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The best iPhone and iPad games this week - Instantion, Groundskeeper 2, and Trials: Frontier

Robots, dirt bikes, and clones

The best iPhone and iPad games this week - Instantion, Groundskeeper 2, and Trials: Frontier
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iOS
| New releases round-up

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

Instantion
By Travis Fincaryk - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.49 / $1.99)

Instantion

Instantion is basically The Swapper for iOS. And if you've played that slick indie game on PC, you'll know exactly what we mean - and whether or not you want to buy Instantion.

If you haven't played The Swapper before, though, let me explain Instantion to you...

You play as a wireframe lady who can create three identical clones of herself just by slingshotting seeds out of her belly button. These doppelgängers all move and jump in sync with their progenitor.

This enables you to solve all manner of mind-bending puzzles. First off, you'll be using clones to weigh down pressure-sensitive buttons. Then, though, anti-gravity, teleportation, and controversial clone modification get involved.

The game's packed with stuff to do. And while it's not the most pretty or original game ever made, the clever puzzles and fresh ideas will keep you plodding through all 50 levels.

Trials: Frontier
By Ubisoft - download on iPhone and iPad (Free)

Trials Frontier

Plot everyone's review scores for Trials: Frontier on a graph and the critical consensus for RedLynx's latest stunt bike sim would resemble one of the lumpy bumpy tracks you have to navigate in the game.

Most have praised the actual biking bits here, and the way this one feels like a proper Trials game - touchscreen be damned. Others have moaned at all the extracurricular stuff that comes part and parcel with its free-to-play status.

You know, like the way progress is based more on your luck with a roulette wheel than your skill on a bike. Or how a grind for items and a pesky petrol system often conspire to stop you playing unless you stump up some cash.

Our Harry liked it, though, saying that "Trials: Frontier isn't quite as deep an experience as you might find in the less mobile versions of the game, and it lacks the hardcore, razor sharp edge that made the series so popular."

"But if you're looking for a bike-balancing blast with a bit of pop then you're going to find a lot to like here."

Groundskeeper 2
By Pascal Bestebroer - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.49 / $1.99)

Groundskeeper 2

The latest game from Gunslugs developer OrangePixel features messy, scrappy, tense firefights in cramped single-screen arenas.

As you fight an intergalactic war with robots from space, you're constantly unlocking more worlds and more weapons and more power-ups. And watching the 'percentage complete' meter creep up and up.

Plus, the game is randomised every time you kick the bucket, so you'll be aching to jump back in for more.

It's not quite as tight and taut as arcade action game Super Crate Box, but it looks nice, is enjoyable to play, and the call of "unlock more stuff!" is a hard one to ignore.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer