Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld we saw indie devs Flashbang return with Crane Wars -- hands down their best game since Minotaur China Shop and likely to be the best indie game of the month -- which sees your staunchly union construction lot pitted against the loathsome scabs next door. It's very polished, very funny, and very well balanced between careful construction and wanton destruction as you fling flaming rubble into the scab lot to stymie their progress.

Elsewhere we also took a belated look at Fret Nice (above) -- a former Indie Games Fest finalist platformer played entirely with a Guitar Hero guitar -- which Tecmo has picked up for Xbox 360 and PS3 release, and saw how the 3.0 firmware has officially unlocked the iPhone's future of connected, social gaming.

We also read about the etymology of a seemingly endless list of video game characters, saw the fanciest new LED-lit Metroid figurine, and saw LittleBigPlanet go Druidistic, and had a lazyweb bullseye as we asked (and received!) a translation for this ultra-dryly funny and massively adorable Japanese 8-bit meme crossover.

And our 'one shot's for the day: Portal's Aperture Science vehicles spotted on the roads of Sweden (!), and Skinny Ships' fantastic work-in-progress retro-Zelda illustration.