The best iPhone and iPad games this week - RGB Express, Anomaly Defenders, and more

Every Friday, Pocket Gamer offers hands-on impressions of the week's three best new iPhone and iPad games.

Fist of Fury
By Happymagenta - download on iPhone and iPad (free)

Fist of Fury is about as simple as it's possible for a game to be without turning into a gif. You play as a wizened old martial artist standing in the middle of a cross-shaped island, with paths extending horizontally and vertically away from you.

Ninjas file down these paths, lurching rhymically in ones and twos and threes, and you have to swipe at the right time to knock them flying. The challenge is to triage this ninja horde, keeping enough of your wits about you to pick off the closest ninja and resisting the urge to just mash the screen.

Within seconds of each round starting you're basically one bad swipe away from death, and the only way to survive is to enter a zen-like state of flow. It's like Guitar Hero, but simpler, and free, and ninjistic.

RGB Express
By Bad Crane - buy on iPhone and iPad (£1.99 / $2.99)

RGB Express – which, let's face it, is quite similar to Trainyard – is an extremely polished cutesy puzzler in which you have the ostensibly unappealing task of delivering barrels to buildings.

There are three different colours of truck, barrel, and building, and barrels can only be delivered to the corresponding buildings by the corresponding trucks. Unfortunately the trucks can't share a road, or drive past a building without a barrel.

An initially straightforward enterprise soon becomes a mind-melting, finger tangling challenge as you struggle to find a route for multiple vehicles without violating any of the game's petty rules. Eventually you'll need to deal with switches, drawbridges, drop off zones, and other complicating factors.

Anomaly Defenders
By 11 Bit Studios - buy on iPhone and iPad (£2.99 / $4.99)

Anomaly was the first reverse tower defence game, taking the tower defence genre and spinning it around by putting you in charge of the attackers. So Anomaly Defenders has the curious distinction of being the first "reverse tower offence" game – or the billionth tower defence game. Whichever you prefer.

It's not just any old tower defence game though. As Harry discovered when he reviewed it earlier this week, it's tower defence max, a beautiful and technically impressive strategy title with resource gathering, cover, and other advanced features of the genre not normally associated with TD games on iOS.

And these features are put to use in a game that demands careful tactical consideration. If you want to survive you'll have to make optimal use of all the weapons, items, and terrain at your disposal, and the 'pause' button becomes your most important weapon as you stand back from the action and examine your options like some kind hi tech Napoleon.

PG extras

It's funny how things work out. Last week I was so desperate for stuff to put in our weekly best games roundup that I resorted to Ninja Raft – an enjoyable enough casual grindfest, but hardly what you'd call a premium gaming experience.

If only the worldwide developer community would be good enough to coordinate its output so that a roughly equal number of good games came out every week then we wouldn't find ourselves in a situation like this one, where I'm forced by convention not to tell you about all the other great games that came out this week, concentrating instead on the ones we've already reviewed.

But wait. Mark isn't here. He's at EGX. There's nothing he can do to stop me telling you about *gasp* more than three games.

Ha. Haha. MWAHahahaha!

So as a special bonus, here are a couple of other games you should play this week. If you think I've missed any out, please tell me how thick I am (and what I neglected to include) in the comments.

Asphalt Overdrive

By Gameloft - download on iPhone and iPad (free)

The Asphalt series goes all auto-runner in this high octane free-to-play chase-fest.

Turbo Dismount
By Secret Exit - download on iPhone and iPad (free)

Secret Exit's long awaited game about destroying cars in creative ways.

Smarter Than You
By EightyEight Games - buy on iPhone and iPad (69p / 99c)

Minimalistic and potentially very popular take on rock-paper-scissors.