Junk Jack

It's quite hard to know what to make of Junk Jack: on one hand it's a side-scrolling platformer, but on the other there's a clear nod towards RPG-esque depth. You control Jack, running and building things. Movement is done through swiping in your intended direction – it’s nicely simple, but imprecise. Sometimes there are small monster-like creatures, which come out to play at night.

Your goal? Survival. And… actually, that's it. Junk Jack professes to be indebted to Minecraft – and this is evident in the cutely blocky aesthetic – but there's more on offer here than just chucking some bricks together.

Materials do have a sense of worth about them – you have to gather them yourself, by digging, mining or killing things – and they can be crafted to form useful items. That said, it's not intuitive – the instruction 'craftbook' takes up /over 30 screens/ – and combat is frustratingly limited. You may keep Jack alive, but it's hard to gauge exactly what he's living for.