No longer must you spend several dollars to play a slick and amazingly refined iPhone racing game. Real Racing 3 drops the price tag from the franchise while maintaining the quality, serving up a bevy of impressive licensed cars and tracks plus hundreds of available events. It's worth spending a few bucks to increase the variety, but it's plenty enjoyable without ever pulling out your wallet.

Temple Run 2 offers significant enhancements over the original 3D endless runner, sensation delivering a glossier look while pumping more variety into each pursuit. You'll guide your avatar through maze-like paths using basic taps and swipes, but now there are mine cart and zipline sequences, plus more distinct terrain. It's one of the best high-score chase games around.

When rambunctious hero Barry Steakfries finds himself in a testing facility, there's only one logical next step: grab the nearest bullet-blasting jetpack and bust out! Easily one of the iPhone's best overall games, Jetpack Joyride finds you tapping and holding the screen to weave through electric obstacles and evade rockets, all while collecting coins and notching great distances. It's riotously amusing.

We liked Letterpress plenty when we reviewed it, but the more we play this inventive and stylish word sensation, the more we fall in love with its tactical approach. Alternating turns with an online foe, you'll aim to claim tiles on the board for your favor; locking letters down by surrounding them with other owned tiles secures those points, adding a bit of territory control to your term creation strategy.

Both zombie games and auto-runners are a bit too prevalent in modern gaming, but Into the Dead manages to deliver a fresh twist on both. Pushing you headlong into a foggy, atmospheric evening sprint, you'll dodge the shambling undead as you aim to survive for as long as possible. Found weapons help a bit, but a brutal end is promised. Still, you'll want to do it all again immediately.

Most people know this trivia favorite from console or browser-based versions, but You Don't Know Jack shines as a free-to-play, asynchronous multiplayer iPhone game. You'll play a hilarious five-minute episode at your own leisure, while the game loops in the performances of five other friends or random foes to make it feel like you're answering the oft-ridiculous questions at the same exact time.

Who knew that a game about an unstoppable speeding car could be this much fun? Extreme Road Trip 2 might look generic in still images, but this addictive affair is a leaderboard-chasing gem, tasking you with keep your vehicle upright and moving throughout hazard-filled hills without crashing. And while you can access upgrades easier with cash, it's plenty fun without spending a cent.

Cool Pizza isn't a particularly easy game to describe, though once you see the game in motion, it's hard to go back to cartoonish, candy-coated fare. Skating forward into the monochromatic horizon, you'll catch air off of ramps and swing your board at a variety of evil monsters, which explode into brilliant bits of pink and yellow. It's wonderfully trippy and aesthetically quite amazing.

Finding the middle ground between match-three gameplay and the allure of playing cards, Chip Chain serves up an intriguingly fresh puzzle experience. You'll line up numbered poker chips to link up and clear at least three of a kind, but the cards that appear at the bottom of the screen offer helpful twists that can turn things in your favor. A rotating selection of playable modes is available each day.

The best-known MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games may be on computers, but Heroes of Order & Chaos shows that the team-based strategic formula can work very well on an iPhone. In teams of three or five, you'll work to topple enemy towers and soldiers in an effort to ultimately take down the opposing base. Gameloft's mobile MOBA offers stellar multiplayer action without a fee.

It's pretty much impossible to play a round of Whale Trail without cracking a smile. Originally a paid affair, this vibrant side-scrolling game -- in which you tap and hold the screen to make a flying whale soar around stormy clouds -- has been reformulated as a still-stellar free-to-play title, wherein you'll earn cash to spend on power-ups and upgrades. Just try to get that theme song out of your head!

Building skyward is the goal in Tiny Tower, an App Store sensation that's one of the most alluring games of its type. Stocking stores and shepherding visitors around earns you currency you can use to add floors, all with the goal of building the tallest possible tower and comparing it to those of your friends. There's no great need to spend real money here as long so you keep the bitizens happy!

Most free games don't feel anywhere as big and polished as Shadowgun: DeadZone, the online multiplayer extension of the slick Gears of War-esque third-person shooter. Right out of the gate, you can hop online into team deathmatch and zone control battles of up to 12 total players, with great visuals and satisfying gunplay available even to those who never drop a dime on the game.

The lightning-fast variant of PopCap's brilliant match-three puzzler comes to iPhone in the form of Bejeweled Blitz, which gives you just 60 seconds to line up like-colored gems and trigger bonuses to rack up the highest possible score. Like every other iteration of the series, it's tough to put down, especially since the minute-long sessions tempt you to tackle "just one more" over and over again.

Aerial tactical action is the name of the game in Steambirds: Survival, a slick turn-based experience in which you'll point your planes in the desired direction before setting them loose into battle. It's an approach that allows for tactical thought and teamwork between units, plus works perfectly for a touchscreen interface. Survival's minimalist visual design also makes a big impression.

You don't need an arcade (or even a quarter) to enjoy a great game of pinball thanks to Zen Pinball, which recreates the beloved pastime with great success on the iPhone. The free download earns you unlimited access to Sorcerer's Lair, an original table that pinball wizards can sink hours into mastering, though serious fans have the option to shell out to unlock many more additional tables.

Created by some of the folks behind the Age of Empires real-time strategy series, Hero Academy delivers tactical action in a smaller package with turn-based grid battles between a pair of teams. The asynchronous approach makes it a great diversion for the spare moments in your day, and while there are premium teams available for purchase, the game is plenty enthralling without them.

If you missed out on the Draw Something Free phenomenon at its peak, there's no shame in checking out the hit asynchronous doodling game now. Picking from a trio of terms, you'll draw your best interpretation and send it to the other player, who must guess the right word and then send an image back. It's less a competitive experience than a nicely amusing game of word-to-doodle telephone.

It's hard enough to last for very long in most side-scrolling auto-runners, but Grim Joggers Freestyle ups the stakes considerably by putting you in charge of 15 fitness buffs at one time! Granted, they all won't last for long on a running path lined with deadly drops, killer robots, and devious spikes, but that's part of the fun. Grim Joggers is a hilarious tweak on a common theme that proves seriously fun.

For fans of robust golf simulations on PCs and consoles, Flick Golf essentially takes the ability to add backspin to a ball in motion and builds an entire game around it. Amazingly, the concept holds its own as an entertaining little diversion, in which you'll flick the golf ball towards the hole and then swipe the screen to change its direction in midair. Landing in the target isn't tough, but good luck sinking the shot

If Hero Academy doesn't suit your need for mobile tactical combat, Outwitters is another great option that lets you command a team of colorful creatures in battle across a hexagonal grid. You'll take turns against an online or local pass-and-play opponent, moving and using your units in smart and strategic ways to survive and ultimately topple the enemy's structures.

Solitaire is an old standby favorite on many devices, but Kings' Corners serves up an intriguing twist on the formula that we've been coming back to time and again. In this free card game, you'll plop fresh cards in the slots on the screen, with certain cards only allowed in limited slots. Smart placement is necessary to ensure that you always have a space for those, making the game tricky but satisfying.

While never a huge mainstream smash, Drop7 FREE has its devout supporters, who swear by the original puzzler's unique mechanics. In the game, you'll drop colored discs into a grid, aiming to clear them and create chain reactions by using the numbers shown. It's smarter than the average matching game, and this free version includes everything from the premium one, albeit with ads.

Maintaining the winning look of Nimblebit's previous free-to-play hit, Tiny Tower, Pocket Planes shifts the scenario to that of running an airline, tasking you with making cargo and passenger decisions, expanding your fleet, and even mapping out routes on the map. While not quite as sensational as sending buildings skyward, it's an interesting premise and there's plenty to enjoy.

Need a poker fix without the pressure of pumping in actual currency? Poker by Zynga lets you play a pretty stellar amount of Texas Hold 'em in five or nine-player varieties, assuming you have at least some understanding of the game. A slick UI shepherds you around the games, and best of all the lobbies are fully stoked at all hours, letting you pop in for a few hands whenever the urge strikes.