IGE's Ten Favorite Games of 2016

2016 is almost over, and that means it's time to look back at the games that stood out, that stuck with me for various reasons. I actually played quite a few more AAA games this year, due to finally getting a PS4, so this list does feature several non-indie picks, but that's only because they were just that good. 

So here's my ten favorite games of year, in no particular order, along with a few honorable mentions. 

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Hitman
Hitman is something rare and special: an honest-to-god comeback, a return-to-form that sets the bar for all future returns-to-form. From a game that made one question if IO had forgotten what made the series special, that altered many of the series' unique features in baffling ways, to a sleek game that pushes the Hitman series to new heights.

But even putting all that aside, Hitman is a triumph of game design, with sprawling clockwork sandboxes just waiting for you to poke and prod and manipulate, each one heavy with atmosphere and clever story vignettes, with so many ways to approach each mission that a single one can last you a dozen hours, and a huge amount of additional content that challenges your assassination prowess in new ways. This is the sequel I've been waiting a decade for.



Inside
At a glance, one might question what exactly makes Inside so special. Its visuals seem muted and dull, strip away everything and it's a game of mostly traversing right and solving environmental puzzles, it's a game where the only controls are move, jump, and grab. But Inside can't be fully appreciated at a glance; it must be played to understand its excellence.

Inside is a bleak crescendo of a cinematic platformer, every aspect building upon the other until its incredible finale. The animations, how the boy stumbles and struggles, how he looks with nervous glances or hunches over in tense fear. The aesthetic, rife with countless details and a cohesive palette that accentuates the game's depressing dystopian tone. The sound design, from the subtle heartbeat of a soundtrack to the boy's hurried breathing when stealth shifts to desperate pursuit. Everything coalesces to create an oppressive miasma of unease and tension, where you never feel safe, where every mistake is met with quick ruthless death, and its lean puzzle design is always driving you forward to more haunting imagery and more surreal discoveries.



The Last Guardian
I liked Ico, and I loved Shadow of the Colossus, so I had high expectations when I started The Last Guardian. And somehow, Ueda's vision was able to surpass them. This is an incredible journey of friendship told not through cutscenes or prose, but the medium's most unique element: interactivity. No doubt many great stories in gaming have been conveyed through audio logs and expert writing and compelling voice actors, but The Last Guardian tells the story of boy and beast through gameplay, through Trico's groundbreaking animations, through your petting and cleaning of feathers and removal of spears, through the desperate saves from certain death and the graceful leaps through this world's mysterious architecture.

From that foundation emerges a cinematic platformer that pushes boundaries on myriad fronts: playable set-pieces that rival Naughty Dog's work, tense platforming over vertigo-inducing heights, smart puzzles driven by cooperation, and an gripping ending that won't soon be forgotten



Titanfall 2
My eyes were opened to the joys of online multiplayer this year, first with Overwatch and Rocket League. then Battlefield 1 and Rainbow Six Siege. But I've played one shooter more than all of them, and that game was Titanfall 2. It's a demanding game, where quick reflexes and deft wall-running are your ultimate advantage, so it took a while for me to gain the skills to not get slaughtered. But with practice comes precision, and with precision comes some of the most intense and entertaining action I've enjoyed in a long time. There's nothing quite like wall-running past a missile salvo between warring titans, or sliding around a corner to cut down an incoming enemy, or grapple-hooking an ejecting pilot to deliver a killing mid-air blow. It's fast, furious, skillful, where a typical match can produce awesome emergent set-piece moments.

But those awesome set pieces aren't reserved to multiplayer, because Titanfall 2 also comes with one of coolest FPS campaigns in a while, a lean series of missions that shifts from one cool concept and encounter to the next, all wrapped in the stylish skillful parkour and combat that defines the series.



Oxenfree
The narrative adventure has seen a renaissance since Telltale revitalized it with The Walking Dead way back in 2012. From Dontnod's Life Is Strange to the historical 1979 Revolution, their influence has been undeniable. But while they may be the originator, Oxenfree is the innovator. Harkening back to the Spielbergian adventures of the 80s, this tale of friends on an island where dark forces lurk pushes the genre forward in wonderful ways. Its walk-and-talk mechanic allows for the kind of pacing that Telltale games and their ilk could never do, letting you make tough dialogue choices without breaking away from regular gameplay. And that dialogue is so natural, flows so smoothly, with interjections and interruptions and whatnot, a far cry from the turn-based style of conversation seen in everything from Mass Effect to Fables. Finally Night School found a clever way to do a New Game Plus within the confines of a narrative adventure, giving you another reason to revisit these likeable characters and atmospheric locales.



SuperHOT
It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years. No really, clever joke aside, it is. SuperHOT takes the one hit kills and limited ammo and encroaching enemies on all sides of Hotline Miami, and makes it a pseudo-turn-based action puzzler through its core time-moves-when-you-move mechanic. That simple idea changes everything. It's a game of minimalism and restraint, more time spent side-stepping bullets and planning your next move than attacking. Those methodical minutes-long sequences of time-slowed action only last mere seconds in real time. Every moment is one of careful movement, since every step by you means danger is one step closer. 

The combat in SuperHOT is the stuff of Hollywood magic, scenes that are usually only reserved for scripted moments and set pieces. You snatch a gun out of the air and spin around to kill the enemies approaching from behind. Point blank shots are negated by a katana slicing the bullet in half. You weave between bullets with effortless ease. It's a low-poly dance through a rain of crystalline shards and it never gets old



Stephen’s Sausage Roll
2016 was the year of the puzzler. The Witness, Obduction, SHENZHEN I/O, Recursed, Sethian, Thoth, and more, this year was one with quality puzzle games of all kinds. But none impressed or stumped me as much as Stephen's Sausage Roll. It may not seem like much, a Sokoban-style puzzler with a low-fi aesthetic, but that's where the genius of the games lies. Stephen's Sausage Roll is an ever growing puzzle box of new mechanics, mechanics that were always there, hidden in plain sight through level design alone.

Your basic toolset of rotation and fork is so versatile, allowing for puzzles so satisfyingly diverse and tricky, it is astounding to think back to how the early puzzles were only about rotating and pushing sausages with your fork. This is an ingenious work of level design and clever puzzles that should not be missed.



House of the Dying Sun
At one point, House of the Dying Sun was a bigger game, an ambitious sprawling Mount-and-Blade-style campaign with procedural factions and an open map. But instead the finished game is a lean collection of hand-crafted missions, polished and distilled to focus on one thing: combat. Combat is House of the Dying Sun's core element, each mission dropping you into a volatile situation and asking you to seamlessly manage both intense dogfighting from your interceptor cockpit and fleet tactics from the macro RTS view. No map to travel, no trading or hangars to buy a better fleet, no smaller jobs to build up your reputation, just relentless combat where positioning and expert flight is key to survival.

But it would remiss to not single out House of the Dying Sun's stellar sound design. The audio makes the game. The muted rumble and thuds of your weapons. The rasp of your oxygen mask. The tinny chatter of your wingmen, The mechanical whir when you reload or switch weapons. The sound design draws you into the combat, gives every action an immersive and atmospheric reaction



Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
You know a game is going to be good when a demo shifts your expectations from "Huh, seems interesting" to "I need to keep playing, please release already". In an ideal world, Shadow Tactics will be for real-time Commandos-style tactics what Divinity was for CRPGs. Polished to a mirror sheen, this is a game of weaving through vision cones, of carefully planning out precisely timed distractions and executions, of managing all your of team's special skills and abilities to overcome seemingly impossible odds. A single mission can last 2-3 hours, as you plan and study and observe and act and react and quick-save like a madman. This is one of the best stealth games of 2016, and the best Commandos-like in a long time.



Imbroglio
Michael Brough's games have often hinged on the dichotomy of simple on the outside and surprisingly deep within, a lo-fi aesthetic contrasted by challenging strategy. His latest game Imbroglio is no different; it plays like a distant cousin of his previous roguelike 868-Hack, with a focus on positioning and smart use of your abilities, but expanded exponentially and offering surprising complexity.

Imbroglio is many things. It's a roguelike, as you tactically use different skills and turn-based movement to outlast increasingly challenging groups of enemies. It's a card game, with each class having unique skills and limitations that define the kind of deck you can build. And it's a board game, as you use those cards to build the floor of the board itself, carefully considering synergy between abilities and your health and mana and where enemies will enter the arena. Imbroglio is the kind of simple-to-play yet surprisingly complex game that you'll often find on mobile, and one of the best roguelikes the platform has to offer.

Honorable Mentions:

Sethian
I've never played anything like Sethian. Essentially Arrival: The Game, it's a narrative adventure/linguistic puzzler that challenges you to learn how to read and communicate in an alien language. Wholly unique and very clever

N++
I'd place the physics-driven platforming and slick smooth controls of the original N up there with games like Super Meat Boy as one of the forefathers of the indie precision platformer, and N++ is the culmination of 12 years of refinement on that original game, with thousands of smartly-designed stages that wringe diverse platforming challenges from a simple moveset.

Devil Daggers
If DOOM was the modern update of the old-school shooter, Devil Daggers is the other side of the coin, distilling the genre to its leanest form. You, your weapon, an arena, a cacophonous onslaught of eldritch horrors, now survive. An oppressive symphony of distorted shrieks, skittering legs, guttural roars, echoing moans brings to life a bestiary of bone and flesh and too many appendages. Devil Daggers' sound design is some of the best you'll hear this year

Thumper
The most intense, most satisfying, and most draining test of reflexes since Super Hexagon, Thumper is equal parts simplicity and excess, easy-to-understand but challenging-to-master gameplay within a sensory overload of movement, color, and sound. If Super Hexagon was hypnotic in its shifting twisting geometric minimalism, then Thumper is 2001's mesmerizing mindfuck given metal life.

The Witness
Jonathan Blow's seven-years-in-the-making magnus opus is a puzzle game masterpiece, a vibrant Myst-like that wordlessly teaches you to understand its expansive repertoire of mechanics

DOOM
You are not a one-man army. You are a god of death, a bringer of ruin and slaughter to the forces of hell. They fear you and rightfully so, as you unleash unstoppable fury upon them through relentlessly fast first-person shooter action

IOS Review #119: RYB

Title: RYB
Developer: FLEB LLC
Platforms: iOS Universal
Price: $0.99
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Puzzle games come in all shapes and forms, from the sprawling island and panels of The Witness to the charming snowy sokoban of A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build. One of more minimalist indie successes of recent years was Matthew Brown's Hexcells series, a mix of Picross and Minesweeper where every puzzle could be solved through logic alone. Fans of Hexcells will feel at home with the abstract RYB, a similarly logically-driven puzzler that eschew numbers and text for colors, symbols, and oddly-shaped geometric stages.

RYB stands out from the start through its vibrant colors and shaped levels that maks each stage look more like abstract art projects than levels in a puzzle game. Squares, triangle, hexagons, and other shapes interlock to form odd levels that games designed around uniform grids and tiles never could (ie Hexcells' hexagons or Picross's grids).

Despite the myriad shapes and colors across levels, the core challenge remains the same: correctly color in each shape using clues and logic. Accomplishing that goal is what makes RYB such a wonderful gem of a puzzler. Figuring out the rules of the game, what the colors and markings within the shapes indicate, gives the games a playful charm, a sense of experimentation as you figure out the logic of the puzzles and then begin to understand how to solve the more tricky challenges.

The game gradually guides your hand, offering simple text and basic puzzles to introduce each mechanic and rule but letting the gameplay itself work to ingrain those ideas into your head. Slowly but surely, levels evolve from a group of shapes and colors into a visual language you can decode and decipher, that those colored circles in this formation within that shape means these other shapes must be this color. Through its visual learning and satisfying challenge, RYB stands out as a must-play puzzler for players looking for a game where logic and learning ensures success over trial and error.

RYB is available for $0.99 on iPad and iPhone.

IOS Review #118: Imbroglio

Title: Imbroglio
Developer: Michael Brough
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $3.99
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Between his titles like Zaga-33, Corrypt, and 868-Hack, Michael Brough is known for delivering odd abstract roguelikes and puzzlers that seem simple on the surface but gradually reveal a wealth of hidden depth and complexity. His newest work Imbroglio is no different, blending roguelike, RPG card game, and board game into  one challenging and engaging game

In some ways, 868-Hack veterans will feel at home with Imbroglio. The two share some similar elements and mechanics, such as randomly spawning enemies, the level layout shifting when you achieve a certain goal, enemies moving when you move and swiping towards them to attack, and so on. But while both share a similar skeleton, Imbroglio is its own beast. Choosing from a selection of different classes, each with their own unique abilities and deck limitations, your goal is to collect stars to increase your high score, evading or destroying enemies along the way.

Every star collected is another point to your score, but also alters the level layout and refills part of your health and mana bars; this aspect adds a risk-vs-reward element to increasing your score: how long can you use the level to your advantage, before needing to grab a star to balance out your health and mana. The two act as more of a resource to be managed, since certain weapons also draw from those meters to attack.

Yes, weapons. Imbroglio isn't your usual card game. After a certain score threshold is reached, you can build your deck of weapon tiles, ranging from swords that teleport you to a random spot or stun nearby enemies to ranged crossbows, and then use those tiles to construct the level floor. Standing over a weapon lets you use its properties, and killing enemies levels up that individual tile, unlocking new effects and buffs.

This complex interconnected web of class and tiles and board layout turn Imbroglio into a simple-to-play, but deep strategic roguelike. Finding synergies between different weapons, choosing the most opportune moment to gather a star, deciding which tile to use and when, Each class offers new strategies to master, due to the tiles they can or can't use. Every movement counts, as it can mean another enemy appearing or you being cornered. Every tile counts, as upgrading certain weapons can be more useful against different enemies. Every placement of those tiles count, as some can level up adjacent weapons or work in tandem against enemies.

Imbroglio is available for $3.99 on iPad and iPhone.

IOS Review #117: Blackbar / Grayout

Title: Blackbar, Grayout
Developer: Mrgan LLC
Platforms: iOS Universal, Android
Price: $2.99 each
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Sometimes it can be easy to forgot the power of words can play in games. Often words are merely relegated to mere UI indications or the names of cool new loot. Dialogue, flavor text, and logs of lore remind us of their importance, while the Torments, Sunless Seas, and 80 Days of gaming show us how effective well-crafted prose can be. But outside of text adventures and word games, fewer still focus on blending the words themselves with the gameplay. Perhaps the most recent examples I can think of are Device 6's use of text to mirror the described environment and Type Rider's platforming journey through the history of typography.

Blackbar and Grayout are two narrative-driven text-based puzzlers that use their words to tell their stories and as gameplay. Set in a dystopian future, both explore different aspects of the same world through different lenses and mechanics.

Blackbar draws us into its heavily surveillanced and controlled future through the correspondence of two friends. One works in the government, and thus her messages and letters are censored by the Department of Communication. As you progress through the story, story context, past knowledge from other letters, cyphers and codes hidden in the text, and other means allow you to fill in the redacted words and phrases.

Grayout is a prequel to Blackbar, and explores a different element of its world. Rather than letters and messages, you're in the headspace of Alaine, a woman suffering from aphasia - a condition that affects one's ability to communication - and recovering from an industrial accident. At least that's what the doctors tell you. Grayout dives into the subject of medical experimentation; Alaine (and yourself) struggle to express your thoughts to the queries and comments of doctors and others in the hospital research lab where she is kept, choosing terms from a word cloud to respond.

Both games tell engaging stories that explore their world through interesting lenses. Blackbar's restrictive perspective of letters and offical mandates from the government hauntingly shift from everyday small talk between friends to unease fear, all presented through taut well-crafted prose.

Grayout's narrative is more intimate and personal, but expands on the merging of gameplay and text in a more clever, interesting execution. Understanding what you want to say, but puzzling out the correct terms from screen's word clouds mirrors Alaine's own struggle with her impaired communication, brilliantly placing the player in the protagonist's shoes through mechanics alone. Furthermore, Alaine's emotions and other narrative twists will affect which words are present, or even how words are spelled and colored.

Blackbar is available for iOS and Android, while Grayout is only on the App Store.

IOS Review #116: Barrier X

Title: Barrier X

Developer: Noclip

Platforms: IOS Universal, Android

Price: Free

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Hyper-fast, lightning-reflex arcade evasion are some of the most thrilling games you can find on mobile. The simple controls translate well to touch, and the seconds-long survival fits the platformer perfectly. The psychedelic rotation of Super Hexagon. The constantly-changing levels of Boson X. And now the insane screen-shaking speed of Barrier X.

An expanded version of an freeware 2014 title, Barrier X puts you in control of a vessel rocketing through an endless expanse at insane velocities, as white barriers appear with alarming speed. The ground beneath your craft turns orange as a visual warning of an upcoming barrier, giving you just enough of a warning to shift right or left and evade destruction by mere fractions of a second. It's breathless thrilling action, as barriers fly past, barely a blur as you rocket onward. Survive for 15 seconds, and your reward is to go faster, an increase in speed. 30 seconds, and you unlock a new level, while 60 seconds masters that level, a true test of reflexes and reaction.

That alone would make for an exciting arcade game, thanks to Barrier's slick polished design and wonderful sense of speed. But each of the game's seven level introduces something new. Blue blocking barriers that must be dodged in a specific direction. Green barriers that you need to pass through rather than avoid. A rival craft that you need to shoot down and avoid its fire. These elements make Barrier X's gameplay that much more interesting and intense and keeps what is essentially just moving left and right from feeling repetitive.

Barrier X is available to download for free, with a single in-app purchase to remove ads. You can find the game on the App Store and Android; a PC version is currently seeking votes on Steam Greenlight.

The Watchlist: Neon Chrome

Title: Neon Chrome
Developer: 10tons Ltd
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, Android
Release 2016
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A ruthless cyberpunk top-down shooter

Two years ago, 10tons surprised me with their blood-soaked dual stick Crimsonland, a furious shooter that throw massive hordes of enemies at you and mixed up the action with weapon unlocks and perks. Neon Chrome follows the same basic structure of dual stick action, unlocks, and sci-fi, but with a new focus on cyberpunk megacorps, stealth, and a more cautious approach before the explosions start.

Waging war against the massive tower of the titular megacorporation and its Overseer, you remotely control augmented "assets", divided between classes like assassin or hacker. As you battle through each procedurally-generated levels, you unlock new cybernetic enhancements, more weapons, and skill buffs, to face survive increasingly dangerous defenses.

I've been playing the beta for the past week or so, and Neon Chrome feels like quite change from the instant non-stop action of Crimsonland. The pacing is easily the biggest difference, as enemies aren't aware of your presence when you first arrive, If you're a hacker, you might be able to disable some lasers or turrets, while an assassin with a cloaking augment could even the odds before going on the offensive. New enhancements, ranging from an armed drone to stronger melee and increased speed, can be chosen as you move between levels, while more offensive power-ups let you unleash area-clearing lasers and missile strikes.

You'll need those tools because the enemies in Neon Chrome are more advanced than the charging hordes of Crimsonland. Rotating turrets, mines, and security drones defend rooms, and heavily-armed soldiers patrol, wielding shotguns, machines, or even riot shields which force you to flank and attack enemies' exposed backs. Alerted foes can call in devastating reinforcements that only give you a couple of seconds to prepare, and powerful bosses will test your shooting prowess.

Neon Chrome is still in beta, and will be releasing later this year. You can learn more about the game here.

IOS Review #115: Super Arc Light

Title: Super Arc Light
Developer: No Code Studios
Platforms: IOS Universal, Android
Price: $0.99
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There's almost something refreshing about those pure and simple games like Super Hexagon or Canabalt or any other of those simple-to-control, laser-focused, arcade-y experiences. Super Arc Light is another entry to that list, a radial shmup that only requires a single finger to control but focus and timing to succeed.

Super Arc Light's set-up couldn't be more simple: there's a base in the center of the screen, there's a single turret guarding the entrance's perimeter, and there's an endless wave of geometric enemies approaching. It's a formula as old as Space Invaders, presented here in a slick minimalist style, colorful rounds contrasting against the stark black-and-white battleground. There are no extra modes to unlock, no alternate difficulties, nothing to upgrade. Super Arc Light is pure distilled shooting action.

Shooting those encroaching waves is easy as well. Your turret automatically travels around the base's circular entrance; holding down slows time and fires your weapons, while letting go causes you to reverse direction and rotate the opposite way. It may take a few attempts before you get a handle on the one-touch control scheme, but when you do, combat becomes a hectic back-and-forth dance as you swing back and forth to deal with enemies on one side, spinning around to take out a new pattern, then back again to grab a power-up.

As you survive longer, new weapon power-ups are unlocked and added to power-up pool, ranging from the basic forking triple shots to blinking ion beams, horizontal split shots, and gracefully homing missiles. Enemy types are equally varied; single ships that hover around, fast movng x wing-likes that change direction, rotating patterns in the shapes of triangles and squares, large swarms that require quick precise shots.

While the lack of gameplay of modifiers or modes means Super Arc Light might get repetitive after a while, the simple, direct, easy-to-control but not-easy-to-win gameplay makes it perfect for those quick sessions when you need an instant adrenaline boost of action. You can purchase Super Arc Light for $0.99 on iOS and Android.

IOS Review #112: Abzorb

Title: Abzorb
Developer: Gerald Kelley
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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It's been six years since Tilt To Live showed how to do tilt controls well on mobile, and three years since its sequel expanded on the strengths of the original. Tilt-controlled games can be difficult to nail, but the new arcade puzzle Abzorb might be the best I've played since Tilt To Live, featuring both responsive controls and surprisingly varied twists on its simple concept.

Abzorb is quite straightforward. You control an arrow, sliding around the screen to absorb blue energy from orbs. To collect the energy, you need to stay close enough that the orbs are in the radius of your triangle, but not close enough to actually touch. Meanwhile dangerous red orbs drain the level's clock if they enter your range, making Abzorb a game of fast-paced evasion and puzzling as you figure out how to gather each level's blue energy without running out of time.

If Abzorb was merely an endless game revolving around those mechanics, it would still be a fun game thanks to its stylish minimalist aesthetic and surprisingly tight tilt controls. But Abzorb layers on a vast range of additional mechanics and tricky level design to create a unique polished arcade puzzler.

Some orbs grow or shrink your absorption radius. Other orbs are chained together and inactive until drained of energy. Other orbs form barriers around you, forcing you carefully push and shove the sides to move across the screen, Special gates change the color of orbs that pass between them, Many more mechanics await, as well as the additional challenge of completing each of the game's 65 level as fast as possible for the best scores.

Abzorb is available for $2.99 and has no in-app purchases.

IOS Review #111: Decromancer

Title: Decromancer
Developer: Unit9
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: Free
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It can be easy for mobile games to slip under the radar. Given the sheer amount of releases each week, decent games can come and go without ever catching many eyes. Decromancer first released in 2013, afterwards making its way to Android and Steam, I only discovered the game last week and completely surprised by its tactical card combat and wealth of content.
Decromancer's story is simple: explore a enemy-filled map, help a stranded diplomat to get home. But story isn't the focus here; it's the game's tactical combat and in that aspect, Decromancer shines quite brightly.

Encounters takes place on a four-by-five grip, with enemies controlling the top two rows and you controlling the bottom two. Each turn, you can draw three cards from your deck. So far, kind of standard. But while the mechanics are akin to the wealth of other card battlers, the actual combat is strategic and all about positions and abilities. Each unit has a specific range of effect and special skills: spearman can hit two tiles in one blow, archers can randomly target three tiles, healers assist all adjacent tiles, and so on.

This allows an incredible amount of tactics. Protecting your front row with siege shields while peppering an enemy's front with protected spears. Place powerful snipers in your back row, while reinforcing your front line with healers and swordsman. As you gather more powerful cards and upgrade cards already in your deck, the strategies only grow more complex, allowing you to stack status effects, attack ranges, and buffs to annihilate your foes. An arsenal of spells further expand your tactics, letting your unleash a horde of rats, call down meteors upon your enemies, increase your ranks' defense for several turns, and more.

Of course being a card game and free, Decromancer is likely to cause some to be hesitant, but it's surprisingly fair. There aren't any card packs to buy, and while you can purchase gold or shards to heal your cards, the game rewards you with both frequently. By the time you're facing stronger factions, you'll earn thousands of gold and dozens of experience points per battle, letting you continuously upgrade your cards and gather new ones from merchants. And while the early game can be pretty grindy, the constant dripfeed of new cards and unlocks and the satisfaction of decimating lower-level foes with your superior tactics and powerful cards provides a good push to keep playing.

Decromancer is available for free. You can also find the game on Android and Steam.

IOS Review #110: Knotmania

Title: Knotmania
Developer: 2 Think Games
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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If you've played Zen Bound or Shadowmatic, you're already familiar with the feel of Knotmania's gameplay. A relaxing atmosphere and tactile mechanics make Knotmania an enjoyable game, but the sentient alien entities that you untangle make it unique.

Knotmania revolves around the simple premise of untangling knots. Multi-touch controls lets you pull apart strings and twist, drag, and rotate with ease. But those fibers aren't static; instead they're living creatures, worm-like beings that flex and coil and react to your touch.

It may seem like a small change, but the notion of manipulating living creatures gives Knotmania its weird quirky charm. Each level begins with a twisted knot to tackle - sometimes a single worm, sometimes many entangled with each other - a calm relaxed mass indifferent to your presence. Begin tugging and dragging and, as expected, they resist and twist away, moving in slow graceful movements as if through water or in zero gravity. Maybe one worm will try to wrap around and wrestle with another. It adds an engaging vibe akin to an unearthly nature documentary to what's a relatively simple format.

Knotmania includes 76 levels, each one featuring a colorful pairing of room and strings. The oddly textured environments enhances the alien atmosphere, and seeing the shadows of the twisting, flowing worms against the backgrounds helps cement the sense that these are living physical things in the environment.

While the core gameplay is quite relaxing, there is an element of challenge in completing the levels under a time limit, as well as the optional goal of using the fewest amount of touches. An upcoming update will add a Zen mode that removes the timer.

Knotmania is available for $2.99.

PC Review #137: Swapperoo

Title: Swapperoo
Developer: Fallen Tree Games
Platforms: PC, IOS Universal
Price: $9.99 (PC), $2.99 (IOS)
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I'm not the biggest fan of match-3 puzzlers outside of the genre hybrids like Hero Emblems and Puzzle Quest. So it was a nice surprise that I enjoyed Swapperoo as much as I did. Although, perhaps I should have expected it; Fallen Tree Games had proven themselves with the excellent series of Quell games and Swapperoo evolves the traditional match-3 formula in interesting ways to deliver a surprisingly strategic puzzler.

At its core, Swapperoo follows the same principals as any other match-3 game - connect three or more like items on a grid, removing those matched items from the grid, and so on - but that's where the similarities end. The first and most crucial change is that you only move certain tiles on the grid, and furthermore, only move these triangular tiles in the direction they're pointing. This change alone makes matching a strategic affair, requiring planning moves ahead and thinking if or how to move tiles around the grid,

But soon Swapperoo adds more elements into the mix. Each new addition introduces a new hazard or new caveat to the basic match-3 formula. Suddenly you have tiles that explode after a certain amount of turn, ending your game; now every move you make matters. Then you have sawblade tiles that destroy any tile they collide with; careless moves will throw your grid into chaos, but with planning and careful maneuvering, you can use the sawblade to clear the path for other tiles and set up some high-scoring matches.

And those two are only the start. Tiles that needed to be protected, tiles locked in place, and more continue to add new wrinkles and challenges to the puzzles. On top of those unique tiles, Swapperoo also gives you access to three special abilities, to be used at the most opportune moments: moving a specific tile in any direction, increasing the time on the bomb tiles, and completely detonating the grid. Powering-up these abilities require calculated matches, so each use shouldn't be wasted.

The game features both a hefty selection of handcrafted levels, with unique objectives ranging from simply making a certain number of matches to only making matches with specific tiles, and 38 randomized challenges to truly test your skills and offer long-term replay value.

Swapper is available on Steam, as well as IOS; an Android version is expected soon.

IOS Review #109: Blown Away

Title: Blown Away: Secret of the Wind
Developer: Black Pants Studio
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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Besides being quirky and/or having a unique art style, the only definite thing you can say about the games from Black Pants Studio is that they're diverse. From the hand-drawn mirrored landscapes of Symmetrain to the 3D platforming and environmental dicing of Tiny & Bing, each of their games seems to try something different. Blown Away: Secret of the Wind is their newest iOS game and it combines auto-running and fast-pacing puzzling in a charming and colorful package.

Hendrik is unfortunately having a bad day. Through a gust of wind, Mother Nature took away not just his home, but his hair too. Now he travels a weird and dangerous world, collecting the pieces of his house along the way. For the unprepared, this land would prove to be an insurmountable challenge, between deadly gaps, roaming monsters, and raging flames, among other hazards. But Hendrik has a unique tool in his arsenal: a pair of teleporting boots, that Blown Away's puzzles and platforming revolve around.

In each of the game's 120 levels, you walk to the right automatically, recharging your boots with each step. Tapping the screen teleports you to that location, even as you're falling to certain doom. The charging element is what turns a relatively simple mechanic into a puzzler. Your boots only charge when you're moving, and you only have a limited amount of teleports, so reaching the end of a level means assessing the level and figuring out where to teleport so you have enough distance to recharge. But distance isn't the only thing to consider; timing is important as well if you want to evade patrolling monsters and crushing sawblades.

The auto-running and boot recharge complement each other nicely, forcing you to always pay attention to the path ahead, thinking of how many teleports you'll need to cross a gap, where you should teleport to and when. Through that simple single-tap mechanic, Blown Away delivers both puzzles on the go and the arcade-y thrill of dodging traps, and it's all presented in a vibrant hand-drawn art style that brings to mind old-style cartoons.

Blown Away is available for $2.99.

IOS Review #108: Power Hover

Title: Power Hover
Developer: Oddrok
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $3.99
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Between Temple Run, Subway Surfer, and everything in between, I've been somewhat burned out on behind-the-back runners. It's one of the most common genres on mobile, and in recent years, seems to have been reduced to the format for generic licensed titles. Switch lanes, jump, slide....sometimes it feels like if you've played one, you've played them all. None that I've played have been able to match the variety and style of the hectic Boson X...till now. With its incredibly varied stages and colorful low-poly aesthetic, Power Hover is easily one of the best runners on mobile.

The story is simple. The energy to your robot village has been stolen,  get on your hoverboard and follow the thief's trail of batteries to retrieve the power. It's merely there to serve as a framework for the fast-paced chases and hazards to evade, and it's in those aspects that Power Hover shines.

Endless deserts where massive worms gracefully arc through the sands. Sea-bound ruins and seaside cliff faces. Tight canyons wracked by seismic tremors and drills erupting from the dirt. Every level in Power Hover is unique, not merely in terms of locations and hazards, but in how the camera seamlessly changes perspective. One moment, you're guiding your robot boarder through discarded shipping containers from high up; the next, the camera swoops in close as you enter a claustrophobic tunnel.

The constantly changing locations and perspectives, even within the same level, makes each stage feel like an adventure, driving you to see what comes next. The hazards along the way are equally diverse, ranging from stationary stones and rusted cars to rolling spikes and saws to lasers. Between hand-crafted stages and endless boss levels, Power Hover offers a surprising amount of variety in every aspect of its gameplay.

The reflex-testing action wouldn't be worth experiencing if the controls weren't tight. Actually, tight is the wrong word. Your hoverboard has an intentional looseness to it, feeling more like surfing than rigid lane swapping. You're always in control, even as as you smoothly weave between obstacles or grind across rails, but doing so skillfully requires timing and looking ahead to prepare for the next section,

Power Hover's aesthetic completes this polished package. Each level pops with vivid colors and interesting sights, whether it's a coastal strait with wind turbines and gulls skimming the water or a massive machine lumbering through the desert.

Power Hover is available for $3.99 on iPad and iPhone.

PC Review #134: Devouring Stars

Title: Devouring Stars
Developer: Nerial
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, IOS Universal
Price: $9,99 (Steam), $4.99 (IOS)
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You've waged war on land, air, and sea. And more than a few real time strategy and tactical games take place in space. But in Devouring Stars, your conflicts don't just occur among the cosmos. Here, the cosmos are your weapons, as you wield the stars themselves in a war between celestial forces.

As a cosmic being far beyond mortal comprehension, you challenge the might of other cosmic factions among the nebula clouds and black abyss. Devouring Stars's gameplay is relatively simple: gather resources to strengthen your units, capture the enemy's portal, and escape the stage. But simple doesn't mean easy, and there's an array of mechanics and complexities that make Devouring Stars stand out.

While it may be an RTS, the game strips back the complex base and building systems of other titles in the genre in favor of a more minimalist approach. Stars act as resources for both you and your enemies, and there's only a finite amount on each battlefield, forcing you to assess the stage and decide when and where to gather cosmic energy.

Each star gathered makes your units stronger, but strength isn't always enough to emerge victorious. Before each mission, you're able to select a small group of units to bring into battle, compared to the typical RTS method of spawning units during battle. This challenges you to consider what strategy you plan on using and choosing which units best suit your plan of attack. While that mechanic may seem limiting, Devouring Stars' units are more versatile than they may first seem.

By combining two units, you can create a single, more powerful unit. These celestial warriors not only gain increased stats that could boost their movement or their efficiency at absorbing stars, but also have unique abilities that can turn the tide of battle. Your merged units can do everything from teleporting short distances to freezing opponents in their tracks, to unleashing powerful ranged attacks or achieve damaging critical hits.

Devouring Stars may lack the bombastic spectacle of other real time strategy games like Planetary Annihilation and Supreme Commander, but what it lacks in bombast, it makes up for in beauty. Battles in Devouring Stars are dances of swirling particles and flashing color as stars and galaxies become weapons of the gods. It's always satisfying to watch.

Devouring Stars is available on Steam, and recently released on IOS. You can learn more about the game here.

IOS Review #107: Euclidea

Title: Euclidea
Developer: Horis International Limited
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: Free
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Math can be difficult and frustrating for some people, and the very notion of math puzzler probably is enough for people to dismiss some games. But Euclidea isn't like most math-based puzzlers; rather than numbers and addition and subtraction, it's all about geometry, constructing figures and shapes. There are quite a few games that feature similar concepts, usually physics-based puzzlers where you need to build supports or structures, but Euclidea distills that idea down its purest, most minimalist form, with an elegant presentation and easy-to-use controls.

Euclidea starts out simple, easing you into its collection of geometric brainteasers by teaching how to create line segments, select points, draw circles. And then gradually, the challenge begins to increase, as you use intersecting circles to create equilateral triangles and perfectly bisect lines.

But the game isn't completely merciless. For several of the more common and tricky actions like bisecting angles and creating parallel lines, once you learn how to construct it once, Euclidea provides tools that automatically perform the action. Thanks to the game's controls and clean UI, the challenges of the puzzles are about figuring out how to accomplish a task rather than in the execution

You'll need those tools, because while Euclidea may be easy to control, it certainly isn't easy. Figuring out to create a perfect hexagon within a circle or trisecting an angle requires you to think ahead, understand how points and intersections and line segments all interact and can be used together. It may sound scary, but the game does a good job at introducing its concepts and making sure you can use them before throwing the tricky challenges at you. Like math in general, Euclidea's puzzles are cumulative, building upon what you figured out before and challenging you to use that knowledge in new ways.

Euclidea is visually sparse, black lines against white, but there's something appealing and satisfying about the symmetric patterns of lines and arches created from your attempts to solve puzzles, how distinct shapes emerge from the mess of intersecting and overlapping figures.

Euclidea is free to download, with only an IAP to remove ads. You can download the game here.
And if you enjoy this one, the developer released Pythagorea earlier this year, a similarly geometry-focused puzzler with its own unique twists.

IOS Review #106: Five Card Quest

Title: Five Card Quest
Developer: Rocketcat Games
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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Between Mage Gauntlet and Wayward Souls, Rocketcat Games is well established as a developer that can develop a challenging quality RPG/roguelike experience on mobile. Now with Five Card Quest, they tackle the turn-based game and deliver a challenging tactical dungeon crawler

In Five Card Quest, you select a duo of warriors from a selection of classes, from the powerful support Priest to the dagger-wielding Rogue, and traverse room-by-room through dangerous dungeons. You might find a healing fountain or a merchant or another warrior to add to your party, but more often, you'll find enemies blocking your path to the exit.

Combat in Five Cars Quest is an interesting blend of card game and lane-based strategy, reminiscent of Zachtronics' Ironclad Tactics (however less complex). Your party is one side of the screen, enemies on the other, spread out across three lanes. Each turn you have five skills to use from, a mix of random abilities from each of your warrior's pool of skills, and with each action, your enemies move down the lane, closing in until they're within striking distance.

The combination of random abilities and staggered enemy approach gives Five Card Quest's combat a unique feel and allows various strategy and tactics. Abilities don't just inflict damage; they let your characters swap lanes, freeze an enemy's movement or knock it back to its side of the screen. Some attacks may take three turns to charge up, forcing you to consider how long it will take certain enemies to close the distance to strike. Other attacks do lane-based damage or injury the front-most foe.

You never know what attacks and abilities you'll have at hand during your turn, resulting in tense and desperate strategy as you use whatever's available to postpone incoming attacks, heal and prepare blocks and parries, switch characters across lanes, and so on. Five Card Quest pulls no punches, and a careless strategy will only get you killed more quickly.

Your enemies are just as varied, ranging from shielded brutes to archers and spellcasters. Each area has its own array of enemies, enemies that can stun and poison, among other actions. Friend and foe alike are brought to life on a bright angular art style, giving Five Card Quest a unique aesthetic.

Five Card Quest is available on iPhone and iPad.

IOS Review #104: hocus

Title: hocus
Developer: Yunus Ayyildiz
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $0.99
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Earlier this year, developer Yunus Ayyildiz released the challenging shape-crafting puzzler rop. Its simple mechanic of manipulating ropes and nodes to mirror shapes was used to offer quite tricky and complex spatial conundrums. Now Ayyildiz's next game hocus is also about spatial conundrums, but rather than recreating shapes, you're navigating them,

Each level in hocus presents you with an impossible Escher-inspired structure. You guide a red cube along the perimeter of the shapes, traveling along the odd shapes towards the waiting exit. Forced perspective allows you to travel along planes that appear to touch, letting your cube navigate each impossible maze to reach your destination.

It may sound complicated, but hocus is actually a pretty laid-back puzzler. There are no timers or move counters, so you can access each level at your own pace. While the shapes grow more complex and intricate, the core mechanics remain the same and the game even has a compass that lets you know which directions the cube can move at each junction.

Every new level in hocus is a pleasure to study and navigate, especially if you're a fan of Escher-style illusions and impossible shapes. The game's minimal aesthetic complements its simple yet increasingly challenging puzzles.

Hocus currently features 50 levels, with more to come. You can purchase the game for $0.99.

The Watchlist: Verreciel

Title: Verreciel
Developer: Devine Lu Linvega
Platforms: IOS Universal
Releasing January 2016
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A virtual space exploration project

Devine Lu Linvega is known for his enigmatic abstract puzzle games, from the Myst-esque Hiversaires to the dimensional-hopping Oquonie. For his next game, he's taking that approach and applying it to space exploration, in Verreciel.

Verreciel sits you before the control consoles of a Glass Ship traversing the cosmos, surrounded by screens on all sides. By connecting different parts of the ship, you'll be able to power thrusters, autopilot, weapon systems, oxygen levels, shields, radio scanner, and other modules. The tactile UI looks perfect-suited for touchscreens.

In your travels, you'll discover extraterrestrial structures like the Prismatist and venture into the ashen Opal dimension. You'll collect batteries, ammo, warpgates, cloaking devices, and other items in your cargohold. You'll set autopilot coordinates to follow NPC travelers. To survive the dangers of space, Verreciel will challenge you to reroute and manage your systems amidst dangerous weather systems and hostile events.

Verreciel is slated for release on January 10th, 2016; you can learn more about the game on the developer's site and see gameplay clips on Vine..

IOS Review #103: SPL-T

Title: SPL-T
Developer: Simogo
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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If you follow mobile games, no doubt you're familiar with Simogo. Their games - from the haunting adventure game Year Walk to the enigmatic text-twisting Device 6 - are defined by how they use the touch interface and slick polished presentations to deliver unique and compelling narrative experiences. So at first glance, SPL-T doesn't appear to be a Simogo title. But as you learn its rules and master its intricacies, SPL-T reveals that it's as unique as any of their other games.

Your first attempt at SPL-T is likely to be confusing. Its gameplay seems as simple as its minimal appearance. The core concept is that you need to gather points by splitting the screen into blocks. Splits alternate between horizontal and vertical divisions; by dividing an area into four or more equally-sized blocks, those blocks convert into "point blocks" marked with a number. That number indicates how many splits are required to remove those blocks from the screen.

Once you realize that those blocks disappear from the screen, SPL-T's hidden depth becomes apparent. When those blocks disappear, above blocks as well as new blocks fall down to fill in the gaps, allowing for new splits to be made. Adding to the mechanic is that point blocks that fall into an empty space have their split number halved, letting you remove them more quickly.

SPL-T evolves from a puzzler with seemingly little strategy into a game of careful planning. To earn a high score, you must be mindful of how the screen will affected several splits in the future and be careful not to create a scenario where mo more splits are possible. It's a tricky and surprisingly addictive challenge.

And not surprisingly, just like its simple puzzle mechanics blossomed with hidden depth, SPL-T is not as basic as it first appears. A plethora of secrets are waiting to be found within the game itself. To say more would spoil the mysterious nature of Simogo's puzzler, but rest assured that SPL-T might be more than just a block-splitting game.

With SPL-T, Simogo once again showcases its mastery of mobile puzzlers, delivering an engaging game hiding a strategic challenge behind its simple aesthetic.

You can purchase SPL-T for $2.99.

IOS Review #102: Lara Croft GO

Title: Lara Croft GO
Developer: Square Enix Montreal
Platforms: IOS Universal, Android
Price: $4.99
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I'll start with a confession: when I first saw the screenshots and footage of Hitman GO, my impressions weren't exactly positive. I'm a big fan of the stealth franchise and it seemed like such a weird direction to take. But then I played the game and realized it was a brilliant distillation of Hitman's stealth-puzzle DNA into an experience built from the ground up for mobile. So to say my hype and expectations for the Tomb Raider-themed follow-up were high would be an understatement.

Lara Croft GO not only exceeds those expectations, but also refines the turn-based puzzle template introduced in Hitman GO, all in a gorgeous isometric package.

While Hitman GO presented its sneaky puzzles like a board game, Lara Croft GO sheds the tabletop veneer to deliver an action-puzzle adventure. The turn-based movement along paths remains, but it's no longer contained to flat surfaces and figurines. You guide Lara through ancient temples and dense jungle, past deadly traps and subterranean passages. This is an adventure in the full sense of the word, as levels flow together seamlessly and areas seen in the distance might be traversed several stages later.

Yes, traversal. The levels here are multi-tiered environments and Lara is as agile as ever, able to scale walls, shimmy along edges, and even pull off the occasional handstand. The handstand isn't the only callback to the main games; Lara's dual pistols return as well, as you deal with the numerous creatures found throughout GO's levels. Like in Hitman GO, you need to bump enemies from the side or back to kill them, but the combat is far more involved here. You might need to goad a lizard to chase you, or time your movement to avoid the poisonous fangs of a giant spider. Single-use spears let you skewer creatures from afar, and the environment is your greatest weapon, since traps and hazards can kill creatures.

However Lara Croft GO wouldn't be compete without environmental puzzles and all the elements you'd expect are here: pillars to push and pull, switches and pressure pads, platforms to raise. Given the turn-based nature of the gameplay, puzzles rely heavily on timing and figuring out the optimal path through the levels so you can avoid danger while activating switches or getting platforms into position. While the grids are smaller than the ones in Hitman, Lara Croft focuses more on interactive elements and environmental dangers to add challenge and variety to its puzzles.

Lara Croft GO visuals are just as impressive and polished as its gameplay. The board game aesthetic is gone, and in its place is a colorful isometric world filled with detail and life. Foliage sways in the breeze, lizards test the air with forked tongues, waterfalls drain out over cavernous drops. Each chapter, divided between different Mazes on your journey to a mysterious artifact, has a different visual tone, from the cliff-side ruins of the Maze of Snakes to the underground ruins and murky swamps of other levels. That visual polish even extends to the stylish menu and minimalist UI. An atmospheric soundtrack completes the engrossing presentation.

Lara Croft GO truly impressed me in how it adapted the turn-based puzzle gameplay seen in Hitman GO to Tomb Raider's platforming-heavy adventure. Once again, it distills the core aspects of a franchise - the exotic locations and ruins, the dangerous traps and creatures lurking within, environmental puzzles and agile climbing - into a mobile-friendly experience that's simple to control but still challenging and engaging.

If there's one gripe, it's that the game lacks the replay value of Hitman GO, with no collectibles that require extra puzzling to reach, optional challenges, or move pars to beat. There are gems and hidden relics to find, which in turn unlock new outfits, but those are hidden in the background rather than extra gameplay elements. But I imagine those elements would tarnish the atmosphere and adventure vibe, so perhaps the experience is better without those aspects.

Lara Croft GO can be purchased for $4.99 (Also on Android).
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*Okay, so Lara Croft GO is a slight deviation from the usual games I cover, but with a mobile game this good, I really wanted to share my impressions, and honestly I put it in the same category as Grow Home and Valiant Hearts, aka games from larger publishers that are more indie game-esque than their usual work.