There’s something heart warming about the companionship between two dogs, even if those dogs happen to be attached by the tongue such as Mick & Ralph in Mojo Bones’ first iOS title: Tongue Tied.

Arriving in early December, Tongue Tied follows the exploits of Mick & Ralph as they traverse their way through 50 levels, hoping to eventually retrieve the WonderBone. As the names and concept suggests, it’s going to be a pretty zany ride with an entertaining combination of platforming and physics puzzling.

It promises to include numerous tricks and bonuses to keep things interesting as well as a form of levelling up system, leading to many unlockables. Besides the 50 story levels, there’s also the promise of 30 separate DogHouse levels boosting the replayability of the title.

With a graphical style that clearly takes a few ideas from classic cartoons, I reckon Tongue Tied will be ideal for young and old alike.

Tongue Tied will be out next month. For now, gaze at the gameplay trailer and screenshots below.

ngmoco:)’s hotly anticipated titles, Touch Pets: Dogs and Eliminate, have finally made their way past Apple’s approval process. For those who don’t know, Touch Pets is a pet sim that focuses on raising and training “the ultimate puppy” and also includes a wide array of social features. Eliminate, meanwhile, is a multiplayer online first person shooter. Both games will be free (yes, you read that right!) but will feature In-App Purchases. Note that IAP’s won’t be necessary to play the game; you’ll just need them to unlock extras. With Eliminate, for example, you get to play a certain number of games per day before your “energy” runs out; you can play without energy but you won’t be able to earn any in-game credits.

While both apps are approved, don’t get too excited: ngmoco is doing a Canada-only release first, to make sure that “all Eliminate systems are online and all puppies are house broken before unleashing upon the world,” according to their tweet. It’s an interesting strategy that will have non-Canadian fans grumbling, but given that ngmoco is releasing two extremely hyped games with heavy online components at once, it makes sense. Once the games make their USA debut, we’ll post our reviews; for now, you can check out our preview coverage from earlier this month.

Update: Eliminate is now out worldwide. Make sure you grab it! It generally takes a few hours for new apps to show up in the App Store, so don’t worry if you can’t see it yet.

Canadians can get Touch Pets here, though the rest of the world is still waiting.

We got invited, by ngmoco:) in to their San Francisco offices to take a look at the nearly final versions of Eliminate and Touch Pets: Dogs. While we were there we got to talk to CEO Neil Young a little bit about the Plus+ Network progress, what it takes to host a multiplayer game, and a little bit about what ngmoco:) has in the pipes for the rest of 2009.

Plus+ Network, ngmoco:)’s entry into the now very crowded social gaming networks for the iPhone field has had a rather slow start. Except for signing one high profile third party company, Freeverse, and the ngmoco:) titles, there are only 3 third party games that are part of Plus+. Well, that’s about to change. Neil Young commented that there will be over 50 Plus+ enabled games by end of year. They’ve been getting a great response from developers wanting to integrate with the system or switch from other networks to Plus+.

It’s been a quiet summer for ngmoco:) releases. Except for the amazing release Rolando 2, we haven’t heard much from them. That too will change. They have a total of 6-7 games that will be out by the end of the year. This includes Eliminate and Touch Pets: Dogs and 4-5 others we don’t know about yet. I don’t expect sequels to be part of that though and am hoping for some new and exciting games.
Continue reading Upcoming From ngmoco:), Eliminate and Touch Pets: Dogs »