Daily Double: Spore Origins for $0.99, iPharaoh for Free...and Super Monkey Ball 50% off!

Posted by Bonnie Eisenman on December 12th, 2009

It's hard to believe that our countdown to Christmas is halfway over. (24 days in December before Christmas, and today's the 12th!) I hope you all have your holiday shopping done. This Saturday morning comes with our two daily deals. Today, EA Games has Spore Origins on sale for $0.99, while the Appvent Calender is featuring iPharaoh Episode 2 from Studioufo.

Early perusers of the App Store may remember Spore Origins. I know that when I first bought my iPod, Best Buy was giving free copies of the game away with every iPod Touch...that seems so long ago! Anyway, while this game is over a year old, don't let that deter you. Spore Origins is based around the first stage of the Spore PC game, in which you play a tiny creature (your "Spore") and must swim around the "primordial ooze," avoiding larger creatures while devouring smaller ones. As you eat, you'll eventually evolve, adding parts and customizing your creature. One word of warning: it appears to use accelerometer controls without calibration options. If that's not a problem for you, go ahead and try it out!

iPharaoh is an original action-puzzler with a delicious mummy theme. I'll let the game's description speak for itself:

Your Pharaoh, peacefully resting inside an ancient Egyptian tomb is disturbed by the sound of hammers pounding away at his tomb.
Your mission is to defend your Pharaoh and his treasures from greedy treasure hunters by using the Pharaohs mighty powers to control mummies, giant cube stones, sliding doors and moving walls.

It looks surprisingly good, and it's far more original than many games in the App Store. You'll need both strategy and speed to excel here. Listening to the YouTube video, it sounded like the audio might become annoying after a few plays, but the mechanics looked solid and addicting. Heck, it's free. App Store reviews have been largely positive, and the developer clearly plans to update: an endless survival mode is promised with the next one. Grab it before the day's out!

Now for a truly awesome deal: Super Monkey Ball 2 is now 50%, which drops it from the premium tier down to an easier $4.99. The original Super Monkey Ball was one of the earliest and most ambitious App Store games, though it was plagued by rocky controls. Its successor has souped-up graphics, 115 levels, and Wi-Fi multiplayer. Be sure to read our review:

"Super Monkey Ball 2 is a huge step from its original self. While some isolated reports have come in of problems with the game crashing on the second generation iPod touch, in my experience of playing on an iPhone 3GS, gameplay was both smooth and fluent. Within superb in-game graphics, and an upbeat infamous sega-esque soundtrack to boot, Super Monkey Ball 2 is just one of those games you can pick up and play."

Seeing as its original price is $9.99, this is the day to get it if you're on the fence. The sale is for this weekend only!