There’s just enough crunch here to offer a thrill of nostalgia to anyone who’s ever pasted up an article by hand or worried about whether the Opinion pages were getting bloated. If you’re dying for a hardcore newspaper management sim, you’ll have to wait.

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.

Though the interface isn’t quite as natural as I’d wish, you do get used to it pretty quickly, and what’s left is a genuinely wonderful game.

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

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.

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is a delightful little puzzle game.

It’s just a shame that Buried leaves some of its greatest potential, well, buried on the table.

Sometimes the narrative stutters due to the need to grind and upgrade your tools and items, and you’ll remember that what you’re playing is just an artfully disguised Skinner box. As you’re ploughing over unexplored savannah in search of Glutterfly eggs, however, you’ll realise it doesn’t matter because it’s a hell of a disguise.

Any fan of either Puzzle Quest or Magic: The Gathering would do well to check the game out.

In the end, if you’re in the market for Hearthstone with tanks, or just looking for a new deck-builder, World of Tanks Generals is worth a try.

Silent Night isn’t quite as good as the original Lifeline…, but it’s still worth playing.

Aural nitpicking aside, and despite a distinct lack of multiplayer, Star Hammer: The Vanguard Prophecy is a quiet gem.

It should be immediately evident to anyone who plays or even looks at the game what an incredible effort went into making it. Unfortunately, the tedious and frustrating nature of many of its puzzles undermine the considerable charm State of Play cultivated through their craftsmanship.

It’s impressive both visually and mechanically, showcasing lots of innovation to get the most from its minimalist mechanics. The fact it doesn’t do better is, I suspect, more a comment of the difficulty of making satisfying real-time strategy on mobile than it is on the game itself.

If you’re willing to play it in small doses over a very long period of time, with either a lot of in-app purchases or a long grind, there’s absolutely a game worth playing here.

Pea Ridge by HexWar has some blemishes but it offers an interesting gameplay experience with different problems for the Union and Confederate player.

SRPGs don’t generally have very strong or interesting AI, but Templar Battleforce is trying to be a deeply tactical SRPG, and the one-trick AI can break one’s sense of immersion even as it presents a rough-edged challenge. Even so, the varied maps, missions, foes, and extensive character customization keep things interesting throughout the extensive campaign.

Overall, it’s a lot to enjoy. But you need to know what you’re getting into. There are dragons here. Sometimes they are logical ones, sometimes iron. Either way, there’s a lot of satisfaction to be had in slaying them.

Because of the use of monetization shenanigans, that feels like a deliberate attempt to push players to be more committed to the game so that, when their carefully-developed Dice Monster expertise no longer avails them, they’ll shell out for some extra boosts. It’s like the twist ending of Frankenstein, in which you discover that the real monster is the creator.

Cublo managed to take a game with a lot of information and complex interactions and turn it into a fantastic digital edition that both fans of Brass and newcomers to Wallace designs can enjoy.

The controls aren’t perfect and it’s still on the short side, but The Room Three delivers exactly what you’re promised: brooding and beautiful atmosphere with epic-length puzzles to solve.

So it’s a puzzle within a puzzle, made all the more vexing because there might be nothing to find.

If you’re a fan, there’s nothing here that’s going to shake the foundation of puzzle games in the future but if you’re looking for a quick puzzler to kill some time, Magic Flute does what it sets out to do. If you’re not a fan of sliding puzzles and find them the bane of all that is good in the world, stay far, far away.

Advance Wars fans looking for a fix could do much worse, as could anyone else looking for a game that balances the simple and the cerebral.

As bad as the user interface is—and it is completely horrible—I still can’t hate too much on XenoShyft. Much like those old VASSAL modules of mine, once you get over the learning curve and figure out how the UI works, it’s manageable and the game underneath isn’t hurt by it.

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 mechanics are occasionally a loose fit for the theme, but Rebuild 3 atmosphere and gameplay create compelling narratives of growth, progress and hope.

A strong sense of mystery, puzzles which are either inoffensively brief or intriguingly maddening, a considerate user interface, and a promise of future updates add up to a generally pleasing experience.