These 10 super-addictive phone games might take over your life

(Image credit: Facebook/Zombie Highway )

last updated 8 January 2015

The mission: To find a few phone games worthy of filling the Candy Crush- and Dots-sized holes in our hearts. Not an easy feat!

The methodology: We asked our readers and friends for their recommendations, and consulted with a few video game websites like Kotaku to assemble a rough list of worthy contenders beyond the usual suspects. (Angry Birds, Words With Friends, etc.)

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But once you get past the facts that the bears are mean and you have to kill them, it's actually pretty fun. And you get addicted figuring out how to optimize your placement of greenery and structures to get the biggest town before the grid fills up. So, yeah, it's pretty awesome and it turns out I'm pretty good at it. Recommended for passing the time on your commute, your six-hour plane flight, or half of your Sunday.

In 10000000 you play as an adventurer who has been imprisoned and is tasked with earning 10,000,000 points to achieve his freedom. Points are earned by running through a dungeon, "fighting monsters," and opening treasure chests by playing a fast-paced puzzle game roughly comparable to Candy Crush or Bejeweled. When you "die," you take your accomplishments with you, and the process begins again. Each dungeon run, which typically lasts no more than a few minutes, also earns you more loot, which you can spend to improve your equipment and statistics (and ensure that your next run will be even better than the one before it).

It took me around three and a half hours (or about eight subway commutes) to earn the 10,000,000 points required to secure my 8-bit avatar's freedom — upon which I was told I had unlocked an "endless mode" that would allow me to keep playing far past the goal 10000000 originally set. I immediately deleted the game, out of fear that I'd lose the rest of my life in a haze of swords, keys, and treasure chests, but that first 10,000,000 was well worth the price of admission.

But the basic idea is to build an international airline from the ground up, starting with a handful of small planes that transport goods and passengers short distances. I wake up every morning to find that the planes I dispatched the previous night have arrived at their destinations. Before even checking my email, I send a box of orchids to Montreal, a passel of socks to Quebec City, a fellow named Troy Jimenez to Cincinnati. I take a shower, drink coffee, ferry some bananas to Detroit. I respond to emails, mutter goodbye to my wife as she ducks out the door, buy an airport in Minneapolis.

Each flight costs me a few gold coins, presumably for gas and the pilot's labor, but the loss is more than offset every time a plane touches down, my stash of coins increasing by a number that rises and vanishes like smoke. I skim the news, make breakfast, purchase a Bearclaw-P plane in an effort to expand my fleet. I get on the subway, and even though I'm underground, sealed off from the economic life of the city, I'm content in the knowledge that my planes are in the air, my empire is spreading, and the profits are rolling in by the bushel. I enter the office and sit at my desk, no colleague the wiser about my hidden world, one in which the ebb and flow of commerce is determined by the tip of my finger, I rule the skies like God, and, most unbelievably, the planes run on time.

Every other driver on Earth is already toast, and zombies lie in wait like so many undead highway patrolmen for the chance to hurl themselves at your SUV and harvest your brain. Luckily, there are a few ways to get rid of the zombies: Run them over before they latch on; scrape them off by sideswiping any number of abandoned cars strewn across the highway; or shoot them off using a series of increasingly high-powered weapons that are unlocked as your miles of successful zombie-free driving pile up. If you let too many zombies pile on, or ram into one of the many abandoned cars that turn the highway into an obstacle course, you're a goner.

There was something amusing about watching the zombies leap Jackie Joyner-Kersee style onto your car. Less amusing was the gyroscope-based steering function, which rendered the slightest inadvertent movement or subway rattle a potential "game over" situation. Basically, you can't move while you play this game, save for the wild gyrations needed to steer the car back and forth. There aren't a ton of variations to the road, the zombies, or the graphics involved in Zombie Highway, so visually the game can be a bit of a bore. That said, there isn't much more satisfying than sweeping a ream of murderous quasi-corpses off your car. My verdict: a great waiting room game, but no way can you get away with playing it in church. You'll look possessed.

Homer's lines are funny, but weren't enough to keep me going. I'm no gamer, and felt like I was just clicking on a few narrow options to get things moving. I turned to my elementary school sons for help. The older one, a Minecraft fanatic, lost interest quickly, saying, "This is just one of those games where you win coins to buy stuff." He had a point — progress seemed frustratingly slow, because we weren't willing to make in-app purchases (of donuts, Homer's preferred currency) with REAL money. Then I handed the phone to my younger son — a Club Penguin aficionado — and he was hooked instantly. He promptly built the Simpsons a neighborhood, complete with Apu behind the counter of a new Kwik-E-Mart. He begged for the phone whenever it was out of his hands. This is a kid, however, who last weekend complained of being bored, and, when given the opportunity to head to the park, said, "I don't want to do anything in the REAL world." If you find yourself saying that sometimes, you might get addicted too.

Earlier this summer, a pair of 7-year-old twin boys reportedly spent $3,000 on in-game purchases while playing Clash of Clans on their mother's iPad. It's easy to see why. The game plays like a medieval fantasy version of FarmVille, with plenty of gold and other resources to collect as you build your virtual village. The goal is to wage war on other players with a Tolkien-esque arrangement of warriors, giants, goblins, and dragons.

This is accomplished by strategically constructing a "Bad Hotel" every single level, which you build upward to include all sorts of weird weaponized rooms. I guess you can say the game takes the classic Tower Defense model and flings everything skyward. Some rooms, for example, launch explosive projectiles into the air. Others come with cool freeze beams. Some heal the structural damage your buildings take from invaders. And some rooms exist for the sole purpose of earning you money to buy new gear.

In theory, such a scary armament should make the birds and other animals hell bent on attacking your property easy pickings. Only these aren't ordinary creatures. Nope. These are relentless, swarming manifestations of evil that just so happen to be drawn really cool. Birds are strapped with explosives, rats wear TNT backpacks, lightning clouds frown at you and make mean faces, and there is even a gigantic crab whose whole existence is dedicated to smashing all your expensive stuff.

I don't know why I'm writing this review when I could be playing Robot Unicorn Attack 2. I could be guiding my noble robo-steed as he jumps and dashes through a gorgeously apocalyptic land filled with fairies, stars, narwhals, and the occasional giant. The game's premise is fairly simple: Avoid the obstacles, collect some fairies and other goodies, and don't die (robot unicorns are unfortunately not immortal). While I could do with fewer ads and less sneaky attempts to get me to make in-app purchases, it feels plain wrong to have any qualms with a game that's so addictive and transporting.

So, that covers "jelly." But what about the "splash"? Like Candy Crush, each level of Jelly Splash has a task — like exploding little mushrooms, or freeing jellies from dark slime — and only a certain number of turns. If you complete the task without using all the turns, the reward is a "splash" round, where, without any help from you, jelly bubbles drop from the sky and explode on other jellies in a sloppy, point-building bonanza.

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