Some games are as much about art and the experience they create as they are about gameplay. Monument Valley comes to mind for instance. Gemini – A Journey of Two Stars is a beautiful new game from Echostone Games that falls into the same category and succeeds by being simultaneously stunning and engrossing.

As you start Gemini, two stars have fallen from the sky. You play as the larger star. There are no instructions or tutorials, just subtle visual hints about what you are supposed to do. Tapping the left and right sides of the screen guides your star in those directions.

As you approach the smaller star, the two interact and begin to rise. Get too far away from the smaller star and both start to fall from the sky. This makes for an interesting tension as you try to stay close to the smaller star, which can have a mind of its own, while also completing the game’s tasks.

As you rise through a gorgeous abstract landscape, the sky darkens. If it gets too dark, your stars will fall. To avoid that you need to light beacons by steering your star over them. Lighting up the sky has the added advantage of revealing more of your surroundings. The stunning artwork of Gemini is paired with an equally impressive and soothing soundtrack that sets the tone for the game.

As you lose yourself in Gemini, the game is more about the interaction of the stars than anything else. The dance between the stars and making sure you bring the little star along become the focus. This is a very different game, but the feeling of a connection with the small star that Gemini created as I played reminded me a lot of playing Journey last Summer on my PS4.

Gemini is relatively short. The six stages of the game should take most people no more than 1-2 hours to complete. If you evaluate games by the numbers of levels per dollar you spend, you may be disappointed with Gemini, but as a piece of interactive art, I suspect many people, myself included, will return to Gemini over and over just to enjoy the visuals and soundtrack.

Gemini is available on the App Store at an introductory price of $2.99.

Legend of the Skyfish by Crescent Moon Games is an action-puzzle game that evokes Nintendo’s Zelda franchise, but has its own unique twist that will reel you in. Legend revolves around the tale of the Skyfish, an evil creature from deep below the ocean’s surface that was awoken by the greed of fishermen. Skyfish took over the surface world and enslaved its people. You play as a girl who was saved by the Moonwhale and is in search of her little brother.

As the protagonist of the story, your main tool and weapon is a fishing pole. Whether it’s navigating the map, avoiding barriers, or defeating enemies, you can accomplish it all with your fishing pole. Fend off the attacks of mutant sea-people that roam the surface world by swinging your pole like a sword. Jump from island to island or move objects by casting your fishing line to hook special points on the map. Catch enemies and pull them into spikes and other obstacles with your fishing pole as an alternative to hand-to-hand combat. More than any other element, the creative uses to which you can put your fishing pole set Legend apart from other games.

Legend eases you into the game with several fairly easy levels in the first of three worlds, but does a nice job of getting progressively more difficult and imaginative with its puzzles. You move around the island world by dragging your finger in the direction you want to go. There are also two game pads. The first swings your pole like a sword. The second game pad casts a line from the fishing pole. By tapping the pad and shifting your finger, you aim the pole. Raising your finger launches your fishing line.

One thing that is sorely lacking from Legend is progress syncing. The game is available on iPhone, iPad, and the Apple TV, but there is no way to pick up where you left off across devices. I played on my iPad more than my iPhone, but both worked equally well. Touch is well-suited to aiming the fishing line. I played a few levels on the Apple TV too. Legend’s world looks gorgeous on a big screen, but I liked using the touch interface on iOS devices better than the Siri Remote’s tiny touch surface.

Legend has two things that help it transcend Zelda copy-cat status. The first is the clever fishing pole gameplay, which is unique and thoughtfully implemented. The second is enemies’ vulnerability to the game’s environment. Both aspects of Legend add a depth and novelty to navigating the colorful water-world and to combat that keeps the game fresh and fun throughout.

Legend of the Skyfish is available on the App Store for $3.99.

Linia from Black Robot Games is fiendishly difficult, but strangely relaxing in its complexity. The challenge is to draw a straight line through a series of colored shapes that intersects the shapes in the order of the color sequence at the top of the screen. Here’s the thing though, the shapes are moving, rotating, shrinking, growing, and changing color all at once. The movement follows a regular pattern, but it gets complicated fast.

Linia is a creature of the post-iOS 7 design aesthetic. Each of its 80 levels is composed of brightly-colored geometric flat shapes. What’s ingenious about Linia and makes it particularly difficult is that it requires pattern matching, careful timing, and quick reflexes simultaneously. As you draw a line it appears white but fills in behind where you started in red, which is part of the timing element. You have to lift your finger to commit to your line before it turns completely red. If you wait to long, you’ll have to start drawing your line all over, but if you release at the wrong time, you may be unable to hit the right color sequences.

I’ve played Linia on both my iPhone 6s Plus using my finger and on my 12.9 inch iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil. I give a slight edge to using the Pencil to play Linia on the iPad because you can draw such a precise line, but the difference between playing on the iPad and iPhone was much less than I expected.

The soundtrack that accompanies Linia plays a big role in minimizing the frustration of some of the harder puzzles. There’s something inviting about the electronic vibe of the soundtrack that feels like it’s encouraging you to stay a while to keep trying to beat even the hardest puzzles.

Black Robot has done a great job bringing something fresh and clever to the crowded puzzle genre on iOS. It’s especially impressive given that this is Black Robot’s first iOS game. With such a great start, I look forward to seeing what else Black Robot comes up with in the future.

Linia is available on the App Store for $1.99.