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Athenion might not have the pedigree of some other deck-building card games available for mobile, but that shouldn't put you off. This is a game that's packed full of bright ideas, fresh new gameplay modes and enough content that you can lose hours of your life to.

Battles take place on a 4×4 grid, and see you taking it in turns with your opponent to lay down cards. You draw up to five cards from your deck of forty at the start of every turn.

These are the units you're playing in the fight, and they range from hulking monsters to flighty fairies, from magical trees to fearsome undead dragons.

Your cards have arrows on them that you show you which direction they can attack. You'll also notice a bunch of other numbers on the cards. These let you know the hit points a card has, how powerful its attack is and how many soul points it grants you.

Those soul points let you attack your opponent and they're the key to victory. The first player to lose all of their own hit points is the loser.

There's a lot more going on than that though. For one thing you need to pick from one of six different factions before you even get to the fights.

These factions have different strengths and weaknesses and figuring out which of them best suits the way you want to play is the first step of a pretty long journey.

Different factions have different special moves as well. Some let you link together cards to make them more powerful, others are all about sacrificing weaker units to create pockets of dark magical energy. One lets you build giant rock walls that you can use to protect some of your units or power up others.

There are single-player challenges, regular events and much, much more as well. You're never short of something to do in Athenion, and the pace of the matches lets you get a lot of them in in a single setting.

The Good

There's a staggering amount of depth to Athenion. It's going to take you a good while to get to grips with the basics and once you've done that there are layers and layers to peel back. Every time you win you'll figure out a new strategy and every time you lose you'll be trying to find a way to right that wrong.

The game looks amazing too. The cards all sport a brilliant anime art-style and you'll want to collect all of them just so you can check them out. The speed of the fights is a massive plus too – they deliver huge chunks of tactical action in the sort of short-blast sessions that are perfect for mobile play.

On top of that there's a brilliant community to the game, and you never have to wait long to find an online battle. There are a number of different modes that let you practice with different decks, take part in intriguing events and fight it out in ranked and casual multiplayer matches.

The Bad

There's a pretty steep learning curve here, so if you're not in for the long haul then you might be better finding your card-based fun somewhere else. Even when you've got the basics down you've still got a lot to learn and it can be punishing to come up against an opponent who knows more than you do.

There are also a lot of currencies, crafting materials and other rewards to figure out. The game does tell you what they do, but the tutorials are pretty brief and you're left on your own for a lot of the time to try and get to the bottom of things.

Overall

Athenion might not be the easiest game to understand, but once things start clicking it becomes something really rather special. There are some brilliant ideas here and they're woven into a bright tapestry of gorgeous visuals and wonderfully paced mobile play.

It won't be to everyone's taste, and it's fair to say that some players are going to put it down before they've even got to the good bits, but this is one CCG that it's well worth sticking with.

8.2

OVERALL

Replayability 8.1

Game Controls 8.2

Graphics 8.7

Sound/Music 8.2

Gameplay 7.8

FREE

Athenion: Tactical CCG

ZERO-bit Company Limited

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Let Them Come ($1.99) by Versus Evil is a survival shooter where you must fight hordes of alien enemies as the lone survivor of a spaceship. If you enjoyed games like Ashworld and Kick Ass Commandos, then you will like what Let Them Come has to offer.

As someone who has watched a lot of movies and television shows and even played games that feature some post-apocalyptic setting, I've always wondered what it would be like to be all alone. You know, the last living human being, forced to survive by any means possible when it seems that everything's doomed? Yeah, that's pretty much what you end up with in Let Them Come, and as a fan of arcade shooters, I had to check this one out. While it's a fun game, it does have some flaws that affect gameplay.

$3.99

Ashworld

Pascal Bestebroer

$2.99

Kick Ass Commandos

Anarchy Enterprises

Visually, Let Them Come has an awesome 16-bit pixel art style aesthetic that falls in line with many other games. As someone who grew up in the '90s, I definitely appreciate these visuals. Despite the pixelated appearance, I found everything to fairly detailed, including the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the barren spaceship, as well as the various hostile aliens that can explode upon death. While the setting of the game is going to be dim overall, the lighting ends up being a bit dynamic because of your weapon and bursting neon alien corpses. Animations are smooth and fluid in Let Them Come, with no lag or choppiness on my iPhone 8 Plus. The game also features a heavy metal soundtrack with unlockable mixtapes as you progress, which is just appropriate when you're the only human left.

In Let Them Come, you'll control Rock Guner as he faces off against waves of alien lifeforms. As you clear waves, you won't be able to go back and grind, which is an unfortunate flaw of the game made apparent as you reach the first challenging boss level. Each time you die, you'll have to start off at the beginning of the wave you died on, so Let Them Come gets increasingly more difficult as you get further along.

As you kill enemies, you earn coins, which doubles as your score. You spend the coins in the ship's inventory stash, where you can purchase various weapon and passive upgrades, as well as mixtapes. If you change your mind on a purchase, you can also sell it back for the same amount of coin that you bought it for, though the buttons for this aren't too clearly labeled. There's a mix of various bullets, melee weapons, grenades, health increases, and more. Of course, the better an upgrade is, the more expensive it will be, so save up those points.

Once you have purchased an upgrade, it stays in the inventory until you decide to equip it into your loadout. To do this, just drag-and-drop what you want to use into the appropriate slots at the bottom. You can have up to four passive skills, two secondary weapons (melee and grenades), and two ammo types.

Controls in Let Them Come are simple but can feel a bit clunky. Since Rock Guner is stationary behind a machine gun on the ship, you're responsible for aiming and shooting from that single spot. Along the left hand side of the screen is a slider that allows you to aim the weapon. To shoot, just long-press on the button of the ammo you want to use. Yes, the gun can overheat, which you can gauge with the meter next to your weapon loadout. If it's getting dangerous, the rate of fire drops significantly until it can cool down, so make sure to keep an eye out on it. If enemies get too close, you can choose to use your melee weapon instead by tapping on it to use.

Near the top right of the screen will be your combo meter. This indicates the number of consecutive kills you currently have. Once it's full, you can get a bonus unlock to use for this round. These include useful items like unlimited item use (some ammo rounds have a limited number before you need to refill), more health, resupply, have enemies explode on death, and more, including the all-powerful Frenzy Mode. Your bonuses are always randomized, so you'll always end up with a surprise of what to expect.

Get ready to face an onslaught of enemies, and try to kill everything that moves.

The Good

Let Them Come is a good survival shooter game that is both fun and challenging. Even though it proves to be difficult, it's still hard to put down once you get started. The graphics are retro an a nice homage to classic games, and the tunes are also awesome to listen to. Being able to change the soundtrack as you play is a nice touch.

I wasn't sure about the whole stationary shooting thing, but it does work out fine for what it's worth. It gives me a ton of pleasure just sitting there and blowing up a bunch of aliens as I struggle to survive, and having so many upgrades to unlock and increase your strength just makes me keep coming back.

The Bad

While I like Let Them Come a lot, it isn't without some big flaws that unfortunately affect the gameplay. As you advance in waves, things get more difficult and eventually you may end up stuck and unable to grind for points to get better gear. I wish it was possible to go back to previous waves just to grind for coins for the necessary upgrades before facing off against the first boss, which can be too hard.

Another issue is the slider for aiming. Sometimes the slider's touch zone does not seem as responsive as it should be, so it was hard to aim fast enough to get the enemies on the ceiling as well as the ground. This resulted in some untimely deaths for me because I couldn't have the gun pointing up in time, so hopefully the controls get better optimization in a future update.

The verdict

Overall, I'm enjoying Let Them Come a lot, despite the issues with the controls and levels. The game looks great and the metal soundtrack is just fun to listen to, especially since you can change the tracks on a whim. Hopefully the difficulty and level issues get addressed soon, as its current state can be a bit unbalanced. And I hope to see improvements and optimizations to the aiming controls, as it would make the game a lot smoother.

Still, Let Them Come is a fun survival arcade shooter that everyone should try out. You can find Let Them Come on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $1.99. It's also available on Steam for PC and Mac for $4.99.

8.4

OVERALL

Graphics 9

Sound/Music 9

Replayability 8.5

Gameplay 8.5

Game Controls 7

$1.99

Let Them Come

Versus Evil

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