The Room Two
£1.99/$2.99
Improving on the award winning original, the more expansive sequel soon draws you into its dark, atmospheric world. Fiendish, multilayered puzzles require lots of poking, prodding and lever pulling.
Monument
Valley £2.99/$3.99
Inspired by MC Escher’s famous ‘impossible reality’ art, this isometric 3D puzzler forces you to think laterally as you visually ‘connect’ pathways so that your character can move between them.
Trainyard
£1.99/$2.99
This classic brain boggler sees you placing tracks to guide trains to colour-coded stations, sometimes needing to merge them or blend their colours. The tougher levels may well end up driving you loco!
World of Goo
£2.99/$4.99
A golden oldie to tax your logic and patience, it has you building bridges and other structures from gooey balls – some with special properties – to get enough of them to each level exit.
Tiny Thief
Free + IAPs
Rovio’s Robin Hood concept sees the eponymous hero stealing treasure from the rich. You’ll definitely need all your cunning to outsmart enemies, solve fiendish puzzles and unlock all the tasty bonus rewards.
Plunder Pirates
Ahoy there me hearties, here be treasure!
Launched on iOS last year, Midoki’s seafaring strategy MMO has finally landed on Android shores. It plays identically and you can even continue your existing iOS game on Android by entering a special code – a nice touch for those who are juggling devices.
Plunder Pirates offers a well-balanced combination of resource building, maritime exploration and good-oldfashioned plundering of rival bases. The early focus is on building up your island base, unlocking new structures and upgrading your defences and attacking capabilities. Key to all of this action is the production of gold and grog, from mines and distilleries respectively.
The third currency in the Plunder Pirates universe is gems; these are more difficult to source, found occasionally while seafaring or earned via certain achievements. Fortunately, while IAP bundles are available to speed up things such as building, the freemium aspect never becomes overbearing. Indeed, you can play the game perfectly happily without ever needing to shell out any of your real gold.
Merrily sailing around the high seas is the other main part of the game. Your ship’s crew is recruited from the tavern; the pirates come in various types and can be trained up in order to give them special powers for when you are in battle. In addition to attacking all of the AI bases on the map, you can act like a real pirate and plunder those of other players to earn gold and grog. You only get three minutes to mount your attack, with a bonus earned for achieving 100% destruction. Naturally, this means that your own base may be targeted by others, so an essential part of the gameplay is to build some serious defences such as cannons, mines and walls.
A friendlier aspect is the guild system, enabling you to team up with other players to chat, gain bonus perks and battle rival guilds in the newly added rumbles. It adds an extra facet to a fun, compulsive experience with a decent amount of strategy. The only slight, but obviously necessary, downside is the inability to play it offline.
Launched on iOS last year, Midoki’s seafaring strategy MMO has finally landed on Android shores. It plays identically and you can even continue your existing iOS game on Android by entering a special code – a nice touch for those who are juggling devices.
Plunder Pirates offers a well-balanced combination of resource building, maritime exploration and good-oldfashioned plundering of rival bases. The early focus is on building up your island base, unlocking new structures and upgrading your defences and attacking capabilities. Key to all of this action is the production of gold and grog, from mines and distilleries respectively.
The third currency in the Plunder Pirates universe is gems; these are more difficult to source, found occasionally while seafaring or earned via certain achievements. Fortunately, while IAP bundles are available to speed up things such as building, the freemium aspect never becomes overbearing. Indeed, you can play the game perfectly happily without ever needing to shell out any of your real gold.
Merrily sailing around the high seas is the other main part of the game. Your ship’s crew is recruited from the tavern; the pirates come in various types and can be trained up in order to give them special powers for when you are in battle. In addition to attacking all of the AI bases on the map, you can act like a real pirate and plunder those of other players to earn gold and grog. You only get three minutes to mount your attack, with a bonus earned for achieving 100% destruction. Naturally, this means that your own base may be targeted by others, so an essential part of the gameplay is to build some serious defences such as cannons, mines and walls.
A friendlier aspect is the guild system, enabling you to team up with other players to chat, gain bonus perks and battle rival guilds in the newly added rumbles. It adds an extra facet to a fun, compulsive experience with a decent amount of strategy. The only slight, but obviously necessary, downside is the inability to play it offline.
Thomas Was Alone
Enjoy this award-winning, striking and unique plat former
Perhaps one of the most memorable and charming games on any platform, Thomas Was Alone began life as a Flash-based browser game back in 2010, before being released for desktop in 2012. How does the mobile version compare? While it looks like a slightly drab block game, this really doesn’t give an accurate representation of how the game plays, or what it’s all about. You control Thomas, a discarded red block AI who is slowly becoming aware of his surroundings and abilities. As the game progresses, you encounter other AIs who each have different abilities and clearly defined personalities.
Thomas can jump, particularly well over distance, and he can fall well too, something that we learn in the introduction thanks to a Douglas Adams-esque narration, provided by comedian Danny Wallace. Taking place within the mainframe where the AIs were stored, the aim of each level is for you to shepherd each AI to the exit, a portal where they will be transported to the next map. Often, negotiating these maps will require some co-operative play, which means switching between AIs to guide them in turn. This is done by tapping the relevant coloured block on its position around the edge of the display, while control of your AIs around the map is achieved by using your thumb to move and jump.
When you’re not chuckling at the narration, you’ll be furrowing your brow trying to find a way to the portal (often level maps reconfigure as you attempt to get around) or admiring the game’s soundtrack, a gentle electric guitar that seems perpetually on the edge of going into heavy thrash mode. Unless gaming eye candy is an absolute must for you, Thomas Was Alone is a superb game.
» Price £3.99/$5.99
» Designed for Phone and tablet
» Requires Android 4.0
Perhaps one of the most memorable and charming games on any platform, Thomas Was Alone began life as a Flash-based browser game back in 2010, before being released for desktop in 2012. How does the mobile version compare? While it looks like a slightly drab block game, this really doesn’t give an accurate representation of how the game plays, or what it’s all about. You control Thomas, a discarded red block AI who is slowly becoming aware of his surroundings and abilities. As the game progresses, you encounter other AIs who each have different abilities and clearly defined personalities.
Thomas can jump, particularly well over distance, and he can fall well too, something that we learn in the introduction thanks to a Douglas Adams-esque narration, provided by comedian Danny Wallace. Taking place within the mainframe where the AIs were stored, the aim of each level is for you to shepherd each AI to the exit, a portal where they will be transported to the next map. Often, negotiating these maps will require some co-operative play, which means switching between AIs to guide them in turn. This is done by tapping the relevant coloured block on its position around the edge of the display, while control of your AIs around the map is achieved by using your thumb to move and jump.
When you’re not chuckling at the narration, you’ll be furrowing your brow trying to find a way to the portal (often level maps reconfigure as you attempt to get around) or admiring the game’s soundtrack, a gentle electric guitar that seems perpetually on the edge of going into heavy thrash mode. Unless gaming eye candy is an absolute must for you, Thomas Was Alone is a superb game.
» Price £3.99/$5.99
» Designed for Phone and tablet
» Requires Android 4.0
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