Title: Buster Boy
Developer: Jonathan Apple
Price: $0.99
Hosted Rob LeFebvre and written by Jaden Walker.

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Released: May 1st, 2009
Developer/Publisher: SilentLogic Studios
Verdict: Buy It (Lite version available)
Pros: Great graphics, online leader board, insanely addictive.
Cons: Stop! Stop! Stop! NO!

Shuffleboard, curling, pitching pennies, Gravulous, they’re all games for when you’re bored, too cold to think clearly, or about to die. Wait a second… What was that last one? Gravulous? Hold the phone, this just got awesome! :)

For $0.99, I couldn’t be happier with this title. Gravulous is an oddball puzzler that takes a page out of the books of “sports” like curling, but in an actual fun way. You use planets! The game goes completely at your pace, which is a big plus in my book for puzzle titles. Rushing really ruins my thought process.

At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a black hole. When you touch the screen, a little planet will shoot out of the black hole and into space. There’s no way to control the speed it shoots, so you have to aim very carefully. As the planet hits the walls, it will bounce at an angle just like a ball on a pool table. It will gradually slow down and come to rest somewhere in space. Based on where it lands and how much room it’s given, it will grow. You could end up with a moon, Mars, Earth, or Venus (from small to largest). As you add planets, things will begin to get crowded. You’ll now need to begin to blow up these planets. I know, it sounds like fun, doesn’t it? It is! To blow them up, just shoot a planet into it, which will crack the established one (but not the one you fire). It will also send your new one bouncing off into another direction. Hit a planet three times to make it explode, clearing the way for more. Your score is simply how many planets you’ve blown up.

I bet you think this sounds WAY too easy. Well that’s because I haven’t told you the catch, yet. Here, I’ve been dangling a carrot in front of your face and just telling you the super fun and easy part, but not where the frustrating challenge is. It’s quite simple, actually. Don’t let the planets back into the gravity of that black hole. If one ends up there, they’ll all be sucked in and it’s game over. I can’t count how many times one has been slowing down and edging closer and closer in, only to get sucked in right as it’s about to stop. It’s frustrating, but makes it really satisfying to just barely miss it. Just don’t get stuck with a Venus in your way and you’ll be fine.

The only negative I can really say about this game is the difficulty of putting it down. Gravulous (which is really easy to type as “Gravylous,” which sounds both tasty and rather gross) is a must own title for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

Released: January 25th, 2009
Developer/Publisher: Russell Bernau and Super Squawk Software
Verdict: Buy it
Pros: Great graphics and sound. Very challenging.
Cons: Might be too challenging for some.

We know you have a choice in your selection of tower defense games for the iPhone, and are humbled by you selecting The Creeps!™ as your primary tower defense title.

In all seriousness, though, there really are way too many tower defense titles in the app store. Some are good, some are bad, but very few are perfect. In my humble opinion, The Creeps! is one of those few perfect titles.

In all tower defense games, you can expect there to be a “base” that has to be protected, and you set up “towers” to stop the incoming baddies from making it to the base (whatever it may be). The baddies will always walk along the path established on each level, as they’re oh-so observant of those “Keep Off The Grass” signs. As they run from one side to the other, your towers will try and wipe them out. As you do, you’ll get more funds to build more towers.

In The Creeps!, the formula is the same, but it’s the scenery that really gives it an appeal that others lack. You’re in graveyards, or in space, or other creepy locations. The bad guys are things like zombies, aliens, vampires, skeletons, and all manner of ghoulish critters. My favorite part is the sounds they make when you blow them up, especially the vampire’s overly campy, “BLUH!”

The Creeps! has more than a dozen levels, some of which are “infinite swarm” which means that you just play until you’re tired or your base (the little kid in bed) runs out of health. As you progress, they get harder and harder to survive. And if I may put my personal opinion on the difficulty, it can be extremely frustrating to finish some levels! Just the second one took me close to 40 tries!

When you start the game, you only have two kinds of towers that you can use. One is a lazer, and one is an Elmer’s Glue bottle. The lazer obviously shoots the baddies, which is quite important. The glue bottle does damage, and slows down their movement for a little bit. Both can be upgraded, for a cost of course, as you progress through the swarm of the level. As you move on to other levels, you’ll be able to get new weapons (like an exploding boomerang shooter!), and on some even lose the older ones, adding another level of challenge to an already difficult game.

The singular drawback I see to The Creeps! is that it it’s $0.99, which isn’t much, except that the majority of games in this genre, as far as the app store goes, are free. That said, the sheer fun factor of this title makes it completely worth it. So be you a fan of the tower defense genre, a fan of horror movie style baddies, or just a fan of fun and difficult games, The Creeps! is a game that I can’t recommend enough. :)

Update (5-13-09): A new update to The Creeps was just posted, and it includes some great new features! There are several new weapons and levels, but the best new addition is difficulty settings. You can now choose to play on easy, medium, or hard, making the game great for everyone. Now there’s absolutely no excuse for not buying this one.

When I was originally tapped to do this review, I was told that it was going to be an iCasual, but I can’t help but say more about this game. When I was told there was a skeeball game for the iPhone, I got excited. I never expected it to be as amazing as this ended up being. As such, I can’t say enough positive about this title.

10 Balls 7 Cups, which is SUCH a great title, was recently released by Graveck Interactive. You can pick it up in the iTunes app store for only $0.99 so there’s no excuse for not buying this game.

The game is deviously simple. It’s skeeball. Everyone has played it at some point in their life. It’s the wonderful game where you get ten wooden balls that you roll down a ramp which arcs up into several cups worth different point values. In this game, sometimes a cup will be glowing, meaning that you’ll get extra points if you can hit that one. The goal is obviously to get the most points. Based on your score after all ten balls, you get tickets to buy absolutely worthless objects and toys.

The ticket system is where the game absolutely wins me over. It has a world-wide leader board, but doesn’t track your high score. It tracks your total number of tickets won (even after you spend them). This encourages you to come back and play more every day. I swear, I can get up to 80th place, then the next day when I log in, I’m always back to around 116 or so.

So what do you do with these tickets, you ask? You buy really awesome useless crap! Some is rare, some you’ll see often. After each game you play, the ticket shop randomly picks new items. The most awesome part is that you can email your list of goodies to your friends to brag about it. At this point, some of the awesome pieces of swag that I’ve cashed in tickets for are: college ruled paper, one old sneaker, a temporary heart tattoo, a fake mustache, a glitter pencil, a tiny metal car, one grape, one dumb sucker, a banana, a cherry popsicle, one hug, a plastic panda, two mints, a finger trap, vanilla lip gloss, an offbrand ping pong ball, one stupid fart application, one free smell, a pink and blue eraser, and a taco. That, alone, can show you how addictive this is.

10 Balls 7 Cups is an amazingly habit forming game which brings back a large amount of nostalgia for the old arcades of so many of our youths. If you miss that bygone era of your past, this game is a wonderful way to relive it.