The best Android games this week - Unmechanical, Blackwell, and more
Ghosts, robots, ghobots
Every Friday, Pocket Gamer offers hands-on impressions of the week's three best new Android games.
Blackwell Trilogy
By Wadjet Eye Games - buy on Humble (pay above average)
Android gamers might know Wadjet Eye Games from the defiantly retro point and click adventures Gemini Rue and The Shivah. But the tiny New York studio's real claim to fame is the Blackwell series.
This five part saga follows Rosa Blackwell: a struggling writer who discovers she can talk to the dead. Alongside of her spirit medium Joey - a trilby-sporting smart alec who died in the Jazz era - she'll help the recently deceased pass on.
It's a point and click series that can be sweet, funny, and enthralling. And it has clever puzzles that encourage you to think like a detective or reporter. And while the first two episodes are shakey, part three is a belter.
The final two chapters are also coming to Android… sometime.
Unmechanical
By Teotl Studios - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.99 / $2.99)
A flying robot would normally be cause for concern and could possibly lead to the inevitable destruction of the human race.
But the tin can bot in Unmechanical is so cute, you could never imagine him leading an army of androids in an uprising of metal versus flesh. He's just too cute. Aww look at that tractor beam lifting a giant boulder. So adorable. Mind my head!
In this game, his job involves solving all sorts of clever puzzles by manipulating physics, switches, levers, buttons, weights, and lasers. It's all backed up by an unsettling isolated atmosphere, like during the dystopian aftermath of all-out robot warfare.
Anomaly Defenders
By 11bit - buy on Android (£2.99 / $4.99)
The Anomaly games are about playing tower defence in reverse. Or tower offence, if you will. Whatever you call it, this series was defined by the fact that you play as the creeping troops, plotting a safe path through the gun turrets.
So it's a little bizarre, then, that 11bit would finish the series off with a game that reverses the reversal and takes us back to a world of plopping down towers and fending off swarms of enemies.
But what it loses in originality, it makes up for in strategic depth - this game has resource gathering, tech trees, cover, and ambushes - and absurdly lavish visuals. It might be the best and most gorgeous TD game yet.
Harry gave it a Silver Award and said "it might start out a little sluggishly, but when Anomaly Defenders reveals the full extent of its strategy, you can't help but be sucked in".
