With its comic book aesthetic, dark detective story, and double-layered title, the upcoming Framed is unapologetic in its noir influence. Somewhat less obvious is that this is the first independent project of three ex-Firemonkeys developers, who've teamed up to form Loveshack Entertainment.

TouchArcade was invited around to the Loveshack office in Melbourne, Australia for an exclusive first look at Framed. We sought to find out: what is this unique-looking puzzler about, anyway? What is independent iOS development life like after the Firemonkeys days of highly priced racecars and cheese-stealing mice? Can a narrative-driven puzzle game survive with free-to-play becoming such an abundant practice?

Our gameplay session was just ten minutes long, but polished and promising; it was the first six chapters of an eventual experience that lead coder Josh Boggs described as "movie-like," both in its length and its mood.

"I had an idea of having actions that were predefined, and rearranging them so that the meaning would change," Boggs explains. "In the narrative, the meaning behind a scene comes from the actions and context - so I wanted to play with the context, rather than the actions."

Before me, an iPad showed me a sequence of images arranged in comic book panels - a key hanging from a hook, a door, a hatch in the floor, a bloodied body in a basement. Upon hitting the "play" icon on the first panel, our silhouetted hero began to move through the panels from left to right, top to bottom. He strode obliviously past the hanging keys, coming to a stop when he reached the hatch in the floor with no way to open it.

It was now my turn to rewrite the story. Two of the frames remained unmovable, as indicated by a small lock icon in their upper-right corners. This suggested to me that my goal in this chapter was to reach the body in the basement; it was up to me to reorder the actions to facilitate reaching this goal.

The remaining unlocked panels wiggled to indicate that I could move them. By dragging them around, I changed the order of actions. This time, the detective walked through the door, collecting the keys as he emerged from the other side, before proceeding to unlock the hatch and move into the basement to make his grisly discovery. Despite the wordless, purely graphical depiction of this detective's journey, I felt oddly powerful, playing a part in the way his story panned out.

"There's a strong undercurrent of narrative in there, but you're never beat over the head with it," Boggs says. "'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' Six words. There's a narrative right there. We don't need tons of dialogue or lore to communicate a powerful story to the player."

Though this reordering of the panels is Framed's current sole mechanic, Loveshack's developers - whose collected previous game credits include SPY Mouse [Free / Free (HD)] and Real Racing 3 [Free], as well as PC gaming classics Theme Hospital and Syndicate Wars - have been experimenting with other mechanics as they work on the difficulty and puzzle progression. The ability to rotate panels might be a future feature, as well as panels that expand when dragged into a larger area, revealing more context to the action they depict.

Boggs and his two fellow Loveshackers, Ollie Browne and Adrian Moore, left Firemonkeys recently following the gradual disillusionment they experienced in the year following the studio's acquisition by EA.

"At Firemint we had a lot of creative control," Boggs recalls. "Things got a lot tighter after we became part of EA. That's business; I completely understand it. But I began to miss working in a smaller team."

All three worked together on SPY Mouse, and though their staggered departures from Firemonkeys weren't engineered with the intention of opening a new studio, their natural synergy saw them reunite early this year to work on Framed.

Still, it's quite a leap, going back from a big-budget studio to the quiet indie scene. In the current terrain of free-to-play titles and in-app purchases, Framed represents a much more classic, refined gaming experience. It's beautiful with its moody colors and elegant execution - but can it survive?

Browne believes that there will always be a place for a game like Framed.

"The music industry became free-to-listen a long time ago, and there's still musicians surviving," he points out.

"The free-to-play mechanic will never be massaged enough to where it's not somewhat confronting to the player. But there'll always be a place for premium games. Some people just want to be left alone to experience the game [without being interrupted by free-to-play mechanics]."

"You don't need to dilute your vision to sell a successful game," Boggs finishes.

Framed is currently on target for a late 2013 release. It'll be available on the iPad and iPhone.

We've already posted a TA Plays on NimbleBit's upcoming snake-like NimbleQuest, and could totally write up an extensive preview article detailing even more about the game for its upcoming release. But, really, what's more fun? Reading what we think about an upcoming game, or just playing it yourself? We're thinking the latter, so we're trying something new here. NimbleQuest is made in Unity, and among the other magical properties of the engine is the ability to build the game into a format that's playable in your browser.

All you need is to do to play it is download a tiny browser plugin and mash the image below to load the game up and give it a spin:

This online preview is only going to be active through Monday night, so if you want to check out NimbleQuest before it launches on the App Store, be sure to do it before then. As far as when it's going to launch, NimbleBit isn't ready to get official on the release date, but their fingers are crossed that we'll see NimbleQuest before the end of the month. Enjoy the game, and feel free to post any tips or strategies you come across for maximizing your score in the comments.

Also, let us know what you think of this style of game preview, as we'll try to do more of them in the future if people enjoy it. It obviously wouldn't work for every game, but NimbleQuest is a perfect example of a title that plays just as good in your browser window with arrow keys as it will on your iOS device with swipe gestures.

Nitrome Limited just let us in on its next game project, Icebreaker - A Viking Voyage. It's a physics-based 2D puzzle game that revolves around a slicing mechanic that'll have you slashing and hacking at pieces of the game world in order to get a little soon-to-be Viking hero around or through obstacles. We've got footage of this in action in this post.

Nitrome tells us that Viking Voyage won't be a one-trick pony. There will be "tons of variety," as well as an explorable world map, side-quests, and secrets to find as you travel the game world in search of the hero's missing Viking clan.

If you're scratching your head and thinking this looks similar to something... well, it should. This game's content is based on a flash game series Nitrome had a hand in. This isn't a port, though. Apparently, Viking Voyage is built from the ground up for iOS. We can get behind that, for sure.

This game looks neat and it sounds neat, so we're more than stoked to grab the game when it hits iPhone and iPad this coming January. Stay tuned for more.

Wind-Up Knight [Free] was easily one of my favorite games of 2011, but I have to admit that it's a niche title. There is an audience for brutal precision platformers, but it's not exactly the broadest audience. Robot Invader's upcoming Rise of the Blobs, on the other hand, should be more of a crowd pleaser. It's cute, it's accessible, it's free--but underneath its bubbly exterior lies the same killer instinct that made Wind-Up Knight such a delight.

Here's the scoop. Rise of the Blobs is a puzzle game played in a 3D environment. A tower rises up, and around it are many colored blobby cubes with blank, staring eyes. Your marshmallow buddy and guide to this game of blobs is Mal, and he sits perched atop the tower with a pile of fruit that he tosses down at set intervals--more than a little bit Tetris-style.

The blobs love fruit, and absorb it into their tubby little bodies. This leaves them open to explosion, which is how you pull off all the typical things you find in matching puzzles. You can pop fruit-filled blobs into chains or combos, match certain shapes for bonuses, and earn yourself a few coins in the process. All the while, the blobs are rising up toward their tasty, marshmallow dessert. You may also be fighting to beat a timer, or to clear away blobs within a set number of turns. Any way you play, though, failure gets messy.

Since the blobs are wrapped all the way around the tower, you constantly have to keep two things in mind: what you can see, and what you can't. As the blobs climb closer and closer to their grim goal, it becomes a game of franticly swiping around and around to find the spot where the next fruit will best fit. The game will be balanced so both casual players and serious high-score seekers will be able to have fun and make progress, but don't expect Tetris-style 40 minute marathons if you're skilled. The difficulty curve is steep, and the games are kept intentionally brief.

So why did Robot Invader go from the dark and dastardly platformer we know and love to a cute and cuddly matching puzzle whose fangs are kept well-hidden?

Part of the reason was to challenge itself. Rise of the Blobs is, in a lot of ways, a 180 from Wind-Up Knight, and in speaking to Robot Invader I learned that the about-face was completely intentional. The studio has no interest in pigeonholing itself as the guys who make incredibly difficult platformers, even if that's something they're particularly skilled at. So they abandoned the genre, the level structure, the monetization scheme and pretty much everything else in order to rise to something new.

Thanks to digital game marketplaces, we've entered a something of post-scarcity world of gaming. Anyone with a modern mobile device has enough entertainment at his or her fingertips to stay occupied indefinitely. So how, as a developer, do you stand out? According to Robot Invader's Chris Pruett, you experiment. In such a young marketplace, everyone has to struggle to find the right games to make, the right ways to market them. Get complacent and you're likely to be left behind.

One of those experiments is finding the right free-to-play balance. Rise of the Blobs, as it currently stands, is playable (and thoroughly enjoyable), without any additional content. There's no magic trick that will make an iOS game succcessful, but this model eliminates many of the obstacles between the studio and the wide audience it hopes to continue to build.

The audience of Rise of the Blobs is likely to be wide and varied. Some players will want to challenge themselves against their friends and strangers, and the game is well-suited to that. The short sessions mean every fruit drop counts, and a complex progression system means plateauing should rarely become a problem. But the game is equally playable by those who just want to work through the unlockable content, dress Mal up in his trademark Malwear, and have some good, clean, matching fun. I've approached it both ways in the early build I've played, and it's a blast either way.

Robot Invader isn't ready to announce a release date, but the game's development is progressing rapidly. With each update we see, Rise of the Blobs becomes slicker, sexier and better balanced. Whenever it arrives, it will hit iOS and Android, and be playable on iPad and iPhone alike. We'll keep an ear to the ground and let you know when that will be just as soon as we have the details ourselves.

On Friday we posted a hands-on of the upcoming Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013. It was great. Really great, actually:

Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 for the iPad is the full experience. I'd argue it's the best way I've played a Duels of the Planeswalkers game so far. The touch controls work exactly as you'd expect them to. Playing cards from your hand is as simple as dragging them on to the play field, targeting is done by tapping, and a few on-screen buttons control the rest of the things you need to do to advance the game. It feels so much better than playing with a controller.

As promised, here are a whole load of screenshots of the game. They're available in full iPad Retina Display resolution, which you can see by clicking (or tapping) on any of them. Take a look at how good the card text looks, it's night and day from the console version.

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When you truly adore a game, sequels can be a scary thing. Sure, it's more of what you love--but what if they mess it up? What if they abandon all the things you love for the sake of novelty? Well, Defender Chronicles [$1.99 / $2.99 / $4.99 (HD)] fans, let us put your fears to rest. We've had a chance to spend some time with Defender Chronicles II, and it seems to have everything the original had to offer. And every little bit of it is bigger, better, and sexier.

I spent the summer of 2009 consumed by the original. I had a brand new 3GS and pages of games, but Defender Chronicles - Legend of the Desert King was the one that devoured my time. Its mix of vertical tower defense and RPG conventions was completely irrestistable, and Gimka Entertainment and Menara Games propped it up with massive updates that added to its already substantial content. Defender Chronicles II is looking like it will contain that same potential for time investment, so you might want to clear your schedule in advance.

This game is leagues beyond its predecessor in terms of visual appeal, and that's an achievement--as we pointed out way back in our review, Defender Chronicles was a looker in its time. But now every unit is more detailed and every animation is more fluid. And crisp--Retina support is in for iPhone, though apparently not for iPad. The game lives up to the rose-colored vision you may have of the original, but it's much more refined, more up-to-date.

The gameplay has been similarly preserved. You'll still spend your time turning flags into guilds and upgrading them through tiers of units, archers to rangers, squires to cavaliers. Strategy seems more important than ever before, with enemy units that take advantage of every potential weakness in your defense. Height and range are the biggest considerations as you scroll around massive, multi-tiered 2D maps. There are quite a few of those this time around, and they hit an almost Escher-esque level of complexity pretty quickly.

There isn't much that's changed outright, really. Voice actor George Ledoux returns to impress us with his Sean Connery impression, though he also pulls off an impressive lizardman. Heroes Melwen and the General return, but this time they're accompanied by two new friends: Lovell and Elwyn, an archer and priest. The brand-new story of the heroes and their defence of Athelia against the Orcs and Forsaken is told through gorgeous comic-book cutscenes once more.

From our brief time with the game, it really seems like you're going to be able to put in a ludicrous numbers of hours. There's so much here for the player that wants to go deep, with heroes to level up and customize, hundreds of artifacts to locate and five difficulty levels and game modes to work through. The difficulty curve also feels a bit steeper, so if you're already familiar with the game you shouldn't be underwhelmed. If you're feeling particularly cocky, you'll be able to challenge yourself with a huge list of Game Center achievements and leaderboards.

Ultimately, it seems like Defender Chronicles II will be the perfect sort of sequel. It updates already excellent gameplay for a new generation of devices, and brings in all sorts of improvements in the process. It's hard to imagine any Defender Chronicles fans being disappointed, and folks that are new to the series should be in for a treat. We'll be taking a closer look at the game over the next couple weeks, and we'll be back with our review after it hits the App Store on May 24th. In the meantime, the developers are posting regular previews in our discussion thread, so take a peek if your appetite isn't already whetted enough.

Today, at The Gadget Show Live in Birmingham, four teams of student developers will bring Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy series to the iOS audience in a brand new way. We've had the chance to look at the games in development, and they're looking pretty hot.

The Make Something Unreal Live competition is the sort of opportunity most folks who've dabbled in game development would kill for. It's organized by Epic Games and Train2Game. Student teams were given access to the Fighting Fantasy IP and, basically, told to go nuts with it. They've spent the last few months building games based off that IP using the Unreal Development Kit. Working with industry mentors, they've created new interpretations of the beloved books. Now they'll go on stage and put the finishing touches on their titles with help from some of the industry's biggest names.

If you don't know the Fighting Fantasy IP, it's a series of roleplaying gamebooks that were super popular in the 80s and 90s. A number of them have been brought to iOS in classic interactive fiction form by Big Blue Bubble, but this is the first time they've been reimagined for the platform as full 3D games.

There are four teams of students competing in Make Something Unreal Live, each with members with expertise in art, design, programming and QA. Each team set out with a different title: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Armies of Death, The Citadel of Chaos and Deathtrap Dungeon. We've had some time with each of the titles, and they're shaping up nicely.

Digital Mage is the team responsible for Armies of Death: Rise of Agglax. It turns the tale of Armies of Death on its head. Players will command the undead forces of Agglax as they travel down lanes destroying the heroes and defenses of the kingdom of Allansia. Defeating enemies releases their souls, which provide the power needed to raise the undead.

The levels of the game are inspired by events from the original book. Though we were only able to try out the early stages of the game, Digital Mage says that the final product will boast a lovingly crafted story that expands of the tale of Armies of Death.

Indigo Jam showed us its take on Deathtrap Dungeon. Like the book, the game pits players against rooms of devious traps and vicious enemies. It's a first-person action adventure with areas and traps designed on a grand scale. From what we've seen so far, stealth will play a large role in the game, and sneaking around unseen is the surest way to survive while you try to solve the deadly puzzles of the dungeon.

The Citadel of Chaos: Dire Consequences is a wave-based first person action game built by Derp Studios. Players are tasked with protecting Dree Village against waves of monsters. You begin with a sword and shield, but with each wave you survive you'll have the opportunity to purchase and upgrade spells with the souls you earn in combat. Players who survive 10 waves unlock new levels, and ultimately win after 20 waves.

Derp Studios plans to bring in a story mode as well. This will take place after the final moments of The Citadel of Chaos.

Finally, we took a look at The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Lost Chapters, by Commando Kiwi. Though we won't know which game takes the grand prize at Make Something Unreal Live until next week, this one really caught our attention. Built as a third-person RPG, it already has a progression system in place and some promising looking item collection. But the combat system is where it stands out.

Lost Chapters uses an active-time style combat system, with a selection of abilities that operate on individual timers. To capture the element of luck that the Fighting Fantasy titles so relied on, blocking is left to good fortune. Each time an enemy attacks the player is presented with three cards. Each has a shield on the other side, one red, one yellow and one green. If the green card is drawn, damage is escaped. The red card hits twice as hard.

The four teams will show their games off today at The Gadget Show Live, and they'll receive feedback from the advisory board. The judges include Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone themselves, as well as industry leaders that include, no joke, Peter Molyneux and Cliff Bleszinski. Teams will work to bring the games to their full potential over the course of the show, providing regular updates and showing their work off to an audience of over 100,000 attendees on the show floor. The winning team will be announced on Sunday, and it will get to take home a commercial Unreal Engine 3 license.

The games should all be heading to the App Store soon, though it sounds like the winning team might have a leg up on the others. The builds we played were still far from being ready for release, but they had real potential. Here's hoping the final releases follow through, because we're pretty jazzed about seeing more original RPGs and action-adventure titles on the App Store. So good luck to all the teams--we'll be keeping an eye on what comes next.

Hunger Games: Girl on Fire sounds about as good as it looks. This afternoon, we nabbed a few in-game images of the runner-meets-shooter for our audience's viewing pleasure. Girl on Fire, is of course, the "teaser" tie-in to the upcoming Hunger Games flick, which is based on the first book in a massively popular book trilogy. We've been advised that the events in this game will actually take place "towards the beginning" of the series.

Right, the images. Below, we've got an actual in-game look of lead protagonist Katniss Everdeen, as well as a shot of a level. Adam Saltsman, a member of the indie dream team heading up the title, describes Girl on Fire as a runner-y, shooter-y kind of thing. Like us, we think you'll understand the categorization immediately after peering at the level specifically.

Our all-seeing eye is fond of artistically gifted games, and Catch the Princess is the latest to be caught in its steely gaze. Imagine, if you will, a side-scrolling puzzle game that tries to capture all the essence of rustic fairy tale imagery, and then pairs that with deliciously crafted Cut The Rope-style play. That's the pitch for Catch the Princess in brief, and we're thinking this is something you'll want to look out for, too.

As you'll see in the reveal trailer, Catch the Princess is dark and gloomy in all the right ways, and appears to have the mechanical might to match its inspired tone and art direction. The game launches next week for the iPhone and iPad and will boast around 60 levels filled with rusty chains, bellows, soft lighting, and princess-saving action. Get your eyeballs on these screens:

In case you wanted to know, this is being crafted by Robots and Pencils, an outfit based in Calgary. If you're big into Minecraft World Explorer [$.99], then you already know these guys. We've been told that we'll be hearing a lot more about this studio in the near future, and provided Catch the Princess rocks, we'll pair some ears with our eye. Somehow.

One of the coolest tactical turn-based games we've ever seen on iOS, Hunters: Episode One [$.99 / HD], is getting a sequel. Rodeo Games, the original creator of Hunters, have revealed with us that it is indeed working on Hunters 2. And guys, it sounds and looks radical.

Hunters 2, which is slated to hit Spring 2012, will build on the same combat that made the first game so popular, but it'll also throw in some notable new systems and weapons. For example, the team is dropping in a new mini-gun that fires blistering bursts of 10 rounds. That's especially hip, we're told, because it'll show off the game's new projectile system, which lets you see every round fired.

New enemies, environments, and mission types will naturally be part of the fresh package, but so will a fleshed out and scripted campaign mode featuring Rodeo's new hero character Caius Black. One of the promotional images we've received notes that he'll be "alone, wounded, and betrayed."

As if that wasn't enough, the game's engine has been scrapped in favor of a new one that'll integrate real-time dynamic lighting and "loads of customization options." Get a taste below:

Speaking of customization, that's something Rodeo is focusing on character-side, too. In Hunters 2, each Hunter will have a talent pool and you'll assign points in specific skill and build trees. Rodeo tells us that this system "really individualizes your Hunters and brings all sorts of new tactics" to the fold.

We'll be getting our hands on Hunters 2 in the coming weeks. If you'd like to try the original game, now is a great time -- both versions are on sale now at $.99 instead of their usual $4.99 and $6.99 price points.

Earlier this summer, we caught word that Frontier Developments's LostWinds was headed to iOS and Android. Now, we've got a great first-look at the iOS version title in action -- and, guys, it's silly gorgeous.

Once an acclaimed WiiWare title, Frontier has obviously pushed the visuals to the max for our phones and tablets. And if you look, you'll notice that it's a fairly HUD-free port with specific touch actions, which has us thinking that we're actually in for an all mobiled-out experience.

No solid date or price point have been announced, but we do know that LostWinds is coming to every iDevice this holiday as a Universal app. Also, it'll ship with a "new map feature" specific to touch devices. Our popcorn is ready, for sure.

UPDATE: Yay, technology! The trailer we originally posted was cut short for some... reason. This is the full thing.

Harmonix is giving the gift of VidRhythm [$1.99] away this holiday season. Soon, the crazy, but always hilarious audio and video mash-up app will go free indefinitely. Also, it'll receive one of its biggest updates at the same time -- twelve new tracks, including "Jingle Bells" and "Deck the Halls, six new video styles, an all new pitch correction mechanic, and an iPad 2 and iPhone 4/4S-exclusive YouTube export upgrade to 720p are all a part of the new package.

We spent some time speaking with the man who spearheaded VidRhythm at Harmonix, Josh Randall, in this week's bonus edition podcast. Randall and I go deep on this update and many other things Harmonix, so check it out if you want to hear this news and other bits from one of the creators. And, hey, I also think you'll leave the conversation with a pretty good idea of how much music truly matters to the studio and how iThing stuff figures into its future. Later today!

Earlier this month we brought news of Elite Systems' initiative to expand on their ongoing retro rebirth efforts and bring a host of classics of old to iOS -- those that originated on platforms beyond the ZX Spectrum, which was their initial source platform. Studio co-founder Steve Wilcox was kind enough to provide us with builds of the first wave of titles that will soon arrive in the Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games to share with our readers.

The first Elite Collection titles that will arrive in the App Store are Datasoft's 1987 magical platformer Black Magic, Image Works' lovely 1992 release First Samurai, and the frantic 1992 space shooter Enforcer from Manfred Trenz. Every one of these titles is very well implemented in iOS and is among the top tier of games to be found on the 8-bit platforms of decades past.

Let's have a look.

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The eternal question of what do you get when you combine inspiration from both Pan's Labyrinth and Infinity Blade with a team of iOS-centric Unreal Engine experts is getting dangerously close to being answered. Phosphor Game Studios' The Dark Meadow is an action-adventure monster slaying game set in a supremely creepy abandoned hospital.

The Dark Meadow is coming next month, and is boasting some incredibly compelling features such as gesture-based combat, "console-level" story and production, and a six-ish hour campaign that will need to be replayed multiple times if you want to see all the game has to offer.

Check out the full launch trailer:

For more information on the game, you can take a look at the initial teaser trailer, as well as additional details from the developers. We're ridiculously excited for this game, and for good reason too. There needs to be more projects like this on the App Store, as sometimes it feels like a waste to be playing simple 2D physics games on iOS devices when they're totally capable of this.

It's been about a year since decades-old studio Elite Systems brought their ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection [iPhone, iPad] and the first wave of its retro titles to the App Store. Since then 150 titles have become available through their Spectrum emulator, giving retro fans much old school gaming goodness to play with.

Since then, Elite has been hard at work engineering a completely new system through which to bring an even broader range of retro classic to iOS gamers. I recently had a conversation with Elite co-founder Steve Wilcox who filled me in on some of the titles that are on the way in the coming Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games, as well as details surrounding their newly completed proprietary technology that went into it. The new system is a facilitator, of sorts, that was designed in such a way as to not incorporate, reference, or in any way rely upon third-party property and that is able to deliver, to iOS, games that originated on platforms other than just the ZX Spectrum in near-100% original form.

Elite has been busy licensing classics from a wide range of developers and it sounds like iOS gamers are in for a trove of titles to be delivered through the studio's new system. The first stage in the deployment consists of nine games developed across North America, the UK, and Germany.

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