We’ll also highlight five new game every weeks, so remember to check back regularly to get a taste of the latest game to consume your waking hours.
1. P1 Select ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)
P1 Select is a single-screen dungeon crawler with a twist. At the bottom half of the screen is a basic maze, with its walls, monsters, bling, and an exit. At the top half is a player select grid. As you move within the maze (in turn-based fashion), the player selection shifts accordingly.
This is, to put it mildly, perplexing. At first, P1 Select merrily smashes your brain out with a brick. Even though the game has just nine screens, getting to the end seems like a daunting prospect.
At some point, it just clicks. You figure out how to goad monsters, and better switch between players. Then you can work on improving your strategy – a must, given that your high score is actually an average of recent runs. Thinky stuff, then, and all the better for it.
2. Astro Golf (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)
Astro Golf puts an outer-space spin on mobile golf games. Instead of fairways, sand traps, and perfectly manicured greens, courses comprise celestial bodies. Your tee is on one planet or moon, and the hole often far away on another. The aim of the game, however, remains the same as ever.
Gravity is what shakes everything up in this title. Smack a ball into space, and its path changes as it whizzes by planets and moons. This often results in fancy slingshots that would leave even the Rory McIlroys of this world bewildered and jealous.
This is also a game that wants to be played. Scores are tracked, but they don’t really matter. Even the hard mode, which demands holes-in-one, is an exercise in stress-free, enjoyable play. Out of this world, then? Quite possibly.
3. Kingdom Rush Vengeance ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
Kingdom Rush Vengeance is the latest entry in mobile gaming’s foremost tower defense series. As ever, the basics involve using resources to buy towers that stem the flow of adversaries. If too many of them reach their goal, you’re defeated and must try again.
The twist – at least from a storyline perspective – is that you’re the bad guy. Vez’nan the wizard has had enough, and is now on the rampage, attacking his nemeses. (How this is achieved through tower defense, we’ve no idea, but, well, video games.)
It’s visually smart, with varied levels, plus added strategy in the form of heroes to deploy and special powers to unleash. Even though it’s a touch fiddly on iPhone, and gates some towers and heroes behind IAP, Vengeance should be immediately snapped up by any fan of the genre.
4. Twinfold ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)
Twinfold initially comes across a bit like iOS tile-sliding match classic Threes! You move cards within a claustrophobic grid, aiming to match pairs and double their face value, and cards all sport expressions, imbuing them with the kind of personality typically absent from such games.
Very rapidly, though, you realize Twinfold has more in common with turn-based dungeon crawlers than puzzlers. Your aim is primarily to survive; and this requires you learn and master rules and powers that enable you to efficiently deal with enemies roaming the mazes that shift and change every time you gulp down an energy-giving yellow card.
Despite the tight confines of the arena, there’s loads of depth here – but it sits behind a vibrant and inviting interface that ensures immediacy and accessibility. Top stuff.
5. Euclidean Skies ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
Euclidean Skies takes the framework behind iOS classic Euclidean Lands and stretches it to breaking point. Lands had you move in turn-based fashion on floating structures akin to Rubik’s Cubes, attacking nearby foes in chess-like fashion. Manipulating the landscape was as important as the direction of your next step. But in Skies, the land itself can be pulled to pieces.
This means the original’s quiet clockwork elegance has been replaced with a kind of brain-thumping chaos. You may be tasked with obliterating a giant monster’s spine by reworking the landscape, or figuring out how to simultaneously carve a pathway to a switch and some doors.
It’s hard work, but hugely rewarding; and even though the game’s a touch fiddly on the smaller screen, iCloud sync means you can always pick up from where you left off on your iPad.
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