TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Touchgrind BMX

Illusion Labs' Touchgrind was one of the first iPhone games I ever saw in action. Honestly, it wasn't very successful as a full game, but using the iPhone's multi-touch screen to control a fingerboard was fun. Now, Illusion Labs is bringing the brand back with Touchgrind BMX, a game that changes your mode of transportation to BMX bikes, and opens up the view a bit.

One of the big issues with Touchgrind was that, because the camera was top down, you had a hard time seeing exactly where you were going. Illusion has fixed this in Touchgrind BMX by moving to a more from-behind view, and setting the bike along a path rather than letting you freely explore. But you still control the bike with two fingers, flipping the handlebars around with one, and spinning the bike's body with the other. It still takes quite a bit of getting used to, but it's much friendlier than the original Touchgrind interface.

There are plenty of extras to find and explore, including goals and scoring medals and challenges, along with a nice replay mode that even lets you send videos off to YouTube and Facebook. There's no Game Center integration, strangely, which would have been nice for leaderboards and achievements. But if you're interested, the app is now available for US$4.99 on the iPhone.