Pandemic

Most mobile games are little time-wasters, suitable for entertaining yourself while you wait for the bus; few are deep, involving, and require strategic thinking. Plague Inc does, however.

In Plague Inc., you play a disease, and your victory condition is the complete extermination of humanity. Experiencing fiero because you've just killed every man, woman, and child on the planet is... strange, but interesting.

The game comes with seven different plague types (bacteria, virus, parasite, and so on); only bacteria is unlocked at first. Each poses somewhat different difficulties; for instance, the virus mutates frequently, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can gain new abilities without requiring you to spend "DNA points," but you may also evolve in a way to alarm humanity more quickly than you'd like.

What is it about pandemics? We've had a rash of them recently, and here's another. In this one, though, the pandemic is the zombie apocalypse.

Most games with zombies are horror apocalypse; in this one, you are, by implication, a mad scientist unleashing the zombie apocalypse on the world. It's played in a series of stages, each one set in a "city"; you trigger a zombie infection, then watch as your zombies eat the brains of citizens, sweeping your pointer about to collect coins when they die. Then, you upgrade your zombie capabilities in the "Lab." At higher levels, the humans fight back with mercs, secret agents, Spiderman, Santa Claus and other such things who are harder to infect and who fight your zombies, possibly stopping the infection before you collect lots of coins. Luckily, you get bombs and such to blow them up as an upgrade.