Nightgate (Semidome Inc.)

The best way to experience Nightgate is with the lights down low, and your stereo cranked up. Cutting out any unnecessary sensory input maximises what this trance-like experience offers.

You’ll play as someone hacking into a visualisation of an intelligent computer system, with gameplay a simple mechanic of obstacle avoidance enabled by the touch pad of the Siri Remote.

The goal is to guide your cursor ever-deeper, and seemingly into the screen through layers of defences, seeking the heart of this A.I.’s mystery.

With simple, yet beautiful graphics, and a hypnotic soundtrack, this is definitely a game that fits that third category of simplicity with depth.

You can read my complete early impressions here, and view the trailer, but here is a brief quote to give you a nutshell idea:

“Developer Semidome Inc. have shown with Nightgate its capable of adding enough intriguing layers to the simple genre of obstacle avoidance with imagination and creativity, to make it worth playing on a big screen as a main focus, rather than as a mobile distraction.”

Red’s Kingdom (Cobra Mobile)

Red’s Kingdom is essentially a puzzle game, requiring players to figure out how to get from door A to door B. Such a simple distillation doesn’t do it justice though.

Here is a quote from my full review:

“At first glance it would be easy to write Red’s Kingdom off as a simple, one-touch puzzle game. Essentially it’s a series of rooms that require players to find a solution in order to progress from door A to door B. But take a closer look and you’ll soon see why Red’s Kingdom deserves to graduate from small screen to large, from mobile to console. Beneath it’s simple mechanic of swiping towards one of four compass points players will discover a rich, hand-crafted experience that feels very at home on Apple’s digital-only gateway to your big screen.”

Cobra Mobile have just added a whole bunch more content into Red’s Kingdom with new islands to explore, so there is now even more to love.

Lara Croft Go (Square Enix Montreal)

Square Enix now have a trio of Go-branded titles, the others being Deus Ex Go and Hitman Go. The series distills these iconic Triple A franchises down to the very essence at the heart of their gameplay, and all three are a recommended download.

Lara Croft Go takes Lara’s depiction back to its roots, with the heroine outfitted in her classic PlayStation One-era kit. Even her movements have wonderful nods to fans of the old Tomb Raider games, such as her handstand on reaching the top of a cliff, and her confident, dual-shooting stance.

The gameplay is true to the franchise’s formula, involving puzzle-solving your way through tombs in order to relieve them of their treasures. In Lara Croft Go this iconic formula is boiled down into a very hand-crafted, almost physical toy depiction. Levels comprised of sliding blocks and switches make you feel like you could actually craft them from blocks of wood and fit them together.

Even those not a fan of the original series will surely get a kick out of Lara Croft Go’s attention to detail, and satisfying puzzle-questing, the mechanics of which are all handled with ease through simple swipes of the Siri Remote.

Check out the trailer: