StickWars 3

Defending things is very popular nowadays. Whether it's a mass psychological reaction to the fragile economy or something more ingrained in our genetic make-up, many of us have taken up arms to protect a digital strongholds.

StickWars 3 not only lets you defend your castle, but it also enables you to flick hilarious stick figures hundreds of feet into the air before they plummet to grisly, gorgeously animated deaths. It's violent catharsis and the protection instinct rolled into one.

Flipping the sword

Things start off rather sedately. You're an evil undead warlock out for revenge, so you pilot your moveable castle across the land, squashing villages. Obviously, this upsets the residents, who launch an attack as soon as your rocky outpost touches down.

It's your job to flick these pesky ants away, flipping a finger across the screen to bring about some deliciously squelchy deaths. As the game progresses, your assailants become tougher and bring siege weapons along for the ride.

Luckily, you can augment your flicking abilities with extra defences around the castle wall. Zombie archers fire arrows, necromancers cast defensive and offensive spells, and reapers cleave wedges of death into the enemy force.

Manapult

You'll need to collect souls, too, dragging unsuspecting warriors into your pool to bubble and broil and have their humanity stripped away. You can spend the gold coins you pick up after each fight on upgrading your various defences, turning your castle from a strip of wall into a fortified stronghold.

There's not a great deal of strategy on offer here - you just power-up your flicking finger and hope that anything that gets past is mopped up by creatures patrolling your gate. More often than not, frantically wiggling a digit at the edge of the screen is enough to finish off a level.

StickWars 3 isn't as deep as it would like you to think, but that doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable waste of time. On tougher difficulty settings it becomes a finger-stretching nightmare, and even at its simplest the gory deaths are more than enough to raise a chuckle. This is one castle that's worth defending.