Back at the beginning of February we caught our first glimpse of First Strike, a real-time strategy game about nuclear was that was equal parts beautiful and gut-wrenching. Swiss developers Feinheit (now working as Blindflug Studios) got in touch today to say that the game is done and releasing next Wednesday night for iOS and Android.

I hate to be presumptuous but you have to get Ascension now — Playdek have just made it free. Click right here, open up the App Store, and download it. Your boss isn’t looking, quick. Did you get it? High five.

If you won’t take my word for it that a game about mass-transit system design can be a tense, white-knuckle thriller, go play the free in-browser beta of Mini Metro yourself. You’re the administrator of the city’s subway, and stations (and passengers) are popping up all the time. The city, in its bureaucratic wisdom, allocates you just one upgrade per week: a new line, additional cars for existing lines, under-river tunnels and the like.

The iOS platform has grown at such an incredible pace during its short lifetime, and mobile hardware has advanced to a point where it rivals dedicated gaming consoles. It's remarkable. But it also means it's becoming harder and harder to really bowl people over with fancy visuals.

Last week I heard from Glitchsoft, the makers of that perfectly-styled He-Man mobile game from 2012. The Canadian devs wanted to announce that they were putting the finishing touches on Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past for iOS and Android and that it would be available in May. Which very conveniently will land it right alongside the rush of promotion for Marvel’s Tyrion Lannister-starring X-Men film of the same name.

I know that we tend to regard touchscreen action games with the squinty suspicion that greets SyFy Channel original films and Ma Faraday’s Sunday roasts but I’ve had my eye on Crescent Moon’s Mines of Mars for quite a while now. This game combines the 2D mining ofMotherlode with a bit of Metroid-style action and it looks absolutely beautiful.

Owen asked me to have a look at how The Inner World is holding up since the adventure game received a much-needed patch the other day. A good three months after its release, and nearly two since Iweighed in on the bug-ridden iOS port of Studio Fizbin’s acclaimed PC adventure game, and I can now safely say that I’ve completed The Inner World, and that the game seems to be in a state where, well, it’s actually possible to finish it at all. “Most likely” possible, that is.

I’m not going to attempt to out-funny this trailer for The Reaper, because that’s a sucker’s game. But you should definitely watch this trailer for the forthcoming puzzler from Danish devs Kong Orange. It takes a page from Final Destination and has you setting up elaborate Rube Goldberg scenarios to help Death bag the souls he’s after. Death is also quite an enthusiastic dancer, it would appear.

I do know that the keenly-anticipated expansion to last year’s RPG of the Year runner-up is out right now for desktops on Steam. I’ve asked Harebrained Schemes if they had a target date for when the mobile version of Dragonfall would be released and they replied with their usual circumspection that they did not.

Ever since Foursaken Media announced Block Fortress: War last October, a spinoff of their hugely popular tower defense title Block Fortress [$1.99 / Free], we've been dying to get a glimpse of it in action. Sure, they released some very lovely screens of the game last month, but I'm talking about something that's in motion.

Atlus is getting ready to release an iOS port of their early '90s RPG Shin Megami Tensei, and for the first time ever it will be localized for a North American audience. As Atlus puts it in their press release, "For the first time in history, the ground-breaking role-playing game Shin Megami Tensei will be localized for North American release.

The boys at Pocket Gamer have uncovered a game that will let those of us with educations in humanities do something practical for once in our romantic, whimsical lives. Principia is a physics puzzler in the style of The Incredible Machine, but with real working electronics. It’s like a mobile Lego Mindstorms, or a nerdier Enigmo.

The Emperor himself would be embarrassed at the wealth of Warhammer-based games on the horizon: Slitherine’s Armageddon wargame, Herocraft’s Space Wolf, and Rodeo’s mysterious and high-tech new project — to name but three.

If you enjoyed the collection of puzzles in 2012's The Curse [$1.99], then you'll want to get your Excited Hat on as developer Mojo Bones has announced that the follow-up title called The Voyage is hitting the App Store this Thursday. The Voyage is a similar collection of classic brain teasers all tied together with a storyline and a piratey theme. Check out the trailer, narrated by your new adversary Captain Bucklebeard.

A tiny pixellated raven landed here atop Mount Hexmap at thePocket Tactics Sinister Rookery and Family-style Fried “Chicken” just now with the news that Disco Zoo will be dropping this week. This is Pocket Planes maker NimbleBit’s first go at publishing somebody else’s game — Disco Zoo isbeing developed by Milkbag Games, of which 50% isTrainyard creator Matt Rix.

Every year mobile hardware gets more and more powerful, rivaling the cutting edge graphics found on dedicated gaming systems. And that's great, but, it's important to remember your roots too. That's why I think there are so many retro-inpsired games still being released.

When I spoke to legendary internet comedy writer Seanbaby last October, we were all tantalised by the prospect of his debut game Calculords: a collectible card game that is all about arithmetic. Don’t like math? Seanbaby would probably tell you to piss off.

You know how I keep spouting forth about first-person turn-based dungeon crawlers being the hot new thing? Here is yet another clue to throw onto the mounting pile of evidence for my assertions. Servants! [clap-clap] Come tend to the evidence pile! It grows precariously tall and I fear for our collective safety.

Back in 2012, Singaporean developers Touch Dimensions released a mobile RTS called Autumn Dynasty that looked like nothing you’d ever seen before. Set in medieval China, it was a period painting come to life — remarkable to hold in your hands.

I love when touchscreens are used in interesting and unique ways, and the upcoming game Primal Flame from developer Irrelevant Fish does just that. You'll start out in total darkness, but a few swipes on the screen with your finger will "light" up your match, giving you limited visibility.

High Moon is a turn-based game set in a world where cowboys of the Old West settled their disputes with magic duels. That’s not actually that fantastical. Here at PT HQ we settle disagreements with magic all the time. My best trick is to go out to lunch with Phil and make my wallet disappear. That gets Phil every time, and gets me a free lunch.

Though they made their bones with idyllic representations ofprovincial villages and educational exhibits for science museums, Norwegian developers Turbo Tape Games decided somewhere along the way that the most valuable lessons are that all life is suffering and that there’s no outfit that isn’t improved by a generous splash of blood.

This might be news to younger readers, but there was a time when business sims were a big deal. Games like Capitalism,Theme Hospital, Detroit, and SimCity weren’t just profitable, they were bona fide hits.

This is too cute. In-between bigger projects, Ravenmark devs Witching Hour Studios have been making Romans In My Carpet!, a new turn-based wargame based on the Ravenmark Mercenaries engine.

During the course of last year, Zen Studios released CastleStorm to Xbox 360, PS3, WiiU, PC and the Vita, and today the developer has announced it's finally bringing the game to mobile.

Hey, I’m just being straight with you in the headline. Subset Games have revealed a whole slew of new gameplay details about FTL: Advanced Edition, the iPad edition of (and free PC update to) their hit sci-fi starship management sim that they announced last year.

Two reanimations of games from days gone by have appeared on the App Store: Cinemaware’s mobster adventure The King of Chicago and the fantasy epic Doomdark’s Revenge, games originally released in 1986 and ’85, respectively.

It's been a long time coming, but the beautiful pop-up book adventure game Tengami is finally finished and will be launching this week. Developer Nyamyam had already been hard at work on Tengami for quite some time when we first posted about it in August of 2012, and they were almost positive the game would release before the end of 2013 when they posted an update to their blog a year later. However, this past December Nyamyam had to make the tough decision to delay Tangemi into early 2014 to ensure it met their high standards. Hey, with a game as awesome looking as Tengami, I'd rather they didn't rush it.

Dial the clock back to August of 2012 and developer Turborilla had just unveiled the trailer for Mad Skills BMX [$0.99], the follow-up to their hit 2011 side-scrolling motorcycle racer Mad Skills Motocross [$0.99]. The game itself was an awesome mobile racer, with tight level designs that sucked you in as you tried over and over to shave precious tenths of a second off your top times. It was like Mikey Shorts with bikes. But man, that trailer. That thing really cracked me up. Well, Turborilla is back again, this time with a sequel to their original racer. And the trailer for Mad Skills Motocross 2 had me grinning even harder than the one for BMX did. Check it out.

We're always talking about how much we love when a developer takes a tried and true gameplay mechanic and slaps some RPG elements on top of it. Games like Dungeon Raid or 10000000 are just a couple of examples of the formula working really well. However, I don't think I would have ever thought to take the pipe-fitting puzzle mechanics of Pipe Dream and blend it with an RPG, but that's basically what the upcomingSwapQuest is all about, and it's such a brilliant fit I can't believe I haven't seen it done before. The trailer for SwapQuest pretty much speaks for itself, so give it a look.

In June of last year, Mi Clos Studio lifted the lid off of Out There, a space-themed strategy/survival/choose-your-own-adventure mashup with an incredible art style and atmospheric soundtrack. The following August during Gamescom, the studio released a brand new trailer which showed more of what the game had to offer, and it looked really great.

What happens when blowfish meets meteor? Undersea pandemonium, that's what. At least that's what you can expect from Sky Tyrannosaur's recently released, three-years-in-the-making iPhone game, Blowfish Meets Meteor.

The name "Crooz" probably doesn't ring a bell for you unless you're reading TouchArcade from an Asian market, in which case, you probably are totally familiar with them. Basically, they're fiercely competing in the mobile arena with GungHo, who you probably know of as the Puzzle & Dragons [Free] developers.

Trent Polack of Team Chaos, producers of my guilty pleasure Dragon Academy, sent me something new to look at the other day: a beta build of Enigmo: Explore, which is coming to iOS & Android in the next few weeks.

We’ve spent many slack-jawed minutes ogling screenshots of the extraordinary-looking Ultimate General Gettysburg, but we’ve yet to see the forthcoming game in action. Let’s change that, shall we?

Tucked in at the bottom of a Wadjet Eye press release announcing the final game in the Blackwell series for PC today is the news that the supernatural mystery franchise is coming to iPhones and iPads “this spring”. The adventure games imprint has already ported over sci-fi escapade Gemini Rue (to great acclaim from us) and synagogue-saving sagaThe Shivah.

This game tells the Three Kindom Period when warlords fought with each other. Player would lead an army to rise in revolt, breaking through all obstacles, and become a historically famous general with capability to fight against thousands of enemies.

Rolling the clocks back to late 2010, it's hard to think of a game that made a bigger splash in our community than Aralon: Sword and Shadow [$4.99]. We loved in in our review, and it really elevated iOS gaming to new heights with in-depth RPG elements that you just never saw in mobile games.

From our comrades-in-arms over at 164 we hear tell of a new board game just landed on iOS & Android: The Power Game, which is an abstract game the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever seen.

Here’s a publisher I didn’t expect to write about this week. Or ever, perhaps. Radiohead have a new app called Polyfauna that they’ve created with British design agencyUniversal Everything.

Tactical Space Command developer Douglas Triggs pinged me a note over the weekend with news that his iPad sci-fi fleet simulator is getting a major 1.2 update in the coming few days, adding 12 new scenarios to the game, plus a powerful new scenario editor that lets you create and share your own modules for it. There’s also a slew of UI improvements and tweaks included in the patch.

Doomdark’s Revenge, Chris Wild’s next modernized Mike Singleton ZX Spectrum classic, is out a week from today on pretty much every imaginable platform: iOS, Android, Blackberry Playbook (!), Windows, Mac, and Chumby. We last heard from Chris Wild when he brought us Doomdark’s predecessor The Lords of Midnight in December of 2012.

Aficionados of turn-based, first-person fantasy RPGs in the style of the old Might & Magic games must have performed some terrifying ritual sacrifices to bring about the renaissance the genre is having right now. We’ve had Silversword on iOS for a while, and Ubisoft’s Might & Magic X is available for your PC. Time to add another one.

If Pocket Tactics is the center of the cult slow-playing, stately-paced touchscreen sims and RPGs and strategy games, there’s a secret idol in the basement that we pray to in furtive moments: Rocketcat.

Modern Command (Free) by Chillingo Ltd is a tower defense game in which you must fight for the Earth's supply of a rare and valuable substance, known as Protonium, all while doing so under the command of an agency known as the MCA. This title brings an interesting angle to tower defense, which we will now explore.

Time for my semi-annual rant about the lack of proper city-builders on iOS, despite touchscreens being an utterly perfect platform for the genre. But Merchants of the Sky might scratch that itch. It’s a sandbox trading game set on an archipelago of islands in the sky, where the towns on each island are connected by blimps and airships. Heliumpunk? Hydrogenpunk? Something like that.

Just a week after it hinted at the imminent launch of the much-awaited game, Square Enix has released the mobile port of Final Fantasy VI, which was first debuted in 1994.

I spoke this week with tabletop publishers Repos Productions, who have been working on an iOS edition of the popular 7 Wonders for the last couple of years. Repos tell me that they’re expecting to have 7 Wonders up in the App Store this spring — specifically in April or May.

The Brothers Jackson, the indie game development quartet better known as Foursaken Media, have got a new game in the pipeline: Bug Heroes 2 is due out 20th of February. The game chronicles the elaborate wars that take place between the legions of insects in you’re house while you’re out at Tesco. Foursaken describe the game as a “tactical action/defense hybrid, with a dose of MOBA-like gameplay”, featuring both competitive and cooperative multiplayer.

GamerNationX might sound like a YouTube channel that reviews new flavors/colors of Mountain Dew, but they’re actually a Seattle-based indie studio with a promising proposition for us: an iOS real-time strategy game about assaulting and defending fortresses in Roman Gaul.

Since EA’s free-to-play reincarnation of the fondly-remembered PC strategy series Dungeon Keeper arrived on Thursday, there’s been a storm of outrage in the gaming press at what a crass, undisguised money grab the game is.

There’s a bevy of sales on at the moment pegged to the Lunar New Year, so let’s take a moment to thank our east Asian and Semitic friends who celebrate the holiday and give publishers another excuse to put on promotions.

Prolific digital board game specialists USM have sent across screenshots of their next offering: Kahuna is based on the Gunter Cornett tabletop game of the same name and it’ll be on the App Store next week. USM are the volk who previously brought Catan and the underrated War of the Roses to iOS.

Of the father-son duo at the top of the Slitherine/Matrix pyramid, the one more apt to spill newsworthy details on Twitter is definitely the elder McNeil, JD. But today’s tantalising tidbit is brought to you by son Iain, who’s revealed that celebrated designer Victor Reijkersz’s next Slitherine-published wargame is coming to iPad as well as PC.

Bug Heroes 2 from Foursaken Media is one of our community's (an my own) most highly-anticipated upcoming games, and today Foursaken has finally announced a release date for it. Rejoice! Bug Heroes 2 will be heading to the App Store on February 20th, and to celebrate this announcement Foursaken has released the first official trailer for the game. Spoiler alert: it looks awesome. Check it out.

If you keep an eye on our Upcoming iPhone Games Forum, you'll no doubt totally be aware of the phenomenon that is totally open development that some iOS developers get really into. Ernest Szoka's Only One is a perfect example of that, a game that was originally revealed all the way back in November of 2012 which has seem semi-frequent updates from the developer on what he's been up to.

Matt Rix (who created iOS puzzle phenomenon Trainyard back in 2010) and his collaborator Owen Goss have just announced on Twitter that their next game will be Disco Zoo, published by Pocket Planes makers NimbleBit. The brothers Marsh have made a fortune off the back of their games so I’m not surprised to see them branching out into publishing. I have no idea what Disco Zoo is all about but the trailer is the most charming thing I’ve seen today. I’ve ensconced it for you after the jump below.

The new version of the Kabam-developed strategy game based on Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” trilogy introduces Campaign Alliance Boss Battles. As its name suggests, this new feature lets you battle against some of the mightiest bosses or villains of Middle-earth with your alliance-mates inCampaign Mode.

Whether you’re 9 or 99, you can get such a kick out of playing each of the 90 levels in the new iOS game Grandpa and the Zombies.Grandpa and the Zombies is centered on Grandpa Willy, a geriatric hero who suddenly wakes up with a broken leg in a hospital full of zombies. Now, it’s up to you to help Grandpa Willy as he tries to escape from the undead in his wheelchair, whose brakes, as bad luck would have it, don’t seem to be working.

If you think playing Plants vs. Zombies on your iOS device is so 2010, then make sure to check out Trolls vs. Vikings as soon as it invades iOS next month.

In September of last year, during the Tokyo Game Show, Namco Bandai released an iOS port of their classic 1995 RPG Tales of Phantasia to the Japanese App Store. The game was entirely in Japanese, but it seemed like an English language version was in the cards, and indeed just today Tales of Phantasia [Free] has landed in the US and Canadian App Stores with full English language support.

Holy cats I forgot about Glyph Quest in the Out Tonight post yesterday. This is the match-3 RPG that ex-Bullfrog man Alex Trowers created to feed his baby. My oversight haunted me last night. Years from now, a knock at my door.

Earlier today, we featured Disney’s Where’s My Mickey? in our roundup of Apps Gone Free. As it turns out, Where’s My Mickey? has just gone free — for the first time at that — on account of its having been selected by Apple as its App of the Week in the App Store.

A strange trailer came across our desks here at TouchArcade today, and caught our attention. The trailer is for a game called Barmark, the first project by Swedish developerStormhatt Studios. So what is Barmark? I… don't know. It's classified as a point-and-click adventure, but with "no goals, no points and no death." Sound strange? I thought so too.

When all is lost, fear is set to become your best ally as well as your worst enemy in In Fear I Trust.In the game, you have to solve mind-bending puzzles as you try to find out what led to your becoming a test subject in a mysterious experiment.

Boulder Dash is turning 30 this year. And in celebration of its three decades of gaming longevity, the classic puzzle adventure game is getting a brand new sequel aptly called Boulder Dash – 30th Anniversary.

Klei Entertainment's action-adventure title Don't Starve arrived on desktop computers via Steam back in April of last year. It received a warm reception from both players and critics alike, and prior to the end of 2013 Klei announced that the game had garnered over a million players in the eight months since its release. Don't Starve arrived on PlayStation 4 earlier this month too, and is currently a free download for members of the PlayStation Plus service. With that promotion bringing in more players along with their already respectable player base from the Steam version, Klei has told Edge Online in an interview this week that they'll be looking to possibly expand Don't Starve's presence on additional platforms including Vita and iOS.

Samantha Lin is telling me about Regency Love, an adventure game set in 19th-century England which came out last month for iOS. ”We hope we have created something that can be enjoyed by women who love to read,” Lin says, “and who wish to be transported back into polite Regency society.”

Originally released in September of 2012, The Room wound up being a terrific puzzler from Fireproof Games. It was inventive, it was gorgeous, and it was devious. It made you think, and when you figured out the answer, you were wrong, and it made you think some more.

In an interview over at The Wargamer about his forthcoming PC gameHeroes of Stalingrad, Lock ‘n Load impresario Mark Walker let slip an interesting tidbit.

Road of Kings is a brand new adventure game for iOS, which promises iDevice users a gaming experience where “no two adventures are the same.” Featuring a “choose-your-own-adventure” mode of gameplay, Road of Kings offers a huge open world, countless characters to interact with, and excitingrole-playing game (RPG) elements.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition appeared iPad just over a year ago. A remake of Bioware's point-and-click RPG classic, the Overhaul Games-developed port was a collector's dream, cramming in all of the game's original expansions, and running on an improved version of the Infinity Engine.

If you have not yet heard the news, Get Set Games has done it again with Mega Jump 2 (Free). The original jumping game has made a huge dent in the App Store since its conception, so there is no reason to assume that Mega Jump 2 should be worse.

The acclaimed role-playing game sequel Baldur’s Gate II has finally arrived on iOS with the release of Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition for iPad.Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition is essentially a remake of the role-playing game Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn and its expansion, Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal.

The sequel to the acclaimed Japanese retro action role-playing game Across Age has finally arrived on iOS.Simply called Across Age 2, the sequel improves on the original, which wasreleased over three years ago, with various graphics and gameplay enhancements.

The product of Double Fine's record-breaking Kickstarter is finally set to see the light of day, at least for owners of Windows, Mac or Linux platforms. The first Act of Broken Age, Tim Schafer's first foray into the adventure game genre in 16 years, is scheduled to launch for those platforms on January 28th, Double Fine announced today.

The second episode of The Wolf Among Us, the adventure game adaptation of the award-winning “Fables” comic book series, is set to come out early next month.

This past October, we sat down with representatives from Sega to check out several of their upcoming winter releases. Of the four titles previewed, three have already arrived in the forms of the remastered Sonic The Hedgehog 2 [$2.99], Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed [$4.99] and Demon Tribe [Free].

Last month, Hello Games announced a new mobile entry in the Joe Danger series calledJoe Danger Infinity. Just a few days later, as you might already be aware of if you follow them on Twitter, the Hello Games studio was ravaged by a flood, destroying much of their equipment.

Yesterday’s New York Times ran a fascinating profile of George Yao, a 25 year-old gamer who, for six months earlier this year, was ranked number one in Clash of Clans. How did he do it? Just as you’d probably expect: by spending lots of time and money into the game.

Republique is the first episode of a new IP that hits the ground running on iOS. The main character starts off locked in a jail cell, where you quickly learn that she’s been placed for possessing what the oppressive dictatorship considers contraband.

Are you an old-school gamer who just loves kicking thugs in the teeth? If so, check out this hands-on video of Double Dragon Trilogy, a game that takes all three arcade games and smashes them into a single app.

We’ve reviewed hundreds of games this year and come up with two lists of our favorite titles. But only one can receive our Game of the Year award, and this year that accolade goes to one of the best strategy games around on any platform.

Now we need some tester for the beta version of Emperor Legend! We would like to paid $10 for each testers, and we sincerely expect your participation!

Those who are still waiting for a jailbreak for iOS 6.1.3 and 6.1.4 will be happy to hear that its release is planned for this week.

Cydia has finally received a redesign! Check out the new look for iOS 7.

Well, good news, as Overhaul's own Trent Oster has confirmed over Twitter that Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition has been sent off to Apple for approval.

I love both Telltale games and the Borderlands universe so I'm not sure I can even think of a better mashup than Telltale and Gearbox slamming their proverbial creative heads together on this one. Check out the vague reveal trailer:

It's been about a year and a half since we were first introduced to Nyamyam's Tengami back in August of 2012. Tengami caught our attention due to its incredibly unique premise

Hmmmm. Looks quite fun.

Not many people have downloaded Clash of Clans yet, so the developer is risking all with a TV advert.

True Axis has finally confirmed the release date for its long-awaited sequel to the Silver Award-winning Jet Car Stunts. So, the imaginatively titled Jet Car Stunts 2 will be out on January 2nd.

Hello Games has just taken the metaphorical wraps off Joe Danger Infinity, a fresh entry in the series made specifically for iOS.

Shadowmatic takes the creative fun of making shadow puppets and turns it into a tilt-and-turn puzzle game for iOS.

Super World Karts GP, a 16-bit-style kart racing game from One Legged Seagull, will include a cameo from Tim Burr, the time-traveling lumberjack that stars in another indie game, Fist of Awesome.

Sky Gamblers dev Atypical Games has released a brief teaser trailer for its upcoming tank battling game Battle Supremacy.

Glu Mobile is set to release it’s free-to-play RoboCop game, which is based on the upcoming movie reboot, in January 2014.

The evad3rs have just announced the release of evasi0n 1.0.1 with the removal of TaiG App Store from the evasi0n installer. The team previously had the TaiG Store remotely disabled. You can head over to our download page to grab the latest version.

Cydia has received a major redesign and improved compatibility for iOS 7.

Game Insight released the first trailer for its upcoming title Running Shadow, a game that looks to mix endless running with the depth of a fantasy style RPG.