Unless you’re a heartless monster, the sight of cute pets who need our tender love and care is simply irresistible in video games. For proof, just look back at the 1990s, where the Tamagotchi craze began (and quickly died) alongside the Pokémon and Digimon games.

Developer ZeptoLab tapped into this innate desire when it released the first Cut the Rope for mobile phones and tablets in 2010. The goal was simple: feed the weird green monster (called Om Nom) some candy by solving physics-based puzzles. Almost three years and 300 million downloads later — and after a successful sequel with Cut the Rope: Experiments, a Chinese New Year-related update called Cut the Rope: Lantern Box, a comic book, lucrative merchandising deals, and the launch of an animated web series — ZeptoLab is ready to unveil its newest Cut the Rope game.

Cut the Rope: Time Travel (out today for iOS and Android devices and reviewed on an iPhone 4S) isn’t a radical departure from its predecessors, but it’s just as addicting. The biggest change is that you now have two Om Noms to feed in each level: the one from the present and an ancestor from its family’s past, like a warrior from the Middle Ages or an artist from the Renaissance. Future updates to Time Travel will include new levels as well as the second season of the animated Om Nom Stories (the first episode comes out May 4), which you can watch from within the game.

In other words, Cut the Rope: Time Travel continues ZeptoLab’s quest of transforming Om Nom into not just a popular video game monster, but also as a widely recognizable cartoon character.

What you’ll like

The adorable Om Nom

How can you not love Om Nom’s face? ZeptoLab has done a great job of turning a green blob with stubby legs and huge eyes into a lovable character that you just want to squish to pieces — it’s like the long lost cousin of Gizmo and Stitch. From the cartoon, we know that Om Nom has a bit of a personality, too: It’s rambunctious and has a child-like sense of wonder (which led it to stumble into a mysterious time machine in the first place). Om Nom oozes the kind of charm that both adults and children can appreciate.

Just the right level of difficulty

While the first 90 levels (which I completed in about two hours) steadily adds new challenges, it never feels too overwhelming. Familiar obstacles and tools like ropes, rockets, and bouncing platforms are still here, as well as new ones like portals and the ability to stop time (see the gallery below for a full list). Trying to figure out which object to activate first is a lot like applying the order of operations to a math problem: If you accidentally set off something or mess up in just one area, you’ll probably have to restart the level.

Like in the first two Cut the Rope games, however, I never felt truly stumped. Just when I’m thinking about using Om Nom’s telepathic powers (it has a finite amount of uses) to cheat by pushing candies to its mouth, I find a way to pass the level. It isn’t always the most elegant solution, nor do I always earn a perfect three-star rating, but it’s still rewarding to solve Time Travel’s complex visual equations.

Cut the Rope: Time Travel screenshots

What you won’t like 

Pesky ads asking you for money

Nothing takes you out of the experience like an ad that constantly reminds you that you can refill Om Nom’s superpowers with real money. You’re given a few to start off with, but the message pops up if you’re repeatedly failing a level. I suppose the prices aren’t too insane (from 20 uses for $1.99 up to 1,000 uses for $19.99), especially since the game costs about a buck or three depending on the platform, but it’s just another stark reminder that mobile games are not afraid to put their business models front and center.

Conclusion

Cut the Rope: Time Travel is the type of time-wasting game that mobile devices excel at. Most of the levels takes seconds or minutes to solve and it’s easily double that amount for dedicated players going for the coveted three-star rating in every level. Having two mouths to feed doesn’t change the formula all that much, but when combined with the funny time traveling premise and the upcoming cartoon, ZeptoLab gives you more than a few good reasons to come back to Om Nom again.

Score: 80/100

Cut the Rope: Time Travel is out now for iOS ($0.99 for iPhone and iPod touch, $2.99 for iPad) and Android devices ($0.99 on Google Play). The publisher provided GamesBeat with the iOS version for the purpose of this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you can’t get enough of Angry Birds, you might want to check it out on an arcade machine. That’s right. Dream Arcades, the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of arcade machines for the home, just announced that you will be able to play Angry Birds and Cut the Rope — two of the most successful mobile games in history — on its coin-op hardware.

Dream Arcades distributes games on its arcade cabinets, which can be refitted with different titles easily. Each Dream Arcade machine has 145 classic video games. But users can also buy them in packs. The company targets families, particularly those who are nostalgic for the bygone era.

The four-player Dreamcade 2.0 Cocktail is a tabletop machine with 145 titles, a 19-inch monitor, and a three-quarter-inch computer-routed Melamine cabinet. It sells for $1,999. The Cabaret Dreamcade 2.0 is a stand-up machine that has pinball flippers on the side, a 19-inch monitor, and 145 games. It sells for $1,899.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Those gifted with new mobile devices this holiday season have a world of fun awaiting their fingertips — maybe too much fun. Thousands of games have been made available over the years, especially since iOS and Android have increased in popularity, making the selection process frustrating for those navigating Google Play, the App Store, or the Amazon App Store for the first time. Well, consider this list of the best mobile games your saving grace. We’ve compiled a source for mobile gaming based on user friendliness, accessibility, and more importantly, fun factor. Whether you have an iPhone, iPad, Galaxy device, or Kindle Fire, these games are waiting for your attention. Think of this list as a beginner’s guide to gaming on your mobile device.

Plants vs. Zombies

Developer: PopCap Games
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Plants vs. Zombies still stands as one of the more addictive games I’ve played. Ever. The object of PvZ is to protect your home from a hoard of zombies that hungrily make their way across your yard. All that stands in their way are plants curiously armed for your war against the living dead.

Specifically, the plants are equipped with a variety of weapons, such as projectile peas. Other plants eat zombies while cherry bombs blow them to deader than dead bits. The more plants you create, the better your chance at survival. You must position your plants strategically, or the game will end rather quickly.

Cut the Rope

Developer: Chillingo Ltd.
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Cut the Rope is disgustingly cute. How so? A piece of candy hangs on a rope over an adorable little monster, and the player must swipe to break the candy free and drop it into the creature’s mouth. His smile is priceless. He’s a happy, goofy-looking little beast named Om Nom.

Cut the Rope’s puzzles are mostly based on physics and timing. For instance, the candy may be hanging from two or three ropes. The order in which you cut them becomes a strategic decision, and timing a cut perfectly so that the treat lands in Om Nom’s mouth can prove tricky. Some of the tougher parts incorporate elements such as hungry spiders that also want the treat, forcing the player to act quickly while still trying to carefully plan moves. More often than not, you’ll retry a level in the hope of feeding the little guy a candy so you don’t have to see his pouty face. It’s heartbreaking, and you can’t help but feel overwhelmed with guilt every time you fail.

Infinity Blade and Infinity Blade II

Developer: Chair Entertainment
Platform: Apple App Store

Infinity Blade is the first iOS game developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, and it looks beautiful. It’s truly a showcase of what can be accomplished visually on a mobile device with the right resources, and it’s not far from what current consoles are capable of.

You walk through a castle fighting monsters using simple left, right, and swipe gestures to dodge, block, or attack your enemy. These controls work well with touch screens because they don’t rely on precision finger movements. Instead, the player must focus on timing and pattern recognition to win. It’s Punch-Out!! with shields, swords, ogres, and knights.

Angry Birds series

Developer: Rovio
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

I admit that every time a new Angry Birds game hits the download market, I pretend I’m too cool to be interested. How many times can Rovio reskin the same game? Then I pick it up, and I’m hooked. Angry Birds is arguably the most popular mobile game around right now, and for good reason. It’s no wonder the developers keep releasing sequels and making Angry Birds available on every thinkable platform because even when you want to hate it, you have to admit it’s fun.

The object of the birds’ anger are evil green pigs that have stolen their eggs. The player’s job is to slingshot the birds into said pigs’ fortresses, rendering them dead and bacon. You have a limited number of birds per level, and you must find clever ways to efficiently eliminate all the pigs before advancing. The puzzles are physics-based, so players have to calculate distance and trajectory to win. You’ll often find that what was supposed to be a few minutes of playtime can become an hour or more of slaughtering hogs and cursing at the touch screen.

Draw Something

Developer: Omgpop
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Draw Something was one of the first mobile games to bring a social element to the general public thanks to its Facebook integration. In fact, the social network is very likely the reason Draw Something became so huge. It’s easy to sign up for because most of us have a Facebook account. It’s also very accessible to nongamer types since drawing is a basic skill, which eliminates the need to learn complicated control schemes or rules to enjoy the game.

One player is given a word and must do his best to represent it in a drawing by using his device’s touch screen. Then, he sends it to the other person, who must guess the word based on his (usually horrible) illustration. You can be playing against several friends at once, and it’s not unusual to have 10 or more games going at any given time. Keep in mind that it may be hours or even days before a friend gets back to you with a reply. The only downside to any of these social games is that you are forced to rely on others if you want to play. Once the initial popularity dwindles, it’s a little harder to find opponents.

Rayman Jungle Run

Developer: Ubisoft
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Ubisoft is one of those top-tier gaming companies that wasn’t afraid even early on to invest in development and publishing for mobile platforms. Rayman Jungle Run was picked by Apple as its best game of 2012. Luckily, Rayman is multiplatform, so Android users don’t have to sit this one out.

Rayman Jungle Run is what’s called an autorun game. The character — in this case, Rayman — continuously runs through the levels. The movement is out of your control. It’s the player’s job to jump, glide,, or attack at the right moment. This genre has grown in popularity on mobile devices because it brings elements of traditional run and jump games (often called platformers) yet keeps gameplay simple enough so that users aren’t annoyed by sloppy touch-screen controls.

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When I first heard the term “pudding monsters,” I thought about those Bill Cosby Jell-O Pudding Pops commercials where he made the scary faces that ran on television when I was a kid. That’s my pudding monster.

Thankfully, Cut the Rope developer ZeptoLab has something much cuter in mind. Pudding Monsters is the studio’s new game for iOS and Android. The title shares many of the sensibilities of the Cut the Rope games, but in doing something that doesn’t rely on its established brand and popular OmNom character, ZeptoLab is dealing with monster expectations.

“Since the release of Cut the Rope, we’ve been really busy working on all the opportunities that Cut the Rope provided us as a a team,” said ZeptoLab co-founder Semyon Voinov. “Like expanding the brand, adding new stuff, and releasing spin-offs like Cut the Rope: Experiments and a visual comic book. We’ve started our merchandising strategy and direction, but at the same time, we’ve always been eager to do different things.”

Pudding Monsters is different. It features new characters that are, well, monsters made out of pudding. They live in and around refrigerators and have a desire to expand. That’s where the developer introduces its fresh gameplay concepts.

“The goal of each level is to stick all of the monsters together,” said Voinov. “There are different kinds of monsters with different kinds of abilities. Which can help — or maybe even make it trickier — to accomplish the goal in each level.”

ZeptoLab is still in the teasing phase, so Voinov didn’t get more specific than that. He did say that one of the developers at the company came up with the concept for the title during an internal competition. Everyone at the studio spent a few days creating a new game, and the kernel of Pudding Monsters was the team’s favorite.

Now, the team has to deal with expectations.

“Overall, the Cut the Rope games were downloaded more than 250 million times,” said Voinov. “Of course, that’s a hard goal to meet, but the market has grown drastically since Cut the Rope was first released. The biggest challenge for us will be to maintain the interest to keep the [players] interested in our new game.”

Despite the concerns of living up to Cut the Rope’s legacy, Voinov and ZeptoLab are creating something new, and that is exciting for them.

“We’re creative people, and we’re happiest when we’re creating,” he said.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The cute green creature from the popular Cut the Rope mobile games is the star of a weekly animated series.

Om Nom, the needy, candy-loving monster in developer ZeptoLab’s breakout hit, has already reached 8 million views in a video called Om Nom Stories. That short film explores what Om Nom does when you aren’t watching. Its success inspired ZeptoLab to expand Om Nom Stories into a full animated web series that begins streaming tomorrow on YouTube.

The developer is updating the iOS Cut the Rope and Cut the Rope: Experiments apps to add an episode-streaming feature so players can watch the episodes directly through the games. ZeptoLab is bringing the same update to the Android versions of those games Friday.

Cut the Rope isn’t the first mobile game to capitalize on the appeal of its main character in other forms of media. Disney created a series based on Swampy, the cartoon star of its Where’s My Water? mobile game, that streams online and airs on The Disney Channel.

Throughout this month, over 19,000 movie theaters have shown the original Om Nom Stories. ZeptoLab partnered with National CineMedia to play the short film in that firm’s FirstLook block of entertainment and advertising. The developer also announced plans to create a live-action game show in partnership with Sony Pictures Television, the same production company that produces Jeopardy.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It took a while, but Twitter finally lets its users add a header image at the top of their profiles. Take advantage of this to show off your favorite hobby with our collection of video game-themed pictures.

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme:

• Monday: The modern era
• Tuesday: Popular franchises
• Wednesday: PC
• Thursday: It came from Japan
• Friday: Mobile
• Saturday: Retro arcade
• Sunday: Consoles

Today’s batch of headers features 10 entries from hit mobile games. Right-click (or Ctrl-click for Macs) the picture you want and hit “save image as” to save to your computer. To add the header to your Twitter profile, please follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your account.
2. Go to “settings” and click on the “design” tab.
3. Scroll down to the “customize your own” section.
4. Click on “change header” and select the image you want to upload. No need to scale.
5. Click “save.”

Bad Piggies

Minecraft: Pocket Edition

Cut the Rope

Wipeout

Temple Run

The Simpsons: Tapped Out

Police Escape

Super Hexagon

Infinity Blade II

N.O.V.A. 3

For gaming-themed Timeline covers for your Facebook profile, click here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s popular iOS App Store has now topped 25 billion downloads, a sign that mobile device owners are still hungry for well-built native applications.

On Apple’s site, the company has highlighted the achievement with a page that says: “A billion thanks. 25 times over.” The company had been promoting a contest where the person who broke the new milestone would win a $10,000 iTunes gift card. The milestone was broken some time in the past few days. Apple held a similar contest in Jan. 2011 when the company hit 10 billion App Store downloads.

While there have been persistent arguments about how well native mobile applications would fare against surging HTML5 development, at least when it comes to Apple, consumers are still plainly in love with native apps. Social networking apps like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter are especially popular for iOS, as well as casual games like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja, and Where’s My Water?.

VentureBeat contributor and CBS Interactive CTO Peter Yared recently summed up the current state of the conflict between native and HTML5 well, saying: “While HTML5 has come a long way, it is still not up to par with the native app experience. Some publishers, such as the Financial Times and Playboy, have come close to native app functionality by investing heavily in HTML5 in order to bypass Apple’s 30 percent app store subscription fee. However, there are no turnkey JavaScript libraries that provide functionality such as efficient swiping and offline reading.”

What apps for the App Store have you been enjoying most lately?

The merchandising agreements are part of the company’s push to become a global gaming brand and expand into new markets. The deals are similar to those struck by Rovio for its Angry Birds mobile game and Outfit7 for its Talking Tom series of mobile apps. And it makes sense, considering Cut the Rope has a bigger audience than a lot of TV shows.

ZeptoLab is also showing off a new version of its game today dubbed Cut the Rope Experiments: Bath Time. That game will soon debut on multiple platforms.

ZeptoLab is making the announcement at this year’s Toy Fair show in New York.

“We’re looking beyond where things are in the moment,” said Misha Lyalin, executive chairman at ZeptoLab, in a phone interview. “We have 100 million downloads now, but this is the beginning of where we are going to go.”

Under the deal with Mattel, ZeptoLab’s Om Nom character from Cut the Rope will become the basis of a variety of toys and games. One game will emulate the digital gameplay of Cut the Rope (pictured), where  the goal is to cut a rope in a way that solves various puzzles. The board game will use Mattel’s Active Touch technology, dubbed Apptivity, which allows kids to play with a physical toy on the surface of an iPad.

With Hasbro, ZeptoLab has a deal to bring co-branded board games to the market featuring Cut the Rope and Om Nom. Toymaker JAKKS Pacific will market stand-alone Cut the Rope branded game controllers for kids. And Li & Fung (LF USA) will create sleepwear and loungewear featuring Om Nom starting in the fall of 2012.

Cut the Rope was published by Chillingo in October 2010, has more than 30 million monthly active users, and is played in 125 countries. It is the brainchild of twin brothers Semyon and Efim Voinov in Moscow. Now in their 20s, they have been making games since they were 10.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It has happened with Rovio, maker of Angry Birds; Outfit7, maker of Talking Tom Cat; Lima Sky, maker of Doodle Jump; Halfbrick, maker of Fruit Ninja; Bolt Creative, maker of Pocket God; and Andreas Illiger, creator of Tiny Wings. So the question isn’t why were two Russian brothers so successful with their iPhone game, Cut the Rope, which has been downloaded more than 60 million times in just a year. It’s more, ‘Why not?’

Semyon (pictured above left) and Efim Voinov (above right), two twin brothers in Moscow in their 20s, have been making games since they were ten. They have put in their time, making dozens of games for the old feature phones and a handful for iPhones too. So it’s only right that, finally, one of their games has paid off with blockbuster results.

Efim got his first iPhone in 2008 and decided to work on games for the device. He created  ZeptoLab, a game development company where he serves as technical director and his brother Semyon works as creative director. Misha Lyalin (pictured middle) is the chairman of the company. With a team of just four people, they created a zany game called Parachute Ninja. The game, which stars a ninja with a ball-like body that bounces and floats, debuted in February 2010.

Parachute Ninja was almost based on the rope mechanic that’s in Cut the Rope. Efim spent a lot of time getting the physics right by creating a custom engine that could simulate the behavior of the rope. There were other open-source physics engines available, but Efim liked the challenge of creating his own. He wanted to create a rope engine that worked well even on a device with a weak processing brain. To do so, he had to dust off his old physics books.

At the last minute, the developers decided to substitute a parachute for the rope. Parachute Ninja was downloaded 3 million times — a solid hit, but not as spectacular as some of the other mega-hit games on the iPhone.

“We found that there were no barriers for small developers,” said Efim Voinov, in an interview. “It is possible to be successful without a huge team on the iOS platform.”

The game gave the small team some good experience with its core development tools. After the first iPhone game shipped, the brothers decided to make use of their rope engine with another creation. They studied their first game and felt like the combination of touch and tilt controls made Parachute Ninja tricky to understand for players. Other games used rope physics.

“We experimented with different ideas,” Semyon Voinov said. “One of them was Cut the Rope.”

The concept phase was in the spring of 2010 and the prototyping took place in the summer. The team settled upon a mechanic where the player can draw a rope on the screen to solve various puzzles. Playing with a rope was pretty universal. The game play involved predicting the behavior of different objects in the rope environment.

It turned out that the visual element of how the rope looked wasn’t the key. The game play was the secret. It was an arcade-like experience that was simple to learn but players had to think and act fast.

The team also decided to create a funny character since casual gamers enjoy interacting with animated characters more than blocks or geometric shapes. They decided to use the rope to deliver food to Om Nom, the little green monster with a big appetite. Semyon thought that the monster should be cute, like a baby or a pet. That would tap into the feeding instincts of the players.

The 99-cent game came out on the iPhone on Oct. 5, published by Chillingo, which is now a part of Electronic Arts. Chillingo helped to get it off the ground and noticed with promotions and marketing. On its first day, the game shot into the top ten on the App Store. On its second day, it hit No. 1 on the App Store charts. Within 10 days, it crossed a million downloads. In June 2011, the game made its debut on Android. The game took off, Efim said, because it makes people smile.

“The monster is like a stress reliever,” Efim said. “They look at the animations and feel better.”

After the runaway success, the fairy tale has continued to play itself out. The team has done six or seven updates of the game, and Zeptolab has now grown to 20 employees in Moscow thanks to profits from Cut the Rope. Zeptolab has no plans to raise fuding, since it already has a lot of money coming in from game sales. The brothers are now mini-celebrities in the mobile game development world.

“I don’t have a lot of girls standing by my house yet,” Efim said. “But we are known in the industry. What we see as a great sign is that Om Nom is liked by people. We see a hunger for something more.”

And, of course, like Angry Birds before them, there are Om Nom plush toys. The toys hit the market in September and they’re selling well. On Nov. 18, they released a free holiday edition with new game content on iOS.

Efim and Semyon have some advice for small developers. “[If you] do what you like,” Semyon said. “You will not waste time doing things you don’t like.”

They suggest developers study games that have been successful and understand the features that made them successful. They also say developers should study games that were duds and understand what people didn’t like. Developers should create games that appeal to as many people as possible and to keep at it. Altogether, the brothers had worked on 30 mobile games before they had a major hit.

“We were mentally prepared to work on many titles, hoping one would be a hit,” Efim said. Semyon added, “It’s very important when you develop games to show it to others. Listen to them. Understand what they like. Show it to non-gamers.”

And what’s next, beyond the plush toys? They are working on a sequel to Cut the Robe that should be released in 2012. They want to keep fans happy with updates and they are working on a new intellectual property (an original title) that should come out next year as well. That’s where the 20 employees come in. The company now has the ability to work on multiple projects at once, including a new digital comic book.

“We want it all, basically” Efim said. “We want to expand the Cut the Rope brand. We plan to offer new titles that are similar. At the same time, as creative people, we have an urge to work on something different.”

The team will expand Cut the Rope to new platforms, but is aware that it can’t pursue all opportunities due to resource constraints. The company continues to hire, but only people who are perceived as the best at what they do. Facebook is intriguing, as is HTML5 for multi-platform games. The growth of the mobile game industry, which is now in the billions of downloads, is surprising them most of all.

“We started working on mobile games a long time ago, when the phones were not powerful and had tiny screens,” Efim said. “There was hype back then, and we expected it to become huge. I had some illusions. It didn’t happen then, but it surprisingly happened with the iPhone.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If you made plans for your weekend, you might want to kiss them goodbye.  Apple yesterday released its iTunes Rewind 2011 list, with the 40 top  iPhone and iPad apps of the year. The iTunes store now has more than 500,000 apps in it, but  this year’s top apps list shows that fun is the dominant theme. Games and social networking tools dominated, and photo sharing tool Instagram was chosen as the No. 1  app of the year.

People can’t get enough of Instagram. Since launching in October of 2010, the app has acquired over 13 million users. On the iTunes Store, the app has been rated by more than 207,000 people who give it 3.75 stars out of four.

Apple’s top apps list still has many other fun services and games to choose from. Some you know and love, others might be new. Don’t be surprised if your Saturday and Sunday disappear as you check out a few of the games you might have missed out on earlier in the year. It definitely happened to me over Thanksgiving weekend when I downloaded Tiny Wings for the iPhone. And now the list, without further ado:

Top Paid iPhone Apps

1. Angry Birds
2. Fruit Ninja
3. Angry Birds Seasons
4. Cut the Rope
5. Tiny Wings
6. Angry Birds Rio
7. Words With Friends
8. Camera+
9. Doodle Jump
10. Plants vs. Zombies

The top 10 paid iPhone apps were all games, with the exception of Camera+, a photo app with tons of cool filters. Angry Birds claimed the top spot, and it’s no surprise. 2o11 was the year Angry birds went from a niche meme to a full on cultural phenomenon. Making an unlikely appearance on the Top 10 list is Doodle Jump, a basic but “insanely addictive” platformer that first appeared on the iPhone nearly two years ago.

Top Free iPhone Apps:

1. Facebook
2. Pandora Radio
3. Words with Friends Free
4. Angry Birds Free
5. Skype
6. Netflix
7. Angry Birds Rio Free
8. Groupon
9. Fruit Ninja Lite
10. Twitter

The top free apps were dominated by games and social networking services. Facebook took the top slot, and it has has been the most popular iOS app for some time by a comfortable margin. More than 350 million people access Facebook through a mobile device, and it is the most popular  iPhone app of all time. Pandora is another heavy favorite for iPhone users, and Twitter, which was integrated into iOS 5, is an app that has become part of the mobile phone experience. No real surprises here.

Top Paid iPad Apps:

1. Angry Birds HD
2. Pages
3. Angry Birds Seasons
4. GarageBand
5. Angry Birds Rio HD
6. Penultimate
7. Fruit Ninja HD
8. Cut the Rope HD
9. SCRABBLE for iPad
10. Keynote

The top iPad apps showed a little more bias towards productivity and work, with Apple’s publishing tool Pages, and presentation designer Keynote making their way to the top 10. Overall, iPad owners still love their games. Cut The Rope HD and Fruit Ninja were still in the running, capturing people’s imagination on both the iPad and the iPhone.

Top Free iPad Apps

1. Angry Birds HD Free
2. The Weather Channel for iPad
3. Netflix
4. CNN App for iPad
5. Angry Birds Rio HD Free
6. Kindle
7. Skype for iPad
8. Calculator for iPad Free
9. Pandora Radio
10. Calculator Pro for iPad Free

The free iPad apps category shows the most diversity, with a mixture of games, such as Angry Birds Rio, a calculator app, and even the app designed for the Weather Channel. Pandora, Kindle and Netflix are all on the list, showing that people love their iOS devices for play and media, even when they can help get a lot of work done.