Top 20 best free iPhone games (2010)

"You get what you pay for" is usually a pretty good adage to go by, but in the twisted economy of the iPhone App Store it goes out the window.

Some of the best games are the cheapest, and you can get hours of gaming enjoyment for less than the price of a Snickers. In some cases, 100 per cent less.

With that in mind, here are the 20 best apps you can stick on your iPhone or iPod touch without paying a penny. That's right - snap that iTunes gift card in half and rip up all your money. You won't need it here.

We've split this list into two sections. Up first is that horrendous buzzword, freemium. These games get you in the door with their ever so tempting price and then dangle extra goodies and gizmos to get you to shell out.

And then there are the just plain old free games. Maybe they're packed with adverts or they're trying to sell you on something - don't ask questions, just download them.

Press play on tape. Relive the glory days of games on cassettes, sticky keyboards,, and Maggie Thatcher with this Commodore 64 emulator.

You get seven free games bundled in, and an additional eight free games in the shop. If you want to cough up, though, there are plenty of top C64 memories to buy and they rarely top the 59p price point.

Do you ever sit there playing FarmVille and think to yourself, "This would be much better with hordes of reanimated corpses"?

No, me neither, but Playforge evidently did. Zombie Farm has all the agricultural monotony of its Facebook cousin, but also dead bodies, gravestones and zombies. Pay cash to boost your in-game wallet, which is suitably represented by braaaains.

This isn't just a short taster of the Tap Tap experience or an empty shell that forces you to buy new songs. You can get hours of rhythmic tapping fun with the built in songs, the huge library of free tracks to download, and the weekly free song.

Tap Tap changes the game's graphics to suit the songs, so you'll get more than an MP3 if you do choose to shell out.

Good old fashioned "my numbers are bigger than your numbers" Mafioso romp, with mobsters, vehicles, jobs, and weapons. If glacier paced number crunchers are your thing, and you're too cool for farms, fishtanks, and cafes, perhaps Mafia Wars will scratch that itch.

A fully 3D, real-time massively multilayer online game. You can go through a whole bunch of quests, rack up loot, customise your hero, and even play over 3G, so you're never far away from some skeleton-smashing fun. If you've got the money, there's tonnes of in-app junk to buy.

We Rule: the game so popular it completely wrecked ngmoco's servers and everyone's turnips were fading in and out of existence for days.

The game is all fixed up now though, so you can get this regal FarmVille-styled kingdom builder without worrying about disappearing turnips. Like Pocket Legends, there's also a free iPad version of We Rule, so you can keep harvesting, no matter what screen you're on.

Fill your own aquarium with all kinds of exotic animals, feed them, clean their aquarium, forget you have the game installed, come back to find a bunch of dead fish. Tap Fish is a beautiful fish tank sim, but if you're lazy you can cough up and spend tonnes of cash on "Fish Bucks".

The Godfather has got this freemium thing down pat. It offers Race or Die, iMob, Jet Fighters, iKnights, iVampires, and Girl Wars, all for free.

Sure, they're just Mafia Wars knock-offs but with cars, jets, dragons, vampires, and shoes instead of mobsters, but find one you like and you might get hooked.

IMO is a beautiful pixel art MMORPG, with three classes, social networking features, and a player versus player arena. You can also hook up to The World of Magic via 3G, and chat with your pals in real time.

There is, as you can imagine, a whole bunch of premium garbage to buy as well, including items and weapons.

Relive the glory days of numeric controllers, delayed keyboard components, and more Maggie Thatcher with this Intellivision emulator.

It's not quite the great deal that C64 is - you only get one free game (Astrosmash) and there aren't any freebies in the store - but it was only released this month, so don't give up hope yet. Games are 59p each.

A simple but effective timewaster: just tilt your iPhone to get a ball to fall down the holes. It also looks like something straight out of TRON, and is every bit addictive as Doodle Jump or games of that ilk. You can pay 59p to nix the adverts, if you want.

A multiple-choice-answer pictionary styled game that looks fantastic and is tonnes of fun to play. The games only last a couple of minutes, too, so it works brilliantly while you wait for your treacle tart to warm up in the microwave.

You can pay for custom avatars and a lightning round, if you're so inclined.

Trundle is a gorgeous puzzle adventure game that plays out entirely in silhouette. It toys with physics and kinetic motion as you push blocks, make tricky jumps and activate machinery. There's an extra level to buy, but the base game is lengthy and enjoyable.

Okay, maybe this one is only for vocabulary obsessed editors, but its for a good cause. MobileRice asks you what a word means - get it right and the app maker will donate 10 grains of rice to people in need.

There's 60 levels of difficulty, which goes from "What does Listen means" to "What does Tarsitis means". You'll need your Latin prefixes in mind for some of these.

If you want to take the classic Windows card game on the road with you, and don't need flashy graphics or tonnes of unnecessary features, this app will give you the bare basics for nothing.

That's not to say its feature incomplete - you can play in portrait or landscape, have custom cards and backgrounds, and activate Vegas scoring.

If you loved Chillingo's castle-defending, enemy-flicking, dragon summoning game Knights Onrush, you might enjoy this free spin-off game that sees one little knight forcing his way through hordes of baddies.

Or you might not. How should I know?

Some companies release lite, demo, or trial versions of their games. Firemint went one better by partnering up with Volkswagen and chucking a brand new motor in this popular 3D racer. You get one track and six cars for zilch, but you can always buy the full version if it tickles your fancy.

Another spin-off of a fan favourite game, Hornet Smash drops all that bug catching stuff in favour of squelching everyone's favourite Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor enemy, the hornets.

It gives a pretty good idea of what the main game is like, too, so maybe it'll convince you to shell out for the incredible Spider.

Try and throw a piece of balled up paper into a waste paper in. Because everyone knows that a piece of paper and some kind of bucket to throw it in are very difficult objects to come by. You get a bunch of stages, high scores and even difficulty levels. Pay 59p to remove the ads, if you wish.

A bit like Flight Control, but with a busy traffic intersection instead of an airport. Simply tap cars to make them brake, and swipe your finger over vehicles to make them accelerate. Keep everything running smoothly and you'll have a nice high score and a giant smile on your mug.

Any that we missed? Let us know in the comments below.