I'm what you might call a pinball dilletante. Oh sure, I've played a table here and there, downloaded a few pinball games and poked around, but I lack discipline. I dabble, I don't commit. I've never learned to play with real accuracy or attention to the goals of the game beyond keeping the ball in play.

Momonga Pinball Adventures [$2.99] has changed all that. I discovered a reason to learn to be accurate, to pay attention: furthering the adventures of a ludicrously cute flying squirrel named Momo. A momonga, to be precise—a Japanese dwarf flying squirrel. He is the ball in this game of pinball, and he's on a mission to save his people.

Pinball adventure games are a niche within a niche, so maybe it's best to think of Momonga in broader strokes. It's a game of tiny challenges, a handful of which are stitched together to build a level. A beautiful level: Momonga Pinball Adventures is better crafted than most of what we see on iOS, with lush 3D environments that vary wildly and a simplified style that looks great on the small screen. Paladin Studios says that one level can take up to two months to create, and the effort shows.

But let's step back to the content of those levels. The game's story mode presents a series of fairly straightforward challenges of the flipper-control sort. Knock Momo into a few targets, then a few moving targets, then a few still targets immediately followed by moving targets. For anyone with more skills with a flipper than me, there probably won't be much need to slow down—especially with only 9 major levels.

Of course, that's just the trip through the game's simple, charming story. After each level is finished for the first time a series of challenges unlock. These present new reasons to run through: breaking every block in a level, collecting all the stars, or dipping into more obscure paths and procedures. When you've cleared a few of these you'll also unlock an odd little endless mode that has nothing to do with pinball. It's delightful nonetheless.

There are a few stumbling blocks on the way to freeing Momo's people and really sinking your teeth into Momonga Pinball Adventures. Failing at challenges can be a huge hassle, for instance—the relevant portion of a level might be midway through, after a good chunk of loading, a few cutscenes to skip and a section or two that needs completing. Failure is generally this game's biggest problem: I find myself wondering what a three-life limit adds to the experience aside from frustration.

Otherwise it's all about the pinball physics. They're good, but not great. The action is pleasantly fast. The flippers feel good, with a simple left-side/right-side tap control, but they can't pull off some of the light lobs or quick shots experienced pinball players might expect. There's also no way to tilt the board—it's not a board, it's a level. That's the saving grace, really. Momonga isn't built like a pinball game, so it doesn't suffer badly for missing some of pinball's finer features.

Momonga's Pinball Adventures is already a winner. In part for its impressive look, certainly, but the charm and challenge of the game are a big part of what makes it so loveable. If anything stands in its way now, it's simply that Paladin Studios has already squeezed everything it can out of the existing content—new levels are all that will keep the game going now. Given what goes into them, that might take a while. Just don't mistake this for a complaint: more Momonga will be well worth the wait, and there's plenty of tiny squirrel action to love for the moment.

Ndemic Creations' Plague Inc. [$0.99] is one of those games I never imagined would hook me like it has. It's a strategy title that sees you unleashing a plague on the world and then managing how best to make it spread and annihilate the human population before scientists are able to wise up and find a cure for it.

With a ton of different plague types, each with their own modification trees to explore and strategies to utilize, Plague Inc. is a highly satisfying and cerebral affair. Since its original release and our review from mid-2012, the game has been updated extensively adding even more content and strategies to the mix. We even talked with the developer who revealed a ton of interesting facts behind Plague Inc. which turned out to be one of our most popular stories of the year.

Today, Ndemic has sent over the details of the new upcoming update for Plague Inc. which adds a new virus to the game. It's called the Necroa Virus and at first blush seems pretty similar to the other plagues you can unleash in the game in the way it behaves. However, there is one branch of mutation that will enable it to reanimate the humans that it's killed, thus turning them into zombies. From here a whole bunch of cool stuff happens.

A new population category appears, so you're now keeping your eye on who is healthy, infected, dead and who is a zombie. Once zombies are unleashed on the world they'll begin attacking and infecting the healthy humans, and at this point a "cure" doesn't do a whole lot of good. So humanity fights back. A new organization of zombie hunters called Z Com will popup around the world and need to be dealt with if you hope to wipe out humanity. There's also a new mechanic called Active Abilities which will allow you to directly control specific regions of zombies to attack the living population, and even reanimate fallen zombies. The Necroa Virus comes with 5 new genes for additional customization options, as well as new algorithms, evolution options, government responses, events and more that make it feel unlike any other plague before it.

Like the previous Neurax Worm expansion, the Necroa Virus will be available as a $1.99 IAP or unlocked for free if you're able to complete the game on the brutal difficulty. If you can do that, you are good, my friend. The upcoming update will also feature some new things that apply to everyone even if they choose not to get the Necroa Virus. These include new events and achievements, some UI fixes to make the game easier to play, and general tweaks and fixes.

Oh, and since people seem to love hearing about cool Plague Inc. factoids, here's a few on how well the game did in 2012. It was the 15th most popular paid iPhone game and 18th most popular paid iPad game overall for the year, and 76th top grossing game during that same time. And the Neurax Worm expansion pack? That thing was pretty popular too, and has been played over 5 million times since its release last September.

The Necroa Virus update is set to launch sometime next month, so check out the Plague Inc. discussion in our forums and we'll be sure to let you know when it hits.

It seems it's a good day for good game design, as not only did the audio visual feast that is Wave Trip [$1.99] launch earlier today but we stumbled across another incredibly stylish little game called Wide Sky [$0.99] from developer and motion design specialist Marcus Eckert. In it you play as an adorable little hedgehog who must swing around each level trying to smash into an orb, breaking it into a bunch of shards, and then go around and collect those shards as quickly as possible. You're given a grappling hook-like rope that can attach to clouds and swing your hedgehog around to build momentum and launch yourself towards your targets. You tap and hold the screen to attach your rope and tilt your device to swing around.

They're really interesting mechanics, but also incredibly tricky. Like, I am terrible at this game so far. Unlike most other hooking games, in Wide Sky your rope will only launch from the top of your hedgehog, so you need to keep an eye on its rotation before launching so you can aim properly. It takes a certain kind of finesse that I just don't seem have yet to attach the rope where you're intending to. I'm just fumbling around at the moment, but I think it's one of those things that will eventually "click" and I'll improve. You can see Wide Sky in action in the trailer below, which I should add is one of the nicest game trailers I've ever seen in my life.

While I'm still figuring out the mechanics in Wide Sky, I can't help but marvel at just how thoughtfully everything else has been designed in the game. It reminds me of the kind of minimalism and ingenuity showcased in an app like Figure [$0.99] mixed with the whimsical audio and visual styles of companies like Simogo and Lucky Frame. It's also a hilarious game, as the description texts and tutorials are all colored with a ton of humorous dialogue.

Wide Sky is just oozing style all over the place, and while I'm still waiting to come around on the gameplay portion I'm enjoying myself a lot nonetheless. If you've got a spare buck lying around and can appreciate tremendous design, then I'd suggest giving Wide Sky a look and checking out our forums for more discussion and impressions while you're at it.

There's no denying Kumobius's Time Surfer [$0.99] owes a lot to Tiny Wings [$0.99 / $2.99 (HD)]. It has the same swoopy hills, the same leap-and-glide movement, and the same joy of flight. After that, things go a bit off the proverbial rails.

If the '80s exploded all over Tiny Wings, we'd be part way there. Time Surfer is a glorious mess of bright colors, pixel art and the most upbeat of chiptunes. It's more than that, though. Take the calm simplicity of Tiny Wings, crank up the speed, stick it in space and add a dozen good ways to die. Not so calm, but death is just a state of mind: you can turn it around with the rewind button.

The rewind button is key to the whole Time Surfer experience—you'd only be half a time surfer without it. As you surf you collect gems; these add to a pool you can use for a bit of quick time travel. You can only head back a few seconds, even at full power, but that's often enough to save yourself from death or a bad jump.

More than that, time travel lets you be creative. Given the usual laws of physics, it might be impossible to grab a certain powerup and also manage a perfect curve on your next jump. You, however, aren't limited to the usual laws of physics. Grab that powerup, then rewind and line yourself up for the perfect jump. You have the power.

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Platforming games can be a finicky genre on iOS. It almost always comes down to the controls. I've played otherwise great games that were marred by terrible virtual controls, and on the flip side I've played some platformers that controlled beautifully but were bland and boring. To really shine, a platformer has to nail both the controls and the design to a high degree, and that's exactly what Renegade Kid's Mutant Mudds [$4.99] has accomplished.

The premise in Mutant Mudds is simple: brown, globulous, muddy aliens named Mudds have invaded Earth, and they've totally disrupted main character Max's day of watching TV with his grannie. Not cool, Mudds, not cool. Max isn't going to take this slighting lying down though, so he sets out to dispatch the alien menace using his trusty water cannon and a cool jetpack that allows him to briefly hover around. I wish I had one of those when I was a kid.

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In a world where endless runners are now as prevalent as platform puzzlers and tower defense, I imagine it's tough for newcomers trying to make their mark on the genre. Bulwark Studio's latest release, Rōnin [$0.99], looks to take the typical endless runner and infuse it with a beautiful art style, a somewhat in-depth upgrade system and some hard-work with a lack of IAP. While the combination of the above certainly makes the game worth a look, bland gameplay along with some issues with timing keep it from being more than just a pretty face.

The first thing you'll notice when firing up Rōnin are its highly stylized visuals. Taking a page from such games as Autumn Dynasty (although admittedly not as nicely done), Rōnin's graphics are heavily inspired by classical Japanese artwork. Each of the backdrops your samurai runs through are nicely detailed and have a pseudo-storybook look. This attention to detail even extends to the game's enemies and animations, although some look out of place in comparison to the rest of the artwork. Still, as far as endless runners go, it does have a unique look and feel.

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Hey, it's time for your weekly Angry Birds content update. Ok, so maybe the games are not actually updated ever week, but there's so many different versions of the game and they each receive such frequent updates that sometimes it can feel that way. Today's update is for Angry Birds Space [$0.99 / Free] and Angry Birds Space HD [$2.99 (HD) / Free (HD)], the, uh, fourth main games in the Angry Birds series.

The update includes 30 new levels set in a water galaxy, dubbed the Pig Dipper, with unique water physics and some Bad Piggies patrolling in boats. There's also 3 new power-ups: Flock of Birds, Space Egg, and something called the Pig Puffer. Alrighty then! There's also a new underwater boss level and a few new bonus levels if you can achieve some 3-star scores on this new pack of levels. Also, if you check in with the game everyday you can score a free power-up.

Angry Birds Space is yet another Angry Birds game, but that's not a bad thing. It introduced the gravity slinging mechanic that's also made its way into the latest game Angry Birds Star Wars, and the way that Rovio is constantly updating the whole library of Angry Birds games means that your buck or three should go pretty darn far in terms of providing entertainment. You can check out our original review of the game for some more insight, but if you aren't familiar with Angry Birds by now then I just don't know what to tell you.

Let's clear the air: clean lines and futuristic stylings aside, Pixelbite Games' Repulze [$2.99] shares little in common with Wipeout. One is an iOS racer that costs less than a dollar, the other is one of Sony's most popular and enduring racing franchises. That's not to discount Repulze, though -- it's from the same team that developed the excellent Reckless Racing 2 [$1.99]. Whereas RR2 included drifting mechanics and a dynamic difficulty system, Repulze is comparatively stripped down: it only does one thing, but it does it really well.

The game's most obvious feature is its visual design. The tracks and hovercraft all fit squarely in sci-fi's artistic wheelhouse, but the vibrant colors and sharp lines look nice on a big iPad screen. One of my favorite hovercraft, for example, is the Yugana SB-23, the one that looks most like a podracer from The Phantom Menace. I like the way it handles, of course, but I also like the the way its hydraulics pulse up and down as I bank left and right. Each vehicle is full of small visual touches that set it apart from the rest, and Pixelbite's attention to detail permeates the entire game. Even the menus look nice.

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There is no way to sugarcoat this: ShaqDown [Free] is not a great game. It is, at best, a merely serviceable game ideal only for anyone ravenously massaging their hands mad scientist-style with anticipation. This also probably is going to really, really bum out Shaq who is himself a hugely outspoken Apple enthusiast.

Sorry Shaq. But what follows is true.

So what went wrong? There is far too much emphasis and reliance on gimmick. ShaqDown starts off in Yemen, which is seemingly ground zero of the zombie apocalypse. Mankind underestimated the zombies, and wound up being enslaved by them. Among the wreckage, though, “[there] was a man that stood up to mutant zombies all by himself. To some he is known as the ‘Dunkman.’ We know him as ‘The Justice Bringer.’” The opening cinematic laying this all out comic-book style is charming, but by the time you’ve hit “buy” in the Apple store, you know all this. Its element of surprise and kitsch has all but worn off.

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ZeptoLab makes charming games. It's kind of their thing, judging by Cut The Rope's eminently marketable Om Nom. The studio's latest, Pudding Monsters [Free / Free (HD)], is certainly charming—it practically oozes character. It just lacks a little something else, a bit of the fun factor.

Aside from the flavour, you might have heard this one before. Pudding Monsters is a puzzle game about sliding pudding into other pudding until it forms one massive blob of eyes and goo. Ideally said blob will wind up sitting on top of three star tiles, thus achieving the coveted three-star ranking. There are variations, there are challenges, but it's all a bit by-the-numbers. Still, if you're looking for a game about sliding pudding into other pudding, you probably can't do better.

After all, I wasn't kidding about the character. The big, bouncy puddings are dressed up with giant moustaches, sleeping caps or snail hats. They slime and jiggle and wiggle their way around the screen. They babble in nonsense language, and the music jingles happily. One could go so far as to call the whole thing sprightly.

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Are you the sort of person who knows all about the majestic alot? Have you considered sending your friends posters to help them with their little their/there/they're problem? Well then, we should probably hang out some time, since insufferability loves company. Also, you might want to take a look at The Grading Game [$0.99 / Free].

There's an argument to be made that this isn't really much of a game, that it's just badly disguised work. You take poorly written 'student papers' plucked straight out of Wikipedia, locate the errors that have been inserted into the text, and see how well you did at tracking them all down within a short timer. For the wrong person, this would be agony. If you're anything like me, though, you'll love it.

It's the timer that does it. I'm not the fastest editor out there, and The Grading Game isn't exactly generous. So many great games are about snap reflexes for skills you'll likely never use in real life, but this one hones skills that are actually pretty useful. Get good enough at it and you'll have no problem spotting a misspelling, a run-on sentence or a poorly-place punctuation mark at a glance.

There are two ways to play The Grading Game. One, Career mode, has you work your way through dozens of levels that focus on individual topics. Each time you complete a level you earn fake cash and unlock the next. The narrative has you grading to pay off a crippling pile of student loan debt, working for the abhorrent Dr. Snerpus. Fail his students and he's ecstatic. Let them through with a decent grade and you're fired.

Career mode's levels are split into three rounds, and your performance on each is paid out into one hefty total—supposing you've managed to get the students down to sufficiently low grades. Each round generally has its own style of play. Sometimes it's a matter of finding a certain number of errors before the timer runs out. Sometimes sections pop up one at a time, each with a single error to find. Occasionally a whole round will hinge on finding one sneaky little error, a nice break for your marking hand.

In Quick Play mode you're still working for Snerpus toward the same goal, but this time the play is more or less endless. Each time you finish a round you're presented with a new one, and you keep going until you fail to, er, fail a student.

The problems with this game are the ones you might expect if you're a seasoned stickler. There are rules that aren't always cut and dry, so the difference between success and failure can sometimes ride on iffy calls. Similarly, there are occasional errors in the text that the developers apparently neither introduced nor noticed. You get hit with a time penalty for incorrectly marking an error, so this can be a hassle.

I'm also going to nitpick briefly, as this is a game for nitpickers. The Grading Game is a nag. It nags me about following the developers on Twitter. It nags me about rating the game. It prompts me with all manner of prompts, and I'm really not interested. Learn to take no for an answer, mode of expression.

Most of the time, though, The Grading Game is pretty cool—assuming your idea of cool is finding other people's mistakes and punishing them. Allow me to propose that it's a better outlet for that sort of thing, than, say, your friends' Facebook conversations, or comments on blogs. Not only will The Grading Game make you a better, faster, more precise editor, it could make you more likeable to boot. How many games can claim that?

Mister Frog! [$0.99] is Coconut Island's follow-up to the impressive One Tap Hero, so it has big shoes to fill. In this case, they're probably clown shoes, as Mister Frog! presents itself as a Vaudeville act, in which the titular frog is performing to entertain an audience: perhaps you and the child you're trading turns with.

At a glance, one might me tempted to draw comparisons to Frog Fractions, what with the stationary frog catching flies with his tongue-thing, but this game is as straight up as that one is twisted.

You swipe to stretch Frog's tongue out to catch bugs, with three or more creating a combo. Combos of all the same color insect worth more, and a progressive combo multiplier that drives you to keep up the combos.

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There was a time I was content to simply match three. This was around the same time I had, no joke, a Palm Pilot so I could play Bejeweled with a stylus in class. Nowadays I need a little something more with my matching, and Pixel Defenders Puzzle [$0.99] has plenty more to offer.

For starters, it plays a lot like Triple Town [Free] without that game's aggressive turn limits. Not like "oh my goodness this is the next Yeti Town;" more like "now that's a clever way to use those mechanics." If you match three units, they upgrade to the next tier of unit. Then you match that with two more like it, and it bumps up another level. Familiar, but you're not upgrading little trees and houses, you're upgrading an army. It's what you do with it next that makes things interesting.

As with Triple Town, you'll run into all sorts of problems with the tight board. You'll need to watch for corners and edges rendered unreachable, combos that can't be completed, and obstacles that can't be dealt with. You're not dealing with just one upgrade path and a pile of angry bears, though. Each of Pixel Defenders Puzzle's levels gives you a selection of armies to deal with—maybe one, maybe more. Each is defined by its own color, and there is no upgrade path that lets units of different colors get together.

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It seems like Subatomic and Halfbrick are on the same page lately, as both companies released an update last week for the iPad versions of their game which have finally come to the iPhone versions this week. One week ago today, Fieldrunners 2 HD [$4.99 (HD) / Free (HD)] was updated with a couple of new towers as well as two new Christmas-themed power-ups. Today those items have come to Fieldrunners 2 [$2.99 / Free] on the iPhone, along with widescreen support for the iPhone 5.

I get unreasonably excited when my favorite games get widescreen support. I totally appreciate the fact that non-widescreen games can run on the iPhone 5 with borders rather than not run at all, but just like with playing iPhone games in 2x on the iPad it gets old not having a truly native version of a game or app for your device. And it seems like every day my list grows longer for games I wish to get widescreen updates.

Anyway, if you've been holding out on digging into Fieldrunners 2 waiting for widescreen support to come (I know some of you out there have been), then now is the time to update and get to playing. Oh, and one of the two new towers will run you an unusually high price to unlock in-game, but with good reason. Just like with the iPad version, Subatomic has a new lite version of Fieldrunners 2, and if you download and install it you can unlock the new Polymorph Tower totally for free. So be sure to do that and save yourself some in-game scratch.

One more thing. As a special bonus both the iPhone and iPad versions of Fieldrunners 2 are currently on sale, with the former available for 99¢ rather than its normal $2.99 and the latter down to $2.99 from its regular $7.99. Be sure to take advantage of these sales while they last, and hit up our Fieldrunners 2 review or the thread in our forums for more on this fantastic tower defense game.

Last week we briefly mentioned that Fruit Ninja HD [$2.99 (HD) / Free (HD)] for the iPad had received a new update that included a couple of new blades, two new backgrounds, and a handful of new challenges. We also expected that same update to hit the iPhone version of Fruit Ninja [$0.99 / Free] along with widescreen support for the iPhone 5 and new iPod touch 5th generation model. Well, that's exactly what happened as late yesterday the update for the iPhone Fruit Ninja went live in the App Store.

And hey, it's great. I mean it's Fruit Ninja, a total classic, and I'm very happy to have it support the wider screen of my iPhone 5 now. But let's be real. I'm merely using this new update about Fruit Ninja as an excuse to post this new video that has been making the rounds which features a real-life Fruit Ninja slicing up a market full of fruit in the forest, in slow motion... set to dubstep, naturally. It's glorious. These same folks made the "kittens flying in slow motion" video that was pretty popular a few months back, and they do some seriously quality work.

So grab the latest Fruit Ninja update on the App Store and take a break from whatever probably way less important task that you're currently doing and check out this vid, and be sure to watch through until the end. Wubwubwub.