Framed as really solid gameplay, but that's pretty much it, which is a bit problematic because it felt original and I had a good time playing it, but I was just puzzled as to the lack of meat around the bone, albeit how solid the bone really was. You play the game by moving frames of a comic around and it influences the actions that take place. I have to say that the silhouettes of characters work well until they add eyes to them - they just look weird - and the jazzy music fits the tone of the game quite well. It's got charm.
Outcast Odyssey isn't a terrible game even if there is a respawn timer, even if you have to be online, even if it's weirdly balanced and even if the core battle system is a bit flawed. I had fun with it at the beginning, but it deteriorated quickly. OO is a game where you explore maps, fight enemies and fuse cards together to become stronger and potentially fight stronger enemies while they slowly lower your HP until then you have to pay for potions or wait until you get healthy again.
Lost Viking is way too hard. It's a "puzzle" rpg where you slide tiles around to attack enemies, collect gold, unlock chests and do other things. It's way too hard and it's barely a puzzle. The core mechanic is that tiles appear and you slide the whole board - a bit like Threes - but with the tiles being pseudo-random and there being about six type of tiles, sometimes you just can't do anything. The game is also plagued with a bunch of progression-related issues and a few weird technical glitches here and there. But hey, at least there are no microtransactions.
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.
The Bot Squad is half a puzzle game, half a black hole for your money, it's gameplay mechanics well thought in order to minimize your enjoyment of the game if you're not ready to annoy someone on facebook or to give them cash. It's something that looks like a puzzle game but quickly turns into something else, a primordial paste of energy timers, premium currencies, best values and robots.
This is a match-three game where you have to spend money in order to get anywhere. A few good ideas here and there, but I grow bored of these things. It's also very frustrating in the maps where you can't do anything and the only way to save yourself is to spend some money on items to break tiles or resurrect your troops.
Skullduggery is a fast-paced puzzle game using the advantages of iOS games to help itself rather than work against it. You play it by stretching the brain of a skull in order to propel it around. Think how you stretch the catapult in angry birds, but with more squishy flesh instead. You do so to collect money and defeat enemies, navigate labyrinths while a wall moves to crush you and collect power-ups in order to defeat bosses and get all the objectives in a level.
Compared to Magic 2015 I looked at a few weeks ago, PTCGO is way better. I had a few technical issues here and there with the game but otherwise it feels like you can do pretty much anything you could do in a real game of the actual card game. Some might argue that the Pokemon cards are simpler - there is no 'instant' in PTCG, everything is played during your turn - but that's just the nature of the rules of one game versus another. It had been a while since I had looked at this and was surprised to see that there are now the equivalent of enchantments - such as giving +30 max HP to a pokemon.
Puzzle Bandits, simply put, is a Puzzle&Dragons clone. You match things to make combos and then you attack your enemies or heal and after a fixed number of turns, your enemies attack you. You can fuse heroes together to raise their levels, you can buy random heroes for real money and they are really strong. While P&D had me going for at least an hour before I stopped, PB didnt last more than ten minutes because of some extreme difficulty
What is the main goal of a digital version of a card game? The goal of adding metagaming around the core experience, being either with a story, with cards to collect, achievements to get or quests to complete, is of course the main draw to these remakes of games such as MtG. That being said, the main goal of a digital TCG is to portray as closely as possible the original game and to follow its rules the best it can. MtG2015 is terrible in many ways at doing so, especially since I've been playing MtG for the past 15 years and I was at least expecting basic moves to work.
SpyMaster is an okay iOS game, it's a few things away from being a great iOS game, but it falls into the same traps and issues that I have with most games on that platform. SM is a board game where you move agents in Europe to establish spy rings, collect intel, raid factory and evade Gestapo Inspektors. Each action takes a number of turns and your agents get tired after a while and need to rest, it's a nice balance of risks and rewards. Sadly, there is a premium currency used for most practical things and timers in most places too.
Gemini Strike is a top-down arcade style bullet hell shooter with RPG elements that is way too hard for its own good. Almost everything can only be bought with premium currency that you accumulate too slowly and the options you have with the regular currency are pretty limited. But the spikes of terrible difficulty near the very beginning of the game are what turned me off it and I was sad not to be able to see more of its contents.
Tiny Dice Dungeon isn't as bad as last week's game, but I found it an annoying game to play. No matter the fatigue system, it's one of the core mechanics that just turned me off the game. I know that the main theme here is risk versus reward, but the risk is too sharp, the potential reward is not worth the consequences except if you are extremely lucky.
Spellfall makes me angry as a designer. It's a neat game, you match things to attack with elements, you get powerful tiles if you match more than three, you equip stuff, you charge up to cast magic. Spellfall is also everything that is wrong with mobile gaming nowadays, a cheap experience that seems fine for a while but quickly becomes impossible to bear.
Rules! is a good representation of what the best iOS games are; clearly made for the medium, simple core mechanics and controls that fit perfectly with the platform and no extra charges for dubious artificial gameplay boosts. Of course, the quick, almost minigame genre isn't the only thing you can do on iOS devices, but Rules! pulls it off quite well and is an interesting little game.
Rusted Emeth is a very average RPG with a few weird control issues and some things that could be explained better. I love the style of games where you have both a pilot and a mech, it's a bit weird when they both can deal and/or take almost the same amount of punishment, but I was curious about the game so I let it slide. A bit on the incomprehensible stats side with an uncertainty in game progression, RE didn't grab me at all.
What if Nintendo went free-to-play with Pokémon? How would they sell it? Would they still put the same production values into the game? Would the game feel fair and balanced or would it feel like you need to pay money in order to have even odds? I'm not sure where Micromon fits in this whole picture, but it smells both of Pokémon rip-off and of pay-to-win systems implemented together in a bland game that I won't play anymore.
Like most iOS games, there is something sad about Rhythm Thief. Born from a 3DS game about the aforementioned thief, this is a music game where you complete various mini-games in order to progress in a unimportant story comprised of three blocks of dialogue that almost have no impact on anything, something that probably was more akin to cutscenes in the original version. Why have story at all? To do so, you equip allies and fuse items and request friends like in other iOS games like Puzzle and Dragons, you collect premium currencies, hold auditions to spin the wheel on random gifts and other things of the sort that just distract you from the actual music games that are actually okay.
Dwarven Den is barely a puzzle game; while the earlier levels might seem clever and lure players in with a slow difficulty curve, the game becomes quite difficult past a certain point which left me wondering about what 'puzzles' are when maps are randomly generated, resources are scarce and of course, sold for real money.
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.