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Fly With Me [99¢] from Electronic Arts may resemble a cute kids game about a flying bird, but it’s not actually as simplistic as it seems. You tap the screen to make the little bird fly and try to collect three stars and reach the birdhouse at the end of the level. This may sound easy, but the catch is you have a limited number of wing-flaps available.

Each time you tap the screen to flap your wings, your flap-meter decreases slightly. Once that meter is depleted, you’ll literally fall out of the sky with an amusing animation as you splat into the ground. So, you quickly learn to be more conservative with your flaps, and glide whenever possible. NOT flapping is a key part of this game. Your flap-meter must also be replenished by eating bees, otherwise you won’t have enough flaps to reach the end.

At the top of the screen is a progress bar. This shows your position within the level, but also marks the location of three stars so you know when to watch out for them. These stars are used to unlock chapters. There’s also one golden gear to collect per level. One you’ve found 45 golden gears a more powerful metallic robot bird is unlocked, or you can just buy it right away as an in-app purchase.

There’s three chapters to play (fields, trees and tropical), offering 45 levels in total. You can play using four different birds, but first they’ll need to be unlocked. There’s also three challenge modes (one per chapter) which are unlocked once you gain enough stars. The challenge levels involve trying to fly as far as possible, and your score in that mode is measured in distance (meters).

Each level contains good winds to ride and bad brown air to avoid. These bad winds might do a loop-the-loop or carry you through an underground tunnel, which is interesting to watch but you can’t control the bird while being blown along. While bee’s are good to eat, the sick bugs should be avoided. As should predators, including big dangling bird-eating spiders, hungry fish and carnivorous plants.

Fly with Me has two disappointing features. First off, the frequent adverts for the games IAP offerings feel intrusive. After a couple of attempts at the same level, a full screen message appeared asking if I wanted to buy a robot bird (no thanks). Slightly later it asked if I was interested in paying to unlock all levels (Err, no thanks). Perhaps I want to purchase the easier kids mode? (No. Thank. You.) Then it starts over, trying to sell the IAP previously declined.

Secondly, the game reports back to EA, sending them data about game statistics, settings, incident or event data and feature preferences. I have no problem with this “usage sharing” functionality, except that it’s enabled by default. If players don’t check the “Info” screen, they may not realize their device is sending out data. I turned this setting off on principle.

Despite these drawbacks, Fly With Me is a solid title that’s more challenging than it looks. The limited flapping mechanic sets it apart from the many similar simplistic arcade games on the App Store, and it’s a good value for a dollar – assuming they don’t eventually talk you into additional in-app purchases.

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Games like My Little Monster [99¢] are nefarious. In spite of being a largely thankless collection of repetitive chores, they have this way of making you fuss over them constantly. They’re like kids except without all the collateral benefits. Just ask anyone who has ever owned a Tamagotchi or any other of those ‘virtual pet simulator’ things.

I use the term loosely, by the way. My Little Monster isn’t exactly what you would call a Tamagotchi, though the simplicity of the gameplay here is definitely on the same level. At the beginning of every in-game day, you’ll be given the opportunity to decide whether you want to purchase new hats, upgrade one of your three skills or improve various statistics. This, in turn, is accomplished by spending the currency you earn from your daily fights.

Now, before you get excited about the idea of rumbling with other leviathans, combat here isn’t all too fancy either. You have no direct control over the fights themselves. For the most part, your time will be spent tapping on various words on the screen, tapping on the ability you want to use, and a fair bit of waiting. Assuming you survive, you’ll then have your score tallied and the whole cycle will begin anew.

Yes, I know. It’s kind of underwhelming but that doesn’t make it a bad game. In an odd way, it’s actually one of the reasons that My Little Monster works so well. You can play it anywhere, any time. Because so little brainpower is needed to propel the game forward, it’s ideal for meetings and long, uncomfortable road trips. Of course, things would be different were the presentation any less stellar.

Group Sound really did a brilliant job (granted, they could have gone with a better choice of fonts but that’s me being nit-picky) with the delivery in My Little Monster. The nostalgia-inducing visuals, the silly cut-scenes, the menagerie of eccentric enemies, the offbeat dialogue, the ludicrous plot – they all go along together like Japanese curry on rice. I mean, really? Is it even possible to dislike that little green guy and his earnest quest to grow up and destroy the world? I thought so.

Though considerably shorter than I would have liked it to be, My Little Monster is a reasonable amount of bang for your buck. If ‘virtual pet simulators’ weren’t a thing back when you were growing up, you might not quite enjoy it as much as some. But for the rest of you, this may be a pleasant trip down memory lane.

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Hatchi [$.99] the game will be evolving, too. Portable Pixel’s clever take on the Tamagotchi has received its first update. Like most first passes, this is a Clean-Up On Aisle App kind of thing: Hatchi now displays even more pet statistics, has a help screen, boasts Game Center achievements, and sports greater stability across platforms.

Embedded in the patch notes, however, is a roadmap for future content updates: more evolutions, more food options, and also plans to add brilliant features like pooping, mini-games, and a social component are coming, the studio says. Oh, and that iPad version, by the way? It was name-dropped. We’re guessing it’s not strictly a possibility anymore.

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It’s the little things that matter. You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s not the bacon that he brings home, it’s the breakfast he wakes you up with. It’s not the fact that Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion [$2.99] is probably going to be one of the definitive names in turn-based strategy for the iOS, it’s the way the commanders bellow at their troops to merit their wings.

Food metaphors aside, there’s a lot to like about Witching Hour’s debut title. If you’re anything like me and have spent some amount of time bemoaning the paper-thin worlds that populate the App Store, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion is going to make your heart beat faster. The setting is exhaustive. Every character has a detailed biography, every unit type a set of statistics and a matching description. There are social hierarchies, self-serving matriarchs and imperial ranks. There is history. There is substance.

Paradoxically, the actual plot itself feels a lot less deep. You can blame it on a childhood diet of Ursula K. Le Guinn and Terry Prachett but I can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen it all before. The first part of the game, for example, is centered around the soft-spoken Calius Septim. Determined to make his way up the ranks, he must deal with things like an overprotective older brother and a superior officer who loathes him. It’s a familiar story, one that has been related a thousand times before in various forms. Nonetheless, that doesn’t make the tale any less compelling.

Delivered in a visual novel-esque manner, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion’s greatest strength lies in the fact it is not pretentious. The protagonists are not larger-than-life heroes; they’re men. They’re people we can empathize with. While it is doubtful that the dialogue will win the Pulitzer prize anytime, it’s still some of the best I’ve recently seen. You will care about them, regardless of whether you intended to or not.

But let’s get to the real reason you’re reading this. An exquisitely-crafted world is good and all but is Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion fun? The answer to that is: it depends. Did you want something you could fiddle with and forget while you’re on the bus or the loo? If so, you’re not going to be very happy with what the Witching Hour has to offer. Ravenmark, to put it succinctly, is heavy stuff.

Utilizing a rock-paper-scissors (swordsmen beat spear-men, spear-men trump cavalry, cavalry wins over archers and archers have the edge over swordsmen) sort of approach to things, battles in Ravenmark are played out through a series of turns. Each round consists of two rather self-explanatory phases: the Command Phase and the Battle Phase. In the Command Phase, you give orders. In the Battle Phase, you watch as they’re carried out. Units will move. Abilities will be used. If they find themselves within range of one another, they will attack; an action that consists of nothing but some artwork sliding around and numbers dwindling where appropriate.

Simple as that might sound on paper, the reality is significantly more complex. To begin with, you’ll never have enough Command Points. You’ll also have to ensure that you’re constantly aware of the order in which the various units will move. One false move and you might find your foe neatly eluding your grasp even as you beat your head against the wall. On top of all that, you’ll also have to worry about being flanked and whether your army’s current Formations are sufficient for its needs. Do you break up a Formation into Daggers to allow for greater mobility or do you make use of the raw strength that such a contingent can offer?

If that wasn’t enough, you’ll also have to take geographical constraints into consideration, worry about active skills and passive abilities and give Standing Orders whenever appropriate. The Standing Orders battle system is a stroke of minor genius, by the way. With a Standing Order, you’ll be able to command a unit to pursue an enemy till it or the foe dies, or to rest until it has recovered much-needed HP.

It’s an absolutely glorious mess of details. The in-game tutorials are informative and well-done. The controls are exquisite; the large buttons and concise radial menus make me want to name my first-born child after the UI designer. The gameplay, once you’ve mastered its nuances, is a complete and utter joy; Ravenmark gives me honest-to-god, no-hyperbole-intended hope for serious iOS gaming. Sure, you’re going to find yourself beating your head against a wall in frustration whenever you find yourself outmaneuvered by the infuriatingly clever AI, but the satisfaction of a hard-won victory is incomparable. Ravenmark probably would have benefited from a few customization options or even just the ability to select what kind of troops you want to bring into battle but those are minor quibbles. Nitpicking, if you will.

I seriously couldn’t be happier. Witching Hour’s maiden project Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion is almost everything this iPhone-touting strategy game aficionado could ask for, and as long as you’re a fan of its somewhat hardcore nature, I will eat my fuzzy hat if you don’t find yourself thinking the same.

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As if there was any doubt left in your mind that Angry Birds has attained such ridiculous levels of success that describing it as “success” barely feels appropriate anymore, try this on for size: The Angry Birds family of games has now been downloaded over half a billion times. Sure, that figure is worldwide and across all versions, even the free ones, but to put things into perspective consider this: That’s about 1.6 Angry Birds downloads for every man, woman, and child in the United States. That’s just… incredible.

Rovio released the following video that has some other crazy statistics on Angry Birds:

If for some strange reason you still haven’t played an Angry Birds game, you should get on that. I prefer Seasons, but really, they’re all great games and available now for basically ever platform imaginable.

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How much should a game punish you? This is the question that hangs over Mountain Sheep's Bike Baron [$0.99] but the answer is totally subjective. Me, I can take a bit of brutality. Sadistic level design appeals — to a point. You'll need at least as much tolerance as I have to enjoy this game, but if, say, Trials HD is your high water mark for cruelty to gamers, you'll find a lot to like here.

Bike Baron successfully merges an excellent interface with charming art and sound design. Those things pull you in, and then the game tries to break you. If you're looking for a casual biking experience where you'll spend a lot of time soaring through the air, look elsewhere. If you get gleeful at the thought of pixel-precise jumps, trial and error, and endless retries, well, you might be a bit mad. Not that there's anything wrong with that — those are the exact things you'll find in Bike Baron.

Mountain Sheep has built over 40 levels that range in difficulty from easy to extreme. In more practical terms, they range from conventionally defeatable to unreasonably sadistic. All you need to do is get the Baron and his bike across the finish line. The controls are simple — stop and go buttons are positioned on the right, and buttons to tilt your bike are on the left. The levels are all quite short, and they're absolutely stuffed with checkpoints. You'll need 'em all before long.

Bike Baron comes from the cartoon school of physics. Levels are designed with a certain wackiness, with huge jumps, loops and explosions. But the Baron is slightly more realistic in design. Like most people, he's vulnerable to hitting his head, blowing up, smacking into ledges or crushing himself under his bike. Honestly, if you're going to participate in this kind of extreme biking, you really ought to be made of hardier stock.

But the Baron's fragility is only half the problem. The other half is the level designers at Mountain Sheep, who I've cursed several times an hour since starting their game. It doesn't take long to reach levels that require insane precision. Hit a jump at the wrong speed or angle and you're toast. Heck, a small dip in the road handled incorrectly can leave you little more than a smear across a ramp.

It's a frustrating approach to level design, and its exacerbated by touchy physics and stiff controls. Whether it's a good frustration or a bad frustration depends on how patient you are, how comfortable you are with repetition, and whether you're the sort that will throw your device after getting killed one too many times.

But for all that frustration, Bike Baron is exceptionally well-made. While everything about the game is set up to get you into the action as quickly as possible, it's also set up to ease frustration and charm players in the process. The menus are gorgeous, showcasing some of the game's excellent art. The sounds of fanfare echo organically to celebrate your successes and gruesome deaths. A comprehensive statistics screen shows you just how many times you've won or died, and you can enable ghost mode to compare your attempts.

For the casual player, the level-unlock system is a blessing. Each level costs one star to open, and at first you earn a star for every finish line you cross. Bike Barons doesn't let you off that easily for the entire game, though. Eventually, to earn a star you'll need to make it through under a time limit, collect all the coins, finish without a single crash or flip like a madman. Still, as long as you can pull off enough of those goals you can skip ahead to (nearly) any level you want. With up to three stars to be earned each level, there's (almost) no reason to keep bashing your head against anything you find too frustrating.

Only the best of the best will make it through all seven of the bonus Joker levels, though. Those are only unlocked if you earn three stars on every preceding level. I've only seen the first few, but I've heard that they crank the difficulty level up to 11. Enjoy?

Mountain Sheep is still planning for the future of Bike Baron, but in the meantime you can entertain yourself with user-created levels. The level editor is comprehensive and easy to use. Discovering levels is a bit tougher: you can only share them with level codes. Mountain Sheep has compiled some of the best on its website, and you can find more in our discussion thread.

Difficulty aside, the only serious issue I've had with Bike Baron is the lack of a quick level reset. It's easy to reset back to the previous checkpoint, but depending on the star you're trying to earn that isn't always enough. Occasionally checkpoints also position you in a spot you can't proceed from without awkwardly backing up. It's enough that going to the menu and resetting the level isn't ideal.

The Game Center integration is a sore spot, too. One leaderboard tracks your overall score for all the levels you've played, and there are only three achievements to earn, so all in all it's a bit bare bones.

Otherwise Bike Baron is solid, if you're into the difficulty it puts forth. It's not a type of difficulty that I'm particularly fond of, being as reliant as it is on pixel-perfect positioning. But that's not to say the game doesn't do a fantastic job of it. If you're looking for punishment, you can't do much better than this.

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Late in 2010, Semi Secret released SteamBirds [$1.99 / HD], a turn-based aerial dog-fighting game based on the Flash game of the same name, which we thought was "tons of fun". Apparently other people liked it too, as it's reportedly been played by 12 million people worldwide (including the online Flash version). Well, the original makers of the game, SpryFox, teamed up with HalfBrick to release a sequel – Steambirds: Survival [Free/HD]. And it's definitely worth checking out (again!)

It's a top-down dog-fighting game where you play a pilot with the Allies, fighting against the Axis powers, to protect the United Kingdom. But the cool twist is that it's also turn-based. Your aircraft has an arrow in front of it, which represents the distance and direction it will travel in the next turn. You can bend the line to control your plane's flight-path.

When you press the "End Turn" button, your plane moves for a couple of seconds, as do any other planes in the sky, including enemies.  If any enemies appear in front of you, your plane automatically opens fire. It's like a slow-motion dog-fight, which plays out in bursts. Some of the AI controlled planes are on your side, so they'll also shoot at any Axis enemies.

In the original version, the missions were pretty basic: The enemies all appeared at once and you had to shoot them all down. Whereas Survival has eight cities to unlock and defend, like Aberdeen, Manchester and Exeter. Each city has eight specific missions to complete, such as  "Down three planes", "Survive 5 waves (of attack)" or "take down 8 bombinos within 5 waves". Instead of one wave of enemies, there's now multiple waves, making the missions feel more much varied and interesting. In fact, there's much more content in this release overall, with 64 missions and eight planes now and a further 56 missions and seven additional planes to be released soon.

Once you've completed a mission you can either return to base to play the next mission, or continue playing for glory and to earn extra copper (money). You'll score more copper by taking out more challenging enemies. Once you've beaten a mission, you can't replay it, although after beating the first seven missions for a city a much harder eighth "infinite" mission is unlocked. You keep playing this eighth mission until the enemy eventually shoots you down; and you can replay it too, for better scores in Game Center or Openfeint.

In the original, your plane started with specific power-ups, with no additional power-ups being available during the mission. In Survival, power-ups can be gained by shooting down enemies. To use a power-up, you simply tap the arrowhead in front of your plane to display an icon for each acquired power-up. This might include super-speed to travel further or bombs to deploy when planes are tailing you. You can also collect homing missiles, a 180 degree turn, a 360 degree attack, shields or maybe a poisonous green gas to deploy in front of an approaching enemy aircraft.

The touch controls work brilliantly, allowing you to frequently and quickly adjust your plane's direction as you hunt down other (moving) planes. But remember, you're sometimes given a finite number of turns to complete a mission, so if you fly around excessively or chase down every single power-up, you could put the mission in jeopardy.

In Survival, each of the eight cities features a different aircraft for you to pilot, each with different strengths and weaknesses. For example, one of the first planes you unlock is the "Buster", a bomber with relatively weak guns. Whereas the "Looper" is powerful with fast guns, but has relatively weak armor and relies on 360 degree power-ups and careful flying to stay alive. You have to use different strategies for each unique airplane.

You can tap any aircraft, including enemies, to view it's statistics ("health", weapons, speed, agility and armor) plus a status description, such as "on fire – nearly dead" or "going down!" This allows a clever player to be strategic in their attacks. For example, prioritizing your kills by attacking the main threat first and targeting planes with a shorter firing range from a distance. Of course, if you prefer more casual play, you can just fly around shooting at stuff.

Another new feature is that you can use your copper to buy assistance at the start of a level (up to two extra controllable allied planes). This allows you to fly multiple planes together as a squadron, for defensive maneuvers or for stronger attacks. You can also use copper to unlock cities earlier, although this leaves less to spend on other things.

Steambirds: Survival is a free-to-play game, with advertising banners at the bottom of each menu screen and full-size advertisements between each level – but there are no adverts displayed while you're actually playing (although the standard version has a bug which causes ads to appear obtrusively, but the developers have already submitted a fix to apple). If you choose to remove the adverts altogether with an In-App Purchase (IAP), it also unlocks all of the eight cities. The developers advise that the entire game can be completed without IAP, but it's available if you're impatient to progress.

The developers plan to eventually deliver asynchronous multi-player Steambirds, which would be super-awesome. With the arrival of iOS 5, hopefully we'll see more asynchronous turn-based games being released. In the meantime, there's a free Flash version of Steambirds: Survival to try on your computer. It isn't exactly the same as the iOS version, but gives you a feeling of the gameplay …but since it's free (and a great game) you might as well just download the iOS version!

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I used to love strategy RPGs but as age has warped my enthusiasm so has it stolen my patience for all the genre’s clutter, meandering UI constructs, same-y production values, punishingly difficult fights, and oftentimes tedious leveling systems. The Game Bakers’ Squids [99¢] is a great change of pace. It’s a kinetic, clean, charming, and particularly streamlined entry in the aging genre that has a ton of character, fun, and unique constructs to share. If it wasn’t for the weird payment model, it’d be just about perfect.

Squids' setup goes a little something like this: in a troublesome period of squid life, you’ll be tasked with stopping an evil black ooze that threatens to destroy civilization with its ooziness. To accomplish this great deed, you’ll need to assemble a team of eclectic and multiple-armed things, all with different abilities and varying degrees of awesome, and take the fight to the core of the conflict.

There are four classes in total – the scout, the healer, the brawler-dude, and the gun-guy who can hit enemies at massive range. It’s a pretty uninspired setup saved by Squids’ inventive, grid-less, and active combat mechanic. Instead of moving space by space, you’ll be flinging your squids into enemies and areas of interest in the environment that contain goodies. When you connect with a foe, you’ll do damage according to a bottom-line. A stamina bar keeps you from endlessly flinging around the map to and fro and allows for turns. Enemies do the same.

Combat manages to remain consistently interesting throughout the experience, as the maps have a ton of surface area and even the more modest flings cover a lot of ground. Positioning your characters takes as much style and touch as it does thought, and you’ve got an entire map to work with, as opposed to constricted and designated kill zones featured in other similar games. You’ll also need to contend with the lack of level borders. Squids is fond of holes as much as it is of its pinball-like physics engine. When you make contact with an enemy, there are physical repercussions as the two (or more) of you spin off. Knocking foes off the ledge-less levels is a valid play strategy, but same goes for the enemies.

All blended together, Squid’s combat ends up being delightfully action-heavy, while still remaining a strategy game at its core. Individual fights never dance with monotony because you’re always moving around the breadth of a map, frantically avoiding edges and attempting to position yourself for rounds that’ll hopefully swing in your favor. The level design in particular is huge for the combat: Squids boasts a ton of colorful and intricate environments with not-so-subtle zones you can “capture” and control, as well as traps you can exploit.

Keeping true with conventions, invisible dice-rolls and statistics provide the groundwork for the damage dealt and taken. The currency for leveling up is the pearl, which you’ll receive for every downed opponent and find scattered around in the game’s world.

This currency rubs me the wrong way: it’s monetized and the balance of the game often reflects that. At some point, you’ll be aching for parity in conflicts, and the only way to get it in a reasonable way is to spend real-world coin on the fake-world currency. You’ll also be asked to buy the things you find in levels, including new party members, with Pearls as well, which ratchets up the need to always have more. It’s hard to agree with this kind of approach considering that the game asks for money from the get-go and then doesn’t give you some sort of exclusion from the profiteering systems in the process.

While Squids might suffer for its off-kilter payment model, it doesn’t make any sacrifices on the visual front. It’s a delicious, warmly crafted game that has an indescribable charm and whimsy that springs from its painterly look. It’s gorgeous, and all of its constituent parts, including the animations, the cutesy writing, and the sound production, support its style and tone spectacularly well. It’s an impressive feat.

The strategy RPG is, like, my arch-nemesis. I want them until I actually play them and start remembering why I dislike them while wading through their overbearing setups. Squids is remarkable in that it cooly throws out a lot of the garbage I associate with the genre and turns it on its head with a kinetic combat mechanic that keeps you in control without sacrificing any strategy. If it wasn’t for a wonky layer of in-app currency, I’d be screaming about its greatness. Instead, I can only tell that it’s definitely a good game with a fresh approach, but it’s a little rough around the RPG edges. I think you’ll like it, though, model be darned.

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Commander Pixman [99¢] from One Minute Games is a retro platformer. In fact, it's so retro that the graphics are intentionally pixelated, the landscape is formed by a simple yellow line and the background is an old-school scrolling star-field. Graphically, this is platforming cut down to it's most basic form. And I'm totally enjoying it.

Commander Andrew “Pixman” Blazkowicz has crashed and must escape from an alien base by reaching the end of each level. If we do this fast enough, we'll be awarded three stars. And if we kill all the enemies on a level, we'll receive a red badge. Both of these goals can be completed in one attempt, or during separate runs. This allows a rapid enemy-avoiding run-through and a separate unhurried enemy-hunt, squeezing more playability from each level.

There's a healthy 80 levels in total (65 plus 15 extra bonus levels). Each level is small and the goal is to complete them quickly, with some levels completed within a few seconds. This isn't a large platform game which takes ages to explore like Emberwind [99¢/HD], instead it's a rapid sprint, more like Mos Speedrun [$1.99/Lite], but here you're armed with a weapon. This is a game where you'll die every few seconds and then try again. You can quite easily die and restart 10 times in a minute, but that's all part of this game. Just reaching the end of the level, is enough to unlock the next level.

To unlock the bonus levels you can complete objectives to prove you're not a rookie. For example, completing level 20 unlocks the first bonus level and reveals the next objective: to earn an enemy-killing badge on level 22 within 13 seconds. Although having seen how hard the bonus levels can be, unlocking them is the easy part!

The game description mentions there's "over 20 hazards, monsters and utilities". This includes mines with delayed detonation, gravity lifts, trampolines, spikes, crushers, automatic turrets and teleportation portals. There's dissolving platforms and keys for locked areas. With simple graphics there's a risk of the levels appearing repetitive, but pleasingly, they feel well designed and varied, with enough difficulty to be quite challenging without being impossible.

To progress in this game you need quick reflexes and precision movements, as the enemies are often patrolling within a confined area leaving you just a tiny window of opportunity – a mere split second – to land in exactly the right place. So, the inevitable question is: "What are the controls like?"

Well, there's virtual buttons for moving left or right, jumping and shooting. The left, right and shooting parts work fine, but the floaty jet-pack jumping takes some getting used to. If you watch really carefully, Pixman's jumps seem to be slow at the start, then speed up -  and that teeny, tiny, nanosecond of delay at the start means the enemy often runs into you, whereas you might have expected to jump free. The jumping is such an important part of this fast-paced game that it needs to be perfect …and it almost is, it just takes some time to become accustomed.

After completing a level, you can watch your previous attempts all clambering simultaneously across the level in a mass-replay. It displays up to 40 simultaneous previous-attempts on a recent iOS device, or 10 on an older device for performance reasons. This ensures the game can run on older devices. After watching the trailer, some people may mistakenly assume you control multiple characters in the game-play, like Grim Joggers [$1.99/Free], but that's not the case. You control one commander at a time and trust me, that's challenging enough.

The mass replay feature is interesting to watch, because one-by-one each little green Commander drops off at the point they died, until eventually just one makes it to the finish zone. This feature would be improved if the last attempt was shown in another color, so you can assess your latest performance against other attempts. And since the movements have all been recorded, it would be nice in the future to have the option of a ghost of your best time to compete against.

With its emphasis on speed and times, this game is crying out for Game Center leaderboards and achievements, but unfortunately these aren't provided yet. However, the developer plans to integrate Game Center in one of the first updates and is also working on a content update that provides 20 harder(!) levels. The game does track some statistics already, such as your best time for each level and totals for time spent playing, stars collected, deaths and number of enemies killed.

Commander Pixman is a good game for hardcore platform gamers. It's fast-moving and challenging, with simplistic retro graphics and some heavier than usual background music. It's not for the death-adverse, as you'll die frequently and it requires skill, impeccable timing and perseverance as it's not easy to gain three stars for each level. If you can handle that, then it's also extremely satisfying to finally beat a level. Who knew eight seconds could leave you feeling so proud?

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Awesome Saucer [$1.99] slipped stealthily into the App Store a couple of weeks ago, without receiving much attention, but this well-presented 3d space-shooter deserves some acknowledgement. Nebuleux Games has used a unique graphical style, which makes it a memorable experience to play. And because it's universal, you can install it on your iPad and iPhone. Here's the low down…

You're a saucer pilot, responsible for flying the SCR-090 space fighter. It's an old-fashioned flying saucer, shaped like a frisbee, as often portrayed circa the 1950s. You fly around space, tracking, targeting and destroying the required quota of aliens to clear each area. Do it fast enough and you earn bonus points and unlock weapons. It's basically a dogfight situation, in space. This is an arcade-style game, so there's no story, missions, trading or traveling to specific locations. Instead, you simply score points by blasting aliens. When your shields hit zero, it's game over and you restart from scratch.

The graphics are, as the title suggests, quite awesome, in terms of their uniqueness. The enemies resemble glowing stars, which leave colorful trails, which are helpful for tracking them down. The default view is third-person perspective, looking from behind your saucer, however you can switch to first person perspective by tapping the screen. There's also crystalline asteroids to dodge or shoot.  The background graphics, such as particle clouds and interplanetary skies will make you pause mid-battle to check out the awesome scenery. Movements are all smooth, fast and responsive. And if you hit the 'boost' button, things get even faster for a few seconds, with an acceleration effect. At times the game does get a little too fast, and that's on easy mode!

There's a heap of weaponry systems (12 types) and you can try them out in the free-roaming tutorial. Weapons include a rapid-fire proton-burst, gas attacks, 360 degree lazer targeting and graviton missiles. Some games offer two or three weapons slots, but in Awesome Saucer your craft can be loaded with all of the weapons simultaneously.  The weapons auto-fire when an enemy is in range and targeted, so you can focus on navigating rather than mashing the fire button, although there's a manual fire button too. Now, need something to shoot? There's at least eight different enemies. Some are fast, others aggressive, some swarm, while kamikaze extra-terrestrials will chase you down and attempt to physically ram into your saucer.

The controls are a little different, with a left "flight stick" for steering and a right stick to rotate your saucer, so it rolls like a fighter jet. I didn't understand why the rotate stick was required, until the developer explained "It helps you turn faster, and rotating can help you track a target by spiraling in. But mostly it just looks cool". There's also buttons for braking and changing weapons.

If you took away the stunning graphics, Awesome Saucer would be less awesome and more ordinary. The gameplay is fairly shallow, a bit repetitive and doesn't provide a great feeling of progression, as there's currently no story, career mode, achievements or rankings and each game starts from scratch. Although, the game does track your overall kill statistics and the developer advises Game Center integration will be a priority update.  Fortunately, the graphics transform Awesome Saucer from an average dog-fighting game, into a visual experience, which is why it caught our attention. E.T might need to "phone home" to warn the galaxy, because I'm about to board my saucer!

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