The best Android games this week - iON Bond, Scurvy Scallywags, and Romans In My Carpet!

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

iON Bond
By Smiling Bag - buy on Android (69p / $1.17)

iON Bond is about charged particles. It might be easier, though, to think of it as a game about magnets. 'Plus' attracts 'minus', but 'plus' repels 'plus' and 'minus' repels 'minus'.

All you have to do is make the coloured particles bond by crashing them into one another. When you draw a line between two particles, they'll either zoom towards each other or drift apart.

There's no set answer or solution to each level: you just have to play around with the scientific sandbox until you win. And just when you get the hang of it, developer Smiling Bag throws in a whole new mechanic to mess you up.

Scurvy Scallywags
By Beep Games - download on Android (Free)

This week, Ron Gilbert ported his much-loved pirate game to Android. No, not Monkey Island! I mean Scurvy Scallywags, of course. Silly billy.

This is actually a raucous musical about pirates. You have to simultaneously act the part of swashbuckling adventurer type and keep the theatre production on track by selling tickets and fixing leaky pipes.

You do all this by playing a smart match-three puzzling RPG that actually puts your pirate hero on the game board. And you move him or her about by matching up gems, which lets you trounce baddies or pick up quest items.

It's funny and compulsive. Just note that this Android edition is free-to-play, so some of the Silver Award-winning iOS edition's mechanics have been tweaked.

(You'll have to make do with SCUMMVM for Monkey Island.)

Romans In My Carpet!
By Witching Hour Studios - buy on Android (£1.99 / $2.99)

The thing I like most about this game is that Witching Hour Studio doesn't even try to explain why this dorm room is infested with microscopic Roman soldiers.

It's just the way things are. There are tiny imperial troops riding spider-drawn chariots and fighting on a battlefield pocked by blobs of chocolate and flanked by enormous 20-sided dice. Get used to it.

But this seriously absurd concept doesn't affect the smart and addictive turn-based strategy fun we know from the Ravenmark series. Whether in multiplayer or in the campaign, this is a feisty little game of tricky tactics and juggling units.

And as Witching Hour so astutely puts it, "the in-app purchases are only for cosmetic uses. There is no pay-to-win rubbish in this game."