Anyone who's played a few casual games will have heard of the phenomenon of desktop tower defence — a simple little flash game that has seen millions of man hours lost in a flurry of hastily built ramparts and squeaking enemies. I even introduced it to my office just before Christmas, and an afternoon was lost as yelps of defeat sounded from every PC in the room.

Coming fresh off the back of this trend is PixelJunk Monsters — part of the fledgling, fun series from Q-Games that aims to take cute little ideas and create cheap and hugely addictive downloadable titles for the PlayStation Store.

The premise is simple — mainly because you're probably already familiar with it. Little beasties enter the screen from a certain point, and it's up to you to build various types of towers with which to stop them. Different types of towers are effective against different enemies — they fire a variety of ammunition — and it's your job to collect the gold and gems they leave behind, which you can use to buy upgrades to your existing defences, or new types of towers.

There are a few differences from the (admittedly basic) game that PixelJunk Monsters was spawned from. Instead of clicking towers onto a blank screen masquerading as a desk, the game takes place in outdoor environments — like forests and mountains. Trees can be selected and turned into towers, which adds a new layer of tactics — you can line forest routes with towers rather than having a blank slate.

Standing in front of a tower and dancing raises the experience of the defences, which means a quicker upgrade — essential for stopping tougher enemies later on. It's like a mini-real-time strategy game — cycle through your units, and tactically take out enemies, each with their own health-bar. It's not like the old PC game, in which loading the screen with enough towers was enough to clear all but the toughest of levels. Right from the start, tactical thinking is rewarded — but you're often left erring to the error side of things rather than the trial, with tactical experiments being ruthlessly punished: Each enemy that breaches your defences gobbles up one of your friends back home. Run out of these, and it's game over.

Graphically, it's cute as a button: cartoon trees, a cartoon little dude under your control and cartoon enemies that'd only look menacing to a 5-year-old. It's tremendously endearing, and the simple yet addictive gameplay only adds to the absorbing nature of monsters — build, upgrade, defeat and move on.

A simple formula, maybe, but certainly one that works. The gameplay is simple and repetitive but in a fantastic way — balanced well (aside from the odd harsh rebukes if you get something wrong) and hugely addictive due to the absorbing and intuitive nature of this basic strategy game. It's also available on the PlayStation Network for a mere handful of your own coins — you wouldn't scrimp on building more towers, so don't scrimp here. PixelJunk Monsters is one of the finest five-minute wonders available for download at the moment, and it's well worth the minuscule price.