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The first time I tried a digital collectible card game (or whatever the proper term for the genre is), I had very low expectations yet quickly found myself ensnared by the admittedly Pavlovian gameplay, and I continue to tap for rewards to this very day. But Monster Paradise, despite excellent production values and a powerful, irresistibly cute Pokemon aesthetic, leaves me cold. It's not necessarily a bad game, it's just not particularly necessary.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that crabs and penguins are both pretty cute. The folks at Coca-Cola are similarly aware of this, and that’s why both creatures are starring in their upcoming iOS and Android game. Titled Crabs & Penguins, it tells the tale of a crab attempting to return a ball to a friendly group of penguins. Don’t even try and act like you don’t find that adorable.

Sure, alien bugs may have destroyed Earth and reduced its space fleet to a ragtag handful of survivors. But buck up: If you've got an iOS or Android device, you can still score a few victories for humanity with Strikefleet Omega, a freemium space battle game from Harebrained Schemes and publisher 6waves that turns the struggle for mankind's survival into a whole lot of fun.

To me, games don’t really need much of a premise or story to be a ton of fun, but sometimes you can really feel the developers stretching to force things together that just feel strange. Of course, this can work if you approach it all with a well-placed sense of humor, but in Dragon & Dracula, there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason that Dracula wants your baby Dragon dead. OK, fine. Dracula and his bat and rat minions want to stop you from collecting coins and jewels. Let’s do this, I guess.

From the tripped-out Rez to the outlandish Parappa the Rapper, many of my favorite gaming experiences have centered around music. Song Pop for Facebook and mobile devices is a battlefield of sorts for music fans like myself; a place to test our knowledge of all things melodic. It may not feature a singing onion, but it’s certainly a lot of fun.

Nestled amid the hustle and bustle of the Ottawa Game Conference - in the corner of the Ottawa Convention Center’s second floor main hallway - I found something special.

I'm not a soccer fan myself, so my vague hope was that Soccer Superstars 2012 would keep it simple. Some running, some kicking of the ball, and maybe the option to spend a bit of money to make the goalie a little less useless. But no such luck. I knew I was in deep when the tutorial went on, and on, and on... and on. Not unnecessarily, mind you, and it wasn't digging down into the nitty-gritty details by any measure. There's just that much material to cover.

In an infographic entitled “Game of Phones” - making it so punny I couldn’t ignore it - mobile analytics provider App Annie detailed the state of the union for today’s phone and tablet gaming giants. In other words, they did some research to bring you an updated answer to the burning question you’re no doubt asking daily: who’s doing better, Android of iOS?

Gameloft has announced a licensing deal with Hasbro, the end result of which will be their development of My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop titles for smartphones and tablets. I have to imagine all you bronies out there are gleefully placing party hats atop your head. Who could blame you?

There are a lot of perks that come with being an independent game developer. First and foremost, you don’t have a publisher trying to tinker with your creations. That very prospect is what has inspired so many people to go solo or develop for the smartphone and browser platforms in the first place. Awesome though it is, it leaves many of them without any sort of business backbone or financial leverage to promote their games. This is where Selfpubd comes in.

Run, fishy, run. Leap that log, forget the sun. Chasing Yello is and endless runner game for iOS that grants a small fish named Yello the opportunity to escape his overzealous owner, Mathilda, by way of a local wild creek. Yello’s freedom is hard-won, though. There are hazards galore in wild, and worst of all, Mathilda has a boat and a net.

We cover plenty of new games here at Gamezebo every week, but the number of games we’ve already covered that show up on new platforms? It’s staggering. Starting this Wednesday and continuing every week, we’ll be rounding up the games that aren’t quite new, but might be new to you depending on your platform of choice.

Remember M.U.L.E? It’s alright if you don’t. The classic sci-fi economy sim, designed by Dan Bunten and produced by Electronic Arts, is nearly a whopping thirty years old. Eons ahead of its time, M.U.L.E would go on to inspire classic simulation series’, including Civilization and Sim City.

A few months ago, I talked about a shocking addiction rocking a huge amount of the population, including perhaps you yourself. The culprit? Mobile devices. Among smartphone owners, 80% are now so glued to their mini-PCs that they surf, IM and game while watching other media. And 15% of that 80? They do it instead of watching. Looking now at some of the major announcements from this year’s game conference season, it seems I’m definitely not the only one watching these numbers.

Welcome to the quick start guide for Pocket Clothier, a from Kairosoft. You will be building a clothing empire. Create appealing floor plans, hire excellent staff, and unlock unique items to help you on your way so that you can rise up and become the number one clothier in the nation. This guide will help you familiarize yourself with the game world.

Say what you will about The Dark Knight, but he always manages to rise to the occasion. Be it taking down The Joker or putting up with the ire of the confused citizens of Gotham, he takes it all in stride. Everyone will be able to experience this stoic heroism in the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises game, coming to iOS and Android later this summer.

Bugs. Why’s it always gotta be bugs? Oh, that’s right—because insects are, in many ways, a far more successful class of life than primates (even if we’re much handsomer than those six-legged freaks). Strikefleet Omega, a strategy game for iOS and Android, illustrates a grim future where, once again, bugs have evolved and gotten the jump on humanity. Sheesh. Someone spray some Raid already.

You know what we can't stand? Video game tutorials. Nine times out of ten a tutorial will either be walls of text that we're clearly not going to digest properly, or half an hour of "do this simple thing", "now do it again but with an added element" and repeat until fin. The best tutorials are those which either incorporate the teaching into the gameplay, or let us figure it all out for ourselves.

If you really think about it, Draw Something is basically Win, Lose or Draw in mobile game form. The main difference between the two is that, in Draw Something, a lot of people resort to either cheating or drawing phallic imagery. Or maybe I just play with jerks. Either way, CBS has recently won a bidding war for a game show based on the Zynga-acquired title, created by Sony Pictures Television, Ryan Seacrest Productions and Embassy Row.

Duel of Fate is a card game developed by Gamevil that has players battling it out in a rock, paper, scissors fashion. Gamezebo’s Duel of Fate strategy guide and walkthrough will provide you with a quick start guide, tips and tricks, hints and cheats on how to win.