Saving App Data for Removed Apps

Question

Hello everyone,
I was wondering if via a regular iTunes backup would I be able to say, remove apps on my iDevices (they are taking way too much space) but without deleting their data so if I want to use them again (specially games) I just sync them back and have my data recovered (let's speak savegames).
Is this possible?
Or basically everytime I delete an app from an iDevice via iTunes (uncheck when sync) the data goes along to the garbage can?
Also, if I delete an app from the iDevice itself, would it just delete it from the device and not from iTunes? So basically in each new sync it won't sync the app? Am I right?
So far I think the only solution to my problem would be games or apps that save data to iCloud (let's leave aside other services like the developer's own), so if I delete an app from the iDevice the data will still be on iCloud and shall I restore the app to the device (check via iTunes sync) the app data would be brough back from the cloud? Is this basically how it works, so nothing in this world will have the data on iCloud removed?
I'm doubtful because since you check which apps you want data for on iCloud, and once the app is gone from the iDevice I assume the app check wouldn't appear on the device so there would be no way of checking if it's still up there (unless the app was installed on other device, but let's forget that option for the sake of clarity), so you'd have to cross your fingers and pray for it to.. you know.. still be up there?
Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

The application storage directory is a good place for saved game files.
The format is whatever you find easiest to use. Both text and XML work. You can also write a save game object to a byte array and save that to a file.
Instead of reading and writing a file yourself, you could use a local shared object.