Top 10 best iPhone and iPad games of March 2014

In March, the App Store has provided, as it is wont to do, a truly mixed bag of new games.

A game where you run a cruise liner, a game where you trudge around '90s Tokyo picking fights with demons, a game where you fall in love with a nuclear missile.

A game so abstract it's just a mess of colours and shapes. And a game so realistic it tells you the exact sobering death toll whenever you drop a nuke on another country.

But that's what we love about the App Store. How it's never a ceaseless march of joyless shooters about white dudes with buzz cuts. You never know what's coming, and that makes trudging through the clones and the crap so rewarding.

Here are ten amazing iOS finds from March, then.

Wave Wave
By Tom Janson - buy on iPhone and iPad

Wave Wave is a treacherous zig-zag dash through a maze of instadeath pointy things. A heart-pounding reaction test where your brain gives up and goes home and lets your fingers take over.

It wouldn't be so hard if it wasn't pumping a thumping electro soundtrack into your ears, and twisting the camera around like your iPhone is tripping balls.

Wave Wave's influences may be abundantly clear - in his most shameless moment of aping, Janson even got a Super Hexagon sound-alike to say 'Begin' and 'Game Over' - but this is no clone.

It's something fresh, and something you'll be glad to have on your phone.

First Strike
By Blindflug Studios - buy on iPad

When it comes to nuclear warfare, the only winning move is not to play.

But by doing so, you'd miss out on a slick, tense, rapid-fire strategy game about building up an arsenal of missiles and blowing North Korea off the face of the earth... enormous death tolls be damned.

There's something slightly twisted and discomforting about the game, but you can sleep at night knowing that some $10k of revenue has already been handed to organisations working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Lionheart Tactics
By Kongregate - download free on iPhone and iPad

So, you want the taut tactical warfare of Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem but don't want the pages of lore, the endless complexity, or the price tag?

Try Lionheart Tactics, a simple but satisfying series of turn-taking strategic bouts with rich character art and enough depth to keep you engaged through the whole campaign.

It's also got asynchronous multiplayer against the squads of other players, if you think you're hard enough.

Block Legend
By Dot Warrior Games - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.49 / $1.99)

You can play Block Legend by concentrating solely on the sea of tiles in the centre of the screen and furiously hunting and tapping on clusters of swords, shields, treasure chests, and hearts.

But you'll be missing out on the charming and inventive little pixel-art world you're suppose to be saving. A world of basketball players, rocket ships, and cats in cars fighting bizarre monsters in wacky locations.

So, while Block Legend isn't the most deep or original puzzle-RPG hybrid (check out 10000000 for that), it's hard not to play it with a smile.

Shin Megami Tensei
By Atlus - buy on iPhone

Being able to play Shin Megami Tensei in English will certainly help you understand the story, but it won't make the game any more approachable to new players.

This ancient dungeon-crawler - the grandaddy of the much-loved SMT and Persona franchises - refuses to hold your hand, offer hints, or point you in the right direction. You either need steely determination or a walkthrough from GameFAQs.

But hiding beneath that cold, uncaring exterior is a deep and rewarding RPG, and a fascinating antique curio for anyone who has found herself obsessed with Atlus's games.

Mines of Mars
By Crescent Moon Games - buy on iPhone and iPad

Mines of Mars works almost on a loop. You dig down into Martian soil, extract some gems, return to the surface, and spend the gems on tools to help you dig even farther. Repeat.

Until you run into a giant boss that takes up half the screen, that is. At that point, your safe little mining job takes quite a different, quite deadly turn.

This is an atmospheric, engaging sci-fi game - you'll be compelled to keep on digging just to see what's lurking beneath the next block. Will it be a dark secret, a pocket of gems, the next part of the story, or another terrifying boss?

World Cruise Story
By Kairosoft - buy on iPhone and iPad (£2.99 / $4.99)

The problem with Kairosoft - the Japanese studio behind breakout hit Game Dev Story - is that all its games are pretty much identical, and it releases them all too quickly.

But, you know what? It's been a while since the last Kairo-sim. And we've got a hankering for a cute pixel-art management game. So, we'll gladly sink another week or so into World Cruise Story.

This one puts you in charge of a luxury liner, and tasks you with plopping down rooms and decorations to keep your passengers content. You'll also sail from port to port, organising day trips for your customers.

Clarc
By Golden Tricycle - buy on iPhone and iPad

You don't really need a good reason to engage in 100 clever, inventive, and fiendishly difficult spatial reasoning puzzles, but Clarc's got you covered anyway.

You're a tiny spider-like bot, and the last sober automaton in a doomed nuclear facility. You've got to save your facility from an intruding spaceship and rescue your new crush: a missile.

This sets up 25 levels of re-routing laser beams, plopping boxes on buttons, carrying tipsy drones to safety, and solving various other devious puzzles. All with slick controls and inky Borderlands-style graphics.

Block Fortress War
By Foursaken Media - buy on iPhone and iPad

Block Fortress War answers, in explicit detail, the question: what would happen if Command & Conquer and Minecraft got involved in a steamy moonlight tryst?

It would look something like this: a resource-gathering real-time strategy game where you can stop time and whip up a blocky defensive wall, lined with flamethrowers and machine guns.

It's a little jumbled, a little repetitive, and a little rough around the edges, but the mixture of cuboid warfare and creative defence is potent, and the game is filled to bursting with stuff to do.

Boom Beach
By Supercell - download free on iPhone and iPad

Everyone and his grandma has got a Clash of Clans clone.

Gameloft's done one, as has Remedy, Kabam, EA, Square Enix, and countless others. But the last studio you'd expect to rip off Supercell's game would be... Supercell.

But here we are, with a military palette swap of Clash of Clans from the guys behind Clash of Clans. The same smart mix of building, attacking defending, and waiting, but now with bazookas instead of archers.

For all its similarities to Clash of Clans, though, Boom Beach offers some fresh stuff that will give Clash of Clans veterans something new to think about. You have more control of your troops in battle, a more dynamic map, and an overhauled economy to dive into.

If you hate Clash of Clans and all its clones, there's nothing to see here. If you love it and want more, Supercell is probably the firm to deliver it.

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Previously... February 2014 - January 2014 - December 2013