I vaguely remember playing Doodle God a while back; you would mix elements like earth and fire to create more and more elements. The concept worked because there is plenty you can make using your imagination and a few basic items and the 'goal' of the game to finding all possible combinations felt okay. Now with Doodle Tanks, you have to fumble around aimlessly with tank parts, engineers and other doodads, making matches that don't make sense, basically trial-and-error-ing the whole thing.
I've spent so much time on Adventure Capitalist. Countless hours tapping things to upgrade them so I would get enough money to buy more things and upgrades to get more money to do that ad infinitum. Then you reset your things but you get even more money next time. And the numbers go really really high and you can buy things to make the numbers go even faster. It's basically the only iOS game I've played so far that made me watch its ads gleefully - because it made the numbers go faster, and watching a 30s ad is always worth it to do that. If you like idle game - which I'm not sure what that says about you, or me - you gotta try this one.
Sonic Runners is trash. I really hated it. And I didn't even play it that much. There was some loading, some menus, some clutter. Maybe if it only had been a sonic endless runner without fifteen layers of free to play stuff layered onto it. I'm sure Big The Cat is in it also. It also ran terribly on my iPad. Oh well.
Magic Touch: Wizard For Hire is a game about drawing symbols on your iOS device in order to burst balloons. It's a pretty fun game! Although the core mechanics are very enjoyable, I didn't play it for too long because of a lack of clear progression, luck-based difficulty spikes and the abusive usage of full screen video ads in a free game - an eternal debate I'm having between myself and the iOS game space.
Noodles! is a mighty fun game, I've spent a bunch of hours with it and never did its mechanics fail to amuse me. That being said, there was too much of it, I've stopped at about 40% of the game being over, and what was left to do was more of the same. Some games overstay their welcomes and without adding new mechanics or without metaphorical carrots to dangle in front of me, I had to stop before I got really bored with the same puzzles over and over.
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.
Tadpole Tap is a simple little game where you're a tadpole, and you tap on things to stick your tongue out and grab them. By doing so, you accumulate flies that can be used to unlock new upgrades and different tadpoles. It's an okay game, I suppose, but it didn't grab my attention at all. After playing for about an hour, completing a number of runs during that time, I put it down and moved on to something else.
Century City is an okay idle game where you build a city and spend time by tapping in a mine to get more money to build you city. It's not the worst idle game I've played ever, but it's a bit boring. There isn't much to do besides tapping inside the mine - and sometimes playing some very simple mini-games - so it didn't grab my attention for super long. The isometric style is kinda cool, however.
Masters of the Masks is a confusing and convoluted free to play turn-based RPG where you spend stamina in order to fight guys, only to die on the fourth level because the balance is out of wack. To do so, you find materials to create masks and gear and you spin wheels and wait for a few minutes in order for crafting to complete - or you can always pay to make it faster. I didn't have much fun with 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.
This is a bad game. If you ignore the core, the mechanics around it are encrusted with layers upon layers of systems, resources, microtransactions and other purchases, unlockable content and levels, things that need to be added carefully to not spoil the broth. But then, if you look at the main game, this just adds insult to injury, as the core gameplay is clunky, unbalanced and not fun.
Devious Dungeon 2 is okay as an iOS platformer with RPG mechanics. It's fairly balanced, the difficulty curve goes up in a manageable way and although coins are sold, you don't really need to buy anything with real money. That's probably one of my biggest issue with the game, in a weird way, there isn't much to spend your money on in order to get an easier time with the game. But that put aside, it's a pretty fun one.
Kingdom Rush Origins is an okay follow up to all the other KR games and it's entertaining enough as a tower defense title, albeit not saved by different towers, enemies and heroes. I suppose that's the main issue with these games; How do you keep making them and keep making them feel fresh and new? There are some things they could do, like add more tiers of tower upgrades, or tweak the hero system, or change the powers you can use, but it doesn't mean that KRO isn't fun to play. It just doesn't feel very new.
Dragon Hills is an 'endless runner' type of game where you go through some hills with the titular dragon, collect cash doing so and use that cash in order to unlock upgrades that will help you do better the next time around. Clunky controls and uninteresting upgrades made this game something I didn't want to spend more time on than I had to. It's not terrible but it's also not very fun, so you can pass this one.
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.
For some reason, this interesting strategy game on iOS didn't display ads properly at first, when I got it. The IAP to get rid of them was there, but I never saw any. Maybe if I had, it would've gotten a 3/5, depending on how frequent they would have been. But I still say it's an interesting game because grid-based strategy products aren't that abundant on iOS - even if the platform should suit them well - and the team building with new units you unlock after completing certain missions is a pretty good drive to keep playing.
Bloons is a bit weird in the tower defense genre. You don't go through a specific set of maps, instead you can attempt any of them at any difficulties you've unlocked. You unlock better towers with a global level - and then you buy them during maps with cash you get from popping balloons. Some of the maps are weird and there are so many towers that it feels a bit like diluting the overall use of each types. I still had a fun time with it, but the lack of a clear progression made me stop after a while.
Leaving behind my fears of moving from opinions to hyperbole, I have to say that FFRK represents one pillar of mobile gaming that is turning this side of my review section into a runaway train of 1/5s and 2/5s. Around the Final Fantasy nostalgia core, around the microtransactions, the energy timers, the roulettes to buy stuff, the fusion and the weird impenetrable systems designed to make money might have been an okay game only if the designers hadn't chosen to make this game excessively reliant on online.
SwapQuest is quite interesting with it's core systems and the ways you can upgrade your character and improve it, but ultimately the act of playing it is boring, mostly because of the main idea that you walk along a path made out of tiles and you have to switch them around in order to progress forward; a needed progress because of the wall of darkness that follows you. Doing so, you fight monsters and pick up chests and things like that.
TouchTone has a much interesting framing device than the actual gameplay most of the time and the relative boredom I had while moving move rows and columns of lines in order to reflect beams on targets outbalanced my desire to see the story through. Which is a shame since it seemed at least interesting and novel, setting you as this spy going through communications in order to assess whether someone is relevant to national security or not. I'm a bit disappointed by it.