Monument Valley is a technical and aesthetic accomplishment that rewards players with beauty, originality, and grace at every turn of its ten stages.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure even that’s a good way to describe Chaos Fighters. I think this is going to be a polarizing game; some people will love the JRPG flavor and unusual amount of content for a free mobile game, while other players will be turned off by the fact that there isn’t much play in the gameplay.

With no real competition in the free-to-play solitaire market, and plenty of existing love for the Fairway Solitaire franchise, the company has a real chance to dominate the mobile charts with this one.

A loyal reader told me I overrated Thor: The Dark World, and while this game is better, it’s not by much. That leaves me in much the same place, lamenting that while this game looks like the proper companion experience to the sure-to-be-awesome movie, it’s just a bit underwhelming. Guess I’ll keep hoping.

Star Wars: Assault Team is a pretty neat little digital card game that’s only slightly impacted by some inherent clunkiness and monetization techniques.

Hello Hero has problems that are typical of a free-to-play RPG, but it also has singing cacti that attack you with guitars. Depending on your feelings about social games, you might want to take the bad with the good.

Shattered Planet has landed in the sweet spot between learnability and surprise that keeps each trip new, fresh, and entertaining. It’s packed with loot to discover, use, and inevitably lose as you fall victim to the many random and wild ways to die.

In any case, The Collectables is easy to grasp, fast-paced and gorgeous, kind of like that bad boy/girl you had a crush on back in the day.

Smash Hit takes a bit of getting used to - it is, for instance, difficult to tell where your character's hit box is, which makes collisions unpredictable at times - but once you're on your way, it's a soothing experience.

It demands patience, and I'm not a huge fan of the"mine it/craft it" style of game to begin with, but Mines of Mars has me, if not hooked, then at least giving serious thought to lunging for the worm. The rough edges are irksome but not insurmountable, and in a way they're also a testament to the overall quality of the game: I wouldn't be so bothered by it if Mines of Mars as a whole wasn't so good, and so close to being great.

If you've only dabbled in the series many recent spin-offs, this is an excellent introduction to a piece of gaming history. Just be prepared to deal with those issues that come with playing old games, and the new ones that come with playing them on touch devices.

Even with the "reasonable" pricing, it's hard not to define Deadlings by its shortcomings rather than its successes; a shame, because those successes scream to be genuinely enjoyable. I genuinely want to give it a pass for what it does wrong, and that, at least, says something.

It’s got its heart in the right place aspiring to be like the Final Fantasy or Xenoblade series, but it’s still caught up in the platform paradigms we know all too well. In other words, it’s fine for its time, just not timeless.

Bridge Constructor is tricky, but it's accessible for (ahem) engineers of all skill levels. There's more than one way to build a bridge (at least in the virtual world), and it doesn't matter if your constructions are creaking, swaying abominations that would give an acrophobic the screaming horrors. As long as the cars make it over safely, you're golden.

If you’re a fan of the arcade classic, don’t hesitate on this purchase for a second.

The Tribez and Castlez has some good things to offer, especially if you haven't played The Tribez. Its audio-visuals have real charm, and it's fun to watch your kingdom grow. Unfortunately, as much as this sequel draws upon its predecessor, it seems to have learned little from the previous game's social and monetization mistakes. Because of the latter, it's not an easy game to recommend.

Tempting as it is to instantly dismiss Block Fortress: War as unfair, it grows on you the longer you plug at it.

There’s a lot to like about Block Legend, but none of it goes deeper than the surface. It may not summon the frustrating slowness of latter Puzzle Quest games, but neither does it capture the satisfaction of the first entry or the constant build-up of 10000000 – the games to which it owes so much.

The absence of words or instructions of any kind make this more suitable for children who aren’t reading yet, as they’ll still be exposed to concepts like matching shapes and sizes while getting in some fine motor skill practice at the same time.

Frontline Commando 2 is complicated enough to make maximizing your score a challenge, simple enough to enjoy in bite-sized bursts, and can be played just about anywhere thanks to some honest-to-goodness offline functionality.

Card City Nights isn’t concerned with being unique; it knows it is. The way it plays shows some resemblance to other personalities, but the game wears it with reverence and confidence (even while it tries its best at irreverence). Its most original features are plastic and surface-level, but they hide a deeper personality that isn’t quite like what we’ve seen before.

As a fun, charming, respectable little card game, however, it's equal to or greater than the money you can put into it.

Full of potential but still in need of work.

With a little more detective work and a little less store-bought justice, Another Case Solved would truly be the cat’s pajamas.

Out There is a solidly built game that I can happily recommend to anyone looking for a proper adventure game, and to players who don't mind testing their luck over their ability to plan. It's worth mentioning that the game is largely text-based, so it's suitable for players of all skill levels.

If you had a fondness for games like Ruby Skies and Adventure World, Disco Zoo does a fine job of scratching that itch. If you believe that overly simple games are an offense to gamers everywhere, this probably isn’t the NimbleBit game for you.

Bug Heroes 2 succeeds at practically everything it sets out to do. Its graphics are great (check out the detail on the bumble bee soldier's fuzzy coat), the fighters' bug-like voices are adorable, if a little hard to understand, and there's enough content to keep you busy for a while.

That’s the danger of Perloo: with no menu, no hints, no level skips, and no sense of progress, it’s easy to feel lost, hopeless. Yes, it demands dedication and commitment to carry through, but this doesn’t make for a fun game.

But despite the minor hiccups along the way, for a free-to-play Diablo-like experience on a mobile device, you really can’t go wrong with Second Chance Heroes.

If you enjoyed Guardian Cross or really have a thing for zombies, there’s a good chance you’ll really like Deadman’s Cross. Otherwise it probably won’t hold your interest for very long.

Card Wars – Adventure Time isn’t perfect, but as Finn and Jake might say, it’s a lot closer to being a cool guy than a dweeb. And no one likes being called a dweeb.

Looking at it as a conventional game, in other words, it's not terribly impressive – short, simple and perfectly linear. But as an interactive story, or perhaps more accurately a poem, it is superb.

But you will look forward to it, because in spite of its shortcomings, Coldfire Keep is a really nifty little dungeon crawler. It doesn't compete with the giants of the genre, but as an introduction to the form that you can carry under your arm and play whenever you have a few minutes (or a few hours) to kill, it really should not be overlooked.

Final Fantasy VI on mobile is a lackluster port of a great game – but thankfully, not even a "blah" remake can bring down this classic.

Considering that Only One is free-to-play, it can't hurt to give it a try.

But in the end, what we have here is a refreshing mobile game that was hard to put down back in 2009, and even harder to put down now in 2014 thanks to its addictive new endless mode.

Rather than trying to make game experiences more cinematic, Telltale is trying to make cinematic experiences more like a game.

The simple mechanics, deep strategy, and stacks of charm are balanced so perfectly together that it’s impossible to imagine a single change that could really improve upon what Sirvo has created.

Naughty Kitties is endearing at first, but difficult to love once you’ve seen all its tricks. Like many free-to-play endless runners, its failures are repetition and an unfriendly economy. Its tower defense features, adorable kitties, and playful attitude make it worth checking out, but these cats won’t find a forever home on your device.

Flappy Bird is simultaneously everything that’s right and wrong about video games. You’ll play it, you’ll obsess over it, but you’ll never really like it.

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.

So even though the game might be a little too easy at times with a score system that greatly favors your melee attacks over your weapon-based ones, Bloodstroke is still a bloody and beautiful good time.

In every way imaginable, Bardbarian steps up as the perfect mobile experience, and it has everything you could ever want in a video game, for that matter: a fun-loving presentation, a seamless blend of different gameplay types, and an addictive balance of challenge and progression that will always keep you coming back for more.

As both a comic book fan and an endless runner aficionado, Marvel Run Jump Smash! didn’t need to do much to wow me. But in the end, it just fell flat.

The paywalls and in-app purchase ads can be rather off-putting, but they don’t ruin the fun of Motocross Meltdown because there really isn’t all that much fun to be had in the first place.

Whether it’s personal or not (and I’d be pretty egotistical to think that it is!), I’m sure people are going to keep combining RPGs and casino games, and hopefully someday one of them will flat out blow me away. Until then, Suits and Swords is ready to download for free if you have to have blackjack with your adventuring. And may the cards ever be in your favor if you do.

Clearly a lot of effort was expended in making the game look and sound arresting, but very little care was wasted on anything else.

Worst of all, Tales of Phantasia deserves so much better. Fans mention its name in the same breath as legendary RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI for a reason. But as long as the West only has this mobile mess as a modern reference, we'll never fully comprehend that reason.

Front Wars is not perfect by any means. It's derivative, its tutorial is lacking, and its translation is sub-par. But if you're aching for a new Advance Wars experience, or if you'd just like to see its formula applied to a real-life war, you could do worse than hang with this shell-shocked soldier for a while.

But even in the short time that it lasts, there’s no denying the fun that can be had from playing Doodle Kingdom, and it quickly becomes clear why JoyBits’ addictive gameplay formula has been so successful over the years.

Rhythm Thief & The Paris Caper brings some cool ideas to the card/battle system, but ultimately Phantom R's bold antics and swaying rhythm feels like a mediocre fit for the genre at best.

It offers nothing new of note, the trading feature isn't implemented yet, and it's just flat-out dull – and that's saying something, given that the genre isn't exactly known for its off-the-hook gameplay excitement.

With lots of incentives to keep playing, a fun-loving presentation, and smooth and speedy gameplay mechanics manning the helm, I think I’ll choose the simple arcade game over the big, fancy production any day.

There’s a lot worse stuff on the App Store than this, and even though it’s not really pushing endless runners forward or anything, it’s not a bad way to kill some idle time – and maybe the only way to pit athletes versus aliens, for what it’s worth.

What the game really needs is more depth and complexity, and tighter mechanics; a greater sense of being woven into the rich tapestry of a mysterious world rather than button mashing on a touchscreen. Is that something an update can deliver? Here’s hoping.

Still, Lost Yeti deserves a lot of credit for drawing so affectionately upon the games of the past and effectively recreating their magic.

There's not much to Deadeye Derby, even for Happy Tree Friends fans. Even the epic gore is toned down. It's repetitive, slow, and you're better off swinging from a tree by your dislodged eyeball.

Shadow Blade could be the start of a great franchise on mobile, thanks to great controls and exciting action. Let's hope we see the student become the master again soon.

The problem is that these changes, like many others in Across Age 2, are the exception rather than the rule. Much of the game is Across Age DX, tweaked slightly and with new dungeons.

There’s just too much silliness to suffer through to dig into the parts of Archangel that are good. This is one of a wave of titles showing how pretty mobile games can look on up-to-date hardware, but the beauty is definitely only skin deep. Gameplay matters, even on phones and tablets.

At the end of the day, the basic idea for Alpha 9 is still incredibly sound.

Interruptions aside, Joe Danger Infinity is packed with solid, colorful good times that should appeal to kids and adults. If you've had enough of the series, you'll be okay with putting Infinity back in the toy box.

RoboCop might be a great time-killer, but even its eerily addictive upgrade system can’t save it from the sheer mediocrity at play. Checking out the upcoming film might be something fun to do; playing the game, however, is not.

In a game where even failure is surprisingly soothing, the emotional reward of success is worth chasing.

With any luck, a future update will help Dr. Lord Evilstein find some tolerance for your mistakes, and Castle Doombad will go on being a lively and fun tower defense game that contributes some interesting ideas to the genre.

From the moment you set foot on the docks, Boggy’s Bog is engrossing, its characters alive and endearing, and its mystery simple—yet inescapably intriguing.

Those touches aren’t enough to save Battle Supremacy from a general feeling of mediocrity. Every positive has a negative to balance it out, and one gets the sense that it’s going to succeed or fail based on future updates.

In its current state, simian.interface is clever and well worth experiencing, but far too brief for its own good.

It’s slickly packaged, you know exactly what you’re getting, and it hits the spot even if it doesn’t challenge your gaming palette in any way.

Despite being too eager with IAPs, Hidden Objects: Mystery Crimes pulls itself together and manages to be an entertaining experience.

These features are the pull to keep playing Sound Ride. They don’t completely make up for the frustrating physics and unavoidably frequent deaths, but their presence promises more good things may be yet to come when developer OutOfTheBit releases additional—and free—stages.

The original Jet Car Stunts was a paid app we gave four stars, but Jet Car Stunts 2 simply fails to live up to its predecessor’s legacy as it falls into the free-to-play trap so many other titles have. Unless and until they give this one some fine-tuning, it’s better to go with the original or other, better games than bother with this one.

While the gameplay might have fared better on the mobile scene a few years ago, it quickly becomes clear that Holy Water Games needed to revamp more than just the visuals to keep this one from feeling like a slippery mess at the start of 2014.

Despite these setbacks, when Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed works, it works well. The racing is solid, responsive, and feels fair.

Once you walk through the game's short length, you'll almost definitely be craving more adventures in Pantslvania while walking in the skin of the underwearwolf.

Oasis: Path to Redemption has several good ideas and great qualities, but it’s the execution which is unfortunately a bit lacking.

That's really Fightback in a nutshell. It's a fun game, it's an amusing game, but it never leaves me craving more.

All of this is packaged in the typical Hothead Games visual style. Of course, a lot of the other stuff is common to the other games as well, but Big Win Racing is presumably catering to players who prefer stock cars to footballs, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Before the Nexus is a typical endless running game with a couple of issues as well as a couple of smile-worthy surprises. If you're into the Ratchet and Clank universe, or if you just like collecting endless runners, you'll enjoy this. If you've had it with the genre, or if you've sworn only to touch the very best it offers, feel free to skip ahead to Into the Nexus.

Island of the Lizard King was originally written in 1984, and it shows. By the standards of modern fantasy, it can sometimes seem clumsy and crude. But besides being a great nostalgia trip, it reminds us of the simple excitement that sophisticated fantasy has lost. Sometimes those primal thrills of adventure and exploration get buried in the desire to justify and explain everything. Besides, any book that lets you fight a lizardman riding a styracosaurus gets two thumbs up from me.

It doesn't challenge genre conventions very much, but it's still a fun ride.

Unlike its charming cinematic counterpart, Frozen Free Fall is a definite disappointment. Although it has the advantage of Disney audio visuals, it lacks the magic that should be inherent to anything with the Disney name on it. Really the only reason you should bother downloading it is if you're a kid under twelve, a Frozen fanatic, or a die-hard Disney defender.

That said, if you have a sibling or a kid who has expressed interest in HOGs but finds them a bit too complicated, Disney Hidden Worlds will enthrall them – at least until they run out of energy and have to go do something else for an hour.

The world they have built—which promises to be much larger than this single alien ship—is one worth exploring, with cinematic environments that are both cavernous and claustrophobic.

If you're a fan of the genre, you owe it to yourself to try this game – and if you're not, it's a pretty good place to start.

Despite some mildly rough edges, there’s plenty here to recommend.

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

There really isn’t much bad to say about Ridge Racer Slipstream, and it stands to reason, as Namco Bandai have been producing installments for almost every platform imaginable for so long, they seem to more or less have it down to a science.

Get it, play it, enjoy it – just don’t let the powers that be know how much fun you’re having throwing a monkey wrench into the machine of authority.

Many rope-based physics puzzlers have hit the App Store since the introduction of the original Cut the Rope, but Cut the Rope 2 demonstrates Om Nom is still the top monster.

There's a decent game buried under problem after problem, but even when you find the buried treasure, there's no guarantee it'll stick around.

Panda Pop certainly doesn't re-invent the genre, but do you really want to turn down an invitation to play with pandas and the elements of nature?

I honestly had high hopes going into Cabela’s Big Game Hunter, since my previous excursion was such a surprising amount of fun. Also because of the name attached to it. I’d expected one of the biggest names in hunting games to produce something that would at least rival what’s already available. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case.

Fiz takes an unusual setting for a sim or RPG, mixes in some wit and whimsy and blends it into something that will make you feel like you can actually take on the King of Beers with your own homebrew. And if that’s not living the dream for some of you out there, I don’t know what is.

So in the end, if you’re a big fan of the popular Cartoon Network TV show and just can’t get enough Adventure Time to fill up your day, then you’re sure to find something to love in Ski Safari: Adventure Time, as the game is incredibly faithful to the spirit and presentation of the source material.

There’s a massive sense of reward in eking out every resource and collectible from a given region before turning to raze the next, and there's plenty of opportunity to do it. An unfortunate lack of freedom just makes that return on your time a diminishing one.

The concept is good fun, and when it works, it’s great… but that’s when it works. Some might find it repetitive, and it is – but that’s not always a bad thing, so long as the controls are able to keep up with the player.

Angry Birds Go! is a good game. It’s just not the great game it could have been.