It doesn’t offer the depth of the mighty Angry Birds because it frequently feels overly dependent on luck, but taking that into account, it’s an enjoyable enough ride in a familiar feathered world.

Skyhill wasn’t what I was expecting, which is a shame, but it’s not bad either. It’s a simplistic zombie (sort of) survival game that requires some careful planning, but doesn’t necessarily require much skill. Conversely, the atmosphere is great. Check it out if you’re looking for a survival game that’s creepy, but also a bit less involved.

There are some unpolished corners that could use attention in future updates, but so far this quiet release has had a thunderous start.

Evil Factory looks great, sounds great and plays great. It’s certainly an above average game that many players will take the time (and spend the money) to race right through. Like the feeling you get after binge-watching the latest series of a great show, completing the initial story arc will leave you wanting more.

If you do have a group of friends to play with though this is a title that will stay solidly in rotation for games nights for months to come. It’s just the right blend of depth, fun, and unpredictability.

If you’re happy to be patient with this cosy game, I say give it a go. I enjoyed Magical Delicacy, and respect that it has so many great ideas – but you certainly have to be in the right mindset to play it.

The simple to understand game mechanic of delays and time kept leading me down more and more paths of strategy the longer I played. This is definitely one of those "minute to learn, lifetime to master" games. You can burst out of the gate as a beginner and feel like you understand the game and do pretty well, but the longer you play the more the game reveals itself to you – and that's the mark of a great experience.

Very Very Valet is perhaps a touch overpriced for something you’ll only really enjoy with friends, but if you do happen to hold regular games nights then this is a title you’ll want to seriously consider adding to your roster.

There are even boss battles to contend with. Every so often, Gru’s rival, Vector, will show up in his battle-mech and toss smaller robots at you. You need to tap on these robots to send them flying back at him, which requires tricky timing. Younger players might need to turn to an older sibling or a parent to help them best the gangly super-villain.

Pixel Ranger has been a blast to play for a few years now, and this new iPhone version is no exception. Even better, though, is that Pixel Ranger on the iPhone ends up feeling more like a sequel than a simple adaptation. There's more structure, more power-ups, more modes – more of everything.

Even without much real-life influence, Virtua Tennis Challenge accomplishes one key goal: portable tennis action. It may be pricier than most mobile games, but if you enjoy hitting the fuzzy green ball, it'll be well worth your time and cash.

So long as players don’t have anything against the idea of shooting wild animals that are just milling around nibbling on grass, there’s every reason to think that they’d have fun with Deer Hunter 2014. The typical freemium hurdles still get in the way at times, and the cash requirement for joining co-op hunts feels contrived, but it’s still a remarkably enjoyable and surprisingly strategic game.

A great little title. It's fun to play, its levels are easy to beat (most of the time), and it features some seriously adorable style. On top of that there are a lot of levels to play through, which means players aren't likely to get bored with it.

The Switch is probably not the best place to experience the game – this was originally a PC title – but playing it handheld on the touchscreen is easy enough, and this is well worth investigating for those looking for something a little different.

It will get frustrating at times -- particularly in some of the larger levels -- but all in all it's an enjoyable take on the slingshot (or catapult, in this case) mechanic.

With a variety of beautiful level designs, challenging stage layouts, awesome power-ups and intense gameplay, Hyper Breaker Turbo is one of the best brick breaking games we've seen in a long time. Simple to play, but mastering it will take a very long time!

There’s just something that’s so inherently satisfying about this simple style of gameplay, and KingHunt’s shining presentation works in perfect harmony with the intuitive slicing mechanics.

At its core, Pang Adventures is a grand arcade flashback from a great time in gaming’s history. Until we get that hoped-for control fix, however, this adaptation of Pang remains an awkward collision of the past and the present.

Give me good solid gameplay mechanics combined with witty writing any day of the week. To be honest, the game really only has a few tiny drawbacks to it. It seems to make poor decisions when you tap where you want to move your guys, and you need to really zoom the camera around so you can really zero in on your targets.

This isn’t a game you can blitz through over a weekend, but it is ideal for someone with a busy life who still wants to uncover bits of story. For that reason, Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n won’t be for everyone.

For speedrunners on the more masochistic side there’s undoubtedly a lot to get your teeth into here though. For everyone else we’d recommend a more rewarding and streamlined hardcore 2D platformer.

Morphite is the type of game that I can’t help but love despite having a surprising amount of flaws. It can be frustrating from time to time – more often than I’d like, admittedly – but I’m willing to put up with it because, dang it, I can’t get enough of exploring planets, discovering useful items, and upgrading my stuff. There’s enough right here that I think it’s easy to overlook what’s wrong. If you like sci-fi exploration stuff, I think it’s definitely worth checking out.

It may not be the most original game on the market, but Blood & Glory is plenty of fun, and takes a huge step forward in defying our pre-conceived notions about what freemium gaming can be.

A well presented collection of some of the more interesting titles from the Pac-Man series. Not all of the best ones are included of course, but you can’t have everything.

Still, Colossatron can be good fun – especially by the end when you’ve unlocked all of the gadget options.

You’re the one with the power to influence the people to rise up in The Westport Independent, or trick them into following along – and neither result will be pretty or make you feel particularly good. But despite the short playtime and lack of variety, it’s something worth feeling either way.

Joan Mad Run is an exciting blend of hyper violence, platforming nous, and pixel graphics. And if you like any of those things, it’s well worth sinking some time into.

Rock Runners is a great addition to the one-button runner genre, and runner fans should definitely consider giving it a whirl. What we really need now is a sequel that isn't so dependent on the same content being mashed together over and over again.

Dream Track Nation could be something great, but ends up being something that's merely okay. On paper, it's got everything you'd want in a custom racer. But there are too many rough edges to give it the fullest, heartiest recommendation.

An incredibly deep game that's full of epic storytelling and excellent strategy mechanics… it just might take a little while to appreciate all of this.

Shooting Stars’! memes and ever-changing enemy patterns make for an odd shoot-em-up that’s hard to stay with for any significant amount of time.

Ultimately, Super Arc Light delivers on its promise of a “relentless retro shoot-em-up” and fans of the genre will not be disappointed.

If you’re a fan of puzzle games, it’s still very much worth checking out despite these occasional frustrations.

With striking animations, precise controls, and a touch of humor, Outland Games is well worth checking out, and will reward the time you put into it. More variety in settings and announcer dialog would go a long way toward fleshing out the experience, but there is still plenty of fun to be had in the outlands, barren as they may be.

Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf Act 3 does add a new monster or two to the action, although practically speaking there’s not much to distinguish them from their predecessors aside from being bigger and badder.

Narita Boy has style and substance in equal measure, and is a massively impressive first game from Studio Koba.

The Nintendo Switch port truly does hinder the game, ultimately. The game itself is excellent if it’s being played on a more powerful platform, and perhaps if this game was released after the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 the outcome would be different.

If you like JRPGs, combat with depth, and love getting to know characters more, CRYMACHINA is the game for you. Not a lot of games as of late feature such a distinctive art style, and it inspired me to pick up my own digital art projects again for a while – and that’s saying something!

For the price, you'll be getting a very competent city-building simulator. There are hours of gameplay and a number of different maps to choose from for building multiple cities, so the value is unquestionable.

Slickly made, Swing King and the Temple of Bling is cute and appealing while also being quite tough at times. It’s an ideal action puzzle game, whatever your mood, meaning you’re going to enjoy working your way through the 45 levels on offer. That might not sound substantial but just you wait. You’ll see that’s plenty of content for little Mumbles.

It all results in a game that is enjoyable enough while you’re playing it, but it doesn’t leave a massive or lasting impression.

Even if FakePup reneges on their promise for an extra mode, it wouldn't be that big of a travesty because what is currently on offer is so great. The smooth controls, fantastic pacing and the thrill of beating you and your friend's high score make this a game that you simply should not pass up.

Although the 90 levels currently available will take most players a decent amount of time to complete (and recomplete for higher scores), developer Not Doppler has stated even more stages are on the way. Hopefully the new levels will focus on the best parts of Bunny Cannon: creating combos of bunny multipliers, overflowing baskets with bunnies, and watching them bounce like crazy without flying off the stage.

SlamBots is good solid fun, and a novel experience based on a seemingly simple idea. If you like to bop every now and again, this is definitely one for you.

Ultimately, Spirit Lords’ free-to-play barriers are relatively minor. They’re definitely worth looking past if you’re in the market for a charismatic game that lets you collect oodles of loot and brilliant-looking ghosts.

Imagine your favorite mobile base-building strategy game, mix in a dash of XCOM, and then paint on a fresh coat of AMC’s The Walking Dead. That’s No Man’s Land in a nutshell: it’s nothing new to play, but the game features tried-and-true mechanics and comes with a heaping amount of appeal for fans of the television series to digest.

Although it’s not revolutionary in its gameplay or narrative elements it combines the two to far better effect than it has any right to – and is ultimately a well priced passion project that’s well worth investigating.

Dust & Neon is still a fun, stylish, and tidy little roguelite. It can get a bit repetitive, but overall we had fun with it – and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to those looking for a new twin stick shooter.

Eventually, you figure the match-3 machine is going to run out of steam. But so far enough developers have been able to find new ways to present it that it hasn’t given up the ghost, and it helps when they can hook specific audiences. For comic fans, Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign can definitely do that. Just don’t tell the heroes they can trade their powered armor and web-shooters for iPads, okay?

2-Bit Cowboy is both accessible and fun, but the level of challenge offered by each level’s multiple goals means you’ll want to explore, and the more you explore the more chances you have to encounter death.

All told, Asphalt 9: Legends offers a lot to like both for devoted fans of the series — of which there are undoubtedly many, given its longevity — and for people simply looking for a new free-to-play game with outstanding production values. While we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves or put any pressure on Gameloft after they just released this one, you get the impression that this franchise will definitely see its tenth game, and probably many more beyond that too.

With an engrossing variety to the level objectives and the things you can do on a simple match-three grid, to the gorgeous and smooth presentation, it’s clear that to make a great game in today’s technological age, sometimes all you need to do is take things back to their prehistoric roots.

It’s all solidly assembled, but it just feels a little too generic despite its wacky main character. Certainly one for the more hardcore run and gun fans out there.

Charging for apps or making it free with an in-app purchases are both viable options for turning a profit, but combining these two is ambitious at best and insulting at worst. Either way it's a bad deal for the consumer. Whether or not it's a deal breaker is up to you. Shame too, because without this stupid blunder I'd have nothing but great things to say about Chromanoids.

Inertia: Escape Velocity isn't quite like anything else you'll find in the App Store. It manages to take a fairly simple and familiar concept and craft an entirely new experience that's -generally- pretty fun and challenging, in spite of a couple of issues that keep it from being truly exceptional.

The developers have great history, the presentation is exceptional, and gameplay can be intense. It offers no more than half an hour of gameplay, which will likely be the time it takes you to complete the game or give up on it in frustration. With zero replay value, we can't help but feel it's a shame that the adventure is cut off so soon.

Critter Escape is what you want out of a mobile puzzle/action game. It has a ton of variation, huge relay value, and a clever concept.

Fist of Awesome’s campaign does come awfully close to wearing out its welcome, but everything from the pixely graphics to the challenging Arena mode is wonderfully humorous and created with care. It’s an achievement made even more impressive when you realize that the bulk of the game was created by just one person.

The game is polished, and the empty look and design of Munch is disturbingly adorable; even more so when he latches onto flowers. Munch Time is a solid physics-based puzzle game that's worth a look.

It’s best experienced in short bursts of explosive, colorful mayhem: burn bright and fast.

As such, CounterSpy is quite the interesting – and ambitious – game for mobile, and I’m excited to see a console game release in a similar form on mobile, only weeks after the console one comes out! But it’s hard to not be left wanting by CounterSpy.

I’m a big fan of pixelated titles and management/simulation games, so I knew Discounty was for me, and it didn’t disappoint.

A pretty delicious little game. It's challenging, fun, and addictively fast-paced. Not only that, but the constantly-changing gameplay provides players with varying gameplay mechanics that help keep things fresh and interesting.

Dead Stop isn't really doing anything new with the tower defense concept. Then again, it doesn't pretend to, either. If you go into the game knowing how the genre works and are just expecting it to have a little fun with the zombie theme, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Motley Blocks offers up an impressive package, with a simple yet challenging premise that tests your ability to balance speed and precision. There are loads of levels to unlock and a lot of helpful power-ups, each of which offer new ways to amend your strategy.

There’s fair amount of content in Turbo Racing League. It’s unfortunate that the slide mechanic is bad and the levels feel empty.

Overall, Swift Revenge is a fun addition to the App Store. It has enjoyable characters with amusing dialogue, some nice music, and is overall fun, if a little frustrating at times. If you don't mind a game with a bit of bite, then pick this one up.

The ease-of-play makes it perfect for a wide variety of players, and the slight map variations with each playthrough help to elongate the experience even further.

The budget price-point means this is a very easy recommendation for those looking for a new shooter, or even a well balanced co-operative experience. In our eyes Centipede: Recharged is one of the best retro reboots so far this year.

While this version of LostWinds fails to live up to the lofty heights set by the 2008 WiiWare version, the game is all here and is just as visually pleasing on iOS.

The only glaring omission from Beach Buggy Racing is multiplayer, as this is a game that would be an aboslute blast to play against five other humans, or even just against friends with a few AI drivers thrown in.

The bottom line is that Catch the Ark is a pretty good game, at least on a fundamental level. However, the kind of grim undertones seem to make it slightly awkward in some ways. Whether you're fine with that is up to you, but if you are, you should find a pretty good experience here.

Saturday Morning RPG has heart, and in any kind of pop culture, that's the most important part.

I think my lasting takeaway from Super Lemonade Factory was just how generic it was, for better or worse. There's nothing inherently wrong with it in any shape or form, but it doesn't do anything to make itself stand out either. In an oversaturated app market, that alone could be enough to bury it in the long term.

Luckily, Running With Friends works well as a single-player experience. You do need an opponent, but you can choose not to obsess over your distance. Just pull on your running shoes and get going.

Worms 4 may irritate series purists, and it may intimidate newcomers a touch (its in-game tutorial and guide can use some work). Its server problems are disappointing, too. But if you approach it with an open mind, and if Team 17 applies a bit of polish, you may find this take-out version of Worms to your liking.

The battle mechanics are different that other similar genre games I've played, and it's also nice to have to learn to adapt to a new system. It's just that there was this nagging feeling in the back of my head while playing that there are better options out there.

The physics feel dull and droopy, and the level design does little to break new ground. Monkey Quest: Thunderbow makes a decent first impression, but its true value is only skin deep.

There is no denying that Harry the Fairy is a well-polished title but perhaps someone polished too hard and some of the internal workings are showing. The game follows a formula to a tee and doesn't stray from it. The controls are great, the audio and visuals are solid, the gameplay offers light challenges and solid design. Everything works how it's supposed to, but there is no "above and beyond." It's exactly what you'd expect and nothing more.

Because of the relatively early difficulty, Ion Storm might struggle tackling similarly frantic games like Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride. Constantly beating your old score is a big reason the runner genre is so addicting, and it's a shame it wasn't implemented a little better here.

There's nothing bad I can say about Nightfall. It's Playdek's finest game to date, and people that might've been a bit bored by the solitary nature of Ascension will find a ton to like here. For me, there's an evolving level of strategy to the game, and I know it's going to be front and center on my iPad for quite some time.

A simple game, but that's more of a strength than a weakness. It's simple enough to provide quick, painless matches on an iPhone in an idle moment, and there are enough different units to choose from in the battle mode to make playing against other players endlessly rewarding. Best of all, the option to fight against NPC goblins gives Clash of Clans a small edge over similar strategy games that rely almost entirely on player-versus-player combat.

What NFL Kicker 13 is screaming out for is a little more. The gameplay is fun for a while, but the lack of additional game modes seem like they will hurt long term replay value.

But while Survivalcraft may well provide some slight differences here and there, it's also missing plenty of the features that Minecraft has.

Overall, Bridge Constructor Medieval nails some neat new ideas onto the Bridge Constructor formula, but it's most likely to be enjoyed by lords and ladies that already cherish physics-based construction games.

Even if you’re getting kind of sick of match-3 stuff, I’d recommend giving Zombie Match Defense a look. Underneath the basic matching formula is an unexpectedly solid (and difficult) strategy game.

DIRAC offers a great presentation, looking really quite stylish for a game that’s solely about joining the dots, but I can’t see it maintaining your attention for long.

In an increasingly cynical world of devious ways to trick you into in-app purchases, or into making you feel like you’re having more fun than you are, Maximum Car is a truly pleasant return to good practices. It’ll scratch that Burnout itch for a while to come.

With a reasonable one-time purchase on the App Store and on Google Play, it’s certainly worth taking the chance that you’ll unlock weeks of fun and frustration for less than a fancy cup of coffee. You’ll probably want the coffee too after you’ve poured a few all-nighters into seeing how far you can take things, but the point is if you’re debating whether to give Super Gridland a try, do it. It’s early, but this might just be one of the best games of the year.

If you can sync with the game’s slower and more deliberate pacing it can be a fairly enjoyable test, and there are some great boss showdowns to help break things up. It’s a shame there are these issues – as there’s clearly been effort made to make Frogun look and sound like a platformer from the 90s – but the clunky feel will just end up putting most players off.

I think my love for Potion Permit comes down to the stunning world design, weird villagers and homely, whimsical charm. That and I’m not immune to being a witch doctor. Echoing what I said at the start of this review, you need to try this game! Potion Permit is stacked with a great storyline, freedom of choice but a linear progression, lovely visuals and a huge sense of accomplishment as you build relations between the characters.

Fibble may not be for everyone due to the low challenge level early on, but it's still pretty solid. Definitely the type of game you can feel good about giving to someone-- a non-gaming young child, significant other, parent/grandparent, what have you-- and that they may have a pretty good time with.

There's so much to do in the game and, more importantly, those things are all fun. Plus, you can finally take out your anger on that darn McDonal...opps, we mean McJoint.

Can Knockdown 2 is the next best thing from hitting the midway at your local fair. It may not have cotton candy, but it's still plenty of fun.

If you have fond memories of Tetris, or just like puzzle games and own an iPhone, you should pick up Mosaique. You might even be compelled to complete your seven rounds every day to unlock “hidden bonuses.” Here’s to more addition by subtraction.

Even without its “HeadTwister” technology, Droidscape: Basilica is a unique experience that maintains momentum from its beginning to whenever the actual end comes.

It has a thumping and varied soundtrack, an eye-catching visual style, and a impressive range of play modes.

Although these Recharged titles aren’t taking massive risks, this entry is an easy recommendation for anyone who wants to enjoy a rock solid remake of a classic.