Sophia, Rory and Dylan Games, Inc

A cooking adventure round the world in 3D, built like the Agent Rory games. Name your chef, then fly from Home Farm to thirty levels in thirty countries — Italy under the Leaning Tower, Paris under the Eiffel Tower, New York, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall, Sydney, Rio, the pyramids, the Parthenon, Dutch windmills, Moscow, Machu Picchu, the Rockies, Kilimanjaro, Bangkok, Iceland’s geysers, Barcelona, Istanbul, Seoul, Marrakech, the Matterhorn, Jamaica, Buenos Aires, Hoi An, Antarctica and Mount Everest among them. In each, zap a few little food enemies and crack Agent Rory puzzles (mazes, oven lights, laser mirrors, pairs and turning picture tiles) for that country’s food, then beat its boss, from The Mighty Meatball and Count Croissant to the Moose Mousse and the Himalayan Hot Pot. Everything goes straight to the kitchen at home, the only kitchen in the world: cook each country’s dishes for the shops where they come from, earn stars for a balloon, a helicopter, a jet and a rocket, make wands, and brew the Grand Concoction to reach King Burgerbeard. Move with the arrows and JUMP, drag to look.

Rory’s spy HQ, in 3D, and now a whole base: walk him round the briefing room, pick a mission off the board, make a cup of tea and try not to press the big red button (or open the quick list). Through the TOP SECRET doors are a garage full of Rory’s vehicles, a training gym, Pip’s lab, the canteen and Frost’s office, and out through the garage door a kart track, a lake and a helipad. Somewhere in the base is a secret room, and in it the Secret Folder: eight quick side missions with stars and best times, from kart chases and a drone dash to escaped robots, a laser corridor and a night shift past the guard bots. Operation Eclipse: UMBRA is stealing the sun, and Rory chases it through twenty-one countries from London and Venice to Machu Picchu and the Antarctic ice, ninety missions and six chases. Meltdown, a spy movie: Baron Kaldera has built six Inferno Engines to melt Antarctica from underneath, and POLARIS sends its youngest agent from a cold open on the Greenland ice through Norway, Monaco, Barcelona, Santorini, the Rockies, Dubai, the Atacama, Java, Seoul, the Himalaya, Cape Town, New Zealand and Patagonia to the volcano at the bottom of the world. Ninety missions on twenty-four brand-new mini-games and a chase in every place on fourteen rides, from a snowmobile to a bobsled, then two more operations: Madame Minuit stopping every clock in Europe at midnight, and Doctor Tempest steering a hurricane at Washington. A hundred and ninety missions in all. Zero Gravity, in real 3D: Professor Zero is sucking the gravity out of the world’s landmarks, and Rory and his robot partner BOLT run, jump, float, drive and fly from Tokyo, Giza and Sydney to Rio, New York, the Great Wall and the Taj Mahal, then up to a space station and the Moon. Sixty missions: ride ferries and cable cars, bounce off pads, sneak past searchlights, chase Floaters in a kart and bring down three giant robots. Deep Red, under the sea: Captain Undertow is draining the world’s oceans, and Rory swims, dives and drives TORPEDO the little yellow submarine from a Cornish harbour on the mud through the Bay of Fundy, the Panama Canal, the Galápagos, Hawaii, the Great Barrier Reef, Hong Kong and the Maldives to a floating base in the Bermuda Triangle, then down into the abyss and up a space elevator to Mars. A hundred and seventy-nine missions, with surfing, sonar, turtles, a lava tube and a robot squid. Spectrum, the fifth file: Baroness Grisaille is draining the colour out of the world’s most colourful places, and Rory and PALETTE, a chameleon robot, paint it back place by place, from the shopfronts of Dingle and the trams of Lisbon to the salt-flat mirror of Uyuni, the northern lights, Petra, the lanterns of Hội An, the baobabs, Samarkand, the Plitvice lakes and the red dunes of Namibia, up to her flying grey gallery. The world is grey until you win it back: sixty missions, a band for every country, and a chameleon who can turn invisible. Timeslip, new and back in time: Doctor Hourglass is bottling history’s greatest moments, and Rory follows her on the POLARIS time-sled from Dinosaur Valley, where a baby triceratops called Pebble hatches in his hands and becomes his partner, through the Ice Age, Egypt, Olympia and Rome to the Vikings. Slow time down, jump back three seconds and hold a door open for yourself. Act One is here: thirty-six missions. HQ shows how far Rory has got in each. More missions are on the way.

Number facts, fast. Adding and taking away to ten and to twenty, and times and divide to twelve, learned a family at a time (3 + 5, 5 + 3, 8 − 3, 8 − 5) and practised in six little games — Rocket Ride, Balloon Pop, Frog Hop, Monster Munch, a race against Robo, and Ladybird Doubles. Doubling and halving are a set of their own, from double 1 up to doubles and halves to 100, and a switch turns every game over to them. A fact turns green once it comes back right and quickly three times running; new ones arrive only as the old ones get fast, and a wrong answer is shown with counters, never buzzed. A star a day for enough right answers, coins for hats and colours, and a map of every fact for grown-ups. Dylan starts on adding and taking away to ten, Rory to twenty, Sophia on her tables.

Slime Storm in space. Fly with one thumb, weapons fire themselves, hide behind asteroids and mine them, ride out three bosses and reach the warp gate. Three ships to unlock.

One finger, one monkey, a lot of jungle. Hold anywhere to grab the glowing vine ring, let go to fly, slide up to climb. Seventy named levels over seven worlds — an easy banana grove to start, jungle, safari savanna, temple ruins, a night rainforest, misty falls and a volcano — and each world has its own thing to do besides swinging: bamboo poles to climb, zip lines, blast barrels, springy branches and water wheels. Three stars a level, a new Daily Jungle every day, a profile for everyone in the family, and the family’s best run on every level to race as a ghost.

American mah jongg for the family: the Charleston, jokers, calling tiles and a card of hands to aim for. Easy (hold 8, mahjong with 9) to learn on, Short (12 and 13) and Standard (13 and 14, the real thing). Play with three bots, or on your own phones and iPads together with a room code - bots fill any empty seats. Tiles rendered in 3D like real carved resin, with pictures on the flowers, jokers and 1 Bam, in four sets; six tables from emerald felt to red lacquer; and hints that show how far you are from every hand on the card.

A calm puzzle about mending broken pottery with gold. Tap the shards to turn them until every crack joins into one gold seam, in as few taps as you can: each bowl has a par, and you're rated from Flawless to Mended. Every mended bowl turns into a 3D porcelain piece — a meiping vase, a ginger jar, a tea bowl — carrying your own gold seams. Five new bowls every day, the same for everyone, with a streak and a result to share; plus a collection of sixty bowls across five glazes, from Celadon to Raku. Gentle koto and shakuhachi-style music, different for each glaze, with a button to turn it off.

Four real-looking 3D pinball tables: a soccer stadium with a goalkeeper to beat, a dog park where you feed the dog and play fetch, a blocky mine with TNT and a rock golem, and a wizard school with a castle, a cauldron and spells. Tap the sides for the flippers, hold to pull the plunger. Multiball, jackpots, five missions and five stars a table, balls to collect, a daily challenge and the family’s high scores.

Kart racing, drawn the way the old 16-bit ones were: a picture of the circuit seen from above, laid back into the screen a band at a time until it becomes a road running to the horizon. The kart drives itself forward — you steer with a thumb, hold DRIFT through the corners to charge a boost, and throw whatever the item box gave you at the kart in front. Eight drivers, three circuits — a sunset beach, a jungle and a volcano — three laps of a long circuit, a single race or a three-round grand prix with points.

A dungeon crawl for one thumb. Walk with the left of the screen, your weapon aims and fires itself, and the two buttons on the right are a dash straight through danger and a special the dungeon pays you for killing things. Doors stay shut until the room is clear. Three floors — catacombs, fungal hollow and emberforge — each one ending in a boss the size of the doorway, with shrines, shops, a locked vault and eighteen relics that stack on the way down. Play as Sophia with a longbow, Rory with boomerang blades, or Dylan with fireballs.

Wordplay for the boys. Four answers, and a clock that eats the points rather than the turn, so nobody gets cut off mid-think. Two thousand two hundred riddles across a dozen kinds: hidden animals, rhymes, anagrams, sound-alikes, odd ones out, word glue and a few hundred proper head-scratchers. It builds them fresh every time, so nobody learns the answers off by heart. Quick Quiz for twelve and three lives, or Beat the Clock for ninety seconds.

Six-a-side arcade football from straight above, built the way the old 16-bit ones were. The ball is never glued to your feet: you knock it ahead and run onto it, and a tackle is getting your body there first. One thumb steers, one button passes and shoots, and holding a direction after you hit it bends the ball through the air. Eight teams, a quick match, a three-round cup with penalty shoot-outs, and two players on one iPad.

A marble run builder. Drag planks, curves, trampolines, bumpers, fans, spinners, cannons and portals onto the board, turn them, press GO and watch the marble roll. Sixty-four puzzles in four worlds, each with a goal cup and bonus stars and a hint that shows one piece at a time when you are stuck, plus six custom sandboxes with a hopper and an end cup you place, marble rain and a longest-run clock for your own contraptions.

A one-thumb survivor. Walk, your weapons fire themselves, grab gems, pick upgrade cards, survive ten minutes and three bosses. Play as Dylan, Rory or Sophia.

Two players on one iPad, held between you. Drive with a thumb, tap to fire, bounce shells off steel, smash bricks, grab power-ups. First to five hits. A robot plays if you are on your own.

A 3D hat-throwing adventure across seven kingdoms: Dino Ridge, Skyline City, Sunburn Sands, Frostbite Peaks, Volcano Bay, Cloud Islands and Ghost Manor. Capture a T-Rex, a taxi, a stone lion, a bird and a fireball, hunt Power Moons and beat the raptor bosses.

A 3D Sonic act built on speed: loop, corkscrew, rails over the bay, homing chains, a torch-lit ruin, a wall run and a waterfall jump to the beach sprint. Keyboard, gamepad or touch.

A 3D dog platformer. Ten open worlds, all of them wrong. Three dogs, triple jumps, ground pounds, and seven bones to sniff out in every world.

Swipe arrows onto the floor to steer the lizards into the rocket, past the snakes and around the holes. Twelve puzzles and a 90-second Stampede.

Anti-gravity racing. Eight ships, three circuits, boost pads, rockets, missiles, mines and shields. Hold the iPad sideways.

Build a fort against the clock, then survive the golem that comes to tear it down. Ten rounds.

Dig down, collect every star, break the seal. Your stars are your lives against the boss below.

A real Mega Drive emulator in the browser, with eight free homebrew games on the shelf: platformers, a trap-filled tower puzzle, an egg-catching chicken and a four-player star race. Add cartridges you own to play them on this device. On-screen pad on the iPad.