Top 5 smaller, yet addictive iOS games

While games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope have no doubt dominated the iOS gaming scene, there are a few happy discoveries that we’ve made in the App Store that have games almost as addictive. Of course, the problem with a lot of the smaller games in the App Store is that the frequency of the updates aren’t that much and you can lose your addiction pretty quickly. But maybe that’s a good thing. Check out the top five smaller, yet addictive games for your iOS device.

1. Tiny Tower - Free

Stack up high

If you read the description of this game, it will sound exactly like one of those annoying Zynga games that everyone blasts you notifications with. The fact is, Zynga did copy this game and with good reason; it sucks you in. What works for Tiny Tower is that as you keep progressing through the game, your goals also become a little more difficult to reach, but it’s never so difficult that they’re completely unattainable. Your objective in this game is to build a tower and each floor in your tower contains a business that will make you money. However, since you need people to earn money for you, the tower can also contain residence floors and at midnight every night, you will collect rent from your residents. You need to build more floors with money and the game also provides you with certain objectives, like collecting products from two specific businesses for Tower Bux, their version of the harder to make money.

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2. Subway Surfers - Free

For the little miscreant in you

If you liked Temple Run, you will like this game. You’re essentially a miscreant, spray painting graffiti on the city’s very expensive public transport and the station master catches you and starts chasing you. You run over trains, under barriers, collecting coins and power ups, along the way. The game provides you with three missions for each ’level’ and as you progress through each level, your score multiplies by the number the level is. For instance, if you’ve finished your first round of missions, you’re technically at level 2 (even though the game doesn’t lay it out like that) and the points you gather as you run are multiplied by 2. What’s particularly fun is the design that the game has chosen. As you keep running, you’ll go faster and faster and the obstacles get closer and closer. If you’ve been missing out on your cardio at the gym, play this game. While you may not be the one actually running, you’re going to have some serious heart pumping while playing.

3. Monsters Ate My Condo - Free (temporarily)

Epic colouring

This game is just wild. The objective is simple, but I keep playing it because the graphics are so wacky. The company behind this game is by no means small folk. It’s an Adult Swim game, a pretty big adult comedy channel in the United States, which shares space with Cartoon Network. Your aim in this game is exactly the opposite as that of Tiny Tower. You have to make sure your tower containing condominiums doesn’t grow too high. The way you do that is either by stacking condos of the same colour next to each other, thereby creating combos. Or you feed the floors to two terrible monsters waiting next to the tower. The monsters have colours too and you have to feed the monster the same colour condo as the monster itself. Otherwise, you will enrage those monsters and there is no music in the world to calm those savage beasts. Check out the graphics of the game, too. You will be reminded of some pretty trippy anime. The game is this week’s iOS App Store’s free app of the week.

4. PipeRoll - Free

Brush up on your plumbing skills

Pipe Roll is a puzzle-based game in which you have to connect houses to water plants and sewage facilities. The game starts out simple where the pipes underground have been misaligned and you have to tap on each pipe unit to turn it around, so it connects to the preceding unit. After the house and the various plants have been successfully connected, water will flow through the pipes from the plant to the house, or sewage will successfully flow from the house to the respective plants. You have to be careful not to confuse the pipe units that serve for each different purpose because many times, they will intersect. For instance, the water pipe will intersect with the sewage pipe at some point underground, therefore, you might have to solve the puzzle by trial and error at times. That being said, the game is fairly easy, increasing difficulty at a decent pace.

5 . Bag It - Free (temporarily)

Know what grocery store baggers go through

Another puzzle-based game where you have to essentially fit the groceries you buy in a bag with as little of the groceries breaking. My one problem with the game is that levels sometimes take a long time to load, however, as you progress through the game and overcome all the levels, the game has you thinking about how to play it better. And of course, that leads to some pretty great addiction. Groceries comprise eggs, milk, orange juice and more. The graphics are done pretty well, where when the eggs get squished, you feel icky, as if you’re carrying a grocery bag with actual squished eggs. You also get various rewards for keeping all your groceries upright. Groceries will have to be repositioned, rotated and more to be able to fit into the bag properly and it’s your job as bagger extraodinaire to figure it out.

So there you have it. If you need a break from Angry Birds or Cut the Rope, you have quite a variety of options to choose from. Happy playing!