I've been golfing before. The first time I tagged along with my dad. He hit a ball just off a slope. We hopped in the buggy to retrieve it, he told me to lean out and grab it as we rumbled by, I fell out and tumbled down the slope. The second time, I actually played! Just one hole, though. Why? Because golf is boring when you have to, you know, fish your ball out of sand traps and actually walk around. Yep, that's golf: boring at best, painful at worst. Thanks, Dad.

Super Stickman Golf, however, is neither boring nor painful. It is awesome. If you enjoyed developer Noodlecake's golf-slash-physics-puzzler, you'll be happy to hear that Super Stickman Golf 2 [$0.99] is loads better, and available at the same impulse-buy price point.

Super Stickman Golf 2 challenges you to complete courses at or under par. Sounds a lot like golf, right? Well, instead of straight shots from tee-off to the green, each hole in Super Stickman Golf 2 plays out like an obstacle course. There are pits, sand traps, water traps, moving platforms, lasers that vaporize your perfectly-aimed shots, and portals inspired by Valve's popular spatial puzzler: smack a ball through one portal and it pops out the other.

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There's been a lot of talk lately about Block Fortress [$1.99] and for good reason. Rare have we ever witnessed a game that manages to combine tower-defense, first-person shooters and creative sandboxing genres all in one game. Foursaken Media's Block Fortress not only successfully accomplishes such a feat, but manages to do it in such a way that truly makes its sum greater than its (individual genre) parts. There's a lot of love about Block Fortress, making it a game that really needs to be checked out.

Simply put, Block Fortress is a game about survival and defense. Players place a barracks on one of several pre-set maps, and are charged with defending it from hordes of enemies. Generally, gameplay is divided into two phases. The build phase tasks you to fortify your barracks with walls, turrets, and a variety of other attachments. This is also the time to purchase and equip weapons and items for your character. This lends way to the attack phase, which starts the enemy waves and puts you into FPS mode, letting you get into the action and supplement the defense of your barracks.

Meanwhile, while Block Fortress features three game modes, I found the most appealing to be Survival, which starts you off with limited resources and challenges players to build up resources while defending against waves of enemies. The other two modes, Quickstart (which starts you off with a ton of resources to instantly build the fortress of your dreams) and Sandbox (which gives you total control of building and enemies) are also great additions and provide entertaining alternatives with emphasis on creativity.

We've seen tower defense games incorporating FPS elements, but nothing to the degree of Block Fortress. The first-person shooter element is fully featured, with a variety of weapons to purchase during the course of gameplay. Meanwhile, the building element is also full featured, with a wide dearth of customizability in both structural choices and defense options coupled with secondary essentials such as power blocks (necessary for anything requiring power), lights (essential at night) and farms (allow you to replenish health). Sure, the FPS controls still suffer from the perpetual issues that seem to occur on touchscreens and the construction menus can be a little obtuse, but the sheer amount of potential and the fact that the game as a whole actually works far outweighs these minor nuisances.

As if the near limitless possibilities for construction weren't enough, Block Fortress's long-term upgrade scheme showcases just how much depth the game can offer to dedicated players. Each weapon and turret (along with certain building blocks) has the potential to be infused with modifications, which can be built with rare minerals that are mined and gathered during normal gameplay. Modifications have the potential to dramatical change the way you play the game, and are an essential component to pay attention to for players looking to truly succeed. One complaint lies in the relatively slow rate of accumulation for rare minerals (particularly at the beginning of the game) but an IAP shop, coupled with the optional nature of mods makes it less of a showstopper.

I'm a huge fan of what Block Fortress has to offer, especially when it comes to the sheer amount of potential strategies that can be employed. While there's obviously some tactics that'll succeed better than others (and with that said, I highly suggest checking out our previous tips postings), a lot of the appeal lies in being able to try whatever you wish. In this regard, Block Fortress has everything needed to offer plenty of replayability. In fact, the only thing truly missing is some sort of co-op multiplayer mode, and it's something that I hope that can conceivably be added at some point in the future.

Of course, if the appeal of Minecraft-like construction (or the controls of iOS FPS titles) doesn't suit your fancy, it's hard to imagine that you'll particularly enjoy Block Fortress. However, for those that are intrigued, Foursaken's latest is a game that simply has to be experienced. With plenty of depth, replayability and a great melding of genres, there's plenty to check out and enjoy.

In my fourth year of university, I took a class called Canadian Experimental Shorts. I wasn't optimistic going in (I mean, that title alone puts you to sleep, right?). On my first day, however, instead of handing out notes or instructions, the professor dimmed the lights and showed us something I had never seen before: a film without cameras. Barely longer than two minutes, it was animated entirely onto physical film strip, and packed with color that danced, twinkled, and exploded to the sound of classic jazz. Its name was Cameras Take Five, and it sold me on Canadian Experimental Shorts. Good news if you're looking for something completely original: Melodive [$0.99] is basically Cameras Take Five: The Game.

Fair warning: like experimental film, this one isn't the most approachable at first blush. Before embracing the game's persistent feeling of being lost, I felt...well...completely lost. Unable to understand the controls, not quite sure what shapes I was looking at, and disturbingly confused as to which way was up. Fascinated by the ambient noises and sea of floating jewels, I decided to re-read the instructions section and give it another go. And another. And then another. And while I can't say I ever fully came to terms with which way was up, it ultimately didn't matter soon enough.

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I told myself I'd go get lunch after getting through one more of Bobbing's [Free / $1.99] 86 levels. They're short and sweet, once you know what you're doing. It shouldn't have been a problem. Twenty minutes later, I was finally done. Famished, but finished. I probably should have taken the break I promised myself--Bobbing is not a game to be played on an empty stomach.

It's cute, colorful and quick, but it isn't kind. Most precision platformers eventually let you get by on muscle memory. Repeat a level enough times and you'll know it in your fingertips. Bobbing starts out that way, but it isn't long before it becomes clear that Little Bobby Games has created something more ambitious. Each level becomes a maze, a puzzle that needs to be worked out as you go.

You wouldn't think it would be all that complex. Each level is only half a screen high, and there are only two inputs to work with. Tap the left side of the screen to reverse gravity and the right to swap colors. It's loosely familiar if you've played Polara [$0.99], at least up to that point.

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Slot machines and RPGs make good bedfellows, as the King Cashing series has taught us. Dungeon Plunder [$2.99] takes that combination and applies it to the roguelike, creating an interesting pairing. On one hand, the semi-random nature of slots works nicely in the otherwise randomized world. On the other hand, I like my combat to be quick, you know?

If you can get around the speed issue, Dungeon Plunder's slot-based combat is clever, just one of several smart features that make it one of the better roguelike experiences on iOS. It's even welcoming to the less hardcore among us, with a legacy system that means you make progress even when you draw the short end of the permadeath stick. It's lacking in the looks department, but that's just how roguelikes tell you they want to be taken seriously.

Not that Dungeon Plunder is particularly serious. The premise of an evil wizard hell-bent on sending the world into a new ice age is just a good excuse to send your sprite off to fight. That sprite might be a mage, a warrior or a rogue, each one as generic as the last. Frustratingly, you have to buy cosmetic IAP to unlock female sprites, but the lack of consumable purchases more than makes up for that disappointment.

One way or another, after you pick a class and sprite, a name, and a starting rune (a kind of permanent stat boost), you're off to do battle on a randomized map with all sorts of big bads and creepy crawlies. There is nothing turn-based about Dungeon Plunder. Enemies are static on the map until you bump into them, and combat is simultaneous. You spin the reels of the slot machine, then you and your enemy both take whatever damage you need to take. The one with hit points left at the end of the process wins, and the other one retires for good.

The slot-machine combat needs a bit of explanation. There are five reels, and a number of symbols that represent things like damage, healing, money and defense. You spin the reels, select as many as you'd like to hold on to, and re-spin the rest. Two or more of any symbol is a win, with more of whatever it is you matched being granted for each extra symbol.

This might sound like the results of combat are extremely random, but there's strategy at work. You need to pay attention, to focus on damage when your health is high, to keep your shields up, to manage your class's special abilities and so on. You can only control as much as the reels allow, but re-spins make the system surprisingly flexible.

So you toodle around killing orcs and brigands, wandering through random dungeons and collecting treasure. Then, nearly inevitably, you die. You get a final score and that's the end of that character. It isn't the end of the road, however. You can begin your next character with some of the last one's gold and maybe an artifact or life scrolls to heal you in a pinch. If you make it far enough you can unlock a new rune to add to all your future characters' stats. You also begin at level based on the highest one you've reached with that class so far.

Death isn't a total write-off, it's a step in Dungeon Plunder's journey. Eventually you'll make it so far that success will be a foregone conclusion--if not on this attempt, then on the next. It can get old, settling in for game after game of lengthy slot-machine combat, but there's always the thought that you might get a little further to keep you going.

Dungeon Plunder is a bit rough around the edges. Death could be telegraphed more obviously, the interface could be better laid out, and so on. All surface stuff in a pretty deep game. The most important thing is this: if you play, you will die, but you will want to pick yourself up and start all over again when you do. That's the mark of a good roguelike, that incentive to never give up, no matter how stacked the odds.

A world of teddy bears and pretty lights doesn't sound like the perfect setting for a killer platformer, I'll grant. Penumbear's [$1.99] teddy bear is, however, a ball of fluff in serious trouble, and the pretty lights are all that stand between it and a gruesome stuffing evisceration. The shadows, in this case, outweigh the light.

Those shadows are an integral part of the platforming experience. The titular Penumbear awakes alone in a dreadful tower with only a firefly for company. That firefly can manipulate light switches, and the bear can explore the penumbras: the places where light and dark meet. With directional controls and a jump button, it's well equipped for classic platforming. But it's the ability to walk on light that gives the bear real hope of escape.

From the simple building blocks of platforms, darkness and light, over 100 levels are formed. There isn't much too them, really: a few solid stones, a couple light switches, and maybe a few more aggressive obstructions make up the brunt of every level. With that formula, Taco Graveyard put together dozens of layouts that rarely repeat themselves, creating a massive, sprawling beast of a platformer.

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It seems like an eternity since King Cashing [$1.99] came out of no where in 2011. Combining a strong slot-machine battle system with a loose RPG system, King Cashing was a little rough around the edges from a presentation standpoint but absolutely nailed its combat mechanics, making it a sleeper hit amongst our forums. That same mechanic returns excellently preserved in King Cashing 2. With a refined leveling system, new characters, a wealth of weapons and items and a story told with an excellent visual novel style, King Cashing 2 addresses every issue I had with the original, making it a game that begs to be played.

If you're unfamiliar with how an RPG with a slot-machine battle system works, I'd encourage you to check out our review of the original King Cashing. For everyone else, the same combat system that we loved before makes a return with some minor improvements. Players still participate in battles with cherries as the currency of choice for spinning the reels with the goal being to match up characters and weapons against enemies to cause damage. One new twist is the ability to eventually purchase a power-up that will a selected reel for one turn during a battle. Otherwise King Cashing 2 focuses less on innovation and more on simply adding to an already excellent system.

With only three character types and corresponding weapons, simplicity was the name of the game in the original King Cashing. King Cashing 2 looks to up the ante with a lot more variety. Players eventually unlock 7 characters, each with their own preferred weapons and critical bonuses. Weapons also continue the hit/damage trend of the previous game, meaning that the stronger the weapons is the lower its hit attribute is (meaning the less likely it'll show up on a slot reel).

Some of the new weapons and characters are also pretty unique, such as the Necromancer, a relatively weak character that converts a 'Miss' reel into a 'Human' weapon with each hit. Another interesting addition is the potion weapon class which offers a wide variety of effects ranging from damage-over-time poison to armor damage, to enemy 'bait' (which temporarily adds more enemies to the reel). There's also a wealth of new secondary bonus items which can be equipped to modify the slots even further. These new additions and options lead to a lot more different ways to play the game and go a long way towards formulating new strategies, especially as later enemies start to become resistant (and immune!) to more and more weapons.

The most impressive improvement that Productions Multimage has made in King Cashing 2 is in its visual style and narrative technique. Taking on an entirely different theme than its predecessor, King Cashing 2 employs a slick graphic novel style that does a great job of telling its tale. It also doesn't hurt that everything simply looks amazing, with the game taking full advantage of retina visuals which are pretty essential for any game attempting to emulate comic-book visuals. King Cashing 2's story, meanwhile, is infinitely better than the original, telling a tale of an undead king awoken from his slumber and searching for gold. One minor complaint is the lack of full iPhone 5 support (borders fill out the extra space on the elongated device), but the game still looks great nonetheless.

Most importantly, like its predecessor, King Cashing 2 is simply fun to play. Battles are streamlined and offer players the ability to play the game as one of chance or to focus on memorizing and individually stopping reels. Incredibly difficult enemies return as 'side quests' that offer quite a challenge. Achievements, ranking systems for each battle, and leaderboards that track how fast you complete 'issues' all return, adding some extra replayability. While the story itself is a bit short, the system in place makes it easy to add new 'Issues' with a future already being promised.

As I mentioned in the review for King Cashing, a slots-based RPG is certainly not for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be folks that can't (or won't) grasp the unique battle system. However, for folks that can, King Cashing 2 is the definitive title for the genre. Where the original at times felt like a nicely implemented tech demo, King Cashing 2 is an excellent game in its own right, improving on nearly every facet over the original and well worth checking out.

Chillingo's position in the App Store has become somewhat of a double-edged sword. As a mega-publisher with a huge user base, getting signed to work with them can mean instant success for a smaller developer. Yet with the crazy flood of new releases, the blessing of brand recognition can just as easily be a curse. Hand-crafted standouts from talented studios risk being dismissed as "this week's Chillingo game," passed over by players and reviewers as they scour for something more 'unique.' Until a couple of days ago, I had typecast Room 8 Studio's Cyto [$0.99] as one to skip. While checking out our forums, though, it became clear that it had readers intrigued and impressed, wondering why there wasn't more being said. One non-stop play session later, I'm here to make amends.

Cyto puts you in control of the world's cutest piece of cytoplasm (I think this may be the only time someone has ever written the words "cute" and "cytoplasm" in the same sentence). A smiling, blinking, blue amoeba missing its memories and desperately searching for its friends and family. As usual in the puzzle platform genre, it's all a thinly veiled excuse to fling, stick, and drop your way through a slew of bite-sized levels in an attempt to collect three tokens. In this case, glowing pieces of Cyto's past. Familiar mechanics are where the slippery slope to boredom ends, however.

Deftly avoiding the trap of lazy visuals, Room 8 delivers a vibrant and ominous little world. Static backgrounds filled with painterly orbs and tentacles dwarf your microscopic protagonist and allude to the body of something sinister. Meanwhile, the playing field is abuzz with life as microbes pulsate and motes of glowing particles spiral in all directions. It even seems like Cyto is reacting to it all with wide eyes, agape mouth, and looks of trepidation mid-flight. Tying the experience together is an evocative piano soundtrack; part nostalgic waltz, part funeral dirge, it'll have you taking the game's recommendation to use headphones seriously. Cyto tickles a lot of the same synapses as Chillingo cousin Contre Jour [$0.99 / $2.99], and the comparison goes further with the game's absorbing design.

It's a hallmark of too many three-star, one-screen platformers that I can barely remember one level from the next. They all mix together in a soup of vaguely rearranged obstacles and objectives that enter occupy my thoughts one second, and are gone the next. With Cyto, many of the game's 81 levels stick around after the score screen has faded. This is due in no small part to the surprising sense of choice that runs throughout the game. Instead of having essentially two ways to complete each level - the easy way, where you careen straight to the exit, or the substantial way involving collectibles - it's often apparent that you took one of a handful of paths to the level's glowing exit orb. The meticulous arrangement of the game's sticky surfaces, thorny obstacles, and precious open space allows for ample experimentation as you try to chart your course to the far corners of each level. I'd often finish with that wonderfully satisfying feeling that the way I played and beat the level had been a complete fluke; that only I had beaten it that way.

Cyto doesn't mollycoddle when it comes the difficulty curve, either. The back nine levels in each world deliver shades of the same cerebral thrill that made Portal so spectacular. Instead of slingshotting around, proverbial guns blazing, you'll have to digest portions of the level as you take yourself through the paces and consider cause and effect. When pulled off perfectly, the game becomes an opponent you outplayed in chess, conquered at the hands of your mental trapeze work. Easily the crowning jewel here is the game's "gold" levels, given out as sadistic rewards for perfecting the eight levels that came before. Each one caps off the mechanics of that section, and adds huge longevity to the game by sucking you into a brain-busting challenge that's best served when you have plenty of patience on hand.

Mechanically, Cyto is also a breath of fresh air. Sure it's got all the typical add-ons like wind, portals, and bouncing pads, but every new feature rolls out in such that each stage has a healthy mixture of what you've seen and what you haven't. Function even becomes form as new obstacles like multiplying spikes and fading memories throw a wrench in the game's measured pace and turn levels into tense races against the clock. The result is an experience that very much keeps you on your toes...perhaps too much so, in some cases. The game takes a noticeable hit by demanding extreme precision, but not delivering it in return. Shots that launch you onto a safe piece of grass during one try seem to bounce you off a wayward edge during another; detaching Cyto to roll down an edge to the exit will often send him tumbling the other way, all with little to explain why. Luckily, the game traces your last five shots with angled dots, making retries far less frustrating than they could be.

That's ultimately Cyto in a nutshell. With every opportunity it has, it proves that it's not lowest common denominator fare. This is one of the few in this genre with the promise of more levels "Coming Soon" which has me eagerly awaiting the update notification on my iPad. Rather than judge a book by its publisher, pick this up today: it'll be a delight for your left and right brain alike.

Editor Note: We've now got a second Eli writing for us.

Have a love of adventure games and an hour or so to spare? You absolutely must take a look at Finding Teddy [Free / $1.99]. No, the name may not inspire confidence, but trust me, Look At My Game has published a real gem. It may not quite be the next Sword & Sworcery [$4.99], but that's not for lack of beauty or heart.

It begins with a childhood nightmare, a teddy bear stolen by something monstrous from the closet. The wordless little girl that stars in Finding Teddy is brave and curious, though, and she ventures in after it. From there it's a trip into a world of lovely pixels, terrifying creatures and magical music.

As with the best adventure games, the short time I spent with Finding Teddy was filled with moments of discovery. Some were of the traditional point-and-click variety--finding bits and pieces lying around and figuring out where they're meant to be used. This is the mixed bag it always is. If you buy into the game's logic all the pieces fall into place. If not, there are moments of dragging and dropping and aggravating experimentation.

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There's a great story -- perhaps apocryphal -- about Will Wright designing SimCity to reflect his political beliefs. Specifically, the thinking is that Wright designed the trains and buses in that game to run smoothly and efficiently to reflect his own views about the importance of public transportation. I'm not sure how true that is, but it's a great illustration that the games we play -- and how we play them -- says something about us.

Kairosoft's latest, lightweight city management sim Beastie Bay [Free], for example, let me build my own kind of environmentalist utopia. Sure, I could probably attract more tourists (and therefore more money) by building roads through my island, but I'd rather have the beaches and wooded hills and caves -- and the fish, bears, and mecha-chimpanzees that live in them. I have plenty of food and lumber -- resources you'll need for everything from researching electricity to building nests to upgrading weapons -- and my upkeep costs are low enough that I'm not forced to expand faster than I want to. I appreciate that Beastie Bay is flexible enough to allow me that freedom.

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Richard Perrin's Kairo [$4.99], released under his Locked Door Puzzle label, is billed as a minimalist, first-person exploration puzzle game. That's a mouthful, and it's true, but it doesn't begin to describe the game's texture and feel -- it's equal parts serene, melancholy, unnerving, and dreamlike.

The world of Kairo is like a playable, explorable tone poem.

Kairo's minimalism is its defining characteristic: it affects everything in the game, from the puzzle design to the environments. There's no real narrative frame (or text, really) to speak of, just a few scattered hints that the game takes place in some deserted future-Earth. Abandoned monuments abound, but there are no people, just the puzzles and long-dormant technology they left behind. The game's environments are built out of simple shapes -- cubes, blocks, spheres -- giving the game a futuristic, alien quality.

The abstract environments, lack of narrative, and audio direction all help set the mood for each section. The lack of some over-arching emergency gives players time to relax and explore the nooks and crannies in a peaceful, pixelated garden, but it also keeps us disoriented and confused when Kairo takes a turn for the creepy and macabre. Kairo isn't a horror game per se, but it re-creates the feeling of being alone in an old house -- every scrape, every bump in the dark, every muffled footstep feels overblown and significant. Disembodied voices are terrifying when you know you're literally the only living being on a dead planet.

The game's visual and narrative style is matched by equally sparse controls and puzzle design. On the left side of the screen are virtual buttons that move your first-person avatar forward and backwards, and the the camera is controlled by touching and dragging with the right thumb or index finger. The controls are tight and simple and worked well on my iPad 2, but here's the kicker: there's no dedicated interaction button.

This means that every puzzle in the game is a mix of aural, visual, and spatial cues. With no way to interact or pick up items, entire swathes of traditional puzzles (physics puzzles, inventory management, etc.) are rendered off-limits. Some designers might find that restrictive, but Perrin finds a lot of interesting and graceful ways to work within that context, mostly with the help of audio cues -- a bell-chime for "good," a cymbal crash for "bad" -- and visual symbols. The majority of the puzzles are logic-based, which works well with the control scheme and mood of the game.

Perhaps my favorite puzzle involves walking on a giant track-pad connected to two wall-mounted dials: moving vertically moves one dial, but moving horizontally moves the other. Getting the dials aligned just so -- there are clues on the wall to help you figure out where this is -- will activate the machinery necessary to advance.

Doing away with text-based instructions and relying on atmospheric clues makes Kairo an elegant and understated game, but that elegance isn't always intuitive. Kairo is perhaps over-dependent on players paying close attention to each puzzle's fine details, or on making connections between disparate parts of the world -- even after "solving" a puzzle, you may not notice what affect it had or why it was important. Kairo doesn't always do a good job highlighting the salient features of its design: I was stuck for two days on the game's second hub area before I had an epiphany about how to interact with the game's numerous fragmented monoliths, for example.

It also helps to know that kairo is the Japanese word for "circuit": there are four hub areas, each with a number of puzzle rooms attached. Once each puzzle is solved, the circuit is complete, the hub area is activated, and the player can move on. Given the lack of text or narrative in Kairo, learning the structure can do a lot to keep players focused and oriented.

In any case, any unintuitiveness is largely mitigated by a generous hint system. Kairo isn't about making players feel dumb or setting up arbitrary challenges and goal posts: Perrin is obviously focused on letting the player explore the mysterious world he created, see how it works, and try to make sense of it. There are no penalties for using the hints or experimenting as much as you need to solve each puzzle -- it's more important to see what the world has to offer than it is to be stumped by a designer's funky logic.

I like that Kairo demands attention, demands that you clear out some time, relax, go slowly, and be observant. It's a thoughtful, deliberate, and delicate game. Few players, I would imagine, unlock of all of Kairo's secrets during one play through -- there are a few optional rooms that I haven't been able to wrap my head around, hints or no hints. Even after having beaten Kairo, it's story is still mercurial and vague -- all that exploration provided more questions than it did answers.

Kairo's roots as an indie PC game are apparent, but it's made a great transition to iOS. The controls are responsive and well-suited to touch devices, but more importantly, Kairo brings something fresh and unique to the platform -- there's nothing like it, to the best of my knowledge, on the App Store. We need more games like it.

I'm what you might call a pinball dilletante. Oh sure, I've played a table here and there, downloaded a few pinball games and poked around, but I lack discipline. I dabble, I don't commit. I've never learned to play with real accuracy or attention to the goals of the game beyond keeping the ball in play.

Momonga Pinball Adventures [$2.99] has changed all that. I discovered a reason to learn to be accurate, to pay attention: furthering the adventures of a ludicrously cute flying squirrel named Momo. A momonga, to be precise--a Japanese dwarf flying squirrel. He is the ball in this game of pinball, and he's on a mission to save his people.

Pinball adventure games are a niche within a niche, so maybe it's best to think of Momonga in broader strokes. It's a game of tiny challenges, a handful of which are stitched together to build a level. A beautiful level: Momonga Pinball Adventures is better crafted than most of what we see on iOS, with lush 3D environments that vary wildly and a simplified style that looks great on the small screen. Paladin Studios says that one level can take up to two months to create, and the effort shows.

But let's step back to the content of those levels. The game's story mode presents a series of fairly straightforward challenges of the flipper-control sort. Knock Momo into a few targets, then a few moving targets, then a few still targets immediately followed by moving targets. For anyone with more skills with a flipper than me, there probably won't be much need to slow down--especially with only 9 major levels.

Of course, that's just the trip through the game's simple, charming story. After each level is finished for the first time a series of challenges unlock. These present new reasons to run through: breaking every block in a level, collecting all the stars, or dipping into more obscure paths and procedures. When you've cleared a few of these you'll also unlock an odd little endless mode that has nothing to do with pinball. It's delightful nonetheless.

There are a few stumbling blocks on the way to freeing Momo's people and really sinking your teeth into Momonga Pinball Adventures. Failing at challenges can be a huge hassle, for instance--the relevant portion of a level might be midway through, after a good chunk of loading, a few cutscenes to skip and a section or two that needs completing. Failure is generally this game's biggest problem: I find myself wondering what a three-life limit adds to the experience aside from frustration.

Otherwise it's all about the pinball physics. They're good, but not great. The action is pleasantly fast. The flippers feel good, with a simple left-side/right-side tap control, but they can't pull off some of the light lobs or quick shots experienced pinball players might expect. There's also no way to tilt the board--it's not a board, it's a level. That's the saving grace, really. Momonga isn't built like a pinball game, so it doesn't suffer badly for missing some of pinball's finer features.

Momonga's Pinball Adventures is already a winner. In part for its impressive look, certainly, but the charm and challenge of the game are a big part of what makes it so loveable. If anything stands in its way now, it's simply that Paladin Studios has already squeezed everything it can out of the existing content--new levels are all that will keep the game going now. Given what goes into them, that might take a while. Just don't mistake this for a complaint: more Momonga will be well worth the wait, and there's plenty of tiny squirrel action to love for the moment.

We've been watching Foursaken Media's Heroes and Castles [$0.99] ever since we got wind of its existence shortly after the release of N.Y. Zombies 2 [Free]. Departing from its comfort zone, Heroes is certainly its most ambitious title by combining both third-person action gameplay with castle defense and resource management. That sort of combo on iOS would be intriguing on its own, but Heroes and Castles also does an excellent job implementing it, making it another winner for the developer.

Simply put, Heroes and Castles is a game of third-person combat and castle/tower defense. Players control one of three heroes (each with their own attacks and moves) against a horde of undead looking to destroy your keep. As you play, you continually earn gold, which can be used to purchase buildings and recruit armies. Units come in various types, such as the archer which stays on your wall shooting from afar, the pikeman which has piercing damage or the peasant which are cheap but plentiful. Meanwhile, buildings range from essentials such as the gold mine (which increases your rate of gold accumulation) to arrow towers and ballistas (which target enemies) to even support structures which improve your units.

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Mobile games have left their roots behind, no longer relying on entertaining us with a dozen variations of Snake and Bejeweled. Our habits haven't quite kept up. For every one of us that sits and plays an iOS game for hours straight there are many more who will never load up a game for more than five minutes in a sitting. That's reasonable: these games are a diversion on the go for most people. It's just a shame because there are games that can't be digested in five short minutes. Take Lucky Frame's Wave Trip [$1.99].

I didn't fully grasp Wave Trip until I played with the level editor. The studio's latest comes off like a competent cave flyer that makes pretty music--to Lucky Frame's usual impressive standard of pretty music, of course. The scoring rules seem a bit opaque, and you're never quite sure what's coming next. In fact, what's coming next seems to change each time you start a level over. But open up the level editor for a few moments and the whole game unfolds before you.

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When Imangi Studios originally launched Temple Run [Free] in August of 2011, the small indie developer had no idea the kind of phenomenon it would go on to be. In fact it wasn't even a success right off the bat, and only after a switch to free-to-play about a month after release did it start to build up some momentum before flourishing late in the year and all throughout 2012. The latest tally is that Temple Run has been downloaded and played by more than 170 million people across all platforms. That's just insane.

Now with Temple Run a household name and the kind of bona fide success that can spawn a successful spinoff game with a major Disney movie in Temple Run Brave [$0.99], a proper sequel has stealthily landed in the App Store. Not a lot has changed in Temple Run 2 on a fundamental level, it still plays very much like the original game you know and love, but it has received a massive upgrade in the visual department along with a few new tweaks to the formula that make it a substantial improvement over the first game in just about every way. It feels like a fresh start, a new Temple Run that's geared towards the future.

I'm sure most everyone is familiar with how Temple Run works, but just for kicks let's go over the basics. You follow your perpetually running character from a third-person perspective as they're being chased by a humongous demonic primate. You see, your adventurer swiped the beast's precious idol and that didn't seem to go over too well, so now you've got to run for your life.

Control of your character is handled by swiping up or down to jump over or slide under obstacles, and swiping left or right to turn when necessary. Tilting your device moves the character back and forth inside the lane for collecting coins and avoiding additional hazards. That's about all there is to it, and it works great. Temple Run 2 is one of those perfect games to play with just a single free hand, for just a few minutes at a time or for hours on end as you tirelessly try to top your best run. Nothing has changed with the sequel in that regard.

The biggest improvement in Temple Run 2 is in the graphics department. The game has been built from scratch in Unity and boasts gorgeous lighting and colors as well as extremely fluid animations. My one gripe is that the draw distance isn't the best, which means environmental elements will pop-in right in front of your eyes. It doesn't really bother if you're focusing on not dying like you should be, but it's still kind of disappointing considering what iOS devices are capable of.

The original Temple Run didn't have that great of a draw distance either, but it was masked quite ingeniously using a fog effect that worked well with the dank jungle theme. In Temple Run 2 you're running in a temple in the sky, so everything is right out there in the open. This new sky temple is great though, offering a much more dynamic feel to the level design. The track will curve, dip and elevate in ways that the rigid straightaways of the first game never did. It feels like a more organic environment, and it also keeps you on your toes just a tad bit more since you never really know what's coming around the next bend.

Like I said before Temple Run 2 is a beautiful game, and there's a greater variety to the types of scenery you'll see, like various temple ruins architecture and forests with sunbeams poking through the leaves. There's a couple of new environmental elements too, like a zip line to ride and mine cart sections. These parts aren't drastically different from the rest of the game's normal running, but they do add some additional drama and excitement to your adventure.

Temple Run 2 brings back 4 playable characters from the original, and each one is associated with a specific power-up. As you unlock the additional characters beyond the default Guy Dangerous, their associated power-ups become unlocked too for any character. There's the standard set of upgradeable attributes too, like a Head Start boost and a coin value increaser, which are also shared across all characters.

The power-up you choose for your character can be activated with a double tap once you've collected enough coins to fill up the associated meter on your screen. The power-up itself can be upgraded too, using the game's premium gem currency. Both coins and gems are available as IAP and are also earned through play. The coins come at a relatively fast clip, especially if you splurge on the IAP coin doubler, but the gems are typically few and far between. It still feels balanced though as the number of gems needed for normal upgrading is gradual.

One other use for the premium gems and something that's a huge change in Temple Run 2 from its predecessor (as well as a point of contention with some of its fans) is the ability to continue your run after a death by spending gems. This essentially sullies the scoring as in theory you could drop enough cash on IAP gems that you could just continue on forever.

The cost to continue doubles in gems each time, and it's possible there's a limit to how much you can continue that I just haven't seen yet. Even so I'm not super interested in the leaderboards anyway so it doesn't really bother me, I just have fun playing for the sake of it. Still, adding a special "sudden death" leaderboard where continuing with gems isn't allowed would be a nice compromise. Really what's more annoying to me is the un-skippable continue countdown that plays after a run ends. It would be nice to be able to immediately retry.

If you weren't a huge fan of the first Temple Run then I doubt the sequel will drastically change your mind. Though, it's free, so I'd say just try it anyway just in case it clicks differently for you this time around. You don't have anything to lose. If you loved the original game then I think you'll love Temple Run 2 just as much or more so. Granted the continuing aspect is kind of suspect and there's some minor technical issues, but Temple Run 2's improvements far outweigh its flaws.

There are plenty of more complex runners out there, and the beauty of the App Store is that you're free to play any and all of them to suit your tastes. But Temple Run 2's simplicity and intangible "something" is what made its predecessor a game that I always went back to even in the face of a smorgasbord of alternatives, and it's what will keep this on my device easily within thumb's reach for a long time to come.