Feels like a deception – a physics puzzler that appears simple enough to engage with from the outside, but will leave scores disappointed when they take to its waters. The idea behind it, though a touch derivative, has potential aplenty – but developer Cezary Rajkowski's strict rule set means Feed the Duck's fishing trip only turns tasty when you follow its line to the letter.

Sure, you can ‘capture’ iconic locations eventually but it’s all a cynical way of making you feel like you’re truly part of Game of Thrones. Instead, this is a retread of an overly familiar concept. You’ll regularly be asked to spend money on starter packs or other forms of currency, all in a bid to make you more invested in the experience. Anyone who’s been playing mobile games for a while will have already done this elsewhere. Game of Thrones: Conquest doesn’t deserve to be rewarded with your time, money, or loyalty. It’s a poor use of a franchise that’s rich with imagination.

Rockpocalypse is okay for a short while before it becomes tiresome, and not even the jabroni beating, pie eating, trail blazing, eye brow-raising People's Champ can save it by himself without some improvements elsewhere. They need to take this game, shine it up real nice, turn it sideways, and... maybe resubmit it for approval.

Smash Spin Rage is, at the very least, one of the more interesting titles on the App Store today. It has the potential to speak to fans of dungeon crawlers, brawlers, or even Japan-o-philes. Still, it’s hard to overlook curious design choices that cause your own hand to obscure your view of the action.

Ultimately The Game of Life 2 isn’t a bad game – and should appeal to families looking for the occasional brief piece of entertainment – but doesn’t offer a slick enough package to justify its price-tag.

Purple Cape features a fun premise and some good ideas with some lovely cartoon-styled graphics; it's just a shame they weren't attached to a better game overall. It has promise, but definitely isn't ready for prime time.

There isn't quite enough here that will keep even fantasy nerds like myself hooked for very long. It gives the illusion of depth through a good number of tasks to manage, without any actual strategy behind it. As it stands, it's worth a casual glance to see what it has to offer (and the sheer amount of content on offer is impressive), but don't expect to inhabit Westmore for more than a day or two before losing interest.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile does little to earn its name, or its price tag. Sad as it is to say, it's almost indistinguishable from any other free-to-play building game. Atari is obviously hoping to sell the game on its name alone. For that, somebody in charge needs to be forced to ride on the last car of a wooden roller coaster for a year straight. No bathroom breaks.

Unfortunately, an innovative and well done approach to movement is only one part of the puzzle to making a good game, and Brandnew Boy is missing almost every other element. If you want a Dynasty Warriors style mindless action game, perhaps you should give it a go. Otherwise, just be on the lookout for other games that implement this movement scheme with a better game behind it.

That's all that Tappily Ever After is: Tap Zoo. Other than a new coat of paint, there is nothing unique here. It is merely a copy and pasted title with little thought to even the economy.

ISLANDS: Non-Places does make for an interesting way to relax and kill time if you’re looking for something fairly mindless. Or heck, if you’re looking for something that looks weird and you just want to stare at it for a while, here you go. But if you’re looking for something more involved, or any sort of brain-teasing challenge, chances are you’ll be disappointed.

Sniper Fury appeals to players who enjoy seconds-long bouts of sniping, and those who get a rush watching a bullet fly through the air and into some poor guys head, belly, or little finger are going to have some decent time with Sniper Fury. As for everyone else, Sniper Fury just doesn’t offer enough interesting content upfront, and there are other games out there that do a better job at what Sniper Fury is doing.

But in the end, that just isn’t enough to save NinJump Rooftops from what could have been a great little game a handful of years ago. While the game is technically a big step up from its predecessor NinJump, it becomes painfully obvious after only a few minutes of playing that this particular mobile formula has become incredibly dated.

Unfortunately for Yeti Town, the only substantial difference between it and Facebook's Triple Town is the platform it's on. Otherwise it's the exact same game, only this time with snow.

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuffapes The Simpsons: Tapped Out without quite understanding why the latter has remained a hit. Some Family Guy fans may consider a temporary move to Quahog, but chances are good they'll go back home to Springfield before long.

With its decent puzzles and wonderful presentation, Hidden Runaway has a lot of potential as both a nostalgia trip and a means to revive adventure games on a new platform. Unfortunately, the wretched hidden object component makes it a hard game to recommend. Newcomers will quickly get frustrated, and the series' fans will wind up on the couch alongside Gina and Brian as one more victim of a broken heart.

This isn’t a “decent” endless game. Even the less than impressive ones understand the importance of being able to start a new game quickly. And making players have to wait and/or pay to repair their suits so they can get back to it faster only makes it that much more insulting.

It’s clear that Overclock FPS wants to be a much more engaging and influential multiplayer shooter, but its dull delivery, plodding difficulty, and lack of real options as well as the various issues with the game keep it from being one.

Ultimately, having my hand held through the only portion of Monster Quest that even had a chance to have been a challenge was both frustrating and a little insulting.

Hammerwatch Coliseum does have potential, but “potential” is about all that’s going for it right now.

Pocket Village wants to be loved, but it doesn’t exhibit many loveable traits. It’s not awful by any means, but it’s slow, repetitive, and ultimately unoriginal. If you’re a collector of village building games, Pocket Village might please you for a time. Otherwise, don’t bother putting the Pocketeers to work. Let ‘em loaf.

It’s perfectly serviceable – but ultimately there are shooters out there that are a far better fit for the Switch, and just much better games in general.

Having finally played Dominant Species I can confirm that at its core is a superb strategy game, filled with difficult choices and fierce competition. But this conversion to digital is a weak half-attempt, struggling up from the primordial ooze and gasping for breath on dry land. It takes almost no advantage of the inherent advantages of the format, offering no multimedia, no tutorial, feeble AI and limited network play, succeeding only in streamlining the overheads inherent in the physical game.

Breach & Clear is a game that does a lot of little things right, but once the gameplay hits, almost all of that is thrown out the window. The customization alone may be more than enough to keep some players invested for a short while. On the other hand, the bare-bones gameplay will be a huge turn-off to both hardcore strategy fans and users looking for a new mobile game.

For the desperate Wipeout fan who needs a futuristic racing fix, Flashout 3D is not unplayable. As a $2 game with more disappointments than features, it is one to wait on.

Disney has made a number of admirable changes to Where’s My Water? 2, but these are overshadowed by the money-grubbing nature of its energy meter and pay-to-play focus. What was once a relaxing, refreshing change of pace in the App Store is now just another poorly implemented freemium model. It will take a lot of baths to get this stench off Swampy.

If you’re not entirely burned out on match-3 games, you’ll be happy to learn that Blossom Blast Saga isn’t going to waste your time for the first two-dozen levels. On the other hand, it’s also not going to do anything that exciting or revolutionary in those two-dozen levels.

Sweet Shop isn't a bad game, but it's absolutely nothing original.

Athyr Above’s muddy visuals don’t help matters, either. Enemies are small and hard to see against the dark backgrounds. Picking off flying enemies is especially painful, since they typically rise into the air before attacking but it’s difficult to determine when they’re airborne and when they’re ripe for a pounding.

Team Monster has lots of potential. It looks great, and it balances the line-drawing and monster collection quite well, but the energy mechanic and monetization drain almost all of the fun out of it. With a lot of patience it can still be quite a bit of fun, but there are plenty of other more gratifying games to play out there.

Technical difficulties prevent this title from being the crowning achievement in "average." The first five minutes are kind of fun, but it's all downhill from there.

There’s a solid core idea here and it’s enough to keep you distracted for a while. But Sleepy Squares doesn’t have a sharp enough hook to really get under your skin.

It might be pretty, and it might be free, but if you’re on a lower-end device your time will be much better spent with the Breakneck’s inspiration rather than Breakneck.

Beneath the grime is a zany RPG that I really wanted to like, but I ultimately found Doom & Destiny Advanced just wasn’t worth wading through the sludge to endure for long.

It's got a certain limited appeal for fans of the franchise, but it isn't really good enough to be considered a lot of fun on its own merits. Players could certainly do worse than this, but they could also do a lot better.

This isn’t a terrible game, it all works reasonably well, and the art style is unique, if a little scratchy around the edges. It just feels like it doesn’t really know what it wants to be.

It’s a ‘fun for five minutes’ kind of experience, rather than something that has you coming back for more.

Like the Triples themselves, Triple Trouble is harmless. It's not a bad game by any means, but we craved a lot more out of its unique mechanics than we ended up getting.

A work of adorable potential hidden behind gold-plated barriers.

Amazing Battle Creatures’ so-so gameplay combined with its technical issues makes it an unremarkable monster-collecting game.

Although it’s an amusing tale it’s not sharp or slick enough to work in that very one-dimensional way. The slightly high price-tag also prohibits us from recommending this as just a 2 hour throwaway experience. Why the main concept couldn’t be explored with some actual gameplay we don’t know, and you’re left with a title that simply never gets close to fulfilling its potential.

Ultimately, if it wasn’t for the PewDiePie name at the start of the game, this would be a fairly forgettable experience from beginning to end.

It's funny how fitting an analogy the main characters of this title are for the game itself. There's too much to do here and not enough of a reason to do it. Pocket Minions is one of the rare occasions where ambition works against a game.

As a point and click adventure game, Dead Escape is actually pretty entertaining. But unfortunately it's been wrapped up with unpolished elements that really detract from the experience. Clunky controls, the inability to look around, and terrible voice acting just serve to poison the underlying game, taking it from a game that fans of the genre should check out to one of caution.

There are some enjoyable elements – the combat isn’t as mind-numbing as in similar titles, and there’s clearly been some effort made to make the presentation bouncy and light – but it never pops or gets your blood pumping. And for the high price tag that feels unforgivable. Even the excuse that this is made for younger players doesn’t hold much water, as your child will get a hundred times more out of your average Mario game than this. Add in some strange bugs and you have a 3D platformer that’s not worth it for even for more forgiving fans of the genre.

Nothing about Record Run is unforgivably broken, but nothing is spot-on, either. It’s like listening to a favorite song sung by a different artist in the wrong key; it’s familiar and almost enjoyable, but it never gets stuck in your head like the real thing.

Heavy Blade is an okay dungeon crawler that feels more like a framework than anything.

DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing is a just about serviceable budget kart game, but did we really need another one of those?

Lords of Discord won’t wow you with its originality nor its fairly dated user interface, but it is fun enough to play from time to time.

If Com2Us is responsible, they'll patch this game up and get it back to fighting in the streets. Pending the fixes, this could be one of the better action games on the iOS platform. Until then, it's held back by its technical flaws.

After Burner Climax is not a bad game in itself, but the iOS port is severely lacking, and a blemish on the series' name.

It's a fashionable example of something that isn't very interesting. The Hitman license is used here to good, if slightly limited, effect. It's just not enough to make me like something that a lot of players like myself finds fundamentally frustrating, and, moreover, just boring.

If you're interested in Dédale, our advice would be to grab it for iPhone or iPad - it's far better as a quick toy to play around with on the work commute each morning. If you're planning to play it on PC, however, we'd suggest grabbing the demo first, as you may find it's not all that interesting.

There’s still a chance that the developers might keep working on it so it at least performs more smoothly in future updates, but as it stands, Hot Hands is something of a hot mess. It might bear Ellen’s voice, but Hot Hands lacks the wit, charm and joy that her brand deserves.

Pretty much everything about Armed Beasts feels middle of the road.

Despite the surprise treat of real-time multiplayer, Castle Raid still feels like an incomplete game. Some players may find the current amount of content enough to warrant the $2 price tag, but I would mark this as a wait-and-see game.

I wanted to like Roar Rampage; I really did. I mean, everything about the game just screamed awesomeness to me. But the problem comes from when you actually get to play it, and have to fumble with the spastic controls, and question the incentive for doing pretty much anything the game has to offer.

If you have never seen Wipeout, or any other show like it, what you’re getting here is a just-average platformer with some control issues — a very forgettable experience by the finish line.

A mediocre game trying to sneak by on the coattails of greatness.

The matching itself is a fun enough diversion, and the Tintin trappings are definitely going to appeal to fans of the quiffed journalist. But the entertainment value slowly but surely leaks out of the game as you fail, fail and fail again.

MLB: Full Deck is a game on the wrong side of the Mendoza Line. It's free, so you don't have much to lose if you want to try it, but ultimately it's a letdown on both sides of the coin: There's not enough collectible card action for CCG fans, and there's not nearly enough baseball for baseball fans.

I just wish Stan Lee’s Hero Command captured a little more of the magic in the living legend’s mind, but he probably isn’t sweating the fact that it doesn’t make that much of an impression, so neither should you.

The basic premise of Lie Swatter will still bring a whole lot of laughs, and if you don’t mind a lot of waiting and trying to reconnect to the game’s unreliable servers, then you still might get some use out of that old lie-detecting flyswatter.

So, is the I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream Switch version it worth playing? Yes and no. It’s a great bit of writing, and if you’re a fan of the story and its world, it’s the best way to explore more of it given the original author helped create it. On the other hand, the decision to bring the game over with minimal changes makes it an overall flawed experience. With a better cursor and some much-needed bug fixes, this would definitely get a higher score, but as-is, I think only big-time Ellison fans will want to suffer through the annoyances of playing when they could find a gameplay video somewhere.

The whole experience of Space Ops! was a little peculiar to me. As a huge fan of puzzlers and arcade titles, I spent every level trying to like it, even succeeding on the occasions where luck was on my side. Most of the time, however, the game felt caught in an identity crisis, with me sitting despondently in the middle suffering for it.

There’s potential here. With some extra polish, better path finding, and a better tutorial, Defend Your Turf could be great.

Half-Inch Heist is a nice idea, let down by a lack of content and a slightly shoddy movement system. It's free-to-play so you might as well grab it anyway, but here's hoping a future update rectifies these issues.

The problem with Zombie Swipeout is that it makes no attempt to do anything bold with the concept.

For those of you who can’t get enough Westeros, I urge you to avoid the mobile version and look into the PC or console ones for a more stable experience.

If you’re looking for something that you genuinely need to play and master to beat your opponents, just skip this one. It’s an exercise in spending money – not strategic prowess. We can’t really recommend it to anyone but the rich, who’ve got the cash to fork out on being the best.

It boggles my mind that Capcom can flawlessly port new titles like Street Fighter IV and Ghost Trick, but somehow struggle with classics like Mega Man X and Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It still contains all of the characters, modes, and combat of the original, but limiting that with occasionally slow and murky presentation gives the impression that Capcom is simply trying to make a quick buck as a cross promotion with the Marvel-heavy Avengers film.

Scarface for iOS has the foundation of a solid social adventure, but it doesn't expand on its component parts in any interesting ways. The lines of dialogue might be enough to draw fans in initially, but pedestrian gameplay will do precious little to keep them coming back for more.

A game which might have had great potential, but as it is, has too much working against it to truly be memorable.

With some simple level objectives (usually eliminate certain blocks or hit a particular score) the gameplay is a step ahead of it’s predecessor in that it’s not simply a one-level score-chaser. But when the game is easy to the point of boredom, the level layouts can only do so much.

The Deer God is an interesting game that’s packaged as a pretty platformer, but underneath all of that is a wonky experience that’s hard to recommend.

Flight! isn't a bad game by any means. It functions as advertised and the game works perfectly. It's just not that interesting.

Simply put, there are better options out there, and Neon Shadow is little more than a boring distraction wrapped in an OK-looking package.

Run'n'Gun had the potential to be great: an action hybrid that combined layered shooting components with endless running gameplay. There are definitely a few moments of greatness here and there that seep through the cracks, like the more stylized environments later on in the game, and the base gunning feature itself. But while the intentions are there, poor mission designs, bland starting environments, and little offered in terms of rewards or affordable perks make this endless runner just another forgettable fifty-yard dash.

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

Bloody Epic is not a bad game. Its ambition alone make it deserving of your time, but it’s unfortunate that that same ambition is overshadowed by a lack of polish and a forgettable experience.

There's really nothing bad about iCannon: Hellfire. That said, there's nothing all that great, either. Its production values are solid, as are its controls, but the problem is that it never feels all that fun.

The technical issues will make it a struggle to stay engaged. For everyone else, there's just no reason to bother.

FarmVille: Harvest Swap’s good ideas are unfortunately buried deep beneath a frustrating number of restrictions that barely let you squeak out a single star in the majority of its levels.

The basic premise of Rappin' Granny holds promise, but with only one song to play through, there's simply not enough content.

No, it’s not the worst endless runner you’ll ever play, but it lacks the charm and creativity of similar titles like Robot Unicorn Attack.

While it's kind of fun, it's nowhere near the games it's basing itself on.

While the game has a very respectable amount of content included, the underlying game is simply not good enough to justify dropping cash on. You'll get some neat puzzles, but you'll have to work for the solutions-not because you do not understand what needs to be done, but rather you aren't given enough feedback from the game to properly complete the levels with any sort of accuracy. The premise is fine, but the execution is flawed.

Empire Online isn't a bad game by any means. It's cute and charming, but it feels unfinished at times and doesn't feature enough unique content to stand out from the pack.

Just imagine playing Mega Man 2 and having a screen-filling message pop up during a fight with Air Man. “You’re out of energy! Pay 99 cents to keep playing, or return to the level select screen.” It’s like a joke scene penned for a web comic, but it’s very real in The Sleeping Prince.

At the end of the day, Rainbow Pony isn't necessarily a bad game – it just suffers from a lack of originality (outside of the general "rainbow" theme) and gameplay features.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a fan of the chibi shapes and this caused me to lose attention, and skip most dialogue to avoid looking at NPCs and cutscenes longer than I had to. This lack of engagement with a core part of the game pulled me out of the immersion. But I’ll admit that that’s mostly my fault. Maybe the real critters were the avatars we made along the way…

A fun middle-of-the-road free puzzler that will amuse you for about half an hour.

As match-three games go, Candy Blast Mania is moderately entertaining, if blatantly unoriginal.

I’m a bit disappointed with Strange Telephone, to be honest. It had a promising start, and I was interested in seeing where it all went, but after so many repeated trips to the same not-really-random worlds while floundering around trying to figure out how to progress, I just got tired of it.

Although not particularly inventive, Dragon Academy could be a fun little time waster were it not so full of fun-busting issues.

Blitz Brigade has almost all of the basic elements it needs to be a great multiplayer FPS on iOS devices. It looks great, plays great, and has a fair number of unlockables and the like to keep players motivated. Unfortunately it’s missing the most important one: server stability. With a little time and an update or two, I have every confidence that this could be one of the iPhone’s biggest online shooters. But at the moment, it’s a total dud.

An okay game. If nothing else, it's a well-polished visual presentation that tries to do something more unique in an age full of carbon copied clones.

Crossy Maze is a good example of how bad controls can bring down a game full of decent ideas.