Before venturing too far into this review, I have to apologize for being a little late with it. Without early access to the mobile version, I got to start at the same time as the rest of you, and I didn’t want to review a game like this without doing some thorough examination. I had been greatly anticipating SaGa Emerald Beyond ($49.99), you see. I like the SaGa series more than the average person, and I still think SaGa Scarlet Grace is one of the most enjoyable RPGs in recent history. But the satisfaction in these games tends not to be easily extracted; effort is required, and so here we are. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room first. This is a very expensive game by App Store standards. Indeed, at $49.99 USD this is the exact same price that SaGa Emerald Beyond is selling for on other platforms. From one point of view, this makes perfect sense. It’s a new game, it came out on the same day on mobile that it did elsewhere, and it’s the same game content-wise. Why should it be cheaper? In a way, wanting games to be cheaper on mobile is simply feeding into the image of these platforms being inherently lesser somehow. Thinking of it that way, price parity almost seems like proper acknowledgement that mobile isn’t just a dump.

On the other hand, this is mobile gaming. We’ve seen games cease being updated before, and we’ve seen games pulled before. Heck, The Last Remnant, a SaGa game in all but name, vanished from the App Store ages ago with some vague promises from Square Enix that it would return when it was fixed. Perhaps as you read this sometime in the future, it has returned. But the possibility of games breaking and getting delisted is a more real concern on mobile than it is elsewhere, and one we have to consider. It stings a little when you lose a game you paid five or ten bucks for; losing one you paid fifty for, even temporarily, would be a real test of one’s patience.

Ultimately, you’re going to have to dig deep and answer that question yourself. I want to tell you not to worry, but I can’t. I’ve been covering this beat for over a decade now and I am not naive to its problems. Square Enix is better about this than some publishers, and that’s the only real reassurance I can give you. I won’t blame anyone for the price affecting their decision of whether to buy the game on mobile or not, and I’m sure Square Enix was prepared for such hesitation when it priced the game the way it did. That’s all I’ve got to say about that. The absolute state of things that I have to spend three paragraphs talking about prices in a game review.

I’m of the belief that the SaGa team might have been caught off-guard by the response to SaGa Scarlet Grace. This series is not typically well-received in the West, after all. Indeed, more often than not it is reviled by most of the media and the general audience. Over in Japan it tends to fare better, though it certainly has had its highs and lows with fans and critics there as well. But SaGa Scarlet Grace was different, wasn’t it? I daresay that people kind of… liked it? Look, I’m a SaGa Sicko. I always like these games (not Unlimited). But I’m usually only joined by my fellow SaGa Sickos, and that isn’t what happened with SaGa Scarlet Grace. A lot of people really enjoyed it, a fact made all the more impressive by how clearly modest its budget was.

I think that might be what brought us to SaGa Emerald Beyond, at least broadly speaking. This game feels like it was made on a similarly shoestring budget, but that’s not really too surprising. I think one of the reasons SaGa survives, beyond the series creator Akitoshi Kawazu’s senior position with Square Enix, is that even when it fails it doesn’t leave the publisher holding a big bill. And if a streamlined approach worked last time, why not this time? What’s more unexpected, given the history of the series, is how… safe?… this game is in its basic structure. Relatively speaking, of course.

If SaGa is known for anything, it’s that it’s very uncommon for any two games to be terribly similar to each other. Sure, there are persistent elements. Sparking new skills, the unusual character growth system that sprung out of Final Fantasy II, multiple playable characters, and so on. But those systems are usually fit into new frameworks, a double-edged sword if ever there was one. That’s not what happened here. SaGa Emerald Beyond isn’t exactly like Scarlet Grace, to be sure, and I’ll get into that shortly. But it presents itself an awful lot like it, and I’m not sure why but I feel a bit disappointed by that. It’s like asking your wild friend to surprise you at Baskin-Robbins and getting a scoop of French vanilla. Hey, it’s a good flavor. I love French vanilla. It’s just that I was just expecting Boogers & Caramel Melody or something.

Okay, so. Emerald Beyond. You’ve got your choice of characters, a sum of six in the end. You are going to get a very different experience based on who you pick. You are going to get a different experience based on whether you’ve finished the game with certain characters already. Playing the game again with the same character will often lead to different results. There’s one character whose true ending won’t even open up for you until you’ve fulfilled some very particular conditions (don’t choose Ameya for your first playthrough, trust me). If there is one way this game separates itself from prior games in the series, it’s in this wide variety of potential routes through the game. If you only do one playthrough of this game, you’ve missed most of it. If you only do three playthroughs of this game, you’ve missed most of it.

A single playthrough can be very short but rarely longer than fifteen hours, but you are assuredly meant to keep on playing it again and again with new characters and new paths. This is something some players will love and others will hate, but it certainly helps the developers get a lot of soup out of a rather small amount of ingredients. It runs rather thin storywise, but I doubt you’re coming to a SaGa game for the story no matter how much text this particular entry likes to throw about. You’ve easily got over a hundred hours of game ahead of you if you want to see the game all the way through to its intended conclusion, and that’s both the value for money you want to see but also a crushing commitment.

It’s fascinating from a design standpoint because on the surface this is a very linear game, penning you into small locations until you fully see them through rather than letting you run about. But it turns out to be very non-linear in a deeper sense, and the way it achieves this is completely bonkers. I respect that, because I’m a SaGa Sicko. Others might be less thrilled, particularly since these repeated playthroughs lead to a lot of recycling that can wear on one’s soul. The story that’s here is well-written and the localizers have again done a bang-up job, but there’s not enough substance in it as a whole to keep one sated on their fifth or sixth run. You really have to be in love with the mechanics to keep sticking it out, or really like connecting thin strands from the stories of different characters.

The battle system is the star of the show again. Structurally it’s a lot like the combat in Scarlet Grace, with a heavy focus on offense and making sure you set up your big moves (called Showstoppers here) while trying to interrupt the enemies in such a way that they can’t bust out their own on you. There’s no healing in battles here, so you really have to plan your moves carefully. Any damage taken is serious business, particularly in boss battles. On the whole, I’d say Emerald Beyond is a lot more lenient in difficulty than Scarlet Grace, but when it starts cooking (and it will) it demands good strategy and serious situational awareness. Of course, there is a bit of the ol’ RNG in here as usual as it pertains to picking up new moves via Sparking and stat increases, but your brain is going to be your most powerful weapon. You’re going to have to fall in deep, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary for SaGa.

Man, I don’t know. I’m sitting here trying to think if Emerald Beyond is an RPG I would recommend to the average person or if it’s just something for SaGa Sickos and I’m torn. Personally speaking, I love this game. I don’t know if I love it quite as much as Scarlet Grace, but that’s one of my favorite RPGs of the past couple decades. Emerald Beyond not quite living up to that is not a knock on it. But I really do love this game. It’s so mysterious. There are so many surprises to find, and small details to pick up. You absolutely have to lose yourself to it in order to find its best qualities, and that is something that is right up my alley. The thing is, I don’t know if that’s up the average player’s alley. I found the repeat playthroughs in Bravely Default brilliant narratively and mechanically, but most people hated them. So I’m having trouble finding my compass here.

Here’s the thing: if you’re a SaGa Sicko, get in. I can’t say where you’ll end up ranking it in the series, but it’s not Unlimited and I think that’s probably enough for you. If you’re not, you have to ask yourself how into digging out opaque mechanics and non-obvious narrative elements you are. If you take SaGa Emerald Beyond at face value, you’re not going to get much out of this. A single playthrough is paltry and it’s just easy enough to wave you through. The story isn’t going to do much for you, either. Just like with the mechanics, you really have to work to get things out of the narrative here. And unlike with the mechanics, I’m not fully sure the effort is worth the reward. But those mechanics! That combat system! It’s all amazing stuff, the kind of meat an RPG fan dreams of when they’re having particularly lovely dreams at night. It’s SaGa, baby. No one else bakes these pies.

Alright, let me try to sort this out. If you’re a total SaGa beginner and don’t want a game to beat you up too much, you’re probably better off going with Minstrel Song. If you don’t mind getting beaten up, Scarlet Grace is still the high-water mark. I like its story better, and I like how it handles its outside-of-combat mechanics more. So I guess what I’m saying is that those who are new to SaGa probably shouldn’t go with Emerald Beyond as their first choice. But once you’ve cut your teeth on SaGa one way or the other, do make sure you play this one. I think it’s better than it’s getting credit for at the moment, and to be fair that is on the game for hiding too much and being too subtle on the whole. This is way up there in the series rankings for me, and that’s after carefully digesting it for a lot longer than optimal traffic dictates I should have.

It’s the most obvious thing in the world to say about a SaGa game at this point, but SaGa Emerald Beyond isn’t going to be for everyone. Setting aside my personal feelings, I can say that it’s probably opaque to a fault, and it’s trying to stretch itself a bit too thin for how much time it wants you to put in. It’s a fantastic little RPG puzzle box in the mechanical sense, and players who come to RPGs for strategic battles will get their fill here. I think even outside of that, there are a lot of neat non-obvious aspects to this game that are waiting to be found by the observant player. In the end Emerald Beyond is another SaGa game that is preaching to the choir, but it’s a choir worth joining if you think you’ve got the patience for it.

Just like with Hades, I’ve enjoyed revisiting an old favorite of mine in Katana Zero (Free) from Askiisoft and Devolver Digital with its new mobile release through Netflix Games. Katana Zero did soft launch recently on mobile already, but the full worldwide rollout should now be live as of this writing. I’ve been playing it early through a pre-release build from Netflix, and I’m shocked at how good it plays with touch controls, but there are a few issues. Before getting into the review, for those new to Katana Zero, the title is a reference to a line used in the game when you finish a section of a stage.

Having enjoyed and beaten Katana Zero multiple times before on Switch and PC, I was well aware of how difficult some stages are, and also how annoyed I was for specific bosses. In the translation to iOS, Katana Zero has lost nothing, and I’m quite surprised by that. It almost makes me want a port of Hotline Miami from Devolver, but I digress. As with my other port reviews, I’m going to also cover how the game on mobile compares to other platforms I’ve played said game on, and help you decide which one you should get.

Katana Zero is a stylish action-platformer with stunning pixel art, mesmerizing animations, and superb music. While most games in the genre have a story that gets the job done with a focus on gameplay, Katana Zero is the rare game that punches (slices?) well above its weight in every single category. It is very much a once in a generation experience, and I don’t say that lightly. After every few stage sections when you get used to a new mechanic or enemy type, Katana Zero throws something new at you. This could be with a brand-new stage type, boss fight, story moment, and more. Expect to take about 5 hours or so to see Katana Zero to its end, but it took me a lot more during my first run through it on Switch back in the day.

The core gameplay in Katana Zero involves platforming, attacking, dodging, jumping, stopping time, and more. You end up using a combination of all of this to make it through a stage section. You can keep playing through a specific section if you die until you manage to clear it. If you hadn’t caught on from the title screen and the opening, Katana Zero wears its synthwave and VHS vibe proudly. When you die, you get a VHS-like rewind effect. In fact clearing a section also has you ejecting a tape.

Speaking of the length, Katana Zero feels like it is built for speedrunning. It has a few settings that save your time, like being able to skip the VHS rewind animation on death and almost instantly restart. I recommend enabling this because it does get annoying when you make a mistake a few times in a row on a specific level and see the same animation play out.

Given the structure and difficulty, there is a lot of trial and error as you learn a specific level segment before moving to the next one. This may or may not be an annoyance for you. I expected it given the genre, but there are a few bits that annoy me to this day. When watching Katana Zero trailers or gameplay, you’d think this is a very fast-paced game, and you’re right, but there’s a lot more to it. While the opening levels feel pretty straightforward, there is a lot of depth and strategy at play in Katana Zero. Each level, enemy placement, point of interest, object, and more work together to make you feel like a puzzle solving samurai genius with one of the best soundtracks in gaming.

If you played Hotline Miami, the addictive one more chance style action is at play here. You will die often, but every death is a learning experience. This aspect might turn some players off, but outside of maybe a handful of deaths, I’ve never felt like my time was being wasted in any level of situation. I will say that some of the boss battles are frustrating, and that’s really my only complaint with the core game. It is a sublime experience, but I never really enjoyed some specific moments in my Switch or Steam playthroughs. Those aren’t fun when experienced on mobile either as you can expect.

On Switch and PC, Katana Zero plays perfectly with a controller. On iOS, you can of course use a controller, but I was more interested in seeing how the developers adapted the game for touch controls. On the controller side, I tested using a Backbone One on an iPhone 14 Plus and my 8BitDo Pro 2 on iPad Pro. It all works well. On my iPhone 15 Pro, I used touch controls, and found them to be very good outside one issue. The action buttons and interaction button can all be resized and moved around. The analog stick for movement has three settings, but none of them let you properly fix the joystick including the fixed setting. I have to imagine this is a bug or a mislabelled setting. If you aren’t used to playing platformers on touch controls, this will take you some time to get used to, but I think the team has done a fantastic job with the controls on iOS.

Katana Zero looks brilliant on iOS. It has some border artwork on iPhone 15 Pro during gameplay, and has black bars in menus and interfaces. On iPad Pro, there are just black bars around the 16:9 gameplay. It looks crisp though, and performance has been very good on my devices. Katana Zero is capped at 60fps on PC so I didn’t expect support for more on iOS. I did notice a variable frame rate in some parts on iPad Pro (2020), but performance was excellent on my iPhone 15 Pro.

If you’re new to Katana Zero and have a Netflix subscription, I’d definitely try it out on mobile before buying it on another platform. If you don’t have a Netflix subscription, I’d recommend getting Katana Zero on Switch or Steam Deck to play on the go with the latter being the best version with no performance issues at all.

I mentioned the soundtrack being great, but it really is one of the best game soundtracks in many years with it touching quite a few genres through its runtime. This is definitely one to own on vinyl. If you have no interest in the game and have somehow made it this far into a review of said game, at least listen to the soundtrack. You will not regret it.

While I’m not sure I’d say Katana Zero justifies subscribing to Netflix if you don’t have an active subscription, it is immediately one of the best games on the service, and a fantastic, and near-perfect, conversion of a magnificent game. If you have a Netflix subscription, drop everything else and play Katana Zero right now. It is that good. Replaying it has not made the wait for Katana Zero DLC easier.

The term “remaster” started losing all meaning in the early PS4 and Xbox One generation when we saw a few games just see bare-bones ports while being called remasters. Since then, we’ve had remakes that are more re-imaginings like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Resident Evil 2, and also games officially called remasters that are more like remakes with Metroid Prime Remastered and Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (this one is called a remaster on Nintendo’s website in Japan). So when Braid, Anniversary Edition (Free) from Thekla, Inc was announced as a remaster, I wasn’t even sure what to expect because the original game looks gorgeous and felt great to play when I tried it last year on Steam Deck as well.

Having now played Braid, Anniversary Edition on iPhone and iPad through Netflix, Nintendo Switch, and Steam Deck while trying the original game on my older Steam Deck, I see that a lot more has gone into this release than I expected, and I’m not even talking about the extras. In this Braid, Anniversary Edition review, I’m going to cover whether this is worth getting if you already played the original, and also why this is worth your time if you’re new to the game and comparing all versions as usual.

If you’ve not played Braid before, it is a puzzle-platformer with a gorgeous aesthetic, incredible music, and excellent mechanics intertwined into the various levels. These range from different ways of manipulating time that either directly let you control time, interact with the environment in interesting ways, or even have time controlled by your own movement. There’s a lot that changes across the levels, and even though I’ve played the game twice before, I enjoyed revisiting the old areas and seeing how well the extra content has been added into Braid, Anniversary Edition. In a lot of ways, Braid, Anniversary Edition feels like a deluxe 4K Blu-Ray remaster of an older movie you loved chock full of bonus content, interviews, and extras. I don’t think I’ve seen this much attention put into those areas of a re-issue of any game outside something from the masters of reissues at Digital Eclipse.

For newcomers to Braid, you can experience this without any of the extra content, and even toggle the older visuals if you’d like to play it like it was back in the day, but on modern platforms. If you already played it, you might first wonder what was “remastered” visually, but toggling the old and new graphics which you can do just about at any part of the game will show you how much attention has gone into translating the colorful painting aesthetic of Braid for modern platforms while making it feel just as you remembered the original in your head.

The comparison below shows the new graphics (left) with the old graphics (right) on my iPad Pro (2020):

For those who played Braid before, aside from the remastered visuals and improved soundtrack quality, the highlight is the commentary. I thought we might just get a commentary track playing while making our way through the game normally (which is included if you’d like), but I’m stunned at how much has been added on top of that for those who really want to go into the weeds of Braid. Not only do you get to check out different kinds of commentary with interview dialogue during parts of the game, but there’s a commentary world on its own that lets you experience design, programming, sound & music, and visuals as different categories of commentary. I’d say this commentary feature on its own is worth the asking price of Braid, Anniversary Edition for me, but there’s so much more than that in this release overall.

Before getting into the mobile port and platform-specific features and differences, if you’re wondering whether Braid, Anniversary Edition is worth buying or playing if you already have played it before, the answer is yes, if you care about the extra content or want to replay it. This is now the best version of Braid, and instead of just giving it a fresh coat of paint (I couldn’t resist) and porting it to more platforms, Thekla did so much more. My only real complaint with the release itself, is that there’s no physical version right now, and I will use this chance to grumble about no physical release of The Witness as well. If you already own Braid on Steam, Braid, Anniversary Edition is available at a 50% off discount for existing owners, and this is a no-brainer purchase if you like the game.

Braid, Anniversary Edition on mobile is available exclusively through Netflix. I tested it on my iPhone 15 Pro, iPad Pro (2020), and iPhone 14 Plus. On the iPhones, Braid, Anniversary Edition has fullscreen support which I didn’t expect. On iPad, there are black bars above and below the gameplay. Performance is solid across the board as well. The issues I ran into have to do with touch controls. If you play with a controller, which Braid, Anniversary Edition supports, these will not bother you, but I am disappointed to see no customization for the on-screen control button sizes. The touch targets for some controls are too small on the iPhone 15 Pro. I found them acceptable on iPhone 14 Plus though.

On Steam Deck, Braid, Anniversary Edition has black bars above and below the 16:9 aspect ratio gameplay. It targets your screen refresh rate (90fps on Steam Deck OLED, 60fps on Steam Deck LCD, and 144fps on my monitor) but seems to use v-sync (double buffered) where if the game cannot hit the target frame rate, it drops to half that for a few seconds. On the Steam Deck OLED, I noticed it sometimes went from 90fps to 45fps for a few seconds, but it always shot back up. There are no graphics or display options in Braid, Anniversary Edition on PC that I can see on Steam Deck.

On Nintendo Switch, Braid, Anniversary Edition looks gorgeous on the Switch’s OLED screen. I also tested it on my Switch Lite. The only difference here is load times are longer and the swapping between SD and HD graphics sometimes has a delay on Switch compared to mobile and Steam Deck. I have no qualms in recommending it on Switch if you’d prefer to get it there.

Being able to change from the older to newer graphics on the fly also highlighted how much better the soundtrack quality is in Braid, Anniversary Edition. Everything sounds clearer, and this perfectly complements the visual upgrade we see. Speaking of the visuals, not only is everything gorgeous on high resolution modern displays, but seeing assets redone and new animations hits home how much work went into this release.

As a value add to Netflix, Braid, Anniversary Edition is an amazing boost to its gaming catalog for newcomers to the puzzle-platformer, and another fantastic game on the service that likely wouldn’t have hit mobile alongside other platforms. Playing Braid, Anniversary Edition has been just as much fun as it was experiencing the Xbox 360 version years ago, and I hope it gets a physical release in the future. I also hope the mobile version sees some touch control improvements in potential patches though.

After the Among Us collaboration DLC, I had no real idea what to expect from Vampire Survivors (Free) for its next potential DLC. I assumed that was a sign that we’d just see popular indies like maybe Risk of Rain, but never in a million years did I think we’d see Vampire Survivors collaborate with Contra. Can you imagine telling someone Vampire Survivors has a collaboration with a Konami IP, but it isn’t Castlevania? I sure wouldn’t have believed you back then. Today, the Vampire Survivors Operation Guns DLC is launching worldwide for iOS, Android, Switch, Xbox, and PC platforms. I’ve been playing it for review on all non mobile platforms since the mobile DLC isn’t up yet. Alongside my review for the Vampire Survivors Operation Guns DLC, I’ve also covered a bit of how the account and cross save system currently works in beta.

If you’ve not played Vampire Survivors since it launched, you’ve missed out on a lot through free updates and paid DLC releases. Read my co-op impressions of the Steam version here, 1.0 launch review here, Legacy of the Moonspell DLC review here, Tides of the Foscari DLC review here, and Emergency Meeting DLC review here. It was already a superb experience, but each update and DLC only enhanced things. So how does the Vampire Survivors Operation Guns DLC feel for a Contra fan, newcomer, and someone who just wants more Vampire Survivors? I’m going to try and cover all that in this review.

On paper, Vampire Survivors Operation Guns brings in 22 new weapons, 11 new characters, a new map, Contra music (including six new tracks), and more. You initially start by just getting access to the new stage (Neo Galuga), which is awesome not only for the Contra theme, but because of its layout in general. What initially starts out as just a nice themed stage ends up quite surprising. I don’t want to spoil things, but I recommend paying attention to the prompts on the map sooner than later when you notice something new. One more thing I love about the stage is how the Contra power-ups have been translated to Vampire Survivors. The team went all out, and this is easily my favorite release involving Contra since probably Contra Hard Corps that I recently got to enjoy on Nintendo Switch Online. I’m not counting the M2 anniversary release of course and I’ve not played Contra 4, but you get the picture.

So the stage looks and feels awesome, but what about the characters and weapons. As usual, you start out with nothing and need to unlock the first new character from the new stage. After you unlock Bill who is the first Vampire Survivors Operation Guns character, you can slowly work your way to getting the rest which have their own requirements usually relating to evolving weapons. Speaking of weapons, I can’t get over how awesome the animations are for the weapons, the particle effects, and interactions with elements of the stages. Vampire Survivors Operation Guns feels like a labor of love throughout, and if you love Contra Hard Corps and the original games, you will adore this DLC.

Whenever I review a DLC pack, I also like covering the current state of the game in question. While pushing for absolute chaos, Vampire Survivors Operation Guns on my Steam Deck OLED never dropped below the high 40s for its frame rate before the 30 minute timer ended. It usually hovered around the high 70s mark. I disabled damage numbers as I usually do when I play, but I did enable them just to see how much I could push the game for this review. I’m impressed with the current state of the game on Steam Deck and Xbox Series X. The Switch version is excellent, but the worst platform to play the game on right now.

If you’re wondering about the mobile version, I had the least progress in that version and the Switch release since I have put so much time into both Xbox and Steam Deck. This brings me to the cross save feature that’s currently in beta. I moved my Steam Deck (LCD) to the beta version of Vampire Survivors and created an account. This process is simple. Once created, I uploaded my progress from Steam Deck to the cloud. I have access to the account (beta) through the beta build on iOS that I used on my iPad. I got my Steam Deck save to my iPad and picked it up right there. I don’t have the Vampire Survivors Operation Guns DLC on iOS yet, but everything else worked fine in the sync. The only complaint I have is auto sync not being possible, but I understand the reasoning for that with how save data is handled in this game. You can read about the poncle account system here.

Coming back to Vampire Survivors Operation Guns, and it is time to cover the music. The new Vampire Survivors arrangements for Contra songs are incredible. I can’t wait for the soundtrack on Steam to get updated so I can transfer these to my phone. Just like with the visuals and weapons in Vampire Survivors Operation Guns, I think the team has gone above and beyond for the music. Other than arrangements, there are also Contra songs from Contra 4 and Contra Hard Corps.

At this point, Vampire Survivors DLC is a lot like Dead Cells DLC where it is hard to not recommend buying any of it. Vampire Survivors Operation Guns, like the Emergency Meeting DLC, is a must-have regardless of whether you are familiar with the source material or not. It enhances the game and made me play a lot of Contra Hard Corps on Nintendo Switch Online today. It is an essential purchase if you like Vampire Survivors given the value and quality.

Vampire Survivors Operation Guns Steam Deck Review Score: 5/5

Thinking back to when I first got my iPhone, one of the earlier games I bought was a decent little take-off of Nintendo’s 3D Picross called Oh! Cube. It was implemented fairly well, and I had a nice time going through all of its puzzles. I expected more games along those lines, but just as on consoles, they never really came. Well, here’s one: PiKuBo (Free). It’s pretty clear what it’s doing if you’ve played 3D Picross before, but the devil as always is in the details. Is it worth trying out? Investigation time!

Let’s talk the money stuff first, because that’s how the world works. As you can see, it’s free to download this game. It won’t hassle you with ads or anything. You get the first puzzle pack without paying a cent, which is a nice way to see if you’re into what it’s laying down or not. You get just over thirty puzzles to solve, with some nice tutorials that explain things to new players and will feel excruciatingly long if you already know what you’re doing. At the time of this review, there are two more puzzle packs available as IAP. Each one offers thirty-six additional puzzles to solve. I imagine if the demand is there, the developer will make more packs available. All up, you’re paying a couple of bucks for around a hundred puzzles. Not bad.

I do have one bone to pick with those puzzle packs, though. The puzzles contained in each follow the same general difficulty curve as the included pack, which means that several are wasted on extremely simple puzzles that you’ll solve in a matter of seconds. Presumably anyone buying these packs has already played the initial set, and I don’t see why we’d want to be going back to the basics again. So many of the puzzles are quick and simple that the whole thing ends up feeling a lot smaller than you’d ideally like. Perhaps future packs can be themed so that those who want easier or harder puzzles can get what they specifically want? Just spit-balling.

The puzzles run the gamut in terms of difficulty, and I’m generally satisfied with the challenge of the harder puzzles. Moving beyond that, the most important thing about a game like this is in how it controls. Like its 2D counterpart, 3D Picross plays best with a stylus, some buttons, and a resistive touch panel. There are always a few challenges when it comes to adapting this kind of game, even to an iPhone. One is in how to handle the swap between marking and breaking cubes. Another is in how to fit larger puzzles on the screen while leaving the cubes big enough to work with. PiKuBo approaches this tricky task with some interesting ideas.

By default, touching the screen will simply allow you to move the puzzle around. You can pinch and… de-pinch? Un-pinch? Do the opposite of pinching. That will allow you to zoom in and zoom out on the puzzle. There are some arrows on the side of the screen that allow you to move layer by layer through the puzzle, and that’s a pretty standard way to handle that. Now, if you want to paint or break the blocks, there are buttons for that. You might think you touch the one you want to use and just go to town. Well, kind of. When you tap the button for each action, it will stay active until you tap a cube. After that, there’s a short window where if you keep tapping, you’ll keep performing that action. Once it elapses, the action is de-selected. This mitigates accidents, and I think it’s a good idea even if it is a little annoying at times.

In general, I think it controls as well as it can. The screen real estate is certainly tight on bigger puzzles, and accidents will certainly happen from time to time, but those are issues with the original 3D Picross games as well. If you make a mistake, you’ll lose a heart. Run out of hearts, and you’ll have to start the puzzle over again. You can also lose by running out of time. When you complete the puzzle, you’ll be given a rating from one to three stars based on how you did. When you finish a set of puzzles it will be marked with a crown so that you know what you’ve already finished.

In terms of options, you get a selection of four different paint colors to use for the cubes. You can turn the music and sound effects off independently, turn off the cooldown on the paint/break buttons, use a left-handed mode, and reset your progress in case that’s a thing you want to do. There’s a quick save option here as well, in case you need to stop playing in the middle of a big puzzle to go make some pasta or something. And that’s about it. The graphics get the job done, and the music is nice, chill stuff for solving puzzles to.

PiKuBo is a great way to get your 3D Picross fix on mobile, with a good selection of free puzzles and additional puzzle packs available at highly reasonable prices. It’s all wrapped in a highly functional interface and topped off with some nice tunes. Since the first pack is free, you don’t even need to take my word for it. Give it a download and try it. My only real gripe is that the extra puzzle packs have some extremely elementary puzzles included that really shouldn’t be taking up space when we only have around a hundred to play with. Otherwise, this is a very nice puzzler for Picross lovers.

Over the last few years, there have been many indie games that debuted on PC and consoles that felt like they’d be a perfect fit for mobile. Some of those took years to show up on mobile while others never made it so far. Devolver Digital and Four Quarters’ dark fantasy roguelike RPG Loop Hero (Free) hit mobile this week through Playdigious, and just like Slice&Dice, it feels dangerous to have installed. Don’t even ask me what will happen when Balatro finally arrives on iOS, but I’ll worry about that when it happens. Back to Loop Hero, which has been my obsession recently as I started playing it on Steam Deck and Switch to prepare for the iOS version that I got access to earlier this week. There’s a lot to unpack in Loop Hero’s gameplay, but the one constant in the time I put into it prior to release was being disappointed in myself for not playing it sooner.

A reductive way of describing Loop Hero’s core gameplay loop (sorry) is a blend of an autobattler, deckbuilder, and roguelike. This combination makes it feel unlike anything else I’ve played before. You don’t actually control what your unnamed hero does, but influence things around them. When you first start playing Loop Hero, your hero starts walking around the path fighting whatever fodder enemies spawn in the hope of getting good drops in the form of cards or items (gear). You use these cards to influence things around you ranging from heals or stat boosts to all sorts of other things. Said cards let you summon specific establishments or terrain types and each has their own flavor ranging from summoning specific enemies to buffs and more. Positioning matters and with your own experience you will start understanding how to get better with this.

What initially begins on a small looped road where you start moving in a loop might end in a complex map where you’ve littered the environment with all sorts of things to give yourself buffs while summoning more powerful enemies to get better loot and slowly making progress to take on the boss. On paper it sounds like the gameplay in Loop Hero might be a bit too complicated for touch controls, but it actually works almost perfectly. The game ships with a few options to pause time after battles or while you’re making a decision and such, but it also has options to speed things up in and out of combat. I found my own balance here and Loop Hero started to feel more like a zen experience despite the carnage happening on screen.

As you continue looping on a specific run, you need to properly balance laying down cards to spawn more powerful enemies because you don’t want to be overwhelmed. You can retreat when safe as well and take some materials with you. These are used to build permanent upgrades or help you with your next run. The way Loop Hero is set up, I never found anything I did as a waste of time. I either learned something that helped me plan better for the next run or had actual in-game items available that helped me grow stronger. It all comes together very nicely, and this is all just for the first hero. There are three in total, and while I found the balance a bit off, I feel like I need to spend more time with the others to understand if that’s actually the case or it is more me not having as much experience with them.

While the gameplay initially seems like that Charlie meme from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it really comes together and makes you see the genius it has to offer. I really would love to see how the gameplay loop in Loop Hero changed during development and how the team managed perfecting it more or less as they have in the current version of the game.

So Loop Hero has superb gameplay with how it blends in different systems together, but I want to highlight just how gorgeous the pixel art aesthetic is. It feels immersive across the board and the aesthetic never lets up with how perfect it feels even in the small menu interaction animations. The card art, character portraits, small enemy animations, combat, and more all come together perfectly. The iOS version from Playdigious even has art to fill up the black bars that feels right at home with the game itself.

Loop Hero’s soundtrack from blinch is also notable with how catchy it is, and how it never gets old no matter how much you hear it. Every little sound effect outside the music is also exactly what it should be. Loop Hero’s audio design in general is consistently high quality.

On iOS, Loop Hero feels perfect and it runs flawlessly, but there are a few interface issues. These are mostly to do with some font sizes being a bit too small even with the larger size option enabled, and a few touch targets being too small. The game ships with a few options for tweaking the interface so you can tap to select and place cards or items versus dragging them, and this is a welcome option because I ended up swiping into multitasking on my phone sometimes when I meant to play a card in Loop Hero. The touch target issue isn’t a dealbreaker on my iPhone 15 Pro, but the current Loop Hero mobile conversion feels a lot better on my iPad Pro. It also has iCloud save support that has worked fine in my testing outside of one instance where I had to force quit the game and relaunch it to sync correctly.

In fact, the more I played Loop Hero on iPhone 15 Pro, the more I wished it had a portrait mode. The gameplay style perfectly suits portable play, and it would make me spend a lot more time with the game if that option was available. Maybe this is for the best, but jokes aside I really wish Loop Hero had portrait mode support on iPhone. Playdigious told me there is no plan for this now, but I hope they consider it for a potential future update.

If you prefer playing with a controller, you can use controllers with the iOS version. I played Loop Hero on iPhone 14 Plus with my Razer Kishi V2 and it worked perfectly. I also used my Xbox controller on iPad to test it and everything works as it should. The game seamlessly swaps between touch controls or showing controller prompts depending on your input just like the PC version does on Steam Deck when I use touch (mouse) or the Steam Deck’s own controls or Switch when I played with a combination of touch and button controls there. Check out the screenshot comparison below for how the UI differs with touch and a controller.

Speaking of Steam Deck, having played Loop Hero on Valve’s handheld and Nintendo Switch before, I enjoyed it the most on iPad. It isn’t a lesser experience on any platform really, and I recommend playing Loop Hero on all portable platforms. It just benefits so much from portable play with its one more expedition and loop nature.

Loop Hero is a free to try game on mobile and I urge you to download the game and see how you feel about the gameplay yourself. Some aspects might not hit as hard for all players, but the demo gives you enough of an idea of how the game plays and feels on mobile. I think Loop Hero is absolutely worth the asking price on Switch and Steam Deck so it costing a fraction of that on mobile makes it even easier to recommend.

Loop Hero feels like a game that was always intended for mobile, and the conversion from Playdigious is almost perfect. At a fraction of what it costs on other platforms, not only does Loop Hero feel right at home on mobile, but it is the best version of the game. It is going to be a mainstay on my iOS homescreens for a long time. I just hope portrait mode can be added eventually because it would make Loop Hero absolutely perfect on mobile.