The iPhone/iPod App Store has thousands of 99 cent games these days.  A lot of them are great.  A lot more of them, however, and to put it mildly, suck.  Below are 5 games I find myself playing again and again, getting far more entertainment for my $5 than I would’ve with, say, half a movie ticket.

Rush Hour

This is the official iPhone adaptation of ThinkFun’s awesome puzzle game.  There are plenty of knock-offs in the App Store, but this is the real deal and the best implemented.

The goal is to free your car from rush hour gridlock by moving the other cars back and forth, clearing a lane.  And with 2,500 levels included, you’ll have pretty much endless fun doing so.

The iPhone edition even adds new features that the physical game cannot, such as a counter that tells you how many moves you’ve made, allowing you to replay the same level and try to do better.

[App Store Link]

Doodle Jump

In Doodle Jump, the Doodler (seen in the icon to the left there) jumps up and up and up, from platform to platform.  It’s your job to guide him left and right, landing on jumping aids such as springs, trampolines, propeller beanies, and rocket packs.  Conversely, you try to avoid broken platforms, black holes, monsters, and alien spaceships.  You can cause the Doodler to shoot from his snout by tapping the screen, helping to take out monsters and spaceships.

That’s about it, but it is, as they say in the description, it is insanely addictive.  Adding to the fun is a global leaderboard, and hash marks to the side of the screen in-game, showing when you pass levels that you and others have reached in the past.  It’s a great way to kill 5, 10, or 20 minutes.

[App Store Link]

Rope’n'Fly 2

Rope’n'Fly 2 is another game that’s great for killing 5-10 minutes here and there.  You are essentially Spider-Man, though they can’t say that; you don’t make enough money on a 99 cent game to fight lawsuits from Marvel, I’d imagine.  Actually, the original app icon used to have a guy with a red shirt and blue pants swinging until, one day, the icon got more boring.  While you can customize the color of your swinger, red isn’t even an option anymore.  I can only speculate as to why that would be.

Anyway, the game mechanic in Rope’n'Fly is simply — you tap on the screen to direct your swinger where to attach his rope to a building, then you tap again when you want him to let go.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  But, keeping him airborne is not as easy as it sounds.

The game includes many different modes — some in which you go a certain distance, some in which you only have a certain number of ropes, and some in which you go as far as you can get.  There are global leaderboards for all modes for you to see how you stack up.

[App Store Link]

Flight Control

Flight Control spawned a whole subgenre of “line drawing” games in which you direct objects on the screen on where to go, by drawing a line that they will follow.  In this case, various planes and helicopters are flying through your airspace (at varying speeds) and you must direct them all safely to the proper runway.

It starts out seeming easy, but when you have 10 planes on your screen at once, all on intersecting paths, it gets a little hectic.

[App Store Link]

Labyrinth 2

The first Labyrinth game by Illusion Labs was one of the original “show apps” for what the iPhone/iPod Touch could do.  It was a faithful port of the old game, where you could tilt your phone in your hands to maneuver the ball around the various holes to the goal.

With Labyrinth 2, they’ve taken that to another level with a variety of well thought-out obstacles, including magnets, fans, and gates that must be opened before you can pass through.  Both of the Labyrinth games allow fans to create their own levels online, and for levels to be downloaded for free from within the game, giving endless replayability.

[App Store Link]

Conclusion

These games represent just a tiny fraction of the sad and ungodly amount of money I’ve poured in to the App Store, but are responsible for a much higher percentage of the enjoyment I’ve gotten out of my iPhone.  I recommend taking advantage of my trial-and-error and giving them a try.