It's you, your opponents, and a big empty city just waiting for your deep pockets. Trade Mania 2 shares a lot with the board game Monopoly. Maybe a bit too much at times, but it's all in good fun. It hits a comfortable balance between sturdy strategy and blind luck, creating an atmosphere of casual competition that's easy to enjoy alone or with a few friends.

It's said that at the core of every cliché is a kernel of truth; when storytellers tap into that, they bring us unforgettable experiences. Gunnar Games uses themes, characters and settings that are very familiar to us in its new hidden object game, Small Town Terrors: Pilgrim's Hook but it does so expertly. The result is a darkly lush, unsettling adventure of Lovecraftian proportions.

Papo & Yo is beautiful, heartbreaking, moving, upsetting, powerful, and plenty of other conflicting emotions all rolled into one. It's a magical experience that captivates throughout, with puzzles that will have you genuinely smiling along, to scenes that will stir up something inside you that video games don't often touch.

After the runaway success of their casual smash hits like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, Halfbrick Studios had set the bar pretty high for themselves for any follow-up release. While their latest bubbly and fish-focused adventure may not have the lasting power and widespread appeal of some of Halfbrick’s past greats, Fish Out of Water is still an incredibly fun and friendly frolic through the bottom of the sea.

While many hidden object games come with plenty of puzzles and adventure elements thrown in, there are the occasional games that contain nothing but hidden object scenes, as players complete one after another with nothing to break up the cycle. One of these games is 100% Hidden Objects, which is a game that’s named perfectly. This one is all about hidden object scenes, but the jury’s out on whether or not that’s a good thing.

Space pirate adventure games are as common as star-lice on the hull of a space ship, but that’s because they remain fun no matter how many times you set sail for fame and glory. Plus, space is vast and mysterious, so it’s easy enough to pen endless mythologies around it. By comparison, we already know that sea-bound pirates stole a bunch of stuff and had a problem with their teeth falling out. Exciting.

Consider the crab. He wakes up and rides the rails, collecting arbitrary score items, rescuing children that may not be his, jumping on the heads of penguins. Back in 2007, one of the first games I bought for my first iPhone was MotionX Poker. It was the definition of a launch title- a proof of concept that did nothing but use the iPhone’s accelerometer to simulate the throwing of dice. That’s about where Mr. Crab lives.

When the collectible card game format originally exploded onto the hobby scene, there was a quick burst of incredible creativity resulting in some diverse and enthralling designs. There’s been little innovation in the genre in recent years, but the genre has now moved to computers, with the potential for new directions to explore.

It’s spring again, the time a young man’s fancy turns to love. At least it’s that way for some. For other men and women, thoughts are invariably turning to the new MLB season and how best to simulate it on iOS devices. The reigning and defending champion of mobile baseball sims is back in its latest iteration, iOOTP 2013, showing why it’s unlikely to be giving up the title any time soon.

War of Mercenaries is one of those games that may look a little too familiar when you first boot it up--specifically, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Kixeye's beloved Backyard Monsters and, more recently, Supercell's Clash of Clans. To its credit, it handles the popular concept well. Gone are the monsters and their suburban environs; in their place we have the trappings of medieval high fantasy and a host of memorable units. That might be enough to win you over if your preferences lean more toward high fantasy than Monsters, Inc., but be prepared to bring along some friends—the social requirements get demanding fast.

Most tower defense games revolve around placing obstacles and weapons along pathways so you can crush your enemy before they make their way to your tower. This formula has worked countless times in the past. What's less common is when your tower is your primary source of offense. Hills of Glory 3D takes the typical tower defense model and turns your defenseless tower into a killing machine.

Sometimes a game comes along that is simply too abstract to be recommendable to all, yet still feels like an experience you should be nudging as many people as possible in the direction of. Starseed Pilgrim is not for everyone - in fact, I would suggest that it's not even for most people.

Run Sheldon is one of the most adorable free endless runners to hit the App Store in quite some time. Perhaps that's because it's based upon one of the most memorable fables of all time: how the tortoise beat the hare in a race. This time, the tortoise in question is adorable little Sheldon, who's facing not just one but an entire gang of hares who want to beat him to the finish line. Old Man Hare wants to take the Golden Race Trophy back from Sheldon, but as he's gotten a little chubby in his old age, he's got to depend on his rabbit buddies to help him do so. That's where you come in.

If anyone is ever in the mood for running a city under the auspices of organized crime they have plenty of options to get their fix in a family-friendly way via the App Store. Freemium mafia games are pretty much their own subgenre at this point. While Crime Connection isn’t without its own set of problems, it manages to stand up quite well against its peers.

Bottle Cap Blitz is a specific kind of game. It's fast, friendly, and free of the bells and whistles and constraints seen in a glut of App Store releases. And without a gorgeous exterior or extraneous additions, it still manages to reel you in and hook you with simplistic, addictive gameplay that channels the likes of Paper Toss, while combining the nature of the hit Fruit Ninja.

Aquascapes is an aquatic hidden object game with just a touch of aquarium management thrown in. It's almost like a simplified spin-off of the Gardenscape series, though instead of complicated time management interludes you can just sit back and stare at your virtual aquarium. It might be a little thin on features, but it's a clean and relaxing game that's perfect for the younger crowd.

War of the Fallen, Zynga's latest entry into the free-to-play collectible card game milieu, is precisely what you would, or at least should, expect from a Zynga game: it's accessible, very highly polished and has one hand on your shoulder while the other slowly reaches for your wallet.

What’s better than a cute baseball semi-sim  (look ma, I coined my own genre) for iOS devices? That same game with real MLB players and uniforms, that’s what. Hothead Games has its first fully licensed sports title on its hands with Big Win MLB, which is just like Big Win Baseball, except… realer.

18 Cadence is the latest work from interactive fiction writer Aaron A. Reed, creator of Blue Lacuna.  While not a game in any standard sense of the word, this “story kit” is an interactive experience that allows you to send more than just a high score to the world: you are enabled and encouraged to share your own story or poem with other reader-creators, and to explore what they have shared as well.  It’s a potentially endless cycle of inspiration and creation, originating from Reed’s own offerings.

I knew from a pretty early age that I wasn’t meant to be a golfer. Nothing against the sport or anything: I just seemed to be much better at finding all the sand traps and water hazards than getting holes in one. But now I may have finally found a way to enjoy the game without all of that constant walking around to retrieve my ball, as GolfStar by Com2uS is the closest I’ll ever come to playing a real live game of golf right from my living room sofa.