Puzzles involve picking your way through the darkened maze using walls of light to separate your spindly stick woman from aggressors and guiding her to pads in the floor which trigger the next door to open. It’s not a terribly good summer game, the perma-darkness making the action almost impossible to make out on a sunny day, but it’s a well made and atmospheric game with interesting puzzles and a distinct personality.

There’s not much to it, but what’s there is made so perfectly that it can prove hard to put down.

Its insanity is highly addictive, and Bacon is the best of this avant-garde trilogy of comestible foolishness.

In spite of the difficulty level and minimalist beauty of the graphics, Optica’s problem is that it’s just not that compelling, and once levels start to get more devious, summoning the will to trial and error your way to the end becomes your biggest hurdle.

Trexels II is a vacuous entertainment void, which does at least accurately simulate the icy desolation of deep space.

Slapping down a couple of mines and energy structures, then sending a massive volley of missiles to destroy the enemy base will get you through the first few levels, until suddenly it becomes overwhelmingly tough. The lurch in difficulty isn’t insurmountable, but also isn’t much fun, which is particularly disappointing given how perfect everything else is in Element.

Although frequently frustrating – this is a game you will find yourself loudly shouting at – it’s also fabulously clever and addictive, with one more go an almost foregone conclusion as you once again impale/lacerate your stickman in pursuit of that final collectible.

Even at this early stage (there’s no indication yet when Red Dead Online will officially emerge from beta) there’s plenty to do, with a similar wealth of content to the single-player game. And yet Red Dead Online hasn’t abandoned its essential character: it’s altogether slower and more content to leave you to your own devices than GTA Online. The prospect of living an online life in Rockstar’s vision of the not-quite-as wild-as-it-used-to-be West seems just as alluring as the story mode.

The charmingly dark and brooding graphic style works nicely with the fizzing electromagnetism of each level, but it’s undone by the touchscreen controls. The demanding, pixel-perfect jumps you need to pull off to complete platform sections immediately rendered exasperating by the woolly onscreen joystick and buttons. It’s not in any way a dead loss, but without a physical joypad you should brace yourself for irritation.

The result isn’t quite the sum of its parts unfortunately, because although each course looks stunning, rounds have an unfortunate tendency to be frustrating, the random factor underpinning victory just slightly too prominently. That’s actually quite a good analogue for real world crazy golf courses, and if you enjoy that element in the digital world this will seem pretty great.

It may be turn-based and lack any sort of time restriction, but it’s also highly competitive, with a distinct stab of angst when another player steals the very line of food and felines you’d nervously been eyeing. Sadly, it’s also riddled with bugs, many of which force you to restart the app, something that with any luck will be addressed in an update.

As a pick up and play mobile puzzle game this ticks the right boxes: levels are short and satisfying to crack, and its cute graphics are just enough to give you an impression of golf.

There are all sorts of decisions to make: should you try and cover up the civilian casualties from a stray airstrike or fess up, lowering support? Will you educate farmers on use of pesticides, or offer passive advice? It sounds dry, but once you’re in the thick of it, using the game’s myriad social and political leavers to lessen the chaos, it’s utterly gripping and offers layers of extra complexity over Plague Inc.’s already highly compelling ruleset.

It lacks the sparkle and modernity of the more recent Florence, but still evokes a wonderful sense of mystery and melancholy, and because of its sedate pace does not in any way suffer from having touchscreen rather than physical controls.

Its pleasing synth tunes and unusual gameplay are immediately alluring, but that optimism is swiftly trampled by a difficulty level that starts tricky and rapidly becomes sadistic, the overwhelming flurry of notes requiring taps so fast that the music gets lost under an ecstasy of fumbling. It’s always a pity when fresh and interesting ideas don’t quite work, but unfortunately Sonar Beat never manages to live up to its considerable promise.

Sadly, with only 41 puzzles – more are coming soon – it’s over too quickly, but while it lasts this is a highly amusing and completely free slice of mobile gaming goodness.

Emotive, melancholy, and thought provoking, Photographs creates a striking balance between game and story that will leave you considering its themes long after you’ve put away your phone.

It’s fun while it lasts, but we very comfortably finished the game on our first run, which took about half an hour, and while you can just keep going round and beating it again and again, there’s very little inducement to do so; the procedurally generated maps varying so little as to make them effectively identical.

It’s played in real-time, a countdown appearing on each move you make, with new cards to collect when it’s finished. It also has a branching narrative with the powerful and evocative prose you’d expect from the founder of Failbetter Games. If you like being flung headlong into deep and esoteric mysteries there are few games that do a better job of it, or reward you as much when you figure them out.

With any luck the legion of glitches will be fixed in an update, but even with all that Powernode manages to be engrossing and addictive.

As far as it goes, this is a reasonable game of cards, but like last month’s Knights Of The Card Table its lack of depth makes it instantly accessible but less interesting in the medium to long term. It also has very long grinds and a lurch in difficulty, which may or may not be designed to tilt you in the direction of its in-app purchases, something that feels beyond cheeky in a paid-for game. There are much better card battlers available, the best of which is still the brilliant Card Thief.

Relaxing, aesthetically pleasing, and giving you just enough room to feel creative with your flower arrangements, this suffers from the usual idle game problems – no threat, zero difficulty, mostly a waiting game – but makes up for it with charm and good looks.

The Quest has to start somewhere with online multiplayer though and this is as good a place as any.

Having Patrick Stewart as your narrator is quite the selling point, but he seems oddly wasted here, in this otherwise fairly low budget, portal-filled puzzler. Before you get too excited this is really nothing like Valve’s classic and a much more slow-paced, story-based affair.

If you’re not careful you’ll also find yourself learning a lot about the period’s history and the Romans’ divisive final lurch towards Christianity. But don’t let that put you off, as this is a deep and varied strategy game that never lets historical authenticity get in the way of fun.

Its frequent checkpoints get more spaced out as you progress, but the invention never stops, expanding its simple base mechanisms in increasingly challenging new directions. Its polished, elegantly biological good looks are complemented by deliciously gloopy sound effects in this satisfying and tactile action puzzler.

Between managing individual outbreaks you use a world map view to spread the infection to neighbouring countries in your ongoing effort to kill all humans. But while the process is reasonably compelling, the relative simplicity of its mechanics eventually starts to undermine the fun.

Its attempted revolution of turn-based tactics isn’t quite as practical as it first seems but this is still an impressively fun, and funny, strategy game.

A sci-fi shooter-meets-RPG sabotaged by a lack of plot, weak character progression, and sluggish combat.

A director’s cut that for once makes a significant difference, with new levels and the return of co-op – although the underlying game is still slightly flawed.

A monstrously awful game that is subject to so many bafflingly awful design decisions it’s lucky it doesn’t collapse into a black hole of its own ineptitude.

Its mixture of inventive, challenging puzzle-solving and pixel perfect platform hopping works fine using touchscreen controls because interactions are generally undertaken with no time pressure. And if you don’t fancy watching an ad every three continues, removing them will cost you £3.99.

It’s highly addictive, and even though it only takes a couple of hours to see everything, there’s a more demanding New Game+ that chops each life down to 40 seconds, and your energy bar down to a single heart.

It’s an interesting idea let down by one-note gameplay, finicky onscreen joystick controls, and its habit of forcing you to replay levels after each mistake. It’s also significantly overpriced at £6.99.

Because your party doesn’t auto-heal, anyone with that skill swiftly becomes indispensable, although you can mix and match team members depending on the enemies you face. The real problem is that without new ideas, this no-frills dungeon crawler is possibly a little too generic for its own good.

There are regular moments in dungeons when the 3D viewpoint gets in the way, and you’ll need to grind a fair bit, but these are relatively minor niggles when set against compelling battles, great art style, and an inspiringly large world to explore. It even has a New Game+ for those who just can’t let go.

If you’ve played it before, it’s a relatively brief experience that most certainly bears repeating. For those who haven’t, the first time is a joy we’d recommend to just about anyone.

If you’ve played Kerbal Space Program you know exactly what to expect (minus the cute characters), but for everyone not familiar with terms like periapsis, there are tutorials that guide you from novice to space flight professional. Having all that in your pocket is a salutary reminder that we live in a wondrous age.

The splendidly named Dread Nautical is a turn-based roguelike set on a spooky, zombie-infested 1930s cruise liner. Choosing one of four survivors, you spend action points to move, pick things up, and attack, either melee or ranged depending on what makeshift weapons you’ve managed to purloin.

As you progress words get longer, featuring far more abstruse letter groupings, and although it can’t quite muster the rampant addiction of Alpha Bears, it offers a decent word-based challenge.

It’s very simple, but there’s a level of learning involved in when to boost wood and gold production; when to upgrade your defences, barracks, and walls; and which path your raiders should take. It’s very throwaway but the lightly tactical gameplay is still breezy fun.

If your ball-like warlock slips between the flippers he falls, taking damage equivalent to his height up the tower. You can recharge health with heart containers, and by getting him through the exit in time, but progress is cemented with the treasure and XP you earn, which permanently unlocks new skills, helping you get even higher next go. All of which is enjoyably addictive.

In other words it’s a clone of 1983 coin-op Spy Hunter, but unfortunately what you see in the first minute of the tutorial is all there really is to it, with relatively little nuance to uncover. As mindless entertainment its daily missions are a brief diversion, but little more.

Elegantly balanced so that using a controller is no advantage over touchscreen, its developers promise regular updates of new mazes, game modes, and challenges.

It’s a joyous affair, even if aiming can prove a bit frustrating, especially as the farmhand, with his limited water reservoir and three naughty porkers to keep track of.

Unfortunately, its reach sometimes exceeds its grasp, and even on the latest iPhone it suffers from frame rate stutters when the action gets busy. Its unremittingly generic sci-fi characters and setting also conspire against it.

It’s weirdly hard to concentrate on what the text is actually saying, rather than simply spotting which sentence fragments go where, so it’s not much of a reading experience, although it is a gentle and long term challenge that turns out to be pleasantly relaxing without a timer.

It’s a pleasure to wander around, the input of American artist William Chyr evident in the expansive and mildly trippy building designs that trail off into infinity. And it’s no shrinking violet on the challenge, which rapidly becomes deliciously tricky.

Puzzles soon become multi-layered memory tests, especially when you’re trying to pare back the number of moves used, and there’s no hint system, so you’re on your own (or on YouTube) if you get stuck; although the tinkering and eventual epiphany is where the real joy lies.

It’s a bit of lightly addictive throwaway fun, a sense that’s undermined by rounds against overwhelmingly more powerful computer-controlled snakes.

As you progress across its worlds the complexity layers on, with new powers and gardeners constantly being added in what is a clever, likeable, and surprisingly deep game.

Fights themselves are a bit light on tactics, with the looming shadows on all sides making it impossible to see enemies before they’re right on top of you, but the range of other activities and role-playing style progress of your troops will appeal to those who love XCOM but prefer their games a bit less sadistic.

It’s designed to be relaxing, but the reality of not knowing what the hell is going on is actually slightly stressful and eventually extremely dull.

Although similar in some respects to Hearthstone, the tactical depth and ability to deploy game-changing combos keeps it fresh and distinct, the touchscreen port playing even better than the PC original. There’s still an undertone of pay-to-win but provided you don’t take things too seriously it doesn’t spoil the fun.

The brothers’ interactions and cute claymation styling make for delightful, heart string-plucking interludes between levels. There’s not much of it but it concertedly leaves the door open for future chapters.

With infinite continues and no ads, it’s a friendly user experience, and even though some of the level design is a bit iffy, the art style is unusually good for a freebie.

With a couple of hours’ worth of occasionally irritating head-scratching, there’s a slight sense of having played the intro to a much larger game. Whether you’d want a full-length version of Discolored is another matter entirely.

The sparkly graphics and familiar faces do their job, although it soon starts to get trickier, tempting you to spend in-game gold and actual currency to complete levels. For its target audience of small girls it’s fiendishly compelling, just don’t forget to turn off in-app purchases before handing your phone over.

It’s completely free, with no ads or in-app purchases, and is clearly a labour of love for the small team at Stay Inside Games. If you like turn-based tactics and have a phone, you may as well.

One of the best Dark Souls clones so far and while some things are near identical the co-op features help distinguish it as something more than just a straight copy.

With its 8-bit-style graphics and roguelike trappings, Space Grunts 2 is every bit an OrangePixel game; only this time, rather than being about action, it’s a turn-based deck builder with an emphasis on speed and simplicity.

Beautifully drawn and with a haunting soundtrack, the cyclical nature of the game and its oblique plot exposition make this a playful and constantly delightful experience.

In spite of its manifold similarities and some distinctly wobbly voice-acting it’s still good, its involving multi-stage puzzles taking quite a bit of teasing, prodding, and experimentation to figure out.

Even if you love the game’s sense of humour and art style, the quality of the interactions is so wafer thin it’s impossible to draw much satisfaction from them. Randomly surviving may be marginally less irritating than dying through no fault of your own, but neither is much fun.

There are a few tricky puzzles in there, but the overall sense is one of gentle relaxation.

There are no instructions and the English translation is a bit homespun, but the game is rock solid, its real-time gameplay loop proving hugely compelling.

The result is absolutely sensational and Gladiabots has a level of depth and complexity that will keep the right kind of stubborn logician busy for months.

The goal is to complete 15 levels, but even making it as far as 10 is a huge undertaking that will require both significant practise and a lot of luck. It’s a fascinating and constantly changing challenge.

The story mode’s 100 levels offer a stern challenge, with the action quickly becoming frenzied but also a little repetitive.

Part room escape, part point ‘n’ click adventure, its subject matter, subtle puzzles, and graphic novel style line-drawn artwork make it a treat from start to finish.

Dead Cells’ hugely engaging roguelike-meets-Metroidvania gets its first paid-for DLC and becomes even more compelling than it was at launch.

Although graphically pretty, the controls are often slow to react to your input and swiping to swap out redundant power-ups is horribly temperamental, undermining a great deal of the potential fun.

There’s always someone falling off something, or getting impaled on something else, in a cacophony of tiny sound effects reminiscent of the chaos of LittleBigPlanet 3’s excellent multiplayer mode.

To keep abreast of upgrade requirements you’ll need to watch ads to double your winnings, or pay £10 per month for what amounts to a battle pass giving you automatic gold doubling and the ability to autoplay levels, obviating the need to sit there triggering special moves when their cool downs expire. That may be a fundamentally mindless process, but like most successful incremental games, the steady flow of upgrades proves shamefully compelling, although if we have to sit through one more ad for Charm King we can’t be held responsible for the consequences.

With excellent pixel art, Bomb Chicken is an engaging puzzle platformer with its own very distinct personality.

Tool around, explore, and try to reach lofty areas you spot from ground level. Taking out surveillance drones and signal boxes could be seen as using your hoverboard to dismantle the tools of oppression, but then you also have to destroy fire hydrants, so maybe things aren’t that straightforward, in this piece of interactive entertainment that’s as much toy as formalised game.

The way seemingly innocent snippets of data are collated, corroborated, and then grossly misinterpreted in the name of law and order makes for a sobering refresher course in why digital privacy is so vital. It’s also an enticing few hours of drama.

Its mellow pace requires diligent concentration, and its 30 levels will be enough to sustain a few days’ solid puzzling.

It often takes the best part of two minutes to load, but after months spent locked inside, it’s just quite nice getting a bit of unfettered fresh air, even if it is only simulated.

Its light challenge and straightforward level design are complemented by minimalist good looks, but there’s just too little going on to maintain interest beyond saving up and collecting a few perfectly drawn miniature vehicles.

Clever, taxing, and graphically elegant, the short-form ads you have to watch before and after each level are thoroughly inoffensive and can be removed for a one-off payment of £3.99, which also unlocks hats for your worm.

Its non-rotate-able isometric world makes it tricky to see around furniture and walls, and the absence of an undo button makes that problem worse, a single misplaced tap enough to end an otherwise perfect raid, which encourages continual shameful save scumming.

There’s a plot involving the town’s ineffectual mayor, gaff-prone police department, and various other resident caricatures, but underneath that shell, it’s incremental business as usual. How this got past Apple’s legendarily puritanical vetting process is anyone’s guess.

Because this is free to download everything comes with a countdown timer, which in time-honoured tradition starts off instantaneous and soon has you waiting multiple hours for processes to complete. It’s also very buggy, frequently crashing to the home screen, although rarely losing too much progress.

Even on the easiest difficulty level it’s intensely challenging from the start, with movement, managing your dwindling oxygen supply, and timing the long cooldowns on your weapons requiring patience and skill to get right. It’s also hampered by touchscreen controls that never feel as responsive as you’d like.

It’s a friendly and beautifully constructed ecosystem, and if you enjoy tinkering with, as well as simply playing, levels this is an endlessly engaging toy.

As you upgrade you’ll face tougher monsters, your backpedalling crowd control getting steadily more bloody as foes arrive thicker and faster, and you unlock more of the game’s vast arsenal of weapons and armour. You’ll need to grind its paltry selection of side missions to keep up with the rigours of story mode, but it’s a rewarding progression even if the action soon starts to feel repetitive.

There’s a new, less punishing, three-round battle system, but this is mostly business as usual with lots of deep pits, damp caverns, mysterious alcoves, and a short-lived partnership with Throm the barbarian. It’s a pleasantly relaxing game to play, your frequent deaths only ever sending you back to the previous narrative branch, with Eddie Marsan amiably suppling details of your demise.

It’s a nerdy organisational rabbit hole of depth and intricacy that, for the right personality, will create the sense of benign addiction gamers crave.

Your desire to carry on shrinks with every match, giving the game a perilously short half-life. This is only a beta, where almost everyone is as unfamiliar with the game and its legacy as each other, so perhaps the game’s virtues will become more obvious once players have had time to get more practice in and formulate appropriate strategies. But at the moment it’s an exhaustingly dull experience that quickly has you wondering why you don’t just switch it off and play one of the dozens of superior alternatives available. Admittedly, they won’t be free but as with most things in life, you get what you pay for. [Beta review]

It’s still a dialogue-heavy adventure set in a dystopian, cyberpunk future, and maintains its Broken Sword-esque sense of humour and charmingly British sensibilities. Sadly, it also suffers from the same peccadilloes as its ancient forebear. Chief amongst those is the need to figure out sometimes non-intuitive sequences of actions to solve its puzzles, and sitting through reams of chat that sometimes isn’t quite as amusing as it imagines. It’s still worth it for the sweet pang of nostalgia though.

Earn XP to level up, unlocking new creatures, equipment, heroes, and bigger maps. While finding a decent weapon early on can make a big difference, the randomness isn’t too brutal, and the game gets more interesting as you progress, with more characters and larger levels forcing you to make judicious use of each hero’s skills to survive.

Grounded shows great promise, and apparently a large community is already at work helping Obsidian to hone it (which is the main point behind its appearance in Early Access). It has all the ingredients required to make it a cult hit and you can only hope that Obsidian will finish it off sooner rather than later.

There is a satisfaction to completing stages with all three bonus goals intact, but the game’s glacial pace and realistic but intrinsically clunky onscreen controls, that offer no option to connect a controller, will not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem as the rest of its genre, namely relying on random-seeming and counter-intuitive combinations of equipment to overcome many of its problems. YouTube will get you unstuck but cheating your way through feels as hollow as it always does.

Amanita’s distinctive art style and wonderfully expressive characters, whose movements and expressions convey chapters’ worth of emotion, are as effective as ever, even if the ladder mazes and robot baiting eventually get to feel a bit samey.

Clocking in at under an hour, with no challenge and a story that is at best highly confusing, Arrog is beautiful but strangely empty.

The in-your-face visuals distort and strobe when you collide with walls or objects, giving the whole enterprise a migraine-inducing quality that actually goes quite well with its savage difficulty level. If you suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, this is a game you might want to avoid.