The free iPhone game Trawler Report: We rebuild Valentine’s Day’s shattered dreams with Tower Blocks and Dropbrick

Whenever a big event comes around - especially Christmas and Halloween - themed games and apps start flooding onto the App Store. However, not many games succumbed to the lovey-dovey trend this year.

There we were thinking that the iPhone had brought gaming to a new, more diverse audience and it turns out that iPhone developers have mostly failed to cash-in on the singleton’s least favourite day in February.

There’s been no Doodle Jump update that adds love heart-shaped enemies and no Pocket God update that adds Valentine’s Day-themed instruments of torture. That said, we’ve always been bigger fans of zombie horror flicks than cheesy identikit rom coms, so we’re glad Valentine’s got the chop instead of Halloween.

We’ll let you know if Easter suffers the same fate in April.

Tower Blocks
By NextPerformance
Type Full

Tower Blocks is a lot like Digital Chocolate’s 2005 mobile smash Tower Bloxx. In fact, it’s virtually identical. You drop blocks down onto a stack - using a swinging crane - to make as big a tower as you can manage. The key difference between this and Tower Bloxx is that Tower Blocks is free, at least for now.

It’s a lot simpler than Digital Chocolate’s original. You’re not building a city, just a single tower, and the game finishes as soon as you let three building blocks tumble down to the streets below.

However, this makes the game all the more suited to quick sessions while waiting for the bus, train or Learjet - but if you’re using the latter, you should probably be paying for your games.

Hellemental Magic
By Intersog
Type Demo

Hellemental takes a very hands on approach to the castle defence genre. You aim is to stop any approaching nasties from breaching the defences of each of the game’s cities, but you don’t do this with towers - instead, you have to take them on yourself.

Thankfully, you’re a powerful wizard and so can blast away at them from a distance, Gandalf-style. This involves enough screen taps to give even a toned ‘n’ honed finger RSI, so don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Two different cities are here for you to protect in this Lite version, and you’ve got a roster of spells to choose from - some powerful enough to let your finger move at a more leisurely pace. Not a traditional TD killer, but Hellemental Magic does at least stray from that norm.

2360: Battle for Cydonia Lite
By Brisk Mobile
Type Demo At first glance, 2360: Battle for Cydonia didn’t grab us, but this game is far more interesting than its ordinary-looking screenshots might suggest. At the front of the features queue is its controls.

You play as a mech that’ll instantly conjure up movie memories if you’re a fan of Aliens, Avatar or District 9. You’re lumbering and huge, and you control your mech's movements using a Flight Control-style drawing method, with a dotted line appearing to show its ‘flight path’.

To attack, you just have to tap on the screen, but 2360: Battle for Cydonia actually lets you control each of your mech’s arms independently.

If you like, you can drag around the aim for both arms, but with careful taps you can get it shooting at opposite directions simultaneously. Clever stuff.

The first couple of missions drag on a bit, but give it time and 2360: Battle for Cydonia soon flourishes.

Pick of the Week Dropbrick
By Antonio Xu
Type Full Dropbrick’s been around for a while, but it has only just been made a freebie, attracting thousands of downloads in the last week. It’s based around a familiar concept - you have to balance falling objects on a seesaw-like platform, making sure that you don’t send any tumbling down into nothingness.

In each of the 70 levels, you need to build-up a tower that’s tall and heavy enough to meet certain criteria. Some brain power is required, too, as different types of block are of different densities, with particularly heavy blocks sure to upend your tower if you’re not careful.

There are also levels that let you take control of the tower’s balance using the accelerometer, although these towers are invariably unstable no matter how steady your hand is, making sure it’s an additional challenge rather than a bonus. We suggest you grab Dropbrick quick before it goes up in price again.

Crap Apps Box of Shame Eco Cow
By Berthing Making something cynical is one thing, but making something that looks like it’s all benevolence and goodness - when it’s not - is even worse. Eco Cow looks like an app intended to promote ecological farming. The cow in this app claims to be a Danish eco cow, and doesn’t that just sound like something that hybrid car-driving folk would approve of?

Well, all Eco Cow does is make a 'moo' sound when you turn your iPhone upside down. Here’s the real stinger, though: there’s an ad at the bottom.

So, not only does this app have no eco message, but the seeming promise of one has lured you into making the developer some cash. To add insult to injury, the moo noise sounds more like a bloke with a mic than a cow. Bad Berthing.