Category: Mobile Game Releases

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. We’ve got a couple new games, a couple updates to great games, and a whole bunch of sales for you.

In case you missed it on the site this week, we also reviewed Where Shadows Slumber, Stockpile and One Hour One Life.

Out Now

Civilization VI (iOS Universal) (Review)

Yes, iOS Universal. Now you can play the latest installment of the turn-based classic franchise not only on your iPad but your iPhone. The game has been completely reworked to work well on a much smaller screen. The result is surprisingly good. The menus are well-optimized for a smaller screen and it’s easy to see what’s going on in your empire, albeit with a bit more panning around. In celebration of going universal, Civilization VI is also 60% right now, making it a great time to pick it up if you haven’t yet, or if you don’t have an iPad on which to play it. Be aware, however, Aspyr says the game requires a more recent iPhone, 7 or newer. I did install it and poke around on my 6S Plus, however, and it seemed OK. 

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Chroniric XIX (iOS Universal)

The interactive-fiction genre is a popular one on mobile. Phones are the perfect platform to deliver these modern Choose-Your-Own-Adventure like content. Chroniric XIX is the latest title in the genre and features real-time conversations with an entity from an alternative past. The game imagines “what if” scenarios—like what if a scientist discovered an inexhaustible supply of energy way back in 1889—and drops you into the story. I didn’t get a chance to play Chroniric XIX, but if you’re a fan of interactive fiction it seems to have plenty of promise.

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Harvest Moon: Light of Hope (iOS Universal and Android)

The pastoral-based franchise Harvest Moon is celebrating 20 years and now Light of Hope is out on iOS and Android. After a monsoon and ship wreck, the game’s protagonist recovers from injury in an all-but-abandoned town. Your job is to grow crops, herd animals, gather materials and rebuild the town. Light of Hope appears to be a direct port of the PC and Switch version and might scratch that farm-simulation itch.

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Barbearian (iOS Universal) (Review)

One of my favorite games of the year is the action hack-and-slash fest Barbearian. At launch the game was universal, but without iCloud support there was no way to share game saves, effectively forcing you to choose your device. That hole has been closed with a recent update and Barbearian now includes iCloud support. If you haven’t tried the game and enjoy explosive combat games I highly recommend grabbing it. You can read my 5-star review for much more on why.

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Sales

A Dark Room (iOS Universal and Android): $.99

Minimalist, text-based RPG A Dark Room was a viral hit in 2014 and is on sale for just a buck. It’s entertaining and well worth the price if you enjoy text adventures.

Ensign (iOS Universal and Android): $.99

The prequel to A Dark Room, Ensign, brings more of the same great RPG feel. Also just a buck.

Evoland 2 (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99

Adventure your way through the history of video games in Evoland 2. It came out earlier this year and is at its lowest price ever.

Evoland (iOS Universal and Android): $.99

You can also get the original Evoland for just a buck.

Planescape: Torment (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99

Classic post-apocalyptic RPG Planescape Torment‘s special enhanced edition—with remastered music, updated graphics, and a new user interface—is at its lowest price ever, down from $10.

Project Highrise (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99

Skyscraper simulator Project Highrise puts you in charge of the growth and management of a building. You decide how to grow—office space, shops and restaurants, hotels, and more—and work to attract visitors and keep your tenants happy by offering the right mix of amenities. It came out earlier this year and is at its cheapest price ever.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

“Aspyr, when will you be giving us Civilization 6 on our iPhone?”, said everyone, ever. Well, now the developers have followed through and you’ll be pleased to know that the iOS version of Civ 6 is finally iPhone compatible, making it a ‘universal’ game.

To recap, this means that if you already own Civ 6 on your iPad, you’ll be able to download it on your iPhone completely free of charge.

If you never picked it up (particularly if you don’t own an iPad), then Aspyr also want to help you out. As you may remember, Civ 6 is actually “free”, in the sense that you can download the game at no cost and play out the first 60 turns of a game.

You then need to purchase an IAP to unlock the full experience and be able to use the DLC packs that have been released so far. Normally this retails for $59.99 but until October 16^th, 2018, you can purchase that unlock at a 60% discount – so $23.99 USD.

This is the biggest discount on that IAP to date – although there have been regular 50% discounts since the game’s launch last year. If you’re playing chicken and waiting for a bigger discount, I doubt it’ll get much cheaper while Civ 6 is still in active development.

If you’ve already played the free trial and are still unsure, you can read Nick’s review to find out more. He’ll also be dropping on thoughts on the iPhone version specifically in tomorrow’s Weekender update, so keep an eye out for that as well.

Remember, Civilization VI on iOS has the following minimum spec requirements: iOS 11 on an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus, iPhone 8 or 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPad Air 2, iPad 2017, or any iPad Pro.

Mobile gaming has really enjoyed a resurgence of compact, clever & pretty puzzle games. That desire for a quick break on the subway or the john has merged with clean and modern hipster design and minimalistic storytelling to create a whole new genre of precious mazes you can play with one hand. Like Monument Valley and Square’s Go series among others, Where Shadows Slumber tries to give you an experience both artistic and thoughtful, wrapped up in bite-sized chunks.

The game has a conceit almost as clever as Monument Valley‘s Escher-like pathways, but more indebted to the early iOS hit Helsing’s Fire. In Where Shadows Slumber, you have to make use of light and shadow to transform the world around you. Your character carries a brilliant yellow-green lamp that throws pitch-black shadows. When cast in darkness, portions of the scene will change. Sometimes this only changes something small, like making a door appear out of thin dark. Other times, shadows will reveal a whole other world. As the shadows sweep across the screen, you’ll see new possibilities blink in and out of view. Your job is to figure out how to walk between these worlds and make it out alive.

The controls are straightforward and familiar to anyone who has played this type of game before. You can use simple single taps move your hero through single-screen mazes (or double-tap for a run) and drag on various parts of the background (light sources, blocks, platforms, or walls) to open new paths. 

Like Monument Valley, a lot of the puzzles come down to figuring out what is possible to change in a given scene. You need to figure out what will shift when shadows pass over each section of the map, and then how you can get a light source into position to throw or remove those shadows. There are 35 stages in seven worlds, each a single screen long. No one stage is particularly brutal, and each will probably take less than ten minutes to puzzle through.

On top of the central twist, Where Shadows Slumber tosses all the usual maze-puzzler tools at you: sliding platforms, floor switches, impassable obstacles, and moving NPCs that can help or hinder. These additions can be nice, since it means each level has something new. At the same time, a lot of these are tossed in without much explanation, assuming you are familiar with them from other puzzle games, and then they are tossed out just as unceremoniously. It gives some variety to the puzzles, but it doesn’t give a strong sense of progression. The game never sets any expectations to the puzzle mechanics, so it can’t challenge those expectations in more advanced levels. Instead, the game is more about recognizing what the tools you’re given can do and how they affect the screen they’re on. That’s fun, but it could be more ambitious. 

Given the title, one would expect the story to be gloomy, but it is also surprisingly violent; this is not a low-key puzzler you can let the kids fool around with on the iPad. Instead it’s host to a silently-told tale of pursuit and lots of seemingly random murder. The hero seems to live in a world where sad bald humans are under the thumb of cruel and capricious animal-headed monsters, which is certainly a game setting I’ve never experienced before.

Animated cutscenes break up chapters, updating us on the story of Obe and his quest to escape with his magic lantern. The atmosphere is oppressive, twisted and really effective. The music and architecture emphasize the dreariness of the environment. The common people live in run-down wooden villages while the animal overlords inhabit monolithic labyrinths. It’s dark, but also imaginative, and the hero ventures through several distinctly different environments to the conclusion.

If you’re a fan of the Square Enix Go series of puzzle games and you’ve finished Monument Valley already, Where Shadows Slumber is a good pick. The puzzles are clever, but not as varied or mind-melting as the Go series. The game’s central mechanic is cool, but it isn’t quite clever or adaptable enough to push it to instant-classic status like Monument Valley. That said, it would be hard to reach the heights of those games, and as it is, Where Shadows Slumber is an atmospheric and imaginative puzzle game.

I must admit that a game based on the stock market doesn’t really float my shares. In fact, it sounds drier than a scrunched-up ball of The Financial Times tumbling through Death Valley. However, the original board game was very well received, so a digital version by those experienced guys at Digidiced is certainly something worth further investigation.

In Stockpile players are striving to become the richest stockbroker by dealing shares and manipulating the market to their advantage. Each round players will bid for stocks and action cards, sell shares and adjust the markets. In a standard game, players begin with a starting capital of $20,000 and a single share in one of the six different companies that make up the stock exchange. At the beginning of every round, some public information about one of the six companies will be revealed. In addition, each player receives some secret insider information. Both sets of information will show which of the companies will increase or decrease in stock value and announce any dividend payments.

Next up, each player is dealt two market cards. There are various card types that offer additional shares, trading fees or adjustments to stock value. Players take it in turns to place these cards into piles on the board, preparing them for auction. The only restrictions are that there can only be as many piles as there are players and that one action card must be placed face up and the other face down. Each stack has a bidding ladder that is marked out with values from 0 to 25 and players take it in turns to place or increase their bids. The auction finishes as soon as all players have bid on different stacks. They now claim the stack that they have bid on; paying the cost that may include additional trading fee cards that are often hidden in the stack by your crafty opponents. In the final stage of the round, players have the option to sell any of their shares for the current market value. The insider information that players received at the start of the round is now revealed and the markets are adjusted accordingly.

In the basic game, each of the six companies has the same standard track to record their value. Hit the bottom of the track and the company goes bankrupt, rendering all shares worthless. Reach the top of the track and the shares split, adding even more to their value. The advanced game introduces a more volatile trading environment by having tracks of different lengths. This means that some companies will have longer tracks leading to more stable values, whilst others have short tracks with the potential for wild swings from big profits to bankruptcy. There are also four different expansion modules that can be added to the game. The forecast dice make the market more unpredictable, whilst bonds offer a safe investment but tie up your money until the end of the game. Adding commodity trading and taxes to the stockpiles brings even more tension, whilst the investor cards give each player extra cash or a unique ability which they can use throughout the game.

At the time of writing there does appear to be a nasty intermittent bug that makes selecting and selling shares unresponsive. It’s a pretty major fault that should have been spotted before release, but I’m sure that we can rely on Digidiced to resolve this issue quickly. Other than that, the developers have done a decent job, but, as you can no doubt tell from the screenshots, the game does look rather boring. To be fair, there is little room for graphical flair when the whole game is basically just a spreadsheet. The music is also instantly forgettable and destined to be turned off at the first opportunity. Stockpile isn’t that difficult to grasp, and the tutorials teach the game in a clear humorous way. The screen layout is generally clear and comprehensive. However, it is a bit annoying that in the auction phase the stockpiles of cards are superimposed over the market table. This means that you have to keep switching screens. At the highest difficulty level the AI opponents provide a decent challenge but the game cries out for human interaction.  That leaves us with pass and play or online matches, both work well, although the secret information does mean that extra care needs to be taken when your opponents are sitting next to you.

Despite my reservations, I found Stockpile to be an interesting and cleverly designed game. The auction works really well; adding cards to the various stacks makes for some interesting choices and leads to a range of sneaky manoeuvrings. Since players only have one active bid at any one time, the auction can end abruptly, which leads to some delightfully tension filled wrangling. The cunning mix of public and private information promotes player interaction, with bluff and double bluff being essential tools of the trade. Things can get very ruthless, as players gang up to bring down successful companies, wiping out the value of their shares and leaving you cursing and regretting that you didn’t sell when you had the chance. At the end of the game you will earn a bonus for each company that you are the majority shareholder in, so sometimes it can be prudent to hang on to those shares rather than cashing them in. There is some nice variety with standard and advanced games and the expansion modules, all being provided in the package at no extra cost.

Unfortunately, Stockpile does such a great job of promoting player interaction that the digital version ends up falling somewhat short. The bluffing needs that eye to eye contact, the insider information demands smug and knowing smiles. What you are left with is a rather dry and mathematical game that although initially interesting, ends up feeling like it is missing an essential element.

Time is precious, but hardly more so than in One Hour One Life. The mobile multiplayer survival game features an intriguing concept at its core. Your in-game lifespan is exactly as the title implies: one hour long. With each minute that ticks away representing an hour of time that’s passed in the game world,

As you struggle to make sense of your existence in this austere, hand-drawn world, you’ll try your best to leave some sort of memory behind, whether it’s in the form of your old children who follow you or the eventual technical advancements that will eventually come to the game. It’s all about relying on your fellow man to carry you – and carrying you in turn, which really results in something special.

The game can only be played online, meaning that all interactions that you have with other players will echo throughout the game for the foreseeable future. Yes, there’s permadeath, and yes, you’re going to die over and over. That’s a fact – best to get used to it early on. Following the game’s lengthy tutorial, you’re born into the world with one important goal: Survive, as long as you possibly can. Of course, this all greatly depends on what kind of mother you’re born to, oddly enough. This is a game that, like life itself, calculates success largely based on the hand you’re dealt at birth.

It’s possible the mother you’re born to is a robust fighter looking for another strong child to add to her brood, or you could even find that your new mom doesn’t care about you at all, can’t get you food, or even protect you from predators. Luckily, you can grow quickly to sustain yourself, but without your mother’s help early on death is almost certainly assured. This kind of game mechanic makes for some extremely interesting beginnings, especially as it means you must rely heavily on other, real people to make any progress through the game.

You’re not a helpless baby for long, though. Given that you age a year a minute, if you can survive long enough you’ll grow to an age where you’re no longer a burden on your mother and family and learn to help around the village gathering food supplies or at the very least not acting as a burden on other players. Until you’re past your early childhood years, you can’t even communicate properly with others – you’re relegated to basic words and phrases until you’ve survived long enough to receive that “privilege,” which may end up being for the best.

That’s the beauty of the game. You can act as you wish, whether it’s as a tyrant who destroys resources and steals food from other players, or you can play the role that was intended for you as you grow into an “elder” and find a place somewhere in the game where you can survive peacefully and act as a sort of beacon for others who make it as long as you do.

There’s a wide variety of crafting materials, and you’ll spend a lot of time tapping around to see exactly what you can create. The game’s environments are practically teeming with different things for you to use to make your own little life, including plants, animals, and organic materials practically begging you to create the basis for society with.

Ultimately, you’ll run into some difficult decisions during the game, and those are what make One Hour One Life such a harrowing title. It’s not dying of starvation in the middle of the woods or never surviving past your childhood. It’s having to decide, if you make it that far, whether your child should be wolf food or if you have enough resources to feed them and let them live to see old age (keeping in mind it’s another player). It’s having to figure out if you’re going to be patient enough to respect a village’s rules that were established long before you came around, or if you’re going to grief others and cause havoc during your entire time in-game.

The game itself is absolutely genius, with intriguing mechanics and survival elements that work together to make a functioning “society” full of real-life players, with those who are content to cause problems and others who just want to make it past their teens. Unfortunately, there are some particularly frustrating control elements when it comes to the touch controls, many of which have revolved around off-target taps and inaccurate swipes. Combining items with the crafting system can be a turnoff at first, because it simply feels like, at times, it isn’t working with you. Luckily, as you make additional attempts, it begins to feel a bit easier.

The game is actually based on a PC title by Jason Rohrer of the same name, and its mobile adaptation plays beautifully, just as mercilessly as the original, despite some touchy controls that could be worked out in a future update. Overall, however, it’s an intriguing social experiment disguised as a survival game that’ll really bring out some folks’ true colors.

If you’ve ever found yourself ruminating on the futility of life, this is certainly a game that’ll drive that point home even further. Prepare to have your spirits lifted in one minute, and then utterly destroyed in the next. Such is the nature of life.

Reviewer’s Note:  Following a lengthy amount of time spent playing OHOL for the review, I randomly became unable to access the game via servers on my iPhone X. The game was tested across multiple iOS devices, but I have since been unable to log into One Hour One Life, nor am I able to press the greyed-out “Start” button. I am continuing to pursue a way into the game and will likely be testing the game out on an Android device to discern what the problem could be. Since this doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue, we decided that it shouldn’t affect the review or the score for now.

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. We’ll lead off with not one, not two, not even three, but four updates to great games. We’ve also got the western release of a monster hunting game and a whole slew of sales. Read on.

Out Now & Updates

Meteorfall—The Demon update (iOS Universal and Android) (Review)

Let’s start with a free update to one of the best games of 2018: Meteorfall. The “Demon Update” is out now and is aimed at players who have bested the game with one or more classes. The update adds Demon mode, which confronts the player with a series of five increasingly difficult levels to tackle. Each level layers on additional challenges and culminates in a boss battle with a different demonic foe. The update also adds 20 new cards and two new events to the game. Two content updates since Meteorfall released early this year is great, but the developer isn’t done yet. There’s at least one more coming. The game is absolutely worth checking out if you’ve not done so yet.

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Iron Marines—The Borealis Update (iOS Universal and Android) (Review)

Another update…this time for space-based RTS Iron Marines. The Borealis update adds a new planet to discover and of course fight over. Borealis is a world of ice with ten new missions against a new alien foe and a powerful boss to take on. The update also introduces three new premium heroes: Blue Dragon, a starfighter pilot, Roy the alien gunslinger, and Sparas a seasoned pathfinder.

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Antihero —Dueling Docks update (iOS Universal and Android) (Review)

Yet another free update to a great game? Sounds good. Competitive turn-based board game Antihero has added a new area of the world to fight over, the dueling docks. This map takes place on the water and features a fight for the control of a pair of steamships.

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Vampire’s Fall Origins update (iOS Universal and Android)

The last update to mention this week is to a very recent game. Vampire’s Fall: Origins just came out a couple weeks ago and has already become one of my favorite mobile RPGs. Recent updates have added some nice features into a potion that’ll increase the frequency of random encounters for those looking to grind out gold and XP. There’s also a new respec option where you can completely reapply your skill points, which is great. For the PvP crowd hit points now scale to three times the amount when battling another player, which extends fights and allows for new tactics. Finally, the devs have included opt-in ads for those who want to show some support for the free game.

Monster Hunter Stories (iOS Universal and Android)

If you’re interested in the Monster Hunter games but would rather befriend the beasties you find CAPCOM has a game for you as well. Monster Hunter Stories flips the franchises usual script and has you looking to befriend the monsters you find and ride them across the world on an adventure or take them into battle against other players online. This is the apparently full-featured port of the Nintendo 3DS game. It’s been out for some time in Japan and is now being released in other markets.   

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Sales

Mini Metro (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99 on iOS

One of the better builders and puzzle-game options on mobile, Mini Metro, is on sale in the App Store for the cheapest it’s been in 9 months. I gave it four stars when the game came out and the developers have since added a bunch more cities and game modes.

Carrier Battles 4 Guadalcanal (Review) (iOS Universal): $5.99

Hex-and-counter naval wargame Carrier Battles 4 Guadalcanal focuses on WWII air battles in the South Pacific in 1942 and 1943. It gets frequent updates and is rarely on sale (it’s been over two years). If you’re into military simulation games and want to save a buck give it a glance.

Siege of Dragonspear (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $3.99

The missing link Baldur’s Gate game, Siege of Dragonspear, takes place between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II. It features a 30-hour campaign that explores new regions of the Sword Coast, within the long running Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It’s normally $10 and is on sale for its lowest price yet.

Seen anything else you like? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments! 

There’s perhaps no genre synonymous with mobile platforms – especially iPhone or Android devices – than puzzle games. Low intensity inputs are good for a device with no buttons, and the pace of these games plays well with the low session time, start-and-stop nature of mobile gaming. Puzzle games also take so many unique forms nowadays that a top list in the genre can produce completely different looking games.

If you’re looking to test your literary skills, we’ve got a great collection of Word puzzle games as well!

As you’ll see below, we have our own menagerie of titles that we feel represent the best Puzzle games have to offer across iPhone, iPad and Android devices…

Evergarden (Review)

Developer: Flippfly
Platforms: iOS Universal
Price: $4.99

This recent release is an easy inclusion in our best-of collection not only for its accessible nature, but also because it requires a lot of careful thought and planning. It’s more of a high-score puzzler than anything else, but the floral theme and impressive nuances make for some entertaining sessions. Evergarden’s developers estimate that the game will take between four to eight hours to fully explore. After this, it is all about breaking into the global high score tables.

Consequently, it is more of a Tetris high score chaser rather than the type of puzzler where you have to pit your wits against increasingly difficult levels. Unlocking all of the game’s secrets does not require particularly high levels of skill, just the persistence to keep playing and adding to your gem collection.

Death Coming (Review)

Developer: SixJoy
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $1.99

Death Coming is a cute pixel game of Where’s Wally twisted in with Final Destination. It’s a murder simulator with the player taking the role of an omnipresent servant of Death. You are tasked with offing a certain number of people in a detailed pixel-art scene through manipulating the environment towards various horrible accidents and mayhem. The pixel artwork is awesome, reminiscent of a really great Kairosoft game. Everything is clear and distinct even at a distance, although the game is definitely better sized for tablets and larger phones. The characters are cute and expressive in their tiny little animations. It’s a shame the devs didn’t trust their core gameplay enough to avoid gumming it up with unnecessary frustrations.

Monument Valley (Review)

Developer: ustwo games
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $3.99

Every intrepid fan of puzzles is intimately familiar with the eureka moment after which everything falls into place. With Monument Valley, these insights are found by rotating and manipulating the world and its unlikely, Escher-esque geometry. Visual insights coincide with mental ones. And what visual twists and turns there are! Paths bridge on towards infinite loops, curve around corners and angles which display cleanly on the tablet’s surface but will warp the mind. The challenges and spatial awareness necessary are minimal, yet the game never feels reductive or simplistic despite its pared-down nature.

Infinite West (Review)

Developer: APE-X GAmes
Platforms: iOS, Android
Price: Free with IAPs

Infinite West is a puzzler that resembles more boardgame than match-3. It’s difficult to find which had a bigger influence on it, the sombre motif of the Ed Porter/Sergio Leone style western or Square Enix Montreal’s critically acclaimed GO series. What’s easy to see is that developers APE-X have a clear reverence of both and have done their best to highlight what makes both strong while adapting it to a unique vision. Achievement hunting and score chasing in Infinite West can throw you in that fervent, ‘just one more map’ loop because of the solid core concept, and the presence of IAPs is by no means a deal-breaker as you get given a modest amount of freebies anyway.

Lara Croft GO (Review)

Developer: Square Enix
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $7.49, $4.99

Many a sterling series has seen its reputation dinged by weaker entries. In particular, the sophomore slump, that challenge to recapture what made the original great without slavish repetition. Every member of the GO series has its unique merits and mechanics, but Lara Croft GO stands as the series best. Hitman GO was plagued by odd turn-counter challenges which offer only derivative challenges and pad the playtime without expanding content; Deus Ex GO’s grand plan for daily challenges and community-generated puzzles largely fell flat, but Lara Croft GO along with its two expansions hit the sweet spot of challenge, presentation and pacing. Its focused treasure hunts will keep the best minds, most any mind, really, engaged. (There’s even a maddening hidden-object sidegame to unlock cosmetic goodies if either of those are your wont) Its solutions were exclusive and in many cases immune to the kind of brute-force, mindlessly-spam-moves approach to puzzling, and the whole adventure felt like just that.

The Witness

Developer: Thekla (iOS), NVIDIA (Android)
Platforms: iOS , Android
Price: $9.99, $13.60

The Witness is an excellent game to binge, forget, and then revisit. Its puzzles are sorted into wholly distinct environs (treehouses, greenhouses, forests, deserts, mountains, castles) with each of the regions introducing a unique mechanic. Powering on the panels by drawing glowing lines. The game is open world, with players free to wander around and be as enlightened or confounded as they like, and the ultimate nature of the island and its nameless visitor (Witness?) is left up for interpretation. Still, the puzzles are incredibly varied and numerous, and the island is a wonder to explore and idly consider just what in the world is going on.

Cosmic Express (Review)

Developer: Draknek Limited
Platforms: iOS, Android
Price: $4.99

Cute little aliens harumph and squidge themselves into unlikely spherical compartments as they commute to their destinations in outer space. In Cosmic Express, the puzzles are pickup-and-deliver, drawing train paths for a route that allows for no cross-overs or doubling-back. The game includes a ton of levels and gets surprisingly difficult (or rather: uncompromising, since difficulty is always a relative, judgmental term) sooner rather than later. Every level feels crystal clear in the post-solved hindsight; nothing is superfluous. Cosmic Express winds its way through the galaxy and wends its way into your heart.

Beglitched

Developer: Alec Thompson
Platforms:  iOS
Price: $3.99

Beglitched is the story of the Glitch Witch’s sudden disappearance from a computer OS and the player character’s sudden quest to train and replace her. You’ll open ‘files’ to find items, other avatars and programs, and enemies. The game is split between overland mode, which utilizes a minesweeper-like method of divining connecting spaces, and the match-three battle mode. The tone is light and idiosyncratic, and the level design is inspired and gimmicky in a good way. Constraints, properly applied, stimulate creativity. (Or else we’d be without the phrase ‘thinking outside of the box’). Beglitched was released without much fanfare and then subsequently ported to mobile, where it shines even more because of its screen-within-a-screen schtick.

Mini Metro (Review)

Developer: Dinosaur Polo Club
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $4.99

Logistics makes the world go around. These often break down into math and logic puzzles, even to the point that we have fields dedicated to studying the topology of knots. But maybe none of this matters and you just need to get to work. Well, Mini Metro folds all of this and makes for an amusing, minimalistic puzzle about ordering and sequencing the right trains in the right time to complete the right route. So, programming motion to meet specific goals, and tinkering towards that end. Some puzzles rely unduly on shifts in perspective or tricks of the light to interpret what happens next; not so with Mini Metro. The needs and requirements of the puzzles are always clear, the demand is upfront: all the player has to supply is the way forward, that vital connection which will close the gap and make everything come together.

Developer: Loveshack
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $4.99

The search for the story is the story in Framed 2. Cleverly partitioning and recombining what made the original so great, the follow-up refines and refreshes the initial conceit. Comic book action meets stealth in a cheesy noirish setting. One could even say it…re-frames…what made the original great. Yes, it is probably the shortest and most easily exhausted member of this list but it still has a little extra panache that merits some special attention. There are games to play for months or years, trying to crack their mysteries or refine skills. Then there are those games to consume in an afternoon, letting the whole experience become a unified and unbroken memory. Framed 2 belongs to the latter category, a class of brief puzzlers definitely worth playing.

The Room Three (Review)

Developer: Fireproof Games
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $3.99

What can be said about The Room series that hasn’t been said before? Its excellent value and construction, or the heaps of critical awards? Not to mention the host of mistaken-identity jokes based on the so-bad-it-is-a-phenomenon film of the same name. Puzzle boxes are a unique tactile treat which shrink a world into a single object and then propel one to open it based on nothing more than curiosity and the hint that something might wait inside. The Room has digitized this experience as well as it could have been, all while making the experience portable and affordable and just a skosh mysterious.

What would your list of the best puzzle games look like? Let us know in the comments!

By Joe Robinson 26 Sep 2018

Like puzzle games, word games are synonymous with ‘gaming on the go.’ They are often designed with a life on the move in mind. Any given round of word finding, or letter stacking can last just long enough to span the wait for a morning coffee. This sort of quick convenience has led to a devaluation of word games. We don’t respect them like we should. We are wrong.

Want to check out some non-word puzzle games? We’ve got you covered!

There are some incredible word games available in the palms of our hands, but with the massive crush of content that hits the App Store and Google Play store every day, it’s very difficult to find them. Fret no longer, we’ve curated a list of the must play word games available to mobile platforms, so you don’t have to.

Developer: Fowers Games
Platforms:  iOS Universal, Android
Price: $4.99

This deck-building word game would feel just at home on our list of best card games as it would here, but since Hardback’s central twist is that cards are only playable in a Scrabble-esque system of dictionary-friendly sets, we feel it’s apt to list is here. The sequel to 2016’s Paperback, the key thing to remember about this game is that you can’t play it as ‘just’ a word game.

The beauty of Hardback is that you’re not just out to score long, multi-lettered words, you’re out to play cards that combo well together to acheive high scores. This can be as simple as collecting a great set of cards that just say ‘OFF’, or indeed bagging a great collection for a longer word. The limitations to playing cards as words adds a challenging yet interesting twist to a classic game-type. Main changes over the first iteration include tweaks to Wild Cards, Special Abilities and additional card draw.

Supertype

Developer: Philipp Stollenmayer
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $1.99

We get accustomed to the sort of word games that have us finding and planted letters to make words. If we’re feeling particularly creative, we find word games that are just complex versions of word finds or crosswords set in some other sort of puzzle motif. In Supertype, words are tools. After typing a word, the letters fall through the obstacle course below, the goal being to find the right letters to roll or slide through the right nooks and crannies in order to burst the target dots below. On harder puzzles, making sure your word has skinny enough letters in the right places is key to shimmying into victory.

Wordgraphy

Developer: Alper Iskender
Platforms: iOS
Price: Free with IAPs

Wordgraphy takes the old trope of unscrambling arrays of letters to make new words and crosses it with some Sudoku elements. Words line the outside of the table, and letters can only be switched with letters in the same position as other letter groups on each side. For example, the second letter in a five letter array at the top of the square board can only be swapped with the second letter of another of the other for arrays lining the other side. The result is a clever word construction gimmick that keeps you guessing and tests the depth of your own vocabulary very quickly.

BAIKOH

Developer: Mum Not Proud
Platforms: iOS, Android
Price: Free with IAPs

Take the pressure of a gradually filling space that has to be emptied by you, the intrepid player, a la Tetris. Combine the added bonus stress of each falling piece being a letter that needs to be used to create words as fast as you can. Then sprinkle on top a narrator that has an aggressive ire towards you, and you have all the ingredients for BAIKOH. Falling letters can come with added attributes as well, like frozen ones that will gradually freeze other letters, making them harder to remove. Unlockable badges can help even out the playing field, but this is a hard game meant to push your reflexes and critical thinking skills to the limit and break them on rapid occasion.

Sidewords

Developer: Milkbag Games
Platforms: iOS, Android
Price: $2.99

Taking words and making other words out of them is nothing new in the genre, but Sidewords commands a new, brain-bending approach to the concept. On the top and to the left of a grid are two words. The size of those words determines the size of the grid, which each letter creating a row or column. Using the letters of the two words, you must make new words of course. But the twist is that the words you make take up the spots on the grid where those letters intersect. You have to fill the whole grid with words to move on, so using a lot of letters to make a word can take up a lot of real estate in the grid, making it hard to create words with the scraps. Strategy and spatial awareness are key.

Spelltower

Developer: Zach Gage
Platforms:  iOS
Price: $2.99

Before Zach Gage was upending billiards, he was setting the word game world one fire with entries like Spelltower. Take your average Sunday paper word finding puzzle and add that block-crushing Tetris mechanic that we all know and lover. New letters file in from the bottom, and you must find words with adjacent letters to removed them from the ever growing pile. Different game modes alter the many mechanics at play, including a clever multiplayer mode that burdens your opponent with your current tower of words when you score.

Puzzlejuice

Developer: Sirvo LLC
Platforms: iOS
Price: $1.99

A brainchild from Asher Vollmer, of Threes! fame, Puzzlejuice takes the best parts of Boggle and Tetris and slaps them together to make something that is much more challenging than the sum of its parts. Colorful shapes drop into the field like Tetris, and as you form lines or match colors, they turn into letters. To remove the blocks, you must turn those letters into words. There’s a lot going on at once, and as difficulties unlock, and different play modes open up, this becomes one of the most brain-turning games on the App store.

TypeShift

Developer: Zach Gage
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: Free with IAP

Another Zach Gage joint, TypeShift focuses on redesigning the good old crossword puzzle. Columns of letters can be slid back and forth to create a series of words among them on a central row. Every time a letter is used in a word, they turn green. You pass the stage when all of the available letters are turned green. Sounds easy enough, but of course it’s not. Other modes, like Clue Mode, bring it further in line with the traditional crossword.  Either way, a few rounds of it, and you’ll be scratching your head in the best possible way.

What would your list of the best word-puzzle games look like? Let us know in the comments!

By Ian Boudreau 24 Sep 2018