You Must Build A Boat is a perfect iOS game, it's build from the ground up to work on touch devices, it has no in-app purchases, no timers and no ads, it could be a bigger product on a portable console without much changes. The #1 block-sliding upgrade-buying boat-building game of 2015 was a blast and with only a few blemishes to an otherwise amazing title, I've only had fun with it and probably would've kept playing if the New Game+ carrot had been more enticing.
GemCraft is great, I remember the old days when I actually paid for the complete version of such a game on Kongregate, something that was unheard of for me back in that time - paying for flash games - but it's a nice tower defense game that might last you a long while. There's so much stuff in it and it all is based on solid core mechanics and titular gems. It's not an entirely flawless game, but after you get over some bumps in difficulty and some clunky UI, you'll have a solid game to keep you playing and unlock stuff, level, and get better at it.
HOOK is pretty great. It's a puzzle game with a fixed set of hand-crafted trials where you have to retract hooks scattered in a predetermined fashion. This game is very good at teaching you its mechanics as you go through and it adds new and interesting things over time. I had a great experience with it and blasted through it in a few days. I have almost nothing bad to say about it and that's always a good feeling.
Twisty Hollow is a delightful little puzzle game, I have close to nothing bad things to say about it and I'd recommend to all iOS owners that also are puzzle fans. The goal is quite simple, you rotate three circles (one representing workers, another representing tools and the third one representing materials) in order to fulfill requests from people. For instance, someone wanting bacon will require you to match a pig, a knife, and a butcher, but as the game goes and more complex recipes come into play you might have to match a fishing rod with the bait to get fish, then the knife, fish and chef to get sushi. The game keeps on adding new mechanics so it's fun to go through the motions.
Pillars of Eternity is to Baldur's Gate what Wasteland 2 was to the old Fallout games - and Wasteland 1, of course. It's a nice throwback to old school RPGs mixed up with new systems and mechanics. I had a good time with it, but I feel like I had an even better time with Wasteland 2. Some of the systems in PoE were too complex. the story felt too verbose at times and the level progression was slow and somewhat unrewarding. I have to preface all of this with the disclaimer that I haven't played any of the older games because I also found them a bit too dense for my tastes.
Cities: Skyline is what Sim City wanted to be. It's the proof that you can make good city simulation games, it's an amazing game that brings back to me all of my memories about city simulators - the last one I had played before Sim City was the SNES version of Sim City, so bear with me here - and while I struggled to understand the core systems of the game - and some would argue that even when I had 'finished' my time with it, I still struggled to understand how proper city planning worked - and found a weird glitches here and there, I had a wonderful time and would recommend it 100% to anyone enjoying city sims.
Although the South Park brand of humor might not be your cup of tea - and I have to admit that it's not mine either - the game inside SPTSOT is quite solid. Against a backdrop of high fantasy only existing in the character's minds - and everyone plays along - you control a normal kid going around South Park, doing quests, fighting enemies and collecting loot, all of that done in an ocean of poop jokes and pop culture references. I had a ton of fun with it and I would recommend it to most turn-based RPG fans.
Wasteland 2 is a masterpiece, it's one of the best RPGs I've played recently, and while I wasn't aware of Wasteland 1, nor haven't I played the old Fallouts extensively, the setting and characters were something interesting vis-a-vis the fantasy settings of old. I might not have built the best team for the job - and I might be stubborn on some things, I might have some complaints about the way the game works in some spots, but overall if you enjoy turn based roleplaying games you owe it to yourself to try W2.
Hero Emblems is one of the best iOS games I've played in a long time. There are no IAPs and the game feels like a complete package with tons of content to go through, fun core mechanics and enough challenge and character customization to not feel bored of it. You play a party of four characters - mage, healer, paladin and fighter - and you match emblems to attack, defend or heal yourself. It's a classic formula turned into an amazing little game.
I don't have any bad thing to say about Evolve:Hunter Quest. I feel it's the right kind of free to play match three game with sufficiently deep gameplay systems, enough variety to make the player want to continue playing and most importantly, no energy system. This might sound silly, but if this game had an energy system (where attempting maps was throttled by such) the experience would have been completely different. As it is, it feels fair and balanced and losing a level isn't a terrible thing - because you would've lost energy for no gain - and I have no real opinion on it's tie-in with the Evolve shooter on PC. Besides setting, it doesn't provide much to this game.
Space Run is a tower defense game where enemies go to you as you're flying a spaceship trying to deliver thing under time constraints. It's a fun game where the tower defense gameplay loop of having a list of things you can build allows you to complete maps not perfectly, but well enough to buy better things later on in order to go back and finish stuff you couldn't do before. It's also very interesting with the way it deals in tower construction and enemy waves.
I'm not a big adventure game guy, but I love Borderlands, so I just had to try Tales From The Borderlands for myself. The potential for great story telling in that universe is there - with its numerous factions, humor and weird sci-fi tropes - and I had some fun with The Walking Dead. I'm quite happy to have tried TFTB, it's a great adventure game mixed with plenty of Borderlands nods and lore and although the gameplay is a bit on the simple side, I wouldn't ask for more in a game that's all about characters and situations and how you react to them.
DA:I is a return to form from Bioware, it's a solid game in which I've invested upwards of fifty hours - and I don't play that many games that long, to be frank - and altough I do not find it perfect in all accounts, I posit that it's an amazing game full of content, story and choices to be made that will be a perfect way to spend an absolutely insane number of hours for any RPG fan and especially people who are invested in their Dragon Age universe.
Super Glyph Quest is one of the best iOS games I've played in a long time, it's not perfect, but it's simply a game. It's not a marketplace, it's not an opportunity, it's not a best deal, it's a game. You match glyphs on a grid to cast spells on your enemies, you get experience, materials and items to allow yourself to survive tougher challenges. Rinse and repeat for a good chunk of time. With glyphs to mix and match to create various spells and a bunch of enemies, it's a really cool little game.
Civilization 5 was a masterpiece of sorts and Beyond Earth iterates upon the concepts brought to Civ5, adding a few things that are quite interesting and still creating the perfect 'one more turn' experience. You have more control on the direction your civilization is taking with some more customization features that impact gameplay in semi-significant ways and you have about half a dozen ways to victory. It's one of the rare games where I just started playing and emerged from a 8 hour session, only after victory was within my grasp. This was on very easy, but oh well.
TMQFEL is a free to play action rpg with asynchronous multiplayer tower defense and base building mechanics. Although the tone of the game - trying to be humorous - is grating for no reason, I really enjoyed my time with it and would recommend it if you enjoy both base building and loot-driven action rpg dungeon delving.
Path of Exile is always being updated with new stuff but the Forsaken Masters update had me try it again and more content always makes for a better game. I hadn't seen the Vaal Gems - corrupted gems that require enemy kills before you can use them - yet nor the randomly placed random dungeons, so there's a lot of stuff in there to digest for me. That being said, I'm having a blast by playing it again.
It's very hard to find a flaw in The Swapper because what it does, it does very well. It does very little, in some sense, but as a puzzle-platformer, I loved it. It felt like one of those games where you could add enemies and a health bar and you would have a full-on metroidvania but instead you have nice puzzles playing around with creating clones and warping to them with an interesting story and simple controls.
Storm Casters is pretty amazing. It's an action RPG on iOS with collectible card mechanics, level-ups and a bunch of different weapons and items to play with. I had a ton of fun during my time with this game because it blends solid gameplay and does not mess too much with the freemium tendrils that could have been stuck in every aspect of the game.
Shovel Knight is a great game, Shovel Knight is an important game. From the success Kickstarter story came this little retro platformer that merges many old NES games together and adds modern sensibilities in order to create a neat little package that I had tons of fun playing through. Although - as most games usually are - not perfect, Shovel Knight is the best mash-up of Super Mario Brothers, DuckTales, Castlevania and Megaman I can think of right now.