Sometimes you play a game so simple yet so effective that it leaves you wondering why no one has done it before. Meet Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe, a sort of Tetris match-3 and platformer mash-up that gives as good as it gets. With twinges of Spelunky in there too, this fast-paced, quick-thinking blaster will kill you every few minutes, and yet you'll keep coming back for more. The soundtrack is sublime, the controls are spot-on, and the challenge is very, very real. What I'm saying is, you're going to love this game.

The world of light and bright fairy tales has been turned dark and sinister as characters like Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk) have been trapped inside books in Grimm Reaper: Hidden Tales. Once you’ve downloaded this free-to-play world onto your computer, though, all of the charm behind the game’s setup is quickly shoved aside in favor of all-too-frequent pay walls and repetitive gameplay.

Longtime readers of this site may know I have a problem with the current explosion of social strategy games. By the time you've played your twentieth variation of the same formula, they've all started to blur together into a confused jumble of housing, farms, and amicable quest givers. I think I've forgotten the names of most of them. And that's why I found myself looking so forward to Godsrule: War of Mortals. For one, it was published by Sega, whose name still evokes awesomeness despite the many years since the glory days of Sonic the Hedgehog; and for another, it promised to deliver a brand of social strategy combat worth paying attention to. Here, I'd hoped, was a social strategy game worthy of the gods.

Hyper Breaker Turbo is one of the most exciting brick-breaking arcade games out there. Actually, that sentence sounds a bit bland. This game deserves better. Hyper Breaker Turbo is Breakout injected with a proprietary blend of nitrous and the blood of a rampaging bull. It's fast, it's challenging, it's filled with awesome power-ups, and even though it's filled with failures and successes, it never gets frustrating.

As far as match-three games go, there's plenty of room for change and innovation; unfortunately, few developers seem inclined to use it. The new deep-sea-themed match-three game Jewel Legends: Atlantis falls firmly into that un-expansive camp. Although a prime example of established mechanics, the game does nothing whatsoever to advance the match-three genre.

It often seems like Cartoon Network’s Regular Show can do no wrong. Whether it’s in the episodes themselves, the spin-off mobile applications, or the countless strings of unique and quotable dialogue, the wild misadventures of the 23-year-old slackers Mordecai and Rigby have established a massive cult following of both kids and adults alike. So why should a full-fledged mobile game based on the much beloved series be any different? 

You’ve heard of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, but have you ever met Greedy Grub? Both insects are capable of eating half the world for their personal growth, but whereas the Caterpillar is restricted to the pages of his storybook, Grub exists in Greedy Grub, an adorable iOS world-building game. Greedy Grub tries some new ideas and most of them pan out, though you can still expect plenty of good old-fashioned waiting around thanks to its freemium model.

Using games as a teaching tool can be a powerful avenue of education. Gaming's increased role in educating both children and adults is becoming a major part of the industry. So when a new game comes around that aims to expand word power and teach fun facts, there's a ton of potential to be unlocked. Then, there's Wordshift Academy, a word game filled with facts and trivia, but plagued with a serious case of boring.

Family Tales: The Sisters is a fairly typical hidden object adventure game that doesn’t break the mold in any respect. Its storyline follows a woman’s journey to rescue her twin sister, with said journey taking players through the real world and alternate dimensions via both magical and scientific means. While there’s some good to be found in Family Tales: The Sisters, every positive is offset by one (or more) problems.

While most people would equate video games with fun, it’s important to see video games for what they truly are: a medium. Like a book, a film, or a painting, video games provide the framework through which a creator can engage their audience. “Fun” doesn’t always have to factor into it.

In the beginning, there was a vast wasteland of interactive nothingness.  And so Man created the video game.  Man then got tired of playing space shooters and sword-wielding heroes, so he created the god game.  One in-game, all-powerful planet spirit got tired of running everything, so he created the Reus: the eponymous Giant designed to do the bidding of the planet through manual labor and you, the player whose not-so-distant ancestor invented the video game.

The iPhone has no shortage of games that have you flinging cartoony creatures at various targets with something approximating physics. If you imagine an Angry Birds where you navigate levels with multiple flings of your cute mascot, rather than aiming for  a single stationary objective, you’ve got a pretty good handle on what Bombcats is like. Are we at our saturation point for using animals as projectiles, or will you want to spend all nine of your lives playing Bombcats?

Throughout the course of gaming history, sequels have typically followed one of two conventions. Some are iterative, by building upon what came before it; a casual passerby might not be able to find much different between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, or Mega Man and Mega Man 2 at a glance. 

More than just a mere update, SEGA's new release of Sonic the Hedgehog rebuilds the Genesis classic from the ground up to not only run on iPhone, but feel optimized for it as well. Fortunately for those who already purchased the original version, upgrading to this version comes at no extra cost.

It’s actually a pretty ingenious idea to develop a video game that can be cross-promoted with actual, physical products. Just look at the success/cash cow that console games like Skylanders have become, and it is kind of a no-brainer. It’s thanks to this concept that the fine folks at Nikko and Paladin Studios (Momonga Pinball) have released a new iOS racing game that not only provides plenty of fun for racing fans, but also reminds us that there’s still a lot to like about RC cars.

I’ve been mucking about with Dragon Bane for a while now; slaying undead, battling dragons, forging powerful new gear, and so on. In all that time I still haven’t managed to figure out how I feel about it. There are some interesting ideas here and a surprising amount of unique elements. Conversely it also uses a very bizarre freemium model that dilutes the fun a bit. It’s complicated.

I think that life around camp just got a whole lot more hairy! Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery borrows from the narrative-puzzle style of gameplay that’s seen in the Professor Layton series on the Nintendo DS, but has some cool ideas and concepts that are all to its own. In the first episode of a planned five, we see Jacob arrive for his first stay at summer camp, after passing by something that looks suspiciously like Bigfoot on the side of the road. What follows is a light adventure with some clever puzzling to be found, but a lot of dead air and wasted potential all around.

Turbo Racing League, based on the upcoming film Turbo, looks to rewrite the definition of “a snail’s pace.” Based entirely around surprisingly quick snails, Turbo Racing League is a kart racer whose focus is less on crazy items and action, and more on track design and speedy gameplay. It has a few painful faults, but its unique style is likely to entertain players of all ages.

Following the success of games like Fairway Solitaire and Solitaire Blitz, the pyramid genre of solitaire games has regained a ton of popularity, as the incredibly accessible game type simply asks players to click on cards one number higher or lower than the card on the deck. Following in that same vein is Solitaire Tales on Facebook, a game that starts strong, but quickly suffers from pushy and even deceptive friend invites, and a skewed level difficulty that makes it hard to progress.

Don’t ask me what the world is going to look like in 2020, because I was one of those kids who was certain we’d have flying cars by now. While we wait to find out, you can shape you own version of the near future by playing 2020: My Country.As a sequel tothe Facebook city builder My Country,this one goes mobile with some new ideas – but ultimately, not enough of them.