If you own Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1, you'll be able to unlock extra content in Episode 2. Owners of both get free access to "Episode Metal," which adds four new levels and a playable Metal Sonic character.

This functionality recalls the "Lock-On" technology in Sonic & Knuckles, which allowed Sega Genesis owners to connect previous Sonic games to the cartridge and replay them as Knuckles the Echidna. The difference now, of course, is that there's no cartridge to connect.

After all the madness Alice could muster and social action game Bighead Bash, it look's like American McGee's Spicy Horse studio is ready to move on to another new project. Entitled Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, the action role-playing game retells the story of Little Red Riding Hood with a feudal Japanese twist, reports Kotaku. As part of the Order of Akane, players are charged with putting an end to a Hokkaido village's demon problem. Akaneiro uses mid-19th century Japan as a backdrop, as tensions arose and the country reluctantly opened itself to western trade.

The game will be free-to-play and will be playable on PC, tablets and via the web. Early screenshots suggest gameplay similar to Diablo, Torchlight and other dungeon crawlers. A beta is planned for later this year.

You'll be able to play Max Payne on a minimal screen next week. The mobile version of Remedy's squint-em-up will be out on iOS April 12, publisher Rockstar reported today. Androids will gain the ability to enter bullet time when Max Payne mobile lands on that platform on April 26.

The mobile port features HD graphics and customizable controls, though you won't be able to customize the controls off of the screen and onto physical buttons.

The team at Carbon Games is basking in its newfound freedom as an indie studio after its first development endeavor, Fat Princess creator Titan Games, dissolved under Epic Games China. Carbon Games' first project is AirMech, a free-to-play RTS-action hybrid debuting as a browser and PC title, most notably via Chrome.

AirMech is currently in alpha, but it's existed metaphysically since 2009 at least, before Fat Princess was even pitched to Sony.

"AirMech is my baby," game director James Green told Joystiq on the PAX East show floor, where Carbon Games is one-sixteenth of the Indie Megabooth. "We pitched it to Sony before Fat Princess, but they didn't get it."

The world may not have been ready for AirMech in 2009, but now, after the success of League of Legends and other accessible, hardcore hybrid titles, publishers are interested in a solid RTS-action blend that translates to multiple platforms and gameplay styles, Green said.

There are more than 60,000 players in the Chrome alpha for AirMech, and at least 5,000 playing the PC version -- but Carbon isn't stopping there. Green pulled out an Android tablet running an early, mobile version (without virtual joysticks as a default, he was sure to note) and Carbon plans to announce a beta version for Steam this summer. Carbon would love to see a version on consoles as well, maybe even with a single-player mode, production coordinator Chris Merritt said.

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Draw Something has become the fastest selling mobile title in history, moving 50 million proverbial units since its launch last February -- 13 million of which were accumulated in just the last week. The pictionary-plus-'splosions app from OMGPOP is currently the number one paid app on the iOS App Store, dethroning Rovio's flagship rocket ship Angry Birds Space.

Broken down into impressive-yet-meaningless marketing figures, Draw Something has yielded six billion drawings in total, at a rate of 3,000 per second. We'd imagine that a large percentage of those drawings are boners, but new-owners Zynga have yet to release information that specific.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

Charley Price: Bag It! is a Tetris-style grocery-bagging puzzle game with a fragility twist.

What's the coolest aspect of Bag It!?

David Marino: The groceries are the coolest thing about Bag It! They started out as colored blocks and gradually grew to become pirate watermelons and flirtatious baguettes. And who doesn't like crushing aristocratic eggs?

CP: One of the coolest things I love about watching people play Bag It! is how the game resonates with different players. Bag It! presents a wide variety of unique modes (from Standard to Multi-Bag to Rampage to Puzzle), which helps the game feel fresh and ensures that there's something in there for everyone.

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The latest in the ever-growing line of Kickstarter-funded games is Shadowrun Returns, a sequel to the original game which hit PC back in 1989. Jordan Weisman, the creator of Shadowrun, secured the license for a sequel on the PC and iOS and Android tablets, and is hoping to raise $400,000 for the project.

Shadowrun Returns is planned to be a "graphically rich 2D turn-based single player game" in the vein of classic Shadowrun. Harebrained Schemes will also release the PC level editor alongside the game, so players can craft their own stories and missions within the universe and share them online -- either with all players or only your friends.

As of right now, Harebrained Schemes is pretty much halfway to the desired goal with 24 days left to go.

[Thanks, Chad.]

For $50,000, you can alter the "Ken sent me" password in Leisure Suit Larry, which is used to gain access to a room even seedier than the bar to which it's connected. You can forever change it to your own name. This profane act is the most tempting, most outrageous reward tier for a new Kickstarter by Replay Games, to fund continued development of the HD remake of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

Replay wants to localize the game into more languages and put it on more devices -- and it has plans for Larrys 2-7 as well -- so it's joined the Kickstarter gravy train to seek $500,000. Other reward tiers offer digital or physical copies of the game, posters, and even Larry-branded condoms.

How much do we have to pay in for an updated Laffer Utilities?

The story behind the third episode of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is almost as long as its title. Following disappointing sales of Episode 2, Penny Arcade kicked off its first PAX East conference by informing Joystiq that the series had been discontinued altogether. At the time, Penny Arcade stated that developer Hothead Games left the project in order to focus on developing DeathSpank, as working on both projects would have impacted the quality of Episode 3. Hothead would later claim that Penny Arcade wordsmith Jerry "Tycho" Holkins had trouble keeping up with the development cycle.

Now, two years later, Episode 3 is not only back in development, but is being taken in an entirely new direction by indie developer Zeboyd Games, creators of cheeky role-playing throwbacks Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII. Along with a new developer, the game has also received a slightly shorter title: Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3. It's slated to launch this summer on PC, Mac, Xbox Live Indie Games, iOS and Android. The price hasn't been announced, though I've been told it should be in line with Zeboyd's previous games or, in other words, cheap. Eager fans will get a chance to see a first look at PAX East in Boston later this week.

The project began, Zeboyd's Robert Boyd told Joystiq exclusively, in a single forum thread on Penny Arcade's website.

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As if there wasn't already enough Angry Birds in your life, Rovio has announced a weekly cartoon series will debut later this year. The news comes from a media conference in Cannes, France, as reported by the BBC, where Rovio animation head Nick Dorra revealed the 52 episode series will be coming to "all possible platforms."

Dorra noted that the cartoon would provide fans with a new way to take part and would also draw newcomers to the franchise. Furthermore, Dorra stated that "Angry Birds is not just about the gameplay," elaborating that the franchise will evolve to be "less and less about the slingshot and more about the characters and their adventures and all different kinds of games in different forms." That's good news, because we've always felt that the blue bird's motivation is unclear.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

TwinKomplex. It's about you and me -- and what happens to us when we partake in the DIA, a Decentral Intelligence Agency. It is also about conspiracy theories, how we try to understand our reality.

What's the coolest aspect of TwinKomplex?

The performance of our actors. The fact that we blur reality and fiction, that we use the Internet as a background for our fantasies. This reflects in the way our interface looks like and in the fact that we run a multitude of fake websites. One of these is a clinic for plastic surgery in Switzerland -- and it looks so real that we have received a few inquiries for silicon implants, etc.

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Gnilley was originally designed for the 2010 Global Game Jam in Sydney. The idea was, at first, to design a game that used the pitch of your voice to alter the environment. However, developer Radix said, it "ended up being about YELLING AT EVERYTHING."

Radix wants to turn that prototype into a full, top-down, Zelda-plus-screaming game for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, and has turned to Kickstarter to make that happen. There are 28 days left for Radix to raise the modest $10,000 in development costs sought.

Rewards include copies of the game, posters, t-shirts, and even the opportunity to design a minigame level. "You'll get access to an easy-to-use level editor and a special beta build for testing your creation, then submit it once it's awesome." For $250, you even get a customized microphone to yell into.

Angry Birds originator and eventual ruler of all mankind Rovio is widening its grasp upon the world by opening a new studio in Stockholm, Sweden. Should all go according to plan, the presently unnamed new studio will be staffed by 20 to 30 folks within a year.

This announcement follows Rovio's recent acquisition of Futuremark Games Studio (Unstoppable Gorg, Shattered Horizon), as well as its highly successful launch of Angry Birds Space. "2012 is going to be a big year in gaming for us, and we're constantly on the lookout for great new talent," said Rovio's executive VP of games Petri Järvilehto in a statement to CVG. "We're excited to expand to Stockholm and work in one of Europe's gaming and innovation hotspots."

From what we're able to tell from the pictures on Wikipedia, Stockholm looks like a beautiful place, but we can understand that not everyone interested in working for Rovio will immediately fall for the city's Scandinavian charm. Don't worry though, future Rovio Stockholm employees. You'll learn to love it.

Double Fine raised almost $3.4 million in its Kickstarter campaign, shattering records and publisher's hearts worldwide, but with all that attention on a single project it seemed impossible for any others to get a penny of funding. Not true, Kickstarter says, and it has the stats to back it up (Back that stat up).

Double Fine Adventure catalyzed the entire video games category on Kickstarter: The month before Double Fine's project, video games averaged 629 pledges per week; after its launch, video games received an average of 9,755 pledges per week, excluding those to Double Fine, Kickstarter says.

Similarly, in the first two years on Kickstarter, the video games category raised $1,776,372 in total. In the six weeks after Double Fine, it generated $2,890,704 without Double Fine's contribution, $6,227,075 with it. Before Double Fine, only one video games project had exceeded $100,000; now nine have.

Double Fine brought 61,692 first-time backers to Kickstarter, and they have gone on to pledge almost $400,000 to Wasteland 2, another successful, million-dollar project. Kickstarter offers a more detailed run-down of these surprising statistics right here.

Halfbrick is teasing new, weird gadgets for version 1.3 of Jetpack Joyride, including today's "Gravity Belt." We don't know how it works in-game, exactly, but the cute video introducing it makes it seem like something that makes flight more difficult.

We can't imagine Jetpack Joyride being more fun without all the ... jetpack joyriding ... but we trust Halfbrick to know what it's doing. We look forward to seeing how being stuck to the ground translates into fun.

A free-to-play version of The Dark Meadow, titled Dark Meadow: The Pact, will be available for download on Apple's App Store later tonight, bringing with it a slew of additions to both versions of the game. Dark Meadow: The Pact is identical to the original, save for the fact that it doesn't include any of the "premium" upgrades or content additions also coming to the original version tonight. paying players receive a "Premium Pack" of in-game goodies, which includes five health kits, 13 bombs, 15,000 gold, 150 Sun coins, and a distinct lack of advertisements.

Said premium upgrades and additions coming to both versions include iPad 3 Retina Display support, new environments, enemies and bosses, new weapons and amulets, a "Fast Travel" system for moving between floors, a world map, and perhaps most importantly of all, health packs that can be used during combat.

An Android version of Dark Meadow: The Pact is scheduled to launch some time in April, optimized for the Intel Tegra 3 processor with "enhanced visuals and physics."

Update: We have been informed that the gameplay additions originally reported as only coming to The Dark Meadow are also coming to Dark Meadow: The Pact and have updated the post to reflect this new information.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

Mike Ouye: Our game is called Life Is Crime. It's a free-to-play, social, location-based crime-themed mobile game for Android and iOS. Players commit virtual crimes at real locations, visiting their local bar, coffee shop and bank to perform missions, sell contraband and fight with other players. The more active players are, the more turf they control and the higher their criminal reputation becomes.

How vicious is the crime-app competition on mobile devices, and how do you feel Red Robot Labs is faring?

Mike Ouye: We took a unique approach by launching on Android first, then approaching the iOS market, and so far it has paid off. Life Is Crime has over a million downloads on Android since its launch at PAX West in August 2011. This created momentum so that when it released on the iTunes App Store January 5th, it rose to the number two on the Free Apps list.

Pete Hawley: As for Red Robot Labs, our company has expanded into the UK, joining forces with Supermono, and continues to grow rapidly here in the US. In fact, we're still hiring, so if mobile gaming is your thing you should come work for us!

We're hoping that location, high polish, and innovation will help set us apart.

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Rovio, the team responsible for Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space (and parts of this), has acquired Futuremark Games Studio, creator of Unstoppable Gorg and Shattered Horizon, among other titles. Futuremark Games was founded in 2008 and is based in Finland alongside Rovio, which may explain why Rovio chose to acquire this particular smaller studio over your own basement operation in Florida. Maybe.

"They are an incredibly talented and experienced team, and we are thrilled to have them on board," Rovio Entertainment CEO Mikael Hed said. "Rovio's success is founded on the excellence of our team, and Futuremark Games Studio is going to be a superb addition."

That might also be why Rovio chose Futuremark Games, but if it helps just keep telling yourself that this is a classic case of nationalism.

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Temple Run, the game inspired by (UNSPECIFIED ACTION ADVENTURE MOVIE)'s famous Idol Temple scene, is now at home in a new edifice: Android. Don't worry, Android owners, this is the real Temple Run by Imangi Studios, and not the crummy clone that was culled from iOS.

The freemium game requires Android 2.1 or higher, and can be downloaded right here. Is anyone else still confused by "Google Play?" We get that mixed up with "Google Plus," which is also home to casual games, all the time. What was wrong with "Android Market?"

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