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Slotomania gets at least one thing right: it does a commendable job of recreating the experience of playing a slot machine. There are lots of bright flashy visuals to keep you entranced and your stash of virtual currency will slowly dwindle as you play. Problem is, while Slotomania is a good representation of an actual slot machine, that doesn’t exactly make for a fun Facebook game.

Tap Petshop developed by Pocket Gems is a delightful game that allows you to run your very own pet shop with every kind of animal you can imagine. Set up animal habitats, choose different breeds of animals and their mates, and expand and decorate your pet shop while collecting profits that you can reinvest. Gamezebo’s Tap Petshop quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

You wake up in your bedroom from one of the deepest sleeps you’ve ever known, head nestled safely in your trusty pillow. A soft blanket surrounds you with warmth and comfort. Only on this particular morning, you shake off the fog clouding your head to discover that your whole world was destroyed as you dreamt. You get up, walk through the door and are aren’t quite sure if the dream has ended. The ground forms at your feet as you start out on the path to meet up at the Bastion. That’s all you know you’re supposed to do.

Imagine you are taking a nice stroll through one day when suddenly, you are whisked away to a rundown cemetery and placed under a curse by an evil warlock who has the unfortunate hobby of murdering adults, kidnapping their children and placing them in life or death situations. Welcome to Redemption Cemetery: Children’s Plight, where it’s up to you to save the children and bring peace to their guardians. In the process you will be tracking down amulets that will allow you to defeat the evil warlock and end the curse that has trapped you in the cemetery.

It might be hard for the freemium faithful to believe, but it’s been nearly a year since Pocket Gems first released their hit zoo management game Tap Zoo on the iPhone. Since that time the company has gone on to release another big hit – Tap Pet Hotel – and readied one more animal loving freemium game for release. But is their latest offering, Tap Petshop, primed to be every bit the hit that Tap Zoo was?

Part of a game’s challenge is simply learning to play it on any given platform. When Zuma came out, the hardest part was using the mouse, keyboard or game controller to rotate the frog shooting the marbles to exactly the right angle before firing. But what if you could just tap exactly where the marble was supposed to go? Would it still be fun, or would it be too easy? Riot Rings addresses this problem by taking the basic Zuma formula and adding so much to it that you forget that the issue was there in the first place.

I'm not going to lie: things look bleak right now. All that's left of humanity is trapped in this tiny little space station, and our enemies are closing in on us from all sides. What's that? You just arrived on the station and need some money? How about you take over here and start blasting aliens in exchange for some cold, hard, cash. Here, take this copy of Blast Radius on the iPhone and start getting ready. No, really, knock yourself out. Don't mind me, I'll just on the other end of the hangar preparing my little escape shuttle.

Are you a fan of Angry Birds? Do you enjoy quirky little physics puzzlers on your iPhone? Do you like goofy premises, clever gameplay and adorable graphics? Then do I have a game for you: iBlast Moki 2, the new sequel to the hit iPhone game from a couple of years ago. It's an incredible sequel to what was already an incredible game, and it's definitely something that no puzzle geek should consider passing up.

The third episode in the 1112 adventure game series (following episodes 01 and 02) will launch on Aug. 23 for iPhone, iPad and Mac, the game's developer Agharta Studio has just announced. In Episode 03 the hero, Louis, is back in Jalonsville by means of an enigmatic passageway, but as the mystery thickens he begins to stagger into madness. Can you help him regain a foothold in reality?

While there’s no official confirmation from either Zynga or Astro Ape, it looks like the studio behind mobile social successes like Monsterz Revenge and Office Heroes has just become the latest acquisition by the social gaming giant. How do we know? Astro Ape’s CEO Chieh Huang, as well as several other staffers, have just updated their Linked In profiles to show their place of employment as “Zynga NY.”

For whatever reason, despite everything else today’s Android phones can do, I’m still impressed when I see 3D models and worlds in a game that I’m playing on my phone. It’s just one of those things that makes me remember that living in the future is awesome. Now you’re telling me that I can have a spiritual kin to Phantasy Star Online in my pocket at all times? OK. I’m just going to start throwing money at you until you give me this game.

Hold up, Star Legends is Free-To-Play? Quick, somebody pinch me.

The iPhone has seen a lot of great tower defense games over the last few years, but if you were to ask any TD enthusiast, they’d easily put Critical Thought Games’ geoDefense series in their top 10. Now the man behind those games has teamed up with Simutronics (the folks behind Facebook’s fantastic Fantasy University) for another tower defense outing, and it looks like it might just be the App Store’s best TD yet.

As a 34 year old man I can pretty confidently say I’ve both been playing games my entire life and that the videogame industry basically started when I did. So when I play a new game and instantly start thinking about the games in the past, it’s not because I think it’s derivative. Far from it. It’s just that I know games are about iteration, and building on what came before. That’s a long way to say that I both enjoy Drag Racing for what it is and where it came from.

Bight Games, the developer behind the iPhone and Facebook freemium hit Trade Nations, has become the latest studio to be purchased by Electronic Arts.

When Apple dropped the hammer on incentivized installs back in April, most folks had believed that would sound the death knell for then-thriving companies built around the pay-per-install business model. Instead it forced them to get creative. Take Tapjoy for instance. Back in June, they launched a $5 million fund to help iOS developers make the jump to Android – a platform where incentivized installs are still fair game. Now, only two months later, they’ve announced new partnerships that bring the total number of apps using their monetization services to more than 10,000.

I'm not always the best boyfriend. I'm distant sometimes. Or I forget appointments. Or, sometimes, I say stupid things. However, I'm pretty certain that I'm a lot better than the boyfriend who appears in Zombie Minesweeper, the first iOS release from Frogtoss Games. Unlike this absentee paramour, I'm pretty certain that I've never done anything as stupid as convincing my girlfriend to walk across a zombie-infested county just so we can have a romantic weekend alone. That said, I guess I should be grateful that this guy managed to convince his girlfriend to do just that, because Zombie Minesweeper is one of the best games to appear on the platform.

Social game developer Digital Chocolate has announced a major new acquisition in the form of Cake Mania and Tradewinds developer Sandlot Games.

Pet Inn for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch allows you to build your very own Pet Inn. Build charming rooms from the ground up for your pets to enjoy. Collect coins from your pets at various intervals and use them to reinvest in your Pet Inn. Hire staff to take care of the animals and be sure to give them love when they ask for it. Gamezebo’s quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

I really wanted to like Exitium: Saviors of Vardonia when I first started it up. The title promised to be an amazing, huge, and fast-paced action RPG straight out of the 16-Bit era of video games. After spending some time playing the game, I can guarantee that the game manages to deliver on two-out-of-three of those promises, but it's not so much "amazing" as it is "so-so."

It’s tough reviewing a game like Shoot the Birds because there’s a weird battle going on in my brain about content versus gameplay. Typically, the gameplay tends to trump all other aspects of a game, with solid presentation, story and achievements rounding out the package. Shoot the Birds gives us solid mechanics and decent presentation to be sure. But there’s just something about the content that’s really bothering me.