Developer Martin Jonasson aka Grapefrukt has been making games for well over a decade now, but it was 2013’s Rymdkapsel ($3.99) that was the first commercial success and the one that really put this developer on the map. It’s described as a stripped-down real-time strategy game where the goal is to build an expansive base in order to harvest resources while simultaneously fighting off waves of attacking enemies. The brilliance in Rymdkapsel is that the rooms that you build in your base are all shaped like tetrominos, aka the block shapes in Tetris, and so you wage a constant internal battle between building a tightly-knit base of pieces that all fit together nicely and ensure your resources and defenses are in close proximity so your workers can switch between them easily; or build more haphazardly so you can sprawl out further and reach the various monoliths spread around your building site which will give you access to upgrades. Either strategy can be a winning one and often the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
While Rymdkapsel is available on desktop, it was originally designed with touchscreens in mind, and this is truly a game that feels perfect for mobile. We loved it in our original review from 2013, and chose it as our Game of the Week. In the summer of 2015 Rymdkapsel received a huge update adding a new Zen mode which eliminated enemies altogether and just let you build out your base in peace, and a Plus mode which acted sort of like a ha...