A​straware's newest release for webOS, an old PC classic Tradewinds 2, has a depth not found on a lot of mobile games, although it is not the prettiest presentation.

The game sets you in the Caribbean at the start of the 18th century. You are a merchant traveler sailing between the islands to make money and battling pirate ships in between. You can outfit your ship with a few different weapon types and as you progress, you will be able to buy better ships. Each time you sail to a different port, time passes. You will be able to see the date as you travel around and that will have an effect on the game sometimes.

Read on for the full review!

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Soft music of a gentle tinkling on the piano, raindrops pattering against the window as you sit before the fire in your country home doing a puzzle. This is the serenity into which you are dropped as you launch Quell, a puzzler that just hit the App Catalog from developer Fallen Tree Games.

The game play of Quell is most closely related to Droplets, though in terms of its peaceful atmosphere and pretty visuals, it is more akin to Ancient Frog, at least in terms of the way it leaves you feeling mellow and refreshed. It is a fun, addicting puzzler that is not too hard for those of you who are easily frustrated by puzzles yet challenging enough to keep a pro puzzle solver interested.

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Puzzle fans who like games like Ancient Frog and Droplets might be excited to see a new game coming soon to an App Catalog near you called Quell. Although we have not had hands on playing time yet, it looks like it involves sliding a water droplet in lateral moves to get to all of the little items without exceeding a certain number of moves. The game features a soundtrack of gentle music by composer and pianist Steven Cravis. The environment between levels is that of a living room in an old country house. It looks to have very good artwork and a nice musical score. It should be a relaxing, take your time, kind of puzzle game that will make you think ahead and plan your moves. Developer Fallen Tree is putting some finishing touches on it and will soon submit it to the App Catalog. Be sure to check out the game play video after the break.

Source: Fallentreegames.com

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Rockers rejoice as Rock Band, the iconic music gaming franchise, recently hit Palm's official app catalog in the U.S. If you've seen Rock Band for webOS before, that's because you live in Europe, as it was uncharacteristically released first in Europe before being released in the U.S.  Putting geography aside, may we say this app rocks?  There is a lot to like here: full version tracks, varied gameplay (including vocals) and smooth if not downright snappy performance.  Like the console versions of Rock Band, the webOS version is from Electronic Arts and is cross-branded from MTV Games and Harmonix Music Systems, which all add up to a very solid gaming experience.  Rock Band for $6.99 is a definite rock solid gaming choice.

Again the awesome power of webOS is demonstrated by others' desire to emulate it, this time by hacking a Nokia N900 running Maemo to play webOS PDK apps.       

 A video posted on YouTube shows The Sims 3 running silky smooth on an N900. Other users in a Maemo forum said Need for Speed Undercover and Let's Golf with great success as well, and without much effort. Check out the video after the break.

It is not too surprising when you consider the specs of the Nokia N900 and the Pre are almost identical. Both have an OMAP3430 processor, both have a PowerVR SGX and OpenGL ES 2.0 libs, and both run a Linux based OS. Native apps for the Pre are written with SDL 1.2, which the N900 supports.

The only problem for an N900 user running one of these games is that the N900 does not support multi-touch, which would render some games unplayable unless a hardware work around could be devised, as one user suggested using the keyboard.

The Pre is one of the best gaming devices around. It is rivaled only by the iPhone and porting iPhone games to webOS can be done fairly quickly so there is not much of a disparage between the two devices. The games run just as smoothly on webOS as they do on the iPhone (with the exception of too many cards errors on a Pre minus). So after years of hearing about 'iPhone envy', it is nice to see some Pre envy out there.

Source: Maemo.org; Via WebOS Internals (Twitter), PreCentral forums

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It's been a long road to getting webOS 1.4.5 on all the webOS devices available in the US, but the AT&T Pixi Plus is receiving the update now, as AllTec tips and jonsmith89 reports in our forums. webOS 1.4.5, if you didn't know, brings the ability to download a much larger number of 3D games along with several other minor fixes. Palm's release notes for webOS 1.4.5 show there's not much beyond the PDK app compatibility:

System
This release includes minor fixes and enhancements to support the public release of the webOS PDK.

Web
If a user enters text in a field on certain websites, the screen focus now remains on the text being entered.
This release fixes a rare problem so that podcasts now download correctly.

Security
This release addresses several security issues with the Palm webOS software.

By our reckoning this only leaves Telcel in Mexico lacking the latest version of webOS. With luck, it will come soon.

Meanwhile, AT&T Pixi users - what's the first game you'll download on your newly updated Pixi?

Thanks AllTec and jonsmith89!

Tanks! for webOS is a simple, vector graphics-based game where you ...shoot at tanks. That's pretty much it, but it's addictive as all get out, has good sound (use headphones, as the sound is now directional), and a blast.

It's a simple game - you simply launch, tap, and then get to driving and shooting. Controls are handled with two fingers - one on either side of the screen. These control the two treads of your tank, so steering take a bit to get used to. You tap the center of the screen to fire and keep an eye on the radar there to see the other tanks that are gunning for you. The result of all that is a game where you can actually see what's going on (since your fingers are on the sides of the screen) as you play.

It's a buck, it's fun, it's retro-cool, it's a crime it's not moving up on the PDK Hot Apps Leaderboard, and it should be on your device. Check out a quick video of the game after the break!

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The long-awaited entry of Astraware into the webOS gaming world has begun with the availability this morning of its first two releases (for devices running webOS 1.4.5, we're afraid; these are built using Palm's PDK), Astraware Sudoku and OddBlob. Astraware Sudoku includes features such as Puzzle-of-the-Day, allowing players to download a new daily puzzle and, once having completed it, upload their times to compare to others' around the world. As for OddBlob, here's Astraware's own description of the game:

Meet OddBlob: the groovy clay dude who loves to bounce! Help OddBlob bound across the squishy maze to grab bonuses, chomp fruit, and win points as quickly as he can as the chasing tiles disappear behind. Watch out for bounce and double bounce tiles that can help you reach your goal or throw you through the gaps to impending peril below! Cake slices earn you a try at the cake or doom mini-puzzle, the more bounces you make to get the cake, the bigger the bonus!

Based on the Astraware webOS page, it looks like Casino is the next title set for release, although Astraware has been tweeting that there will be more coming "in a few weeks." Given the library of games Astraware offers, we can't wait to see what's on the way.

Now that 1.4.5 is available for Sprint devices (Verizon and AT&T users, look away, this will be too bittersweet), we're already loving the rush of PDK games from smaller vendors - including that GameBoy Emulator in the Beta feed. One of the most-anticipated is Angry Birds and we have good news on that front. Rovio let @sp3nca know that it's due in 'a few more days.' Even better, they've sent us a quick video of the device running on a Palm Pre Plus and as you can see after the break, it's running quite nicely.

We trust it will run equally well on a regular Palm Pre - the only device that could conceivably run it at the moment - and we trust that the Plussed Pres will get 1.4.5 and the ability to install games like this right soon.

What other higher-end games are you hoping to see on webOS?

Source: @RovioMobile, YouTube; Thanks @sp3nca!

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