Tetris on iOS, it’s not that great. The controls are fine, but it’s just another free to play game filled with everything you’d expect that really does detract from the fun of playing Tetris. I would’ve gladly paid 5 dollars to play some Tetris in peace. Maybe I should just dig up Tetris DS again!
DEATHLOOP is an interesting first person shooter based around the concept of all taking place around one single day where your character is trying to break the loop by finding and killing 7 specific people. Combining puzzles, exploration and combat, it is a fine experience that I almost dropped because I wasn’t sure how to proceed, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The more interesting elements of the game were definitely its lore and puzzles, and I’ve found the combat and character upgrades/customization to be a bit lacking.
Tiny Island Survival has an interesting idea - what if a little incremental/exploration game took place on a single screen representing a single island? What could you do then, how much stuff would there be to do? I ultimately do not know, because it’s also a game that has ads so invasive I would rather shut it down and load it back up whenever they popped during gameplay, until it ultimately wore me down and I stopped playing. An interesting core idea, for sure, tho!
Inscryption (from the creator of Pony Island) is a surprising, amazing and very interesting card game where a lot of things happen and this review will contain light spoilers. Based on the fictional card game ‘Inscryption’ and the adventures of a card enthusiast messing around with it. Going through different styles of gameplay - but with consistent rules thorough - with light puzzle solving you’ll play a nice card game against a wide variety of opponents, each with their own special gimmicks and tricks. I had a great time with it!
Dawncaster is an amazing deckbuilding roguelike where you fight monsters and build your character using a ton of different cards, powers and strategies. It’s the kind of game that really sucked me in and I would still be playing it right now if I didn’t feel like I had to try other games constantly. I had a great time with it and the sheer amount of content to unlock and ideas to test out makes the purchase completely worth it. Being a premium title, there are no ads or annoying microtransactions as well, another great plus in my book!
Rise & Shine is a puzzle platformer with a tone issue and interesting but poorly framed mechanics. Playing a young boy named Rise, you go through an invasion by evil video game grunts by wielding the mythical gun Shine, shooting your way through difficult enemies, massive bosses and somewhat ill-conceived puzzle sections. I really couldn’t get into it and dropped the game fairly quickly, which is a shame, because there are good ideas in there!
Idle Acorns is a cute, but way too simple idle game with very little in lieu of interactions, instead offsetting most of its progress on long timers that leave very little to do while you are waiting. The potential was certainly there, with the various game screens - waiting for acorns, fishing, races and cooking - but ultimately systems feed into each other insomuch as they are all gated by a wait for diamonds.
Minit is a pretty cool adventure/puzzle game inspired by some of the classic Legend of Zelda titles with a very interesting twist; What if your character could only be alive for 60 seconds before automatically dying and respawning at your house? Playing with this core mechanic to create a really interesting puzzle game that does not overextend its welcome, you go around the map, collecting items, figuring mysteries around, fighting some foes and ultimately get rid of the curse that makes you die constantly. I really enjoyed it!
Idle Industries is not that bad if you know exactly what you are getting into - a free idle game loosely based around collecting resources, crafting items and selling them to make money. I had a fine time with it, even if it ultimately was a bit like junk food and if the layers upon layers of free to play mechanics slathered over the whole thing made it a bit of a mess.
Kingsway is an RPG with an interesting concept; What if everything in the game was represented by Operating System elements? Bags as folders, different pages of the UI (stats, skills, etc.) represented by various programs on your desktop; Blue screen when you die, and more. I wasn’t entirely satisfied by my experience, feeling that the core gameplay loop wasn’t satisfying enough and that the whole “OS RPG” paradigm wasn’t pushed far enough for me.
Melvor Idle is an idle game on multiple platforms that I will revisit in the future because I do happen to have bought the PC version on steam. Contrary to that one, the iOS version is free and comes with a bunch of restrictions and in-app purchases that certainly soured my experience a whole lot. Ultimately it is because of confusing UX and progression that I dropped it. It is fine to have a ton of systems in your games - or a ton of different skills that do mostly the same thing, but affecting different stats - but making it all come together is really important, and - for now - Melvor Idle didn’t do that at all for me.
Diablo 2 Resurrected is the remastered version of Diablo 2, the 2000 action RPG classic, brought to more modern standards for today’s gamers to enjoy without having to download an extremely old game. It is still totally Diablo 2 under the hood, but there are some quality of life improvements, some tweaks here and there, and it’s showing potential for even more improvements in the future. I have extreme nostalgia for Diablo 2 and remember it as a great, deep action RPG with strict mechanics, but I also remember that it was too tough for me as soon as you got to higher difficulties. Twenty one years later I’m here to report that things didn’t change much.
Time Idle RPG seemed like a neat idle game with a lot of ideas based around literally using time to do actions such as gathering resources, crafting and fighting enemies. Sadly with too many numbers and too many mechanics surfaced immediately so I was quickly overwhelmed and stopped.
Get In The Car, Loser! Is an amazing lesbian road adventure RPG with great characters, music, story, lore and mechanics that I blazed through and enjoyed thoroughly, both with the story that made me want to know what was going to happen next and the battle mechanics that made every encounter interesting and satisfying to play. It’s free (with paid DLC that I immediately bought to support the game’s creator) so I recommend it without reservation.
Great year for games, not much for anything else. Without fanfare… my top ten!
Universal Paperclips is the iOS version of a classic browser based game where you start manually making some paperclips and idle your way into transforming the whole universe into paperclips; A few systems are added on top of each other, like the stock market, quantum computing and game simulations, all to feed into your paperclip making. Ultimately, the balance on mobile didn’t work well for me, and at some point progress became excruciatingly slow, so I stopped.
At the core of Outer Wilds is a very interesting and unique idea about exploring space, figuring out clues, solving puzzles and ultimately making sense of the whole universe. Playing as a newly minted astronaut in a colorful, rich world, you visit many planets in a solar system trapped in a time loop, visiting ruins, absorbing lore and hints, working strange machines and dodging danger along the way. I really like the idea in theory, but what I ultimately played left a sour taste of confusion in my mouth, probably due to my own lack of spatial coordination.
Million Onion Hotel is a stylish Match-3 like game where you tap on onions, fruits and a bunch of other weird things to get a combo multiplier going and progress through some levels. I couldn’t understand how to play it and lost interest pretty quickly after a few boss fights where my time was just drained constantly. Quirky story segments, collectibles and a bunch of different mechanics layered on top of each other couldn’t get me to put more time into it, sadly.
Boyfriend Dungeon, the latest game from Kitfox Games, is a combination of dungeon crawler and dating sim where you play someone going on vacation in a small sunny town with the underlying goal to meet new people and potentially date them. The twist here is that these people can also turn into weapons that you use to fight monsters representing your own fears inside “dunjs” scattered across town, so you use them to fight as well. A neat twist on both genres, I had a good time with Boyfriend Dungeon! The pacing was a bit weird, but there was a lot to smooch here!
I was a bit surprised to see a sequel to Infinitode already - since I had discovered the original only a small while ago - but this tower defense game is chuck-full of content with not too much of the usual free-to-play friction that appears in any game supported by that economical model. With tons of missions on each level, an addictive daily quest system, a bunch of upgrades, cool towers and a good difficulty progression, I had a good time with it still and played it a bunch.