When I think of 'mining' games, much like the Motherload of old, I think about digging down to find valuables that you sell for various upgrades in order to be able to dig deeper for more valuables that can be sold for more upgrades, ad infinitum. If you're telling me that your game is a 'mining' game but with multiple levels and you need to get to the bottom of each mines in order to continue, I might find that a bit weird, but the potential is still there for a fun game. Obviously, the more you'd progress, the tougher the levels would be, so you would need upgrades. Pocket Mine 2 takes a tiny sliver of that idea and fills the rest with nonsense.
AlphaOmega is a puzzle game where you swap letters around in order to make words on a scrabble-like board. The core idea of the game is interesting, but it's full of little systems that could have been polished a bit more and some tasks could have been designed as to help the player be less frustrated rather than annoyed at how stuff works. I did have a bit of fun with it, but ultimately it's a bit too flawed for me.
ROP is a little puzzle game where you move ropes around in order to match shapes shown at the top of the screen. The difficulty comes from ropes being tied around in weird ways and you not being allowed to place two rope ends at the same place on the grid. It's not bad, even if there isn't much to say about it.
Swap Heroes 2 is a fun little game where you swap heroes on a grid in order to have them attack monsters or use special abilities. It's a bit too simple with very light RPG elements and there is one tune that reminds me of a Super Mario RPG boss fight theme - which is funny. All and all, I've had a few good moments with it, but it didn't last very long, as the core of the game is doing the same thing over and over.
Switch&Drop starts by asking you to agree to a EULA, this is always a good sign. Otherwise you just can't play the game. S&D is a game where you drop blocks by sliding lines of colored puzzle pieces and the goal is to match three or more to break them and activate special bonuses. It would probably be fine if it didn't have in-app purchases, energy timers and best values. This might sound a bit reductionist - I'll admit I haven't played that game for very long - but putting your worst foot forward isn't a way to make me care.
Although this game has some RPG elements, Zombieville USA 2 has clunky controls and a weird sense of uncertainty added to mechanics as simple as buying new weapons. It's a game where you kill zombies using guns in order to get money to buy better guns and perks that will help you defeat more tougher zombies. The game controls with a virtual joystick that mostly works and I had some fun with it before being frustrated with certain systems and uninstalling it.
Mujo is a matching game where you match 3 tiles in order to do stuff - mostly damage to enemies, but you can also use them to level your heroes and collect treasures as well - and you can also 'combine' matched tiles in order for them to do even more effects. Tiles aren't destroyed automatically if 3 touch and breaking them brings the stack down. You can also raise the stack of tiles if you don't have any moves. An interesting fact about Mujo is the lact of 'lose' condition, you can play most levels forever and never lose. A fact that is rendered pretty moot by the battles that take forever and render the game boring to play after a short number of levels.
Area 777 is a slot machine 'rpg' where you fight aliens by spinning reels to match symbols and attack them. You're also trying to get more cash to continue playing and to get experience to level up and unlock new type of reels, new machines and new power-ups. I didn't have a terrible time with the game but the huge full-screen ads that popped out all the time, combined with unrefined RPG mechanics and the unpredictability of chance games made me uninstall it after I had seen one too many advertisement for some product I didn't care at all about.
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.
Combo Quest is the first paragraph in a design document for another game; CQ is the core mechanic that should be embedded into something much bigger than it is, while actually being all there is. CQ could have been a pretty neat RPG for touch devices, but it's barely a tech demo with some inappropriate in-app purchases. I didn't enjoy my time with Combo Quest for various reasons.
Shadowmatic is a neat concept - you rotate objects in order to cast specific shadows that aren't obvious at first but should become more apparent as you move stuff around. To increase the difficulty after a while, the game throws multiple pieces and now you have to move them relative to each other as well. In practice I find that fumbling around rotating pieces of weird shapes in order to arrive at an unknown goal is quite frustrating and the hint system should be more straightforward.
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.
Puzzle Forge 2 is a pretty neat little puzzle game where the goal is to make gear for customers going to your forge. To do so, you place rocks on a grid and then you place molds next to two rocks to craft parts that you need to combine to create weapons, armors and more. Combining rocks makes better materials and the game adds a bit of complexity with gems (and the combining thereof) and magic that you use to power-up the gear you're making. You lose the game when you can't complete customer requests too many times or when the board fills up - the latter happens more often than the former.
I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here, but SimCity BuildIt is literal garbage, it takes a thing you like, crushes it under the overwhelming machine that free to play casual microtransaction money-stealing barely-games time-wasting represents in today's gaming world and then tries to make you believe that it's a video game where you can do things and that it's worth your time. Preying on nostalgia and presenting production values that at least look like a decent game but otherwise a terrible tragedy for this week.
Where's my Water! is a physics based puzzle game where you have to move water from one point to a drain connected to the shower of an alligator. It's a fun little game that progressively adds new mechanics and concepts and piles on replayability by having you collect things and fill ducks with water as well. I had a good time with it and I suppose it could be considered as a classic of sorts, resembling in spots with many other puzzle games.
Metal Slug Defense is not entirely hot garbage, but there is better to be found in the realm of defense games where you get resources constantly and build units to push towards an enemy base that you destroy. Two things that annoyed me right up top? Full-screen ads on the mission select screen and full-screen ads right after you've completed a mission. No matter how fun or charming a game can be, having a video ad for some other game block your device is awful.
Click Titans is almost a direct clone of Clicker Heroes, a web game where you buy heroes to kill enemies to make money to buy more heroes to kill more enemies to reset your game with more money in the next one (in order to kill more enemies). I like Clicker Heroes, but CT is just a way worse version. Mired with pop-ups for ads and opportunities to watch videos or pay in exchange for quicker game progression. Since the only point of "idle" game is the progression, it's a bit silly to expect people to pay for it.
I like Peggle, it's a fun little franchise where you shoot balls on pegs to clear levels. You get power-ups to help you beat the levels and the characters are quite funny (I'm looking at you, Pharaoh Cat). Take everything good with Peggle, replace it with terrible odds skewed in favor of the game, add micro-transactions to every single thing you could, slap an energy system on it and give it for "free" on the app store, you got Peggle Blast.
Earn to die 2 is a little "endless runner" type of game where you drive a car around with simple and usable controls for iOS - a bit like Trials with tilting and things like that - and run over zombies, boxes, exploding barrels and make money doing so. You then use that money to upgrade your car in order to progress a little bit further and make more money, in order to - you guessed it - do the same thing, almost forever. There are a few flaws with ETD2, but I mostly had fun with it before it became repetitive and pointless.
Maybe if Terra Battle was a game you'd pay money for and you didn't have to gamble to get new characters, maybe if there were no stamina system, maybe if it didn't use the timed drag-your-characters-around method of control in puzzle games, maybe if it didn't do all these things, I would've liked it better. TB is a RPG where you move your characters around a battlefield to "pincer" enemies in order to attack them. You have a wide cast of skills and abilities that trigger and alter the grid and there is also a wide range of characters to collect. Ultimately, I didn't like it much.