Popular game apps 2012

Letterpress is the most sleek social word game we've ever seen. Rather than a Scrabble-style board-game, it's more like a word finder. You select letters from a grid of 20 to make a word; those letters are then marked with your colour, and your opponent has to try to steal back as many as possible.

The game ends when every letter on the board has been played at least once; the winner is the player who has the most territory at the end of a game. It's beautifully designed, and a competitive pleasure to play. This one ain't for the faint of heart. It's a very bare-bones game, but as hard as anything we've played on iOS. Set to catchy electronica by Chipzel, the stages consist of shrinking, rotating hexagons with one or two open sides. You have to get your little cursor into the gaps before the hexagons crush you — and it's extremely fast and tricky.

Aside from the very awesome setting of caves in space, Dynamite Jack is bodacious fun. A lone space marine, you're stuck in caves, from which you must escape using just a torch and bombs. Everything is dark, and you must locate the light from the surface to find your way out. But it's not just a matter of finding your way; enemies patrol, and you have to stealthily sneak past, sometimes dousing your torch and feeling your way in the dark, with only bombs for weapons.

But wait, there's more! The game includes a map creator, which means gameplay is effectively never-ending: you can also download and play maps from other Dynamite Jack fans.

We don't know if any games will be able to replace Dungeon Raid in our hearts as the match-three dungeon crawler of choice, but we've not been able to unglue ourselves from which is the number of points you need to free yourself from the dungeon in question. It's a bit different to Dungeon Raid and The Dungeon Saga , which sees you making chain matches by drawing a line; instead, you match by moving an entire line of items vertically or horizontally.

In this way, you fight monsters by matching weapons and shields ; unlock doors and treasures by collecting keys ; find loot by matching satchels ; and collect materials to repair your room by collecting wood and stone. You also get some of that sweet levelling action going on, to make you bigger and badder against the monsters, unlocking more and better loots. There is nothing not to love. Well, except that the tutorial could be a little better.

But apart from that. Rayman: Jungle Run is an eye-popping explosion of gorgeous colours — and a really fun-to-play arcade title in its own right. It's divided into four sections — Jump, Fly, Wall Run and Punch — each of which is based around a simple one-touch control system. Rayman runs automatically, and you control what he does by tapping or holding the screen; for example, in Jump, tapping the screen anywhere makes Rayman jump, and so forth. The objective in each level is to collect all Electoons — not as simple a prospect as it sounds — in order to obtain a Death's Tooth.

Five of these teeth will unlock the next level, so there's actually incentive to collect a perfect score. It's not exactly deep, but Ubisoft has created the perfect balance between challenging and pick-up-and-put-down gameplay. Generally speaking, "golf game" is not a phrase that makes us sit up and listen. Sure, there was the old golf game played on the IBM in the '80s that had you hitting the space bar to hit the ball when the gauge was at the right point, and apparently the Tiger Woods PGA games are popular, but it just doesn't sound as exciting as "save the kittens" or "chainsaw-wielding princess".

Then along came Wonderputt, and it truly is a wonder. It uses touch-based slingshot physics for you to get the ball from its starting point to the hole in a changing environment that is absolutely gorgeous to look at and play in.

As you progress, the landscape morphs thanks to forces of nature, the interference of man and beast, and It's a delight to play and impossible to put down. Go get Horn right now. You're Horn, a blacksmith's apprentice who awakens to discover his homeland overrun by strange robotic monsters and a mysterious horn and he wears a helmet with a single horn on it.

But they aren't really monsters — a curse has afflicted the land, and transformed the inhabitants. Everything about it is superb; reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda series, the gameplay involves well-designed combat and puzzles, and the game has a sense of humour about it that is delightful. Unlike Infinity Blade which the combat also echoes , you can move around the environments, and the art is excellent. And, unlike most of Zynga's other titles, there are no further micropayments once you've bought the game.

Punch quest is the most brilliantly '80s-arcadey iOS game we've ever had the pleasure of playing. We can almost smell the dank arcade cave smell of stale cigarette smoke and Redskins.

It's retro to the core: an endless side-scrolling 2D beat-'em-up with two-button controls for punching and jumping, lots of explosive biff and graphics that could have time travelled from Much like trivia games, we're always on the lookout for decent isometric fantasy RPG experiences on the mobile market. Heroes Call, we're happy to say, looks like it can join that list of the venerable.

Rather than fiddly on-screen joystick controls, it uses tap-based controls — tap to move, tap to attack, tap to loot — which make navigation and control much easier. Frame rates and loading times are also smooth; both of these things make Heroes Call one of the more pleasant iOS RPG experiences we've had. When the first LostWinds made its way to the iPad from the Wii, it was an absolute delight.

Control issues experienced by Wii gamers had been smoothed out, and it looked fabulous on the iPad's screen. It's with glee, then, that we greet the arrival of its sequel, Winter of the Melodias.

Like its predecessor, it's genuinely fun, one of those games that you don't want to put down because every scrap of it is immersive and enjoyable. Once again, you play Toku And a new hat!

With an owl on! The premise of Crow goes thus: you're a crow flying over the land. As you explore each level, you find fragments of story — one voice telling you to seek and curse the land's guardians so that it can take their power for itself, and another petitioning you to show mercy and not be taken in by the temptation to do harm.

When you find the guardians, you must fight, using attacks and blocks, all the while dodging their attacks; and at each level's final boss, you have a choice: will you inflict the curse, or show mercy?

The smooth one-touch controls are wonderfully responsive, the gameplay intuitive and the story both intriguing and thoughtful. It's stunningly beautiful and superbly built. Machinarium is one of the more gorgeous games on mobile. You're a cool little telescoping robot in a town made of scraps and gears, and you have to save the girl robot by solving beautifully designed point-and-click puzzles.

It's one of our favourite interactive experiences on a tablet. Bad Hotel is the magnificently odd result of someone thinking, "What if we made a tower defence game with music? As he sends in his army of rats, yetis, pteranadons and bees, you have to build rooms on your hotel to protect it: healing rooms, attack rooms, rooms that make money — and each room makes a new sound to create a complex layer of music over the entire game.

This is the kind of idea that's so preposterous it can't do anything but work. From the team behind the gorgeous Deathfall, the premise of Pizza vs. Skeletons is that the dead are rising, and you, as a puissant pizza pie of prodigious proportions, must roll back and forth over the growing hordes to squash them flatter than flat, while avoiding their pointy spears. This is achieved by tilting your iDevice from side to side.

I'm usually a little dubious about games that require gyroscopic controls, but in Pizza vs. Skeletons, it's simple enough and well implemented enough to be actually fun. It's brilliant. Don't be fooled by the thumbnail on this one — Mr Legs is a really interesting bit of work. You know those old flickery black-and-white cartoons where everything looks vaguely menacing? This is a bit like that. He walks along the street, and you telescope him up and down to swallow cherries and dodge obstacles.

It's great fun that can be had in bite-sized chunks, coupled with a quiet uneasiness that he'll completely contort out of your phone and get all slenderman up in your grill. Michelle Starr Jan.

The Room Every year, as the technology advances and attracts more developers, mobile games become even better. It's a stellar achievement in iPad gaming. Clay Jam Zynga has been struggling of late , and a lot of people have been steering away from its games. Endless Road The icon for Endless Road is a little misleading — the game is, in fact, about driving along an endless road, but the art style vastly differs, in a good way; we're actually really impressed with the extremely clean and tight graphics.

Last Fish Every now and again, a game comes along that blows us away with its brilliant simplicity. Waking Mars Waking Mars is one of those mobile games that's just absolutely wonderful to play — about atmospheric exploration and discovery, rather than the bash-bash-pew-pew. Shardlands Some people hate platform games with a heavy puzzle element, in which case Shardlands is not for them.

Plague Inc This game was the first time in my life I found myself saying, "Heck yeah, necrosis! Destroying all humans has never been so much fun. Ingress Google's Niantic Labs is responsible for Ingress — a social AR-based game that turns the real world into a battleground between the Enlightened — who fully accept a mysterious invading energy, even if it does change our humanity into something else — and the Resistance, who will fight against it at any cost. Happy Street Got a yen for town building with cute animals?

Toybox Doing two things at once can be a tricky prospect, even if they're two very simple things. There's a new puzzle every week, too, so it will stay fresh and challenging for a long time. Penny Time Penny Skateboards have been around since with no ties to Tom Penny , and their bright plastic bodies and neon wheels are instantly recognisable.

Cool Pizza Indie game Cool Pizza is has style oozing from every pixel. Letterpress Letterpress is the most sleek social word game we've ever seen. Super Hexagon This one ain't for the faint of heart. Dynamite Jack Aside from the very awesome setting of caves in space, Dynamite Jack is bodacious fun. Rayman Jungle Run Rayman: Jungle Run is an eye-popping explosion of gorgeous colours — and a really fun-to-play arcade title in its own right.

Wonderputt Generally speaking, "golf game" is not a phrase that makes us sit up and listen. Horn Go get Horn right now. Punch Quest Punch quest is the most brilliantly '80s-arcadey iOS game we've ever had the pleasure of playing. Heroes Call Much like trivia games, we're always on the lookout for decent isometric fantasy RPG experiences on the mobile market. After earning strong reviews for its Xbox and PC releases last year especially for its strong storyline and hand-painted artwork , this award-winning action-RPG title from Supergiant Games made its debut on iPads in August, and is now available for newer-model iPhones and iPod Touch devices as well.

If you like punching things, you'll like this arcade-style endless runner from the creators of Hook Champ. Just don't punch your iPhone. It's smart. It's challenging. It's gorgeous. But most importantly, it's fun - dizzying, dreamy, and delightful fun. This fast-paced, retro-styled platformer offers gameplay in two different modes story and challenge and six different playing environments. The year's best-reviewed iOS driving game is a much-improved sequel to 's top-down arcade-style racer Reckless Racing that ditches the country theme and adds new career and challenge modes.

It's an iOS must have. Note that the iPhone version will not run on iPads. EA Sports' annual licensed soccer title offers modest improvements over previous versions, but that's good enough to make it the year's best-reviewed iOS sports game. This iOS port isn't perfect, but it's still a pretty faithful translation of one the best tales ever told in a videogame.

Skeletons is what I love about reviewing. In an endless queue of redundant concepts out pops a game that is utterly unexpected, irreverent and loads of fun to play. Expect this one to be a long-time hit and to spawn many cheesy copycats; it's just that tasty. How do you stop a group of marauding skeletons? With pizza, of course. But the precise way you do so changes in each of short, quirky levels. A free version available as a separate download includes just the first 10 levels.

The indie computer game and its humorous take on base jumping comes to iOS without misplacing a single vowel in the process! Definitely not to be confused with Oregon Trail —though it does utilize '80s-style computer graphics in tribute to that classic game—this Kickstarter-funded project is a zombie survival adventure.

Definitely one to pick up. It's easily the best though, quite possibly, the only undersea-based, Wild West-themed game this year. There's depth to the intricacies of the puzzles and creativity in the various gameplay types. Adult Swim somehow managed to churn out a well-reviewed game every few months this year, but this, their best-reviewed overall, is a clever logic puzzler with a distinctive hand-drawn visual style.

Currently discounted for the holidays, this sequel to the acclaimed tower defense game Fieldrunners offers a ton of content and hours of gameplay. Its bite-sized structure fits perfectly on iOS, and Ubisoft has done a fantastic job crafting a complex experience that works perfectly with a touch screen interface. Named the best iPhone game of the year by Apple's editors, this auto-runner utilizes the visual style of last year's console hit Rayman Origins.

Ten new levels were added to the title earlier this month. And the best part is this: There's not a bloody Jar Jar Binks in sight. What do you get when you cross the most popular mobile casual game series with a legendary film franchise? Quite unsurprisingly, another hit—and one that is one of the better entries in either series in some time.

The classic, top-down, sci-fi shooter—first released for the Amiga over two decades ago—is reinvented as an iOS title that adds a few new levels and allows you to choose between the original graphics or new, more modern, styling.

This on-rails space shooter comes across as a more streamlined take on the Star Fox formula. This free, head-to-head word game has proven to be just as addictive as Words With Friends , while adding a strategic new twist—and a modern, minimalist design—to the genre. Head-to-head multiplayer would sweeten the deal, but as it stands, this is one of the finest match-three puzzlers on the App Store, as well as a shockingly good movie-based game; there aren't many of those available.

While it is officially licensed, this strategic puzzle game actually bears little resemblance to the s movie War Game in terms of gameplay, though it does use the characters' voices, and fans will notice references throughout. At any rate, it beats global thermonuclear war. The makers of iOS classic Tilt to Live return with something completely different: a free-to-play strategy board game with online multiplayer. Blast-A-Way is an approachable 3D adventure game filled with physics-based puzzles from the creators of Touchgrind.

Don't miss it. Based on the Nintendo DS title , this adventure game from the creator of Ace Attorney features a storyline reminiscent of the film Source Code. Don't even bother to debate this ninety nine cent purchase. It should become a mandatory staple of your collection as soon as possible.

Relaxing and frustrating? Simple and complex? Those are the contradictions that arise when you play against the toughest possible opponent: yourself. Swordigo 's gameplay blends platformer-style action with a basic RPG system, and Zelda fans should find elements of this retro-styled adventure game not unfamiliar. While iPad owners can play most of the 25 games above, these next few titles were the best HD releases designed specifically for the iPad. Minimum 5 reviews.

The World Ends With You: Solo Remix is not a game built for five-minute diversions; it's a solid game, one meant to leave a permanent impression. Last year's acclaimed iPhone game finally came to the iPad this summer in an HD version that added some new gameplay modes including multiplayer in addition to the larger resolution.

The gameplay, despite a few small problems, is incredibly well done and we honestly can't think of a better way to do it. The popular collectible card game comes to the iPad for the first time with both single- and multi-player modes. Filled with nifty sci-fi-themed pixel art, this arcade-style actioner asks you to "spin" various levels of a quickly-changing game board to guide your player to safety. Everything about the game is polished, and highly compelling.

No, it's not a spin-off of the worst movie ever made ; instead, this Room is a mystery-filled 3D puzzler that was recently picked by Apple editors as the year's top iPad game. Please sign up or log in to post a comment.