Getting marooned on a spooky alien world full of creepy crawlies and other unfriendly inhabitants might sound terrifying, but it turns out to be a welcome detour from the dull depths of space in Capsized+ for iPad. Exploration and survival in this beautifully hand-drawn 2D platform shooter make for a satisfying balancing act, one made all the more interesting by the diverse ways you can traverse and interact with the harsh planetscape.

Like Angry Birds Star Wars before it, Star Wars Pinball pairs the beloved sci-fi franchise with a proven mobile framework. In this case, it's the excellent Zen Pinball, which serves up original digital tables that look and play like the real thing. Available as a universal standalone app, Star Wars Pinball delivers a great table based on The Empire Strikes Back, complete with moving sections that take after film scenes. Additional tables are sold within, and all can be purchased and downloaded within the main Zen Pinball app, though this is the only way that iPhone 5 players can currently experience the tables in full screen.

Keeping up with comic books has been utterly transformed by apps like Comics by Comixology, as you no longer have to hit the comic shop weekly to snap up new issues, wait for graphic novel compilations, or read on your computer screen. Nearly every new notable comic is right there on day one, ready to be purchased and read wherever you please in sparkling digital quality. Marvel Unlimited acts as a complementary kind of service, eschewing new releases and individual purchases in favor of all-you-can-read access (via subscription) to much of the publisher's deep archive of books older than six months. It's a novel and promising approach, though where and how you can read the offerings are current roadblocks to its success.

Believe it or not, email used to actually be a productivity-enhancing tool -- although by now you're probably drowning in a deluge of spam, sales pitches, and social media notifications. MailHub is a plugin for Apple's Mail that aims to help you quickly sort through the useless stuff, and focus on the messages that are truly important. Learning to use MailHub's many options takes some effort, but you'll learn to speed through, deleting, filing, and setting reminders with an arsenal of keyboard shortcuts.