Air Patriots is the second product from the newly-launched Amazon Game Studios, the company’s foray into making games. The company finally began making their own games in August after years and years of selling other companies’ products.

Amazon’s first game was a social game for Facebook called Living Classics, a “moving object game” that incorporated imagery from classic literature.

At its core, it’s a tower defense game. Amazon touts it as a “new kind of defense game” that features mobile towers and weaponry. It launches with seven different maps, achievements, and plenty of unlockables.

Air Patriots is a new kind of tower defense game with fun and unique gameplay requiring strategic positioning of an arsenal of planes to push back an enemy tank invasion. In Air Patriots, players directly control a squadron of military planes by using their finger to draw the paths the planes will follow in order to engage the enemy. Unlike other tower defense games where defense bases are stationary, in Air Patriots players can adjust their strategy on the fly. Simply draw a new flight path for your planes, and you redeploy firepower to where it is needed most.

Check out the trailer below:

“When we created Air Patriots we wanted to make a game that was easy and engaging, and the simplicity of drawing paths for planes was something we thought would appeal to players,” said Ernie Ramirez, Executive Producer at Amazon Game Studios. “We think customers will find Air Patriots both familiar and fresh, with a degree of challenge that keeps them engaged and enthused to play more. We are very excited to bring Amazon customers Air Patriots today, and Amazon Game Studios looks forward to bringing our fans even more great games in the future.”

The new game supports Amazon GameCircle, their version of Apple’s Game Center which lets players track their achievements and compete for high scores among other players.

In case you need a push, here’s what you can expect:

Amazing Alex has a set of 35 fully interactive objects just waiting to be set in motion. Fans can set the objects up to bounce, pop, ricochet, bash, and crash into each other and create an elaborate Rube Goldberg device! With a houseful of toys to play with, there’s more than one right answer. Fans can share their most creative solutions with friends and see what they came up with. With 100 challenging levels across four fun-filled locations, there’s a whole world of creations to explore!

Players can also design their own levels and share them with friends as well as the general public.

If you race over to snatch Amazing Alex for iOS or Android, just know you’re not the only one. Having only launched today, Amazing Alex is already at the top of the paid charts.

Windows Phones, Mac and PC versions of the game are on the way, says Rovio.

That is about to change, however, as the company has partnered with DeNA to provide mobile social games starting later this month. So far the games are currently being released in Japan, but they have plans to make them available worldwide.

The first game was Disney Party, released March 28 on the Mobage network in Japan, which serves an audience of over 35 million. A second game, Disney Fantasy Quest is set to be released April 2. The games feature Disney’s main characters, Mickey, Donald, Goofy and others.

Disney Party is a social party-simulation game for mobile phones. Players organize parties and decorate their interiors with various “gifts” that will attract Disney characters. When the characters pay visits, players can greet or take photos with them.

Disney Fantasy Quest is a card-collection game where players collect cards of popular characters from Mickey & Friends, princesses and other Disney series to compile “magic books” in a quest to make the world happier.

The DeNA, Disney agreement will see the two teaming up in other efforts as well, including Disney movies, TV shows and smartphone apps.

DeNA also has plans to release a Marvel based game ahead of the Avengers movie release this summer.

EA Sports has decided to reduce the price of Madden 12 for Android ahead of the Super Bowl. It’s usually $4.99, but if you go the Android Market right now, you can grab it for 99 cents. That’s a pretty good deal for the Android version of one of the most popular gaming franchises in all of gaming, though some have reported bugs with it.

The game has more 5 star ratings than other ratings on the Android Market, though its average is 3.3. Of course a $4 dollar discount can be more persuasive than negative reviews.

The app is now optimized for Android tablets.

If you’re watching the Super Bowl alone and you don’t care about Madonna, perhaps this will give you something to do during half time.

In all seriousness, a web-based WWF game is huge news to everyone out there who doesn’t own an iOS or Android device. They will now be able to play the immensely popular and highly addictive game with any of their Facebook friends.

And for those of us who already enjoy WWF, each of our games will be portable between Facebook and our mobile devices. This will ensure that there are very few places where one cannot play their turn. I’m looking at you, slow players – you now have a much weaker excuse.

Word With Friends was made by Texas-based mobile game developers Newtoy. In December of 2010 Newtoy was acquired by Zynga, which put Words With Friends and the less-popular Chess With Friends into the FarmVille family.

They have just recently released “Hanging With Friends,” an interesting little game based on the classic game Hangman. The launch of that game has been marred by some technical problems, and functionality issues like app crashes. While not as instantly addictive as Words With Friends, Hanging is a very fun mobile game with potential.

Fun new features that the Facebook version of the game will bring to the table Google+Reader”>include a “brag feed” where you can talk smack on your friends’ walls after you play a 150-point word on them. Another feature will be the ability to notify friends that it is their turn via Facebook.

If the shot above is any indication, people seem excited by this news. In less than 30 minutes after announcing it on their Facebook page, the post has amassed over 3,100 likes and over 300 comments.

The Words With Friends Facebook page has over 1.5 million likes and over 4 million iOS and Android mobile players have connected using the Facebook app already. Are you excited? Will this kill your productivity even more than the mobile app does? Let us know what you think.

"In addition to being the first app built exclusively for Facebook Places, it is the only app that accesses Facebook Search," says Booyah.

"In InCrowd, players create their own customizable avatar, socialize, meet new friends and track popularity when they check-in to their favorite real-life places using their iPhone or iPod touch," the company explains. "InCrowd players gain popularity when others respond using a series of in-game actions, such as hi fives, fist bumps, winks, or posting about a venue. Players can also utilize the always popular Dropkick to take popularity away from a chosen individual. The more a player socializes with others, the more in-game points are rewarded to them for use in upgrading and personalizing their virtual avatar."

The company also points out that it has spent a lot of time working on privacy features. There is an invisible function in the game that lets users hide their locations and check-ins if they wish to do so.

The InCrowd app is free and available in Apple’s App Store.

Booyah recently launched product check-ins as a feature of its MyTown game, which gives businesses new product marketing opportunities.

The questionable app is a "snake" game called Tap Snake. It carries a description that says, "Yet another modification of the Google Android Snake game. This one listens to the taps for its turn directions."

The app presents a Snake-like game as advertised. "However, the Android ‘satellite’ icon appeared in the top menu bar while the game was running, indicating that GPS data was being acquired," explains Symantec. "What was requesting this data? Well, it was a Trojan included with the game, which then uploads data to a remote server, allowing another person to monitor the location of the phone without the knowledge of the user."

To view the GPS data, someone else would have to install another app called "GPS Spy", Symantec says.

The feature has also attracted the attention of Pantene and H&M, which are offering exclusive items to players of the game.

"For those of you unfamiliar with this feature, the Product Check-in allows players to directly interact with products in a fun and rewarding manner," Booyah explains. "Players simply scan the bar code of their favorite Pantene or H&M items using the built in iPhone camera (or input the numbers if using an iPod/iPad) to unlock branded items packed with points and virtual cash! Check it out by scanning H&M’s Denim Day merchandise and Pantene’s new line of hair products!"

"It’s a holy grail for marketers and brands to have their target audience actually hold their products in their hands," said Booyah CEO Keith Lee, upon the feature’s launch. "It’s as close as you will get before point of sale. Not to mention that a consumer’s product check-in history is invaluable data."

Earlier this month, Booyah announced it was taking MyTown international, launching in Canada, the UK, and Australia.

"With today’s update we’ll have SDKs for both iOS and Android devices that provide an even easier way for mobile app developers to go social," a Facebook representative tells WebProNews.

The two main features that make the new SDK a step up from the previous iPhone OS SDK are use of the Graph API, which lets developers integrate Facebook’s Open Graph into their apps, and authentication with OAuth 2.0.

"With more than 150 million people actively using Facebook from mobile devices, we have a commitment to not only developing our own mobile sites and apps, but ensuring that developers can also build similar social experiences," says Facebook engineer Yujuan Bao. "Since we first launched our first mobile SDK for the iPhone, the Facebook iPhone SDK, in March 2009, we’ve worked with some of the leading mobile app developers to provide easy-to-use SDKs. These include some of the most popular app developers in the iTunes store: Electronic Arts, foursquare, PopCap, SGN, Tapulous, Zynga, and Booyah, who have worked with the SDKs to build fun, social mobile apps and increase app distribution and user engagement."

Facebook has expressed an increased focus on its mobile strategy lately, and this launch certainly plays into that. It also shows that while CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be an Android user now, iOS is still very much on the company’s mind, and the inclusion of the Graph API in the SDK should go a long way for connecting iPhone/iPad apps to the "Open Graph" the way Facebook has already been connecting the web.

Now, according to TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid, who cites multiple sources, Google Ventures has invested over $100 million in iPhone/iPad game developer ngmoco. There is no mention of this investment on the Google Ventures site yet.

It’s important to note that Google Ventures is separate from Google itself. But as Kincaid notes, "Google CEO Eric Schmidt previously said that companies that received funding from Google Ventures would have 20,000 Googlers there to help them. Don’t be surprised if we start seeing an abundance of Android games from ngmoco in the near future."

Other companies that Google Ventures has invested in include: Adimab, Corduro, English Central, iPierian, Miso, OpenCandy, Pixazza, Recorded Future, SCVNGR, Silver Spring Networks, VigLink, and V-Vehicle.

Even if Google (the company) doesn’t intend to do anything with any of these strategically, it does appear to paint a pretty good picture of the kinds of things Google thinks will be successful, and could provide a glimpse into some of the things the company is thinking about internally.