This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go.

There was a time when the beat-em-up was king, a time when Streets of Rage, Final Fight and Golden Axe were at the top of the heap. Combo Crew on iOS and Android looks to return to those days, offering several unique fighters, lots of combos and plenty of bosses to bruise, clobber and otherwise pummel.

The impressive part is that it does all of that with just two fingers.

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Vlambeer founders Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman didn't think Ridiculous Fishing would win an Apple Design Award. Sure, it was in the running, but it was a long shot, and they had other places to be during the ceremony at WWDC on June 10 (E3, anyone?). Just in case, they asked Ridiculous Fishing collaborator and indie extraordinaire Zach Gage to go to the show, and he did. In flip flops. And shorts. And Ridiculous Fishing won.

"Holy shit," Ismail laughed during our chat at E3. He was still getting over the fact that Ridiculous Fishing won an Apple Design Award, and that Gage collected it in what's commonly considered summer beach attire.

So far Ridiculous Fishing sales have hit the "hundreds of thousands," Ismail said, and after the Design Award, sales spiked again. Even Elijah Wood got hooked on Ridiculous Fishing – or, as Ismail put it, "The Hobbit played it!"

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One-man indie development studio Benjamin Rivers' side-scrolling pixel art horror game Home will be available for iOS devices this Thursday, June 20. The Universal App will cost $2.99 and feature new content, new terrifying environments to explore and updated story elements.

Rivers has also established a website to showcase the spooky real-world environments people play his game in – anyone who Tweets, Instagrams or Vines their eerie gaming location of choice using the hashtag #homehorror has a chance of making it into the collection.

Meanwhile, the OSX version of Home should be released sometime this summer, Rivers announced, adding that the improvements made for the iOS version of the game will be transferred to existing and future desktop versions at some point in the future.

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PopCap Games is known for making games that appeal to a mass audience, and perhaps none are more so than Plants vs. Zombies. The cute 'n clever tower defense game has connected with players of all ages and origins. A sequel, then, was inevitable, and after an announcement last year we finally got to see the game in action at E3 last week.

It's unfortunate, however, that much of the discussion around Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, at least during the game's iOS launch, probably won't be around any of the great new content. There are new zombie enemies, new plants, three new worlds set in different time periods, touchscreen-centric powerups that allow you to throw zombies around or pinch them apart, and even a new "plant food" buff that gives each plant an extra burst of ability when used.

At launch, they'll probably all get lost in the mix, because there's one other big difference between the first Plants vs. Zombies and its sequel: PvZ 2 is a freemium game.

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Crytek is building an overhead, tactical action game called The Collectibles for iOS devices, 9 to 5 Mac reports. Crytek demoed The Collectibles at WWDC last week, played with a new, MFi-supported controller, the site says. MFi is Apple's new program that opens up the iOS SDK for game controller hardware and accessories.

The Collectibles has players command a team of five through the ruins of war in a jungle environment, as shown by a series of screenshots with the report. The Collectibles allows for touchscreen or controller play, or both simultaneously for some features.

The Collectibles doesn't officially exist yet. Crytek's most recent foray into our headlines was with Ryse: Son of Rome, a third-person action game coming to Xbox One. We got a chance to play it during E3 and found it more aggressive than expected.

The Cave, Double Fine's latest adventure game, is heading to iOS, Touchgen reports, citing a hands-on preview at E3 last week. Sega published The Cave on PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U in January, but clearly that's not enough, and the game is due out this summer on iOS.

The Cave on iOS doesn't have virtual analog sticks or buttons, but allows the player to tap and drag characters around the map, and choose characters with a poke on their respective icons along the bottom of the screen, the hands-on report notes.

The Cave features seven characters with murky morals and, at times, even murkier gameplay, we found. There's no word on how much the iOS version will cost, but the price shouldn't be any steeper than the walls of that deep, dark, sentient cave.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown will be available on iOS devices this Thursday, June 20, for $19.99. Commanders of the XCOM Project will now have mobile access across iPad 2+, iPhone 4S+ and fifth generation iPod touch devices.

The iOS XCOM is a the PC experience with the exception of the head-to-head multiplayer, which will be added at a later time as a free update.

Ultima Forever, being made by EA for iOS platforms, has received some major tweaks to its freemium currency prices. The RPG has been available in Canada as a beta for a while now, and producer Carrie Gouskos says the biggest change – besides performance adjustments – has been to the cost of things.

In the free-to-play RPG, your character has items that will break over time. You'll need to spend keys of various qualities (that can be earned in game, or purchased with real money) to repair those items.

Gouskos says player feedback made it clear that repair costs were too high, and repairs for the highest quality items have been lowered from about 60 keys to around 8 or 10. Additionally, the cost to increase storage space in your stash was lowered, as the team found it was a mistake to charge people an increasing cost for simply wanting to collect more of the game's items.

One price went up: The cost to loot the highest quality chests was raised a bit to make up for the decreased costs elsewhere. Gouskos also says that once players had good items on their characters, they tended not to loot as much as when they first started playing.

For her part, Gouskos says she's "worked too hard to have people not play" the game, so she's striving to make sure there's a way to play that's both free and fun. The team is still considering providing an optional "buyout" fee to essentially negate the game's freemium elements, but no matter how the final product works, says Gouskos, making the game fun takes priority over the tangled monetization model. If you want to make money from a freemium game, says Gouskos, "you've got to get people to love your game first."

IndieCade took over a corner of the E3 show floor this year, complete with giant orange inflatable chairs and almost 40 games on various platforms. Out of all this beautiful madness, I spotted three games that went above and beyond the standard indie call – they were weird, they were different, and they were awesome.

First up is Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!", a musical point-and-click investigation game from Deirdra Kiai, who is the sole developer, voice actor, singer and composer. If that sounds like a lot of work, it's because it is – but Kiai pulls it off seamlessly.

Dominique Pamplemousse is available now for PC, Mac and iPad for $5, and there's a free demo on Kiai's site. It's a quirky romp through a musical, claymation landscape, and it's tons of fun.

I feature two more games at IndieCade's E3 exhibit, both with videos coming up later today.

During a Transistor demo session at E3, Supergiant Games' Greg Kasavin confirmed that the studio's first game, Bastion, has sold over two million copies. "Bastion has done really well for us; it's sold over two million copies across all platforms," Kasavin said. "That puts us in a position to make games on our own terms and take the time needed to get it right."

Part of that success was the seven-man team's pursuit of creating something "worth a damn" and not disappointing each other, Kasavin added. "Games take a lot of time and a lot of money, so we just wanted to make something that made people feel like they didn't waste their time or money playing it."

Back at DICE in February, Supergiant founder Amir Rao said Bastion had reached 1.7 million sales.

The Walking Dead's next episode, 400 Days, stars five different characters in five separate stories of survival during the zombie apocalypse, all tied together by a geographical locale: A truck stop. These newcomers offer a fresh perspective on the events in season one of The Walking Dead, but overall, Telltale's tone hasn't changed much.

"Aw, fuck."

Those are the first words that Vince, one of the five characters highlighted in 400 Days, says. He spits the phrase into a dark alley as he searches for a spot to stash his gun, police sirens blaring from down the street. The player gets to decide where Vince throws the pistol – the garbage, his pants, the roof – but it doesn't appear to affect where he ends up: chained to the floor of a prison bus, with a heartbroken statutory rapist in front of him and a white-collar, former millionaire behind, all latched on the same line.

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The new episode for Telltale's The Walking Dead, 400 Days, is set to launch in July for $5 on PC, Mac, XBLA, PSN and iOS. It'll hit Vita one month later, in August. That version will be bundled with the entire first season, for the first time ever on Vita.

That bundle is a good deal for fans of continuity – the decisions players made in the first season of The Walking Dead will show up in 400 Days, and the choices in 400 Days will impact season two, Telltale marketing man Richard Iggo said at E3. Players can start 400 Days without having played any of season one, but Iggo warned against it for those who want the full effect.

The DLC features five new characters in five separate stories, with a truck stop as their connective tissue. The truck stop is near events in season one of The Walking Dead, making it easy, geographically at least, to include previous player choices in 400 Days and beyond.

"Who knows, some of the characters that you meet might end up in season two," Iggo teased.

Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers, the next installment in the Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers series, is set to launch on Steam June 26, according to the game's product page.

Magic 2014 is priced at $10, which falls in line with every other entry in the series. A special edition, which includes the game, soundtrack, five desktop wallpapers, a "Return to Ravnica" eBook and ten foil conversions, is also listed on the Steam page. Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers will launch on PC, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS and Android this summer – this marks the first time the series will be available on Android.

[Thanks, Mitch]

Ubisoft revealed a pair of new Trials games during its E3 conference. First is Trials Fusion, a new game in the motocross racing/crashing series for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 and PC. Meanwhile, Trials Frontier is for mobile devices. Each version will interact with one another in some way.

Both games are due in 2014.

Update: Ubisoft has provided a few more details. Fusion will be "tet in a shining vision of what our future could be, where technology and nature co-exist." It also promises "social and visual breakthroughs." Frontier, meanwhile, sounds like the Trials formula adapted for touchscreen platforms, though Ubisoft does call it a "a unique social racing game."

Game Center will get a visual overhaul with the latest update to Apple's iconic mobile operating system, it was revealed during WWDC today. Apple aims to curb cheating through more secure game scores and support for ranking-style leaderboards. It's also added a new Sprite Kit tool to help developers create games, and Apple's adding game controller support for the "Made for iPhone" standard. The new Game Center will be a part of iOS 7, which is due out later on this fall.

[Note: Current Game Center app image presented above.]

Deus Ex is, by nature, a complicated game. You can start by simply moving around a level: There's cover to move in and out of, and stealth movement requires good timing and precision. Then, there's all of the abilities you have, from using various gadgets and weapons to choosing your bio-implants and playing the hacking mini-games. That's a lot of buttons. In making Deus Ex: The Fall for iOS devices, Square Enix Mobile was given the task of putting all those functions into a device that has only one button.

In that respect, the most exciting news about this game is that it works. For the most part, that is. You can't hide bodies, for one thing.

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This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go.

Ron Gilbert's Beep Games has a new game out on iOS called Scurvy Scallywags (subtitle: In the Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty), and it's a match-three puzzle game with light RPG elements and plenty of pirate humor. It's only 99 cents in the App Store right now, and that's probably all of the inspiration you need to go and download it, right matey?

Oh all right, ye lousy landlubbers, I can put an X on yer treasure maps for ye. Scallywags is a bit of pirate-infused joy. It's a simple game with mechanics that don't always light the cannon fuse, but it's got enough charm, depth, and solid fun to justify the very cheap cost of admission.

Plus, there are real sea shanties included.

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NWay, a studio founded by Grand Theft Auto creator Dave Jones and former Realtime Worlds president Tony Harman, is bringing a new action RPG called ChronoBlade to browsers, Ouya, iOS and Android. To throw another big name onto the pile, the game is being designed by Stieg Hedlund, the designer behind Diablo 2.

ChronoBlade combines traditional loot-collecting action RPG concepts with 2D beat-em-up gameplay. The game takes place in a "multiverse" setting consisting of many different dimensions, allowing it to include styles ranging from medieval fantasy to steampunk.

A demo should launch on Ouya next week, and an open beta of the browser version is expected to launch later this month. Check out a developer diary after the break.

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