Touch Arcade

Despite being pretty bare-bones and having a few timed game mechanics that are slightly annoying, The Mesh is still a very easy recommend. Especially for only two bucks. It’s simple, beautiful, and relaxing--usually.

Here’s the rub. I like this game, I truly do. It captures the spirit and aesthetic of Zero Punctuation perfectly, it’s polished, fairly original, and it’s made me laugh out loud numerous times. But after so long, you’ll have seen every permutation of every choice in every mini-game, and then the game loses its luster, because the only thing left to do is grind out hats to unlock every character. ...The long term fun in this game is in the humor, not the gameplay. But once that well runs dry, there’s not much.

If you don’t have three dollars to spare, the game is still a lot of fun--and much more challenging--without spending anything. It’s free with no ads, it looks amazing, and you can race your friends up the leaderboards by speedrunning each level. What are you waiting for? This is Illusion Labs we’re talkin’ about here.

Cally's Caves 3 is jam-packed with content, of which a significant and satisfying portion is totally free to play with only infrequent ads as strings. Virtually every aspect of the game shows significant improvement over its already-excellent predecessor, and its new elements are clearly carefully designed, properly-realized, and contribute greatly to the overall experience.

Don't Starve truly stands as an excellent iPad game filled with dread and fun, terror and laughter (Wilson is quite funny), and is a very rewarding experience and a rare achievement that has rightly captured so many gamers' attention.

I would have a bigger issue with the economy of Samurai Blitz if the game weren't so fun to play on a constant basis. Although it would be nice to earn rewards more often, the core mechanics stand up on their own, and this is one runner I'll be keeping on my device for quite a while.

If you're looking for a good story, are willing to put up with some technical issues, and most importantly are okay with the idea of a game deliberately not being fun, then you might find Always Sometimes Monsters to be up your alley. I suppose I'm glad I experienced it, but I'm not sure how much I'd recommend the game, particularly this clunky version.

There's so much that could have been amazing about Heroki. It just falls so short, and it genuinely makes me sad. It pains me for so many reasons to say bad things about Heroki because of what the game could potentially stand for. But as a game? It's just not great.

At its core, AlphaBear isn't dramatically different from most other letter games, but between its few gameplay twists, the rewarding collection mechanic, and its infectiously silly and fun-loving nature, it's an easy game to fall for. While I'm not totally happy with the power-up system, it's still a remarkably generous example of a free-to-play game

I feel like I could go on and on about this game, but you probably have things to do, so here are some final stray observations: the art is fantastic in this game, with its own unique style while still paying homage to the pixel-y classics of the past. The character animations are incredibly fluid and give the movement a really good feel. The levels are a bit longer than most iOS platformers (it’s a port, after all), but never so long that they become frustrating.