Discover the app store's best-kept secrets

With 185,000 apps and counting, the App Store is a vast warehouse of digital goodies for your iPhone (and now iPad too). But like most mega-marts, the sheer size of it all makes the good stuff harder to find. We’ve scoured the Store, and found the best apps to help you use your iPhone to it’s fullest potential. Whether it’s games you seek, or productivity tools, we’ve got you covered. As it turns out, there really is an app for that, no matter what that is.

Game On!

The iPhone and iPod touch brought back fun to videogaming, with developers focussing on innovation, affordability, and novelty. Touchscreen and accelerometer controls also force designers to think different, resulting in games that are a glorious collision of classic and cutting-edge gameplay and technology. --Craig Grannell

Eliss

Steph Thirion · $2.99

Eliss is the perfect game for the iPhone’s touch screen. The concept is simple--tear apart and combine planets and drop them into like-colored/sized “squeesars.” A successful drop sees a planet vanish in a cloud of stardust, which can be mopped up to replenish energy lost during collisions of differently colored planets. Requiring unique tactics for each level, Eliss is tough but rewarding, and has beautiful retro visuals and audio.

It might look old-school, but Eliss is a modern multitouch creation.

Run!

Arthur Ham · $0.99

We’ve no idea what the little guy in Run! is sprinting toward, but we hope it’s a great prize, because along the way he has to dodge or destroy numerous foes (zombies, walls, lethal giant saws) with the help of only his cunning and a giant bazooka. The superficially similar Canabalt may have more style, but Run! beats it on price, quirkiness, fun, variety, and the ability to flying-kick deadly leaping sharks in the head. Yeah, you read that right.

You know you've always wanted to kick a shark.

Squareball

Drömsynt · $0.99

Imagine the mutant love child of Breakout, Pong, and a simplified Super Mario Bros. (or Pac-Land, if you’re old enough!) and you’ve got Squareball. Your ball constantly bounces and you swipe levels left and right, trying to collect green blocks and avoid hazards like holes and red blocks. It sounds simple, but the level design is devious, ensuring the game is both insanely frustrating and murderously addictive. Mini time-attack challenges add extra value.

Be prepared to die... a lot.

Westbang

Rake in Grass · $0.99

First-person shooters rarely work well on the iPhone unless they’re simplified. Westbang is basic, but it’s also an addictive tap-to-shoot game that tasks you with defending banks from bandits. Since you’re a lawman, you must avoid blowing away innocents or killing bad guys before they draw. Westbang recalls Sega’s arcade classic Bank Panic, and it’s a steal for a buck. For fans, there’s also a free (and bizarre) festive version, Advent Annihilation.

The sheriff bucks convention by aiming at the innocent.

Pinball Dreaming: Pinball Dreams

Cowboy Rodeo · $4.99

Pinball games have become surprisingly popular and numerous on the iPhone, with many offering dazzling 3D visuals (Zen Pinball) or a cartoon-like experience (Monster Pinball, Freeballin’). Cowboy Rodeo’s game lacks visual punch--it’s a conversion of a 1992 Commodore Amiga title, but it makes up for it with four of the best videogame pinball tables ever designed. So look past the dated visuals and enjoy the finest pinball available on the App Store.

This game doesn't look like a dream--but it plays like one.

Mr. AahH!!

Ponos · $0.99

You can’t really go wrong with hugely addictive one-thumb games—and the delightfully named, enjoyably bonkers Mr.AahH!! is one of the best. The aim of the game is to prod your device’s screen to make the swinging man let go of his rope and land in the center of the next platform. Fail and he falls to his doom, emitting a chilling ‘aaahhh!’ Succeed and you soon battle gravity, wind, and ever-narrower platforms.

The simplest swing game on the App Store--and the most addictive.

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ustwo · $1.99

The second in a series of designer games by ustwo finds a white dot speeding through a minimal 3D landscape of blue balls and red triangles. The former are ‘food’; collide with the latter and your ball is damaged. It’s a simple, pretty game, if a little short-lived. If you’re a fan of survival racers of this type, you should also check out the more frenetic Vector Runner ($0.99) and the extensible Cube Runner (free).

Eat the blue balls and avoid the red triangles of death!

Green Fingers

No Monkeys · $0.99

Every action-puzzler and its dog wants to be Bejeweled or Tetris, and so it’s great to see something fresh in Green Fingers. The game tests your dexterity every step of the way, tasking you with swiping flower pots into position to collect the next component and make your flowers grow. This might sound genteel, but it’s not long before the objects fall thick and fast, daring you to blink, miss one, and end your game.

Flower power to the max in Green Fingers!

Fox Vs Duck

MrFungFung · $0.99

At its heart, Fox Vs Duck is a simple escape game: tilt your device to help ducks escape from a pond strewn with rocks and lily pads, aiming to avoid a cunning fox and a ravenous carp. Touches of brilliance throughout lift the game above its peers, including beautiful graphics, haunting audio, and the surprising emotional clout of seeing one of your abstracted ducks killed by the fox, blood pooling around its lifeless form.

Minimal, beautiful, and with long-lasting high-score appeal.

Cluck It!

Curious Bear Productions Pty Ltd · $0.99

Why did the chicken cross the road? To help all the little chicks cross a busy highway and get to school. That’s your task in this game that resembles Frogger but betters Konami’s iPhone disaster by miles. Cluck It! is also deceptively simple--a single prod moves your chicken onward, but timing is key and the game rapidly becomes a formidable opponent.

Cluck It! is a one-thumb classic with perfectly balanced gameplay.

Doodle Kart!

j2sighte · $0.99

If you’re getting sick of ‘doodle’ games, Doodle Kart has what it takes to change your mind. Borrowing the Micro Machines overhead view and the weapons system from Mario Kart, this is the first racer of its kind that truly convinces on the iPhone. Along with computer opponents and 25 tracks, the game wisely provides handy control options (such as ‘auto gas’) and enables you to play in portrait or landscape--start your engines!

Micro Machines crashes into Mario Kart on a school-kid's notebook.

iPolygon

infinityK · $0.99

Breakout’s fine, but the game design’s 30 years old, and iPhone clones merely enable you to drag a bat with your finger. iPolygon reinvents the genre, placing the ball inside polygons. Twist your device to deflect the ball toward a weapon icon, turning it into a spiky orb of doom that can be used to smash shape faces. Three modes offer increasing challenges as you progress.

Micro Machines crashes into Mario Kart on a school-kid's notebook.

Galcon

galcon.com · $2.99

If Risk was set in space and happened in realtime, it’d resemble Galcon. Like Risk, your aim in Galcon is to conquer all, and you do so by selecting planets and sending a share of their ships to do battle with an enemy world. Conquered planets continue churning out ships that can be used in further battles, and games are often over in seconds.

Galactic warfare at insane speeds!

Saucelifter

Madgarden · $1.99

Take a trip into Apple’s patchy gaming history and a few de-facto classics emerge, one of the earliest being Dan Gorlin’s superb Apple II rescue game Choplifter. Saucelifter spruces up the concept and subverts it--you pilot a UFO and try to rescue alien pals from the clutches of evil humans. The game’s controls take time to master, but a tutorial eases your way, and throughout you’ll be dazzled by the game’s crisp, gorgeous graphics.

Dave the alien clearly decided ET's peaceful approach was for wusses.

Blue Defense

John Kooistra · $1.99

There are numerous retro-oriented shoot ’em ups for iPhone, but many suffer from a lack of precision control. Blue Defense! goes back to basics, riffing off Space Invaders and Galaxian, but utilizing the iPhone’s power and features. The glowing graphics are beautiful, and the controls are extremely straightforward: “Tilt to aim. Bullets shoot straight up,” the game helpfully states as it launches--but regular screen orientation shifts will keep you on your toes.

Twisty, glowing Space Invaders for the modern gamer.