My, my, the embrace of the holidays. There’s nothing like a winter evening at home coupled with some tea, a snack to go along, and hundreds of zombies to kill. Wait, what’s wrong with this picture? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the iPhone. But really, is there a better enemy group in video games other than zombies? They are lifeless, soulless, undead individuals who want nothing more than to eat your brain, or infect you and make you one of them…or just tear you to shreds. Perhaps what makes them such easy targets is the lack of emotional attachment; the idea that your morality will in no way be influenced by the extermination of these undead savages because you are only fighting for your survival.

Bulkypix and Press Start Studio have teamed up to deliver a ruthless zombie-killing experience on the iPhone/iPod Touch with art design resembling the manga/anime style. So the question is, does the game fare up against others that revolve around the familiar zombie-thrashing experience? Well, the answer is kind of complicated so let’s get to it right away.

Yeah, I sucked in Chemistry. Luckily for me, it’s been brought down to size on my iPhone and simplified into mind-boggling puzzle gameplay. Fishing Cactus, the same guys that brought you Equilibrio on the iPhone/iPod Touch, are hell-bent on releasing awesome titles. This time, they teamed up with Atomic Cicada Studios to bring Minim–what I would call an entirely fresh concept–to one of my favorite platforms for indies, the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Coming off of an excellent streak of releases on the iPhone, Fishing Cactus gained more than 1,400,000 downloads on its previous release, Shift. Since Minim, they have released a new title called Mikks. But before I even think of playing the other two I’ll have to give you my thoughts on this game. Oh, and I’ll even give you a link where you can play 35 of the 50 levels for free on your PC. What a nice guy I am!

If Pac-Man had a crack PR team for an image overhaul and designers to bring him into three dimensions, the result might look something like PikGem. Pikgem is from Sébastien D’heeger of Dconcept, a French independent game developer. It’s a colorful family game based on simple arcade action and the inherent need for nabbing a high score.

You control Gulpy, a rotund cartoon character with a knack for backflips and shooting stars from his hands. The object of the game is to collect a series of dots in each level, avoiding monsters and obstacles along the way. Once you have all the dots, a teleport square opens up and you can continue to the next level. You have limited ammo to shoot monsters, and limited lives to beat the game, so a careful eye and patience are paramount to success.

Herman, by developer Todd Snarl and Dirge Game Studio, is a prime example of why I love the Xbox Live Indie Games service so much. With the indie games that are available on XBLA, PSN, or even WiiWare there is a certain set of criteria that must be met before any of the console makers will allow them to be put on their respective services. This, inherently, limits what a developer can do. While there are plenty of great indie games on all three services, XBLIG gives us indie games that are more in common with what you’d find on the PC. Of course, the flip side of this being that, often times, the games are a bit rough around the edges, so to say.

Herman is a prime example of the differences between Microsoft’s XBLA channel and their XBLIG channel. Never, in a million years, would you find Herman on XBLA, but that’s OK. It wasn’t meant to be there. It’s an indie game that is so ballsy and ridiculous that it truly belongs on the “other” channel… the one with the real, tried and true indie games.

As many arcade gamers will tell you, Galaga was awesome. First-person shooters wouldn’t be nearly where they are today if it wasn’t for shoot-em-up games. They had one simple mechanic…shoot. What made these games so playable is their addictive nature; you wanted to make that high score, you wanted to beat your friends at it, you wanted that quarter to go a long way, but most of all–you just wanted to shoot shit!

Utilizing the iPhone’s advanced control surface, membraine studios has created a flick-based shoot-em-up. While the developer may be proud of their work, does Orbital Defence really fare up against games such as Space Invaders and Galaga? Does the flick-based mechanic add anything to the gameplay or is it simply a fluke?

I’m not generally a big fan of the shoot-’em-up genre, but I played the demo of S.H.M.U.P. when it was released because it was an IGF China finalist, and I was hooked.

Part of is is that the game uses persistent upgrades, which remind me of a game I played a lot in my younger days called Raptor. But it’s also that there’s a Space Invaders vibe. You don’t just have to survive and avoid a blanket of projectiles; you have prevent the onslaught and protect something.

For a while now we’ve been talking about Emberwind, a fantasy platformer with traces of RPG elements mixed in for good measure. It even managed to make it onto a list we wrote that was supposed to be for 2010 indie games only (back before a release date was announced). So suffice it to say, we were a little eager to get our hands all over it in order to bring you guys a review. Well, we got it, we reviewed it, and now here’s what we’ve got for you.

Before we jump right into the review, allow me to explain the game a little bit. Emberwind is a platformer set in a medieval fantasy setting. While it has all the usual traits of platforming — jumping, “coin” collecting, points — it also has a spot of RPG elements tied in as well. While hardcore RPG enthusiasts probably won’t be getting their fix from Emberwind, the game does allow for some character growth by way of attacking and health. As you kill more Gremlins you’ll increase your health and as you find specific  runes you’ll increase your attack power. Nothing too advanced — this ain’t no Dragon Age afterall — but enough to keep the game more interesting than a traditional platformer.

Studio Fung Fung clearly knows what the hell they’re doing. Mini Squadron is an addictive little experience reminiscent of PC’s Altitude. The 9-year-veteran developer displays knowledge of what’s fun and how to keep it fun. Here is someone who’s coded for Microsoft, Lionhead, Sony, and worked on the Fable series.

And here’s them settling down and finding their own niche. You see, when you give a developer that free space and allow them to work on whatever they truly desire, the results are often profound, addictive experiences that drag in your mind even as you go about your daily activities. That’s not to say there aren’t a couple of complaints, but for the fun this game supplies, I’ll deal with them.

Is it really any secret that Tetris is one of the most popular and widely-dispersed titles ever to have graced the gaming community? No. How is it that a game which contains absolutely no story elements, isn’t at the zenith of graphical prowess, and is over 25 years old is still being played today? Because of one word: fun. That’s right, the game is a ton of fun and doesn’t require you to allocate skill points to your character or choose between a variety of abilities, or platform from rooftop to rooftop and assassinate your targets, or go to war in Afghanistan and obliterate enemy forces, and….well, you get the point. It’s a simple concept but so addictive that my high school Psychology teacher admitted to being an addict to the point where when credits rolled at the end of a movie, she would see them as Tetris pieces.

Enough about Tetris though, because I’m here to talk about Granny Coder’s Gelex. The title is a match-3 game that follows in the same vain as Tetris, but is physics-based. What this means is that the little pieces known as “Gelex” are just that, gel-like and bounce and slip off of one-another. I felt like I knew exactly what to expect from the game, and I was met with pleasant familiarity with an appreciation for the twists derived from this awesome title. Here are all of my thoughts.

By now, I’ve boasted enough about the iPhone’s excellent array of apps and games that seemingly make the medium, dare I say, perfect. You can do anything with your iPhone, and while match-3 titles or puzzle titles or RPGs or action titles or useful applications are available, I have yet to play a detective game. Good detective titles in general are hard to come by. Most of them attempt to engage you in the story but fail miserably in the “fun” aspect. It’s like, “yes I can read but where’s the fun in just reading?”

Enter MaxMars and their brand spankin’ new iPhone title, Jacques & Stella’s Mystery Files Club. Sure, it sounds cheesy at first because the name is so straightforward, but what the hell else were they supposed to name it? Right now you can find this thing on the App Store for a dollar. The following is an explanation of why this game is worth EVERY single penny.