Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld I wrote up quite possibly the most heartfelt game suggestion I've made thus far, for Steph Thirion's iPhone debut, Eliss (right). It's a game of abstraction and economy: you could say it's "just" a game of splitting and joining circles, but the elegance and novelty of its design (it is one of the first true multi-touch games), and the Tetris-like innate sense of order and accomplishment at its core make it one of the most original and essential games for the platform.

Elsewhere, we looked into the dreams of the Noby Noby Boy and saw hints of multiplayer and maracas on the way, gawped at the outlandishness of the first trailer for Russian strategy game Stalin vs. Martians, took a playable look back at the origins of 2D Boy's World of Goo, and read that the co-designer of Sonic is creating a new Pac-Man game.

We also somewhat accidentally discovered that Arkedo's Big Bang Mini was headed to the Wii after downloading its excellent free blip-pop soundtrack, saw the first images of a new 'Art of the Game' exhibit opening in Italy, read Parappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura's take on the music game industry he helped birth, and saw peerless games magazine Edge get 200 different covers for its 200th issue.

Finally, we discovered that Radiohead's Paranoid Android redone in Mario Paint is way more wicked than it deserves to be, and that Behemoth's Castle Crashers was nearly a Lucha Libre comic book spin-off, saw a very Pilotwings-ish game and a new spherical 3D tower defense game coming to the iPhone, and watched an amazing iPhone promo from Bomberman creator Hudson, which calls Fieldrunners out by name in announcing its own original tower defense game.