The Magnificent Pixel Dynasty isn’t a case where more is better, or even a case where more is unobtrusive—rather, these half-baked mechanics that have been bolted onto the same construction toy as All Glory to the Pixel King! only serve to detract from the core experience that lays at the heart of both games.

The game translates a board game of the same name which itself borrowed very heavily from Kingsburg, a well-regarded Euro. Like the joke, there’s very little about the result which is original, and the new expectations created by the digital format create requirements it fails to satisfy.

In a complex genre where games like Unity of Command and Battle of the Bulge are like precision-engineered Gothic cathedrals, Russian Front comes across like a Las Vegas one-hour wedding chapel. It seems to have the basic form and function of an operational war game down, but it’s missing the nuance and subtlety of a truly good one.

As negative as I’ve been about it, Arcane Magic isn’t far from being a pretty good game. Its card mechanics are an interesting idea, but there’s just nothing of substance underneath it.

The lack of many of the features that we have become accustomed to makes for a disappointing and frustrating experience.

The rogueish elements can't make up for shallow gameplay in the other parts of Dead Age. The combat is dull and long, the survival elements are simplistic, and the story is predictable. The gameplay often doesn't fit the theme, and it is poorly optimized, although occasionally beautiful.

Part of the problem is that, though the characters are pretty interestingly varied, with a variety of effects on movement, action points, damage of different types, teleportation, an array of summoning abilities, healing, and board control, there's a substantial element of linear design.

A decent game that doesn’t make enough of an effort to stand out in any way.

This precision 3D platformer does not work with mobile controls. One control option has you using the gyro in the phone to control your view, which is precise, but awkward if you're in a space where you can't move around. The other option is touch only, but doesn't give you easy access to all of your abilities. If you have a controller, give it a try, but it’s not worth the hard drive space otherwise.

In the time I spent with this game, the hardest part was the fiddly controls—it took a while to figure out that with some care I could control the size of the platforms created by pinching my fingers ever so slowly. The puzzles themselves weren't challenging at all.

While the design is cool and the gameplay enjoyable enough, I Hate This Place is nearly unplayable on my Nintendo Switch, making it impossible to recommend to players on this console, especially at a price tag of $30.

For all its pretension about history, Spirit of War is a disappointingly generic experience that could be set in any time period. Even on an App Store that’s chronically short of hex-based tactical games, it’s not particularly noteworthy.

A3: Still Alive is a confused mess of a game that doesn't do anything particularly well.

It is difficult to recommend The Frostrune to anyone but die-hard mobile adventure gamers and/or people with a passion for Norse mythology.

Regicide features impressive animations of Orks and Space Marines blowing each other to bloody chunks, but is fatally bug-ridden and lacks a strategic core.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure twists and distorts the well-loved series into something almost unrecognizable, playing on fans’ nostalgia to sell a half-baked story with terrible graphical performance.

The lack of content undermines the feeling of exploring beyond the final frontier and the limp combat is an awkward step back from the elegant Ace Patrol.

While Hex Mechs has some good elements to it, ultimately it isn’t enough to make up for sloppy QA, mediocre art and some very quirky design flaws.

Punch Club might have worked better as a card game, or with the immediacy of a visual novel interface.

Quest of Dungeons feels like the barebones of a rougelike game – a stripped down, uneventful, tedious affair. It works and functions perfectly fine, but it is so inoffensive and safe in its execution, that that ends up being its biggest crime.

If you played and enjoyed Aralon: Sword and Shadow then this game is more of the same with a better UI. In any other case, there are much better RPGs available for the iPad.

RPS Saga, if nothing else, shows that jan-ken-pon is best left as a mini-game within a larger game. There is just not enough here to enjoy, and frustrating AI hampers what little there is on show.

An obscure and dull system has drained this all-American pasttime of joy. If you are a devout fan of baseball, slavish repetition or Kairosoft's other works, try the game. Everyone else should stay away.

It’s not a terrible game by any means, but it is uninspired. Made all the more frustrating by the cleverness of the CARROT apps that preceded it.

Super Meat Boy Forever is particularly frictionless on mobile. Combine this with its punishing difficulty and aged aesthetic and it just feels a little out of place, out of time. It’s a struggle to have a good time with it.

Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound and Debriefed on Switch is an odd little title with some really unique and interesting ideas, but overall falls short with its visuals, combat, and clunky controls.

Its market price is less than a hamburger at McDonalds, which is a good deal for a pretty polished and lengthy, if generic, RPG. The in-app purchases, currencies and crafting are ignorable if that's not your bag. Ultimately, though, it’s just too uninteresting to seriously recommend. It's only worth playing if you've somehow already ploughed through all the hundreds of hours of far better JRPG experiences out there.

In the end, some nice visuals and a little deduction can't save a basic gameplay idea that's just too random. Overall, there's not enough deduction and bluffing added to the Battleship formula, leaving the game with a frustrating random feel.