Device security comes in many shapes and forms, each with its own strategy for mitigating threat vectors. Read to find out how to stay secure!
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Samsung is offering two-year financing while Best Buy has stores that you can grab the device from as fast as possible. Either way, it's straight up S8.
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You can turn the huge screen around and then take out the active S Pen stylus to draw on it. In all seriousness, it looks like fun.
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Up to 8,000 under-connected municipalities will be able to get a portion of the €120 million set aside for this program to get hotspots by 2020.
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An anonymous source claims that the supposed competitor to the Amazon Echo and Google Home will help Apple rake in services revenue.
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The dual-camera phone has moved to another big box chain in the United States, online and in stores. Honor could go for more.
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Whittling down the best Android apps from nearly 3 million to just 12 is a tall order, but that’s exactly what we saw happen at Google IO 2017 in May.
While Google’s impressive AI and VR initiatives took center stage at its annual conference, it did take some time out to focus on the apps that make its Android platform popular.
Here are the 12 apps that were honored at the Google Play 2017 Awards this year.
“Games from indie developers that focus on artistic design, gameplay mechanics and overall polish" is exactly why Mushroom 11 won this Google Play Store award and beat contenders like Reigns, Mars: Mars, and more.
The game received plenty of praise in its time as a PC platformer, with clever physics puzzles, solid visuals, and music by The Future Sound of London. The Android port came out in March to favorable user ratings. If exploring a toxic wasteland as a sentient, amorphous blob sounds appealing, then Mushroom 11 is worth checking out.
Almost 200,000 people have given Hooked an average of 4.4 stars in the Google Play Store in the lead up to its win as the Standout Startup. This category was for "apps from new developers that offer a unique experience while achieving strong organic install growth," and it pulled that off with stories told on a text message conversation medium.
This out-of-the-box literature app had to be doing something right to beat out the likes of Discord, the ever-popular chat and voice app for gamers. While some reviews seem annoyed with the payment model for the app, the overwhelmingly positive comments suggest that it does indeed get readers properly hooked.
Runtastic Running & Fitness has been one of the best apps to prove that technology isn’t always turning us into inactive hermits. Android software has been doing a fine job at improving our fitness routines.
It does just that, with loads of distance and routing tracking tools, a voice coach and cheering feature, and even a built-in music player. Loads of reviews give the app a solid 4.5 stars in Google Play, and it’s functionality with Android Wear helped it earn the award for Best Android Wear Experience.
The award for Best TV Experience is for "apps or games built for the large-screen format to provide an intuitive experience," and there’s only one that has bikes careening downhill, high-octane motorsports, pros carving the slopes, surfers and cliff divers, and documentaries about these wild sports.
Red Bull TV has what extreme sports viewers want. The app must have scored extra high marks for intuitive navigation because it beat out even the likes of Netflix for this award. While the app might not stream your favorite Disney movies, it has plenty of sports content, music festival footage, and even a GoPro channel.
While the award in this category is for "Highly engaging and immersive experience with optimal use of Daydream UI,” Virtual Virtual Reality takes it a step further by putting virtual realities inside a virtual reality.
Players enter the VR world when they put on their Google Daydream headset and within the game, they’ll put on more headsets to explore other virtual realities. Stylized and cartoony, the game looks impressive, and the concept is novel, as players jump from world to world to avoid their in-game manager at work.
Pokemon Go and Snapchat might be the best known augmented reality apps, but you should check out the breakout hit Woorld. Whether you want to have mushrooms growing out of your carpet, or to have a faucet coming out of your TV and flooding the living room, Woorld makes that possible – at least visually. No surprise, this whimsical experience comes from the mind of Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi.
The app, powered by the advanced AR technology of Tango, lets users add all sorts of things to the world around them, creating interesting and colorful environments. While devices with Tango are few and far between, it seems likely that as augmented reality becomes more prevalent, more devices could see Tango incorporated, or at least feature similar AR capabilities.
If you have a child and are looking for "apps or games with family-friendly design that encourage creativity, exploration and education," then Animal Jam - Play Wild! might be just the ticket. The app is something of a social network, designed as a “safe online playground for kids.”
It lets them become an animal and explore a game world where they can meet and interact with other animal players. It has built-in minigames and includes opportunities to learn about wildlife. Other contenders in this category were Hot Wheels: Race Off, Teeny Titans - Teen Titans Go!, and Toca Life: Vacation.
With over a million reviews and a 4.4 star rating, there’s no arguing that Blizzard had another overwhelming success with HearthStone. The Warcraft-themed card battle game is playable on mobile devices and computers, allowing for friends to play one another without needing the same devices.
Players can build their own decks of characters, devise their own strategies, and compete with real or computer-controlled opponents. Like Heroes of the Storm for the MOBA genre, Blizzard’s HearthStone is simple enough for players new to the genre while offering deep enough complexity for diehard players.
Memrise is an insanely useful app for learning. It allows users to create their own custom study sets – think flashcards but way more advanced – and tests users on a regular basis to keep their knowledge fresh.
It’s also already loaded with study sets created by other users, so new users can dive in and learn advanced Japanese or what different horse breeds look like. There’s so much to learn. But that’s only part of why Memrise landed the title of Best App. The award is aptly for "a true representation of beautiful design, intuitive UX and high user appeal."
Pokemon Go was beaten out not only in the Best AR Experience category but also in the Best Game category, as Transformers: Forged to Fight took the title, meeting Google’s requirements of “...strong mechanics, stellar graphics and strong engagement and retention tactics."
The game has several different elements, with a swipe- and tap-based arcade-style fighting game at its heart and base building and defense on the side. A whole host of fan-favorite Autobots and Decepticons are available for players to use, making the unlock and upgrade system all the more addicting. Best of all, it has impressive graphics and keeps the action fast for a mobile game.
IFTTT, meaning “If This Then That,” enables all sorts of automation with your phone. It's integrations with a wide array of apps allows it to do things like open your garage door and text your significant other “Honey, I'm home” when you pull into your drive or publically broadcast every text message you receive as a Twitter post.
The idea is simple: if a given set of variables are met, a defined task will be performed, and the possibilities are nearly endless. For the less creative users, there are all sorts of pre-made automations available on the IFTTT website. As an app that enables so much, it's no wonder it was able to take the award for Best Accessibility Experience, which is for "apps or games enabling device interaction to serve people with disabilities or special needs."
The United Nations’ World Food Programme has made it easier to make a difference for people who are going hungry around the world. Its ShareTheMeal app lets users donate simply and directly from their phone, so after ordering a pizza on GrubHub, they can make a quick little donation to help out someone else in need of a meal.
The app lets users decide how much they want to donate, and even lets them start teams to work together on big donation goals. ShareTheMeal boasts 13.3 million meals shared at the time right now, which definitely qualifies for the award for "apps that create meaningful social impact for a broad spectrum of people around the world.”
We have more great Android app suggestions from our editorial team, not just the best Google picks.
If you're looking to extend your games and app library on an Android phone or tablet, look no further than our official:
Looking at reduced support for Windows 10 Mobile over the past year, combined with plummeting sales of Windows phones, we wouldn't blame you for thinking Microsoft's last big push into the mobile space would be its last.
However, it looks like the technology bigwig is warming up for another crack at bat as industry sources tell Thurrott that Microsoft if actively developing something new for Windows Mobile.
According to the report, Microsoft is testing not just hardware, but also an extension of Windows Mobile software. While few specifics were given, it may be an entirely reinvigorated OS that could cut support for Silverlight — Microsoft's mobile development tool which is already on life support.
While we take this report with a grain of salt — not a lot of hard details could be given at this time, with Thurrott adding that Microsoft's supposed project is "still in early development and plans may change dramatically — we have heard of Microsoft's continued interest in mobile from a much more...official source.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a podcast last month that the company had not put smartphones behind it — adding the caveat that what it has in mind may "not look like phones that are there today."
The executive went on to describe the success of Microsoft's 2-in-1 Surface line, possibly suggesting that whatever we see may be more of a hybrid device than a conventional handset.
While the long-rumored Surface Phone is still far from confirmed, we can't help but wonder if a Windows Mobile successor (perhaps running on a modified Windows 10 S?) isn't far behind.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 unlocked price accurately reflects this Android phone's elongated screen: it's bigger than you'd ever expect, even if it gets you the best phone in the US.
It's the classic tale of 'you get what you pay for' as the Samsung Galaxy S8 costs $724, while the larger Galaxy S8 Plus costs even more $824.99 in the Midnight Black color only.
Both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus cost more than their Apple counterparts, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, as well as the Google Pixel, Pixel XL and LG G6.
The phones are now being sold through the official Samsung online store and Best Buy. Samsung is even offering trade-in programs for up to $350 off to sweeten the deal.
The price for the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus is more than you've probably ever paid for a phone, but there are several reasons as to why it costs so much.
It comes with top-of-the-line specs (the first with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset), including 64GB of storage, not 32GB, like the latest iPhone, LG G6 and Google Pixel.
That means storage wise, it's a better value, plus it comes with a microSD card slot and is a waterproof phone (up to 5m). The Pixel has none of those features. Oh, and it has a headphone jack unlike the iPhone 7. Simply put, it's chock full with features.
The Galaxy S8 also has one of the best smartphone cameras and can turn into a phone-to-desktop solution with the Samsung DeX accessory. The list goes on and on, just like Samsung's dazzling Infinity Display.
The poster isn't the most polished piece of marketing we've seen, but we do know that an event has to come soon. Maybe the date we see isn't final draft?
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It may be in the later weeks of June before Galaxy S8 users will get to talk to Bixby. The assistant's reportedly trying to wrap its head around English.
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Both models are modest entries into the media tablet market, but if there's anything that ASUS loves, it's getting Android tablets out.
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It's a neck and neck race between Apple Pay and Android Pay as each try to load up their financial ecosystem. Banks are posing a challenge to both.
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We don’t even know the official sweet-treat name for Android O yet, but OnePlus has already confirmed that once it’s available it will come to the OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3.
The company’s CEO, Pete Lau, said as much in a tweet, though no time frame for the Android O update was given.
Android O itself isn’t likely to land until late 2017, probably launching on the Google Pixel 2, and it usually takes phone makers at least a couple of months to get the new version running on their phones.
That, plus the fact that OnePlus will almost certainly prioritize the OnePlus 5 for Android updates, means that we probably won’t see Android O on the OnePlus 3T or OnePlus 3 until 2018.
But the fact that it’s coming at all will be reassuring to owners of those phones, especially as the OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X haven’t even been updated to Android Nougat.
They each only got one major Android update, but the move to Android O will be the second for the OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3. It’s unlikely they’ll officially see Android P, but even this shows a greater commitment to keeping them updated than OnePlus has shown in the past, and bodes well for long-term OnePlus 5 support.
The move to Android O, whenever it comes, should be worth the wait too, as Google’s operating system update is set to add a picture in picture mode, improve boot times and allow you to respond to notifications in more ways, among other things.
Via 9to5Google
Bixby on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is about to finally become more useful, as reports state it will gain its much-needed voice capabilities in late June.
Samsung first showed us Bixby, its promising, new virtual assistant that’s set to take on the likes of Siri and the Google Assistant, on the S8 when it launched a few months ago.
But there was a problem: it debuted without voice-recognizing capabilities, setting it far behind the competition from the start. It wasn’t a good look, especially since there’s a hardware button dedicated to activating it right on the brand new phones.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Bixby’s lack of voice recognition at launch stems from its struggle to “comprehend English syntax and grammar,” something that its competitors have years’ worth of data to work from.
However, Samsung’s team seems to have cracked the code and the update will begin to arrive in the 'coming weeks'.
The brand needs the voice element of its virtual assistant to be a success after the other elements - Vision especially - failed to impress in a world where Google, Apple and Amazon are steaming ahead with impressive AI counterparts.
We’ve reached out to Samsung to see when the Bixby’s voice feature will launch around the globe and will update the story when we know more.
The global smartphone market should "rebound slightly" this year, according to IDC research, and continue to grow at a decent pace through 2021.
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Update: We've now included the Wileyfox Swift 2 in our best cheap phone list - scroll down below to see where it has ranked - plus we've said goodbye to the Vodafone Smart Prime 7.
In the past, the term 'best cheap phones' was usually a warning rather than a tempting proposition, with shoddy build quality, sluggish performance, laughable screen resolution and woeful cameras. But this isn't the past, this is the present, and the market abounds with top budget phones.
While the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S8, iPhone 7, LG G6 and HTC U11 steal headlines around the world, there's a lot of intriguing (and cheap) stuff going on in the world of budget phones.
Sadly smartphone innovation isn't cheap – and most of it is reserved for high-end contract handsets. There is however such a thing as a good cheap smartphone, and ever so gently all those amazing features from the flagship devices are slowly trickling down to the budget phones.
Here's a selection of our favourite cheap phones that cost under £200.
The Lenovo P2 is the best cheap phone you can buy right now. It has some incredible spec and it's all packed into an attractive package that looks like a premium phone that many won't even realise is a cheaper device.
The P2 offers two-day battery life. When we were testing this phone we were able to get through a full two days of using the phone without having to plug it in and put it on charge.
There's a powerful processor inside, considering the price of the phone, and it also features a great, bright 5.5-inch Full HD display. It's a heavier device than anything else on this list, but it's worth it considering how great the battery life on the Lenovo P2 is.
Read the full review: Lenovo P2
Motorola's latest Moto G hasn't become our best cheap phone in the world right now, but it's still a great phone and has slotted in the second place in our best cheap phone list.
The Moto G5 comes with a new metal design as well as a Full HD display and a fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone.
You won't get the fastest processor on this list or NFC with the Moto G5, but as an all-round product the new cheap Motorola phone will keep you going well if you decide to buy one soon.
Read the full review: Motorola Moto G5
For just £189, Wileyfox has done wonders with the Swift 2 Plus. It looks and feels like a much more expensive phone, with an attractive aluminium build and smooth performance.
Its camera is capable of taking decent shots, its fingerprint sensor works well, and the Cyanogen UI is a genuinely thoughtful enhancement of the stock Android operating system.
Read the full review: Wileyfox Swift 2 Plus
This is the lowest price phone out of all the Moto G products available right now.
It features a 720p screen, but despite that the spec on this Motorola phone is still good including 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front facing selfie shooter.
The best part is it's running Android 6 Marshmallow software and Motorola has confirmed it will soon be upgraded to Android 7. That means you'll have the latest software, something many high-end and expensive phones are still waiting to get.
Read the full review: Moto G4 Play
The first of three entries in this list from Motorola, it's the Moto G4 Plus. It's the highest spec budget phone from the company from 2016 and features some of the best features we've seen on a phone at this price point.
The spec is much the same as the Moto G4, but it also comes with a fingerprint scanner and an improved camera - that's what the Plus means as it's the same size as the normal Moto G4.
The 16MP rear shooter is arguably the most impressive phone camera at the sub-£200 mark. If you want to be able to take good photos but can't afford to buy a high-end phone, this is the best choice for you.
There's no NFC so you won't be able to use Android Pay on the Moto G4 Plus, but a bright display and strong performance is sure to make up for it. Before you buy, note it may be worth waiting for the newly launched Moto G5 Plus that's expected to come out in the next few months.
Read the full review: Moto G4 Plus
When the Blu Vivo 6 initially launched it didn't feature in our best cheap phone ranking but a recent price drop has meant it's now in position number six on our list.
Blu's first foray into the UK is a budget phone with a high-end design, despite being available in very limited colour choices.
It comes with impressive spec considering the price though with a 5.5-inch Full HD display, 13MP rear shooter, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. If you like the look of the Vivo 6, you won't be disappointed with this if you buy it as your next cheap phone.
Read the full review: Blu Vivo 6
Another Wileyfox device has made it onto our best cheap phone list, and this one costs even less than the Swift 2 Plus listed above.
We love the Swift 2 for its combination of low price and good spec. There's a 5-inch screen, 13MP rear shooter and Android 7 software right out of the box.
Our highlight of this phone is the design - it feels premium, while coming with a low price point. If you're looking for a lot of features for not much money and you like the design of the Swift 2, we'd recommend this as your next affordable phone.
Read the full review: Wileyfox Swift 2
LG's latest budget handset comes with one major selling point - it has a second, always-on display. No other phone that's under £200 is going to be able to offer you that and that's one key reason to buy the LG X Screen.
The spec may not be as impressive as say the Moto G4, but it still comes with 2GB of RAM, a Snapdragon 410 processor and a 13MP rear facing camera.
If you're a fan of LG, the X Screen may well be the best product you'll be able to buy right now if you don't want to shell out on a flagship phone like the G5.
Read the full review: LG X Screen
Honor used to be a specialist in low priced phones but most recent releases from the company have skewed a little more on the expensive end of the market. That's except for the Honor 5C though.
The Honor 5C is a strong choice for your low cost mobile upgrade. It comes with a 5.2-inch Full HD screen, Android 6 Marshmalllow software and a powerful Kirin 650 processor.
There's also a powerful 13MP rear camera and an 8MP selfie shooter to capture your gorgeous face and send it to your friends and family.
Read the full review: Honor 5C
The Moto E3 isn't our favorite cheap phone in the world right now... it's not even the best cheap phone from Motorola - those are the Moto G4 Plus and Moto G4 up above.
But if you're looking for a truly cheap device, the Moto E3 is still a good option you could take a look at. We particularly liked the battery life and the build quality of the Moto E3 when we reviewed the phone.
There are issues such as the lack of NFC support, which means you can't use Android Pay, as well as limited space, but if this won't be an issue for you then the Moto E3 may be perfect for you.
Read the full review: Moto E3
Should you wait for a new cheap phone to be announced? There's sure to be many more upcoming phone announcements in 2017, but there aren't many rumors for new affordable devices at the moment.
We know Motorola is planning a Moto E4 announcement at some point over the next few months, but other cheap phone rumors are few and far between.
If you want to buy a new phone, go for one of the devices up above now as it's unlikely you're going to miss out on any fresh announcements in the next few weeks and months.
The hype around the OnePlus 5 is (slowly) growing with a poll over what box to sell the phone in, while the 3 and 3T are confirmed for Android O updates.
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Wowee wow that Essential Phone, huh? Andy Rubin, the father of Android has returned to the lime light with a big splash. A high quality, feature packed, new smartphone made with premium materials and engineering. And there’s a lot more to the story. This is a big deal, and it’s a lot to take in, but I had some thoughts I wanted to share.
My thoughts on the Essential Phone can be summed up in one sentence:
“OnePlus is making the Xiaomi Moto Z Mix, the Next Big Thing.”
Let’s break that down
Now, there’s a lot in there, so let’s break it down a little bit. The first item on the agenda is OnePlus, and believe it or not, this is a favorable comparison. I could have said Jolla, or NextBit, of the vaporware that is the Saygus V-divided-by-0, or any number of other companies that are no longer with us. OnePlus started off as a plucky little startup that was fighting to get its name out there in the general public. OnePlus quickly developed a tight-knit fan base, and I’m certain Essential will do the same.
But coming from out of nowhere into being a respectable manufacturer did not come easy for OnePlus. OnePlus’s main “feature” was high end specs at a midrange price – a truly compelling offering. Essential’s main selling point seems to be premium construction and materials – a durable though not waterproof phone. That’s a tougher sell, to be perfectly honest, but not completely crazy. Going up against the likes of Samsung and Apple in that price range will be no small feat. That nearly bezelless screen though could be an x-factor.
Bezels begone
Except we’ve seen that type of screen before – look no further than the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+. Let’s also remember the Xiaomi Mi Mix, which sports an equally bezelless screen, but without the divot in the middle. Sure, arguments are going to be made that the divot won’t matter because of the notification tray, yadda yadda. I’m not convinced, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for the moment. The point is, that the bezelless screen is not a new concept, and some companies have arguably done it better. Let’s continue.
The modular – maybe let’s call them “friends” – concept is also not necessarily new, though when compared to the Moto Z, it may well be better executed. Having two magnetic connectors in the corner of your phone is likely going to result in a more future proof concept going forward. Moto married its form factor when it introduced moto mods – it will be hard pressed to make a bigger or smaller phone without rendering previously bought mods obsolete. So Essential has a leg up here.
Plus, it’s also fun to see the 360 camera concept as its first venture into the accessory market – especially when it’s so flipping small. But how these mod-friend-things will evolve going forward will be interesting to see. But it’s important to stress that the accessories will [...]
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It's as far from affordable as we imagined, but at least the 4K HDR-enabled Sony Xperia XZ Premium smartphone is finally coming stateside soon.
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What exactly is Motorola hyping up on Twitter for Canada and India? It could be any one (or two) of the Moto Z2, Z2 Play, Force, X4, E4 or E4 Plus.
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Mohit Goel, Managing Director of Ringing Bells was arrested back in February on fraud charges. Ringing Bells, a company that claimed it was selling was one of the most talked about topics for the Indian tech industry in 2016.
The arrest was made following a complaint made against his company Ringing Bells for not supplying the handsets that Ayam Enterprises, a phone distribution company had paid for. Ayam Enterprises had paid Goel Rs 30 lakhs, but had received handsets worth Rs 13 Lakh only. Ringing Bells failed to supply the promised handsets and also did not return the money to the distributor despite continuous reminders.
A fresh report suggests that Allahabad High Court today granted bail to Mohit Goel and Sumit Kumar, Director Ringing Bells. The court also observed that a compromise has already been agreed upon between the parties involved in the case.
"The judge found no incriminating evidence in the case. We presented our case where we highlighted the compromise agreed upon by the concerned parties. Judge took notice of the facts and accepted the bail plea," Prashant Vyas, lawyer representing Ringing Bells, said in a statement.
The launch of “Freedom 251” priced at Rs 251 took place in February 2016. Ringing Bells promised to come up with a smartphone for all at an unbelievable price. However, Indian media didn’t took long to get to the roots and find the catch.
The company’s website where the smartphone was ordered crashed due to bulk traffic. The company soon announced that it had delivered 5,000 ‘Freedom 251’ smartphones to customers in July and promised to deliver 65,000 more to those who successfully booked the device.
However, the ‘Freedom 251’ dream buried with time and the company again ran into troubles when around 30,000 customers paid for the phone and the company failed to meet its promise to deliver the phones by June 2016.
After all the scams were busted, the company soon shut its offices in Noida and the arrest took place after the FIR was lodged by Ayam Enterprises.
We still have no name, price, release date or real-life pics for HP's upcoming smart Cortana speaker, but we know it connects to Windows 10 PCs.
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What's better than a free game? Well, pretty much nothing. Except when it's just terrible and you've wasted your sweet time to download it.
Sure, it's not going to cost you anything, but that doesn't mean it's OK to just mess around with terrible games that are free because the developer can't make you pay anything for it in good conscience.
So what are you supposed to do about it? Well, we're here to help you with all that - but before you get into the best gallery around for recommendations, here's some advice to consider.
Firstly, consider what sort of game you want to spend your time on. Time, in this case, is literally the equivalent of money here. Do you want a quick game that you can play easily, or something that's going to be a bit more in-depth?
If it's the latter, then you'll probably have to accept that you'll need to either view some ads or in-app purchases to get the good stuff, as most developers don't want to give away their time for free.
However, there are some brilliant surprises out there as well - some lovely people spend hours coding brilliant games that they just let you play for free.
Also think about the kind of games that you need for your phone - if it's a high-powered game that's a visual treat, it's not going to be much use on a phone that comes from four years ago and has a tiny display.
Right, got all that? Great - you need to get cracking and finding out which titles are right for you. Get your mouses clicking or fingers swiping... we guarantee there will be something you'll enjoy in here.
Zero points for innovation in Binary Dash, which is another side-scrolling auto-runner where you tap to jump, and tap somewhere else to flip upside-down.
But many points for the combination of super-fast gameplay, superb level design, and a visual aesthetic that thumbs its nose at the modern-day penchant for mid-80s pixel art, instead hurling you back to the lurid charms of late 1970s gaming.
Yes, Binary Dash more looks like it’s been vomited out of an ancient Atari console, but it nonetheless has a quirky charm. And the game itself is great. It eases you in gently, helping you get to grips with flipping above and below the horizon, thus turning game-ending pillars into pits to leap over when you’re upside-down.
Before long, though, your thumbs will be seriously challenged by the tight choreography required to jump and flip your way to the ends of later levels.
You probably wouldn’t be a happy commuter if forced to take the line in Infinite Train twice daily.
Here, a cartoon train lurches along a track with more bends in it than seems entirely reasonable. You must swipe in the appropriate direction to ensure the train turns in time, rather than crashing and providing the operator with a pretty good excuse for a cancellation.
Along the way, you can grab coins and carriages, amassing the points needed to unlock new skins, some of which are very odd. (Trains that are in fact massive frogs are the least of it.)
It does get a bit samey, and the online multiplayer is drab, but Infinite Train’s good for a quick blast, and if you get sick of the endless mode, there are stage-based challenges to tackle.
With its four-by-four grid and penchant for rapidly restricting the playfield, Topsoil comes across a bit like a horticultural Threes! There’s no sliding cards about, though – instead, you’re presented with a string of things to plant, and prod open spaces to plonk them down.
After three, you get a chance to harvest – and this is where things become more complicated. You get more points for harvesting many plants at once, which requires them to be on adjacent squares. But on harvesting anything, the soil beneath is turned over. Soil cycles between blue, yellow, and green, and groups of plants cannot cross different soil colors.
The net result is a clever game where you must plan ahead, and where you keep digging for strategies to last longer and discover new plants to grow and harvest.
It takes a lot to make a turn-based puzzle game stand out. NeoAngle’s stark visuals are certainly arresting, but it’s the way in which you move around the isometric landscape that makes the game unique.
Essentially, the protagonist is a triangle that flips into an adjacent tile when moving, leaving a trail in its wake. The trail is solid and cannot be crossed again. A glowing exit is where you must head – but only after grabbing gems along the way. And those gems might be stuck behind doorways opened using switches, or be located behind teleporters.
Soon, you’re trying to figure out a labyrinthine pathway to victory, wondering how someone could make a journey across a little single-screen neon grid so convoluted – and so riveting.
Yet another into-the-screen endless runner, channeling Temple Run. Yawn. Only Sky Dancer has a certain something that keeps you playing – and that certain something is leaving your stomach in your throat every time you jump.
Much of this is down to the construction of Sky Dancer’s world, which comprises tiny chunks of land hanging in the air in a manner that rocks usually don’t have. As you hurl yourself off the edge of one, you must quickly maneuver to land on a platform below.
Battling gravity and inertia is exhilarating, especially when the game speeds up and you know the slightest miscalculation will result in you meeting a splattery end on the desert floor.
We’re in Mario-style platforming territory with Super Phantom Cat, although only if you imagine the entire production quaffed a ton of sugar first. The Phantom World is a lurid, gaudy place, full of deadly traps, bling, and plenty of secrets. (A good rule when playing: never believe any wall is actually solid.)
Retina-searing art style aside, the game feels like a slam-dunk for any fan of classic platformers. Level design is smart, rewarding repeat play, there are varied modes, and the controls can be resized and shifted about if the defaults require banana thumbs on your device.
It is a bit ad-infested at times, but not to the point momentum is knocked. All in all, Super Phantom Cat is loads of leapy furry fun.
Pinball infused with the DNA of an against-the-clock endless runner sounds like an odd combination – but it works. In PinOut’s neon world – featuring a gorgeous electro soundtrack – a massive table stretches far into the distance. Within: dozens of miniature tables comprising flippers, ramps, and more than a few traps.
The basic aim at every turn is to keep moving forward to the next mini-table – and quickly. Accurate ramp shots are key, and so mastering the game’s physics and the layout of its various stages is essential.
For advocates, this is a fresh take on pinball that works brilliantly in mobile form. And for newcomers, PinOut is freed from the frequently arcane rules of pinball, but loses none of its frenetic excitement.
Coming across like Super Hexagon got infatuated with polygons, Polywarp is a brutally difficult arcade experience that’s also maddeningly compulsive.
The basics are simple: your polygon sits at the center of the screen, and walls close in from the edges. By tapping the left or right-hand side of the screen, respectively, you reduce or increase your polygon’s edge count, to match the next shape that’s aiming to crush you.
Everything moves at speed and whirls about, like you’re playing in a washing machine packed with an endless number of lurid shapes.
Initially, Polywarp feels impossible, but you soon recognize patterns to commit to memory and master. Last 60 seconds and you’ll feel like a champ – until you realize a new, tougher mode’s waiting to humiliate your thumbs.
One of the more abstract games you’re likely to install on your Android device, Cubway comprises over 50 minimal scenes you traverse as a tiny red square.
The aim is simply to reach a goal, but all kinds of objects block your path and respond to your presence in varying ways. You must figure out how to get past them all, despite being restricted in terms of movement – forward or backward are your only options, although you can (and will often have to) stop, move slowly, or backtrack, depending on the hazard before you.
As you travel, a story of sorts is revealed, although the text reads like a strange self-help guide. Otherwise, Cubway is a success – it’s intuitive, the mechanics are fresh and clever, and the aesthetics are unfalteringly atmospheric.
All the chicks have been captured, and so super-hen Cluckles sets off to save them, armed with the kind of massive sword most people would be surprised to find lurking in a henhouse.
From the outset, Cluckles’ Adventure is a very retro platformer – all chunky graphics, angular environments with enemies marching back and forth, and an unforgiving nature.
But while the very regular deaths can be off-putting (as can the virtual button placement, seemingly designed for banana thumbs on anything above a seven-inch tablet), it’s hard to stay mad at everything else.
The visuals are rough and ready but full of charm. And most importantly, the level design is smart, making it a mild challenge to reach an exit, but a much tougher test should you want to rescue every chick.
It’s one of the better platformers on Android, and one of the very best free ones, as well as being a reminder of simpler times.
Imagine Tomb Raider reworked as Pac-Man, slammed into Crossy Road, played in fast-forward, and dressed as if spat out of a ZX Spectrum circa 1983. That’s Tomb of the Mask.
You play as a hero aiming to ‘liberate’ gold from a tomb, but he finds a mask – and rashly puts it on. Recklessness here wins the day, since the mask bestows the wearer with the ability to climb walls and leap big gaps, giving him a fighting chance of reaching the end of scrolling caverns packed with deadly spikes, guns, and foes, and avoiding an encroaching glowing wall of death.
Whether playing through set-piece levels or the endless arcade mode, Tomb of the Mask is a fresh, fun, vibrant twitch game that marries the best of old and new.
If you’re the kind of person who’d rather stand up (and knock down) dominoes than play the actual game, Dominocity should appeal.
In this arcade puzzler, the idea is to place as few dominoes as possible to reach a goal, while grabbing golden amulets along the way.
The controls are odd at first. You tap to drop a domino in front of the last one, and slide your finger to angle it if necessary, in order to change direction.
Even so, precision placement isn’t too tricky, but success also hinges on speed. This adds tension to what may otherwise have been a pleasing but undemanding game, further ramped up by the increasing complexity of the pathways you must conquer as you move through Dominocity’s challenges.
It amounts to a fairly unique and original puzzler that’s easy to learn but hard to master, much like Tetris and other greats. It’s also fun in short bursts, making it ideal for mobile play.
One of the most sedate, forgiving puzzle games you’ll ever play, Outfolded also manages to do something interesting with minimal blocky environments and trundling shapes.
For each of the game’s scenes, the aim is to reach a goal by ‘unfolding’ one or more shapes. Each move you make, one of the shape’s faces disappears, leaving you with whatever’s left for further turns, and you can only move in a direction if you have an intact face pointing that way.
Early on, you can make all kinds of blunders and still reach the goal. But before long, the shapes become complex many-sided things reminiscent of Tetris blocks, requiring you to think carefully about the order in which their sides are unfolded and the routes you take.
Mess up and you can undo as many moves as you like. Even this isn’t galling, the rewind animation being pleasing even when you’ve already watched it several times on a particularly tough level.
This one’s far from the worst game ever, but it does feature an amusingly grumpy cat. It’s actually a set of simple mini-games, reminiscent of Nintendo’s WarioWare series, only here, they feature a miffed moggie that’d sooner be somewhere – anywhere – else.
Each miniature challenge in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever can be understood in an instant – stamping a paw on a laser pointer by tapping the screen; firing the cat upward to secure a cardboard box of dreams; pressing shaped buttons to traverse a path and reach a fish.
The variety of mini-games keeps it fresh and interesting, and the game is often smile inducing thanks to its mix of colorful art, ludicrous concepts and eternally irritated feline.
The longer you survive, the faster and more demanding everything becomes. Fail and the grumpy cat scowls, but you’re also awarded coins to acquire new games by way of stickers won from a prize machine. Naturally, every one of them features the grumpy cat.
More or less an auto-runner on a five-lane road, Cubed Rally World is all about belting along, steering left and right to avoid anything in your path. Survive long enough in this isometric landscape and you hit the checkered flag, where cube-oriented fame and fortune awaits.
But things get really interesting when you grab coins en-route and start buying new vehicles on the game’s home screen. Each vehicle shakes up the visuals and the manner in which you race - the dune buggy, for example, can leap majestically over sandy hills where the UFO bothers farmyard cows to add some variety into a older game format.
More importantly, for every vehicle you buy, a new track section is added to the rally, the vehicle you control automatically switching when you reach that point.
Amass a suitably large collection and there’s the potential for colossal scores – but completing the rally becomes significantly harder, which helps prolong longetivity.
This one-thumb arcade game combines classic slalom fare with the checkpoint racing and branching maps seen in the likes of OutRun. Using a single digit, you direct a little red boat through the waters of Memento Bay, aiming to collect ancient artifacts. At the end of each short stage, you head left or right to determine the next location.
Obstacles are a major foe – blunder into one and your boat is robbed of momentum – not great when playing against the clock. But you must also be mindful of the arrow at the top of the screen. This points towards the next checkpoint – miss one and it’s ‘game over’.
This feels harsh (a time penalty would have been better), but encourages repeat play. After all, the map never changes, so learn it and master the controls and you’ll one day be able to scythe towards the finish line.
Namco’s arcade classic hardly needs any introduction. But just in case you’ve been locked in a cave since the late 1970s, Pac-Man features the titular protagonist, a rotund yellow mouth who munches dots in a maze patrolled by ghost-like monsters.
The aim is to eat the dots and avoid the ghosts. Grab flashing power pills and you can briefly turn the tables on your pursuers – by eating them when they turn blue and try to flee.
Despite being over 30 years old, Pac-Man remains a fun game, and the simple controls (basically, swipe in the direction you next want to turn) work very nicely on Android, as do the crisp old-school visuals.
For free, you get the original maze and several plays per day. More mazes can be unlocked using saved up play tokens – or you can buy more (and remove the ads) with various IAPs.
World-building turn-based strategy series Civilization is a classic, but mobile versions have on the whole been a bit poor, offering neither the scope of their computer-based cousins nor the accessibility on-the-go mobile titles demand.
The Battle of Polytopia gets the balance right. You select a tribe, and set out to expand your tiny empire. Armies are created, resources are utilized, technology is researched, and opponents are crushed.
Polytopia isn’t the most immediate game – you need to experiment a bit to figure out how everything works. But the cartoon stylings are approachable, and the mix of entertainment and depth provides a hook and staying power.
Smartly, there are also multiple ways to play: old-school ‘kill everyone else’ domination, a limited 30-turn ‘Perfection’ mode, and, if the AI’s not doing it for you, pass-and-play. And all for free – for which Polytopia deserves to dominate your Android game time for a good long while.
This vertically scrolling shooter plays with convention in a manner that messes with your head. The basics are familiar – you’re dumped within a vertically scrolling environment and must shoot ALL OF THE THINGS.
Occasionally, obliterated foes drop bonus items that boost your weaponry, providing the means to unleash major destruction while yelling YEEE-HAA – if that’s your sort of thing.
However – and this is a big ‘however’ – everything in Time Locker only moves when you do. The temptation is to blaze ahead, due to bonus points being won for covering greater distances, and because you’re being pursued by the sole thing that doesn’t freeze when you do – an all-devouring nothingness.
But careening on isn’t always a good strategy, because blundering into a single foe or projectile ends your game. Risk versus reward, then, in this fresh and great-looking blaster that dares to try something different.
This superb arcade puzzler finds you directing traffic about a small town. A vehicle enters the screen, and you’re told where it needs to leave, steering it by way of directional arrows. Easy.
Only, this town is afflicted with strange temporal oddness that means subsequent journeys overlap previous ones. Before long, you’re making all kinds of detours to avoid collisions with cars you’d a minute ago driven to safety, which would otherwise wipe seconds off the timer as you wait for damaged vehicles to limp towards their exit.
Adding to its smarts, Does Not Commute includes a storyline with multiple characters, playing out across its varied environments. The only snag on mobile: you must complete the entire game in a single sitting. If that sounds like too much, a one-off IAP unlocks checkpoints.
The protagonist in Hop Swap isn’t having an especially great day, having tumbled into a strange videogame world where he’s apparently lost his arms and been painted purple. Still, he makes the most of it, bounding along, grabbing gems, leaping on monsters, and reaching checkpoints.
So far, so standard (for a platform game), but Hop Swap has a trick up its sleeve, in having you regularly leap below the ground. At that point, you flip upside down, jumping downwards to potentially finding more bling and new secrets.
Hop Swap is a fun, breezy game, even if it feels a touch stodgy and unresponsive compared to the likes of Mario. It’s also a generous freebie, in giving you the entire game – you just need to spend collected bling on checkpoints if you want to avoid watching ads to save progress.
This third entry in the Super Stickman Golf series is perhaps feeling a bit too familiar, but the game remains the best side-on golf to be found on Android.
As ever, your little stickman is charged with smacking balls about courses comprising floating islands, laser-infested bases, and space stations. You set your direction and strength, hit the ball, and hope for the best – although this time you can also add spin.
Power-ups eventually enter the mix, providing opportunities to discover new ways to lower your scores. There are also two multiplayer modes – a deranged real-time race and a more sedate turn-based affair.
The free version of Super Stickman Golf 3 is a little limited regarding simultaneous multiplayer games and access to new courses, but a single IAP unlocks the premium game.
Although Super Cat Bros looks like a retro title, it doesn’t play like one. Sure, there’s leapy platform action, like in Mario games, and a smattering of Alex Kidd exploration, but the controls are distinctly modern mobile fare.
You tap the left or right of your display to make your cat move (or wall jump when clinging to a wall), or double tap to dash (which finds the ktitie hurling itself into the air on reaching an edge).
At first, it’s disorienting, but soon Super Cat Bros becomes second nature, and you start noticing the smart design of the dinky levels, and how keenly observed the cat protagonists are.
Also, Android owners get one key benefit over people lumbered with an iPhone: the game’s proper name. (On iOS, it’s Super Cat Tales, because Apple apparently thinks its users might confuse a game about cats for one featuring Nintendo’s famous plumber.)
A brutal, brilliant platform game, Circle Affinity finds its protagonist in a literal take on the circles of hell – only here there are considerably more than nine.
He scoots about the edge of each disc, leaps into it, and then must jump to the outer edge of the next circle, which bobs about in the air. All the while, massive teeth-like daggers close in, and demons march back and forth, waiting for you to blunder into them.
Games are initially short, and Circle Affinity almost taunts you on death, as you try to master the inherently-disorienting nature. Over time, you'll begin to survive a little longer, whereupon you'll be rewarded with new eye-searing color schemes and additional play modes.
It's rare even in mobile gaming – frequently full of innovation – to find a fresh take on puzzling, but Kerflux surprises with a simple, original concept that's perfectly executed.
A crunchy chip-tune plays and you're presented with three waveforms. The music dulls, as if you're underwater, and that's your signal to start manipulating two of the waveforms so they combine to form the third.
Achieving this goal is straightforward, and you can initially blaze through the game's levels – even if a more leisurely pace is perhaps more rewarding. Before long, though, any complacency about Kerflux's apparent ease evaporates when additional waves appear and you're juggling four of them, trying to find the perfect combination that unlocks the next challenge.
Although it visually and conceptually resembles a reverse Tetris, with you removing blocks from a tower, Six! is really all about a hexagon. It lurks atop the blocks, and must not fall over the tower's edges.
A few taps in and Six! appears like it might last for hours, but shapes combine in odd ways, and you can only remove one at a time. This leads to hairy situations where your hexagon wheels and threatens to hurl itself into oblivion.
The physics are a touch suspect, but then this isn't a game aiming for console-style realism. Instead, you must master Six!'s weirdly floaty nature and attempt to take advantage. Rather neatly, the game's also not quite done when your hexagon's gone – you get a few seconds during a 'last call' to frantically tap away at remaining blocks and add to your score.
Although you play games, few of them are about play itself, in the sense of experimenting with a set-up or situation and seeing what happens. Orbit, though, while presenting itself as a puzzle game, is more a minimalist sandbox where you immerse yourself in the delights of creating tiny solar systems.
The game is played by slingshotting celestial bodies around black holes. They then proceed to leave colored trails in their wake, while gravity does its thing. Soon, you have planets clustering together, wheeling around one or more black holes, creating minimalist modern art while they do so.
It's all rather gorgeous and mesmerizing. The only snag is ads periodically wrecking the mood, although they can be eradicated with a single IAP.
Even now, years after Android proved itself as a major gaming platform, some developers seem to barely remember the touchscreen exists. If you reckon trudging through games with virtual D-pads and buttons can be a chore, Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire will be a little slice of magic.
You’re a wizard, defending a castle from interlopers attached to balloons. Cast spells by scribbling gestures to match symbols on the balloons and said flotation devices explode – much to the surprise of their owners, who then rapidly plummet towards a squishy end. Miss just one of them and your wizarding days are done.
From the off, this is a fresh, frantic survival game, especially when trying your hand at the super-fast extreme mode. Stick around for long enough and you’ll be able to utilize super spells too, turning enemies into frogs, and summoning a dragon. Which we all need to do on the odd Thursday here and there.
If you’re of the opinion gaming takes itself a tad too seriously at times, Maximum Car is a perfect antidote. This amusingly over-the-top racer has you barrel along winding roads, blowing up rival racers, and driving like a maniac.
Smash the same kind of car up enough across multiple races and you can buy it in the shop, using coins acquired by terrorizing other road users.
It all feels a bit like someone stripped down Burnout, added a slice of OutRun, and shoved the lot through a Lego-like visual filter.
Along with a brainless commentator (“I’ve got a reading age of six!”) growling at regular intervals as you use your ice cream van to smash an unfortunate convertible to smithereens, this all makes for a suitably silly and entertaining blast of speed that’s great in small doses.
From the developer behind psychotic endless games One More Dash and One More Line comes One More Jump. Initially, it seems a mite friendlier than the previously brutish titles – although still existing within a universe of abstract shapes and vivid colors, the protagonist now at least wears a massive grin. But make no mistake: this is hard-nosed platforming of the one-thumb kind.
Each level simply tasks you with reaching the exit, which requires sticking to white platforms. But with your grinning square automatically speeding along, all you can do to stave off disaster is time your jumps.
Should you also want to grab the bonuses along the way – necessary for unlocking new levels – you may need to leap over the exit and tackle the entire level multiple times. The tension is palpable when going for those final few leaps.
With its chunky graphics, angled viewpoint, and tap-to-jump controls, Looty Dungeon initially comes across as yet another me-too Crossy Road clone. And that’s a pity, because this game is a very different – yet equally as entertaining – proposition.
It’s still an endless game, but rather than scrolling, Looty Dungeon tasks you with offing any lurking enemies within static, single-screen dungeons before making for the exit.
Even early on, each tiny dungeon is filled with spikes, walls, flying arrows, and all manner of other obstacles. Dawdle too long and the floor will collapse from underneath you, survive long enough and you’ll eventually encounter bosses, which require unique tactics to defeat.
Grab enough bling before your inevitable demise and you can buy new heroes, some of which hold weapons that shake up how you approach the game, adding to its longevity.
Coming across like a Flappy Bird game designed in Terry Gilliam's brain, Steamkraft is an amusingly knowing oddball take on the genre. Each level has you navigate a world of deadly obstacles by way of a fantastical contraption that requires more than a prod to the screen to head skywards.
In a submarine, you yank a lever to move up or down; and a level with a bike hanging from a miniature airship has you frantically rotate a mechanism to avoid crashing into the ground or terrifying mechanical ravens.
During play, everything is, in all honesty, a bit simple and sometimes a tad unfair (projectiles being flung your way with merry abandon, often leaving little hope of avoiding them), but the novelty factor - in terms of both visuals and controls - shines through to ensure Steamkraft is nonetheless a worthy freebie.
We're not sure what's going on in Easy Joe World, which marries a kind of cartoon logic with the sensibilities of old-school gaming. It features the journey of a mischievous cartoon rabbit, rampaging his way through over 100 screens of basic puzzling, getting up to all manner of naughty deeds.
Taken on its merits as a puzzler, Easy Joe World is lightweight. Most scenes are defeated by prodding at the screen until something happens, or flicking a few switches; only occasionally are you really tested.
But as an interactive cartoon brimming with character, and with a hint of gaming on the side, Easy Joe World's worth an hour or two of your time.
Flash game Gimme Friction Baby heavily influenced a number of mobile titles, each featuring a little oscillating gun that fires balls into a single-screen arena, said balls then having to be destroyed by subsequent shots.
Hue Ball presents its own spin on the theme, which is respectful to the original source but smart enough to succeed on its own merits.
Here, balls don't expand to fill space but instead grow another layer when a pulsing disc retreats to the center of the screen. When balls have too many layers, they're converted to indestructible skulls that take up valuable screen space.
You must therefore quickly destroy any on-screen balls, while also taking care not to return one over the 'line of doom' that depletes your small selection of lives.
We've heard Perchang called a mix of Lemmings and Marble Madness. That's a touch ambitious, but this is nonetheless a smart puzzler to test your brainpower and reactions.
The idea is to lead a stream of ball bearings to various exits placed within contraption-filled levels. Your only means of control is two buttons, used to trigger colored items such as flippers, magnets and fans. At first, bridging gaps is simple, but Perchang quickly ramps up the complexity, turning the game into a kind of frantic juggling act, balls flying all over the place as you struggle to contain the chaos.
Every few challenges, an ad roundly flings ball-bearings in the face of Perchang's minimal ambiance, but you can be rid of them with a cheap one-off IAP.
In 1986, Sega released a racing game called Out Run. Being that this was in the days before boring, gray 'realism' became mandatory for a number of years, the visuals were colorful, the controls were simple, and the traffic tore along at insane speeds, suspiciously all heading in the same direction.
Final Freeway 2R is a loving tribute to Sega's title. You get the same breakneck arcade racing, forks in the road, cheesy music, and a car flip when you crash. (You also, in this free version, get ads, but they're not intrusive, and are easily ignored.)
If you're old, you'll be in gaming heaven; if not, the speed and carefree nature of Final Freeway 2R will finally make you understand what retro gamers are always wittering on about.
You might moan about trains when you're - again - waiting for a late arrival during your daily commute, but play this game and you'll thank your lucky stars that you're not in Train Conductor World. Here, trains rocket along, and mostly towards head-on collisions.
It's your job to drag out temporary bridges to avoid calamity while simultaneously sending each train to its proper destination - it's exhausting.
From the off, Train Conductor World is demanding, and before long a kind of 'blink and everything will be smashed to bits' mentality pervades. For a path-finding action-puzzler - Flight Control on tracks, if you will - it's an engaging and exciting experience.
We do wonder when light-fingered archaeologists will learn. No sooner has the hero of Raider Rushgrabbed a massive hunk of bling than the ancient temple he's in starts filling with lava.
To escape, he must bound from wall to wall, like a hyperactive flea, making his way towards beautiful daylight, before realising he's merely stuck in the next tower to escape from.
With 30 bespoke levels and an endless mode, there's lots of leaping to be done in Raider Rush, and the two-thumb controls (for hurling the hero left or right) make for a pleasingly frantic arcade experience, akin to juggling your little explorer to the surface (while presumably scolding the idiot for not leaving other people's possessions alone).
Although a far cry from classic Pokémon titles, there's no getting away from the sheer impact of Pokémon GO. It's resulted in swarms of smartphone users roaming the streets and countryside, searching for tiny creatures they can only see through their screens.
In all honesty, the game is simplistic: find a Pokémon, lob balls at it, amble about for a while to hatch eggs, and use your collection of critters to take over and guard virtual gyms.
But despite basic combat and the game's tendency to clobber your Android's battery, it taps into the collector mentality; and it's a rare example of successfully integrating a game into the real world, getting people physically outside and - shock - interacting with each other.
Bad news! It turns out the Axis of Evil needs overthrowing immediately, on account of having access to a ridiculous number of planes and tanks, some of which are the size of small villages. Sadly, we've had some cutbacks, which means our air force is now, er, you.
Still, we're sure you're going to love your time in AirAttack 2, cooing at gorgeous scenery shortly before bombing it, surviving bullet-hell, and puffing your chest to a thumping orchestral soundtrack.
Sure, you might have to turn down the graphic effects a bit on older hardware, and it's a bit of a grind to reach later levels, but you're not going to get better freebie shooting action this side of World War III.
Take an early 1990s FPS, smash it into an auto-runner, add a dash of Pac-Man, and you'd end up with Hammer Bomb. You're dumped in dank mazes and dungeons full of hideous beasts and must stomp along, finding keys, loot, weapons and the way out.
Levels are randomised, adding a Roguelike quality to proceedings, and the entire game's underpinned by a levelling up system. This means XP being awarded for killing loads of monsters, rapidly finding the exit, or performing other tasks, such as completing quests (which, in a nod to Ms. Pac-Man, involves hunting down roaming foodstuff).
Every few levels, you face off against a massive screen-high boss, darting towards it with whatever weapon you have to hand, before fleeing like a coward. Survive long enough and you can swap coins for upgrades.
Top tip: as soon as you've 150 coins and level 3 status, grab the radar, because Hammer Bomb is much friendlier when you can spot monsters on the top-down map.
Like an escapee from Super Hexagon, but now stuck traversing endlessly shifting flat terrain, the heroic ship in Sparkwave only wants to survive. You veer left and right, attempting to remain on an evolving and disintegrating path, avoiding obstacles, and keeping your lunch down as the screen lurches and shifts.
The dazzling art style and thumping soundtrack add to the game's dizzying but engaging nature; and although Sparkwave lacks Super Hexagon's elegant simplicity (there are multiple tracks, unlocks and customizable options), it also lacks its price-tag, making it a no-brainer download.
The best of tennis is about the rallies, and in One Tap Tennis that's all there is. Matches are won by you prodding the screen when a returned ball moves over an orange line. Successful thwackage builds your power bar, enabling you to hit a smash when it's full and win the match.
This is an oddly compelling title, and surprisingly tricky once you've won a few cups and everything's moving at breakneck speed. To keep you interested, there are loads of characters to unlock, and you can restart part-way through any cup by saving your spot in return for watching (read: ignoring) an ad.
Touchscreens should be a poor fit for platform games, which typically require the kind of precision that only comes from a physical controller. This is why so many mobile titles opt for auto-running, distilling platform gaming to its core essence of timing jumps.
In Leap Day, your little yellow character is tasked with getting to the top of a tall tower. You can jump, double jump and slide down walls, but that's it. You must therefore carefully leap past cartoon foes and gigantic spikes, grabbing fruit along the way.
At various points on your climb are checkpoints, which can be bought with 20 fruit or by watching an ad. This means you don't have to start from scratch on coming a cropper. And when you do reach the summit, you can come back the next day for an entirely new level to try.
There are a lot of Android puzzle games that involve you sliding blocks about, but Imago is one of the best, even giving Threes! a run for its money.
You drag numbered tiles around a grid, merging those of the same colour and shape. On doing so, their numbers combine, but when merged groups reach a certain size, they split into smaller tiles, each retaining the score of the larger piece. Successful games require careful forward planning, with only a few moves it can be possible to ramp up scores dramatically, into the millions or even billions!
The game's relative complexity is countered by a smart modes system that gradually introduces you to Imago's intricacies. There's also a Daily Flight mode that provides a regular influx of new challenges, for when the standard modes begin to pall. On Android, we noticed a few minor visual glitches here and there, but otherwise this is a must-download puzzle game that's among the best on the platform.
Asphalt 8 is arguably king of arcade racers on mobile, with its breezy and often ludicrous take on driving recklessly through famous cities. But Ridge Racer used to rule the arcades, and Ridge Racer Slipstream makes a decent stab for the chequered flag on Android.
This is a much more involved test than Asphalt, initially feeling stiffer and even a touch pedestrian. But as you get to grips with the handling model and gawp at the gorgeous scenery, it soon becomes clear Ridge Racer is a first-class mobile racer, and one that provides a stiff challenge at every step of the way.
As you might expect, there's some IAP whiffing the place up, but you can play through for nothing if you're willing to persevere and grind a bit; and with courses as great looking as the ones found in this game, re-racing them isn't exactly a hardship.
We're big fans of Crossy Road, which is both a lesson in how to update a classic arcade game (Frogger), and create a free-to-play business model that isn't hateful. (In short, throw free coins at players, don't make anything pay to win, and add loads of tempting but entirely optional characters to buy.)
With Disney Crossy Road, anything could have happened, but this is far from a cheap cash-in. Sure, it starts off very much like Crossy Road - just starring Mickey Mouse. But unlock a few characters (you'll have at least three within ten minutes) and you suddenly find yourself immersed in chunky takes on famous movies, such as Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph, and The Lion King.
Even better, these aren't mere skins on the original. Each world has unique features, from tiny graphical details that will thrill fans, through to subtle shifts in how the game is played that force you to dramatically change your approach.
You might think there's little new in Alto's Adventure, which is essentially endless leapy game Canabalt on ice. But refined visuals best even Monument Valley, with an eye-popping day/night cycle and gorgeous weather effects; additionally, there's a delightful soundtrack, and a kind of effortless elegance that permeates throughout, propelling Alto's Adventure beyond its contemporaries.
Ostensibly, Alto's Adventure is a game about collecting escaped llamas, but mostly Alto is keen on mucking about on snowy slopes. You zoom down hills, catapult yourself into the air, and try to somersault before face-planting. Extra challenge arrives in the form of chaining stunts to increase your speed, and outrunning elders, angry you're having fun rather than sitting in a stinky llama pen.
Having been mercilessly ripped off by a pretender (who cynically thanked the original's developer for "inspiration"), Sage Solitaire finally made it to Android. It rethinks solitaire for mobile, mostly by smashing it into poker. Cards are removed using poker hands, with the added complication each hand must use cards from at least two different rows.
Clearing the deck and amassing points requires careful strategy and a little luck, not least given how rapidly the lower stacks empty. Win three times and you unlock Vegas mode, where you can try your luck making bets on your skills (and, in all likelihood, lose a boatload of virtual money). Regardless of the mode you favour, Sage Solitaire's one of those seemingly throwaway casual games that manages to take hold to the point of obsession.
In RGB Express, your aim is to build up a delivery company from scratch, all by dropping off little coloured boxes at buildings of the same colour. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Only this is a puzzler that takes place on tiny islands with streets laid out in a strict grid pattern, and decidedly oddball rules regarding road use.
Presumably to keep down on tarmac wear, roads are blocked the second a vehicle drives over them. Once you're past the early levels, making all your deliveries often requires fashioning convoluted snake-like paths across the entire map, not least when bridge switches come into play. Despite its cute graphics, then, RGB Express is in reality a devious and tricky puzzle game, which will have you swearing later levels simply aren't possible, before cracking one, feeling chuffed and then staring in disbelief at what follows.
In Threes! Free, you slide numbered cards around a tiny grid, merging pairs to increase their values and make room for new cards. Strategy comes from the cards all moving simultaneously, along with you needing to keep space free to make subsequent merges, forcing you to think ahead.
On launch, it was a rare example of a new and furiously compulsive puzzle-game mechanic. Within days, it was mercilessly ripped off, free clones flooding Google Play.
Now, though, you can get authentic Threes! action entirely for free, and discover why it's 2048 times better than every freebie 2048 game (personality; attention to detail; music; small elements of game design that make a big difference).
You get 12 free games to start. Add groups of three more by watching a video ad. And you can always upgrade to the paid version if you get suitably hooked.
There are loads of freebie Bejeweled knock-offs on Google Play, and so if you fancy a bit of gem-swapping, you may as well download the original. For reasons beyond us, Android owners don't get the multitude of modes available on some other platforms, but there's the original match-three 'classic', the can't-lose 'zen', and the superb 'diamond mine'.
In the last of those, matches smash a hole into the ground. You're playing against the clock, and over time uncover harder rock that needs special moves to obliterate. It's a frenetic, intense experience considering this is a match-three title, although high-score chasers might cast a suspicious eye over the offer to extend the time limit by watching an advert.
Although there are exceptions, traditional platform games rarely work on touchscreens. Fortunately, canny developers have rethought the genre, stripping it back to its very essence. In Bean Dreams, you help a jumping bean traverse all kinds of hazards, by sending the bouncing hatted seed left or right.
Each level is cleverly designed to offer optimum paths, boosting your points tally when hitting the goal having made the fewest bounces. Timing is everything, then, but there are further challenges that reward exploration. To find the pet axolotls spread across the map, or collect all the fruit, you must use different approaches, which adds plenty of replay value.
Nitrome's fashioning quite the collection of smart Android games, which subvert existing genres in interesting ways. Platform Panic initially comes across as a vastly simplified platform game. You swipe to move and leap, and it's game over the second your little character comes a cropper.
But really every screen is a tiny puzzle that you must learn how to solve; and then every game becomes a memory test, with you in an instant having to draw on your experience as each challenge — sometimes mirrored — is sent your way.
In Rust Bucket, a cartoon helmet with a sword dodders about a vibrant dungeon, offing all manner of cute but deadly adversaries — skittering skulls, angry armoured pigs, and spooky ghosts. This is a turn-based affair, echoing classic RPGs, but its endless dungeon and savage nature transform it into a puzzle game perfect for quickfire mobile sessions. You must learn how foes move and react, plan every step and always keep in mind a single error can spell doom.
In its current incarnation, Rust Bucket cleverly balances enough depth to keep you coming back with the brevity that makes it ideal for on-the-go roguelike larks. Future plans include finite puzzle modes and expanded endless content.
Miserable people will tell you that Battle Golf is stupid and that you should go and play a proper sports game instead. Pay them no heed, because this title might be very silly, but it's also a blast. Two rivals stand at the edge of a lake, from which tiny greens periodically emerge. They must then land a hole in one to take a point. Occasionally, a whale or huge octopus will be the 'hole', and you can bean your opponent with the ball. Just don't bean them with their Android device if they sneak a win with a jammy shot.
Although it's yet another auto-runner, Fast like a Fox has plenty going for it. The game looks gorgeous, with atmospheric low-poly artwork providing an artsy take on chilly frozen hills and dark urban haunts.
There's also some smart level design, with each of the short challenges demanding you learn every pathway, and understanding the speed with which you approach the many jumps, in order to not send your furry friend to its doom.
But mostly we were taken by the control method, which involves drumming your fingers on the back of your device to speed up the fox. Sure, it's a gimmick, but this approach gives you a much greater sense of connection with the sprinting mammal, although grumpy traditionalists can instead opt for a much more boring two-button system.
We've seen several mobile games put a new spin on chess, but Chess Runner amusingly turns the age-old favourite into a frantic arcade battle. You take on the role of a white knight, darting about in L-shaped bounds. Your aim: to fight your way through black pieces and capture a golden king.
Different twists are peppered throughout the game's levels. The most basic mode involves ensuring you don't end up in a position to be taken by static or patrolling black pieces. But sometimes you must fend off a barrage of attacks from pawns or rooks, or quickly get to the king during a speed-run test. It's particularly in those against-the-clock challenges that Chess Runner bares its teeth, temporarily making you forget everything you ever knew about chess, before blundering into a bishop.
There's always a whiff of unease on recommending a game from a developer nestled deep in the bosom of freemium gaming, but Clash Royale largely manages to be a lot of fun however much money you lob at it. The game is more or less a mash-up of card collecting and real-time strategy. Cards are used to drop units on to a single-screen playfield, and they march about and duff up enemy units, before taking on your opponent's towers.
The battles are short and suited to quick on-the-go play, and although Clash Royale is designed for online scraps, you can also hone your strategies against training units if you're regularly getting pulverised. There are the usual timers and gates for upgrades, but the game largely does a good job of matching you against players of fairly similar skill levels, meaning it's usually a blast and only rarely a drag.
This endless survival game eschews typical side-on leapy shenanigans or an overhead land-based approach. Instead, Road to be King has you drag the royal protagonist around the screen, attempting to avoid all manner of foul creatures and deadly traps. Along the way, crystals are there for grabbing, as are power-ups for a temporary reprieve against your foes. Mostly, it's the control method and design that ensure Road to be King is worth sticking with. Both oddly echo bullet-hell shooters as much as endless runners, and as you begin to recognise patterns in the challenges you pass, the game becomes a kind of zen-like experience.
In the world of Splash Cars, it appears everyone's a miserable grump apart from you. Their world is dull and grey, but your magical vehicle brings colour to anything it goes near. The police aren't happy about this and aim to bring your hue-based shenanigans to a close, by ramming your car into oblivion. There's also the tiny snag of a petrol tank that runs dry alarmingly quickly.
Splash Cars therefore becomes a fun game of fleeing from the fuzz, zooming past buildings by a hair's breadth, grabbing petrol and coins carelessly left lying about, and trying to hit an amount-painted target before the timer runs out. Succeed and you go on to bigger and better locations, with increasingly powerful cars.
The amazingly popular iOS game earned over two million downloads during its first weekend of availability on Android and despite myriad sequels and spinoffs, it is still a great game to play.
The Android version of Angry Birds is free, unlike the Apple release, with maker Rovio opting to stick a few adverts on it rather than charge an upfront fee. The result is a massive and very challenging physics puzzler that's incredibly polished and professional. For free. It defies all the laws of modern retail.
We're pretty sure this one's going to confuse a bunch of people, but if you're of a certain vintage, Heist will have you squee with nostalgia. It's essentially a Nintendo Game & Watch for your Android device, featuring a little chap robbing a bank. The visuals perfectly evoke those ancient handhelds, and although the game is very simple — move left and right, avoid falling objects, load pilfered cash into a balloon — getting high-scores requires serious concentration and thumb dexterity.
On a suitably sized smartphone, you'll almost think you're playing the real thing. (And if anyone from Nintendo is reading, how about some official Game & Watch on Android? Better that than any number of dodgy freemium games based loosely on Nintendo's famous characters.)
Objectively, Flappy Bird was a bit rubbish, but it did kick off a ton of 'tributes'. Most of them were rubbish too, but Flappy Golf very much isn't. It started off as a joke — the developer fusing the excellent Super Stickman Golf 2 and Flappy Bird mechanics. Instead of aiming your ball, it has wings and you flap it towards the hole by tapping 'left' and 'right' buttons.
Somehow, this all comes together and Flappy Golf equals the game it's based on — it's fast, funny and challenging, with loads of courses and multiplayer. The on-screen ads are a bit intrusive, mind, but otherwise this is one of the best free games you're ever likely to find for Android, despite 'Flappy' being in its name.
It's probably fair to say that No More Kings is on the basic side regarding aesthetics, but then that merely puts you in mind of those chess puzzles you find lurking in newspapers. The difference here is you capture the king by taking pieces and immediately becoming that piece. By way of example, grab a bishop with a rook and it's 'diagonals only' for your next move.
Finding your way to the crown is easy at first, but gets much trickier in later levels, when the board becomes littered with pieces and the pathfinding is no longer obvious. The masterstroke: tying the stars awarded for completing levels to the speed in which you reach a solution. Speed chess players will have nothing on your deft digits in this game.
With its cute isometric visual style, hoppy instadeath mechanics, and a range of characters to win in a semi-randomised lottery, you might be forgiven for thinking Down The Mountain is Crossy Road upended. While there are similarities, it quickly becomes clear Down The Mountain is a very different game to play. Borrowing from Q*Bert rather than Frogger, it has you tackle leaping down an endless mountain, on which hazards come thick and fast. Even on the easy mode, you must think quickly, leaping left or right to avoid TNT, bounding cars, and vicious spikes. On hard mode, it's not so much Down The Mountain as Down T— Oh. Dead again.
We all love a bit of Tetris, but Tetris doesn't love mobile — previous and current incarnations for Android are mostly hideous IAP-infused abominations. Fortunately, then, Dream of Pixels exists, more or less flipping Tetris upside-down, having you use those very familiar shapes to take chunks out of an endless cloud bank.
The game's floaty and slightly hippyish vibe hides an endless puzzler with serious bite. Once the cloud's moving at speed and you have a few 'orphaned' bits that need reconnecting with the main body, Dream of Pixels becomes a frantic speed test of shape-matching abilities. If it all gets a bit much, there's a static 'zen' mode, where you fill static shapes with pre-defined tetromino sets. And when you're ready for action again, a one-off IAP unlocks three tougher variations on the main game.
Poor Cally. It's like she can't go for five minutes without her parents being kidnapped. It's third time unlucky for her in Cally's Caves 3, but lucky for you, because you get an excellent old-school platformer that costs nothing at all. Cally leaps about, shooting and stabbing enemies in a gleeful manner you might consider unusual for a young girl with pigtails.
The game's brutal, too, with a checkpoint system that will have you gnashing teeth when you die a few steps before a restart point. But the weapon upgrade system is clever (keep shooting things to power up guns!), there are loads of items to discover, and unlike on iOS, the free Android version has several extra unlocked modes.
We're always a bit twitchy about recommending first-person shooters on mobile, because pawing at a glass screen is no substitute for having a gamepad in your mitts. Neon Shadow, though, has a good crack at providing high-octane shooty action on Android, mostly through smart level design, simple controls, and having a protagonist that's surprisingly robust.
The story finds you aboard a sentient space station that's gone nuts and turned all its on-board mechanoids evil. Somehow (and we're really not sure how), this has placed the entire galaxy in jeopardy. So you need to go about blowing everything up, and not get horribly killed. It's quite old-school, looks fab, and never lets up. Only occasionally will the on-screen controls make you swear at your thumbs.
There'll probably come a point when cute video game animals will gain sentience and revolt against the appalling situations they find themselves in. Until then, we have Sling Kong. From the off, you'll know what to do: stretch your little critter and let go, to ping them from peg to peg. All the while, avoid the hazards (saw blades; exploding pegs; blocks of wood smashing together) and a sticky end (quite literally in the case of the octopus when it's squished).
The graphics are cheerful, with the animals looking amusingly shocked at their circumstances and surroundings; the gameplay is challenging and compulsive; and there's even originality evident when winning new characters, involving bouncing your animal around a pachinko machine, rather than played-out Crossy Road-style gift boxes
The 'eco' side of things is a bit on the nose in The Path To Luma, and there are points where you wonder whether the energy company that paid for it only just stopped short of having the protagonist yell "Solar and wind power are amazing!" every few seconds.
But along with being quite right-on, Luma is a beautiful and thoughtful puzzler, with a decidedly tactile feel. Your aim is to explore tiny planetoids, unlocking sources of energy that will bring life to otherwise barren environments.
There's quite a lot of hand-holding from the game's companion AI, but spinning tiny worlds beneath your fingers and watching explosions of sunlight transform landscapes never gets old.
If you've played Pac-Man before, the goal of Pac-Man 256 should seem pretty familiar: eat as many pellets as possible without being caught by a ghost. This time, however, it never ends. You'll get power-ups along the way, and it actually has a reasonable approach to in-app purchases.
Very similar in style and concept to Xbox and Xbox 360 retro classic Geometry Wars. In fact, one might legally be able to get away with calling it a right old rip-off. Android PewPew is a rock-hard 2D shooting game packed with alternate game modes.
It's a bit rough around the edges and requires a powerful phone to run smoothly, but when it does it's a fantastic thing.
It's far from the most sophisticated pinball effort on Google Play, but we're nonetheless very fond of Vector Pinball. It has a kind of old-school sensibility regarding the straightforward table designs, and each of the four layouts requires you to learn its intricacies and basic missions, in order to score big points.
Aesthetically, it also tries something different from its contemporaries. Instead of aping real tables, Vector Pinball is all skinny lines and bright colours — as if someone's squeezed a decent pinball simulator into a Vectrex — and pleasing electronic effects and music accompany your ball-smacking.
Vector Pinball's laudably open, too — it's an open source game, and there's even an experimental editor for creating your own tables.
Winter Walk is madness. You play the part of a gentleman, out for an evening walk. From time to time the wind picks up, so you have to hold on to his hat to stop it blowing away.
While this is happening, the chap's internal monologue appears on screen, giving you an entertaining and distracting read in the process, too. Very simple, but a perfect little high score challenge game for the touchscreen era.
At its core, Crossy Road is an endless take on Frogger. The little protagonist hops about, weaving in-between traffic, and carefully navigating rivers by way of floating logs.
Adding to your problems: train tracks, where you can catch the 10:47 to Waterloo in a rather more abrupt and splattery way than you might hope, and a giant eagle that strikes should you dawdle.
Really, it's nothing particularly innovative, but where Crossy Road shines is in its implementation. The graphics are gorgeous (and have subsequently been frequently aped); the F2P system is fair — even generous; and the characters you can win or buy often transform the game, the most overt example being 'Crossy Pac-Man', a tie-in with the similarly excellent Pac-Man 256.
Dead on Arrival is a very impressive looking 3D survival horror game, which dumps you in a hospital infested with zombies. You then try to not get eaten by buying new weapons, boarding up doors to keep the brain-eaters at bay and using wall-mounted weaponry to quicken the zombie mincing process.
As with many of today's Android titles, there's the option to pay for stuff within the game to unlock features and remove ads - but you don't have to.
Stick Cricket is a fantastically simple little game that reduces cricket to its core values - you just smash every ball as hard as you can. There's no worrying about field positioning, just a bat and a ball coming at you very quickly.
Initially it seems impossible to do anything other than make a complete mess of things and having your little man smashed upside-down, but it soon clicks.
Draw Something Free was a phenomenon that's taking the world by storm. Now four people play it. It's basically a mobile version of Pictionary, where you're given a choice of three words of varying difficulty, then tasked with drawing them so someone can tell what it is.
Syncs with Facebook, too, for easy cross-platform play. If you like the free trial, there's a paid accompaniment with more content.
Super Bit Dash is a retro-style 2D platform game, with controls as simple as its pixel art design. The game runs at a constant pace, so all the player has to do is jump and super-special-jump at the right time in order to avoid smashing into the scenery. Obviously it's a lot harder than that makes it sound.
After making a splash on iOS, Fallout Shelter is now available on Android for all you Wasteland nuts. In Shelter, you create a vault and fill it with post-nuclear-war survivors, expanding your underground property, levelling up your dwellers, and sending them out to explore the surface left behind.
A shock move from developer Rovio, in that this one isn't a simple take on the Angry Birds style. Bad Piggies is a clever building game, which dumps you at the beginning of a big map with a pile of component parts. You then build a flying machine using the given elements, then try to fly it to the end of the level. A really nice, original little idea from the physics game specialists.
Whale Trail Frenzy is an updated version of the iOS original, with the developer heaping in more levels for the Android release of its bonkers flying game. You just fly a little whale around the sky (for reasons never explained), collecting things, avoiding bad clouds, building up a multiplier and generally being wowed by its unique and gorgeous style. A really sweet experience.
Radiant Defense is a fantastic tower defence game, given a dazzling modern look. You do all the usual tower defence stuff like building up your weapon strengths and deciding how best to stop the endless marching enemy, with some "super weapons" to unlock and hundreds upon hundreds of waves to beat. And it all looks astonishingly pretty on a big screened device.
In this age of austerity and scrimping, we've all long since sold our last set of dominoes and melted down our Monopoly counters for scrap.
That zombie shooter Dead Trigger is set in the dystopian future of 2012 is testament to its lasting appeal. Frantic first-person missions set in realistic 3D environments are sure to get your heart racing (unless you're a zombie), even on smaller screens.
Cute critter Om-Nom in Cut the Rope is the Daniel Day-Lewis of puzzle games, with a BAFTA amid his haul of gaming awards. The simple premise (cut the ropes to release Om-Nom's lunch) sustains over 400 well-pitched levels, packed with character and cartoonish charm.
Yes, the insanely popular online card game Hearthstone has been squashed down to fit your phone or tablet screen - and it works surprisingly well. With less space to play with, the creators have rejigged the design slightly; it's still the same game, just a bit more considerate to your thumbs.
It's also still compatible with the tablet and desktop versions so you'll be able to play against your friends on the move.
Yes, the proper Scrabble, not some copyright-infringing clone that'll be pulled by the time you read these words. EA bought the license, tidied it up and stuck it out on Android, where it's a remarkably advert and in-app purchase free experience.
It's been beefed up with a few new modes, but stuff like the ability to sync with Facebook and play multiple matches is actually exactly what you need. A classic that's not been ruined. Hooray.
Blip Blup is the kind of original little idea we love stumbling across. It's a sort of geometry-based puzzle game that has you pressing squares on the screen to fill in areas of colour.
Your light beams are limited in the directions they can travel, so, once you're through the troublingly simple tutorial levels, it soon becomes insanely tough and will soon have you scratching through your skull's skin and bone until you actually itch your BRAIN in confusion.
Extremely controversial thanks to its use of in-app purchases to buy your way to better cars, quicker play time and much more, there's one reason you really ought to give Real Racing 3 a go - it's the best looking 3D racer on Android by a mile.
If you want something that gives both, all four, or even the full eight of your phone's cores a full workout, this is the one. And you don't have to pay for anything, as long as you don't mind staring at timers and waiting a lot.
This one should be absurdly easy. All you have to do is tap the screen at the right moment, so you dash to the next safe zone. The trouble is, there's a timer — lurk too long and you explode. And safe zones are often surrounded by rotating spikes, or shields that deflect you into the deadly void.
One More Dash therefore becomes a steely test of nerves and reactions, where a single mis-timed tap can spell the end of even the most impressive feat of dashing.
GYRO is exactly the sort of thing we like - a clever new idea that makes the most out of today's touchable devices. It's a bit abstract. You are the circle thing in the middle, and you rotate yourself to absorb the incoming spheres, matching the balls with the right coloured segment.
Shields and score multipliers then fire in, and, inevitably, it all gets quicker and harder. Perfect even on older phones and tablets of modest performance.
Galaxy on Fire 2 HD is one of the most visually impressive 3D shooters to be found on Android, Galaxy on Fire 2 also chucks in some trading and exploration play to add a little more depth to the combat, making it into something similar to having your own little portable Eve Online. You also get to play as a lead character called Keith, which is quite an exciting rarity.
New Star Soccer is a previously paid-for game that has undergone a complete refresh, with the developer making it a freebie - but adding in the scourge of modern software in the form of "stars" to buy with real money instead. If you can tolerate the effort needed to bypass the new emphasis on paying to progress quicker, it's still a staggeringly good game, offering a mega-deep football management sim for mobile.
This is a right old gem. Badland is an abstract physics platformer kind of thing, where you play a flapping monster that has to navigate some gorgeous maps while listening to bird song. Power-ups and power-downs increase and decrease the size of your blob, also multiplying it until you control several of the things. Weird and dark and interesting. Definitely try it.
The original was so beneficial to furthering consumer recognition of both major brands that they made another one - aptly titled Angry Birds Star Wars II. It's really free thanks to being ad-supported, which, it turns out, is nicer than being asked to buy imaginary space money every 30 seconds. Loads of levels and stupid Star Wars references galore make this a no-brainer for fans of either enormous super-franchise.
A charming little undersea adventure, in which your little chap dives to hunt for treasure. It does feature in-app purchases, but it's dead simple to grind a little to collect treasure and unlock most of the game's content manually, although the £2.49 coin doubler starts to look tempting after a while. It's a lovely little game, though, so grinding its quirky maps is really quite a joy anyway.
This is weird and initially feels like a physics puzzler someone knocked up in three minutes or so, but stick with it and it becomes a one-more-go addiction you'll be throwing hours of your life into. It's simple -- tap the screen to make the monster walk.
Only he's gangly and awkward, so it's actually quite a timing and precision masterclass. Download Daddy Long Legs here.
In which the Angry Birds developer has a go at pulling off a Flappy Bird style game. Retry is more than a simple clone, though, introducing plane piloting, wobbly terrain to navigate and simple landing missions. It's very, very hard, but you do at least get more of a sense of progression and reward than was present in the interminable Flappy.
Literally utterly infuriating. The concept is simple. You press up, down, left and right continuously, but there's a scrolling set of alternative patterns on the screen. These ask you to substitute one direction for another, requiring your eyes to speak to your brain and fingers in a manner that's bordering on the impossible. An extreme test of your mental problem solving skills.
