Bicolor is a fun little puzzle game with very little issues. Then again, the gameplay is also pretty straightforward, you have to fill the screen with one color by moving tiles around. They have a number on them, and that’s the number of squares you have to move them before they disapear.
Transistor is an interesting game, going in blind, I thought it was going to be some kind of action-rpg where you could stop time to have an easier time with some enemies. I didn’t know there would be a talking sword, I didn’t know there would be level-up mechanics, I didn’t know much, really. I enjoyed it quite much since I beat the game in three days, playing here and there where I had time. A fantastic little game, flawed in spots, but still pretty good.
FTL: Faster Than Light is a great space-themed roguelike. The core mechanics are pretty great even adapted for the iPad. From moving around the galaxy to fighting enemy vessels, there is much to do and many tries need to be taken in order to get to the end, more so to defeat the last boss
Lego Marvel Super Heroes isn’t very good. The last lego game I’ve played was the first Star Wars one and that was a while ago. While I think this game has some charm with its characters and references and while I think somee of the core gameplay is quite solid, there was too much of a confusing mess when I tried playing this one and I stopped pretty quickly to go spend my time somewhere else.
Knights of Puzzelot is a haunted game, haunted by the specter or free to play mechanics and tactics to get your money. The core game is quite good, but that’s even more of a bummer when almost every step of the way, I’m left wondering if something is difficult because they want me to pay, or if it’s just annoying for the sake of convincing me to pay, or wondering if the next level is going to be the one where I have to grind or pay to get past.
One Way Heroics is a great little game, I really had tons of fun with it. It’s not perfect and I wish it was easier - as I do most roguelikes - but my issues I have with it are mostly of personal taste and nothing really ruins the game for me. I would recommend this game to anyone that likes RPGs with weird mechanics, especially roguelikes. I played about 10 different characters, more or less close to the big boss fight the game was warning me of, but I never saw it actually happen, sadly.
Wayward Souls is too difficult for being on iOS. The quick, almost twitchy-like type of control you need for something like this action RPG is impossible to achieve with touch controls and to make matters worse, the upgrades and systems don’t really work in any way that helped me get better after each successive try.
Coin Crypt is quite weird, it’s one of these games where your main resource isn’t something you’d usually expect to use as-is. In Coin Crypt, your special moves and your money are one and the same, you fight with coins that you collect in chests and on enemies. I’ve been a bit confused with it, and the lack of help on some systems made me not use them, but I had some fun with it, especially after I’ve figured it out.
There is a brutal simplicity in Hitman Go, one that flows from it’s very clean design and the refined list of actions players can take, one that stems from well-designed puzzles that eschews randomness in favor of careful logic and planning. That simplicity was a two-edged sword, but I had a fantastic time with Hitman Go
Reaper - Tale of a Pale Swordsman isn’t a very good game, I feel like it was designed as separate things brought together in a confused result, with a good visual style and some interesting RPG mechanics here and there, I only grew frustrated and confused with it
Altough it crashed to desktop quite a few times while I was playing it, I really enjoyed my time with Warhammer Quest and plan to sink some more as soon as I have the chance. It’s a great little RPG with interesting mechanics and hooks to keep me playing for quite a while
Card City Nights is a cute and fun little card game featuring things from other fun games I’ve played (Iji, Hero Core) and I was at first pretty interested by its systems, the way you can win battles and the way the game is structured. However, this didn’t hold out forever
Braveland is an amazing little strategy game from iOS in which you control your army of peasants, knights and archers in a quest to defeat an evil king. You also have a hero with stats and equipment. I really enjoyed that game and I wish there was more of it. Actually, it ends quite abruptly by saying “END OF BOOK ONE” and then you can’t continue to a theoretical book two, what’s up with that?
I really enjoyed the first Half-Minute Hero game, in small bite-sized chunks of adventures, you went around fighting things, solving simple puzzles and completing challenges in less than 30 seconds (with some help from the money-grabbing time-rewinding goddess). This sequel bogs it down with long cutscenes and moves to a more linear way to frame the game instead of the level system it used before. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much.
Games where you match blocks are not that rare, but I love those with RPG elements and clever mechanics here and there. 10000000(000?) was a good example of such a game, but Block Legend is less so. I found that a few mechanics were superfluous or not well thought out and the progression was almost doing more harm than good.
Diablo 3 was pretty okay, but I didn’t play it much before the expansion came out. Now it’s all I play, more or less. In simple terms, the expansion added Loot 2.0, new difficulty levels, act 5, the crusader class and adventure mode. These things work together in unison to make a damn good game that I’ll play a bunch.
Out There is a brutal space adventure game where you are an astronaut in a spaceship and you need to go at the bottom right of the map. To do so, you spend fuel, oxygen, break your spaceship instruments, find alien planets, make decisions, spend fuel, salvage something for precious iron, spend fuel, then drift endlessly in space. I enjoyed it, even if I couldn’t make it very far.
The last time I reviewed Marvel Heroes, the Marvel Universe action RPG, I wasn’t impressed. There wasn’t much to hook me to play more and I found a bunch of things that bothered me. There are still a few of these, but 220 hours later, I think I can safely say that I had a great time with this updated version of MH.
While it might look like an innocent match-3 game with RPG mechanics, Puzzling Rush is terrible, for the single reason that never ever, any mechanics are explained, leaving the player with a bunch of symbols and ‘HELP’ screens that are confusing and impossible to decipher.
A little strategy game with some good old decision-making weaved in, The Banner Saga has style by the bucket and spends a great deal to construct an interesting world around familiar and simple good gameplay mechanics.