The 3 best Android games this week - Mikey Shorts, Pathogen...

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

This week on Google Play, we found an abstract digital boardgame about infecting your friends with a deadly virus, a cute platformer that comes into its own when you aim for the leaderboards, and a card battler with a sense of humour.

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

Card City Nights
By Ludosity - buy on Android (£1.49 / $1.98)

A clever cartoony card battler from the guys behind Ittle Dew. Card City Nights boasts a complex but wonderfully unique battle system where you must line up the arrows on cards to activate them.

Card City Nights is also a barmy adventure game with funny characters, weird locations, a Pokemon-style story of legendary cards, and a sexy hip hop / smooth jazz soundtrack.

Best of all, developer Ludosity says that "there are no IAPs in this game! You collect booster packs by simply playing the adventure from start to finish."

After last week's disastrous Adventure Time card battler on iOS, those are welcome words.

Pathogen
By Gameblyr - buy on Android (£1.99 / $2.99)

Abstract infection sim Pathogen is billed as a strategy boardgame. This is despite the fact that it doesn't actually come on a board.

But that description still kind of works. That's because it has the DNA of a tense turn-based boardgame like Othello or solitaire, but mixes in a nasty viral infection system that would be totally annoying to replicate with wooden tokens or cards.

We called it a "novel strategy game that checks all the boxes for a fantastic digital experience" in our review of the game. There's a full campaign, online multiplayer, loco multiplayer, and a map editor here.

Mikey Shorts
By BeaverTap Games - buy on Android (69p / 99c)

You won't find Mikey Shorts particularly thrilling if you play it as a slow, cautious platformer. It's simply too easy, and lacks the sort of imagination that keeps us plodding through Mario games.

But if you try to aim for the deadline needed to get a three-star award, the game suddenly transforms into a feisty speedrun platformer of precision jumps, perfectly timed slides under barriers, and near-collision encounters with bad guys.

That's why, when we reviewed it on iOS in 2012, we called it "a game about dedication, patience, training, and sliding along on your knees like a six-year-old on a sugar rush who's just spied freshly polished linoleum".