The year's most surprising and emotionally gutting game hit the App Store later than most other platforms, but Walking Dead: The Game ($4.99, universal) was every bit as powerful and affecting with touch controls. Inspired by the hit comic series, you'll take the role of a survivor amidst the zombie apocalypse, tasked with making brutal choices that carry over across five episodes.

One of the first notable iOS games released this year remains one of the best, as Super Crate Box ($1.99, universal) had us obsessively tapping virtual buttons and collecting boxes time and again. As the pixel-based foes pour in from the top, you'll race around the screen to amass crate boxes, each of which bumps up your tally and serves up a new weapon to use along the way.

Great tower defense titles are surprisingly plentiful on the App Store, but that didn't stop us from getting sucked into Kingdom Rush ($0.99/iPhone, $2.99/iPad), a colorful and satisfying take on the strategy genre. Not only will you place offensive towers to ward off invaders across numerous maps, but the towers themselves include ample, branching upgrades, which adds further depth.

Letterpress (free, universal) may offer simplistic visual design, but succeeding in this inventive word game requires ample smarts and creativity. Taking turns with an online opponent, you'll create new words from the pool of 25 titles, claiming each set for your color in the process; but surround your own tiles and the enclosed ones stay yours, adding a touch of territorial control to the wordplay.

Avian fever continued unabated on the App Store in 2012, but Angry Birds Space ($0.99/iPhone, $2.99/iPad) put an appreciated spin on the classic fling-based formula, adding gravitational pull to the planet-circling stages. We've seen the entertaining concept expanded even further in the various free updates, plus the recent Angry Birds Star Wars launched with similarly stellar results.

Like Walking Dead, Bastion ($4.99, universal) delivers a gripping, post-apocalyptic narrative -- but does so in a very different manner. This vibrant action affair centers on smashing and shooting foes from an isometric view, but truly soars thanks to its brilliant art direction and mesmerizing audio narration, which punctuates every meaningful movement and event along the way.

Asymmetric, turn-based games can rely on both brains and brawn, as evidenced by the electric Hero Academy (free, universal), which pits opposing teams against each other in strategic battles upon a game board. It's plenty fun for free, though you can pump in a couple bucks to unlock other squads, plus the game is playable against Mac and PC opponents on Steam.

Rhythm games just make sense on devices where you can tap along to the beat on the screen, though Beat Sneak Bandit ($2.99, universal) is unlike any we've seen before. In the super chic 2D stages, you'll play as the titular hero, who is charged with reclaiming stolen clocks from a mansion. To do so, you must tap with the beat to make him move and evade guards and treacherous traps.

Good luck! You're going to need it in Super Hexagon ($0.99, universal), a remarkably challenging endurance test that tasks you with escaping the ever-closing shapes contracting at rapid speeds. Lasting even 10 seconds may seem impossible at first, but those with steel wills and solid thumb-eye coordination will find their times steadily increasing -- just in time to swap to even harder modes.

Like most folks, we shudder at the idea of a non-universal game sold at an incredible premium, but The World Ends With You: Solo Remix ($17.99/iPhone, $19.99/iPad) justifies its bold price tags thanks to a stylish and engrossing role-playing adventure set in modern Tokyo. And it's even better than the celebrated Nintendo DS version that preceded it, all thanks to Retina display support.