SkyZone unveils its 2008 line-up

Though SkyZone isn't a company we hear much from, it has been quietly carving itself out a successful niche of licenced titles including Rocky, Duke Nukem, The Pink Panther and Prey (which won the Best Visual Design for a Mobile Game at the Spike Mobile Game of the Year awards last year.)

It seems that going forward, however, SkyZone is looking to original licences to spearhead it's 2008 lineup with five new titles.

The first, Samurai Sushi, is pretty much what it sounds like. As a samurai with a taste for Japanese cuisine, you have to prove yourself in the kitchen with all sorts of fiddly sushi making via a host of mini-games. We're guessing that surgeon-like control over a razor sharp katana will be the order of the day here, which in our book is more than enough to make raw fish more appealing.

Then there's Arcade Zone, which is another mini-game compendium, this time centered on various sporting challenges such as boxing, clay pigeon shooting, football and basketball. Interestingly there's a multiplayer option mooted to appear too, though whether it will be a pass-the-handset affair or a full on networked (or even Bluetooth) option is still unclear.

Karnivale is yet another mini-game mash up, but with a carnival-theme and the promise of retro carnival visuals and customizable avatars.

Shifting the pace slightly is the intriguing Escape!, which puts you in the position of a human guinea pig. By that we mean reluctant test subject rather than human/rodent mutant, but as a first-person action adventure game where you need to uncover clues and piece together a complex web of lies about memory-erasing experiment against the clock, this title could end up being refreshingly different.

Lastly there's Goblins at the Gate, which sadly isn't about casting nasty spells on door to door salesmen. Instead you play as a gigantic troll that must destroy a huge siege gate by working together with Builder Goblins that construct catapults and carts and Bomber Goblins armed with huge explosives. So in other words, you get to play the bad guys for once, which sounds like a riot.

Not a bad sounding list; we'll be putting each title through its paces in a series of reviews between now and July so look out for those.