The slightly blurry image shows a handheld controller that fits around the iPhone like a case, with the directional pad and buttons that are standard with most controllers on either end of the device. Kotaku won’t say where it got the image, but says that it’s of a Logitech device that fits an iPhone 5.

(Incidentally, if this is a Logitech case planned for introduction when a new iPhone is announced later this fall, the fact that it’s the same size as an iPhone 5 indicates that the new model will have the same form factor — more of an iPhone 5S upgrade than an iPhone 6.)

Apple hasn’t completely detailed its vision for the iPhone and iPod touch as gaming devices just yet. At WWDC last week it briefly mentioned a new API for turning devices into a game controller and an official MFi designation for some yet-to-be-named hardware makers. But come fall, when a new iPhone is likely to be announced, Apple should have more to share about how the controllers will work and interact with other devices like Apple TV via AirPlay and which hardware makers will be involved.

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Ridiculous Fishing ($2.99, Universal) is Billy’s fishing game. And when you play Billy’s fishing game, you play by Billy’s rules.  And Billy likes to fish a little differently than one might expect.

You start off by casting the fishing line into the water off of the bow of Billy’s boat. As the hook travels downward, avoid all of the swimming fish by turning your screen like a steering wheel to the right and back to the left. As soon as the hook hits a fish, the reel will instantly start pulling up the line. On the way back up, every fish that the hook touches will be caught. Just like on the way down, turn the screen to control the path that the line takes as it makes its way back up to the surface. The deeper down into the water the line goes, the more fish the hook will have a chance to snag on the way back up. Once all of the snagged fish reach the surface, the real fun begins.

Billy likes to fling all of the fish high into the air with one big thrust, the higher the better, in fact.  Once all of the fish are airborne, Billy then likes to pull out his gun and shoot the gills off of all of the fish that were just caught. To show Billy which fish to shoot at just tap on the screen. No sophisticated aiming, Billy is a pretty good shot. However, not all fish go down with the first shot.  So be prepared to fire multiple times.  Don’t worry, Billy has plenty of ammo.

The number of shots it takes to bring down a fish will depend on the caliber of the gun and the size of the fish.  Each shot that does not destroy the fish will send it up into the air a little higher. Continuing to bounce the larger fish further up into the air is fun, and you can continue to push the fish as high as the moon if you like.  But you really need to eliminate as many fish as possible. Eventually what goes up must come down, and that includes Billy’s fish.  Destroying all of the fish before they hit the water is important because that is the only way Billy gets paid.

It is the size and species of each fish that determines how much money is earned. To maximize the payout for each round of casting and shooting, Billy needs to snag as many fish as possible on the line. And that means getting the hook to sink as deep into the water as possible. What initially prevents you from hitting bottom is the length of the line. Each fishing hole that Billy goes to has a different depth.  Fortunately, Billy knows a place where you can get some fishing and hunting gear, Shack Shoppe.

There’s all sorts of gear that you can buy at the Shack Shoppe to help Billy improve his game. You can buy longer reels, more powerful guns, more effective lures, and a wide assortment of other unconventional hunting technology like bowling balls and oil drums. There are no in-app purchases in this game, that’s not Billy’s style. You can only spend Billy’s money that he earns from casting and shooting.

As you use the upgraded gear to fish deeper and deeper, you a find wider variety of fish species.  To unlock additional fishing holes on Billy’s map, you must catch more and more species of fish.  Each new fishing hole also introduces a new variety of fish to catch.  And just like fishing in real life, each fishing hole will bring new challenges that require additional gear from the Shack Shoppe.

So if you want to keep fishing you need to keep buying more and more gear.  And in order to buy more gear, you need to keep fishing.  Sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?  Maybe instead of buying your dad another silly card this year, consider gifting him an app for this weekend and take him on a Ridiculous Fishing trip for Father’s Day instead.

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Tiny Monsters (Free, Universal) is a time and resource management game where you breed, raise and sell tiny little monsters.  While these virtual pets will not die on you, they sure do demand a lot of attention.

Getting the mechanics of the game down is quite easy.  There are monster eggs that hatch in the Nursery.  You can either buy these eggs at the Market or breed two of your monsters together in the Breeding Den to get one.  Once hatched, the monsters need to be placed in their appropriate habitat.  While in their habitat, each monster can evolve into three different stages by first feeding them food and then letting them rest in the Dream Room.  There are over 100 different types of monsters to collect: normal, hybrid and mythical, that live in 10 different Habitats.  As a breeder of monsters, you have four basic resources at your disposal to care for these monsters: coins, food, diamonds and of course time.

The choices you make as you manage your resources can drastically affect the number and type of monsters you collect as well as how fast you move up to the next level.  For instance, growing different crops on your Small Farm costs you different amounts of time and coins.  Cloudberries produce five food units for 30 coins and take 30 seconds to grow, whereas Bluff Broccoli yields 20 food in five minutes at a cost of 40 coins.

At the more expensive end of the food chain there are the Plumpkins that will set you back 2,190 coins, take 18 hours to grow, and result in 275 food.  Depending on what is the most important resource to you, time or coins, you will make different decisions that will either accelerate your monster production, or bring it to a grinding halt.  That is unless you opt to buy your way out of your mistakes and impatience through a series of in-app purchases.

But to think of this game as a pay-to-play game would be a mistake. One can easily advance to level 12 in a single weekend without making any in-app purchases. The only thing holding you back from advancing much further is time. Breeding monsters, hatching eggs and harvesting food takes time. A diverse group of fully grown adult monsters living in several different habitats can easily generate 250,000 coins and 5,000 food in 24 hours.  And that is after only a couple of days of modest gameplay. The only in-game currency you cannot generate in such large numbers is diamonds.

Diamonds are a rare commodity in the game that need to be managed accordingly. The true application of diamonds in the game is to buy time. If you do not want to wait for an egg to hatch, a monster to evolve, or a crop to grow, you can make it happen instantly. Paying one diamond for each hour you would otherwise wait can get expensive. Especially when things start to take days to complete their cycle. Instead, the best way to spend the few diamonds you have is to expand your breaking and evolving operations.  Breeding and evolving three to four monsters a day may prove to be a better long-term strategy than exhausting your resources and producing seven or eight monsters in a few hours.

When you first start the game, the Nursery has enough space to hatch one egg at a time. The same is true of the Dream Room that you send your monsters to evolve into teenagers and adults. Since it can take many hours for a monster to sleep in the Dream Room or an egg to hatch in the Nursery, in the long run it is a better investment to spend your diamonds on more spots rather than fewer hours. Especially since diamonds are very hard to earn.  You can earn diamonds by completing quests. These quests can take the form of hatching more eggs, growing more food, or adding more buildings and decorations to your world. The more challenging quests involve growing exotic breeds of monsters. Knowing which combinations of monsters to breed is a key element to achieving the most rewarding quests.

Keeping track of the monster combinations you have already bred in order to expand your inventory of unique monsters in your Monsterpedia is the real challenge in the game. With all of the different levels of evolution each monster goes through on its path to adulthood creates a seemingly endless number of breeding combinations.  So if you are looking to start your own collection of tiny monsters, then this weekend is as good as any to start.

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Gravity Guy 2 ($0.99, Universal) is different from your typical run-and-jump platform game. In this endless runner, you control the platform, not the guy.

In Gravity Guy you don’t actually jump, instead it is the platform that moves to propel your clone into the air. As you run forward, you tap and hold down on the right side of the screen to move the platform up into the air. Releasing will cause the platform to lower itself back down to its original level. This up-and-down motion is just enough the toss your clone up into the air.

If you need an extra little boost, you can tap on the left side of the screen to use your jet pack and push your clone up just a little bit more. Through the actions of moving the platforms up and down as well as using quick bursts from your jet pack , you maneuver your clone from one platform to the next. What is not apparent at first is that you can also raise the next platform while your clone is in the air to modify the position on the platform you land at. This technique becomes more essential as you try to level up your clone by completing a series of three missions per level.

On each run there are glowing green spots on certain platforms. Landing directly on a spot signifies a perfect landing. There are also tall green glowing beams called bullseyes that you will want to jump through to earn bonuses. Making successive perfect landings or passing multiple bullseyes one after another will increase your combo or bonus multiplier. As you advance levels, some of the missions you will face include earning an increasing number of combo multipliers in a single run. Other missions are as easy as raising a certain number of platforms, running a particular distance without falling, or just using a certain number of special powers.

While the challenges do get increasingly difficult, they are never difficult for the clone you are using. There are special powers that your clone can use when you need to complete a particular challenge. For instance, if you need to collect a large number of coins in a single run, you may elect to use the Amplifier power, which increases the number of coins awarded for making a perfect landing or hitting a bullseye.

There are seven different clones you can use throughout the game, each with its own unique abilities. Neon will earn an additional stash of coins when you level up, Troop earns more coins through rewards, Girl earns more coins when collecting jewels, Slim has a more powerful boost, Mech can revive itself, Beast allows rolls to increase combo multipliers and Beauty just earns more coins overall. The seventh clone is Guy, who starts out the game and has no special powers to speak of. As you level up you will unlock each of the clones.

There are a lot of opportunities to earn coins in Gravity Guy 2. This is primarily due to the fact that in order to use a power on an individual run, you must spend your coins to do so. Each power you use on a single run will cost you more coins. Once you fall and your run is over, the power goes away and you will need to pay again to use the power.

You also use your coins to unlock powers earlier in the game before you earn them. The same is true if you want to use a particular clone before you level up enough to unlock it. You can even spend coins to skip a particular mission; this comes in handy when there is a mission that you just can’t seem to get past.  While earning enough coins to successfully play the game is not very difficult, you can buy additional coins via in-app purchases.

If you like the game play that this sequel offers to the genre of endless running platform games, you will also enjoy playing  the game’s predecessor, Gravity Guy ($0.99 iPhone, $2.99 iPad). In the first edition of the game you flip the laws of physics by changing the direction gravity pulls you. One tap and gravity is pulling you toward the ceiling, another and it is pulling you toward the floor again. With such wild variations in how gravity affects Guy, one can only wonder what a third edition of this title would be like.

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Dude Perfect ($0.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad) is a sports game of sorts. There is a basketball, there is a net, and the goal is to get the basketball through the net. The difference here is that rather than scoring points for getting the ball through the net, you score points for hitting everything else on the screen except the net.

The dynamics of throwing the ball are as simple as choosing a direction and deciding how hard to throw. Anywhere you tap on the screen will engage the throwing mechanics of the game. Drag your finger in the opposite direction you want to throw as if you are pulling back a slingshot. Lift your finger from the screen and the ball is off.  The important thing to remember is that you don’t have to start the shot by touching the ball on the screen.  Tapping anywhere on the screen will start the shot.  This is good to know as many times the player is situated near the edge of the screen.

Clouds, buildings, trucks, balloons, fences and even flying saucers. There are all sorts of obstacles you can use to rack up your score as you make one amazing shot after another. The game was inspired by the real world YouTube sensation of the same name. A series of videos depicting amazing shots that include outrageous bank shots and bouncing the ball off all sorts of objects.  Watching the videos you get a sense that the game is not too far removed from reality.  Except perhaps shots involving bouncing the ball off of alien spacecraft.

There are over 80 different levels to play in seven different themed settings. Basics, Backyard, Ranch, Camp, Amusement Park, City and Space. Each theme has different obstacles that you can use to make your shot earn higher scores. You can also choose which of five different players to use to make your shot with. Each player has their own style and abilities. The twins, as an example, can be used to pass the ball before making a shot.  Keeping things interesting, you can also choose between a basketball, bowling ball or beach ball to throw. As you can guess, neither the bowling ball nor the beach ball have the same aerodynamic characteristics as the basketball. While you may get lucky with a power throw using the basketball and hoping it will eventually bounce in, the bowling ball in particular is not as forgiving.

Multiplayer has two different modes. The first multiplayer mode is for challenges between you and a friend with only one device.  This requires you to pass the one device back and forth between you and your friend.  You each then take turns making shots to see who ends up with the highest score. The second multiplayer game mode is a wireless mode where you can challenge your online GameCenter friends.  You can even let the game set up a quick auto match for you.

Through in-app purchases you can acquire additional payers, unlock all of the levels, and even enable a feature that allows you to create your own custom levels. While skill can keep you advancing in the game, and the included characters have the skills necessary to play any of the levels, the one in-app purchase you have to buy is the level editor.  Like the actual Dude Perfect Team, this is where you can plan and set up your own crazy shots.  You create your own custom levels on any one of the themed settings. You simply go through a series of edit modes where you choose where to place the basket, how to position the player and ultimately the number of objects you want to place on the screen to bounce your shots off of.

The cartoon-styled graphics of this game are well drawn and colorful.  While some of the challenges seem impossible at first, it is the rush of actually completing a difficult shot that keeps you coming back for more.

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Skylanders Cloud Patrol ($1.99, Universal) is a carnival-style shooting game where you tap to shoot at your target to win coins. The targets you are shooting at are mischievous trolls that have broken out of prison.

In this game you play one of a number of different Skylanders. As a Skylander you are responsible for hunting down and eliminating the escaped trolls. To shoot a troll, or anything else for that matter, you simply tap on the screen at the target you want to hit. You can also swipe your finger up, down, across and in a variety of pattern to lock on to a series of targets in quick succession. When shooting in such a manner, the game has the same interactive feel as Fruit Ninja. And like Fruit Ninja there are targets on the screen, in this case mines, that you must avoid shooting at all costs. If you shoot and hit a mine, it will explode and end the game.

As you progress through the game you are presented with a never-ending series of targets at which to aim. Each collection of targets are laid out like individual levels. After you successfully hit all of the targets on a given level, you will be flown to the next level in the cloud and presented with a new collection of targets. These targets can be barrels, boxes, balloons, presents, sheep (yes, sheep) and of course trolls. Things do get progressively difficult as the targets you are aiming to hit do not stay in one place.

The trolls will hide behind shields, duck under rocks and even fly around the screen using propeller caps. It really does resemble a carnival-style shooting game. Some of the trolls are armed with weapons that they will use to shoot at you. You must shoot down the projectiles aimed at you before they get too close and kill your Skylander.

Swirling around the screen intermixed with the trolls are the mines.  The mines always seem to change their pattern and place themselves right in front of a troll as you are tapping on the screen to shoot. There are also magical power-ups, crates packed with explosives that will kill all visible trolls on the screen, and golden coins that you can tap on to collect. When you do finally get overwhelmed and either shoot a mine or get shot by a troll, the game will end. Your score will be tallied, coins will be counted and you will be awarded gems for each of the posted achievements you have accomplished.

The coins and gems collected can be used to buy magic items as well as different Skylanders.  The magic items can be used while playing the game to give you an advantage over the trolls you are shooting.  However, switching out your Skylander for a more powerful Skylander with special abilities can really make a difference in how well you perform.  Between each level, there are in-app purchases where you can buy more gems.  The gems can be traded for gold coins.  This can certainly help you power-up at a faster rate by enabling you to achieve your goals faster.

What really sets the game apart however is that you can also make out-of-app purchases.  This is actually the main reason that the entire Skylander series of games exists.  By purchasing real toy models of the Skylanders at your local toy or hobby store, you can use the web activation code that comes with the toy model to unlock its corresponding Skylander character within the game itself.  Through earning gems and coins in the game, buying gems and coins through iTunes in-app purchase, or buying toy models at a retail store, you can grow your Skylander army.

Rather than exclusively use Apple’s GameCenter, Skylanders also utilizes Activision’s online gamers community, Activate. With Activate you can save game progress and challenge your Activate friends to various Showdowns.  These Showdowns are like goals, and if you win the Showdown you will be awarded with gems and coins.  The interaction between the game and Activate is smooth and reliable.  This weekend is as good a time as any to Activate an Activision online gaming account and start hunting trolls.

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Initially Dots seems like something of an odd fit for Betaworks. The young media incubator is probably best known for its acquisition of Digg last summer, followed by its recent gain of a majority stake in popular read-it-later service Instapaper. The company simply doesn’t have a history in gaming, and as detailed on the Betaworks blog, Dots’ introduction was, in fact, something of a happy accident.

Betaworks’ resident hacker Patrick Moberg ended up creating the game following several interaction design experiments. It’s experiments like these that Betaworks hope will help the company in gaining valuable user engagement insight. Speaking to Mashable, Betaworks’ Paul Murphy explained that the release of Dots will help the company learn “how to keep people engaged,” adding that what it gains will be applied to Digg and other Betaworks products.

So, is the free game worth your time, or is it just a bare-bones experiment aimed to help Betaworks better its other products? Well, as it turns out, it can be both.

How it works

The straightforward, visually pleasing puzzler tasks you with clearing your game board of as many colored dots as possible within 60 seconds, all in the pursuit of gaining a leading high score.

To clear the dots you must match a minimum of two, dragging your finger in a straight line from one corresponding colored dot to another. Once a link is made the dots promptly disappear and the board refills, replacing them as quickly as you can remove them. A point is awarded for each dot you manage to clear.

Things get interesting when you manage to connect four or more identical dots in a square formation. Doing this will clear the board of all dots of that squares given color. After a few play-throughs, the importance of making squares becomes overly apparent, as they are key to ensuring that you set a respectable high-score that linear connections alone can’t assure.

Comparing your high score to those of your friends is done via Twitter or Facebook. You can chose to connect to just one service, or both, as a means to see your friends results. Support for Apple’s Game Center is sadly lacking, which is a shame as the ability to challenge friends to beat your tally would be a nice addition, especially considering the connections to Twitter and Facebook are underused — you can’t tap on a friend’s name to fire off a challenge via a tweet for example.

Gaining an even loftier score can be achieved by use of power-ups. Dots presents you with three choices to advance your game further, all of which add a certain degree of strategy into the mix. The first, Time Stops, pauses the one-minute countdown for five seconds, giving you extra time if you feel you’re having a particularly good run, and would like just a little longer to rack up some more points. The second power-up is known as a Shrinker, offering the ability to remove a single dot from the game board just by double-tapping it — these come in handy if one dot is standing in the way between you and completing an all-important square. Finally, the third power-up is known as an Expander — these do the same as a completed square, removing all dots of a chosen color.

To use these power-ups you need to purchase them with your gained dots. You soon amass a decent number from just regular play, as each high score is added to your dots total at the end of each game.

For the impatient, dots can also be bought with real cash — 5,000 will cost you 69 cents, 15,000 will set you back $1.49, whereas 50,000 are priced at $2.99. However, due to the ease of which dots can be attained from normal play, buying extra with real money is in no way essential, and instead just a nice way to add to the tip jar for an otherwise free game.

There are times during play when you’ll see a square for the taking made up of more than four dots, and yet despite how tempting it may be to take the time to join the additional points up, especially due to the delightful feedback you receive with each connection, it is a misuse of your ticking seconds. Whether you score a square of four dots or nine, the end result is fundamentally the same — all those colored dots are going to be added to the tally and disappear regardless, so chaining a larger square is purely wasted time. Initially this lack of reward for forming larger squares may seem like a frustrating omission, yet the truth lies in Dots’ clean and clear simplicity. One dot equals one point, and it always will.

Clearing dots is as simple as it sounds, at times captivating and calming, at others frantic and frustrating. The addition of a few select power-ups give this lightweight game just enough in terms of depth to make the high-score objective appealing and incessantly addictive.

Dots is a wholly satisfying pick-up-and-play game, perfect for those fleeting free moments.

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Gravity Hook HD ($0.99, Universal) is a high scoring arcade-style game that is more challenging than it may first appear. If there were such a genre for side-scrolling puzzle games, this game would define that genre. Except for one minor detail: it’s vertical.

In Gravity Hook, your robot shoots out a grappling hook towards an orb that you believe is stable enough to propel the robot upward. The problem is that the orb is not attached to anything. As the robot is pulled closer to the orb, the orb is getting pulled closer to the robot.  Gameplay is simple enough to get the hang of — just tap on the orb you want to attach the hook to and the robot shoots its hook at that orb. As the robot moves upward, more orbs become visible for you to grab on to. When you select a new orb, the robot releases the hook from the orb it is currently attached to and fires the hook to the new orb.

Sounds simple enough, but there is one slight catch. The closer the robot is to an orb when it gets attached, the faster the robot moves toward it. So fast, in fact, that the robot can use the momentum to fling itself up even higher. The opposite has its ill effects as well: the farther away the robot is from an orb when it gets attached, the slower the robot moves toward it. If the robot happens to be too far away at the time it gets attached, it will fall further away from the orb rather than get closer. You can, however, attempt to recover from choosing an object that was too far away by targeting a closer object. The problem is that your downward momentum is often times too much for the cable to handle. Extending the cable between the robot and the orb too much will cause it to snap. With no cable to cast out, the robot will fall, crashing downward and ending the game.

The orbs themselves have different properties as well. The farther up you go, the more complex the choices get. Toward the bottom of the game, the green orbs you grapple on to are quite benign and easy enough to get the hang of. The blue orbs on the other hand turn into mines as soon as you attach to them. When attached, a timer starts counting down. Detaching from the blue orbs stops the timer. If you stay attached too long and end up bumping into the blue orbs as you get pulled closer to them, the blue orb will explode and destroy the robot in the process.

The gray orbs are chained to one another and will quickly break free. Once free from the other gray orbs, they begin to plummet toward the ground. Staying attached to them for too long and the robot will be pulled to the ground with them. And the red orbs, lets just say you need to avoid those at all costs. With all of the objects the idea is basically the same, don’t stay too attached to any one object for too long.  Use your momentum to propel the robot upward to the next collection of orbs.

There is a classic play mode as well. I found the classic mode to be much more challenging than the normal play mode. So you might want to get the hang of things in the HD version before you try out the classic eight-bit version. The first rendition of the game was originally inspired by a program that was use to teach students how to type if you can imagine that.  Whichever version you feel more comfortable playing, this is the weekend to grab hold of Gravity Hook.

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Star Command ($2.99, Universal) is a mission-based space game where you are responsible for the safety and well-being of your ship and its crew. However, as captain, your primary objective is to stay alive. This is a game where the ship goes down with its captain.

From the very start, you spend a series of colored tokens to add different types rooms and crew members to your ship. The more rooms you have, the more crew you will need to operate these rooms. Each colored token represents a different capability.  Red represents tactical for your weapons room and security team.  Next is blue; it represents science, this is for your medical team.  Finally there is yellow, which represents engineering.  Striking a balance between the three is essential as the game progresses.  With no in-app purchases to bankroll a fully manned ship, you must earn your tokens as you travel through the galaxy by completing a series of missions.

The ship you start with is basically empty. You need to add weapons, engineering, and medical rooms. Each room will cost you three tokens. Hiring crew members is your responsibility as well. Crew members can only be added on earth and will cost you one token each.  When it come to weapons on board the ship, each crew member wearing a red uniform is equipped with a standard issue laser pistol.  Once your ship is built and your crew is on board, you are ready to take on your first mission.

Throughout the game you will encounter alien battles both in space with ship-versus-ship combat, as well as on the board with crew-to-crew combat. In ship-to-ship combat you can only use the weapons and defenses from rooms that have crew members assigned to them. You only fire your weapons when they are fully charged. Once charged, each weapon has its own mini game you need to play in order to get the weapon to fire and hit its target. These mini games only take a few seconds to play and look like something you would expect to see on the console of a weapon’s targeting system.  As the battle progresses, your attention is focused on when the enemy is about to fire, what levels the enemy’s shields and hull integrity are at, and how long it takes your ship’s weapons to fully charge.  There are enough things going on all at once to keep you on edge.

In crew-to-crew combat, enemy aliens teleport onto your ship and start tearing it apart from the inside. You will have to hunt them down and destroy them before they kill all of your crew. Situating your security team a safe distance from the intruders, you find that you are constantly adjusting their position to keep them from getting overrun. You also need to reposition your teams when more aliens teleport onto your ship. If you are fortunate enough to have a medical room staffed with the necessary personnel, you will also start rotating your security teams in and out of the infirmary as they get hurt. When moving your crew around to fight the alien invaders, be sure not to leave one of the ship’s critical weapons rooms understaffed, or else you will leave your ship more vulnerable to attack.

The rooms on your ship can be upgraded, as can the crew members. At the end of each victory, you will be awarded tokens, which can be used to hire more crew members, add new rooms, or upgrade existing rooms. Also at the end of each victorious battle, each crew member that played a role in the battle will earn experience points based on what action they took in the battle.

There is a lot going on with each battle. While you are managing each crew member individually, you are also keeping track of each weapon to see when they are fully charged and ready to fire. At the same time you are also need to pay attention to the enemy’s weapon system in order to try to dodge an attack at just the right time.  Leaving a fully charged weapon sit idle too long, missing an opportunity to dodge an attack, or allowing just one crew member lose too many health points in a shootout could be the difference between winning or losing the battle.  If you feel like you are up to the challenge this weekend then consider joining Star Command as captain of your own ship.

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Girls Like Robots ($2.99, Universal) is a puzzle game where the pieces of the puzzle each have their own likes and dislikes. In this game, the nerds like robots too, but that is not the problem. The problem is that the girls do not like the nerds.

Oddly enough, the nerds don’t like other nerds either. About the only puzzle piece that can tolerate a nerd is a robot. It is these very basic social rules that lay the foundation of the game. The playing board is laid out in a grid of squares, with each piece occupying a square on the grid.  Each puzzle piece can be happy, mad or indifferent.  The score you earn is based on how many puzzle pieces on the board you make happy. When every piece on the board is happy you earn the maximum points allowed for that board.

From these simple beginnings a truly complex series of challenges await. Of course the size and dimensions of each board can change. But with certain levels there are already immovable pieces placed on the board that you have to contend with. Once a piece is played you cannot move it. There is an undo that allows you to keep undoing your previous moves one at a time. Or if you prefer, you can reset the entire board and start all over again.

As the levels progress, additional player pieces are introduced. Each new piece has its own set of likes and dislikes. There are even girls who like bugs in this game. What makes the game interesting is that each player piece has a personality, and a part to play in the storyline.  If you ever forget who likes who, you can always tap and hold on each player piece to see a cheat sheet outlining its interests. There is also a heart on the screen that you can press to see how the pieces you have already played on the board like each other. Green indicates a positive relationship and red a negative one.

Some levels play out like a game of solitaire where you decide which piece is played where and when. In the earlier levels you can even see the count of pieces you have remaining. And, a s things progress, some levels present you with the exact order the pieces must be played in what can best be described as a sort of Tetris-style of gameplay. On these levels, you only know what piece is coming next.  There are levels where the pieces are moving, and you must box in these pieces in order to keep them from moving about.  These variations are what make each new level a challenge to complete.

There are three different acts to play out as well as a series of bonus levels. Each act is unlocked as you complete earlier acts. Within the acts there are over 100 levels with their own  unique story to tell, which helps explain the rules for completing that level. For instance, you may be responsible for keeping a space next to June in the cafeteria so that Ben can sit next to her.  Ben wants to ask June to go with him to the upcoming school dance.  Or you may need to situate a robot between Ben and the other girls, as Ben has become quite excited to get to the dance.

With each level played, there is a thermometer that rates the total happiness of all of the pieces on the board. The more pieces that are happy, the higher the thermometer rises. Once all of the pieces are played, a final score is tallied and you are awarded from one to three happiness points. These points are collected in your Bag of Happiness.  The bonus levels — or challenges as they are called — are unlocked when you earn enough happiness points in your Bag of Happiness.

As you get familiar with each of the characters in the game, you begin to look forward to learning what comes next in the story.  As challenging as the puzzles can become, the story continues to string them all together into the three acts of a play.  Each obstacle, additional character or new aspect to the game can be associated directly with a twist in the main plot of the story.

So this weekend you should set aside time to come to understand exactly why Girls Like Robots better than Nerds.

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