trials-frontier_659283309_ipad_02.jpgEven heading into PAX East weekend, it doesn’t seem like the App Store is taking a break.

We’ve got another massive week of new releases for you, starting with some high-profile freebies that should be up on the app store by 8am EST.

Ubisoft (along with RedLynx) kicks off this week’s freebies with Trials Frontier, the first official ‘Trials’ game designed especially for iOS devices. Hop on your motorcycle and see if you have the skills to navigate physics-based tracks and race any ghost on the leaderboards of any track to see who is the best. Plus, players can connect with Trials Fusion, coming out April 16 on consoles and April 24 on Windows PC, to “gain access to bonus rider gear and see what some of the tracks looked like in their prime”.

Already stirring up a bit of controversy (like any good Family Guy episode has a habit of doing) TinyCo and FOX have teamed up to bring us Family Guy : The Quest For Stuff. During another epic battle with the giant chicken, Peter Griffin has accidentally destroyed Quahog and now must try to find his neighbors and family as well as rebuild the city by completing a wide variety of random and humorous quests. Family Guy : The Quest For Stuff is a brand new free-to-play game set in the Family Guy universe with the same (often) crude humor you’ve come to expect from this irreverent animated series.

wind-up-knight-2_784339019_ipad_02.jpgRobot Invader returns to the app store with a second helping of clockwork automaton 3D platforming fun in Wind-up Knight 2. The game features some new mechanics and a bigger world, for plenty of platforming entertainment.

Shiny Box Games’ free-to-play action RPG, Dungeon Quest takes players on a quest for epic loot as they “journey through 200 floors of increasingly difficult enemies while collecting the best weapons possible”.

John Mad Run is the free version of Happymagenta’s upcoming endless scrolling shooter, Joan Mad Run. Test your dexterity and spill a lot of blood.

Speaking of challenging your reflexes, our last freebie comes from Galcon creator Phil Hassey and it’s a fresh take on the classic brick breaking genre called BREAKFINITY. The hook is that this game is endless and instead of destroying the usual static wall, you must break your way through each wall before it crushes you. So it puts a bit of a time crunch on you in addition to the usual frenetic gameplay, plus there are “insane bosses every 5th level”.

That’ll do it for our free games, but there are loads of new paid releases to spend some money on if you are one of those anti-free-to-play people.

robots-love-ice-cream_840151571_ipad_01.jpgLets start with Ayopa Game’s latest, Robots Love Ice Cream™. It is an arcade shooter in which you are trying to save the galaxy (and your frozen treats) from evil invading robots with your arsenal of weaponized ice cream. It features a cool planet rotating mechanic and looks like it should appeal to retro arcade shooter fans. It’s currently on sale for 99¢ (reg $2.99) for launch.

In FreeDum it is ladybug v. traps as you help poor little Dum the ladybug escape the treacherous mazes crafted by a mischievous little boy named Max. Fly, shrink and do whatever you can to evade danger.

The next two games are pretty unique and opt for a more retro visual style.

I’m honestly not really sure what to make of David., a retro, abstract adventure game touting an Angry Birds-like slingshot mechanic for a weapons deployment. However it looks quite retro arcadey (which is a good thing…at least for me). The game has been getting a good deal of positive pre-release buzz, so it is certainly worth checking this one out, but it could be a little too retro for some.

Instantion is quite a unique looking 2D puzzle platformer set in a wire frame universe, where you must control multiple clones simultaneously to solve puzzles. The game “combines dungeon-style puzzle design and trajectory ‘sling-shot’ aiming with elements like gravity effects, teleportation devices and clone modification”. I’m really interested in this one myself.

sideswype_826154950_ipad_02.jpgRadiangames’ iOS titles always have a certain look and feel to them, so when I saw some screenshots, I wasn’t surprised to see the studio’s name attached to SideSwype. It is a minimalist block matching puzzle game which employs a “combination of 4-way block sliding and match-3 gameplay” to get players to form matches to destroy blocks. I’ve been impressed with many of the studios previous games, so I have a good feeling about SideSwype and suspect it’ll be another of those addictive “one more try” type games.

Earlier I told you about a new endless brick breaker, now we have Shatter Alley, a music-driven brick breaker, where your fingertips are the paddles. Using multi-touch (and hopefully a set of nicely honed reflexes) you must attempt “to juggle limitless balls at once and aim each one with laser precision”. This sounds like another intriguing (and possibly exhausting) take on this arcade classic.

For the more ‘adventurous’ types, there are some new adventure games / DLC that you’ll want to check out.

Sometime today we should be getting the third episode of Telltale’s amazing adventure game The Wolf Among Us. I can’t reveal any of the plot for this episode as I haven’t read anything about it myself to avoid any possible spoilers. If you have already purchased the season pass, just periodically fire up the app to check for Episode 3 to go live, otherwise you can purchase this single episode for $4.99 right from within the app.

Last month IronCode Gaming released Pahelika: Secret Legends, and now they’ve released Pahelika: Revelations HD, the next title in this hidden object adventure game series “featuring spell casting, alchemy and puzzle solving”.

r.b.i.-baseball-14_783753727_ipad_02.jpgBaseball season is upon us and MLB.com is bringing the 80’s NES classic, out of retirement and rebooting it for modern gamers. Simultaneously released on consoles and mobile platforms, R.B.I. Baseball 14 is one of this week’s great surprise titles. Featuring all 30 MLB teams and 480 current MLB players, this is one of the quickest Baseball games out there with and entire 9 inning game playable in under 20 minutes. It has been a long time since I’ve played R.B.I. Baseball, but I’m looking forward to dusting off my glove and getting some batting practice in this season.

Finally that brings us to an all new Steve Jackson Gamebook adventure from the talented team at Tin Man Games. Fighting Fantasy: Starship Traveller is a thrilling sci-fi adventure in which you, the Captain, find your starship on the other side of a black hole, in an unknown universe. It is up to you to choose wisely to find your way back to Earth. Fighting Fantasy: Starship Traveller of course has all of the great bits and bobs that the Tin Man Crew is known for, so if you are into sci-fi, then you’ll certainly want to dig into their latest quest. If you are attending PAX East this weekend, Tin Man Games will be at the Indie MEGABOOTH, so make sure you stop by and say g’day.





Go to the second page of this post to watch the trailers for these games.