He-Man: The Most Powerful Game In The Universe… now that’s the way to name a game, right? What’s so awesome about it is the fact that Chillingo is not really tying to convey the message that He-Man is the epitome of manliness, no, they show that by not taking yourself too seriously, you can actually improve an existing franchise. And thank god for that. While I thought He-Man was a total badass when my younger self was getting up early on the weekends to watch the cartoons, I don’t think anyone could take that blonde dude seriously in today’s world.

But fear not, while the game does not take itself all that serious, you will still find most of the characters from the show have made it into He-Man: The Most Powerful Game In The Universe! Personally, I’m looking forward to kick some Skeletor butt on my iPad! The trailer doesn’t reveal too much about what to expect form the gameplay, what’s shown does look pretty fun though. The graphics are quite nice and it seems they use some of the original audio recordings, which is always a big bonus in my book. The game will be on the App Store “soon”, so better get your iPhones and iPads ready for the Most Powerful Game In The Universe!

Oh, totally relevant:

The beautiful platforming game LostWinds is this week’s “App of the Week” – and therefore totally free for you to download and enjoy on your iPhone and iPad! And you really should go ahead and give LostWinds a shot since it’s a real beauty and a joy to play! You’re in control of the wind in this game in order to help a little fellow save the world from great evil. So go ahead, get it!

Ubisoft’s Rayman is coming to iOS! And damn soon as well: Get ready for a real jump ‘n’ run treat on September 20th! After playing a smaller part in Ubisoft’s Rabbids franchise, Rayman has recently celebrated a huge comeback with the release of the fantastic Rayman Origins. It was basically a reboot of the Rayman franchise, focusing on what made the little fella without legs and arms so famous in the first place: superb platforming mixed with gorgeous visuals.

In Rayman Jungle Run the gameplay will be a bit streamlined in order to make it control better on your iPhone and iPad touchscreen. Just like in the endless runner Canabalt, Rayman will run automatically while you need to take care of jumping/flying over obstacles and punching the bad guys. Unlike Canabalt however, Rayman Jungle Run will consist of levels that are not randomly generated. This is aces in my book, since I hope the developers will carry over the creativity that made the levels in Rayman Origins so outstanding!

If you look at the trailer you’ll also see that, like its bigger console brother, Rayman Jungle Run looks and sounds fantastic! So if all goes well, we can expect an incredibly charming platforming game – and who doesn’t like a great platforming game?!

Simogo has just announced via their official Twitter account that Bumpy Road will be released on May 19th. Bumpy Road is a unique platformer in which you control a car by morphing the road its driving on. And we liked it a lot in our preview.

The guys at Simogo have spent the last couple of weeks tweaking every last bit of the game to make sure it runs as smooth as possible. (However, our preview built felt already incredibly polished, so this “bug fixing” must be a Swedish way of saying “We had some holidays”). Kidding aside, finally having a release date for Bumpy Road is great and while there’s no word on the price yet, we do know that it’s coming as universal app.

Thanks to the fine folks at dreamfab we got the chance to play a preview build of Demolition Dash. It’s a Canabalt style running/platforming game with a few additional gameplay elements. You’ll be in control of Zilla who just awoke after 100.000.000 years and now wants to “play”. Well “play” in this case means to go stomping through the biggest cities around the world and destroy everything that get’s in Zillas way (and yes, that includes Tokyo).

When I was watching the trailer for the first time, what immediately stood out to me was Demolition Dash’s art style. The game just looks great. The attention to detail is insane and there’s stuff happening everywhere. There’s also some parallax scrolling going on in the background that’s different for every city. But not only that, dreamfab also made sure that the good looks are accompanied by some great music. It’s basically one catchy track that get’s a different touch depending on the country you’re in (it actually reminded me of how it was done in Banjo Kazooie – man that music was awesome).

Demolition Dash is also a good deal of fun. The gameplay mechanics are easy to learn and the increasing difficulty in the level design will keep you busy. Zilla will lose one of his three health points by either falling down a gap or running into the police. You have the options to avoid the police by jumping over them or to simply blow them away with Zilla’s roar. Check out the announcement trailer to see the game in action. All in all this game is shaping up nicely and something you can definitely look forward to if this is your type of game. If everything goes well, Demolition Dash should be available later this month for iPhone[$0.99] and iPad[HD $1.99].

Kodeo80 is currently working hard to finish their upcoming retro platformer 1-bit Ninja. And while it may look like a classic retro platformer at first, it’s actually in 3d. If you drag the top of the screen, the viewing angle changes and reveals the 3 dimensional nature of the game. This effect not only looks pretty cool, it’ll also reveal hidden passages that you can’t see in the classic 2d view.

What’s also special is the control scheme. 1-bit Ninja developer Kodeo80 got rid of the left button in order to streamline the controls for touch devices. The left side of the screen will make the Ninja run to the right, while the right side of the screen functions as jump button. While this has the benefit that you wont have any visible buttons that you need to keep an eye on, it will be interesting to see if it doesn’t feel like there’s “something missing”. According to the devs, 1-bit Ninja is almost complete and will be available towards the end of May.

Piclings lets you decide where to platform on: It seems like you can import any picture and the game will automatically turn it into a level for you. The idea sounds exciting and reminded me a bit of Sketch Nation Shooter, which enabled you to create your own game by taking pictures of your drawings. It will be interesting to see if Piclings manages to turn the promise of importing your pictures into something that’s actually fun to play. Piclings will be available on the App Store tomorrow, May 5th.

Max and the Magic Marker combines classic platforming with physics based puzzles. But unlike your usual platform game, you wont be looking for keys and buttons to get through the levels. Instead, you are given a Magic Marker to draw your way around the various obstacles. The drawing is implemented very well and really gives you the ability to come up with your own solutions for the puzzles.

But before you can start drawing, you will first have to collect ink for the Magic Marker. That means in each level there’s only a certain amount of ink available to limit the size of your drawings. You can always erase what you have drawn before to refill the Marker, but the limit is necessary so you can’t just build one huge bridge from the start of the level to the end. It was fun to figure out the puzzles, but I would have like to see some more difficult ones later on in the game – the solutions are always rather obvious.

Unfortunately, the platforming controls aren’t as precise as you’d want them in a platforming game. And that’s not because of the touch interface, plenty of titles on the App Store can do it better than Max and the Magic Marker (League of Evil and Pizza Boy for example). There is some sort of input lag and a general unresponsiveness that can make it hard to pull off some of the trickier platforming which can be frustrating from time to time.

The presentation is a mixed bag. While the graphics do get the job done, there’s nothing really special or unique about the art style and I found myself turning off the music just after a few minutes into the game. What’s positive and motivating is the solid amount of achievements and the challenge to finish each level with all 3 collectibles within a certain amount of time to get the best rating. This adds quite a bit of replay value to Max and the Magic Marker and it was not only once that I came back to a level to finally get the best rating.

All in all Max and the Magic Marker is built around a creative concept and comes with plenty of levels, but suffers a bit from controls that don’t do it justice and a somewhat weak presentation. However, despite the set-backs I still had a good amount of fun with it. If you are into platforming and like to get creative, you’ll most likely enjoy what Max and the Magic Marker has to offer. And as I am writing this review, there’s currently a 50% sale on the iPhone version [$0.99] and a 40% sale on the iPad version [$2.99] – so you’d better be quick!

I had the chance to get my hands on a preview version of Simogo’s upcoming Bumpy Road, a unique platformer in which you control a car by manipulating the road it’s driving on. The announcement trailer looked great and left me with high hopes for this game. And what can I say – Simogo delivered.

In Bumpy Road you guide the car of an elderly couple to prevent them from falling off the road or running out of gas. On the way you’ll also collect memories of the couple that, bit by bit, unlock their romantic story.

What makes Bumpy Road stand out is obviously the way you control it. Unlike your usual platform game, in which you control your character directly, Bumpy Road asks you to manipulate the environment to control the car. If you touch the screen, the road will lift up, resulting in a little bump which you use to create momentum to make your car go left, right or even jump if you tap right underneath it. Controls are very accurate and responsive, making it really fun to mess around with. It will take some time until you master the concept, but I found it to be a rewarding (and very manageable) challenge.

Even though it was a preview version I was playing, the presentation was already very polished. Graphics are charming and smooth, the sound and music perfectly complement the game and even the menus look slick.

Bumpy Road will come with 2 game modes and will feature everything you can possibly want from an iOS game: Universal App, retina support, achievements, Game Center integration and Facebook score posting – it’s all there. If everything goes well Bumpy Road should hit the App Store sometime in May. Fingers Crossed.

Indie developer Spaces of Play has just announced to run a sale on their puzzle platformer Spirits. Both the iPad version (regular $4.99) and the iPhone version ($2.99) are on sale for $0.99.

If you already own the game, you will also have something to look forward to: Spaces of Play also announced they are working on a future update that will bring Game Center support and includes achievements for all the achievement hunters out there.

Spirits features a Lemmings-like gameplay. You are asked to guide spirits (hence the title) through levels that are filled with obstacles. The game gives you several tools to achieve this goal, like the ability to dig through walls or to utilize the wind to blow the spirits over deathly gaps. What helps the game stand out is it’s clever level design, beautiful art and mesmerizing music. But what am I talking, take a look yourself: