The goals are simple to comprehend.  On the right side of the screen you have orders for donuts.  They are different types with or without icing, sprinkles, filling, or whatever.  In order to complete your order, you need to set up the flow between the different machines so that you get the right number of the right kind.

One of the things I really like about the game is that it is challenging, but there is no time constraint to cause you pressure.  If you don’t get it right the first time, you are not running out of a limited number of lives or something.  This gives the game a nice relaxed feel that I find appealing.  This is enhanced by the fact that the puzzles can have more than one solution.  This allows you to solve the level by figuring out the right order of things without having to get too down in the weeds with exact placement of equipment.

One of the other things I really appreciate with the game (other than great graphics and game play) is the attention to detail.  Not only does the game allow for multiple player profiles, but sound settings based on different volumes (as opposed to just on and off).  It also separates the 111 levels across five different factories for a little variety.  Another thing that I really like is that, but muting the overall sound on the main launch screen, one can play books or music from other apps while playing the game.  The game also allows for skipping levels if you really get stuck on one.

I can come up with very few suggestions for this game.  I think it would be nice if additional “factories” or level packs became available in future upgrades – even if they were in-app purchases.  Ability for users to contribute their own levels would be cool as well.  But these kinds of possible future enhancements take nothing away from the game as it exists today.  It is solidly built and I can’t find a single fault with it.

Rocknor’s Donut Factory, at an introductory price of $0.99, is a steal of a deal for the 100+ levels it contains.  It’s been a while since I reviewed a game that made my Must-Have list, but this not only makes that list, but also gets 5-stars from me on the App Store.  If you are one of the folks that come to me later and ask if I recommend this game for you personally, consider it recommended.

NDrive is a HUGE app.  Weighing in at 1.78 GB and a normal price of $32.99, the app does everything a GPS app would be expected to do.  But the app just made my Must-Have list.  Why?  Because the first 1 million downloads will get it at $2.99.  You can read more about the special promotion here.  If you don’t have  a GPS in your vehicle and don’t already have a turn-by-turn GPS app for your iPhone, you’d be crazy to let this steal of a deal pass you by.

Now for the review.  NDrive did a great job in locating places I was going to check out in my house hunt.  It is a very complete and complex app.  Being unfamiliar with these types of apps, there was a bit of a learning curve in using it.  The thing that threw me off initially was that I could not get it to take/find addresses.  I was trying to stick in an address in the same format as I would write it out.  But the iPhone app wants your address in the same way that the Post Office looks at it…from the largest geographical area down to the smallest.  You start out giving it the city, then the street, then the number.  Once this concept clicked,  was quickly using the app to get from place to place.

The only true issue I had with NDrive was hardware related rather than software.  Obviously, the iPhone is going to pick up better GPS accuracy in the open.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a convertible and medical issues require me to recline as much as possible.  This led to inaccurate locations and directions unless I put the iPhone near the windows.  When I say “inaccurate”, I don’t mean that it was telling me to turn left when it should have been a right.  It would tell me to “turn left ahead” and I’d already be at the intersection.  So, for best results, I’d suggest using this app with one of those windshield mounts like what a typical GPS would have.  If you put them both in the same location with the same access to the sky, NDrive provided every bit as good of a navigation experience as the built-in system in a much more expensive Lincoln Navigator that I was in on one of my “testing” days.

In case you need any further incentive to get such a comprehensive app for such an incredibly low price, check out the app features:

- Fully functional SIGNPOSTS AND INFOLANES
- Embedded store-inside-store to allow an easy download of extra features to your Application
- Highly effective search engine and fast calculations derives benefits such as fast and easy calculation of alternative routes and re-routing
- Car, Pedestrian and Adventure Mode
-ADVENTURE MODE will guide the way while trekking, bike riding, off-road in cars, on boats and even on light aircrafts
- Simple and intuitive user interface
- MULTI-TOUCH TECHNOLOGY with gesture recognition for menu, zooming, tilting and panning will enable you to control and display maps easily
- POIs (Points of Interest) and favorites with phone/fax number, description, email and website address
- UNLIMITED NUMBER of customizable favorite’s entries and user defined categories
- Search and navigate to city centers, street names and numbers, crossings, postal codes, favorite places, recent locations, coordinates and nearby POIs
- Advanced itinerary with multiple waypoints which enhanced planning
- Keyboard available in either ABC or QWERTY mode
- Integration with iPod, offers listening to music while driving
- Automatic Day/Night mode
- Sound and visual alerts for desired and fixed maximum speed limits
- Automatic Portrait/Landscape display mode
- Free access to the NDRIVE COMMUNITY where sharing POIs with other users anywhere in the world is possible
- Search Online from your NDrive application using search engines like GoogleTM to find additional POIs in any location
- Actual and complete map of the USA (March 2010)
- OVER 1,500,000 POIs representing restaurants, gas stations, tourism attractions, hotels, landmarks, etc.
- Precise voice instruction and full interface language support for: English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch and Portuguese.

The game interface is incredible.  A lot of thought went into it, and it shows.  What you can’t see in the screen shot to the left is that those background graphics that look like green gears actually rotate or move slowly.  The initial menu also uses this gears-type theme.  In it, you have an inner wheel and an outer wheel that you rotate to get to the level number that you wish to play.  A status message at the bottom of the screen tells you if the level has been completed or in progress.  If you have completed it, it tells you the best time you have for reaching the solution.

Once you get into a game level,  touching a gray square and dragging your finger will add adjoining gray squares.  You can do the same if you are adding to the “path”.  Tapping any square (except for the ones with the numbers on them) will rotate though the options of a “block”, a “path”, or neither.  Once you finish a level, the button on the bottom of the screen to undo a “move” changes to to one that takes you to the next unsolved level.  The levels also auto-complete once there is only one choice left and that choice solves the level.  I wish this was an optional thing though as sometimes, as I neared completion, it completed it for me before I had that “Aha!” moment and realized that I had solved it.  It almost made me feel cheated because I had not fully figured out that I had figured it out.

Like I said, the game comes with 500 different levels, each with a unique solution.  The levels are divided over five different “worlds”.   Puzzle sizes range from the simple 6×6 grids like what I’ve displayed here, but go up to 9×11…basically three times the size of the small ones.  In order to get from one “world” to another, you need to swipe horizontally on the main menu screen.  This is not as obvious as it could be, but takes you to the larger levels with the different graphical themes associated with that “world”.

The game graphics are incredible, but the minimalistic “clicking” sound effects are perfect for listening to your own music or, like me, an audiobook while you play.  One future enhancement that I would love to see would be the ability to start the titles or playlist from within the game so that you can also stop it when things get hairy and you need to concentrate, but don’t want to just mute the sound and loose your place in the book.

Nurikabe Vault also includes OpenFeint support for leader boards.  You can also challenge your friends.  Other game features are not quite as obvious though.  If, for example, you split up your “path” so that it isn’t continuous, it will “tremble” or “shake” a bit to get your attention.  Same goes with a collection of the “boxes” or “blocks”.  If you don’t have enough in the collection, it will “twitch” a bit.

While the game costs $2.99, I think it is well worth it.  A free version with 20 levels is available if you would like to try it out.  You can also become a fan of their Facebook page where occasional promo codes or news is announced.  I’d highly recommend the Wiki page as well.  Not only does it do a great job of laying out the rules and some strategy tips, but when you look at the graphics there, it really shows you how far Nurikabe Vault goes in setting itself apart with an an incredible implementation of a classic logic game.

Well, I would like to borrow that phrase and say to the folks that were fans of the original Ragdoll Blaster, “This is not your father’s Ragdoll Blaster!!” You see, to compare the new one to the old one would be like comparing the new Ford hybrid to the old Model T. It would be like comparing a Rembrandt or Picasso to a cave man’s drawing. It would be like comparing my wife to…… well, I better not go there but you get the idea.

The game play itself is basically the same but the game has been totally revamped. The graphics are far better (utilizing numerous colorful backgrounds as well as much better graphics for the game elements) and the entire gaming experience has been improved to the point that it is like listening to a band on an old cassette tape versus hearing them in person.

There have been many changes to the game including almost 50% more levels (150 or more), replacing a dashed blue “sight line” with a red laser sight, and adding many more physics elements including secondary cannons, portals, gravity wells, and such.

As I have said in previous reviews, I love physics based games and Ragdoll Blaster 2 has just jumped to the top of my Must Have application list. While there is a lite version available for trial purposes, don’t waste your time. Ragdoll Blaster is available for only $2.99 from iTunes and is worth every bit of that and more.

The only thing I didn’t like about the game was its use of Plus+ to keep track of high scores instead of Open Feint which I think is beginning to become the standard in the online leader board contest. Of course the ability to imagine that the ragdolls are family or co-workers when you fire then into walls is a bonus so I guess the two balance each other out… LOL

Sentinel, at it’s core, is one of the best Tower Defense games out there.  Set in a sci-fi “Mars Defense” theme, the graphics will blow you away.  Prior to playing Sentinel, I thought that Fieldrunners was probably the best TD game for the iPhone.  As soon as I launched Sentinel though, I was immediately re-thinking that idea.  This impression was not just because of the quality of the graphics, but of how the graphics actually work into the game play to give it almost a 3-D effect.  For example, your enemies may have to run a gauntlet between buildings and you can place your towers on those buildings to fire “down” into the path that the enemy is forced to use.  From a programmer standpoint, I realize that this is not much more than any other forced TD enemy path, but the implementation makes it seem much more than that because the landscape plays a more visual part of your strategy.  Instead of a typical enemy path being seen as a limitation to them, it flips that idea so that terrain comes across as something you can use to your advantage.    This terrain feature is enhanced with the addition of temporary barriers that the enemy can eventually tear down and get through.

Sentinel  allows you to defend your base in typical TD fashion with five tower types against four enemy types with three different terrain maps and two different modes of play, but comes with a bit of a real-time strategy feel to it as well because you can also harvest resources and create robot droids to repair your towers.  These additional features make this $0.99 game (originally priced at $4.99 and worth it) a real competitor to the $2.99 Fieldrunners.  And, if you watch for it on AppShopper.com, the developers even drop the price to free on occasion!

Sentinel 2 brings the same look and feel and great graphics down to earth in a “Earth Defense” theme.  But the Origin8 developers didn’t just create the same game with different graphics.  This $2.99 sequel improves on Sentinel with additional OpenFeint features (location based leader boards), further RTS-like features of attack drones and additional harvest drones, and special weapons that can be fired from space once enough energy is harvested from the playing field.  There is also a new booster tower that can be strategically placed to “boost” the effects of your other towers.  And, in addition to upgrading your placed towers, you can also upgrade your ship from which the towers and such are deployed.

The timeline of the game really ties into the first title.  In this game, your “Mars Defense” has failed and the enemy has set it’s sights on Earth.  The game offers four different “locations” on earth that serve as different playing maps, and four different levels of difficulty.  This will, guaranteed, provide any experienced TD player with enough to challenge the very best of their efforts.  Both endurance mode and mission mode (with 10 pre-defined missions) are available as well.  And, because this title builds on both the original Sentinel story line and technology, I’d recommend starting with Sentinel until you get the basics down and then progress to the further depth that Sentinel 2 has to offer.

If you enjoy quality games of this type, you also need to check out the new release, Space Station: Frontier, by the same developers.  All three truly take the Tower Defense genre to whole new levels and, along with Chillingo’s Defender Chronicles, probably offer the best this genre has to offer on the iPhone platform.  Needless to say, both of these titles make it to my Must-Have category.

The graphics are surpurb, the physics life-like, and the dynamically generated music really combine to produce a game well worth the $0.99 price tag (a free lite version is available as well). The developer isn’t just sitting on his laurels though. An update is coming with 20% more levels (bringing the total to 70) and a new sensor type that will literally turn everything on it’s head.

While this game, unlike most, will make my Must-Have list and stick around on my iPhone, I do have some suggestions. I would love to see different player profiles, volume adjustment for effects and music, OpenFeint leaderboards by level, and the ability to create and share levels.

Overall, this is a really nice little game from the developer of another of my all-time favorites, Block Drop. If you like puzzle games, I highly recommend both. They promise hours and hours of fun at an excellent price.

I remember as a kid having those plastic puzzles where you slid the pieces up and down and all around until you got them in the right order.  It could be numbers, letters, or if you were real lucky, a nice picture. While it has been years since I held one of them in my hands, electronic versions of the sliding puzzle games are now relevant on the PC as well as on mobile devices such as the iPhone.

If you were to swap a picture with a physics based theme then you would have the beginnings of an idea of what to expect with the game Cogs. That is because the game Cogs does not limit itself to two dimensions but to three.  By wrapping the puzzle around multiple sides of a cube then you end up with a 3D puzzle that adds an extra dimension of difficulty when it comes to solving the puzzle.

The physics portion of the game involves solving each particular puzzle using gears, pipes, balloons, and much more. The game not only contains 50 puzzles for the low low price of $0.99 but you can also purchase additional puzzles in batches of 10 from within the game.  The puzzles start out easy enough and additional levels are unlocked as you progress and gain experience.

The game is played in an Inventor mode where you gain points based on the number of moves and the amount of time used to solve each puzzle as well as a Time Challenge mode where you are given only 30 seconds to solve each puzzle and a Move Challenge mode where you must attempt to solve the puzzle in 10 moves or less.  The levels in the latter two modes are unlocked by completing them first in the Inventor mode.

While all this might sound challenging (and it is…), the best part of the game is the absolutely gorgeous graphics which are accompanied by a beautiful sound track as well. Once you start the game it is hard to put down because not only do the levels get more and more challenging but the  graphics are so beautiful and the animations so fluid that it easily makes my top ten list of must have games to keep on my iPhone.  The only thing more surprising than the quality of the game is the incredible deal.  I struggle to think of a better game that you can get for less than a buck.