Stone Story RPG (Free) is a very carefully crafted game. Every bit of it feels deft and deliberate, both good and bad. It catches the eye immediately with its distinctive ASCII art, particularly when it starts moving. The mysterious nature of the game evokes things like A Dark Room, and that’s a good place to be. What starts off as a very low-interaction idle-ish game quickly becomes a different beast as it opens up. But in the same way its friendlier points feel cleverly implemented, so too do its flaws. An oddity, to be sure. How does it all work out on balance? Let’s find out together.

I really need to work on my intro paragraphs. Well, nothing to be done about it now. Stone Story RPG has been around on PC via early access for a pretty long time now. Just as the game starts with a single stone and expands considerably from there, so too did this game grow over the years, finally achieving a state that its developer decided was worthy of being called a release version. That early access period means that the developer has received a lot of player feedback, and that presents an excellent opportunity to polish the heck out of an idea. Stone Story RPG is certainly that. Other than a few clumsy bits of the interface that might be a result of not being designed first as a touchscreen game, I don’t think I can find a single issue with the game that isn’t intentional.

The story starts with a stone. That stone is actually apparently the head of a person, a person we shall call hero. Or heroine. Or Dave. Whatever you like. That person collects more stones in the area around them, and finds the stones make for useful weapons against the creatures roaming about. Soon they find another resource, and that opens up things that can be crafted with resources. Weapons, armor, accessories, and chests can be found as well. The most important thing you’ll find are special stones which grant major new features and serve as the McGuffin you’re chasing for much of the adventure. Most are in the possession of large, angry, hungry things. Poke them or zap them as needed to pry those stones out of their grubby appendages.

As you play, the game gets a lot more complicated. Not terribly so, mind you. But you’ve got crafting systems, gear with elemental attributes, the ability to set up various load-outs, and more. You’ll discover new areas and run into puzzles you’ll have to solve using items. Naturally, lots of things to kill and goobers to collect. Before long you’ll have to make use of elemental weaknesses to have any serious chance of success, and you’ll find yourself flipping gear on the fly to collect resources and take advantage of weaknesses. Rather busy for an idle game, I’d say. And you absolutely need to keep your gear at its best. Whether by crafting, lucky drops, or picking things up from the shopkeeper, if you don’t have the right tools you’ll end up banging your head against the wall.

When things are going smoothly, Stone Story RPG is both highly compelling and a ton of fun. You’re discovering new things, new systems and mechanics are opening up, you’re knocking out quests, and you’re feeling clever for getting around various obstacles. I would say that the majority of the game’s several hours of runtime are very enjoyable. I’m going to start talking about the game’s issues soon, but I want to stress before going into them that you should not let them stop you from trying the game. It’s very good, and just watching it move is a bit of a magic trick. When it heats up and you’re juggling gear sets, barely defeating a boss thanks to your strategy, it’s tense in all the right ways. Go download it, it’s free. You have nothing but time to lose.

Okay, time to talk a little turkey. Stone Story RPG is a free game on mobile. It is not a free game on PC. There isn’t a single IAP that unlocks the game, either. A quick glance at the list of in-app purchases in the App Store shows things like bags of crystals that go up to fifty bucks, single weapons that cost ten bucks, and of course the obligatory DEALS that probably aren’t very good deals at all. This game would like you to pay something, which is fair. It isn’t asking for that thirty bucks flat that it wants over on Steam. How you feel about that is up to you. But the type of monetization used here forces me to really consider how it presents things.

For example, the game can be pretty grindy if you find yourself with inadequate gear or insufficient resources. Is that part of the natural design, or is it like that to nudge the player into making purchases or watching the daily incentivized ad? Is the boss difficult because conquering tough enemies is fun, or is it difficult because it wants you to buy the fancy weapon the shopkeeper is featuring? And gosh, those fancy weapons. The game really sells you on them, hard. They make your character look so much cooler, and they’re going to solve a lot of problems for you. Now, to the game’s credit, it doesn’t try to sell you anything for the first little while. And you genuinely don’t need to buy anything to beat the game’s main story, though you might have to do some grinding from time to time. But when a game is being this aggressive with its salesmanship, I just can’t help but feel a little put off.

I think Stone Story RPG is a game any fan of RPGs or mysterious adventures should give a bit of their time to. The presentation is very cool thanks to those ASCII graphics, and the soundtrack is almost as enchanting. It surprises in ways that some of my favorite games do, and it’s extremely clever in how it peels back its layers. You can play through the whole thing without paying a cent, and that’s a lot of quality entertainment for nothing. That being said, the way the game tries to sell its IAPs feels just a little… it feels like too strong of a word, but ‘repulsive’ is what immediately came to mind. Like having a slick dream and one of the characters pulls you aside to remind you that you’re asleep. There’s an illusion being woven here, and the game has to break it to try to sell you something, anything. A chip in a grand boulder of a game.

Just like when Jared wrote about it for Game of the Week, I was in two minds about reviewing Red Nexus Games’ pachinko roguelike Peglin (Free). On PC, Peglin is available as an early access game, which means it will keep getting new content or fixes as it heads to its full release. On PC, that happens quite a bit with indies, in fact even Baldur’s Gate 3 which I’ve been obsessed with for over a week, was an early access launch in 2020 before it hit 1.0 recently. Peglin is in early access on mobile and it has already seen a few notable updates bringing in new characters and more. I was planning on waiting for Peglin to hit 1.0 on PC and mobile before reviewing it, but I’ve been playing it daily again, so why not write about how it is in its current state? This Peglin early access review will be updated when the game hits 1.0.

Peglin is a “pachinko roguelike” and it involves a lot of elements from both kinds of games. There are a lot of balls, pegs, luck, charming designs, catchy music, and more as you try to aim to get as much damage by hitting pegs as one of many orbs while trying to survive. These orbs and pegs have their own interactions, and there’s a lot of RNG or luck involved depending on how you aim and what’s on the board. This affects your attack to damage enemies. Your aim is to progress to the end of the area you’re in. Even selecting the next path on your map is done by launching yourself as an orb into one of many paths on the bottom of the screen.

These paths range from events to treasure chests and even mini bosses in addition to general battles. In addition to your starting orbs, you collect loads throughout your run while also gaining relics and more. Everything changes up how you will approach the next encounter because you could have something damaging enemies further away, something that gives you more critical attacks, or something that heals you. The first many runs will be a learning experience as you try and find your bearings in Peglin. This is another reason I recommend finishing the opening area which is free to try on mobile. That will tell you everything you need to know about whether Peglin is for you or not.

Peglin could do with more variety in its unlocks, but said variety isn’t as accessible early on. These kinds of games benefit from throwing unlocks at you to keep you invested, and Peglin’s structure and difficulty don’t help. Neither does the reliance on luck, but that isn’t something I knock it for. Peglin 1.0 would be a lot more accessible with some quality of life improvements and accessibility options for newcomers. In a lot of ways, Peglin reminds me of the early game of The Binding of Isaac where you see tons of weapons or modifiers, but struggle to make much progress making you feel like you are wasting your time. The difference is that the gameplay in Peglin hasn’t even remotely stopped being fun while I did tire of Isaac before its DLC at one point.

Having played Peglin on my iPhone (with touch and a Razer Kishi V2), iPad (with a controller and with touch), and Steam Deck, Peglin right now is great on all of them, but I’d try it out on every platform if I were you before investing time into them since there is no cross platform syncing. If you do play on Steam, you can play at a higher frame rate as well and sync to your Steam Deck if you have one through Steam Cloud. The Steam Deck version even supports 120fps while docked over DisplayPort, which is how I’ve been playing it when at home.

In its current state, Peglin on iOS has almost every feature I want. The major miss is the lack of iCloud save support. As with all my reviews mentioning iCloud save support missing, I need to specify that sometimes the developer does implement it, but iCloud itself isn’t too reliable. The only times it has worked flawlessly for me are with Apple Arcade games or Feral Interactive releases. Cross platform syncing seems to be out of the question though. Barring that, a feature I’d like, but one that isn’t essential, is the ability to play in portrait mode on iPhone. Peglin is the perfect portrait game, but I understand that it would require a lot of work for the interface and to make things readable.

On modern iOS devices, Peglin is a 16:9 game so there will be black bars depending on your device. It runs very smoothly on my iPhone 11 and iPad Pro (2020). You can enable a battery saver option if you’d prefer to conserve power while running at a lower frame rate. Barring that, Peglin does have controller support on iOS. I used my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone and DualSense controller on iPad without any issues. The button prompts changed immediately depending on my input.

Peglin has a few quality of life features like being able to speed up movement and gameplay, but I hope we eventually get one that lets you skip the animations and do things even quicker. The speed up option also wasn’t implemented fully at launch on iOS, but now it offers the same 3x option as the PC version.

One of the advantages to Peglin on mobile, is that it has a very generous free trial available. Peglin is a free to start game with a one time unlock in app purchase. If you aren’t sold on it, I urge you to try the game and see how you feel in the first area. If you do like it, the unlock price is about half of what the PC version costs making the mobile version an even better option with how the pick up and play nature of the game suits portable play. It also helps that the iOS version is superb, and only really is missing iCloud save syncing.

Having never played Peggle before, Peglin has been a ton of fun even with all the luck and RNG involved. It may not be for everyone, but even in its current state, I recommend trying Peglin on iOS. The free to start model means you can try it out for yourself and see how you like it. I was sold after a few runs, and have not grown tired of it even months after launch. I’ve even started playing it on Steam Deck as a break from other games like I do with Vampire Survivors there. I can’t wait to see where Peglin goes when it hits 1.0.

Early Access review score: 4.5/5*

We’re getting dangerously close to being two decades removed from the launch of the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable. It was an exciting time. Would Sony do to Nintendo in handhelds what it had done in home consoles? What kind of wild games would arise from the beefy specs of the PSP and the unusual features of the DS? An exciting battle where everyone ultimately won, as far as I’m concerned. But I want to look at one micro-skirmish in those early years, because it is from this relative footnote that the inspiration for this game, Gravitas! ($0.99), was born. Let’s talk about Meteos.

Just a couple of years before the launch of this epic generation of handhelds, another major event went down. SEGA, having had its latest console’s clock thoroughly cleaned by the PlayStation 2 (a fate it would not suffer alone), decided to drop out of the hardware business and shift to being a third party. A pivotal time for the company, and one that would see a number of its key developers depart the company for various destinations. One such person was Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the producer of games like SEGA Rally Championship, Space Channel 5, and Rez. At the time a relatively young producer, he was fond of sick dance beats and raver culture, aspects that he had increasingly been incorporating in his projects.

When he left SEGA, he decided to start up his own independent company with a number of other former SEGA developers. Named Q Entertainment, its first order of business was to develop a puzzle game for each of the upcoming handhelds. Not the same one, either. Each handheld would get its own unique game from top to bottom. For the PlayStation Portable, Q Entertainment made Lumines, a rhythm-focused falling block puzzler that saw players rotating and placing pieces to match colors as the screen removed them based on the tempo of the constantly-changing music. The Nintendo DS received Meteos, a very unique puzzler designed by Masahiro Sakurai (Kirby and Smash Bros. creator) that used touch controls to manipulate falling blocks to make matches, which would send them rocketing into the sky and, if they had enough lift, clearing them.

Both fine games, and both did quite well. One did a lot better than the other, however, and to the victor go the spoils. Lumines received several sequels and a handful of ports, and can easily be bought on modern platforms today. As for Meteos? A somewhat ill-conceived sequel knocked it off the rails almost immediately, and it received only a couple more releases of any kind before effectively falling off the map from 2010 on. And look, I love Lumines. But I also love Meteos, and I’ve been hoping for it to make a comeback of any kind for a very, very long time. Preferably in a form closer to the original than that sequel.

Well, I don’t know if Meteos is ever coming back. And clearly, I’m not the only one who misses it. Developer Drew Smith has more initiative than I do, because he seems to have gotten tired of waiting and just went out and made his own Meteos. I’m not going to sugar-coat things too much here. Gravitas! wholesale borrows its mechanics from the original Meteos, almost to a tee. Each Phase sees you trying to send a set number of blocks off the top of the screen within a certain amount of time. You can slide pieces up and down each column (and not left and right), and matching three or more of the same pieces either vertically or horizontally will send all affiliated columns into the sky. How high? It depends on the gravity of the phase, whether the match was horizontal or vertical, and how many combos you have rolling.

Blocks will fall in one by one from the top, and sometimes you’ll get some power-ups in the mix. Send them off the top of the screen to activate them. There are also some garbage blocks, but they can be turned into normal pieces, often triggering a match when they change. Horizontal matches don’t get as much lift as vertical ones, and in theory this is your opportunity to make a combo by making further matches on the elevated pieces. This is a staple of Meteos, and it’s one of the ways where Gravitas! doesn’t quite hit the mark. It’s a real pain to make a match on those flying columns, and it ties into perhaps the biggest problem with the game on the whole: the fiddly controls on phones.

I’m not sure what the game can do about it, really. But I’m not here to fix issues, I just point them out. Anyway, the combination of the small blocks, relatively small display, and my chunky fingers means that it’s a little tricky to get the piece I want to go where I want it on iPhone. It often takes a few tries, and that can be fatal in the more difficult stages. It’s also what makes it hard for me to nail those floating combos. If I can’t move pieces accurately on a stable column, I have little hope of doing so on a moving one. Again, I don’t know how the developer could make this better, but I hope they can because I really like the game otherwise. Playing on the iPad is much more comfortable, and the game plays really well with the Pencil if you have it.

Like in Meteos, each Phase has a style of its own. The pieces look different, the background looks different, the music is different, and the gravity also changes. What impresses me here is that the overall look and feel is very “Q Entertainment”-core, if that makes sense. Sometimes more Lumines than Meteos, but always on point. It’s not quite as polished as something we would see from Mizuguchi and company, which is the main giveaway. But it looks and sounds really good, and some of the themed pieces are very amusing if a little hard to distinguish.

The main game consists of 20 Phases, and the difficulty curve is nice and smooth. Sweet at the beginning, very spicy by the end. You can also do a Quick Play, which lets you choose your favorite theme, how many blocks you need to clear and the amount of time you have to do it, and the difficulty level. A Marathon mode challenges you to keep playing as long as you can, with the difficulty rising as you go. Vs Match lets you play against another human player via local wireless or online (Hamster, take notes). That mode is very fun because the blocks you send off your screen end up cluttering theirs. Finally, your prize for beating all of the Phases of the main game is the Grav-Lab mode, which gives you the ability to play with whatever level of gravity you like. Neat.

Apart from the control issues and some minor roughness in the UI, I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about Gravitas!. I did have a crash here and there, which was disappointing, but the games are so quick that it isn’t really a huge loss on the rare occasions it happens. I’d love more Phases to play, but that’s just me wanting more of something I enjoyed a fair bit. If you’re playing on iPhone, it’s really going to come down to whether or not the developer can make those controls work better. As it is, I have to recommend it with the heavy caveat that you might have to deal with the frustration of frequent missed matches, and not being able to do much reliable comboing with the floating pieces due to the lack of accuracy is a bummer. Again, if you’re on iPad you’ll probably be fine.

Gravitas! is heavily inspired by Meteos, there’s no getting around that. But considering how much of Meteos was wrapped up in a very distinct style, it’s amazing just how close this game gets to evoking the same feelings as that classic. Given the low price of entry, anyone who misses Meteos would do well to pick this up on whatever device they own despite the control difficulties. General puzzle fans might want to give it a go too. It’s a couple of solid fixes away from a strong recommendation across the board, but I’m willing to invest in that hope.

One of the reasons why the NEOGEO hardware was able to last as long as it did is because SNK was really good at playing to its strengths. Thanks to the obsession with polygons in the mid-to-late 1990s, there wasn’t a whole lot of work being done in the 2D realm for a while, which meant that the beefy NEOGEO’s sprites and backgrounds still looked as good as most of what you would see on any newer hardware. Games like Metal Slug 3 and King of Fighters ’98 show the benefits of working smart within the limits of the hardware. What does it look like if you do the opposite? It might look a lot like Ragnagard ($3.99).

This is a one-on-one fighter developed for SNK by System Vision and Saurus that features mythological characters and gods as the fighters. The likes of Susano, Son Goku, and Lucifer are included, making for a lively roster of eight playable characters and three bosses. So far, not a bad concept for a NEOGEO game. Fighting games were the system’s specialty, and using deities as fighters is an interesting hook. Sure, eight characters is a bit of a thin roster for this point in time, but not unheard of. The game even has a functioning aerial combo system, which would have been well ahead of its time when Ragnagard released in late 1996. So what’s wrong with it?

I have to take an important detour first. We need to talk about the 800-lb gorilla in the room around this point in time. Yes, that one. Donkey Kong. In late 1994, Rare pulled off the mother of all magic tricks and Nintendo reaped the rewards. With the next generation on the horizon and Nintendo’s next console still a couple of years off, it was vital to prove that the Super NES was still a viable choice in the face of things like the 3DO, SEGA Saturn, and Sony PlayStation. A fascination with polygons was already brewing in the mainstream, and while the Super NES couldn’t put together a whole lot in real-time, Rare realized it could make 3D models and render them as sprites. With some careful color choices (the Super NES typically could only display 256 colors from a palette of 32,768), Donkey Kong Country looked for all the world like a 3D game despite being no more of one than Super Mario World had been. It was a smash hit, and a lot of folks who were a lot less careful with their color choices decided to ape it.

So yes, Ragnagard is a pre-rendered CG game. The characters are pre-rendered, the backgrounds are pre-rendered, and this is 1996 so these aren’t the most detailed of models by any means. All of this art has been adapted pretty poorly to the hardware despite the hardware offering a palette significantly deeper than that of the Super NES, and it just looks bad. This might well be the worst-looking one-on-one fighter on the console. I will grant that it looks unique, and there is a certain nostalgia to this precise era that might tickle you the right way. But there’s a cost to all of this, or at least I think there is. Did the pre-rendered graphics lead to the rest of the problems or is it just happenstance?

Ragnagard just feels bad to play. The way things animate, the way moves play out, the lag on your actions, it’s all just very unpleasant. Basic moves in particular feel almost useless, with really dicey collision that I am choosing to blame on the character models and how they are boxed out. You pretty much have to play for the specials, charging up your elements to power up your character and eventually unleash some death moves. The ground game in particular is awkward, with the best feel happening when you’re taking advantage of the air dash to pull off some mid-air nonsense. Throw in a relatively unbalanced roster and you’re left with a game that even in its best context is best left as a curiosity.

But this isn’t its best context by any means. Like all of the fighters in the mobile ACA NEOGEO line-up, Ragnagard is hindered by two issues. Anyone using touch controls is going to have a hard time with some of the motions required for special moves or even just keeping on top of four virtual buttons in the heat of combat. You can use an external controller, of course. I found the game more than comfortable enough using my Backbone. But realistically, most players are going to be using the touch controls, and they’re not ideal here. The other problem is of course the inability to play multiplayer without having extra controllers and some kind of shared display. I will bang this drum every time, especially with multiplayer-focused titles like this. We need some kind of local wireless or online multiplayer option in this line.

You get the usual ACA NEOGEO features like the extra modes and a wide array of options. All are welcome here, even if they are just lipstick on a serious pig of a game. Throw that difficulty down to the lowest setting and smack around the CPU for as long as it will let you, or see if you can chip out a higher score than the other four people on the online leaderboards. Lament that you could have bought a few delicious Snickers bars instead of this.

With how affordable the ACA NEOGEO line of games is on mobile, it’s a decent way to try out the weirder, not-so-good titles in the console’s library. If you want to throw a few bucks at Ragnagard just to see how a good idea can go very wrong, I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world. At least you’re not spending a couple of hundred dollars on a cartridge. But I think you could make a good case for this being the worst one-on-one fighter SNK is likely to release in this line, and given how poorly even the best of fighters have fared under its restrictions, that leaves Ragnagard in a very bad position indeed.

Before I go into my review of The Queen’s Gambit Chess (Free) from Netflix and Ripstone, I want to be upfront about where I am coming from. First, I haven’t seen even a single episode of the show. I know, I know. I’ve heard it’s really good, but I don’t have a lot of free time for watching TV shows. So any and all overtures this game makes towards pleasing fans of the show, presumably the main target here, are largely lost on me. Second, I’m a fairly experienced chess player. I was in the chess club back in my school days, and despite me being the literal worst player in that club, I do know my way around the board well enough to put up a good fight. So those are my credentials, and I’ll be proceeding from there.

I’m going to start with what I liked about the game. Yes, it’s one of those reviews. First of all, the presentation is really nice. I don’t know the show, but I can see a lot of care went into recreating locations and making stylized versions of various characters. Most of the chess sets look great, though the designs of some of them make it hard to tell pieces apart at a glance. I respect the attempt to gamify chess, likely as a means to keep people playing through the learning curve of the game itself. Lots of coins to earn for doing various things, and you can spend them on all sorts of things. I think for someone who genuinely knows next to nothing about chess, this is an agreeable way to learn at least the basics. There’s plenty to do here as well, following Beth’s Journey through chess puzzles and matches against various characters. You can even hop online and play against other humans.

Okay, on to the rest. If I had to sum things up, I find myself unsure of who this is exactly for. I think it has to be fans of the show, but as I haven’t seen the show I can’t say whether the fanservice hits the mark or not. But in terms of chess players, I think it’s in an awkward space. It includes a ton of accessibility features that make it easier to win a game, for example, but if you were to move over to another chess game without those assists, you’d be lost. The game isn’t teaching you, it’s telling you. Sometimes it’s telling you the wrong things, even. The chess puzzles, normally a good source of learning a variety of strategies, are surprisingly limited in their scope. If you’ve played chess puzzles before, you’re not going to be terribly challenged by any of these. You’re also not going to pick up many useful techniques through them. Sometimes it does drop some useful techniques in the main game, but since it never properly revisits them or explains the theory behind them, it feels a bit pointless.

On the other side of the coin, the AI and overall progression is probably going to irritate experts, even if they jump to the highest difficulty right away. The game also really wants to help you, and there’s nothing worse than a pushy helper when you already know what you want and need to do. Okay, so maybe you just head online and play against other humans, count on the human element to sort things out? Not a bad idea, but there’s a big problem right now with the game that is magnified when you play online.

This game has a crashing problem. I tried it on multiple devices just to make sure it wasn’t just my phone, but no. Every so often, not every time but often enough to lose your trust, the game will crash in the middle of a match. If you’re playing against the CPU, it isn’t the end of the world. You can pick up where you left off. But if you’re playing against someone online, you’re pretty much done. The game never crashed during chess puzzles; only during matches and only once you get a ways into them. But that is a pretty serious problem for a chess game, I feel. I’m going to assume this will be fixed and not completely spike the game’s score for it, but I’m not going to ignore it either.

I’m not going to drag this one out too far. If you have Netflix it doesn’t cost you anything to try the game, and if you’re a fan of the show and somehow aren’t that familiar with chess, I encourage you to give it a shot. Queen’s Gambit Chess will assuredly teach you how to play the game, so if that is what you’re looking for you’re all set. But it will only take you so far, choosing to show you what to do instead of teaching you what to do. Experienced chess players will probably find it a bit unsatisfying overall thanks to the low level of difficulty and excessive handholding. Throw in some fairly serious technical issues in the current version that deeply affects multiplayer and you’ve got a game that struggles to find its own winning move.

Roto Force (Free) from developer Anton Klinger aka Accidentally Awesome Games and PID Games is a game I’ve had installed since it launched, but I didn’t actually play it until about a week later. I was impressed with it right from the get go, but I ended up forgetting about it until a friend of mine mentioned EDGE magazine saying it was the kind of game Vlambeer would still be making if the developer was still around. That stuck with me, and it became very evident after about 15 minutes of playing. This rotating blend of run ‘n gun twin stick shooting action is a shockingly good and polished experience that will likely be high up on our iOS Game of the Year list in December.

Roto Force not only has slick controls, excellent haptics, and amazing gameplay, but it also has memorable writing when you have to do things for your boss. The level biomes are varied as well, and Roto Force does a good job of introducing new mechanics, testing you, and giving you unlocks at a steady pace. Roto Force has you moving left or right, but also dashing across to any side of the level you’re in barring the one you’re on. You also have the ability to shoot (of course) and avoid enemies and hazards while you work your way through different levels, mini-bosses, and proper bosses. The checkpointing system is quite lenient, but Roto Force has you on your toes at all times with its fast-paced gameplay.

After a nice interactive tutorial, you start to see the real magic in Roto Force as you make your way through the various sets of stages in each level. It feels very carefully crafted to deliver a quality arcade twin stick shooter experience. Depending on your skill level and the accessibility options, Roto Force might feel a bit short, but I have no regrets recommending it at full price right now on iOS. If you watch the gameplay video above, it might look like a game that wouldn’t work on a touchscreen, but the developers of the mobile version have nailed the controls. I love how it feels with touch controls.

While I thought Roto Force looked excellent in its screenshots that absolutely don’t do the slick gameplay justice, it has a surprisingly well done interface not only in its controls for a touchscreen, but also the actual menus. Basically Roto Force screams polish and I was surprised to find the full game unlock price only $4.99. I expected it to be more expensive even on PC given the game quality.

I haven’t played Roto Force on Steam Deck yet, but it feels so perfect on iOS that I don’t think I’ll even bother getting it on PC. I had no performance issues on my iPhone 11 or iPad Pro, and the game looks excellent on both devices. The touch controls have options to tweak the experience to your liking, but you can also use a controller. I tested Roto Force with my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone 11 and DualSense on iPad Pro. The game detects controllers immediately and works perfectly with them.

I mentioned accessibility and not only does Roto Force let you adjust the colors, but you can also disable screen shake like I did. You can also opt for a fixed camera perspective. When I first played Roto Force, I was afraid of getting motion sickness, but that wasn’t a problem after disabling the screen shake. The option to lock the camera is welcome as well. There’ also an accessibility assist menu under your profile that lets you adjust the game speed, damage multiplier, and toggle immortality if you’re having trouble with a stage or boss.

My only complaint with Roto Force on iOS right now is the lack of iCloud save syncing. I tested this on multiple devices across two iCloud accounts and had no success with syncing. I really wish more developers implemented this more reliably or at all.

Roto Force not only feels amazing on iOS regardless of if you use a controller or touch, but it also managed to surprise me with its writing and boss designs. I’m very impressed with the accessibility options and the haptic feedback included on iOS as well. This is one of the most-polished games I’ve played on iOS all year, and one I see myself jumping into regularly with its awesome gameplay and aesthetic. I urge you to try the game for free and see how you feel because this might be your next favorite pick up and play twin-stick shooter on mobile.

What a journey this one is. A title first dropped as a joke in South Park to make Butters look uncool becomes an Apple Arcade game and somehow against all odds is actually fantastic. Hello Kitty Island Adventure () might look like Animal Crossing in screenshots, but that’s really just one facet of the game. There’s a bit of The Legend of Zelda in here, and it even reminded me of A Short Hike at times. How is a game based on Sanrio characters as clever and fun as this? Really a well-done effort all-around. Let’s look at exactly what it is.

The first thing you’re presented with is a fairly limited character creator, after which you will find yourself on a plane with various Sanrio characters. You have the chance to talk to everyone, after which Kitty causes a mess, Badtz-maru drops a movie reference that everyone who has played this game has taken a screenshot of, and everyone is forced to parachute down to the island below. It once played host to a theme park, and you’re all there to… you know, I don’t remember? Visit it? Get it up and running again? The important thing is that it’s a pretty big area and not all of the passengers landed in the same place. Most of you luckily ended up in a central seaside area that is perfect for learning how to play the game. What luck!

The various characters will give you quests to complete. Some of them are fetch quests. Lots of them are, really. Completing them will of course give you some rewards, and might increase your friendship level with that character. Leveling up your friendships will give you access to more quests and more rewards, some of which are tools you can use to explore more of the world around you. You can actually explore a surprisingly large area from the start, but your inability to swim will keep you from going too far. Eventually you’ll get items that allow you explore more thoroughly, and the world opens up to a shockingly big degree. There are some overarching goals that you’ll stumble upon before long, plus tons of smaller ones that may or may not lead to something important. There is also an absolute bucket load of side activities to do like fishing and bug collecting. There are even little mini-races that award you with trophies of various levels based on your time.

You’ll also sometimes find yourself exploring underground, in buildings, and around other structures. There are honest-to-goodness puzzles in these places, often variations on switch problems but often something else entirely. It’s never excessively difficult, likely in deference to the idea that young kids might be playing, but some of them do require a bit of creative thought. Speaking of difficulty, there’s no real way to get hurt or die in the game. At most, you can end up falling off the screen or into the water before you have the right items, at which point you’ll just respawn at the last safe place your feet were touching.

It’s interesting because while there is a lot of Animal Crossing in this game, there’s also a lot more structure to send you off on linear threads if that’s what you want. Go solve the mysteries of the islands and track down the other characters. Get all of the tools so you can explore fully. Or just hang around and try to bake every single thing possible. Go fishing for a bit. Decorate houses with furniture that you buy, find, or craft. Invite guests and complete the quests they issue. Design some new threads for your character. Wear silly costumes. Take selfies with all of the hidden Gudetamas. See if you can improve your island’s Vibe score. It’s amazing how much this game checks off the life simulation boxes while also giving you more traditional gamey bits like exploration and puzzle-solving.

The controls are very simple, with a virtual stick for moving your character around and a few buttons on the other side for using your collected tools or talking to people. Pressing on the right side anywhere but the button spaces makes you jump, and you can press it again to float with your balloons. The platforming is a bit clunky at times and you can easily get stuck in places, but the game will always get you out of any messes you get into. Various menus allow you to change your tools or check your items, and a robust map and quest log ensure you’re never stranded about what to do. You can also easily see how much of each collection you’ve finished.

Simply put, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a game you can really get stuck into for hours. I ran down my battery practically without noticing the time go by on multiple occasions while playing the game for this review. I was expecting a simple Animal Crossing clone because that is really all it had to be. You don’t have to flex that hard when you’re using characters as familiar as Kitty and My Melody, after all. It’s just a game for little kids, right? But developer Sunblink went and made a game that I think just about anyone can enjoy, regardless of age or familiarity with games. I also appreciate how cleverly written it is. That is one of the secret strengths of Animal Crossing that so many of the games inspired by it don’t get right.

Apart from some weirdness with the platforming and clipping, the only real knock I have on this game is that the multiplayer didn’t work properly for me during the whole time I was playing the game. I bet it would be fun, but for now it just doesn’t seem to connect. I’ve been informed the developer is working on a fix, but right now it is what it is. Luckily the game is immensely enjoyable in single player, so it’s not going to hurt things too badly.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Hello Kitty Island Adventure is one of my favorite mobile games of this year so far. It’s so much more than I expected it to be, so much more than it needed to be, and I genuinely appreciate just how compelling it is from head to toe. I’ve been vocal amongst my peers about how Apple Arcade needs more reasons to subscribe these days. Well, here’s one extremely good reason. Butters was right the whole time.

I don’t have a lot of nice things to say as a whole about 3 Count Bout ($3.99), the latest addition to the mobile ACA NEOGEO line from SNK and Hamster. It’s one or two ridiculously poor decisions away from being a really solid game, and its biggest problem is one that is magnified by the nature of the usual format of these mobile releases. It is agitating how many things it did a decent job with, only to flush it all down the drain in what I can only assume was an attempt to fish more quarters from unsuspecting arcade goers. This one won’t be pretty, friends.

While King of the Monsters and its sequel were essentially wrestling games, albeit between giant monsters, there was clearly room on the NEOGEO for a more familiar game in the genre. By 1993, SNK was making some of the hottest one-on-one fighters around, so it wouldn’t seem totally unreasonable that it could make a good wrestling game. The character designers did their job well enough, with ten colorful combatants that wouldn’t look out of place in a real federation at the time. Each of them has a fine assortment of moves, with plenty of strikes and some special moves to spice things up. The graphics and audio are really good, playing to the strengths of the platform very well. It even mixes things up and gives you some street fights from time to time.

In regular matches you can win by pin fall or submission, both of which require you to wear down your opponent’s life meter to have any chance of success. When you’re in other locations, the only option is to beat the opponent to the point that they don’t wake up for a ten-count. Yes, those ones aren’t three-count bouts. Well, it happens. You can choose to play in a few different modes, but most mobile players will only have one available to them. You as a single player will tackle the CPU opponents in a series of battles in order to win the championship. If you happen to have enough external controllers and feel like huddling around your mobile device, you can also do two players against a CPU tag team or battle against each other.

Let’s get to the problems now. The main issue here is the difficulty. This ACA NEOGEO release allows you to adjust the difficulty, but even on its easiest setting, the CPU is an absolute beast once you get a few matches in. It is incredibly aggressive, it will win the button-mashing grapples almost every single time, and if you even think about using strikes it will punish you during the wind-up. It’s not like it’s impossible to win the single-player mode. If you’re tenacious you can find your own cheap, semi-reliable ways of fighting back. But it isn’t fun to play the game like this. Not at all. The upshot is that you get a couple of decent bouts before the computer opponent starts lobbing you around like a beach ball. You’ve got about as much hope of fighting back as the ball does.

Indeed, the only real way to enjoy 3 Count Bout at all is to play one-on-one against another human. If you can swing that, it’s alright. Nothing to go running up and down the street shouting at the top of your voice about, but you can have an okay time. Alas, that’s a tricky thing to pull off in these mobile releases. I really wish there were some other options for playing multiplayer in these games so that I could show more kindness to games like this, but I can only work with what is put in front of me. All the other ACA NEOGEO extras, such as additional modes and options, don’t mean very much when the core single-player experience is as miserable as this.

Simply put, 3 Count Bout is an incredibly poor fit for the most common use case of these mobile releases. You won’t find much joy in its single-player mode due to how quickly and thoroughly the CPU player becomes punishing. The multiplayer options require extra controllers and a means of displaying the game for both players, which isn’t going to be something most can take advantage of. And even if you did, all you would end up with is a middling wrestling game with some nice visuals. Stick to King of the Monsters for your mobile grappling kicks.

So Return to Monkey Island finally hit iOS and Android earlier today following its debut on PC and Switch. When it was originally announced, I wasn’t actually sold on the aesthetic, but Terrible Toybox being involved meant I knew I would need to eventually play it because it likely would be worth it. I decided to wait for a potential Switch physical release to buy it. It was then released on PS5 and Xbox Game Pass. This is when I tried out Return to Monkey Island (Free) for the first time, and I ended up liking the few hours I put into it a lot, but didn’t enjoy playing it with a controller. I figured I’d hold off for a potential mobile version or just wait for the Switch physical because it felt like an experience that would be brilliant on a touchscreen or portable.

A few months had gone by, and I did end up playing it more on Xbox. The way things work out, Devolver Digital announced a mobile version just as I was near the end. I’ve been replaying the game and trying out the different hint systems while seeing how the game differs if at all across platforms. For this Return to Monkey Island mobile port review, I’m going to cover why this is the gold standard for point and click adventure games in many ways, but also touch on the port quality for mobile, Switch, and how it plays on Steam Deck as usual.

Despite its name, Return to Monkey Island can be enjoyed as a standalone story. You will miss out on some references though. While there is an in-game scrapbook that I used as a refresher for the original games, don’t let the name or anyone tell you to skip this until you play games that aren’t as accessible outside of playing on PC. If you’ve already played a few games in the series, Return to Monkey Island will feel like going back to an old bar after many years, but remembering many things you loved about it. Familiar faces, voices, style of puzzles, and more await you in Return to Monkey Island, but this time there are plethora of accessibility and quality of life features that you can enjoy if you ever get stuck. You don’t need to worry about looking up a walkthrough here. Return to Monkey Island has it all included if you ever need some help, and the hint system is very smartly implemented.

Return to Monkey Island has Guybrush Threepwood back talking about an adventure going across many new and old locations. Not only are series’ creator Ron Gilbert and co-writer Dave Grossman back, but also composers Peter McConnell, Michael Land, and Clint Bajakian who worked on both The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge are back with Rex Crowle who worked on Tearaway which I adored on PS Vita. This feels very much like the band coming back for the most part, and while many revivals have taught me to be skeptical, I’m glad this team pulled it off. While we have had Special Edition versions of both The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge hit mobile in addition to Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island, none of them have felt this polished and great to play on mobile.

If you’ve never played a game in this series or are new to the genre, Return to Monkey Island has you tapping to move around, tapping and dragging to find points of interest, interacting with said points of interest, and going through a plethora of well-written and in many cases voiced dialogue to progress through the story and puzzles. There is a lot of backtracking in parts, so keep that in mind as you approach this adventure.

Return to Monkey Island has a few control options available on mobile. I played with touch controls on both iPhone and iPad which felt like the best way to play it. I also used my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone 11 and it worked great. On the iPad, I only tried my DualSense controller, but the game lets you choose between controller button prompts for PS5, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch. It defaults to Xbox, but you can change it. I don’t have a wireless keyboard handy to try out keyboard and mouse support, but using a mouse worked fine. It treats it like a touch input in Return to Monkey Island. I don’t have an Android device to test on, so whatever I’ve said so far applies to the iOS version on the mobile side.

I’m glad to have come around on the visuals in Return to Monkey Island. While I prefer the look of the original game, Return to Monkey Island feels like the correct step forward for bringing the franchise into the modern era. The aesthetic not only works well in motion, but it looks gorgeous on high resolution displays. Return to Monkey Island on iPhone doesn’t have fullscreen support and runs in 16:9 with black bars on my iPhone 11. The iPad version runs fullscreen on my 11″ iPad Pro though and looks superb.

Barring the writing and visuals that are a huge part of the experience, audio is where Return to Monkey Island absolutely shines. The voice acting is superlative, and it is backed by an incredible soundtrack. It feels weird to think of it like one, but this is probably the closest we will come to a AAA point and click adventure game. While not the same genre, I think we should be talking about Return to Monkey Island alongside great games like Pentiment.

Having now played Return to Monkey Island on basically everything but PS5, it shines on a portable. The iOS versions have controller support as well as touch support as I mentioned above, but so do the Steam Deck and Switch versions. Given the game looks, runs, and plays brilliantly on all portables I tried it on, I recommend getting it wherever you enjoy playing games the most. There is no definitive portable version because they are all excellent. My favorite version is definitely the iPad version on my iPad Pro.

On the topic of accessibility, when you start a new game, you’re given the option of playing in casual or hard mode. The former is for those who want easier puzzles and to focus on the story while the latter aims to be a “full monkey” experience with more and harder puzzles. The hint book which you obtain in-game can be used in both difficulty options. If you did play prior games and have more time to spend on the game, I’d recommend the hard mode. I think 11 hours is about what you should expect if you don’t use casual mode and end up retrying some puzzles a few times. Return to Monkey Island ended up being a lot meatier than I expected.

Usually, I’d be hoping for a Switch physical release for a multi-platform game I enjoy a lot at this point, but Return to Monkey Island is already getting a physical release this week on PS5, Xbox, and Switch. I pre-ordered it the moment I finished writing this review. My only complaint about Return to Monkey Island on iOS right now is that it doesn’t seem to have functional cloud save support between iPhone and iPad. I tested this with the pre-release build so things might change at or soon after launch, but it didn’t work across two different iCloud accounts on four devices.

I hope Devolver Digital can work with Lucasfilm and Terrible Toybox again to bring some of the earlier games to modern platforms. They deserve to be played by as many people as possible, and Return to Monkey Island proves that the team handling the games knows what makes these special, and does enough to make them feel good for newcomers and veterans to the genre. The only reason you should avoid Return to Monkey Island is if you don’t enjoy point and click adventure games that can have some obtuse puzzles. This release does enough with accessibility and hints to negate that, but I’d only hesitate in recommending it to that group of people. If you do enjoy the games, just go buy Return to Monkey Island on iOS and enjoy your weekend with it. It rules.

Luck be a Landlord ($4.99) from developer TrampolineTales hit iOS and Android last week following its PC release. When Jared wrote about it it reminded me to try it out on Steam because I had it on my wishlist since I interviewed Superbrothers. I tried the demo on Steam, and was instantly sold on the game to the point where I just bought it on iOS and spent an hour playing it on my iPhone. The first few hours of the game reminded me of this Vince McMahon GIF. The slot machine meets roguelike deckbuilder is a game I feel like I’ll have on my homescreen for a while, but it has a few things holding it back on iOS right now.

Luck be a Landlord has you trying to defeat your landlord by earning more through slot machines to pay your ever-increasing rent. Despite the aesthetic and it involving slot machines, Luck be a Landlord is a premium game with no in app purchases. Initially, Luck be a Landlord felt like a decent time waster that I might get bored of in an hour or so, but the hooks were in after a few attempts at defeating the landlord. You see, each spin gives you things to add to your deck, or in this case slot machine. These change how much you earn, synergize with other items, and can turn the tide of a spin as you inch your way towards your rent target for that cycle. After every rent payment, your rent increases and you eventually need to keep track of many items or symbols so you know what to pick next to make the most of the situation.

There are so many combinations of items and symbols that I sometimes feel like I’m playing The Binding of Isaac. Luck be a Landlord also has loads of achievements though the developer couldn’t add as many on Game Center thanks to a limitation on Apple’s side. The in-game achievements match other platforms though. One quality of life feature I’m glad to see included from the start, is the ability to increase the speed or turn off animations and go for instant results in spins as you earn coins. This makes it even better to just pick up and play on iPhone when you have a few minutes spare.

On PC, Luck be a Landlord has support for mouse and controller inputs. On iOS, it only has touch controls. I wouldn’t use a controller for a game like this given the touch option, but it is worth keeping in mind for those who plan to play on iPad where I prefer using controllers in most games. The interface has been brought over very well to touch, but you will need to tap on a few things more often to understand mechanics in the early hours of playing. For accessibility, Luck be a Landlord lets you adjust font, maximum frame rate including 120fps on my iPad Pro, various colors including that of the main background, item text, symbol text, and more.

As I played more, I started discovering specific items and symbols that I found working better, but the randomness element is going to constantly make you think on your toes with each spin. This is a positive or negative depending on who you ask. As someone who enjoyed the randomness element in games like Hearthstone to the point where I only focused on those joke decks by the end of my time with it, I’ve enjoyed being screwed over by a bad spin in Luck be a Landlord as weird as that sounds. Since this involves slot machines, you need to expect and welcome that, but it still might not be a positive for some players. The other aspect some might be put off by is the sheer number of items and possibilities making the early hours feel a bit daunting to progress, but this learning by experience is what gets me deeper into games like Luck be a Landlord and Slay the Spire.

Visually, I like the Luck be a Landlord aesthetic a lot. It has great pixel art for various objects, animals, and more. Animations are also very nice and smooth on my devices. Given the amount of different characters and items in the slots, the pixel art is still quite varied and recognizable. The music from Vincent Colavita is surprisingly catchy as well.

If you’ve already played Luck be a Landlord on PC, and are wondering how the mobile port is, it is fantastic if you’re ok with portrait gameplay on iOS. Barring that, I saw nothing in the PC version that would make me want to play it there over my iPhone. You can play it on Steam Deck without issues if you prefer playing there over mobile, but the iPhone version is my favorite way to play Luck be a Landlord.

In its current state, the only thing holding Luck be a Landlord back on iOS is seemingly lack of cloud save support between devices and the lack of landscape support which the developer has already commented on. Everything else about Luck be a Landlord on iOS is fantastic. This is easily my favorite way to play it, and I hope the patch with landscape mode does end up releasing soon after the engine adds support for it on iOS.

Luck be a Landlord manages to perfectly blend slots with a deckbuilding roguelike. I never thought those two would work, but just like Peglin taught me recently, the developers that manage getting genres like these working together are the real ones to keep a watch over for future games. Luck be a Landlord is a game I’ll have on my iPhone homescreen for a long time. I just hope the update with landscape support arrives in the near future. I liked it enough to buy it at full price on Steam soon after playing the iOS version. It is that good.