Today’s TiPb Top 5 will be directed towards our iPhone and iPod touch wielding readers who love puzzle games where the goal is to take similarly colored shapes or objects and get them into a group, causing them to be removed from play. Just like our other TiPb top 5 must-have posts, all of these applications are available in the App Store. I've always been quite fond (understatement!) of these types of games, and while the variety is endless, the top 5 I currently enjoy can be found after the break!

Bejeweled 2

I used to play Bejeweled on my PalmOS PDA and Bejeweled 2 was one of my first games I got on the iPhone. Simple and fun, it's a classic and the template for all gem switch games which have followed it. A set of jewels is placed in a grid and you can switch any two jewels horizontally or vertically. If you are able to make a group of three or more matching jewels then your set disappears and all the jewels are refilled from above. The level ends when you have completed your quota of chains or if the timer runs out.

Bejeweled 2 is available for $2.99 [iTunes Link]

Stoneloops! of Jurassica

[Note: Stoneloops was pulled from the iTunes App Store due to a copyright claim. Hopefully it will go through arbitration and be back in the store soon. It's included here because it was so much fun, and so many enjoyed it.]

In Stoneloops, you have a chain of colored stones which move along a track. The object of the game is to shoot additional colored stones into the chain to make a link of three or more. If you can make all of the colored stones disappear before the train gets to the end of the track then you get to go to the next level. There is also another type of play called, grab-n-shoot, where you can take a stone from the moving chain to then re-add it to another location, to make a colored chain.

After you complete a number of levels you are rewarded with an upgrade to your "home", which matches the theme of the levels. You couldn't really do anything with the home, and it didn't affect the game at all, but it was a nice trophy of sorts.

When I first played Stoneloops I played it for so long that I actually got iPhone burn on my index finger (don’t laught, I know there are others out there!). If and when we find out it is back up in the App Store we will let you know.

Trism

Trism was one of the first games made specifically for the iPhone to achieve a huge level of success. Gameplay is very similar to Bejeweled but instead of moving the pieces horizontally or vertically the pieces move on diagonals. If you make 3 or more similarly shaped pieces match they disappear and are replaced by other pieces. In a nice touch, the direction you tilt your iPhone is the direction the pieces slide. Trism also has the added feature of achievements that you gain if you have completed a particular challenge like removing a locked or explosive piece.

Trism is available for $2.99 [iTunes Link]

Jewel Quest 2-in-1 Treasure Pack

Jewel Quest 2-in-1 Treasure Pack, as the name suggests, is actually two games for the price of one -- Jewel Quest II and Jewel Quest Deluxe ! (It's also a great technicality that lets me get around the limit of only choosing 5 games!)

Jewel Quest takes the basic Bejeweled concept and adds a twist. Not only do you need to arrange similarly colored jewels but when you do the square beneath that jewels changes colors. You need to change the whole board to another color in order to pass the level.

In Jewel Quest II, you have to turn all the background playing field squared to gold and this occurs each time you make 4 or more of a kind. This increases the difficulty level of the game and makes you have to think ahead in your selections. The game becomes increasingly difficult with each level, introducing more gem types and board shapes. Some gems are even buried and force you to figure out, through trial and error, its matching partners.

Jewel Quest Deluxe is not quite as difficult as Jewel Quest II but has much more variety and more polished graphics. Each level asks you to complete a different task. It may be to collect a number of colored gems or make the whole board turn gold, it may also have you compete against a computer opponent.

Some games have found a way to interweave an interesting storyline into the game, one that not only relates to the puzzles but adds to the playing experience. Well, Jewel Quest is not one of them. The story in this game is pretty much a bunch of words that interrupts the flow of the game. I can however, overlook this small annoyance because the game is so very addicting!

Jewel Quest 2-in-1 Treasure Pack is currently available for a special price $0.99 [iTunes Link]

Puzzle Quest Chapters 1 & 2

While Puzzle Quest still uses a Bejeweled-type of game board, it's a bit different from the usual puzzle game as it merges RPG and puzzle elements. The story in the game surrounds your character and the puzzle game is the manner in which you battle your opponents. You also can choose different character classes and these will change the kind of powers you get to use in the game. Gold star, Puzzle Quest!

While this is one of my favorite puzzle gem/switch games, I should point out It's not the best port to the iPhone. It does have some spacing issues, and at times some users haves crashes but it's so much fun I keep coming back for more.

Puzzle Quest is available for $4.99 [iTunes Link]

Conclusion

There you have it, TiPb’s Top 5 Must-Have iPhone puzzle/gem switch games. Did we miss any of your favorites? Overlook any amazing gem-game gems? Drop us a comment and let us know your list!

Not sure when this went live, or how I missed seeing it the moment it did, but the snippet of video on Trism that Apple showed off in their iPhone 3.0 Sneak Peek Event is up in full on Apple's developer site, and it's brought along some friends. The full list includes:

• Werner Jainek of Cultured Code (Things)
• Dr. Ge Wang of Smule (Ocarina, Leaf Trombone)
• Steve Demeter of Demiforce (Trism)
• Christina Wick of AOL (AOL Radio, AIM)

The videos show not only some great insights into the personalities behind some of our favorite apps, but the development process as well.

(Via Cocoia on Twitter)

Today is "A Day", the day T-Mobile announces Google's Android mobile platform (see our brand new little sibling site, AndroidCentral, for all the details and coverage) to an anxiously anticipating world. Well... mostly anxiously anticipating.

Turns out some people aren't as interested. Is it because Google's latest forays into content, including YouTube and Wikipedia rival Knol, and platforms, including Android and Firefox rival Chrome (and gLinux OS on the horizon?), make them think "don't be evil" is just a sinister plan to catch the world -- and our privacy -- off guard and unaware? Nope. We tend to like and trust Google. What then?

Same reason some people are less than thrilled with Windows Mobile. See, while supporting multiple hardware and handsets is "choice" for the consumer, that translates into "headache" for the developer. Make a game for the iPhone, and it plays the same on every iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, and iPhone Touch on the planet. Make a game for a multi-device OS, and suddenly you have to worry: some don't have keyboards, some have full Querty, some have T9, some don't have touchscreens, some don't have d-pads, some have 320x240, some have 480x800. Infinite combinations leads to infinite complication, and that's before you even worry about bug fixing. And for some developers, including Steve Demeter who just cleared $250K from the iTunes App Store for his game, Trism, that's a deal breaker:

“Do I want to be spending 6 months to write the game, and another 6 months making it compatible? If I had Trism available for Android, and there are 50 Android devices and every time one of them crashes (the users) contact me, do I want that?”

Sure, some developers won't care. Freedom alone will make the effort worthwhile to them. But these are the developers already coding for Windows Mobile (or LinMo). But for others? The App Store, with all its problems (and they're still many), maintains a value prop that's going to be incredibly tough to beat.

Daring Fireball points to this Twitter from Raven Zachary as a reason why developers will put up with Apple's capricious and communication-challenged App Store:

Trism, the $5 gravity/tilt-assisted iPhone puzzle game by Steve Demeter, has made $250,000 since July 11.

We're pointing to DF because they're right.

And for more on the other side of the App Store debate, check out the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly from TWiT, where Scott and Alex take complaining developers to task, pointing to PodcasterGate as something that could threaten Apple's revenue stream if Amazon or another major company sited it as precedence for releasing their own music catcher Apps, bypassing iTunes, instigating Apple shareholder lawsuits, and other corporate level intrigue.

Agree or disagree, all sides of the issue are definitely upping the debate. (And Trism may just have given one side 250K more arguments in their favor...)

(The Lightning Reviews are coming fast and furious -- our next one comes from a game we've been eyeing as a potential Bejeweled-killer, but new things are scary. Fortunately, cjvitek is not afraid of new things and brings us this review of Trism, $4.99 at iTunes)

I am a big Bejeweled fan, and I love similar games. Trism bring that idea to a whole new level.

Instead of having block, or sqaures, or jewels, trism simply has colored triangles. The trick is, however, you can move a row of colored triangle any direction (along a row). You can move a row to try to get three matching colors together - if you don't, the row "snaps back" to the starting position. The rows wrap around, so if a triangle goes off the screen on one side, it reappears on the other side of the screen.

The other twist with Trism is that the blocks will fall based on how you rotate the iPhone. As you rotate, the block will always fall down - with "down" being indicated in the lower right corner (and if it changes, a grey arrows appears briefly showing the new direction - see my last picture). So as you are deciding how to move blocks, you ALSO need to decide how to hold the iPhone to achieve the best success. Hold it one way, and you will end up with empty triangles (making it more difficult), but if you had rotated it, something might have fallen into the empty spot.

You also have powerup and other special features that you can unlock as you play. To date, I have only unlocked a few of them, so I can't tell you what they all are. There are three game modes, but I have only played "infinism". "Terminism" and "Syllogism" ar the other two modes. I know one of them is timed, but I am not sure about the other.

I give this game 4.5 out of 5 stars for it's unique gameplay and new take on an old game. The only problem with the game is the gameplay is sometimes not as responsive as I would like. It sometimes take a few taps for the game to "figure out" what row I want to move (or the game thinks I am trying to pause).