Let’s just say that there’s an “Indie Video Games Awards for iPhone Games” going on, and you are to nominate iPhone games to several distinct categories (you know how awards are..right?). What will you pick?

As for me, I would nominated the very real (as in, it does exist), and excellent, Hook Champ for Best 2D Platformer of the Year, Best Art Direction and Best Retro Tribute. Hook Champ is a throwback to the old days of platform gaming when games had easy to master mechanics but unforgiving yet addictive gameplay.

Taking its cue from the likes of Super Mario Bros and Bionic Commando, Hook Champ will have players play as a rogue-ish Indiana Jones kind of explorer, making his way through each level hoping to survive in one piece.

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The character’s main mode of transportation happens to be his rope and grappling hook, when combined, are capable (in the hands of a skillful player) of rappelling him across levels. The levels themselves are pretty large affairs and often branch out like a maze, but ultimately, each level’s objective is to simply reach the end in one piece and collect as many gold coins as you can on the way to the end of each level.

The first few levels had a big black floating monster slowly chasing after the player character and that itself is no reason to dilly-dally in a level. You’ll have to time your rappeling perfectly in order to get to certain parts of a level to get away quickly from the monster and collect more god coins. Otherwise, you risk plummeting down to deeper parts of a level and risk taking an even longer time to finish.

Gold coins not only add to a player’s score, but also serve the purpose as currency when it comes to buying better equipment (less-frayed rope, anyone?) for the hero and maps to subsequent levels.

True to its retro roots, Hook Champ is presented in pixelated 2D style, something that I’ve not seen lately in a modern game and it’s actually pretty cool. Hook Champ is practically the best iPhone game released this year that I’ve played so far, and it’s actually difficult to find fault with it.

The amount of dedication shown by the 3-man team Rocketcat-Games deserves respect and kudos. Better still, download the game at the App Store, click here for details.