Tome of the Mask is an 8-bit phone arcade game. You are exploring a dungeon with orthogonal corridors. Swipe to move in that direction but you keep going until you hit a wall. Avoid obstacles and monsters as you collect coins and stars to reach the end of the level. In level mode it's mostly a thinking game and sometimes you have to time things and swipe quickly in the right order. But there are also lave levels where lava rises up slowly so you now have a time limit.

As you play you get chests which give you cards or coins. Masks are unlocked through a random wheel prize or by spending coins then cards are used to level up masks. There are many masks and for the most part you can think of them as skins. Each mask gives you one to three bonuses: increased chance of something (i.e. more coins, more magnets) or disabling some enemy (i.e. no monkeys or no snakes, but disabling is only in arcade mode not level mode). You also level up global abilities: how long a shield, magnet, freeze, etc last.

Besides level mode there's an arcade mode where there is lava rising quickly so you have to always move up and get as far as you can.

There are also a number of events that are enabled for a day or three each week. Most event using the arcade mode play:

• Jewel Gate: arcade mode but there are picks to collect which you use to uncover treasure.
• Fortune Maze: arcade mode but you there are dice to collect. These are used to move in a sort of chutes-and-ladders board and you are competing with other players to get to the end first.
• Lava Quest: puzzle mode but you have to complete half a dozen levels and if you die it ends immediately (though you can get one save/revive for 200 coins).
• Boss Clash: arcade mode with few coins and added swords. Each sword you get does a point to the Donkey Kong-like boss and you need to hit him 250 times to kill him. He also drops things though there is plenty of warning (but there's also lava to distract you). There are other bosses too. Once you die five times you have to wait an hour to continue.
• Blast Off: arcade mode but adds flags and you need to collect 50 before your competing players.
• Tomb League: a longer event where you complete special tasks for crowns. Things like dying by spikes 10 times or collecting 5k coins. You compete against others and want to finish in top 100 for rewards.
• Tomb's Season: like tome league but solo. As you get crowns you hit thresholds and get rewards.
• Snake: a venerable snake game but you want to collect more apples than other players and finish with a high ranking.
• Gem Seeker: puzzle where you are trying to maneuver gems onto you but as you swipe to move all gems it also moves all bats and you don't want to move a bat onto you.
• Color Quest: puzzle where you try to paint all the squares (by running over them) on the level. Do all six levels to get a reward.

So there is enough variety that I didn't get bored with level or arcade mode.

It's an iPhone game so on iPad you get a centered screen and occasionally I swiped to far off the screen. This is important because you can just have your finger down on the screen and move it slight up right down left to move your character -- minimal movements which is good otherwise full swipes slow you down and are tiring. I found this game harder to play on iPhone maybe because my iPhone is small.

Overall a fun game that you can play when you have a few minutes free time.