The free iPhone game Trawler Report: Earthworm Jim pops his head through the App Store’s soil, narrowly avoiding getting UFO Kidnapped

The Black Friday sales have all died down, finally. If you missed out, this weekend saw he US’s trend of slashing prices over the Thanksgiving weekend bleed over into other countries thanks to the App Store. As a result, many publishers would have been saving up their freebies for the event.

So, does that mean the Trawler’s as bare as a fish skeleton picked dry by a ravenous bunch of seabirds?

We’ve had to dig a little deeper than usual, sure, but we’ve still brought in a tasty catch to keep you gaming for free until the usual harvest starts up again.

This week we’ve got an early festive freebie, the return of a much-loved slithering superhero, and a spot of alien abduction - oh, and the writer of the TV show Monk.

The best free iPhone games on the App Store

UFO Kidnapped
By Dim Sum Game
Type Full

Aliens and video games are never all that far apart - the former is such rich fodder for the latter that those game designers just can’t help themselves. UFO Kidnapped isn’t like your average aliens game, though, because it’s a puzzler.

You’re orbiting the earth, looking to nab yourself just the right amount of abductees. Overfill your craft and it’ll crash.

To find the happy medium, you have to choose exactly which countries to visit. Rendered in 3D, each country is a little slab of green sitting on the globe, and tapping one lifts it up to reveal its population, which is then sucked up into your spacecraft.

It could do with an update - rotating the globe isn’t all that slick - but this is a strange enough choice to be worth an abduction.

Hills and Rivers Remain Lite
By Square Enix
Type Demo

Coming from the stable of Japanese gaming maestros Square Enix, you might well expect Hills and Rivers Remain to be a sprawling role-playing game - it’s got the artsy title for it, at any rate. It's actually a strategy game, with more in common with the boardgame Risk than with Final Fantasy.

In each stage, you’re given a battlefield populated with a handful of different outposts that you can take over with your troops. You can only move along the roads that connect these outposts, though, so careful planning is in order as you’re up against a rival army.

If you’re into wars of attrition rather than fast blood and guts, Hills and Rivers Remain is worth a download, though be warned: it's a lot less peaceful than its title suggests.

Earthworm Jim FREE
By Gameloft
Type Demo If you’re starting to go a little crusty around the edges, like us, there’s a good chance you’ll remember Earthworm Jim from when it was originally released 15 years ago. It was weird, it was funny, and most importantly it was fun.

Gameloft has brought this classic back to the App Store, pretty much intact. Of course, your iPhone’s touchscreen isn’t really an optimum replacement for a full console controller in this game, but - especially if you have memories of the original - it isn’t too big a hurdle to get over.

This free version of the game lets you check out the first level of Earthworm Jim, complete with the famous cow launching sequence. Ah, happy days.

Pick of the Week Head Hunter: Holiday Edition
By Rabbit vs. Robot
Type Full While eastern favourite Pachinko isn’t massively popular over here, we do love our Peggle, which borrows its core gameplay from Japan’s alternative to the slot machine.

Head Hunter: Holiday Edition offers yet another variation on the ball flinging classic - you’re trying to launch shrunken heads so that they’ll land on one of a handful of different platforms.

Your path to them is blocked by obstacles, though, so you have to be at least a little careful with how you fling your shrunken head.

In each level you need to land a certain number of heads on the platforms within a time limit. We’re still not quite sure what shrunken heads have to do with Christmas, but Head Hunter has enough going for it to win our pick of the week spot.

Crap Apps Box of Shame Award

Andymatic Zingatron
By WFMU
Type Full

Have you heard of Andy Breckman? Don’t worry if you haven’t because apparently he’s best known for writing the TV show Monk. We don’t quite see how this qualifies him to have his own soundboard app, but someone at WFMU thinks he definitely needs one. What’s next, a Murder She Wrote tie-in?

Even worse, the sound clips bear no relation to anything. One of the most bizarre is “little boys, little girls, and ‘tards’. Fair enough, it’s under the ‘crude’ section. But exactly who wants to watch a Z-list celebrity say such things remains a mystery to us.

Adding to the creep factor, there’s an image of Breckman’s face to look upon, complete with Punch & Judy style moving mouth , leaving us to wonder whether Breckman even knows Andymatic Zingatron exists. Someone get his agent on the phone...