The best iPhone and iPad games this week - Thomas Was Alone, KeroBlaster, Table Tennis Touch
Shoot the lonely with ping pong balls
Every Friday, Pocket Gamer offers hands-on impressions of the week's best new iPhone and iPad games.
Thomas Was Alone
By Bossa Studios - buy on iPad (£5.99 / $8.99)
A brilliant port of the classic indie platformer. With its small-slice levels and minimal controls Thomas Was Alone feels like it was always meant to be a mobile game.
It tells the story of a rectangle named Thomas and his quest to find out why he exists. He's joined on this adventure by a series of other shapes, each with their own platforming powers.
At review we gave it a Silver Award and called it "an eminently entertaining slab of balanced indie-platforming fun."
It's not the toughest jumper on the App Store, but it's not supposed to be. This is a game entangled in its narrative, delivered in short sharp bursts, and if you've never played it before it's well worth a look.
KeroBlaster
By Studio Pixel - buy on iPhone (£2.99 / $4.99)
KeroBlaster is a wonderful side-scrolling shooter with an intriguing control system. A three-way slider lets you point your laser-based weapons around, and buttons let you dart around the action platforming levels.
It's brilliantly well put together, as you'd imagine of a game from the developer of Cave Story, and for all of its jagged old-school edges, it's a tight and polished modern shooter that rarely puts a foot wrong.
There's a hefty wodge of levels to leap and shoot your way through, with pattern-following boss battles and frantic chase sections thrown in too.
We gave it a Silver Award at review, describing it as "a jagged-edged retro-fuelled explosion of brilliance."
Table Tennis Touch
By Yakuto - buy on iPhone and iPad (£2.49 / $3.99)
A fast-paced ping-pong sim that lets you control your paddle with swishes and swipes, Table Tennis Touch is a wonderfully precise digital version of the sport.
There are arcade challenges to complete that enhance your skills, and you'll unlock better bats as you play through the huge career campaign.
On top of all that the game looks stunning, with a vast amount of different arenas and tables all rendered in shiny, neat-looking 3D.
If that's not enough to convince you, there's also a table tennis playing robot called Wiff Waff who walks you through the basics. What's not to like about that?
