This week saw several new and potentially interesting releases on the App Store, but sadly, the biggest one that we as RPG fans are looking for isn't among them. Still, news broke about a fan favorite graphic adventure making its way to the iPad, and there's some notable freebies on offer right now, that you might not want to miss.

Fantastic Knight FREE (Universal)
by Minoraxis, Inc.
FREE [iTunes link]

We talked about the release of Minoraxis' $2.99 action RPG Fantastic Knight in our first edition of iOS This Week. What we missed last week, however, was that the company followed up with a free version of the game, which is universal like the full game, and runs on all iOS devices. Even better - and I personally love this practice - should you decide to buy the game, any progress you make in the free version is carried over to the full version.

Other than that, there's not much to talk about release-wise this week, unless you count gems like "Be Like Mariah Carey," which yes, its developer submitted as an RPG. We're going to choose to not cover that one for our own sake and yours.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
While we already reported that Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions has been submitted to Apple, the fact that it's not available during the usual round of Wednesday night releases says that NEXT Wednesday night - August 3rd, at 8:00pm PST/11:00pm EST to be precise - is looking likely. This is assuming the title is approved and there are no last-minute issues, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Machinarium
Back in January, Kyle reviewed an overlooked (by us) graphic adventure from Czech developer Amanita titled Machinarium. As we've seen through releases like Broken Sword and the Monkey Island titles, the iPad excels when it comes to graphic adventures, as I learned first-hand with Back to the Future. Machinarium is now headed to the iPad, and the developer expects the process to be complete sometime in August. Currently, development is nearly complete, and they are getting to the bug-fixing and testing phases.

If you aren't familiar with Machinarium (meaning you STILL haven't read our review, for shame), you can also play a browser/Flash-based version at http://machinarium.net/demo/.

Zenonia 3 (iPhone/iPod touch)
by GAMEVIL
FREE

Here's a nice surprise. GAMEVIL launched Zenonia 3 for the iPhone and iPod touch in April, and more recently released the game for Android devices. Unlike the iOS release, the Android version was released for free for some reason. Suddenly, the iOS version is now available free as well, versus the $4.99 it launched for. We don't know if this is temporary or not, but if you're at all interested in an excellent mobile RPG (on either platform), there's no reason not to check it out.

Oddly, there are two listings for Zenonia 3 right now in the App Store, one free and one $0.99 version. We're assuming this will be sorted out in time, so we'll just direct you to the GAMEVIL [iTunes link] page in iTunes.

That's all for this week - come back next week where we're expecting to have that Square Enix-related news we're all waiting for. In the meantime... well, Angry Birds HD (iPad Only) is on sale, and Taito (who are owned by Square Enix) just released Groove Coaster (Universal), if you're into either of those sorts of things.

• Touch Arcade