Sometimes you can take two genres and mash them together into something new and wonderful. It doesn’t always work out, and I’ve played more than my fair share of genre mashups that totally flopped, but every once in a while one will come along that feels just perfect. That’s exactly how I feel about Galaxy Stack ($1.99) from developer Retrosaur and Crescent Moon Games. I’ve always felt that vertical shooters are a perfect fit for mobile, as they control well on the touchscreen and are inherently well-suited to one-handed portrait play. And you could say the same thing about those block-stacking tower-building games that we’ve been playing on mobile for years. Mash those two things together? That’s Galaxy Stack.

It’s almost absurd how simple the concept is. You’ll blast down enemies that approach from the top of the screen, and those destroyed ships where fall down and begin to stack up. You need to avoid enemy fire as well as the falling ships and try to build up your tower of fallen enemies as high as you can. At certain height thresholds you’ll square off against a boss and as you defeat the game’s various bosses you’ll unlock different playable ships, each with their own unique offensive attacks. Galaxy Stack isn’t much more than a solid high score chaser, but it’s so mechanically sound and so well suited for mobile play (not to mention that it’s a paid game with no IAP shenanigans) that it’s the game I’ve been coming back to over and over this week.