If you’re looking for new games to play on your smartphone then July has an intriguing crop of detective games, auto battlers, and an accomplished Advance Wars clone.
Since it’s too hot to do anything you don’t have to, slumping somewhere air conditioned with your phone is potentially your best bet for survival. Fortunately, this month’s batch of touchscreen games offer some viable time sinks, from the free-to-play auto-battling tactics of Rift Wars: Merge Arena, to the elegantly styled minimalism of Sky Lobby, via Netflix’s latest addition: Tomb Of The Mask.
Mini Murder Mysteries
iOS, £1.99 (Bunkworks)
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Starting with crowded evidence boards, you go about solving these nine Mini Murder Mysteries by tapping on pieces of evidence, then sending any highlighted keywords from each document to a folder below.
Once you’ve absorbed the evidence, you solve the case by dragging keywords you’ve collected into a statement about what happened. That has predefined words already in it, to provide an overall structure, and you’re left to fill in the gaps, sorting the red herrings from the genuine clues.
You can check your current answers to see how many of the blanks you’ve got right, mixing pure deduction with trial and error, but despite generally having a well-designed interface, the fact that the ‘reveal answer’ button is right next to the check button means it’s all too easy to spoil cases accidentally. Still, as long as you’re careful this will supply a couple of hours of lightweight sleuthing.
Score: 6/10
Sky Lobby
iOS & Android, free – full game £4.99 (Moya Labs)
With a subtly minimalist interface, and a fairly unusual subject matter, Sky Lobby has you building and controlling lifts in a succession of tall buildings, transporting coloured shapes to their target floors before their impatience meters fill and end your run.
Structures gradually allow the construction of more lift shafts, with blockers on some floors meaning many journeys need to be completed in multiple stages. The simplicity of tapping floors to move lifts is complemented by AI-controlled passengers who automatically jump aboard any that are going towards their destination floor.
Its understated musical tones when passengers arrive, and the elegantly effective visuals are reminiscent of Mini Metro and its sequel, and this is just as capable of putting you in ‘the zone’ as you work your way through its puzzles, although Sky Lobby ends up being a considerably more hectic experience. It’s also currently on sale for £1.99.
Score: 7/10
Tomb Of The Mask
iOS & Android, included with Netflix subscription
Although Netflix has announced a pivot in their strategy, away from mobile towards TV-based games, they’re still doing an excellent job choosing new titles to include with their streaming subscription. Tomb Of The Mask has you swiping to steer your avatar around a faux 8-bit maze, collecting dots and stars, while avoiding an increasing set of hazards, many of which are constantly moving.
Its mixture of speed and the need for caution as you figure out just how to get that last star without injury, proves hugely compelling despite a few lumps in its difficulty level. That’s just a warm up for Arcade Mode though, where you have to perform the same set of actions while staying ahead of a rapidly rising water level, massively increasing the sense of pressure.
Twitch games usually work very badly on touchscreen, but not this one. Its rapid swipes and swiftly applied puzzle tactics feel fast, precise and exciting, a sense that only builds as it layers on fiendish new traps and enemies.
Score: 8/10
Rift Wars: Merge Arena
iOS & Android, free (Reflection Games)
Auto battlers are a peculiar genre, in that you don’t actually take part in the action. Instead, you choose and set up combatants who then go about the business of fighting while you watch.
It’s easy to pick up, and fairly balanced once you get the hang of it, but as with other auto battlers the sheer number of bonuses and character class interactions make it feel partially random, the complexity of those networks of effects too complex to take in during the few seconds you have to prime troops for the next round.
There’s still fun to be had though , and while Rift Wars lacks the scale and polish of Clash Royale’s similar Merge Tactics mode, it plays well, doesn’t force you to watch ads, and has a pleasing diversity of units to unlock, before doing your best to resist paying actual money to upgrade them.
Score: 6/10
Quack Quack Attack
iOS & Android, free (HaoPlay)
Copyright infringingly subtitled as Peggle Puzzle Shooter, Quack Quack Attack does indeed have something in common with PopCap’s classic bagatelle game. Its core mechanic involves firing eggs from a team of ducks’ cloacas, to ricochet around on a collection of pins below.
After each volley of eggs, the pins move up a level, and you lose the round if they reach the top. To prevent that, you recruit new hero ducks via gacha pulls, levelling them up with the usual scarce but purchasable in-game currency, and judiciously deploying the powers each comes with, their eggs exploding, electrocuting, incinerating, and plenty more.
The game’s heavily monetised, although the egg bouncing remains quite engaging, even if that’s compromised by the need to funnel you towards its bevvy of tempting microtransactions, by making the grind just slightly too endless.
Score: 5/10
Crownlings: Heroes & Conquests
iOS & Android, free (Angry Banana)
Advance Wars is unarguably one of the best designed games of all time, its spare interactions belying an incredible tactical complexity. Unsurprisingly, it’s inspired numerous other games, from Wargroove’s fantasy style homage to Polytopia’s purposely blocky free-to-play excellence. The latest is Crownlings, which arrives with many similarities.
The map’s on the same square grid, captured towns supply income and heal resident units, terrain affects defence, and there’s a familiar rock, paper, scissors quality to combatants’ strengths and weaknesses. The biggest point of difference, apart from its fantasy setting, is that in deference to monetisation, you now level up each of its fighters by collecting cards and spending gold.
Maps so far are small, but it shows promise, offering an agreeable challenge, and while so far single-player only, it has a greyed out multiplayer button that says ‘coming soon’, which will give fresh impetus to those unit upgrades. And in case Android players are having trouble finding it, on the Play Store it’s called Crownlings: Battle Strategy.
Score: 7/10
Zomline Survival
iOS & Android, free (Yoozoo)
There’s been a recent glut of games that are almost exact copies of each other. They start with a polished and well-designed introductory sequence, that has you refurbishing a village and constructing defences, then suddenly open up into a clan-based city invading game whose content is all but identical to a raft of other titles.
Kingshot, Whiteout Survival, Rise Of Kingdoms, Last Asylum: Plague, and so many more, present you with an initially interesting opening, before plunging you into the same old pay-to-win game, with players who’re willing to spring for upgrades brutally steamrolling those that aren’t.
It’s lifelessly dull, relying on wait timers and upgrades rather than player skill, and clearly embarrassed to be yet another boring clone, which is why it starts out pretending to be something else. Our advice: is to save yourself the few hours it takes to discover its tedious subterfuge by giving this one a miss.
Score: 2/10
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