Coming Tonight: 'Dungeon Hearts,' 'Final Fantasy V,' 'Magicka,' 'Nimble Quest,' and More

It's Wednesday, which means that despite being knee-deep in upcoming game coverage at GDC, there are plenty of games coming out right now that are worth getting excited about. By "right now," of course, I mean about 11pm EST in the Americas and potentially much earlier elsewhere.

Dungeon Hearts, $2.99 - Forum Thread - An iPad Puzzle/RPG hybrid that looks to mix classic JRPG combat stylings with match-3 mechanics in battles with big scary monsters. Very cool.

Final Fantasy V - $16.99 - Forum Thread - Another Final Fantasy title hits the app store. This time around, it comes with improvements from the 2006 GBA release and new character art by the original artist, Kazuko Shibuya.

Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet - $1.99 - Forum Thread - Magicka's been rocking co-op RPG chaos on desktop since 2011. Wizards of the Square Tablet has been designed fresh for iPad, but promises a similarly ludicrous list of spell combos and team-kills.

Nimble Quest - Free - Forum Thread - Imagine this: Snake, RPG mechanics and NimbleBit's pixel art and friendly take on free-to-play. Seems like an easy call.

Runaway: A Twist of Fate - Part 1 - 4.99 - Forum Thread - The first installment of the third game in the Runaway series of adventure games by Pendulo Studios. Check out the technical requirements before grabbing this one—it needs a ton of space and a fairly recent device.

Secret Castle - Free - Forum Thread - A hidden object game with very cool tilt-3D object hunting. Check out the trailer.

Tiny Troopers 2: Special Ops - $0.99 - Forum Thread - The sequel to the popular top-down shooter about mini military dudes. This one should be out at midnight tonight.

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GDC 2013: 'Pylon' is a Great Looking Hack'n Slash RPG Coming this Summer

QuantumSquid was here at GDC 2013 showing off a couple of upcoming games, and their Diablo-esque hack 'n slash RPG Pylon was looking incredibly good. I'll keep my introduction brief as we cover a lot of ground in this fairly lengthy look at Pylon, so without further ado please give our hands-on video a look.

There have been many attempts at Diablo-like games on iOS, with varying levels of success. My all-to-brief time with Pylon has me feeling very positive that this will be one of the winners, and I'm really looking forward to its release sometime this summer.

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GDC 2013: A Look at What's Coming to 'The Sandbox' Creation Game

When we originally reviewed The Sandbox [Free] from Pixowl Games, we thought it was a pretty cool... thing. It wasn't exactly a non-game, as there were structured missions to complete and gaming elements, but they served as more of a tutorial for the broader aim of The Sandbox: to be a creation tool to do just about anything you could think of.

It was a really impressive piece of software, but we felt like it hadn't really reached its potential at that time due to some limitations in terms of content, a slightly stingy freemium model, and a few technical issues. Despite some of these small problems we still really enjoyed the game.

Well, that was almost a year ago, and The Sandbox has come a long way since then. With roughly 7 fairly substantial updates over the past year, most of our original issues with The Sandbox have been addressed, while simultaneously adding a ton of cool new features to the game. This includes tons of new elements and backgrounds, new missions, explosives, dinosaurs, new campaigns, and more. Not to mention Universal iPad support, Retina visuals, and iPhone 5 widescreen support.

So The Sandbox has really come into its own over the year it's been out, and users have populated the game with hundreds of user-created levels that really test the boundaries of what's possible with the game. Some of the user levels I've seen have been downright ingenious. At GDC this week, we got a taste of what's next for The Sandbox with the next couple of updates. Check out the hands-on video to see what's in store.

The Laser & Pipes update is slated for mid-April and will add a new 10 level campaign as well as the new laser and pipe technological elements. There will also be a new set of musical elements, and some of the user levels I've seen that create music are really incredible. In mid-May we'll see the Humans vs. Zombies update arrive, including a 15 level campaign, a Zombie job powder, and a search functionality for the online gallery.

Keep an eye out for these updates and more coming to The Sandbox during the course of the year.

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