Shawn Inman has posted a video of his upcoming iPhone platformer that was created with partial assistance from a Makework Grant which funds artists to work on their “someday-I’d-love-to” projects.

Inman’s proposal involved creating a faux 16-bit game engine which aspired to create multiple worlds, various unqiue powerups and hand crafted pixel graphics. Inman explains his appreciation of pixel art:

Good pixel art strikes the perfect balance between appreciable craftsmanship and the gestalt. A single pixel out of place, one too few or too many, ruins the illusion. There’s an unmuddied, economy of expression, the thankless result of the limitations of cartridge-based consoles.

The premise of Mimeo is that of a Mario clone but where power-ups affect the entire game world, not just the player itself. Powerups will take you from a 2-bit world to a 4-bit, then 8-bit and ultimately 16-bit scene. Enemy behavior and level behavior changes between the modes so there is an element of puzzle-platforming involved.

Inman’s video explains and demos it well

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Assassin’s Creed 2: Multiplayer, an exclusive game for iPhone & iPod touch and the first game in the series that allows you to compete against your friends.

The game is said to have three different environments that are all inspired by the italian cities of Assassin’s Creed II along with six different power-ups for players to utilize when mowing down their opponents. The feature listing also includes mention of a notoriety system, which sounds like a fancy online leaderboard of sorts, and of course, the game comes loaded with its own set of achievements.

Last month, news broke that Ubisoft had plans for a multiplayer Assassin’s Creed game and when we spoke with Assassin’s Creed II: Discovery producer Ben Mattes, he did say to expect some “super-cool content” coming in the following weeks and months, and it seems this is Ubisoft’s followup to that commitment.

Assassin’s Creed II: Multiplayer is “coming soon”, and as soon as we have more details we will post them.

Thanks @RustyFirestar

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Gamevil has posted a hands on gameplay video of their upcoming game iPhone game Vanquish: The Oath of Brothers which is due for launch this Friday.

The game’s story is based on the Three Kingdoms and is set on horseback. The gameplay video and mechanic feels somewhat similar to Hybrid but in an ink-wash art style.

Vanquish will launch at .99 this Friday.

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Namco’s Garters & Ghouls made its way into the App Store last night and is the latest twin stick shooter to arrive on the scene. You play as the freshly reanimated Marie Dupois fighting against an evil force known as “Thrum” who has caused the dead to rise under its control. It’s your task to close the portals of the underworld that spawn the various zombies, werewolves, and demons that are rampaging across the countryside.

The game plays a lot like iDracula and other similar games, with two virtual joysticks that control your movement and shooting. Along the way you come across different weapons and powerups, and throughout the land are shops run by the “Steam Queens” where you can buy upgrades for your character’s health, movement, weapon damage, and other things.

The main content difference between Garters & Ghouls and similar iPhone games is that the gameplay is structured around 25 distinct and large levels and framed in a slowly revealing storyline.

The task for each level, however, remains the same throughout: you must destroy the enemy-spawing portals strewn across the map. Still, going into a level with a specific number of portals to destroy gave me a greater sense of purpose than other pure survival shooters. There is some very light planning involved in avoiding getting caught in the crossfire between demon-spawing portals, and there are a variety of enemies which do get more difficult as well as a number of weapon upgrades.

The game’s difficulty, however, ramps up slowly, so it can feel like you are just grinding your way through the game. And if you listened to our last podcast, you would have heard that Eli Hodapp’s issue with the game was the repetitive and lengthy nature of the levels. While I don’t believe its any more repetitive than many of the existing survival shooters we’ve played before, I had also hoped the levels would provide more variety in gameplay.

Meanwhile, a number of other factors keeps the game squarely in the “good, but not great” category. The controls and animations are adequate, though not especially smooth, and the targeting of the enemies and portals requires you hitting just the right spot. This gives the enemies a 2 dimensional feel. The 1.0 version also suffers from some occasional crashes, though if this occurs only your in-level progress is lost and you can resume at the beginning of the level.

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Hybrid is an adventure roleplaying game with an extensive skill system all wrapped around a brawler-style fighting game. You play as Grey, a kid with a mysterious past protected by an equally mysterious guardian named Fairy through a quest that will take you numerous hours to complete that touches on a number of RPG cliches along the way.

With every enemy you kill, you gain experience points and in-game currency which can be spent on an impressively deep character customization and upgrade system. The combat is the star of the show in Hybrid, and as you fight through each level you eventually gain more moves, techniques, and magical attacks to dispatch your enemies. These attacks can be chained together to form massive combos, and fighting entire gangs of baddies at once can be fairly satisfying.

Like Zenonia, there are a lot of people who love Hybrid, there’s a thread on our forums filled with fans of the game. I do appreciate all the work Gamevil has put in to the game, and as you level up and gain more abilities, watching Grey fly around the screen killing enemies is fairly spectacular.

Where the game fell short for me, however, was in the seemingly endless amount of button mashing and thumb swiping required to kill all the enemies on a level only to watch a cut scene with tons of dialog, then get back to mashing the attack button. Regardless, I still recommend trying the free version, because opinions on this game seem divided, and you could find yourself amongst those who can’t get enough of Hybrid.

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Namco has unveiled new details about their upcoming action adventure game Garters & Ghouls.

Unearth the strange and undying world of Garters & Ghouls! Control and command the newly-dead Marie Dupois as she battles the minions of The Thrum and horrors beyond description! With over 25 levels, randomized level generation and downloadable content, the action never dies!

Based on the screenshots released, the game appears to be a dual-stick survival shooter the likes of which we’ve seen before, but wrapped in a pretty extensive story and with a progressive level design. There also appears to be a wide variety of locations presented in the game.

This teaser video just shows some of the artwork, but no actual gameplay:
Namco is slowly releasing the background story to the game as well as character art.

The following screenshots show more details of the actual gameplay:

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