Ever wondered what you’d look like with a sweet beard? We often do (no, seriously). But thanks to our upcoming game, Give It a Ponder, you won’t have to spend months growing out your facial fuzz to find out!

Give It a Ponder will be launching later this month on Candystand.com — the game will let you upload a photo of yourself (or you can use one of our models), then answer a series of ten beard-related questions. The more correct answers, the bushier your beard.

Check out the video above for a sneak peek of the game, and then watch for the launch on Candystand.com soon!

Our first foray into the PSP gaming space, Vector TD Minis, launched last week. The EU PlayStation blog was gracious enough to let us write a post on the game’s release (by the way, you can download the game to your PS3 and play it on your home console as well as on-the-go). Here are what some commenters had to say:

“I too am guilty of spending a fair few hours playing this game when I should have been working on my dissertation while working on my degree. Needless to say, I’d already bought the game before this blog post. Great fun :p”

“Bought it yesterday and it’s brilliant. Admittedly I’m a bit Tower Defence fan anyway, but the fact that this is simplified down to the purest form is great for quick games on the move.”

“Yeah, seriously, this is a brilliant game, and an absolute steal at £2.50. Better than Fieldrunners? Maybe…”

A few other European gaming blogs also picked up the news — PlayStation-centric site The Sixth Axis gave it a 9/10 and said:

But what starts as a plain screen of dull looking blocks soon decends into a complex series of interlinking power ups and pulsing Vectroids as your nerves begin to crumble

Handheld/mobile gaming blog PocketGamer also covered the release:

At first glance it look like quite a basic tower defence game, but don’t let the straight lines fool you – this is a surprisingly intense and strategic take on usual gameplay, requiring you to make some fast and accurate decision in upgrading your towers before the invading Vectoids fly by.

And lest we forget the Germans, PSPSource.de also posted what (we think) is a pretty positive review of the game as well, giving it an 8.5/10.

Have you played the Vector TD Minis yet? Let us know what you think! The North America and Asia PlayStation stores will be getting the game soon as well.

Mushroom risotto, greek salad, spaghetti carbonara and more — is your mouth watering yet?

Well you’re in luck – our new virtual cooking game launching this week will let you serve up dozens of tasty dishes. What’s for Dinner is a game in the style of popular Wii/DS games Cooking Mama, where you’ll have to use your mouse to mimic the actions of cooking delicious meals.

Each dish is divided up into three stages. First you’ll need to gather and prepare each ingredient. Some ingredients need to be chopped up, others peeled, squeezed or grated.

Then you’ll have to fry, boil or bake the food to perfection, making sure you add each ingredient at the proper time and stirring, tossing or raising/lowering the heat depending on what’s needed.

And last but not least, you’ll have to plate the different parts of the recipe to serve it up.

There are seven different recipes in What’s For Dinner that you’ll be able to get high scores for. Look for the game on Candystand.com tomorrow!

Voting is open for casual games review site JayIsGames’ Best of Casual Gameplay 2009 awards, and several of our games were nominated in their respective categories! Make sure you head over and vote once a day for your favorites.

Click on the link to go directly to the voting page for each category:
Best Action/Arcade Game: Cluster Lander
Best Physics Game: Bridgecraft
Best Puzzle Game: Copy Cat / Electric Box (you’ll have to pick which one to root for )

Fingers crossed!

Candystand Labs is a new series on our blog where we highlight free flash games that haven’t made it onto the main Candystand.com site. While they won’t award tickets or trophies, we’re hoping you’ll like some of these games for what they are: bite-sized fun. It’s an experiment to introduce new games to our audience – that’s why we’re calling it Labs. And hey, no ads!

Logica (formerly Maze of Squares) is a brainy puzzler where you have to figure out the solution for each level using only a few hints and the power of well, logic! Check out the first few ‘Training’ puzzles to get a sense of how the game works. Then move onto the Easy and Medium modes (and if you’ve got those covered, tackle the ten Hard puzzles — but don’t say we didn’t warn you).

Tips: Some of the puzzles have literal instructions, in others, figuring out the instructions is half the battle Once you’ve completed a puzzle, “Maze Complete” will appear (you’ll have to click ‘Level Menu’ to return to the puzzle selection screen). Keep an open mind, and if you need help, you can always check out the Logica walkthrough for full puzzle solutions (don’t tell your friends, though).

Like Logica? Hate it? Can’t get past level one? Leave us a comment, tell us what you think!
Continue Reading…

Thanks to bloggers and fans around the web for spreading the word about Vector TD iPhone! The response to our game has been overwhelmingly positive. If you haven’t checked it out yet, try out the lite version of Vector TD iPhone — it includes one map (out of eight maps in the full game) and all the towers/upgrades.

Pocket Gamer writes:

Vector TD is a simple, but surprisingly deep, tower defence game that borrows casually from retro-themed games like Geometry Wars, and enjoys a stylish air of Tron as you attempt to gun down the legions of two-by-two enemies streaming through the grid-work levels.

Jay Is Games featured the game in their Mobile Monday roundup, saying, “This one plays like a charm on the touch screen.”

The guys at AppCast talked about Vector TD on their weekly show (and also recommended Electric Box for new iPod Touch owners!)

And last but not least, we found a bunch of TouchArcade forum posters who praised it as well!

“If you still have a TD itch that needs to be scratched, you can’t possibly go wrong with this one.”
“I would say its good value compared to other good TDs on the iPhone, this is my favorite on the platform so far.”
“Much harder than the flash version, which is a good thing ”

So what are you waiting for? Download Vector TD for the iPhone now!

We hope you are all enjoying the holiday season, staying warm and keeping company with friends and family. Thanks so much for sticking with us! We launched a ton of great games this year (RIFT, Pool Sharks, Balloon Shaman and Cocoa Match only in the last few months!), rolled out some new features like unlimited tickets and trophies for almost every new game and broke 10,000 fans on our Facebook Fan page! Needless to say, we couldn’t have done it without you.

We have dozens of new games and features rolling out in 2010, and we can’t wait to share them — look for a brand new mini golf game, our PSP Mini debut and much more in the coming months

For some extended holiday cheer, check out Santa’s Workshop, one of the most difficult (but jolliest!) time-management games we’ve created and/or played. And if you just got an iPod Touch or an iPhone, make sure you check out our brand new app, VectorTD!.

See you in 2010!
- The Candystand Team