With the holidays right around the corner, many developers are releasing holiday-related updates for their apps, not to mention extra content in general. Chillingo is one such company. The publisher contacted us today to inform us about its own holiday gift to its fans.

For fans of Cut the Rope, the studio is releasing Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift, which comes with 25 holiday-themed levels and holiday-themed obstacles. The levels in the game feature holiday-inspired visuals, including scattered Christmas trees and ropes made of lights. Furthermore, some levels feature holiday stockings with special physics effects. Users can drop candy into on stocking and it’ll shoot out of another.

The update also adds a new holiday gift card feature. Here, users can create gift cards by adding the game’s mascot, Om Nom, to pictures in user’s photo library. There are also other holiday related visual effects that users can superimpose over their photos, including Santa hats, bells and more.

The best part about Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift is it’s free.

The publisher is also celebrating the third-year anniversary of Sneezies with a free update for fans. The update adds new levels to play through. The developer chose to make the content available to all users, including those who have not played through the original set.

“Before this update, we hesitated to add new levels to Sneezies, because we know the Classic game mode gets progressively harder, and making it to the end is pretty epic already,” the developer wrote in its blog update. “So, we added a completely new menu option: New Sneezies.”

Both the Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift and Sneezies update are now available on the iTunes App Store.

In the competitive battle for the newest and greatest iPhone apps and games, five independent developers set aside their own pursuit for that #1 spot in the iTunes store and created a pioneering new concept.

Sega had them, Playstation had them and Nintendo had them. Now, the iPhone has one: the game bundle.

The 5 Fingers Games Bundle takes five of the most popular and best selling iPhone games, and combines them into one great package. In addition, besides having five great games readily available, because they are all together in one app, it only takes up one app space on your iPhone. That means five games for one dashboard spot!

With a shared admiration and enthusiasm for each other’s work, these 5 indie developers have joined forces to bring you the following five addictive and high-energy games on one simple launch pad:

Chopper – Majic Jungle Software
Up There – Veiled Games
Sneezies – Antair Games
BurnBall – IMS
Blackbeard’s Assault – Warhorse Games

Often for a games bundle, a publisher pulls together one or two good titles and throws in some weaker games to fill in the space, but these are the best selling game from each of five indie developers. Each one is a gem in their own right, with production values, quality, and most importantly, heart.

Together these games have a value of over $10.00, with each being at least $1.99. The bundle is available for just $4.99, a discount of 50% or more off each game.

Could this be a new trend in the competitive world of iPhone gaming? We’ll just have to wait and see.

For more info click here.

FREE!

5 Games in 1

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2009-03-09 :: Category: Games :: Arcade

The Great Indie Bake Off, created and organized by Gavin from Antair Games, has gotten 16 different entries baked by indie developers. The contest organized as a homage to the game cakes often featured on Kotaku, was open for entries from any indie iPhone app developer. It was devised as yet another great way for smaller developers to get a little extra publicity, and, of course, a way to eat some great cake!

To commemorate the bake off, Gavin has gathered some great prizes from the developers. Prizes include promo codes for some of the games features on the cakes, iTunes gift cards, and more. For a full list of prizes, see the voting page. To enter, select your favorite cake and put in your email address on the next page. Voting and contest entries end 1/25/2009.

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