Where's My Water?

Where's My Water?
(Developed by Walt Disney)
Available for: iOS, Android
Price: 99 cents
Originally published: September

Another Disney app from the creators of the blockbuster Jelly Car, Where's My Water? is also another family-friendly smash. The multitouch-enabled puzzle game stars Swampy the Alligator, a clean freak whose eccentricities earn him the enmity of his fellow gators, who conspire to halt his water supply. Gamers must help restore the water flow to Swampy's shower, digging pipelines into his underground home while avoiding algae, ooze and other contaminants. It's good, clean fun in the most literal sense.

What's remarkable about Where's My Water? is the quality of the animation--the water splashes and sloshes with stunningly fluid accuracy (no pun intended), and the subterranean setting is rendered with tactile precision. No less significant, Swampy is a quintessential Disney character: Cute, charming and appealingly silly, he seems destined to make the leap from the iPhone to the world of licensed merchandise, following the trail blazed by the Angry Birdsaviary. It's no surprise that Where's My Water? knocked Angry Birds off its perch atop the App Store's Paid Apps bestseller chart within days of its September release--it feels like an instant classic as well as the birth of a new franchise with serious legs. You're going to see that alligator later.