I first came across developer NinjaBee by playing their XBLA platfomer Cloning Clyde -- it was a game that seemed pretty genre, until you started playing it and discovered a unique charm and depth. Since then, they've brought that flair to a few other types of games, including the turn-based strategy RPG Band of Bugs and Xbox Live's Kingdom for Kieflings, and now they've arrived on the iPhone by porting their original XBLA spaceport business sim Outpost Kaloki X and renaming it as Kaloki Adventure.

I liked Kaloki on Xbox Live and I still like it on the iPhone. The graphics have taken a hit -- the textures don't seem as clear and the menus are a little more functional than good-looking, but the solid core of gameplay is definitely still here in spades. The idea is that you're running a space station with a limited number of expansion slots on it, and you can put various expansions in each of those slots -- some will give you more power (which you can use to grow bigger expansions), and some will make you more money (which you can use to build more power). The idea is to satisfy your power needs, make money, and keep your customers happy all at the same time, turning your space station from a tiny little lemonade stand off the back end of Jupiter into a thriving powerhouse of space commerce.

Unfortunately, not one of them is Contra. But the iPhone is going to get some pretty big name titles from Konami -- the company announced yesterday that Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Dance Dance Revolution, and Frogger were all coming to our favorite mobile gaming platform from the company's vaults.

Frogger you know, and Dance Dance Revolution and Silent Hill look like fairly faithful (if a little tweaked) recreations of the dancing and horror games that both series are known for. Metal Gear Solid Touch seems the most interesting title -- that series seems to reinvent itself almost every time it reaches a new platform. There have been strategy versions, card-based versions, squad-based versions, and even the old 2D games, so though all we know is that MGS Touch has eight levels and will use the touchscreen, from there Konami could do anything they can think of.

Great to see that a historic publisher is investing heavily in the App Store, though. If these games turn out to do well, we could see some other big-time developers follow suit.

Puzzllotto has been about as hidden as the lemurs you can see in the screenshot over there, for some reason -- the concept isn't real easy to grasp, and if you just stumbled across the "game" in the App Store, odds are that you'd think you had $5 stolen from you. But there is a weird story hidden here, both literally and figuratively. David Lanham and Mike Lee contributed to the Puzzllotto, which features unusual game play -- there's just a picture of a forest, and a few eyes that you can touch to make lemurs and other creatures pop out. I would tell you more, but I haven't actually figured it out yet -- there's a "fosa" that will scare away any lemurs or butterflies you've summoned, and I know that the butterflies are basically a progress meter, but other than that I have no idea.

But Puzzllotto isn't just that perplexing app -- it's been dubbed "fundware" by Lee, and 10% of the proceeds from the game will go to the Madagascar Fauna Group to support the habitats of lemurs, fosas, and butterflies. And it's actually a puzzle to be solved, with a cash prize -- if you can be the first to figure out the "puzzle" behind Puzzllotto, United Lemur will give you a cash prize out of their prize pool, currently at $5000, and growing every day for 31 days. If no one claims the prize at the end of the 30 days, all the money will go to charity, project over. You can follow updates on their Twitter -- it sounds like no one's claimed any prizes yet, which is no surprise -- if there are any clues in the app, they're very, very hard to find. United Lemur claims that there is a game in there (and that it is worth the $5 entry fee), but so far, all players have found is a few screens of the weird lemur puzzle.

But it is a different kind of game -- a cash prize handed out by a flabbergastingly tough puzzle disguised as an App Store game, all designed to benefit a charity. Lee says on his blog that they wanted to make a game where players couldn't cheat by telling each other the answer, but maybe they didn't realize that part of the fun of Myst is sharing the strategy with other players. And if you don't want to shell out the $5 on Lee's word, it might be fun to just wait until the solution gets posted somewhere anyway. Have you solved any part of Puzzllotto yet?

Square Enix has released their new game for the iPod, called -- wait, hold the iPhone. Say what again? Square Enix has apparently been hiding a huge secret, and the word is out already in iTunes. They've developed an iPod classic game called Song Summoner, and if the video above is any indication, we don't actually have to wait for the iPhone's App Store to come out, we might have a new winner right here.

For a mere $4.99, you apparently get a full-scale Square strategy RPG, and that's not all -- the characters in the game are created from your iPod's songs. And every time you listen to a song, the game levels up. This sounds incredible, and so it's no surprise that our sister site, DS Fanboy, has already written up five reasons why this might be the new Square game to check out, even compared to the more established Final Fantasy series.

This bodes very, very well for the future of original iPhone gaming -- if Apple has Square-Enix and Harmonix building games this innovative for the iPod, imagine what they'll be able to do with the iPhone. We'll get our hands on Song Summoner as soon as we can, and let you know what it's like when we do.

Macworld's got the tip that Freeverse has released what they're calling a "critical" update for the Mac version of Heroes of Might and Magic V. They say the update to the pretty well reviewed fantasy turn-based strategy game includes "stability and display issues," and a fix for "registration issues." Interesting. Doesn't sound like it'll change the gameplay much, but stability is always a plus.

The update is available for download over on the Heroes page and will bring the game up to 1.5.1.

Michael Greeson has written an article for Designtechnica purporting to see Apple's future in digital home media simply by analyzing their famously minimal 6-button Front Row remote and the new Mac minis. While it might sound like quite the leap, he's written a great article that gives some serious credit where credit is due in terms of the remote's wild departure from the accepted design norm. Dubbing a philosophy of "sophisticated simplicity," Michael believes many of Apple's careful design choices in products like the Mac mini, the iPod and this remote are finally striking the right chord with consumers who are tired of products with so many buttons and features that they're nearly indiscernible from an airline pilot's control panel.

The article is a nice homage to Apple's design ideals, and I for one am glad to see someone appreciating Apple for what the company and their products are really worth, above and beyond the typical "hey there's no viruses" or "wow this iPod's great." Check it out.