I’m a big fan of tower defense games. Especially on the iPhone/iPad and the unique controls these devices offer. Unfortunately, there only a handful of tower defenses that are worthy of the tower defense connoisseur. The Creeps is not only one of those in the handful, but it might just lead the pack.

Right out of the gate, you notice the unique and “happy” graphics that are reminiscent of a cheesy but well thought-out cartoon. The graphics are sharp, with well-defined edges and detail while not too busy. The Creeps maintains a unique look by employing a “construction paper” art style.

This brings me to the characters. Most often, not much thought is given to the mobs in tower defenses. They’re usually nothing more than the jumble of pixels needing to die. The Creeps takes the time to make you pay attention to the baddies by adding personality and simple movements (like an evil bird’s sharp teeth-ridden beak “chomping” up and down) that make you chuckle and drive you to build more Elmer’s glue towers to slow them so you can spend more time laughing at them before eventually bringing them to their inevitable demise!

Any game on the iPhone/iPad has to decide on how to best control the game’s environment without the use of any joystick or buttons. Tower defenses are one of the few genres to actually benefit from the limited controls by only requiring the gamer to “click” on objects. You select a tower to build, and you drag the tower to desired location, then release. If you see a specific mob you want to target, you “click” on that target, which then tells your faithful tower array to ignore their algorithmic lifestyles until selected baddy is assassinated. Very simple. Partially passive. Beautiful. This is an element I very much appreciate about tower defenses for my iPhone or iPad because I’m not required to firmly plant both of my carrot-stick, grease-laden thumbs onto fixed points of the small screen whereby I lose 33 percent of the landscape and inevitably lose the “touch” part of “touchscreen,” resulting from the bodily emissions present during fervent thumbonic gameplay.

This brings me to my only real complaint about The Creeps. Super Squawk Software while devising a superior tower defense decided to occasionally utilize the worst component the brilliant folks at Apple squeezed into the market-dominant iPhone/iPad: the motion feature. In The Creeps, some maps have uber towers that release a time-limited offensive juggernaut that either slows down, severely damages, or gathers and drags the moving mob(s) to the starting point. Although creative, balanced and useful, the method of tilting your device (relative to a tabletop) to move the activated helper requires the gamer to pop up to a proper seated position or contort his/her body to be able to view the playing field via top-down configuration. I don’t know about you, but I want the option to be in the laziest, most relaxing position I can dream up while playing my favorite mobile games.

Despite this minor flaw, The Creeps stands as one of the top tower defenses in this format. Along with the inviting graphics and enjoyable characters, The Creeps offers some of the most creative and balanced gameplay you’ll find in any tower defense. The basic tower is a laser-type blaster-gun that can be upgraded twice to create a fast-firing dominant shooter. The slow-class tower is a hilarious Elmer’s glue gun that grows with size and effectiveness with both upgrades. There’s a four-pointed blade that slices through everything in its path and respects no distance boundary. With a few $.99 pack purchases, you get all of the area of effect towers that include the basic boomerang that sprouts a new limb with each upgrade, a pot of gold that emanates a ring of destruction from the tower itself and provides a slowing effect with upgrades, and a bow-and-arrow tower no doubt stolen from the bosom of cupid himself (apparent by the heart-tipped arrow), which upon impact explodes into a target-seeking heart bomb. There are batteries that greatly enhance towers powered by statically charged sweaters. A piggy bank that earns you coins per wave and a flashlight that sends a constant beam that charges up strength as long as it remains in contact with its target. Unlike most tower defenses that demand one strategy for a successful map completion, The Creeps allows for many creative methods to dominate.

Whether you are a hardened tower defense addict who requires complex strategies and challenging maps that require real strategic thinking or you’ve never experienced the genre, The Creeps is a must-have.