8 best iPhone and iPad games this week - Atomic Fusion, Ninja Village, and more

Every Friday, Pocket Gamer offers hands-on impressions of the week's best new iPhone and iPad games.

Most of the team was at PG Connects this week. That was our first big mobile gaming conference, where we connected tiny indie devs with monstrous global publishers.

To catch up, we've been playing all the new iOS games like crazy in the past few days. You know, so we can do our job and provide this at-a-glance digest of all the new iPhone and iPad games worth bothering with this week.

Think we've missed a top new iOS game? Shout at us with all your might in the comments section at the bottom.

Atomic Fusion: Particle Collider
By Bytesized Studios - buy on iPhone and iPad (Free)

A nimble-fingered arcade romp about switching the polarity of a floating particle as you thread it through expanding rings of coloured energy. Harry called it "a well-put-together anti-shooter" and a "rich and rewarding experience" in his Silver Award review.

Best of all, the Game Center achievements provide you with bitesize scientific facts on the elements you unlock. Carbon in the form of lonsdaleite is the strongest known substance. Hm! The more you know!

Tales of Phantasia is a well-loved Super Nintendo RPG from the mid 90s which has been brought, kicking and screaming, to the present day as a free-to-play mobile game. It needs a constant web connection, and you can buy your way back to life with IAPs.

But beneath the nightmare mobile nonsense, this is a bonafide classic, with turn-based battles, betrayal, and time-travel, and the starting point for a mammoth "*Tales of*" franchise that rivals Final Fantasy in terms of the sheer number of games.

Note: This game is currently only available in North America.

Glyph Quest
By Alexander Trowers - buy on iPhone and iPad (Free)

Between Puzzle Quest, Dungeon Hearts, and 10,000,000, the whole RPG-meets-puzzler thing is getting a bit tired. But we've got room for one more: the scrappy Glyph Quest.

As usual you're matching coloured runes to cast spells and beat up rats. It's got a clever system where following one elemental attack (say fire) with its reverse spell (water) gives you a boost. Certainly keeps you thinking a few moves ahead.

In Fear I Trust
By Chillingo - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.99 / $2.99)

I haven't played this one yet. That's despite the fact that I'm supposed to be reviewing it for the site. But early impressions of this creepy Unreal Engine-powered psychological horror adventure are promising.

You'll investigate crime scenes, solve puzzles, and probably soil your favourite trousers as you run away from nightmarish visions. Why did I agree to review this, again? Full critique next week.

Front Wars
By Gregory Challant - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.99 / $2.99)

Front Wars is Advance Wars. It's no secret. Just like Nintendo's strategic masterpiece, Front Wars sees you moving squat little soldiers around a colourful battlefield, and getting into stat-swapping auto battles with the enemy.

Unlike Advance Wars, it's got a World War II skin and online multiplayer over Facebook and Game Center. No points for originality, then, but until Intelligent Systems gets its Apple dev license, it will have to do.

Ninja Village
By Kairosoft - buy on iPhone and iPad (£2.99 / $4.99)

Game Dev Story dev Kairosoft is still pumping out cute pixel art management sims. This time you're put in charge of a village full of ninjas, who you must recruit, train, and send off into automated battles with rival clans.

In our review of the Android version we warned that "*Ninja Village* is a game in which you spend just as much time not playing it as you do playing". The game still walked away with a respectable Bronze Award.

Hopeless: The Dark Cave
By Upopa - buy on iPhone and iPad (Free)

A game all about quick reflexes and itchy trigger fingers. Can you shoot the demons as they loom out of the darkness, without accidentally capping one of your marshmallow pals?

There's not much to this free microgame, but reviewer Matt said "easy to pick up and difficult to master, the deceptively twee Hopeless: The Dark Cave is a perfect game for short bursts of entertainment".

Song Blaster
By GameFly Games - buy on iPhone and iPad (Free)

Song Blaster can take a track from your iTunes song library and turn it into the blueprint for a manic space shmup. Enemies waltz in to the beat of the song, and intense anthems and blaring choruses make the screen fill with foes.

It's not the best shooter ever made. And it's not the best of these games that turn music into gameplay. But for free, it's worth seeing few of your favourite songs turned into the backing track for an arcade game.