Jumpgrid By: Ian MacLarty I absolutely adored Ian MacLarty's Dissembler, a chill but tricky puzzler with all the right quality-of-life features, such as an unlimited undo button and the ability to unlock all levels from the start. It was one of my favorite games of 2018 and for a good while the six daily puzzles were part of my morning ritual. But alas, it wasn't Ian's usual kind of game. He's better…
The Shapeshifting Detective By: Wales Interactive Ltd. Full Motion Video (FMV) games have been making quite the comeback over the last few years, with Her Story proving that the medium has a lot to offer. Contradiction provided a slightly cheesier experience, but one with also more active sleuthing. They both managed to make me hungry for more FMV games, but not all of them have been ported to iOS. Luckily, The Shapeshifting…
Meteorfall: Journey By: Eric Farraro (Slothwerks) The Reigns-inspired card-based dungeon crawler, Meteorfall, has to be near the top of the list of the premium games with the most free content updates. I already loved the game when it originally released, but found it lost its appeal once I got close to the absolute highest score possible. Beating the game with each character was fun in itself, as they each had their own…
The Company Game By: gary gogis (Chain Reaction Games) If you've enjoyed games like Blackbox or The Guides, you'll want to keep an eye out for Chain Reaction Games' The Company Game, a mysterious puzzler releasing in September that was, impressively, developed by a 14-year-old. It takes some inspiration from these games but stands out on its own due to its underlying story you unravel bit by bit, as well as the…
Powerless By: Narratio Narratio's upcoming Powerless has a compelling pitch. It's advertised as an "interactive doomsday simulator," and its goal is to put the player into realistic life-and-death situations to see how they would react and whether they could survive. You play as multiple different characters as they try to make it out alive after a coronal mass ejection (CME) kills all power on Earth, causing mass destruction. Each character comes in…
Barbearian By: Kimmo Lahtinen (GIMBLLL) If you frequent this site, you probably know that I'm a big puzzle and adventure fan. I usually like to relax with my games and not get too stressed out. But I also enjoy a good hack-n-slash from time to time, and used to adore the old Gameloft Dungeon Hunter series before they went free-to-play. The upcoming Bardbearian, by GIMBLLL, promises fast-paced action "with massive battles in…
Scalak By: Michal Pawlowski Ever since I played his relaxing puzzler, Zenge, I've been keeping an eye out for Michal Pawlowski aka Hamster on Coke's games. Art of Gravity didn't really pull me in (sorry not sorry), but I had a great time with the all-too-brief "PUSH" he developed with Maciej Targoni. So I was happy to play his upcoming game, Scalak, ahead of release. He's been adding content to it…
Death Squared (RORORORO) By: SMG Studio Update: The game is out! See my review here. There are some games I keep an eye on because they sound interesting, even if there's been no indication that they'll ever be ported to iOS. SMG Studio's Death Squared is one such game. It always looked fun to me, but even though the studio has released a number of mobile games, the co-op nature of it…
