The 15 Games You Need For Your New iPhone (pg. 01)

Critter Crunch • Capybara • App Store Link • www

Players who want the real Critter Crunch experience may be holding off for its gloriously hi-def upcoming PSN release, but for a quick-bite preview, you can do no better than its original iPhone release.

As previously mentioned, while the game may look on the surface to be akin to classic NeoGeo puzzler Magical Drop, Crunch's actual conceit, as you might imply from the name is to build food-chain, well, chains, with smaller critters eaten by the next size up, and to collect the crystals that fall when exploding critters clear out their similar neighbors. Still one of the top puzzlers in the App Store.

Circuit Strike.One • h.grenade • App Store Link • www

It's not hard to intuit that Circuit Strike.One creator Shay Casey is primarily a user interface designer: underneath it all the game is basically "just" a futurist take on Asteroids, but here given what might be one of the iPhone's most engaging user experiences.

Everything from its tilt-perspective title screen to the seizure-inducing syncopated rhythm-light show of its main game flickers and pulses with life, making it one of the platform's best "yeah, but can your phone do this?" showcases.

Drop7 • area/code • App Store Link • Lite Version • www

Drop7 is one of those games that regular Offworld readers might already be tired of hearing me mention ad infinitum, but so long as the game isn't on every single one of the 40 million iPhones and Touches in the world, I'll keep working tirelessly to convince you that it deserves to be.

What it is is one of the most clever number-puzzlers yet devised, and, rightly, one of the most addictive: the throngs of friends I've happily irritated by leading them down the path to its time-devouring takeover are proof positive of that.

The Facebook connection is icing on the cake, and one of the few leaderboards I check in with regularly to see how poorly I'm faring compared to my what-used-to-be non-gamer associates, and, as a bonus, its Lite version isn't a crippled take on the full game, but rather an exclusive mode that sits very happily side by side with its paid big brother -- do yourself a favor and get both.

Edge • Mobigame • App Store Link • www

Edge has found itself continually in the news as late for the apparently now-resolved trademark fight over its name, but beneath the battles, as I recently described, it's one of the iPhone's best puzzle-platformers for its awesomely understated, clean design, perfectly measured touch controls, and rewarding sense of exploration though its void-hanging block piles.

Eliss • Steph Thirion • App Store Link • Lite Version • www

Like Drop7, Eliss is a game that should be quite familiar to Offworld regulars (this is the place, after all, where it originally debuted). What you'll probably already know, then, and hopefully have already experienced for yourself, is that creator Steph Thirion has managed to make a game both uniquely his own (dare you to name another game like it), and uniquely iPhone -- the first truly multi-touch game that couldn't be made anywhere else.

With its recent difficulty easing update and its just-released Lite version, there's no excuse to bee-line to the App Store for one of the iPhone's best.