Plants vs. Zombies ($2.99, link) started life as a desktop tower defense game, and made the transition to an ultra-popular iPhone app. And it had the highest grossing iPhone game launch ever. So what is PvZ? The world has fallen to a cartoon zombie apocalypse, and you have to defend your home from their advances using only foliage. Each of the games 50 levels unlocks new content, so the difficulty level ramps up, but so does your plant-based arsenal.

The zombies attack along five rows of your backyard, and you need to harvest sunlight in order to grow attack foliage to stop them. This starts with pea-shooters and sun flowers (to boost your sun reserves), and rapidly expands into tower defense stalwarts—mines, walls, area effects attacks, status buffs and the like. Always plant related, of course. After ever 10 levels, the stage shifts slightly, changing the playing field. You start with your back-yard, then you have to defend it at night, then your pool, then the pool at night, and finally the rooftop.

If the harvest sunlight, grow plants method gets a bit boring, mini-games are scattered throughout to add some variety to the playstyle, and the final level of each stage provides you with a conveyor belt of plants in order to fight the zombie hordes.

I’m utterly in love with the graphics on PvZ. The zombies are adorable, and come in multiple variations—often to frustrate your defenses. The plants are all distinctive looking, and the designs manage to pack personality into just the few pixels each one takes up. The game is infused with a distinctive slapstick sense of humor, which is well appreciated.

I’m really struggling to find anything negative to say about PvZ, and nothing’s springing to mind. The loading screen when you launch is a bit long, and the level difficulty ramps up pretty quickly—but that’s not necessarily a downside. Some of the levels stretch on a bit long, so it’s not something you can just grab your phone and play for 3 minutes while waiting for a bus, but if you’ve got a bit of time free on your hands it’s perfect.

Conclusion

Plants vs. Zombies ($2.99, link) is a perfect example of the tower defense genre. It’s hilariously funny, easy to learn, but with huge amounts of content. With 50 levels, mini-games, achievements, and a free-play mode, you won’t be bored of it any time soon. If you enjoy tower defense games, and you haven’t picked it up yet, you’re doing yourself a disfavor. We highly recommend it, and give it an 8.7/10

Space Miner: Space Ore Bust ($2.99, link) is a well-designed game with an Asteroids-like premise, a cool ship-upgrade system, and hilarious dialogue. Although the game lacks challenge—we breezed through with nary a lost ship—the humor and the Millenium Falcon-esque feel of personalizing the ships make it an enjoyable ride. We recommend it with a 7.8 out of 10 rating. Just expect brainless fun.

I never really liked Asteroids, my least favorite classic 80s arcade game. And early on, it seemed Space Miner‘s work-for-cash gameplay suffered from similar tedium. Thankfully, the game is saved first by its humor, and in the long run by its ship-upgrade system. Soon enough you’ll be blasting away at asteroids and enemies with multiple guns and sporting slick new hulls for your ship.

Casual strategy and puzzle games have long been standout genres on the iPhone, as their gameplay tends to fit perfectly with the iPhone’s interface and mobile usage. So it’s particularly exciting when we come across an excellent game in this area. Sword & Poker ($3.99, link) is an addictive, challenging game that belongs in the top tier of casual iPhone strategy games. Poker and RPG elements may seem like strange bedfellows, but here they combine perfectly to create a deep game with layers of strategy. We found Sword & Poker to be rewarding casual gaming.

At the heart of Sword & Poker are the mechanics of poker. Players are given 4 cards each round that they place on a gameboard of 9 random cards to create poker hands like pairs, straights, flushes, etc. Forming hands deals a certain amount of damage to the enemy depending on your character’s weapon and other factors like shields and spells. And that’s where the RPG elements come in. As enemies are defeated, you gain gold and collect treasures, with which you can buy new weapons, shields, and health points (in the form of “coins”) to make your character stronger.

The blending of Poker and RPG strategies makes for a great if somewhat strange combo. The poker element has you running through the various possible hands as well as watching your opponent’s cards. The RPG element has you waiting for the right moment to cast spells that can favorably rearrange the cards and deal massive damage. The blending of the two requires a multi-layer approach to your thinking. Yes, the game eventually grows complicated, but it also does a good job of slowly introducing each layer of strategy so players are not overwhelmed at the start.

Although Sword & Poker is mostly a thinking man’s game, it’s also possible to play (and win) with minimal brainpower. But that approach takes longer, and battles will be much messier. A clever use of a spell and cards can sometimes end a battle in a single stroke, preserving your own resources for the next opponent. It’s this blend of a casual difficulty level with rewards for advanced strategy that works so well on the iPhone.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor ($2.99, iTunes link) is a unique iPhone game that lives up to all the hype surrounding it. The gameplay is captivating and provides enough variation to keep things interesting. Add that to responsive touch controls and stunning graphics, and you have an iPhone game worth recommending.

Developed by Tiger Style, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor has two main objectives. As a spider, your first objective is to build webs and trap food while you move from room to room in an abandoned mansion. As the levels increase, it becomes more challenging to navigate the rooms and trap your food, but you also uncover clues about the mansion and who lived there. This unique back story helps keep the game interesting as you move through the 38 rooms.

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Catan ($3.99, iTunes link) is based on a popular German board game, Settlers of Catan, that has recently gained global popularity, having been translated into over 30 languages. Part of its appeal is that the game mechanics are relatively simple but game strategy can be deep and complex.

If you haven’t played the board game version, Catan is the name of the island that the four players are attempting to colonize. The island is composed of hexagonal tiles that represent resources that players slowly gather and build settlements and cities on in an attempt to defeat their opponents. Each turn a player roles two dice to see which tiles produce resources, which can be used to build new settlements or be traded to other players.

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Those who wish to jailbreak their iPhones in order to play Super Mario may want to check out Castle of Magic (iTunes link), an excellent platformer with well-designed stages and a unique, goofy style. And like Super Mario, it has great pacing with many surprise powers and gameplay twists that pull the adventure along.

Castle of Magic‘s objectives follow a familiar formula: navigate the platforms while avoiding or taking out monsters, and at the end, defeat a mighty boss character. While the game plot may be a little worn, Castle of Magic manages to keep things fresh through its 5 different game worlds with varying themes like winter, sea, forest, candyland (my favorite), and space. In all, the worlds are beautifully sketched and detailed, and the graphics are rendered in a rainbow of colors that pop. And just when things start to get a little redundant, you move on to the next world.

The main character is a goofy young wizard that’s more Link than Harry Potter, and his powers are more reminiscent of a short-ranged, fireball-spitting Mario. Along the way, you can collect various power-ups that give him a long-ranged wand, make him a tremendously fat Augustus Goop-like character (and nearly indestructible), or turn him into a Robin Hood-like character with arrows that, when lodged, turn into platforms themselves.

The biggest worry a gamer should have about a game like this are the controls. Yes, Castle of Magic uses the dreaded simulated d-pad and buttons, but here they are implemented correctly, not requiring hair-splitting turns or precise jumps from the non-tactile screen. I never had moments where I cursed the touch controls for a frustrating death of my character.

But what makes Castle of Magic a great game is the quality design of the gameplay. There is a degree of challenge that, like Super Mario, ranges from easy to medium hard with some light puzzle solving. The various power-ups often come into play, such as using the arrows to create platforms to climb up a tree trunk, or switching up the gravity in the space level to navigate around a blocking obstacle. There is a constant mix of surprise, challenge, and action that keeps the game fun.

Castle of Magic has few flaws. The ones we did find are nitpick. Some of the boss levels are not very challenging and require redundant actions to solve. And we also felt the final space level was not quiet as interesting as the others.

Conclusion:

Castle of Magic is as close to being the Super Marios of the iPhone as any app. Beautiful graphics, surprising twists, and moderately challenging gameplay pull you through this whimsical platformer. 8.2 out of 10, highly recommended.

Castle of Magic is a $1.99 download from the iTunes App Store.