Alawar is taking a break from the worlds of match three or hidden object games with its upcoming Pearl Harbor: Fire on the Water. A shooting gallery game, Fire on the Water will allow you to take command of a series of massive battleships, armed with torpedoes, laser and even nuclear weapons. Through the game’s 120 story levels, you’ll be asked to fire on enemy ships as they enter from the sides of the screen, never allowing them to make it to the other side.

Are you familiar with microgame collections? A microgame is a bit like a basic action/arcade experience, except the developer force-feeds it a lot of sugar, jams the pacing up to 400 RPMs, and breaks off the gearshift. A microgame collection corrals several dozen of these tiny games into one package, and then wraps them around a basic concept that lets you experience said games for a few frantic seconds at a time. Microgames found a lot of success on Nintendo’s systems thanks to the WarioWare titles, but they’ve never found much of an audience on iOS or Android. Spiffy Games hopes to change that with its Super Fun Time Kickstarter.

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Pricing games, classic music, “The Big Wheel” and beautiful models: The Price Is Right Slots by Ludia combines all of those elements from the greatest game show of all time with modern slots features for reel and wheel-spinning action on Facebook. Except for the models – you'll have to provide those yourself.

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There are two types of people in this world: those who think garden gnomes are creepy, and liars. If you’re not a liar, however, I have some refreshing news for you. Foursaken Media’s Sky Gnomes has taken the little lawn terrors out of the yard, and into the air, where they’re significantly more awesome. And if you are a liar? Shame on you.

Arkedo is a studio that holds a special place in my heart. They may not be as well-known as… well, any studio out there, really – but over the last four or five years they’ve made some of the neatest little games you can find. They were responsible for the fireworks puzzlers Big Bang Mini on the Nintendo DS. And their Arkedo Series – 03 PIXEL! on Xbox Live’s Indie Games channel is one of the most satisfying yet challenging platforming experiences of the last decade. So when they debuted their newest project at PAX East this year, our ears perked up.

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Magic Tree is something you don't see quite so often as you used to, even on iOS: a pretty straightforward farm sim. It includes some gameplay elements borrowed straight from Frontierville, like erecting buildings and following a loose sequence of events as you develop your territory, but at heart it's not too different from the slew of half Farmville, half Harvest Moon farm game clones that spewed onto Asian social networks and mobile phones years ago. What Magic Tree has over those earlier clones is a solid localization and a far more attractive presentation.

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City of Fools, a self-proclaimed light-hearted and clever detective romp, should be a welcomed thematic departure from the macabre mysteries that populate the hidden-object genre. Unfortunately, the joke’s on us. The gameplay consists of the townsfolk (or townsfools in this case) sending the player on one meaningless retrieval task after another and the barrage of jokes about bodily functions falls flat.

Here’s something to think about. Video games have been around for decades, but their burst of mainstream popularity is only a few years old. Why is that? What is it about this generation of video games that gave rise to reams of casual fare? The answer is multi-tiered, but according to recent survey findings, the economic downturn of the late Aughts did a great deal to bring a much wider audience to the relatively cheap pastime of gaming. Moreover, the rise of the free-to-play market, its subsequent success, and the chilly economy all tie into each other in a big way.

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The thought of a card game mixed with a hidden object adventure is a unique one, and in Solitaire Mystery: Stolen Power, we see those two worlds collide in a game that had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the final product lived up to none of it, leaving the only mystery to be where the rest of the game (and its fun) ultimately went.