Top 10 £0.59 / $0.99 iPhone games

It’s a tricky old time for video game fans. Global financial troubles mean that few of us have the level of disposable income we once had. As such, the latest batch of triple-A console titles sit tauntingly on the shelves with their £40 price tags.

Thank heavens for the iPhone, eh?

Even at their most expensive, iPhone games only retail for an eighth of the RRP of a console game. But even more compelling for the pocket gamer on a budget are those magical 59 pence games. 59 pence will only just buy you a Peanut Butter Kit Kat nowadays, yet here’s the App Store offering up fully fledged games for the same price.

Of course, there’s that old adage that you get what you pay for, and if you go into the App Store blind you might find that to be the case. Allow us, then, to guide you by the hand to the genuine bargains on offer.

If you remain unaffected by the global financial crisis, of course, you can have all ten of these fantastic games for £5.90. You big spender, you.

Top 10 £0.59 / $0.99 iPhone games

Pocket God is something of a curiosity, in that it doesn’t really set you any goals or award you any points as a typical game would. You play as the god to a primitive island race, and you can look after or (more likely) obliterate them in increasingly creative ways.

While there may be questions over whether Pocket God qualifies as a game in the traditional sense, there can be none over its value. This game/app/gadget has received a staggering 26 updates from developer Bolt Creative – each of them featuring a new level or element.

We may not know exactly what it is, but we do know that £0.59 is a steal for the most heavily developer-supported experience on the App Store.

Despite its distinctively abstract visuals, Moonlights really isn’t a particularly original title. This game of building towering structures out of individual sticks has been seen before on iPhone in the shape of the excellent Tiki Towers, which in turn lifted the idea from World of Goo on PC and Wii.

But Moonlights makes it onto this list on two counts – firstly, it’s the only example of such a game that retails for a measly £0.59, and secondly, it’s damned good fun.

Moonlights' controls are brilliantly implemented, the physics are spot-on and the spacey aesthetic gives the game a unique feel where its gameplay is familiar.

We’re due a new Asphalt about now, but that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that you can get this slick, attractive, fully featured arcade racer for 59 pence. Indeed, Asphalt 4 is currently one of the best racers on the iPhone.

You get a great deal of bang for your buck here, with a globe spanning set of tracks, plenty of real-life cars and all manner of events to partake in. Whether you’re evading the law, smashing up rivals or just clean racing, Asphalt 4 continues to keep you on your toes.

There may be better arcade racers on the iPhone, but none are as good value.

This game joins the likes of Flight Control and Pocket God as games that have been designed with a budget price in mind. The premise is simple – join together a sequence of grid-based numbers that add up to ten, then repeat until time runs out. The more numbers you use, the higher the score.

Despite the simplicity of the concept, the execution is brilliantly compelling. Negative numbers and bonus items add an extra layer of strategy, which leaves you reaching for the retry button again and again.

Big Top 10 is an unapologetically cheap game, but the obvious care and attention that’s gone into its creation is worth a great deal.

That you can get a rich, immersive 3D game like Glyder for £0.59 is a major reason for our love of the iPhone. The game’s all about unpowered flight through a beautiful fantasy world, as you tilt your iPhone to steer your craft.

Along the way you must collect gems, many of which are extremely awkwardly placed, utilizing air jets to gain altitude and prolong your flight.

Glu has created a compelling new franchise in Glyder, and it’s one that’s set to continue with production on a sequel well under way. If you haven’t already, there’s no better time to get in on the act with the stunning original.

So-called twin-stick shooters, where you use two virtual analogue sticks to control a top-down shooter, have emerged as an surprisingly popular – and populated – App Store genre. Into this congested field strides Alive 4-ever, and its odds of survival look good.

Part of the game’s appeal is, of course, the wallet-friendly price of £0.59. But what really sets it apart from some of its more mindless rivals is welcome layer of depth in the form of level objectives, such as seeking out survivors.

It adds a welcome twist to the frenetic action, and makes Alive 4-ever as compelling as it is cheap.

Tower defence-strategy is perhaps the most oversubscribed genre on iPhone thanks to the supreme suitability of its crisp screen and touch controls. There’s continuing debate over which is the finest, but there’s one title that blows the rest away in terms of sheer production values.

Star Defense is a sight to behold, with a full 3D engine allowing for impressively solid, spherical battlefields. It also plays a mean game as you carefully set up your defences to hold back the oncoming enemy swarm.

Such an accomplished, fully featured game was good value when it sold for a couple of pounds. Now that it’s a fraction of that, you’d be foolish not to pick it up.

If you were to draw up a list of gaming genres that the iPhone could excel at, 3D air combat simulator might not feature too heavily. But that’s exactly what FAST is, and it’s quite superb to boot.

Taking to the skies in a modern jet fighter, the iPhone’s accelerometer input is expertly utilized to allow you to bank, dive and roll with high-speed precision. All the while the game manages to look fantastic despite moving at a terrific rate.

Once again, FAST presents us with a fully fleshed out console-like game (there’s even an online multiplayer mode) for the price of a chocolate bar.

We’ve written about Flight Control quite a lot on Pocket Gamer. It’s really rather good, you see. It presents you with a selection of simple airports from a birds-eye view, then chucks a load of planes your way and asks you to play the part of air traffic controller.

There’s no complex radar equipment or silly headsets here, though. All you need to do is trace a flight path from the planes to the correct (colour coded) runways, ensuring that you avoid any messy mid-air collisions.

It’s an intoxicating game of multi-tasking, and worth every one of its 59 pennies – especially when you consider that Firemint continues to add new levels at no extra cost.

As it turns out, RedLynx rather likes Flight Control too, so the developer decided to pinch the path-drawing mechanic from Firemint’s game and apply it to a racing game. DrawRace is way beyond accusations of pilfering, though, as the resulting game is quite unlike anything you’ve played on any platform.

The idea is to sketch out a lap in advance of the main event, which your little racer will then follow to the best of his/her ability. If the path you’ve drawn is beyond the limits imposed by simple physics, the car will skid out, losing you vital time.

With the extra incentive of beating the times of every other player in the world, DrawRace is in contention for bargain of the century.