Some games are as much about art and the experience they create as they are about gameplay. Monument Valley comes to mind for instance. Gemini – A Journey of Two Stars is a beautiful new game from Echostone Games that falls into the same category and succeeds by being simultaneously stunning and engrossing.

As you start Gemini, two stars have fallen from the sky. You play as the larger star. There are no instructions or tutorials, just subtle visual hints about what you are supposed to do. Tapping the left and right sides of the screen guides your star in those directions.

As you approach the smaller star, the two interact and begin to rise. Get too far away from the smaller star and both start to fall from the sky. This makes for an interesting tension as you try to stay close to the smaller star, which can have a mind of its own, while also completing the game’s tasks.

As you rise through a gorgeous abstract landscape, the sky darkens. If it gets too dark, your stars will fall. To avoid that you need to light beacons by steering your star over them. Lighting up the sky has the added advantage of revealing more of your surroundings. The stunning artwork of Gemini is paired with an equally impressive and soothing soundtrack that sets the tone for the game.

As you lose yourself in Gemini, the game is more about the interaction of the stars than anything else. The dance between the stars and making sure you bring the little star along become the focus. This is a very different game, but the feeling of a connection with the small star that Gemini created as I played reminded me a lot of playing Journey last Summer on my PS4.

Gemini is relatively short. The six stages of the game should take most people no more than 1-2 hours to complete. If you evaluate games by the numbers of levels per dollar you spend, you may be disappointed with Gemini, but as a piece of interactive art, I suspect many people, myself included, will return to Gemini over and over just to enjoy the visuals and soundtrack.

Gemini is available on the App Store at an introductory price of $2.99.

Legend of the Skyfish by Crescent Moon Games is an action-puzzle game that evokes Nintendo’s Zelda franchise, but has its own unique twist that will reel you in. Legend revolves around the tale of the Skyfish, an evil creature from deep below the ocean’s surface that was awoken by the greed of fishermen. Skyfish took over the surface world and enslaved its people. You play as a girl who was saved by the Moonwhale and is in search of her little brother.

As the protagonist of the story, your main tool and weapon is a fishing pole. Whether it’s navigating the map, avoiding barriers, or defeating enemies, you can accomplish it all with your fishing pole. Fend off the attacks of mutant sea-people that roam the surface world by swinging your pole like a sword. Jump from island to island or move objects by casting your fishing line to hook special points on the map. Catch enemies and pull them into spikes and other obstacles with your fishing pole as an alternative to hand-to-hand combat. More than any other element, the creative uses to which you can put your fishing pole set Legend apart from other games.

Legend eases you into the game with several fairly easy levels in the first of three worlds, but does a nice job of getting progressively more difficult and imaginative with its puzzles. You move around the island world by dragging your finger in the direction you want to go. There are also two game pads. The first swings your pole like a sword. The second game pad casts a line from the fishing pole. By tapping the pad and shifting your finger, you aim the pole. Raising your finger launches your fishing line.

One thing that is sorely lacking from Legend is progress syncing. The game is available on iPhone, iPad, and the Apple TV, but there is no way to pick up where you left off across devices. I played on my iPad more than my iPhone, but both worked equally well. Touch is well-suited to aiming the fishing line. I played a few levels on the Apple TV too. Legend’s world looks gorgeous on a big screen, but I liked using the touch interface on iOS devices better than the Siri Remote’s tiny touch surface.

Legend has two things that help it transcend Zelda copy-cat status. The first is the clever fishing pole gameplay, which is unique and thoughtfully implemented. The second is enemies’ vulnerability to the game’s environment. Both aspects of Legend add a depth and novelty to navigating the colorful water-world and to combat that keeps the game fresh and fun throughout.

Legend of the Skyfish is available on the App Store for $3.99.

Linia from Black Robot Games is fiendishly difficult, but strangely relaxing in its complexity. The challenge is to draw a straight line through a series of colored shapes that intersects the shapes in the order of the color sequence at the top of the screen. Here’s the thing though, the shapes are moving, rotating, shrinking, growing, and changing color all at once. The movement follows a regular pattern, but it gets complicated fast.

Linia is a creature of the post-iOS 7 design aesthetic. Each of its 80 levels is composed of brightly-colored geometric flat shapes. What’s ingenious about Linia and makes it particularly difficult is that it requires pattern matching, careful timing, and quick reflexes simultaneously. As you draw a line it appears white but fills in behind where you started in red, which is part of the timing element. You have to lift your finger to commit to your line before it turns completely red. If you wait to long, you’ll have to start drawing your line all over, but if you release at the wrong time, you may be unable to hit the right color sequences.

I’ve played Linia on both my iPhone 6s Plus using my finger and on my 12.9 inch iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil. I give a slight edge to using the Pencil to play Linia on the iPad because you can draw such a precise line, but the difference between playing on the iPad and iPhone was much less than I expected.

The soundtrack that accompanies Linia plays a big role in minimizing the frustration of some of the harder puzzles. There’s something inviting about the electronic vibe of the soundtrack that feels like it’s encouraging you to stay a while to keep trying to beat even the hardest puzzles.

Black Robot has done a great job bringing something fresh and clever to the crowded puzzle genre on iOS. It’s especially impressive given that this is Black Robot’s first iOS game. With such a great start, I look forward to seeing what else Black Robot comes up with in the future.

Linia is available on the App Store for $1.99.

Severed is a dungeon adventure game for iOS from DrinkBox Studios that originally debuted on the PS Vita and will be available later this Summer on the Wii U and 3DS. The game tells the story of a one-armed warrior named Sasha in search of her family in a strange world populated by monstrous creatures.

The move to bring Severed to iOS is a new beginning for DrinkBox Studios, which published its prior mobile titles on PS Vita. But with the Vita in decline, DrinkBox has moved on. In an interview with Engadget, the Toronto-based company announced that it is finished with the Vita. That’s a shame because I love my PS Vita and DrinkBox’s Guacamelee! was one of my favorite Vita games, but Sony’s loss is Apple’s gain.

Severed, described by its creators as an RPG-light adventure, is a visually arresting journey through a bizzare landscape. The unique artwork style will be immediately recognizable to anyone who has played Guacamelee!, while still creating an atmosphere and look of its own. Sasha, the main character, has just one weapon, a sword given to her by a mysterious figure at the outset of her quest. As you encounter enemies, you attack with slashing touch gestures reminiscent of Fruit Ninja and block counterattacks by swiping along the course of incoming blows. Early in the game you are confronted by single enemies. Things get more complicated as you advance and have to defeat multiple foes that are better at defending themselves.

But there’s more to Severed than just frantic slashing. There’s a strategic element too. During the course of a battle, Sasha’s ‘focus bar’ slowly fills. Kill an opponent when Sasha’s focus bar is full and you can sever its limbs. It sounds more gruesome than it actually is. Collect enough limbs and you can trade them for armor, equipment, and other upgrades. As a result, it doesn’t pay to simply kill a monster as fast as possible, which adds depth to the battles.

There are two levels of play – ‘casual’ and ‘standard.’ Severed can be intense and absorbing in standard mode, which makes casual mode a nice option if you would rather play a more relaxed game, soaking in the visuals and soundtrack.

The touch-based gestures of Severed are outstanding on iOS. The game is a Universal app, so you can play it on an iPhone or iPad, but it really shines on the iPad, especially an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. Suddenly, that Apple Pencil that you may use to take notes or sketch becomes Sasha’s sword. Using the Apple Pencil this way adds immeasurably to the fun.

I’ll be playing Severed a lot more as I sit by the shore of Lake Michigan for a mini-vacation this weekend. Severed is expensive as iOS games go, but at less than half the price you’d pay for the PS Vita version, you get a game that fits with the iPhone and iPad hardware in a way that it can’t on the Vita. Sure, the Vita has a touch surface, but it’s still designed primarily for button-based games, while the large touch surfaces of iOS devices make it easier to get lost in Severed’s action and story.

Severed is available on the App Store for $6.99.

Bulb Boy is a bizarre point-and-tap puzzle adventure on iOS from Kraków, Poland-based Bulbware that draws inspiration from games like Machinarium. As the name suggests, the story centers around a boy who is a lightbulb. Bulb Boy appears to be going about his business, living a quiet life with his grandfather and bulb-dog in their bulb-house, until strange things suddenly start to happen. Bulb Boy’s world is beset with monsters and it’s up to you, as Bulb Boy, to defeat them by collecting a series of items that help you solve puzzles.

Everything in the game is black and green like an old CRT monitor. The animation has a distinctly retro feel too. When I started Bulb Boy I immediately felt like I had stepped into a demented version of an old cartoon from the 1930s.

The mechanics are straight-forward. You explore each scene by tapping the screen. Bulb Boy moves to where you tap and examines any items in the area. The items you collect help you solve the puzzles and move on to the next stage. In addition, Bulb Boy can take off his head to illuminate dark areas and help solve puzzles. As the game progresses it continually introduces new challenges that keep the game fresh.

Bulb Boy, which has won more awards than I can list here, is as creepy and weird as it sounds. Originally released for PCs on Steam, the game translates well to iOS’s touch interface. I played on my iPhone 6s Plus and iPad Pro and greatly preferred the experience on the iPad, where the artwork and soundtrack could really shine.

Bulb Boy is as much about exploring and enjoying its strange world as it is about the puzzles. The lead character is so charming that I very quickly found myself wanting to help him out of all the tight spots he finds himself in, which makes for an absorbing game. For the most part, the puzzles are challenging without being too hard, but if you do get stuck, Bulb Boy provides hints in the form of pictographic thought-bubbles that appear above Bulb Boy’s head. There are also walk-throughs online.

Bulb Boy is available on the App Store for $2.99 and, although I have not tried it, it’s worth noting that Bulb Boy is also available on the Mac for $9.99.

Nanuleu by Selva Interactive is an excellent new tower-defense strategy game reminiscent of Rymdkapsel. I’ve been a fan of tower-defense games since the original Fieldrunners game launched on iOS just a couple months after the App Store opened. Nanuleu is a less frenetic, more laid-back take on that classic style with many of its own distinctive elements.

Nanuleu is played from an isometric perspective on a procedurally generated map that makes each game you play unique. There are three modes, Apprentice, Warrior, and Sage, each of which is progressively more difficult to complete.

Each Nanuleu map is procedurally generated.

You start each game with a life tree at the center of the map and resources that you can spend to expand your territory across the map. Tapping on the squares on the map that are adjacent to territory you already control gives you the option to plant certain types of trees or simply expand your network of roots. Water, mineral, and life trees can only be planted on squares with corresponding colored symbols and require more resources than simply laying down roots.

Five types of trees are connected by a root system.

After a while, enemies start attacking from different spots along the edges of the map. Planting protector, and later, war trees helps defend your trees against the enemy. As you expand your network of water, mineral, and life trees, resources accumulate faster, but you need to spend your resources carefully to defend your territory. If the enemies start taking out trees, especially those that produce resources, your territory begins to shrink. Vanquish all the enemies and you win the round. If the enemies get the upper hand and overtake your last life tree, you lose.

It’s easy to understand why Nanuleu won an award at the 2015 Indie Game Maker Contest and has already made a best of 2016 list just over a week since its release. The game combines great visuals and sound with simple, but challenging, gameplay. Nanuleu games are not short. Most of the games I’ve played have lasted 20-30 minutes, but time flies because it’s easy to get absorbed in the action. If you enjoy tower defense and real-time strategy games, Nanuleu is worth checking out.

Nanuleu is available on the App Store for $2.99.