I may be dating myself here, but there was a time when I was completely obsessed with Windows Solitaire. I wanted to see every pixel of the game's window covered in the cards that hopped down at the end of the game, and the obsession lasted just as long as it took to make that happen. Since then, stacking cards onto other cards hasn't held the same charm. Then I picked up Fairway Solitaire [Free / HD] and now I'd kind of like my life back, please.

It's not that Fairway Solitaire is particularly challenging—quite the opposite, in fact. It follows Big Fish Games' usual mandate of making everything as player-friendly as possible. But between the dead simple gameplay and the weirdly compelling golf metaphors, I'm totally engrossed. And reading around online and in our forums, I'm not alone. This game gets its hooks into people more than one might expect from a golf-themed card game.

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Hot off the recently released Dungeon Crawlers [$3.99], the folks over at Ayopa Games are back with Mailmen [$1.99], an enjoyable stealth-based tale showcasing the eternal battle between mail carriers and the canines that chase them. Featuring a crazy story, good team-based gameplay, and well done level design, Mailmen is well worth checking out.

Mailmen follows the tale of three postal employees as they try to deliver letters and packages to the public while thwarting the plans of the nefarious Newman, a former member of the team that turned to evil. Standing in their way are packs and packs of dogs eager to catch, chase and bite our heroes. The story is off-beat, ridiculous, and completely appropriate for the style of game Mailmen offers. This is also echoed in the development of the team itself, which does a great job imparting personality into each of the characters in every little thing they do.

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One of the coolest things about the rise of mobile games is watching the platform evolve in fast-forward. Every day we see new ideas forming out of old ones, business models adopted, abandoned and rebuilt, and the capabilities of iOS reaching brand new heights. Case in point: Ragdoll Blaster [$0.99]. In 2009, this was a doodle-style physics puzzler with a barebones interface. It was massively popular, but the App Store was young. In 2011, Ragdoll Blaster 3 [$0.99 / HD] is an explosion of color and whimsy, with few sacrifices made to what makes the series great: damn fine physics puzzles.

I love how these games make you think a bit about applied physics. It's not just knocking over this tower, stacking that block without letting the whole works fall, it's levers and pulleys and magnets on top of all that. So it's great to see the puzzles wrapped in a much more appealing package. That's the best sort of makeover, wouldn't you say—one that makes the outside as fine as the inside?

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When I heard there was a multiplayer sequel to last year's Puzzle Family [$2.99/Free], I was pretty psyched. Though the game was stuffed to the gills with in-app purchases, at its core it contained a pretty excellent collection of mini-games. I was looking forward to trying them out against a friend or two. That was not to be. As it turns out, the defining features of Puzzle Family must have been the wacky stylings and in-app purchases, because those are what have been brought to Puzzle Family VS [Free]. I guess the mini-games didn't make the cut.

Instead, we're looking at a single Tetris Attack-style game that pits players in a frantic block-matching competition with opponents from around the world. It features much of the lunacy of the original, but little of its variety. The letdown could easily have been enough to turn me off of Puzzle Family VS, but here's the thing: I really dig it.

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I'm going to let you in on a little secret: we're pretty big fans of SpellTower [$1.99], the clever iOS word game from Zach Gage. Actually, that's not really a secret at all now that I think about it. We gave SpellTower a full 5 stars in our review when the game launched in November, and an update the following month added Universal support and Game Center achievements, making an already great thing even greater. In fact, we thought so much of SpellTower that we included it in our Game of the Year picks for 2011.

So yeah, it's no secret that SpellTower is pretty good and stuff. About the only thing the game is missing is some sort of multiplayer mode, but over the weekend Zach Gage posted a quick teaser video showing just that: a local competitive multiplayer mode. Matching words will send letter blocks over to your competitor's screen, and the grey shading in the backgrounds shows where the other person's current tile stack is at.

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It was a treat having The Bard's Tale [$5.99] – the port of the 2004 remake of the 1985 classic – brought to the App Store late last year, and developer inXile Entertainment is looking to sweeten the pot even further starting this week. According to IGN, series creator Brian Fargo wants to add all 3 original The Bard's Tale games to the iOS app for free via updates. The original The Bard's Tale should be showing up this week if all goes according to plan.

Subsequent updates will come about a mont apart from each other and will see The Bard's Tale II and The Bard's Tale III added to the game as well. It isn't clear which versions of the originals these will be, since all 3 games were ported across multiple platforms back in the day. If you missed The Bard's Tale in any of its forms over the years, check out our review of the iOS version, which is still a fun and humorous adventure even by today's standards. Be on the lookout for the original The Bard's Tale to hit in an update this week.

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When I unlocked a moustache and created Ron Swanson Pizza Bagel (Ron to his friends), I fell a little bit in love with Pizza Vs. Skeletons [$2.99 / Lite]. I mean, how many games let you play - and customize - a 10 foot tall pizza that's out to crush every skeleton it finds? And it's not all skeleton crushing, oh no. We've also got Pizza Rescues Trapped Puppies, Pizza Balances on Rolling Skulls and a hefty handful of other games in here, taking full advantage of everything a giant pizza can do.

The common thread is the pizza (or tire, or moon, or...), and its three capabilities: rolling, jumping, and pounding the ground. You roll by tilting your device, jump by tapping the screen once and hit the deck by tapping again. Any of those moves can crush skeletons, which simply can't stand up to the weight of a giant pizza. If you're worried about the tilt controls, give the free version a try. I can tell you they're better than most, easily calibrated, and fit perfectly with the gameplay, but try for yourself to be sure.

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It was one year ago today that Halfbot released The Blocks Cometh [Free] into the App Store, a game we enjoyed immensely in our review. Several months after its release, a pretty beefy update added landscape support, new characters, two new difficulty modes, and an awesome GameBot mode available as a 99¢ IAP.

Since that update last July, though, things have been relatively quite on the Blocks Cometh front as Halfbot has had their hands full working with fellow indie developer Vlambeer in bringing Super Crate Box [$1.99] to iOS (a hugely successful endeavor, I might add). With that out of the way, Halfbot is again back to giving some love to The Blocks Cometh.

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One of the most charming and whimsical games on iOS, Whale Trail [99¢], has just received a nice new content update. We really liked Whale Trail in our review when the game first released in October, and a December update added a whole new dimension to the game by offering 32 scoring-based challenge levels to the mix. Each level had 3 stars to earn, and there was a new Hyper Boost power-up that could launch you way up high in the sky.

Today's update is along the lines of the first, offering 32 new challenge levels and 2 new power-ups. The premise in the previous update was that the game's villain Baron Von Barry fell asleep on the job, allowing Willow the Whale to explore the colorful challenge levels in Rainbow Playground without pursuit. In the new set of 32 levels, the Baron turns the tables on Willow and puts him through these extremely difficult challenges in the Thunder Bros' kingdom where it's dark and stormy all the time.

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You could say we've been looking forward to Simogo's Beat Sneak Bandit [$2.99] The developer announced it just a few months back in November, but it feels like we've been waiting forever. After all, these are the folks that made Kosmo Spin [$0.99] and Bumpy Road [$2.99] two fantastic (if divisive) games, so who could blame us for a little eagerness? Now that the wait is over, you've gotta ask: does it live up to the hype?

And I have to tell you that yes, it totally does. I don't know of any other stealth rhythm puzzle games, but I'm pretty sure Beat Sneak Bandit could take on all comers. Every aspect has been expertly crafted, from the high level game design down to the details of the menus. Oh, and you guys? It's so very, very fun.

You should check out the trailer if you're mystified about the idea of a stealth rhythm puzzler, but here's the scoop in broad terms. You play the Beat Sneak Bandit, breaking into the mansion of Duke Clockface. He has, for undoubtedly nefarious reasons, stolen all the clocks from Pulsebury. He's kind of a jerk like that, I guess. Your job is to take back all the clocks without being caught.

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Dodonpachi Blissful Death [$4.99] is a port of Cave’s 2002 arcade title Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou, and is a direct prequel to their previous iOS effort Dodonpachi Resurrection [$7.99/Lite] (which also happens to be my favorite of the Cave iOS shooters, FYI).

Blissful Death is similar to its sequel at a basic level, but it lacks some of the complexity and strategy found in Resurrection. But, like Cave’s last release Bug Princess [$4.99/Lite], its simplicity is also its strong point for those who maybe aren’t hardcore bullet hell people or those who just like to blast the crap out of everything without much fuss.

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Junk Jack [$2.99/Lite] developer Pixbits has shown a strong amount of post-release love to their 2D Minecraft-esque title, and in their latest update which has been partway released on the App Store they once again deliver the goods.

Wait, how is the update partway released, you ask? Well, for some reason, Apple went and approved the update for the lite version last week, with the full version update still waiting to get the go ahead. So, if you're dying to see some of the newly implemented features, you can catch a glimpse from Junk Jack LE if  you really want.

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We've been pumped for the release of Ravenous Games' follow-up to last year's excellent platformer League of Evil ever since we got a hold of the first screens last November, and the new gameplay trailer from last week has only stoked the fires of anticipation for the sequel. Well, Ravenous isn't content to wait around for the normal glut of Thursday releases, and have released League of Evil 2 [99¢/Lite] into the App Store just moments ago.

I've been toying around with the game for a while, and it's everything that I hoped it would be. While I adored the pixel graphics of the first game, the new visual style is sharp and attractive, and the entire game runs at a incredibly smooth clip. The same tight virtual controls are here too, along with more than 100 short but sweet platforming challenges with the familiar 3 star and briefcase collection reward system.

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Lyst Ignition [99¢] from Steel Games is a fascinating – and sometimes frantic – color-matching game which involves tapping little orbs as they descend down the screen. By learning and tapping different combinations of orbs, you can create explosions and other effects. There's a few rules to learn initially, but the main objective is to destroy orbs of matter.

There's five types of matter which fall down the screen. Basic matter is the most common and is shown as a black circle, but there's also orange, blue, critical and multiplier matter. Plus power-ups and "catalysts" appear. A series of interactive tutorials explain how the various types of orb can be combined. This tutorial is totally necessary to understand the game.

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Sick of dual-stick shooters? Gunning down spaceships lost its shine? I hear that. But let me just say this: unless you're really, truly, and utterly sick of the genre, you really shouldn't miss Beat Hazard Ultra [$0.99], an outstanding music-generated shooter from Cold Beam Games.

It has a few problems - awkward menus, fiddly controls, limited music sources - but I can't think of a more compelling reason to grab a pair of virtual sticks and let the bullets fly. This version is just about on par with its PC and PSN counterparts for a fraction of the price. There's no better way to light up your screen with insane strobes of gorgeous color. Just mind the photosensitive seizure warning, because it's not kidding around.

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