Mid-week iOS releases: Little Masters, Wild Blood, Oh Hi! Octopi!, and more

Welcome back to Pocket Gamer's round-up of the latest iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad mid-week releases.

As you all probably know by now, we produce this article each week because we're simply too busy to bring you a story on every single new game that hits the App Store. Beer doesn't drink itself, you know.

Anyway, these games have recently hit Apple's New Zealand outlet, meaning they should be available to download in the UK and US from around midnight this evening.

The excitement is palpable.

DrakeRider is an RPG (are you surprised?) that's set in a world on the brink of destruction due to the repeated attacks of a mysterious force known as the Dread.

Like the recently released Final Fantasy Dimensions, this role-playing game is made up of five different parts. You can play the first part free of charge, but chapters two to five will set you back £4.99 / $6.99 a pop.

You can always save a few pennies by grabbing all five chapters in one fell swoop for £14.99 / $20.99.

Let's not beat around the bush - this is Pokemon for the iPhone.

In Little Masters, you have to catch and train a variety of colourful critters and then send them into battle against other colourful critters. You can even compete in real time with your buddies and their teams.

Unfortunately, to play this game, you need a constant internet connection and a Game Center account, so don't be expecting to play it on the bus (unless it's a really fancy bus).

Your daughter has been kidnapped by an undead pirate and taken to his ghostly galleon. Let's face it, we've all been there.

Playing as a lowly museum owner, you must save your little girl before she's murdered and her life force is used to resurrect one of the pirate's old flames.

All represented in the form of a HOPA game - or a hidden object and puzzle adventure game as we know it.

Another week, another start up team hits the App Store.

Sparklet Studio has been working on Flying Daggers, its action platformer, which is now available for iPhone, priced $2.99, €2.39 or £1.99.

Looking like a mixture of cute and Metal Slug, Sparklet points out that the game includes a slow motion mode so you can enjoying blowing things up even more. Looks great to us.

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If you don't know what Wild Blood is, you're either a new visitor to the hallowed pages of Pocket Gamer (welcome) or a former coma patient.

Either way, it's the French publisher's very first Unreal Engine 3-powered iPhone and iPad title. It's also rather like God of War; not Infinity Blade as we first presumed.

You can roam the game's environments freely, you see, and mash the virtual buttons on your device's screen to lop the heads off various baddies.

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In Twang the Fox, you assume the role of a bushy-tailed fox who's on a mission to rescue his beloved wife and her little fox babies from the dastardly Boscoe Carnivale.

In order to do this, you have to fling yourself through no fewer than 60 levels and six colourful worlds - all of which are packed with "crazy contraptions" and mechanical foes.

Apple's iCloud and Game Center are both supported.

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Oh Hi! Octopi! is a part-arcade-platformer and part-colour-matching puzzler from the developer of 1-bit Ninja.

In this brand-new title, you're tasked with using your trusty hammer and several paint bubbles to knock out rows of similarly coloured octopi.

The longer you play, the faster the octopi move, so the action heats up pretty quickly.

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This title is your chance to become the sword-wielding fantasy warrior that you've always dreamt of becoming.

You know, the fantasy warrior that can slice through waves of enemies and pull off moves Hollywood fight co-ordinators would never dream of suggesting.

You can spend the gold you earn as you frantically swipe at your iPhone's screen with your finger on new weapons and armours.

Huebrix is an interesting-looking puzzle game that will test your visual, spatial, and logical senses.

It tasks you with dragging paths from various coloured blocks in order to fill a relatively large puzzle grid. Unfortunately, however, each of the boxes can only produce a limited amount of path, so you have to do some thinking.

A hint system should help you complete any of the game's 300 levels.

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