What did the Pink Panther say when he trod on an ant? Dead-ant, dead-ant, dead-ant, dedant, dedant, dedant....

It's probably a while since you heard that classic playground joke, and, to be honest, we're not sure how well it translates to the written word. However, they're going to be dead-ants a plenty if you decide to download our App of the Day, as it sees you taking control of an ant army, involved with the defence of your precious anthill.

Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense

Format

iPhone

Price

£1.49 (usually £1.99)

Where

iTunes

This little gem combines real time strategy and tower defence, merging the two, admittedly very similar genres, into one - creating an excellent game in the process.

The plot is straightforward enough; you take control of a variety of friendly formicidae which all work together to gather food and destroy enemy bugs so that your anthill might be preserved. There are workers who collect the food, an army variety that gets stuck in hand-to-hand, and flying ants who bombard the opposition with green goo, amongst others.

As ever, it's a case of balancing the different varieties at your disposal; creating workers to forage for food and combat troops to defend them, if you're going to be successful. You can determine where each type of ant goes by creating a line on the screen which they'll follow to a target - the whole system working very well.

Where the  real beauty lies is in the gameplay; things can look pretty hectic at times, however due to the intuitive interface everything remains under your control. One example of this excellent gameplay is when you draw a line to a point; rather than having to be exact, finishing the line in the general vicinity will mean that any goodies will be picked up - a small touch admittedly, but something that could have been overlooked, and would have led to a degree of frustration especially on a touchscreen device.

The interface just works, allowing you to develop your strategy and enable you to collect the maximum amount of stars for a given round - of which there are many.

Altogether a very polished product and well worth a download if you're feeling flush, as it does cost £1.99. Fortunately there is a 33 per cent sale on at the moment, so you can pick it up for £1.49, and for a game that, somehow, feels quite fresh on the iOS platform we have to say that it's a bargain.