The best iPhone and iPad games this week - Monument Valley, FTL: Faster Than Light, and Word Explorer
Three-to-play
Every Friday, Pocket Gamer offers hands-on impressions of the week's three best new iPhone and iPad games.
Monument Valley
By ustwo - buy on iPad and iPhone (£2.49 / $3.99)
Monument Valley bristles with the sort of creative energy you don't see on the App Store very often. It's an intriguing scenery-shifting adventure full of charm, wit, and intelligence.
You control a pointy-headed princess who's traversing a series of levels in the titular dip. You need to manipulate the levels. How? By twisting handles, sliding scenery, and pushing blocks to make it to your goal.
It's a brief but brilliant glimpse at what the very best game developers can do within the touchscreen framework of the iPad and the iPhone. And you'll love every second you spend in its endearing company.
FTL: Faster Than Light
By Subset Games - buy on iPad (£6.99 / $9.99)
In some ways, FTL: Faster Than Light has always felt like it should have been on a tablet. This iPad port proves that that feeling was accurate.
It's a massive game of roguelike space exploration that sees you tweaking your modular spaceship, exploring alien worlds, and trying to get as far into the cosmos as you can without ending up dead. Which is tougher than it sounds.
It looks great, it sounds great, and it's full to the brim with the same new content that just went live in the PC version. If you've ever chuntered about a lack of premium games on the App Store, you really should get this bought.
Word Explorer
By Tower Studios - download on iPad and iPhone (free)
Word Explorer is a simple idea wrapped up in a clever package that pushes you deeper and deeper into its puzzling core with each anagram you solve.
It's a mixture of word search, crossword puzzle, and anagram solver. And it's all mixed together in a globetrotting pseudo-adventure that sees you snapping photos around the world.
As casual word-swiping puzzlers go, it's definitely up there with some of the best. And if you've any desire to prove your vocabulary is beyond reproach, there's a multiplayer mode available here, too.
