Even though it doesn't set out to reinvent the wheel of physics-based racers, or serve as a visual departure from what the developers know best, Noble Nutlings is still a highly fun and highly quality title, and it shows that Boomlagoon have certainly set the bar high for themselves going forward.

Legendary Wars is an excellent addition to the defense genre because it manages to do so many thing so very well. It's not quite perfect, but it's a blast and will likely keep anyone who plays it addicted for quite a while.

It’s an unusual thing but Data Wing rarely puts a foot wrong. It’s satisfying to play through, offers an intriguing storyline that’ll leave you wondering, and it doesn’t overwhelm you with options. Throw in the fact that it’s entirely free, there’s simply no reason why you wouldn’t be downloading it right this second. It’s quite the delight.

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.

Rivals at War is an interesting semi-departure for Hothead as it makes good use of their pre-established card collecting system and drops it into the middle of a firefight. What’s better is that it all comes together incredibly well. It can be a little frustrating to have to scrimp and save for the high-end card packs but using a team of Bronze or even Standard soldiers and tactics isn’t a guaranteed loss. And it’s just fun, besides.

I enjoy the Glow Artisan's main twist of having to combine and cross different colors. It was also the crux of the Tetris-inspired game Love Love, and I found it incredibly fun there as well.

Mini-games and the briefest of cutscenes flesh out the rest of the Final Cut Experience. Honestly, everything about the game is so well-tuned, it’s hard to find any faults. The visuals are phenomenal, mixing real photography with artwork in an almost seamless manner. Even the sound effects come across as professional. If you don’t mind scrolling through your inventory every time you hit a new puzzle, Final Cut: Homage will deliver every ounce of hidden object adventuring entertainment your heart desires.

Sneaky Sneaky makes one of the most compelling cases I’ve seen this year for premium experiences on mobile, and – quite fittingly – sneaks under the wire as one of the best titles of 2014.

Do I recommend Sorry We’re Closed? A million times yes! If you like old-school horror games and miss the PSX era, then this game is just what you’re looking for. It’s got a Y2K flare combined with the darkness of familiar survival horror titles. On top of that, the storyline is engaging, the characters are likeable, the dialogue and relationships feel natural, and trying to uncover the mysteries of both worlds had me glued to my screen for hours.

Mikey Boots is a nice reminder of a time when mobile games weren’t aiming to compete toe-to-toe with consoles and PC. When you consider the series is only a few years old, that’s kind of mind-blowing.

Overall, MicRogue offers a quick-and-easy roguelike experience for a bargain price. If you’ve been on the hunt for a good roguelike experience for your phone or tablet, MicRogue is a perfect fit for you.

Any and all point-and-click fans need to check out Samorost 3. It’s a great game, and it’s super pretty to look at and listen to. Even if you’re not a fan of the genre, you should check it out — if only because it’s such an absolute treat for the senses.

Racing Rivals is an enjoyable drag racing game with intense real-time multiplayer matches.

Ultimately, the amount of time you spend with it depends on how much you love Auto Chess. Chess Rush doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does provide a solid alternative that features the faster-paced Turbo Mode, co-op, and a much higher level of visual polish. It’s easily one of the best Auto Chess-likes just yet.

Even though matching tiles to summon units and use abilities isn’t a novel concept, with a heavy focus on creating a consumer-friendly experience, Anomaly Studios succeeded at producing a game that is fun, respectable, and challenging all at once.

Terra Battle is creative, well put-together, and it consistently shows you a good time.

Even if Does Not Commute winds up being a bit too repetitive for your tastes, you certainly won’t forget the time you spend with it. That’s high praise for any game on the hyper-crowded App Store.

As the third iteration in Pixelbyte’s Reckless Racing franchise, Reckless Racing 3 continues to deliver the excellent gaming experience that the series has become known for.

Put in the effort and you will be rewarded by being able to pull off some pretty impressive, parkour-like stunts.

With Game Center online scoreboards and achievements that we will no doubt be struggling to top for weeks to come, and more modes promised in the near future, Into the Dead is a bit of a must-have for mobile - especially if zombies hit your spot.

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 fact, other than the so-so synthesizer soundtrack and lack of additional content once you've completed the Puzzle Mode, Collision Effect is a really compelling game.

One of the best racing games available on iOS, rivaled only by Firemint's own Real Racing series.

Some might be quick to call games like Spellsword a copycat, but when a game improves on its inspiration in just about every way imaginable like Spellsword does, it's hard to justify such labels. While Super Crate Box may have invented the formula, Spellsword elevates it to the next level. Fans of SCB, consider yourself warned – you have your new addiction.

Stickets offers endless chances for improvement and entertainment; I made the right choice sticking with door number one.

This isn’t a gaming experience where hand-holding would feel appropriate, but there are definitely times when a little more guidance would be nice. Once you’ve sunk some time into Iron Marines, though, you’re likely to be delighted by the way it works both your brain and your fingers simultaneously, which is what truly excellent RTS titles always manage to do. It’s not easy, but when the going gets tough, the Iron Marines get going. If that’s not a phrase that people say, consider it officially coined.

As unexpected surprises go, Battle Bay ranks right up there near the top. It’s definitely not the game one would expect from Rovio, yet it manages to take what other companies have done in the multiplayer PvP space and build out from there with its own unique twists. It’s going to sink or swim on its player community, but it’s absolutely worth a try to see if it gets your competitive juices flowing.

Knights of the Round Cable is a charming game with a unique mechanic, and it's well worth your time and money. Just be warned: if you get it, you might start questioning where all of your free time has gone.

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.

At worst, it’s a little bit fiddly during the busier scenes, though Feral does allow you to pause the action and distribute orders in bulk to minimise the frustration. Everything else gets our praise: the presentation is lovely, it runs without a hitch, and if we’re being perfectly honest we’re just happy to see a strategy game of this ilk on iPad, which too often goes criminally overlooked in the world of mobile gaming.

If you've ever found the slightest bit of satisfaction in matching up like colors, consider Liqua Pop a must buy.

An outstanding game and a fine follow-up to Towelfight 2. It's fast, it's challenging, it's funny, and most important of all, it's a lot of silly, goofy fun.

Robot5 HD certainly doesn't have any substantial shortcomings, and is indeed a challenging, polished product that almost feels like it could be a home console game.

The way qomp2 keeps you guessing means it’s a must try if you’re looking for a new experience.

Sometimes a three-minute pop tune can dethrone a ten-minute power ballad. My Singing Monsters' toe-tapping charm and gravelly songs are worthy of endless encores.

If you enjoyed the original Reigns then you’re going to love this sequel. And you don’t need any knowledge about the first to jump in and experience this new game either. And if you’re reluctant to play a game that focuses on a female character, well, not to beat around the bush, but you don’t deserve the fun that Reigns: Her Majesty offers.

It feels like Star Wars: Force Arena delivers enough fun and nostalgia that the de facto four-battle limit won’t be a dealbreaker, but it is something to keep in mind. It’s certainly a worthy addition to the overall pantheon of Star Wars mobile games, one that gives you new hope — pun fully intended — that creative ways to approach the world’s most famous sci-fi series are still out there.

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.

Playing Blockolicious, a unique match-3 puzzle game for Facebook, will make you want to bite into a big 'ol juicy melon. It's pretty darned fun to play, too.

It’s The Binding of Isaac on your phone. That’s awesome. If you’ve had your fill with any of the other versions on almost every other video game platform imaginable, then you probably don’t need to check this one out — but otherwise, it’s definitely a good time.

For those looking for a game that does tower defense differently, look no further. The combination of theme, gameplay and challenge should satisfy just about anyone who's interested in the genre. Though the high difficulty will be a deterrent for some I found it's definitely rewarding to build up your Gorg-smashing skills.

Ultimately this is an improved version of an already almost perfect strategy game, and its bulkier sequel isn’t bad either. We recommend you sign up forthwith.

Simply put, Dungeon Boss is an excellent game that is certainly worth your time and money, even if free-to-play RPGs have typically turned you away.

The game is perfect for those looking for a more hardcore experience on a handheld device, without alienating the more casual mobile audiences either. With a shining presentation, addictive shooting gameplay, and a whole battalion’s worth of missions to complete, it’s going to be D-Day on your mobile device for a long time to come!

The remaster basically makes everything better – particularly the visuals, which have been lovingly brought up to modern standards. While the gameplay didn’t really need such sweeping changes, the dual-stick controls are an incredibly welcome addition. It’s just a shame that a few other modern touches couldn’t have made it into the final experience, including auto-saves, fast travel, and a more useful map.

The game gives you tiny threads of story, but really relies on the ambiance and strange compelling puzzles to pull you along. It largely works, though if you're the kind of person that requires action or story to pull you along you'll probably be left disappointed. For me, I relished my time on that weird island, and was sad when it was over and I had to come back to reality.

Gardenscapes has been doing this for years, but as an experience designed for expanding on mobile—and which has already received over 200 additional levels and numerous new garden sections through updates in less than seven months since launch—players will have rewarding matching, gardening, and Austin-interacting to look forward to for the foreseeable future.

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.

Galactic Keep’s unique visuals might not be for everyone, and its reliance on luck makes for some teeth-gritting moments. That’s just picking space-nits, though. RPG fans of any stripe should make alien-bashing a priority.

Ultimately we don’t think Everybubble does much wrong, and is an essential purchase whether you’ve played a Puzzle Bobble game before or not.

Though Duck Dynasty: Battle of the Beards is somewhat limited and basically an interactive ad for A&E's television show, it's well made, challenging, and far more fun than it has any right to be.

There's no argument about Flappy Golf's excellence, though. If more studios find ways to truly make the Flappy Bird phenomenon their own, all the hubbub surrounding that yellow one-eyed bird will have been worth it.

Grim Tales 6 has just about everything you’d want in a hidden object game. Best of all, it’s presented in a fluid and attractive package. There are no genre-breaking ideas wedged into the gameplay, but what’s here has been built to feel just slightly out of the ordinary. And that’s a very good thing.

It’s really quite hard to find anything to be overly critical of with Tiny Striker: World Football. For some, that it takes so long to break out of England might be a source of annoyance — as might it being limited to European sides at this time (it is called Tiny Striker: World Football, not Tiny Striker: European Football after all). But on the whole Tiny Striker: World Football is a great game from top to bottom that goes above and beyond what we’ve grown to expect from flick football games.

There's a seriously potent fun factor to Nimble Quest. Leaving the Bitizens behind without hesitation, this game shows off NimbleBit's mastery of the things that make bite-sized gaming tick, and blows the doors wide open on what we can expect to see from them in the future.

It's another top-tier puzzle/action/arcade game with great personality, great gameplay and great challenge.

Phogs! is an experience like no other, and one we’d recommend everyone to try – especially if you can rope in a friend.

When it comes to gameplay, there are two noticeable improvements in Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked over Pocket Edition. The switch to strictly touch-controlled movement is more straight-forward, while the accuracy of lighting changes between night and day has also improved noticeably. This being said, there were a few instances of ‘random death’ (no creatures in sight, not hungry, sane, etc.) and night-time creatures appearing during the day, but overall they didn’t affect the enjoyment of the game too badly.

While it may be a continuation of the previous games and simply a single part of a larger story, 1112: Episode 03 shows improvements over its predecessors, resulting in the strongest game in the series yet.

Pocket Trains sticks close to NimbleBit’s successful Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower, but it’s not hard to understand why. This is a fun ride, and best of all, it’s free.

Small quibbles aside, Mage Gauntlet proves itself to be a charming, action-packed, ultra-addictive title that should satisfy any 16-bit gamer. With 42 levels to complete, and then a Master Mode after that, this is a game that will keep you busy for quite some time. Luckily, thanks to some smart design choices, you're never more than a tap away from the action.

From little considerations like the squish that plays proxy for haptic feedback whenever your tap, to key decisions like the game’s nostalgia-inducing voxel aesthetic, Crossy Road oozes arcade charm.

It comes down to the classic gaming questions: do you have the proper equipment, and do you have the wherewithal to invest the time.

Four Letters has no levels, and no hints on what you ought to spell next. It has no themes, no trips around the world that challenge you to solve word puzzles related to the Eiffel Tower or Mount Rushmore. But its simplicity makes it fresh, clean, and worthy of replaying over and over again.

If you're looking for extra motivation to exercise, I recommend you run, don't walk to your iPhone (the Android version should arrive by June), and download Zombies, Run! And remember – in the zombie apocalypse, you don't have to be the fastest runner, you just can't be the slowest!

Wipeout also tries to get you to pony up for premium currency, but it's not a free game to begin with. Most of the game is open to you regardless, but panhandling in a paid app is always a little off-putting.

And that’s what keeps you coming back to Hop Swap – its simple yet beguiling platforming. Nitrome has always been great at offering logical in-app purchases and it’s a similar case here. You don’t have to spend real money if you don’t want to, and you’ll still get the full experience. That experience being a platformer that reminds you of how great touch screen gaming can be when implemented correctly.

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?

While Swap Heroes’ shortcomings are a bit frustrating and may cause you to lose a match once in a blue moon, the overall experience is a good one. There’s an interesting puzzle game here that drives you to try over and over.

Temple Run: Oz is just as good as Temple Run 2, but Temple Run 2 is free. Even if this is your first sprint with the series, you may as well get the entry you don’t have to pay for.

Add in a good number of different arenas as well as a solid mix of power-ups and you have a title that’s well worth trying out at your next games night. It’s just a shame there’s no online play.

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.

If you're a match-3 fanatic with an iPad and want to make your fingers tango all over the screen, consider 7 Elements a must play.

It would be interesting to see how multiplayer works, but that mode is apparently on hold until a future update. Even without it, I, Gladiator strikes you as a game that is very much in line with the conventions of its genre while having just enough tweaks to give it some some identity of its own.

It's fun, and EA built a great game on a proven formula. The game simply doesn't feel as earnest and honest as the original Flight Control, but hey. That's progress for ya.

Ms. Splosion Man is a great game somewhat diminished by an imperfect port. If you can swallow the business model and shrug off a few deaths that weren’t your fault, you’re in for a humorous, challenging, and rewarding time. That being said, Ms. Splosion Man is still best played with a controller, and best purchased for a single amount.

Need for Speed: No Limits is a faithful mobile rendition of the long-running franchise. There are a few issues that prevented me from fulling enjoying the title, especially with the controls. However, for those searching for a way to take racing on the go, this title might just be the one you’ve been looking for.

If you’re in the mood to run with zombies, Infectonator: Hot Chase will scratch your leprotic itch. All you need to do is tear yourself away from the original Infectonator long enough to play it.

One especially great part of RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is how it can introduce younger gamers to the series, and indeed, both my kids were clamoring for some time with it over their holiday break. Think of it as something of a combination love letter to the originals and apology note for the series’ previous foray into mobile, one that proves successful on both fronts.

This is exactly the sort of experience that video games are best placed to provide, and if you have any interest in the medium as something other than a distraction, then you owe it to yourself and the creators to pick this one up.

As a game that favors timing, patience, and well-placed attention over button-mashing controls and bull-headed behaviour, Fight Night Champion manages to deliver a knockout performance for gamers who'd rather polish their skills than throw fireballs and do crazy spin-kicks through the air.

In the grand scheme of things, Spellstorm isn’t all that difficult to figure out. At least it has an in-game help menu. And besides, once all the important stuff is covered there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had through questing, fighting, and upgrading. And it’s so, so pretty.

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

Mini Golf MatchUp is a fantastic little game that will easily scratch that turn-based itch that so many gamers seem to have developed.

In taking a classic concept and packing it to the brim with personality and playability, Spilt Milk Studios has developed an absolute winner through and through. If you've ever enjoyed Snake, TRON, or talking lines, make this one your next purchase.

Is Extreme Road Trip a fairly simple offering? Sure. Kind of a one trick pony? Probably. But the one trick Extreme Road Trip pulls off is an incredibly satisfying one.

Nitro is good at providing plenty of simple, no-frills fun. That also means it’s not exactly an incredibly deep experience, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s fun, silly, and full of upgradeable cars.

A deceptively simple game that can be enjoyed endlessly, yet it's smartly designed to be consumed in only the smallest of doses.

It’s funny, it’s fast, and while it might not be the freshest game out there, there’s more than enough going on here to keep you coming back for more.

Overall, Super Phantom Cat 2 offers a lot of free gameplay, with some complexity that elevates it from basic platformer to more robust experience. The appealing graphics and the cool soundtrack make the game feel updated while still nodding to its 80s inspirations.

Like the conventions it bucks, this one escapes the faux pas of a potentially poor start, and gets exponentially better each time you play.

Whoowasit? is an endearing and engaging game, which offers a lot of charm, a lot of narrative and a lot of excitement for primary school age children. It's let down slightly by a few poor interface choices, and by the fact that it's a little too long and complex for the age group that's likely to enjoy it most.

Quibbles about the controls and orientation quirks aside, The Black Tome of Ice is definitely a worthwhile sequel to Dragon Fantasy. Heck, it’s a worthwhile RPG regardless of how familiar you are with the first game, or how interested you are in a game that pokes fun of cliches.

There might not be that much tactical depth here, but this is the sort of game you’ll dip into for a couple of minutes only to look up after a few hours have passed. And that’s really the hallmark of this genre. It’s unlikely that this is going to dethrone the clashing king of the genre, but if you like your action a little more helicoptery and your gameplay closer to the hard end of the midcore, then War Commander: Rogue Assault is well worth a look.

If you are a fan of Japanese humour or simply looking for something a little different in you game library Shin Chan Me And The Professor On Summer Vacation: The Endless Seven Day Journey is well worth investigating.

Though it might be difficult to garner a maximum score in Clockwork Brain, the bulk of the application is a fantastic collection of brain teasers. Quirky and stylized, it's gratifying to feel intelligent through the rapid solving of puzzles and no two ever feel alike.

Aside from losing points for taking longer, there's no real penalty for not rushing. And it's not a matter of reflexes-- just patience. The puzzles can be pretty challenging, too, so clearing all five houses (with 12 rooms apiece, and a sixth house coming soon) should keep you occupied for a while.

Overall, Heads Up! won’t carry your party into the wee hours on its own, but it’s a great way to pass a little time while you’re waiting for the brie to hit room temperature.