Peggle is an über-popular casual game from PopCap, the masters of the casual gaming universe, and publishers of Bejeweled and Bookworm. Now the game is coming to the iPhone, and I think it just might be the best $4.99 you could spend in the Apple App Store this year. Honestly, I'm not sure who is responsible for more lost productivity in the U.S. each year, PopCap or rolling brownouts. The game is an addictive mix of strategy and luck. But don't just take my word for it; ask my coworker Joel Durham. He actually lost his wife to the game.

In theory Peggle is a pretty simple game in the same vein as the Price Is Right staple, Plinko, or the popular Japanese game Pachinko. The player fires a silver pinball from the top of the screen and tries to bounce it off the game board's blue and orange pegs. When the ball hits a peg, that peg disappears. When you've managed to hit and eliminate all of the orange target pegs (the blue pegs are obstacles) you progress to the next level. There are various special pegs that you can hit for extra points and special temporary abilities like exploding pegs or pinball flippers that let you save an errant shot. Sounds simple, right? But as you progress through the 55 levels, it gets increasingly hard to clear the boards with the ten balls provided (balls are lost when they clear the field of pegs but are not caught by the roving ball receiver at the bottom of the screen).

When you play Peggle on the PC, you can carefully line up your shots with precise mouse control. I thought precision would be lost on the iPhone, but if anything, the opposite was the case. In this version of the game you use a scroll wheel on the far right-hand side of the screen (though you can change the orientation to the far left-hand side if you are left-handed) to adjust your shot, and with a quick double-tap on the iPhone touchscreen, you can zoom in and see exactly where your ball will hit.

Peggle for the iPhone isn't just a straight port of the game over to a new platform: Aside from the new game controls, there's also a dual mode that lets you play against friends locally by taking turns and passing the iPhone back and forth. I also liked the way you can save replays of amazing shot combos with the touch of a button and listen to your own music while you play.

If you commute to work, you really need to get Peggle for iPhone. Just be careful you don't miss your stop, as I did this morning. Again. The Apple App Store is stuffed with new games for the iPhone but none that I've seen really "get" the platform the way this one does. It is easy to pick up for a quick game, but it also has enough levels to keep you occupied if you have more than a few minutes to play.

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