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We put incredibly powerful devices in our pockets and on our laps daily, but rarely do we see games that utterly embrace this like Infinity Blade has. It’s a showcase piece; a technically and visually gifted game that consistently delivers eye-popping stuff.

Infinity Blade 2 is a step a step or two beyond what was accomplished in the original, adding in layers and layers of next-level environmental and character texture detail on top of a ton of fantastic ambient touches — sharper shadows, stronger lighting, and a glut of atmospheric effects bolster what’s already a visual delight, especially on iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

In the game’s opening, you’ll be whisked to a Japanese garden where pink petals tenderly fall into a pond filled with koi. Later, you’ll find a fountain with gurgling water creeping over two titanic figures, a crypt filled with gigantic, ragged rocks with glowing glyphs imbued into them, and you’ll even observe plenty of nature again, as the game’s new fortress has plenty of aerial life and environmental effects to share.

The added oomph of the presentation is a convenient parallel to what’s going on under the hood. Design-wise, this is more Infinity Blade, except expanded. Beautiful vistas and artfully designed and detailed hallways compose that game’s more expansive fortress; the “guided” walking scenes are always punctuated with many more items to loot and fights to be had against increasingly bigger and more complex opponents; also, the mystery as to who you are and why you’re undying is unraveled more coherently, as the writing is now presented with confidence — it actually wants to tell you a good story.

The story element in particular makes Infinity Blade 2 a more cohesive game. As in the first, you’ll be once again stuck in a cyclical play loop, forever walking the halls of this new fortress as you puzzle out what it has to offer. But now the protagonist is as aware of his plight as you are, and you’ll be doing things in this new place with this knowledge in tow. There’s a sense of momentum and honest-to-Crom progression since not every re-birth is a simple game “reset;” plus, not just battle death triggers these this time around.

Combat has been expanded, too, and its constituent parts tweaked. Dodging, for example, is now monitored by an endurance bar. Dodge too many times in succession, and you’ll take tick damage from narrowly avoided blows. Parries seem much more accurate, now, as well, and are much more encouraged by virtue of the dodge nerf. Oh! And say “hi” to weapon gems. In most cases, they act as weapon modifiers that add elemental damage to attacks. In others cases, they add bonus effects like, say, increased Titan Damage Upon Blocking. Gems can be found or purchased and attached to weapons with matching slots.

The game’s currency system is still tied integrally to the combat. Buying new weapons is the key to leveling up, and you’ll need to keep pumping your quarters into the virtual machine in order to compete since each re-birth sees the addition of more powerful enemies. Since you can straight-up buy gold via IAP, this element might turn you off, but in our play, we’ve yet to feel like IAP was anything more than optional.

More importantly, dual weapon and heavy weapon wielding have been added to the combat model and they do meaningfully change your combat approach. Two swords eliminates blocking from the equation and rely on your ability to chain together combinations flawlessly. Heavy weapons trade speed for power, but require a sure-hand. I’m not much of a fan of either of these new styles, but they work as they should.

The enemies you’ll bludgeon not only look fantastic, but also boast, in most cases, more sophisticated routines and trickier blows to block, dodge, or parry. Just as an example here, let’s talk about the monstrous dog-like thing you’ll meet. Its heavy and blinded by the spiked cap covering its head, but its sluggish attacks are consistently hard to peg, as it feints with the aplomb of the nimblest creatures. Also, it has vicious quick-time-y attack where it attempts to swallow your dude whole. In order to stop this, you’ll need to tap frantically to keep his vice-like maw from impaling your meaty bits.

Sometimes I’m tempted to see what’ll happen if I let it take my dude, simply because of how awesome Infinity Blade 2 looks. Does your guy’s head and torso explode into a plume of blood and bone? Probably not (for a variety of reasons), but what I’m absolutely certain of is that Infinity Blade 2 is awesome.

It’s a consistently well put together visual feast that shows off what Unreal 3, and now your new devices, can do. And it’s great that the core gameplay structure and action model still deliver. Basically everything that Infinity Blade does has been expanded on for Infinity Blade 2. There’s so much more to do — so much more to explore and see and learn as you hack-and-slash like a champ through a winding and much more complex environment. Straight-up, it’s a great game.

As a side-bar here, while nothing is confirmed, the UI elements and Chair’s track record with the original hint at many updates to come including a cool social twist to battle. We’ll be keeping our thumbs and fingers at the ready for some time.

International App Store Link: Infinity Blade 2, $6.99

Infinity Blade 2 will be available in the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern.

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Easily one of my favorite platforming games (and just plain favorite games period, really) is this past February’s League of Evil [$1.99/Lite] from Ravenous Games and WoblyWare. The game featured bite-sized levels of increasingly difficult platforming challenges in a similar vein to Super Meat Boy, with a great 3 star rating system for each level that begged you to replay over and over until you’ve perfected every one.

League of Evil became known as one of the top examples of tight virtual controls on iOS as well, and during the past year numerous content updates have added tons of new levels for more than 160 total along with new features like ghost replays and iCade support. In short, League of Evil owns, and is one of the best platforming games on the App Store.

With the positive reception and success of League of Evil, it’s no surprise that a sequel would be in the works and the developers have began to tease the first screens for League of Evil 2 in our forums. Ravenous Games and WoblyWare are once again at the helm for this new entry in the series, but this time have enlisted the help of Bulletproof Outlaws to completely overhaul the visuals, or “kick the graphics up to 11!” as Derek from Ravenous puts it. Eleven. It’s one louder. Think about it.

Now, first of all, I’m a big pixel art geek and I absolutely loved the pixel graphics in the first League of Evil. However, after seeing these gorgeous new screens for League of Evil 2 I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to this new visual style. Plus, the developers are talking up how silky smooth the new character animations are, and I really can’t wait to see this new game in motion.

Since League of Evil 2 is being built off of the same engine as the first game, you can expect the same type of bite-sized level design and tight controls that you’ve come to know and love. All of the original enemies and hazards will be making another appearance along with about a half a dozen new ones. Right at launch the game will feature more than 100 levels spanning 5 different environments, and more than likely it will receive post-release update love with new features and content similar to what happened with the first game.

Sadly, there is no word on a release date for League of Evil 2 just yet, but all I know is it can’t come soon enough. We’ll be pestering the developers for more details in the near future, and until then check out the thread in our forums for discussion of the game.

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Stories are hard to come by on the App Store. Most games don’t bother with even a pretense of a story, and those that do tend to be crammed in rather painfully. It’s understandable — most iOS games are created by tiny teams, often just a programmer and an artist, so there’s not much room or budget for writing.

Sometimes, though, a game comes by that shows that you don’t need to sacrifice to tell a good tale. Some stories are as simple and eternal as boy meets girl, and they can be told over and over in brand new ways. These Robotic Hearts of Mine [$1.99] is one of those games. It’s small, simple and charming, and it does an admirable job of bringing narrative to that least-storied of genres, the puzzle game.

Better still, the puzzles in These Robotic Hearts of Mine are successful and interesting. Games that really experiment with narrative sometimes tend to end up a little light on enjoyable gameplay, but this game does not. It plays out over 36 levels of Rubik’s Cube-inspired puzzling that boast a reasonable difficulty curve, entertainment and even a smidgen of replayability.

The puzzles are straightforward. Each level has a field of hearts and gears. You can turn the gears by tapping them, and they take adjacent hearts with them when they rotate. The goal is to rotate the hearts until all are right-side-up, sometimes moving them from one gear to another in the process.

Each level gives you a minimum number of taps to try to achieve, but you can keep going as long as you’d like without penalty. There are the usual controls — buttons to take you back or forward a move, buttons to reset the level, and so on. You’ll never find yourself frustrated by an inability to proceed.

After each level is completed, you’re shown your progress compared to that of others, whether you hit the par score or fell within the average or worse. Then you’re treated to a single screen of narrative, one sentence of the story.

To avoid spoilers, I won’t get into the story. It’s so short and sweet that there isn’t much to be said that won’t give it all away. Suffice it to say that it’s emotionally charged, if not especially original, and that it’s quite successful.

As to how it merges with the gameplay, my feelings are mixed. I like the slow reveal of the story, the way you need to work through each level. As the levels get longer and more difficult, the story feels similarly halting. Needing to work for it feels quite appropriate. But some mechanical choices get in the way. For one, that score page you’re presented with on ending each level if quite an intrusion into the game’s atmosphere. It’s a distraction to start thinking numbers and strategies when the story is presented so briefly.

A more serious problem presents itself: you can freely skip your way through the entire game if you want to, reading the story panels and then skipping the level. It’s hard to take the combination of the two seriously when they can be ripped apart like that. If the goal is that people will play for their narrative, letting them skip the game undermines the experience, and frankly the story isn’t quite enough on its own.

In the end, These Robot Hearts of Mine is good, but it isn’t great. As a game, it doesn’t go quite far enough to reward players for pushing through or to encourage them to play well. As a narrative, too many of the game elements get in the way of the presentation. A bit more commitment could strengthen the game, hopefully in the direction of its narrative. There are plenty of great puzzle games out there, but never enough strong stories.

Still, it’s a lovely game, and for the most part it works quite well. I consider my time with it well spent, even if a few tweaks could have made These Robotic Hearts of Mine much more atmospheric. Give it a look for yourself, and let us know what you think in the discussion thread.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Love or hate Square Enix, you gotta appreciate the support its throwing behind Chaos Rings Omega [$11.99 / HD] for the iPhone and iPad. For the sixth month in a row, the studio has put together a substantial update to Omega. This latest, which hit the App Store yesterday, raises the bonus content level cap to 150 and adds a new hidden boss, more treasure, two new Piu-Piu collections, and fresh weapons. Huge, right?

Square seems to be missing more than its hitting on the App Store, but the Chaos Rings series falls into the latter pretty safely. Both are fun, iOS-native RPGs with tons of unique content from the get-go. These updates to Omega are icing on an already delicious, and fairly well-rounded cake. Here’s hoping more are to come, though. We like free content.

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Clay’s Reverie [$0.99] is cute. Really, really cute. Cute enough to warrant a warning label. That’s how cute it is.

…And hard. In spite of the fleecy clouds and the pink dolphins, SuperGlueStudio’s physics puzzler isn’t a game for the faint-hearted. One false step and you’re dead or, well, whatever passes for dead with doughy-looking things like the protagonist. Here in Clay’s Reverie, death is synonymous with touching anything asides from the conveyor belt. It’s a tough life but those are the breaks when you’re a little, googly-eyed ball of white clay.

Fortunately, the odds are somewhat in your favor. Clay’s Reverie benefits from simple and supremely responsive controls. Holding down on the conveyer belt allows you to move it on a vertical axis. Clay, on the other hand, does not seem quite as appreciative of such a hands-on approach. In order to control the blob-by hero himself, you’re going to have to make use of the iPhone’s accelerometer to roll him around the screen.

As easy and insipidly sweet as all this might sound, Clay’s Reverie demands a substantial amount of finesse as the worlds you find yourself visiting are … floating death traps, if you want to put it mildly. Bristling with spikes and all manner of metallic menaces, these worlds are all but friendly. For reasons unknown, they’re also filled with the stars that Clay seems to covet. What malleable white spheres with the ability to magically transform into random other shapes after the consumption of dodgy-looking seeds want with flaming heavenly bodies is beyond me but that’s how things goes. Come heck or high water, you’re going to have to acquire the maximum number of stars possible and reach the finishing line without expiring more than three times.

It’s a surprisingly tall order. Those with shaky hands should probably find themselves another diversion because Clay’s Reverie is rather shameless about punishing those with an unsteady grip. This, in turn, wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the fact that the check points are far and few in between, an issue that many will become intimately aware of after the initial few playthroughs. Given that a certain number of stars are necessary to proceed to the next world, the whole thing can result in a fair amount of frustration.

If you’re willing to overlook that little problem, Clay’s Reverie is a mostly satisfying experience. It’s challenging without being unreasonably so, complex but accessible. Your six-year old cousin, on the off chance they’re the precocious sort, would probably enjoy themselves with this one too. Friendly, straightforward and furiously adorable, Clay’s Reverie is a lot of fun.

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If you’re a fan of Red Dead Redemption and similar western-themed horse riding games with lots (and lots) of fighting, Gameloft’s upcoming Six-Guns might just be what you’re looking for. The environments look pretty impressive, although I’m not entirely sure which games Gameloft will be borrowing the combat mechanic from just yet. Take a look:

One curious thing that sticks out in the trailer is the whole “play for free” thing. Gameloft has been predictably vague in just how players will actually pay for the game, but hopefully whatever free to play model they settle on won’t be too offensive to gamers.

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If your iPhone or iPad’s memory still isn’t full after you gorged on the various Cyber Monday and Thanksgiving deals, know this: most of the celebratory sales are still active on the App Store. In fact, we’ve discovered a couple more that we couldn’t fit in before the holiday break. That’s what this post is all about — the leftovers.

For example, Telltale Games has lowered its games’ prices 55-80 percent from the usual. The savings began on November 23, but will continue until tomorrow, November 30. Arghata Studio also bashed the prices of its 1112 series in honor of our Turkey Day, and those sales are still continuing, too, well into this week.

Here’s a short list of some notables:

Odds And Ends

• The 7th Guest – $5.99 → $1.99 [Universal]
• Age of Zombies – $2.99 → $.99 [Universal]
• Burn the Rope Worlds – $.99 → Free
• Corpse Craft – $1.99 → $.99
• Fling A Thing – $.99 → Free
• The King of Fighters – $6.99 → $3.99
• Scribblenauts Remix – $4.99 → $2.99 [Universal]
• Spirits for iPad – $4.99 → $.99
• Split / Second on iPad – $6.99 → $.99
• XIII – Lost Identity – $3.99 → $.99

Agharta Studios

• 1112 episode 01 – $4.99 → Free
• 1112 episode 01 HD – $6.99 → Free
• 1112 episode 02 – $4.99 → $.99
• 1112 episode 02 HD – $6.99 → $1.99
• 1112 episode 03 – $4.99 → $1.99
• 1112 episode 03 HD – $6.99 → $2.99

Telltale Games

• Back to the Future Episode 1 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Back to the Future Episode 2 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Back to the Future Episode 3 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Back to the Future Episode 4 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Back to the Future Episode 5 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Hector Episode 1 – $3.99 → $.99
• Hector Episode 1 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Hector Episode 2 – $4.99 → $.99
• Hector Episode 2 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Hector Episode 3 – $4.99 → $.99
• Hector Episode 3 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 1 – $6.99 → $4.99
• Monkey Island Tales 1 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 2 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 3 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 4 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 5 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Puzzle Agent – $4.99 → $.99
• Puzzle Agent HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Puzzle Agent 2 – $4.99 → $.99
• Puzzle Agent 2 HD – $6.99 → $2.99

Cool deals, right? As a side-note, if you feel like you’ve been left out of the initial extravaganza, App Shopper [Free] remains an incredible tool to keep on the up and up. You can read more about it here.

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There’s hype building publicity stunts, then there’s hype building publicity stunts. Pre-release excitement for Chair’s upcoming Infinity Blade 2 is already at an all time high, which apparently has left Chair’s PR department scratching their collective heads to come up with what else they could do to promote a game that’s already on cruise control for greatness.

I’m guessing this eureka moment coincided with late night fitness-centric infomercials, resulting in a promotion that’s so silly we couldn’t help but post about it. Anyway, Chair has partnered up with musclebound bro Nate Green who is known for The Hero Handbook, a free fitness-oriented self-help eBook. Nate (who can be seen above working out at the local playground) put together a list of exercises which should help prepare even the weakest of hands for Infinity Blade 2.

So, without further ado, we present to you, the unedited Infinity Blade 2 workout in its entirety:

1. Rubberband Splay: This is the reverse movement of gripping something. Train the reverse muscles in your hands and wrist to strengthen them.

Take a rubber band and place it around your thumb and fingertips. Touch all of your fingers together. Splay your fingers as far as you can stretch them and fight the resistance of the rubberband. Touch all of your fingers together again. That’s one rep. Do 20 on each hand.

2. Book Grip: Test your grip endurance. Can you hold for 20 seconds with just your index finger and thumb?

• Beginner: Grab two heavy books, hold them together, and grip them with your thumb and all of your fingers. Shoot for 20 seconds.
• Intermediate: Grip with your thumb and only your middle and ring finger. Shoot for 20 seconds.
• Hero: Grip with your thumb and index finger. Shoot for 20 seconds.

3. Quarter Toss: Improve your reflexes and hand-eye coordination.

Grab a quarter, lay your hand flat, and place it on your fingers. In one motion, flick your wrist, sending the quarter flying through the air. Grab the quarter mid-air quickly. That’s one rep. Perform 10 reps on each hand.

4. Sandbag or Tennis Ball Dynamic Grip: Strengthen the muscles in your hands, fingers and wrists.

Hold a hot pad (shown) or a tennis ball in your hand with an underhand grip. Squeeze as hard as you can and hold for 2 seconds. Release your grip and repeat. Go for 30 reps on each hand.

5. Wrist and Forearm Stretch: After all that hardcore hero finger training, stretch your muscles in your wrist and forearms before you play Infinity Blade 2.

Put your hand flat in front of you. Grab the fingers of that hand with your other hand and gently pull your fingers toward your body, keeping your arm straight. You should feel a pull in your forearm and wrist. Hold for 30 seconds. Do 1 set for each hand.

Neat, right — and all in the name of fun. Regardless if you’re into pumping up your fingers and hands, Infinity Blade 2 hits in the next couple of days at $6.99. If you haven’t yet, give our preview a look, and chat with fellow finger-working buddies in the Infinity Blade 2 forum thread.

Meanwhile, we’re putting the finishing touches on our review which will go live with the launch of the game. Spoilers: It’s awesome.

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Like it or not, more and more games in a wide variety of genres appear to be taking the freemium route in an effort to be more profitable. Rather than simply taking a binary stance as to the merits of freemium, I’d prefer to look at each game on a case by case basis to see if the developers manage to strike that balance of freemium elements versus playability and, most importantly, fun. Bullet Time HD [Free], the latest title from Kiloo Games, hits that balance perfectly and leaves me hoping that future developers will create freemium games like this.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Bullet Time follows John Irish, a man out to rescue his family from the mutated creatures inhabiting the land. You’ll lead John through a variety of locales that look striking and definitely give off a Borderlands sort of vibe. The game looks great and runs amazingly well on an iPhone 4S, although there was some minor slowdown on a 4th generation iPod touch.

Control-wise, Bullet Time plays like your standard dual stick shooter, with no significant positives or negatives to the standard formula. In addition, from a gameplay perspective, you’ll always have a primary mission to accomplish, but the game also throws a few side missions and secret locales at you if you’re willing to look for them. Bullet Time also features a lot of excellent ambient sounds and hard rock music that do a great job setting the tone of the game. From a presentation standpoint, Bullet Time simply rocks.

One of Bullet Time’s strengths is in the wide variety of weapons, armor, and upgrades available to help on your quest for mutant destruction. Mr. Irish can take two different weapons into battle at any one time, and each weapon can be outfitted with powers that range from increased damage and critical change to enemy slowdown. Weapons also have various special abilities, such as rapid-fire or piercing, which add an additional strategic element. In addition, there are three pieces of armor you can upgrade, along with five different short-term boosts that you can use during play. Add all this together, and there is a ton of room for customization and replayability.

The freemium elements come into play with Bullet Time’s currency system. As you journey through each mission, you’ll primarily earn silver, which is the main currency in the game. In addition, you’ll also occasionally find crystals, the ‘premium’ currency (you will earn crystals with each level up, too). While a lot of the gear you can buy requires silver to purchase, the top gear for each level typically requires crystals, which can also be purchased via IAP. While you do earn a decent amount of crystals during normal play, there are items that are simply unobtainable unless you purchase extra crystals.

This will undoubtedly irk some folks, but I thought the developers did a great job optimizing the gameplay for equipment obtainable via silver. While some games implicitly require the freemium items for players to simply succeed, Bullet Time instead treats them as premium items that make the experience easier, and maybe a little more fun, which is my ideal view for these sorts of items.

In addition to the single player campaign, Bullet Time also has a survival-based multiplayer mode with up to three gamers playing simultaneously. Players can elect to be paired up randomly with other folks or they can start/join games with their Game Center friends. Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble trying to start a randomized game, but I was able to try a few Game Center ones. Once I was able to get a game going I found survival mode to be incredibly fun, particularly when I was able to play with folks in the same room as me. You also earn experience and silver while playing survival sessions, which makes multiplayer even more worth it if you’re able to get a game going.

Simply put, Bullet Time gets a lot of things right when it comes to dual stick shooters. The controls, presentation, customization and replayability are all well done. Sure, it would be nice to be able to acquire all the items without IAP, and the multiplayer lobby system had some issues, but those are not game breakers. Add in the fact that the game is free and that the freemium elements are nonintrusive, and Bullet Time becomes a must-play for any fans of the genre. I only hope other developers take note, because this is how freemium should be done.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Have you ever secretly wanted to live the life of a taxonomer, pouring over the details of new species to discover their histories? No? How about blocks — do you like to play with blocks? You might need to fall somewhere within that spectrum to really appreciate Gua-Le-Ni [$4.99], my new favorite taxonomic game. It’s a rapid-fire puzzle game with a fantastical approach to the vagaries of animal kind.

From moment to moment you’re tasked with the categorization of brand new animal hybrids. While you might be familiar with the dreaded CA-MEL or TI-GER, would you recognize a RAB-HOG on sight? How about a WART-DOR-PUS-STER? Anything goes in Gua-Le-Ni, and you’ll need to be quick enough to go along with it.

You do this with a collection of blocks, like children’s alphabet blocks. Each face of each block possesses one syllable of an animal’s name, and a section of that animal to go with it. So a “Ti” block face would have a tiger’s head, and the “Ger” would have its rear.

The blocks can be turned, spun and moved around to form whatever fantastic beast steps across your screen. You’re given two to start, a reasonable number for learning, but when you’re tired of the fifteenth variation of “Lob-mon” or “Rhi-ster” it will be time to move on.

You can do so at your own pace, more or less. In Fiction mode, you can add or remove blocks at will. Four-sectioned creatures may strain your taxonomic talents (and your speedy fingers), but they’re a worthy challenge after some practice. Once you’ve practiced to your heart’s content, you can move on to Non-Fiction mode.

Non-Fiction is no less imaginative than Fiction mode, but the beasts are more beastly and hungry. Some are herbivores, some carnivores, so you’ll need to be on your toes to feed them correctly. There are meals to be made with each combo of three feedings, and bonus points to be earned for them. Feed the animals the wrong foods, however, and it will ruin your combinations.

An odd bit of extra-terrestrial muck can be fed to the animals as well, mutating them into bigger and odder forms. But you must choose to do this — difficulty is not generally forced upon you. The developers at Double Jungle apparently tested the game for biometric reactions in order to ensure that the difficulty curve was appropriate and the cognitive challenge was always sufficient, and this attention to detail shows. Gua-Le-Ni is difficult enough to keep players strung along without indulging in pointless frustration.

Or at least that’s mostly true. The controls are just shy of perfect, and I have found myself occasionally stymied in a playthrough by a block refusing to turn or rotate as needed. The two-fingered twists and lifts are intuitive, but when they don’t register correctly the joy of playing is lost. Hopefully this will see a tweak or two in the days to come.

Despite that bit of friction, though, I find myself continually drawn back into Gua-Le-Ni. Much of its appeal is aesthetic. The scrap paper creatures are partly horrid in their combinations, but partly gorgeous too. The sound is catchy, and the tome-like interface is elegant and entirely usable. The narration particularly stands out, delightfully dotty as it is.

But the gameplay is no slouch, either. Part of the challenge lies in memorization — the blocks you use are always the same, so once you know where to find the “Ti,” you’ll likely never lose it. But managing meals complicates matters, as does the growing speed of the beasts that pass by. Your speed matters too — you earn more points for an animal classified quickly than one that takes time.

Your successes add up into high scores, ranked on two Game Center leaderboards. One is for total score, as could well be expected. But one is cleverer: the time it takes you to earn a Two of Four. That’s two full animals classified with four blocks each in Non-Fiction mode. It’s good inspiration to move up to four blocks as quickly as you can — lingering at fewer blocks slows down your scoring, and knocks off any chance you have of ranking on that leaderboard. There are also a selection of achievements to earn, some clever, but a few too many focused on sharing or rating the game.

Many players will find Gua-Le-Ni a bit steep for what it offers, the rather simple puzzle game at its heart. But for those of you who, like me, are drawn in by its gallimaufry of nonsense creatures, the game will be nearly impossible to resist. Give in – Gua-Le-Ni follows through with charm and plenty of fun. The joy of taxonomy may fade in time, but you’ll always have the knowledge that you were the one to identify the humble Lob-hog-bit, and that’s a memory that will last. Share it in our discussion thread.

TouchArcade Rating:

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