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The free iPhone game Trawler Report: a bumper crop of eight full free games, including Domino Pop and Collapse! Chaos

18th January 2010

The free iPhone game Trawler Report: a bumper crop of eight full free games, including Domino Pop and Collapse! Chaos
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When the Apple iSlate, Tablet, Tabulatron - whatever you want to call it - turns up, iPhone gaming is set to get a shot in the arm.

It looks like the device may be compatible with normal iPhone games too, so you’ll be able to play the Trawler’s picks on an even bigger screen, if you’re willing to fork out the mounds of cash the iSlate will probably cost.

Still, we know that it’s going to be just about as desirable as any other Apple product, so we’d all better get saving.

So, we all need to tighten our belts, start realising that one day all those 59p games will actually add up to a lot of cash. In this spirit of frugality, we’ve got more full freebies than usual this week, with eight on our hit list.

Turn off the central heating and lights, and see if they’ve got any weekend shifts going at Tesco, the iSlate Tablet Tabulatron is coming.

The best free iPhone games on the App Store

All-In-1 Gamebox Lite
By
Triniti Interactive
Type 5x Full

Game collections like this are usually rubbish - designed to grab your attention by offering mountains of games, all of which were knocked up in no time at all. However, the five full games offered in All-In-1 Gamebox Lite aren’t too bad at all, for the most part.

You get to defend a castle from invading enemies, take to the streets to brawl with stick men and get into the cockpit of a war plane, and that’s not all either.

Granted, each one isn’t quite as polished or in-depth as what we’d expect from a standalone game of the same type, but we were kept hooked into some of them for a fair old while. Plus, it’ll only take up one space on your precious home screen.

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Domino Pop
By
Sunmi Kim
Type Full Domino Pop has been made free for the week, so if the sound of this freebie stokes your gaming embers make sure you give it a download right away. It’s a puzzle game where you place bombs within a grid, with the aim of destroying all the blocks on screen.

The game’s script reads as if it’s been translated and re-translated several times by someone with a dubious understanding of language, which makes the tutorial almost impenetrable, but persevere and you’ll soon get the hang of it.

That there are no dominos in sight - the blocks look more like crackers than anything else - doesn’t help either, but we can forgive a few blunders for a freebie.

Coconut Riot
By
Supportware
Type Demo

We all know that the odds are stacked against you in fairground games. Those coconuts are probably nailed to their stands, and those tins aren’t as empty as they look either.

You’re best off leaving them well alone, we say, and you can fill in the thrill gap with an iPhone game like Coconut Riot. It sees you pitching explosive coconuts at totems in each level.

You need to blow them up, but there are obstacles in your way that can’t be gotten rid of with a mere explosive coconut. Success is all about managing the trajectory and power of your throw, which you control with a finger on the touchscreen.

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Project Phoenix
By
Sad Cat Software
Type Demo Twin-stick shooters are common on iPhone, in spite of the device’s lack of physical controls. Some are good, some are bad, but few offer quite as much mechanised carnage as Project Phoenix does. You man a tank that has to take on several armies’ worth of enemy tanks and vehicles. Logically, it doesn’t make any sense as your tank often looks a bit puny next to those of the enemy, but that doesn’t stop Project Phoenix from being fun. This Lite version lets you check out the first five levels from the full game, which will give you enough time to make a few weapons upgrades to your two vehicles – one of the game’s main draws is that you can stack a small mountain of weaponry on your tank. Lock and load.
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Pick of the Week Collapse! Chaos
By
Real Arcade
Type Full Collapse! Chaos is one of Real Arcade’s classic browser games, and now you can play the whole thing for free on your iPhone, as long as you’re willing to put up with a few unobtrusive ads.

Its premise is simple. All you do is tap on groups of three or more adjacent blocks of the same colour to get rid of them. Blocks appear from the bottom of the screen at regular intervals, and you just have to make sure that they don’t take over the whole screen.

Sure, it doesn’t have bags of character, and probably isn’t a game you’d show off to friends, but it’s fun, it’s free, and feels much more at home on the iPhone’s touchscreen than it ever did on button-ridden mobiles.

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Crap Apps Box of Shame award Drop a Piano on a CEO
By
House of C
Type Full Having issues with your boss can be a serious matter. They can really make your life hell if they want to. Even if things are bad, dropping a piano on their head is what we’d call a bit of an overreaction - but this is a game that features exactly what’s written on the piano lid. A CEO walks back and forth, and you need to time your piano drop carefully to make sure it lands right on his noggin, or you’ll be greeted with a lame little quip from the boss man. Sounds like a laugh? Well, it isn’t. Drop a Piano on a CEO looks like a game that was cranked out by a disgruntled employee while at work, in-between watching videos of cats sneezing on YouTube, most likely.