The free iPhone game Trawler Report: Bowman Attack, rRootage Online, Breakspin

This week we’ve got a couple of beauties from the ever-reliable FreeAppADay initative as well as a couple of generous offerings from remoter parts. Check them out.

As always we finish up with our weekly Crap App pick, a piece of programming so odious we feel it’s our duty to warn you away. After ruthlessly mocking it, of course.

Hey, that’s just our way.

Bowman Attack
By Triniti Interactive
Type Full

Our first offering from the FreeAppADay initiative (which, in case you haven’t been following, means you should grab it quick) is this stylish little game. It’s far from original, but it does merge together two obvious but disparate influences to form something that’s strangely refreshing. The art style has been borrowed wholesale from the PSP’s Patapon, while the gameplay is pure Worms. Not in a disparaging way – it merely plays a lot like Team 17’s action-strategy title.

You take control of a weird totem-pole-knight thingy (I really paint a picture, don’t I?) and take it in turns to pelt your opponent(s) with arrows and grenades and exploding rats. It’s surreal, easy on the eye and perfectly good fun for the grand total of £0.00.

Breakspin
By Disney
Type Full

The second game from the FreeAppADay scheme is from Disney, but don’t go expecting talking mice or grumpy midgets. This is fresh IP (although we covered the mobile version, Blocspin 360, last year) that takes the form of a stylish Arkanoid/Breakout clone.

Clone is perhaps too strong a word, as Breakspin introduces an intriguing 360 degree element. Your thumbs control a curved paddle each, which can be moved independently around the central playing area in order to keep a bouncing ball in play and smashing gems.

Accompanying this unique gameplay is some funky neon-drenched visuals and an atmospheric soundtrack. All of which makes Breakspin feel like a high quality app that you’d certainly be happy paying money for.

Piczle Lines
By Score Studios
Type Demo

Piczle Lines is apparently based on a popular Japanese number puzzle, and we can certainly see elements of DS games such as Picross and Slitherlink shining through. This is a good thing.

Score Studios’s freemium puzzler is a very slick effort indeed. Each level resembles a join the dot picture puzzle, but you must only link dots that are numbered and coloured the same. The number of grid squares taken up by the linking lines must also match the numbers on the dots.

It’s extremely absorbing, and it’s all tied together with a charming comic book style. The twenty levels provided in this first of six chapters are quite generous for a freemium title, but you’ll no doubt be enticed into purchasing more.

Pick of the week

rRootage Online
By Miko Wohlgemuth/Kenta Cho
Type Full

You may not have heard of Kenta Cho, but he’s essentially the king of niche freeware games. He makes trippy, stylish yet decidedly old skool shooters and releases them onto the internet without charge. What a gent, eh? Now developer Miko Wohlgemuth has converted one of Cho’s most celebrated games, rRootage, onto the App Store for free. What a(nother) gent, eh?

It’s not the first time this has been done – Lazrhog did something similar back in 2008. But that effort has since disappeared from the App Store, and besides, rRootage Online is by all accounts a superior conversion.

The game is essentially a series of boss battles, which each nemesis throwing thousands of projectiles your way. In addition to Normal mode, rRootage pays thinly veiled homage to the shooting greats Psyvariar, Ikaruga and Giga Wing with the suspiciously named Psy, Ika and GW modes.

The fact that this gem is available on the App Store is great news. That it’s free means that everyone should give it a punt – especially if you enjoyed Space Invaders Infinity Gene.

Crap apps

SuperMom1
By Games2Win
Type Full

It’s not that SuperMom1 is an abomination. It’s just that it’s fundamentally and conceptually wrong.

You’re put in the position of a ‘mom,’ which is already treading on slightly outdated and un-PC ground – what about SuperParent? Or SuperLegalGuardian? Think of the orphans!

Anyway, your job is then to bathe, feed and play with your baby against the clock. Wait, what? What kind of person would hurry the application of essential medicine to their beloved progeny? Oops, those were horse tranquilizers – silly me.

It gets worse. You’re not only racing against the clock, you’re racing against a neighbour, whose progress is creepily shown via a small window to the right of the screen. Competitive baby-maintenance? I won’t have Betty feeding her brat before me – inhale your rusk, boy. No time for chewing.

In fact, the one bit of responsible thought that’s gone into the game – not allowing you to make such wrong decisions such as bathing the kid in hot water – also ruins it as a game. Repeatedly being told you can’t do something (the initial explanation isn’t very good) is like banging your head against a wall.

As is the whole game, for that matter. The parents need locking up.