The visual design is mellow monochrome, the sound design features a meditative soundscape with subtle tings indicating actions, and the game design is completely chill with no time or move goals. It’s a very zen experience that is achieved through visual, game, and sound design. Rop is a minimal puzzle game where you have to create a specific shape with the help of a rope. In other words: I’m horrible at spatial navigation. Sometimes you know where a piece would fit but you just can’t seem to rotate the cube there. This game frustrates me more than any other on this list because of the time crunch combined with the “I almost had it” factor. If you fit the pieces by rotating the cube horizontally, you gain 1 second if you rotate it vertically from the front, you gain 2 seconds, and from the back, you gain 3 seconds. Time counts down continuously but you gain time for fitting each piece. This would be easy enough if you wouldn’t run out of time really, really fast. On the top of the screen, you see a shape and you need to rotate your cube to get the correct hole on top. Your cube has a shape missing on each side. It’s exactly like those shape recognition games for toddlers but much, much harder. This game is all about spatial navigation: the goal is to complete a cube by placing the shapes inside the correct holes. Larger outlets haven’t reviewed it yet but smaller blogs seem to like the game universally so far. I like the zen nature of this game and since it’s a paid app there are no distracting ads or in-app purchases to worry about. Some variation is added by different shaped tiles - hexagons can be confusing! The familiar concept is executed in a visually pleasing manner with nice, smooth pastel colors. You earn points based on the number of moves and the time spent on each puzzle. Noodles! is a rehash of a familiar concept – join together branching tubes to create a closed system. But whenever I need some light and fun entertainment to. Once you’re through the first 5-6 levels you’ll be taking extensive thinking breaks while you figure out your next move. Some skills allow you to get rid of minions by moving around them, jumping next to them, throwing your speak, etc. You might be able to kill two enemies with one blow now, but that might mean you’ll get hit by an arrow by a third enemy. You need to position yourself just right, especially at later levels. Where hoplite shines is the way you interact with enemies. Along the way, you’ll progress by selecting various abilities that will give you an edge over enemies. The aim of Hoplite is to get your character through each level of a dungeon. Thank goodness I was swayed by the review - it is one of the best puzzle/dungeon crawler games I’ve played. While not super-expensive, at $2.99 it sounds a bit pricey for a simple chess-like game. Hoplite is an example of a game I probably wouldn’t have bought without the overwhelmingly positive reviews out there. If you don’t mind the occasional video ad which takes away 15 seconds of your life this game is perfectly enjoyable without buying stars. The app is mostly ad-supported and you can buy stars that allow you to resume the game if you don’t make it to the target. The longer you press down, the harder your “throw” and the farther the puck will travel. The aim goes left-right, you need to press down at the correct time to get the puck in the right direction. The aim is to get your puck into the target area. I grabbed my phone just now to take a screenshot and I ended up playing for 10 minutes trying to beat my high score of 411. Into the Circle has a perfect difficulty progression curve, a pleasant design and is impossible to put down. 20 Mobile Games to Put Your Brain to Test