Touch Arcade

I like Dirac. It’s a clever idea that works pretty well on the touchscreen, and there’s plenty of content to keep you engaged in the form of extra modes with slightly tweaked game mechanics.

It really is a great digital version of a pretty good game, and I feel that in this case, the digital version has surpassed the physical one. So, even though this is probably the weirdest sentence to ever come out of my mouth, I suggest you go and start blowing up kittens.

Doomsday Clicker is not really what I'd call essential, and hardly the apex of the clicker genre, which already has a tenuous relationship with the concept of gameplay to begin with. But, it's amusing with great music, and had me checking in and blowing up the world in comical ways for at least a few days. And I happily spent a couple of bucks on it and got my $1.99 worth out of it.

There's a lot of little things that bother me, but the truth is that I will likely be playing a lot more of this well after my review is finished. It's imperfect, but fun, and only $0.99 at launch, so I definitely recommend it.

At the end of the day, Dream Machine is definitely reminiscent of Monument Valley, but the tones and mechanics of each vary greatly, and the former is somewhat lacking in polish. The story doesn’t really offer much, but it’s nice window dressing for an abstract puzzler such as this.

I'd strongly recommend giving the free portion a shot, but keep in mind that it takes a while for the game to properly get going. If you're patient with it, however, you'll find a game that can safely hang with the best dungeon crawlers on iOS.

Beat Stomper is a far more interesting game than I was expecting. Sure, at a very basic level it’s a pretty standard vertical high score chaser. What makes it stand out, though, is that the developers seemingly rounded up all the drugs and stuffed them into the coding somehow.

The rope swinging feels great and the racing is fast and fair. (Well, you can use a speed boost every few hours if you watch an ad, but you’re not actually racing in real time so that doesn't bug me too much.) Still, even though I get excited when I check in and find that my stamina is full, I can’t help but wish it wasn’t there at all (or lasted longer, or refilled faster) so I could enjoy the game in longer sessions.

Revenant Dogma is another good effort from EXE-Create, a JRPG very much in line with their usual strengths. Its enjoyable characters work their way through a fairly typical "magic racism" RPG plot in charismatic fashion, aided by a pleasant localization that knows when to whip out the comic relief and when to play things straight.

It's impossible to put down, and inspired me to spend entire afternoons trying to be the very best for multiple reasons. Start playing Tomb of the Mask now, and you may never stop.