The free iPhone game Trawler Report: Trucker’s Delight, Lunar Chess, Call of Atlantis

It’s been a remarkably strong week for free iPhone games.

We’ve had to leave off some absolute gems (such as snakey match-three puzzler Luxor) in the process of whittling our list down. As it stands, two or even three of the four recommendations could justifiably have been our Pick of the Week.

Even the crap app this week isn’t that bad. It’s just impossibly inane.

So sit back, enjoy, and then go and download all of them. In fact, probably best to download them first, then sit back and read about them. These offers don’t last forever, you know.

The best free iPhone games on the App Store

Trucker’s Delight: Episode 1
By Mobigame
Type Full

It seems this Trucker’s Delight game has divided people’s opinions as much as the music video it’s based on. To some, it’s sheer marketing fluff and a thoroughly disposable game of Out Run-lite.

To others it’s not a racer at all, but a slick and focused “get as far as you can” experience, more akin in spirit to Doodle Jump or Canabalt.

You can decide for yourself, if you’re quick, as it’s currently free thanks to the FreeAppADay initiative. Guide trucker Jack around the traffic-strewn roads, avoiding collisions with everything except your target – the archetypal blonde in a sports car.

Sproutster
By Dreamkind
Type Full

Feeling good about yourself while playing games can be tough. For some people, there’s always the nagging feeling that they could be doing something more productive. Sproutster has the answer for such sensitive souls. The game sees you shifting a little Totoro-a-like left and right, catching letter-containing raindrops to form words. Once you have one, you add it to your rice plant on the left of the screen, causing it to grow.

For every fully grown rice plant, Dreamkind donates 30-50 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. We don’t know how that works exactly, but we like that it salves our consciences (a bit). Not a bad little word game, either.

Call of Atlantis
By Playrix
Type Full

There are plenty of Jewel Quest clones on the App Store, but few are as accomplished as Call of Atlantis. The depth, variety, and sheer production values of Playrix’s PC conversion place it alongside – and possibly even beyond - iWin’s popular match-three puzzler.

The bulk of the game involves collecting ancient artefacts by matching pieces on the game board (through swapping adjacent pieces, of course). But there are also neatly realised side games, which task you with finding hidden objects and sketching out runes.

It’s the little touches that set Call of Atlantis out as a class act (such as the ability to play in portrait or landscape), despite the inherent unoriginality of the gameplay. It’s on the FreeAppADay scheme, so grab it quickly.

Pick of the week

Lunar Chess
By Neon Surge
Type Full

The ‘Chess’ bit of the title is slightly misleading - a more descriptive name would be Lunar inspired-by-Chess. But that would sound a bit rubbish, so we’ll let it go.

While the game is set on a board where each of your pieces has its own movement parameters, and the goal is to capture your opponent’s pieces, Lunar Chess really does differ considerably.

Both sides have their own side of an oblong board, and straying into the other side’s territory turns the encroaching piece into one of theirs. The game is all about risk and reward, scoring points with calculated losses – your every success strengthening your opponent.

Complete with online play and smart presentation, Lunar Chess is an ingenious twist on the daddy of boardgames – and it’s absolutely free thanks to ad-funding.

Crap apps

How Long Can you Twist it?
By RoLYroLLs Enterprises
Type Full

From the maker of such App Store delights as How Long Can you Tap it? and How Long Can you Turn it? comes… How Long Can you Twist it?

Truly this series is on a conceptual arc leading straight up to gaming nirvana. What’s that? Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit? Maybe so, but this app proves that there’s some serious competition.

What does it do? It measures how many times you can ‘twist’ your phone in succession. Why would you want to do that? Who knows. Why am I asking so many questions? I think typing all those awful app names has damaged my sentence-forming faculties.

The action doesn’t even really constitute a twist – you’re just shaking the handset like it’s hot. Which in itself renders the random trivia you’re presented with useless, as you can’t read the screen.

How Long Can you Twist it? might as well be called How Long Can You Put Up With it?