you were the fan of the first or if it passed you by and you're curious what all this Temple Run business is all about then there's no reason not to give it a try.

FINAL FANTASY ALL THE BRAVEST, $3.99 - [Forum Thread] - [TA Plays] - Square Enix has released a new Final Fantasy game for iOS, and it's something of a conglomeration of all previous Final Fantasy games mashed together into a combat-focused package. Not a bad idea in and of itself for a mobile spinoff title, but there are a couple of strange aspects to the game that have given us pause. The combat itself is quite basic for one thing, but beyond that there's a host of IAP options that seems like it might be an annoyance. We'll spend some more time with it to see for sure, but if you're a big Final Fantasy fan then it's probably worth at least dropping the initial 4 bucks to check it out firsthand.

If your expectations in terms of a game's presentation are high, Imago's Partia: The Broken Lineage [$3.99] isn't for you. On the other hand, if you're a fan of Strategy RPGs, especially the Fire Emblem series, and you can deal with simple graphics, typos, and a few non-fatal glitches, developer Imago's freshman offering is remarkably deep, very nearly on par with big budget games like Final Fantasy Tactics [$15.99] and Spectral Souls [Free].

The plot of Partia is appealingly human: a couple of generations after the unification of two kingdoms, old rivalries and new circumstances threaten to tear the realm apart. Would it be best to let Gran and Anas separate? Unfortunately, you're in no position to consider that possibility, as your brother is the new, and possibly last, king of united Grana.

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Do clothes make the man? In Kairosoft's Pocket Clothier [$3.99], they do. There's something strangely bittersweet about the Japanese company's latest simulation game. Unlike its previous titles, Pocket Clothier won't have you gallivanting across the nether regions of space or monitoring the growth of a mall.

Instead, it will put you in control of a little clothing outlet, one that you will, hopefully, turn into a thriving hotspot for fashionistas and the forsaken.

And that's what makes me want to go "D'aww!" and slap a hand over my face all at the same time. Forget dangerous excursions through subterranean dungeons. Here, you'll occasionally find yourself called upon by the denizens of Pocket Clothier to select an outfit that can help them acquire their dream careers.

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If you're the kind of person who doesn't miss an episode of Project Runway and you can't get enough of Kairosoft games, a new simulation just hit the App Store that's going to be totally up your alley. It's called Pocket Clothier [$3.99] and this time around Kairosoft is putting us to the task of running our own clothing store. Or, as they put it, "Let your inner fashionista flower as you cultivate a quaint corner shop into a world-class super brand!"

Kairosoft continues the welcome trend of releasing universal titles with Pocket Clothier, although disappointingly enough it runs letterboxed on the iPhone 5.

We're going to be powering through Pocket Clothier over the weekend for a review early next week, but if you're a die-hard Kairosoft fan that doesn't want to wait, I can't say I blame you.

I don't know about you, but all I can think about when I mow someone down or blow someone away in Payback2 [$4.99 / $29.99] is Jesse Ventura as Blaine in the movie Predator throwing back the cover of his minigun, spitting out his chewing tobacco (real nasty habit he's got there) and delivering that immortal one-liner, "Payback time!"

It makes you feel tough, big and clever, and it fits Payback2's action like a boxing glove. I mean, this game's got to be worth playing for that reason alone, right?

Clearly this is a GTA clone, and makes no real apology for that. Nor should it, given that the GTA franchise took off in a very different direction after the second installment. Payback2 borrows - admittedly very heavily - from the original, and not the third-person 3D versions that came later. You decide whether that's good or bad, but from my perspective it's a wise decision. The bird's-eye-view format clearly still has a lot of life left in it.

GTA chose to tweak the series when it went fully 3D by dropping you into the world of organized crime. But what was so great about the first two games is that they were all about disorganized crime, and that sweet, reckless, chaotic flavor also permeates Payback2.

This certainly can't be accused of being a slave to its inspiration, however. Instead, it makes use of somewhat randomized game modes, so each new mission - or level, or however you want to label the independent vignettes of action - throws you into quite a different arena. For example, you start out in a tank, surrounded by enemies in need of destruction.

Being a tank you don't have to worry quite so much about self-sustained injury, crashing or enemy gunfire, and you're free to trundle around blasting like crazy and blowing things up. It's an intro that demonstrates the rampant destruction Payback2 actively encourages, after which it's time to head out on foot for a team-based death match.

And so it goes from there, with most any kind of shooting, driving or multiplayer-based game structure you can think of haphazardly piled on top of one another as you climb the criminal ranks. It's true that this dog pile of unsystematic violence might feel rather unstructured as has been noted on the forums, and that's because it is. Personally I'd appreciate more story and less cherry-picking of game styles, but it's hard to criticize Payback2 too much for committing to the chaos. Disorganized crime probably shouldn't be too constrained by a deliberate plot sequence, but it can also feel quite jarring how the game schizophrenically flips between events. Mini-game fans will find this quite endearing, while GTA aficionados will feel like they're splashing around in the shallow end of the crime-game pool.

At least you're never lonely when playing through these mentalist missions, as the city is a very busy place. The place is littered with pedestrians and motorists - who provide the vehicles you'll make considerable use of as weapons and escape options - along with your own AI-controlled team members and a huge number of enemies. On top of this are the cops, who seem fairly oblivious to the carnage until you commit a crime right in front of their faces, when you suddenly find yourself fighting a gang war on two fronts. Escape is your best option when the filth are after you, and considering this robs you of valuable time needed to complete your objectives, you soon learn that it's better to avoid their involvement by any means necessary.

This adds the same enjoyable aura of anarchy that GTA harnessed so expertly, and gives you something to care about when firing wildly into a crowd or jacking car after car. Keeping your eyes peeled for the peelers is an important obstacle that gives the game a bit of much-needed depth.

And if all these game modes still aren't enough, Payback2 comes complete with extensive multiplayer options. The online gaming is quite simple, really; replacing the AI characters with other real-life players. They can be on your team, as members of another gang or every man for themselves, depending on the game mode - of which there are many.

Jump into the matchmaking option, pick your game and get into the blood-soaked action. It's simple and effortless, once the initial matchmaking wait is over and the round is ready. The delay doesn't seem to be because of an underpowered multiplayer system, so much as shoring up the number of players, but it's worth it once the pandemonium is in full swing. Also, even this early on in the game's life, there seems to be a lot of support for multiplayer games, so there's usually a queue waiting that you can jump straight into. Custom games can be hosted by you that other players are then invited to join in with, but they're just a way to ensure you're playing the event you want without having to find someone already hosting it. A nice option, but it wouldn't be a deal breaker if it wasn't included.

The controls don't ask too much of you, and switch depending on whether you're on foot or in a vehicle. Running and shooting is easy from the top-down viewpoint, with one analog stick for movement, and the other for strafing. It's a great system that means you can run in one direction and shoot in another, and since you'll be dead in seconds if you stand still and take careful aim, you'll make good use of it. Armored vehicles, such as tanks and choppers, also use this control method, while cars free up your fingers for accelerating and breaking by employing tilt-controlled steering.

We tested the Payback2 HD version, by the way, which includes support for the iPad as well as iPhone and iPod touch. If you're definitely only going to play this on an iPhone or iPod touch, the standard (and slightly cheaper) Payback2 version is for you. It still supports small screen Retina, but isn't iPad-native. However, both games are identical in every other way.

Admittedly I'm a little torn between the absolute absence of story- which leaves you feeling hungry even after wolfing down the rich feast of violence - and the guilty pleasure of random acts of destruction. Payback2 would land itself an extra star if it had found some middle ground between the two, but there's still a lot to enjoy and it requires very little commitment on your part to play. Load it up, go mental with a machine gun during your coffee break, turn it off and forget. Sounds like pretty good escapism to me.

The Fractal and Pulse: Volume One developer doesn't disappoint in its latest dazzling puzzler Splice: Tree of Life [$3.99 (HD)]. Cipher Prime once again sticks to an iPad-only experience, but it only takes one look at the gorgeously large, 70+ levels to understand why the team opted for the larger touch canvas.

Players have a limited number of moves (splices) to arrange cells in a way that matches the outlined structure. The game later introduce mutator genes which cause cells to duplicate, create or destroy lower level cells. Comprehending this may sound like it requires an advanced degree in science, but Splice's crisp and minimal interface makes observing and learning the different mutations' behavior simple.

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If you've played Hothead Games' Kard Combat [Free], it's a safe bet that Three Donkeys' Spectromancer [$1.99 / $3.99 (HD)] is going to seem familiar. Very familiar. It's not just that they're both card-battle games in the same vein as Magic, it's that they have exactly the same rules, play the same way, and while the cards have different names and art, their game stats and abilities are identical.

So is Spectromancer a clone of Kard Combat? Well, no. Then Kard Combat is a clone of Spectromancer? No, not really. The thing is is that Kard Combat is a licensed port of Spectromancer - the computer game that's been out for years. The new Spectromancer iOS game is also a port, but it's a direct port, keeping the title, card names, art and style of the computer game (which, apparently now exists in a free Flash version as well).

The crisis of origins doesn't stop there: Spectromancer is based on Apus Software's Astral Tournament (2001) a game heavily inspired by, you guessed it, Magic: the Gathering. Spectromancer is a joint project by Alexi Stankevich, the creator of Astral Tournament, and Richard Garfield himself (y'know, the guy who created Magic).

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Lost Cities [$3.99] is a game that's hard to quantify. It's built on Reiner Knizia's formidable game design talents, and made into an impressive asynchronous experience by The Coding Monkeys, developers of board game delight Carcassonne [$9.99]. It has a robust single-player campaign and most of the online tools one could hope for. It looks great, too. All of that sounds pretty glowing, but we're only a few days in and I'm already making excuses not to take my turns.

Lost Cities is, more or less, two-player Solitaire. Like Solitaire it's almost, but not entirely, mindless. You draw cards into your hand, and you put them in appropriately ordered and colored piles. You share the deck with an opponent, and ideally work against each other. Much like Solitaire, though, the game relies on luck as much as skill or strategy. It's also best played as a time-waster, without the brunt of your full attention. That zen-like state that comes from moving cards around towards a goal is kind of hard to achieve when you're only taking turns every hour or two.

That's not to say it's poorly designed--not at all. It's just a bit dull for an asynchronous multiplayer game. You take your turn, you place one card, you draw one card. Rinse and repeat. Normally I'd pad out the experience contemplating future moves or considering my opponent's strategy, but Lost Cities isn't really complex enough to make much of that necessary.

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By now management sim fans should be familiar with the drill - out of the blue a new Kairosoft game is launched, bringing its distinct gameplay style to a new theme. In this case, Cafeteria Nipponica [$3.99] takes a turn at giving players the opportunity to become masters of food service management. The theme is a welcome addition and works well with the management tools it offers. In fact, it may work a little too well, as Nipponica ends up being one of the deepest Kairosoft games on the platform, sacrificing some accessibility for depth.

Cafeteria Nipponica puts you in the role of a manager of a restaurant. You hire cooks and servers, set the dishes, and watch as patrons start flocking to your cafe. Soon after, you unlock the ability to initiate plans for your restaurant, that range from publicity moves (such as running a mobile phone campaign) that encourage business to expanding your restaurant to even being able to move it to a bigger town (bigger population means more possible customers).

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In late February, on Leap Day no less, developer Fluttermind released Incoboto [$3.99 (HD)] for the iPad. Fitting, too, as Incoboto is the type of experience that only comes around every so often. It's technically a platform-puzzler, but all the running, jumping, and puzzle solving you end up doing is just a means to experience the dark and moody story of a strange universe where the sun no longer shines. Incoboto is a visual treat and its story and characters are deep and interesting, something many games have trouble implementing on a mobile platform.

We really liked Incoboto in our review, but since it is so heavily reliant on its visuals and style it was one of those games that suffered when Apple released the new iPad a few weeks following the game's release. It has never looked bad, per se, but that high resolution screen was just screaming for support from a game like Incoboto. And over the weekend, that's what we got. A brand new update has added Retina Display support to the game, and it's straight up gorgeous.

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