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Top 10 best iPhone and iPad games of September 2014

Autumnal awards

Top 10 best iPhone and iPad games of September 2014
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iOS

Every time you start an iOS game, you step into the shoes of someone new.

This month we got to be a Cold War spy, a delivery truck driver, and a security guard in a restaurant where the animatronic animals come to life and feed on human flesh.

if video games are supposed to offer escapism from the dreary doldrums of real life, the App Store offers a pretty wide spectrum of experiences.

These ten games, all released in September 2014 and recipients of Gold and Silver Awards on Pocket Gamer, should get you started on your digital day dreaming.

CounterSpy
By PlayStation Mobile - buy on iPhone and iPad
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Stealth games work well the first time. When you're scoping out the area, memorising guard patrol paths, and anxiously tip-toeing into unfamiliar rooms. But when you die and have to do it all again, the tension is gone.

That might by why Cold War thriller CounterSpy chooses to randomly jumble up its levels every time. So as you descend into these nuclear bases, to make off with secret blueprints, you'll always act with nervous trepedition.

And while the controls (a handful of context-sensitive swipes and taps) might pale in comparison to the PS Vita version, you can't complain about the price.

Five Nights at Freddy's
By Scott Cawthon - buy on iPhone and iPad
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Most would tell you that horror games just don't work on handheld. The terrifying Five Nights at Freddy's would like to argue otherwise. And it will do so in the medium of nightmares.

The game puts you in control of a fleet of CCTV cameras, so you can watch over Chuckie Cheese style animatronics that wander about in search of human flesh. You only have a few tools to stop them - and only limited electricity to use them.

Your inability to move, your powerlessness, the fuzzy visuals of the CCTV feeds, the chilling audio cues, and those god damn moving bears that are scary enough before they get a pang for man meat all make Five Nights genuinely frightening.

Twelve a Dozen
By Bossa Studios - buy on iPad Twelve a Dozen

File this under "I wish I thought of that". This smart puzzle-platformer hybrid stars a funny walking telly with the number 12 on its screen. By teaming up with other numbers he can change his face value and overcome obstacles.

So he might need to tag-team with a three to push a button that says 15. Or he might need to find a much bigger number to cross over a bridge that only allows those greater than 23.

All this educational nonsense is backed up by some sharp platforming, cute 2D visuals, and a storyline that keeps you adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing until you've forgotten you've been tricked into doing maths.

RGB Express
By Bad Crane - buy on iPhone and iPad
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RGB Express owes a debt of inspiration to early iOS puzzler Trainyard. Both are about guiding coloured vehicles to coloured stations, by plotting out complex paths and avoiding head-on crashes.

Express does have ideas of its own, though. For starters, you must pick up colour-coded packages on your journey. Plus, there are switches, drawbridges, strategic drop off zones, and package-nuetral white vans.

And best of all: a devilishly clever feature where drawing a path for one truck shows you a ghostly aspiration of the other trucks's movements, so you can see where collisions will happen without tiresome trial and error.

Mikey Boots
By BeaverTap Games - buy on iPhone and iPad
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Forget what you know about the Mikey games. This isn't a pixel-precise platformer about hopping over spike pits and sliding along on your knees like a 12 year old faced with freshly-polished linoleum.

Instead, Mikey's new rocket-powered boots completely change the gameplay, turning this into a floaty, slightly Flappy style game. Now it's about weaving through mazes of enemies, mines, rockets, and coins.

Don't let the lazy pace fool you, however. This is still a brutal game with harsh time limits, endless enemies, and level layouts to memorise. It might rile up the purists, but stick with it and you'll find Mikey is as tricky as ever.

FOTONICA
By Santa Ragione - buy on iPhone and iPad
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The 3D endless runner is pretty passé at this point. Especially as every lame summer blockbuster seems to have one on the App Store. But like a car battery to the tongue, FOTONICA makes you sit up and take notice.

It's got those arresting vector-drawn visuals that belong in an arcade in 1983. It's in first person. It ditches the usual swipe controls for a novel hold-and-let-go system. It's utterly engrossing and savagely difficult.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War
By Ubisoft - buy on iPhone and iPad
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Don't play Valiant Hearts for its gameplay. As a point and click adventure, with a smattering of stealth sections, rescue missions, and boss fights, its merely quite average.

Instead, play it for the characters (a band of unlikely heroes, all confounded by the chaos of World War I), the heart and humour felt throughout, the reverence for the war (complete with historical photos and letters), and the strong storyline.

Yes, the two are often butting heads with one another, as you bounce from a real letter sent from a soldier to his sweetheart to a cartoon boss fight against a Zeppelin. But when everything's in sync, Valiant Hearts emerges as something special.

Anomaly Defenders
By Chillingo - buy on iPhone and iPad
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The first three Anomaly games were described as reverse tower defence. Which means you played as the little cannon-fodder troops that got chewed up by the corridor of carefully placed gun turrets.

For the final game in the series, 11bit has reversed the reversal and ended up with bog standard tower defence. So it's back to basics, as you litter the battlefield with gun turrets to fend off mobs of enemies.

Luckily, this is one of the best tower defence games yet. It looks great, and is packed with tactical depth. Maybe Anomaly should be remembered for its sharp strategies, rather than its genre gimmicks.

Pokemon Trading Card Game Online
By The Pokemon Company - download for free on iPad
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You can have your Hearthstone. You can have your Magic. If your card game doesn't feature Jigglypuff, I don't want to know.

It's not just Pokemaniacal nostalgia, though. This is a fast, deep, and addictive card game and it works nicely on iPad. There's a huge collection of cards to play with, loads of multiplayer modes, and a generous serving of content for solo players.

MUJO
By Oink Games - buy on iPhone and iPad MUJO

Don't be fooled by MUJO's ocean of tiles - this is not your typical match-three puzzler. Instead, it's about stacking.

You can tap on three connected red tiles, but that will do a piffling three damage to your enemy. Instead, you want to stack them together to make an uber tile, then combine that with other red tiles to do massive damage.

It's a little slow, a little confusing at first, and there are some slightly suspicious IAPs for a paid puzzler. But it's certainly unique, and worthy of further investigation.


Previously... August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 August 2014 - July 2014 - June 2014
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer