Galcon has been around on the App Store for quite a while now, but it still holds it's own against the newest games on the iPhone. Combining the pick up and play nature of the device, with short game sessions makes for some seriously addictive gameplay - throw in multiple modes and WiFi multiplayer and you have a fully featured game for the platform. It was one of the few titles to launch at a high £5.99 price point, and rightly so - for £1.79 you'd be mad not to pick it up.

If you could boil down the title to two words, you'd have to conclude that Galcon is strategy, simplified. Winning is a case of strategically taking down the opponent by gobbling up the best resources on the map. Different planets have different ship production levels, with large planets offering the best amount and smaller moons the least. The planets themselves have an initial resource cost to take over, so if you invest in large, cheap planets you will have an easier time of it.

Control is very simple. The bottom right indicator shows the percentage of units from the planet selected, that you are going to move to another planet. You can choose 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%. Note that when you send in 100% of your fleet, the planet is still under your control and produces units, but it's obviously more vulnerable to enemy vessels. Sending a fleet out is as simple as touching the planet you want to send ships from, then touching the planet that you want to capture. You can also do multiple maneuvers at once, although this is trickier and takes practice.

The game has a wealth of modes and difficulty settings. There are 10 settings in all, from the super easy to insanely hard, and modes of play include Classic, Stealth, Vacuum, 3-Way and Beast. But it's the online component that is the most compelling. From the in game hub you can quickly ascertain the current games available and join them. Be warned though, the skill of many online players is very high, and so you may want to practice a hard AI opponent first.

Presentation is superb. There's just enough information on the screen at any one time, and with the simple design of the ships it's easy to tell what's going on, even in the middle of a firefight - the backgrounds are good too, and do a whole lot more good than a plain background would have. Quirky music rounds off the package as a whole, and it's one of the few games to properly utilise the Settings app on the iPhone.

It's really hard not to like Galcon. It's wealth of modes, online play and addictive premise make for a rewarding strategy game with a ton of depth. We don't normally mention it here, but the download size is also extremely light - 5.5Mb (roughly equivalent to 1 or 2 songs), which won't take up much room on your iPhone even though it's a fully featured game. If you like strategy games, then you will love Galcon. We advise that you download it immediately.

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