The free iPhone game Trawler Report: Dark Nova, Loopz, Digital Heist

It’s that time of the week again where everyone’s spirits are lifted by the imminence of the weekend. The end is in sight. You won’t have to see your boss/teacher for three days. You can have a lie-in tomorrow.

And to top it all off, we’ve got another bunch of fine free iPhone games for you. Can it get any better than this?

We’ve got three full-game gems for you this week, plus a long awaited demo of a blockbuster game, as well as a bandwagon-jumping shocker of a crap app. Read on.

The best free iPhone games on the App Store Dark Nova
By Dead Jim Studios
Type Full

Dark Nova is a conversion of the cult freeware Palm Pilot game Space Trader. Thankfully, it’s received a significant graphical overhaul to make it worthy of its new host platform.

The game’s an incredibly deep space trading RPG – a bit like the classic Elite but with the free-flying element removed. You can follow any path you like, whether that be buying and selling commodities (both of the legal and illicit variety) across multiple star systems or by preying upon those trying to make an honest living.

Dark Nova’s clearly not the game to go to for quick thrills, but as a slow-burning, gently absorbing experience there aren’t many rivals on the App Store. It’s part of the Free App A Day scheme, so grab it while it’s hot.

Need For Speed Shift Free
By EA
Type Demo

At last, some seven months after its release, you can take EA’s excellent racer for a test drive. Need For Speed: Shift Free lets you take the BMW M3 GT2 for a spin around a single track.

It remains, as Tracy put it in his review, “the best single-player racer on iPhone,” thanks in no small part to some stunning console-standard presentation. It also handles like a dream, thanks to the remarkably tight accelerometer steering controls.

Need For Speed: Shift is one of those rare racers that will appeal to hardcore and casual racing fans alike, so if you haven’t taken the plunge yet, now is the perfect time to check it out.

Loopz
By Mattel
Type Full

You know those novelty games that seem to come out during family get-togethers and visits to your grandparents’ house? Well boardgame king Mattel has just released Loopz, which attempts to appeal to a modern generation that expects flashing lights and pumping sounds from its home entertainment.

To tie in with (and help sell) Loopz, Mattel has released this free iPhone app. It contains seven games based around four light pads, including Simon Says-type pattern repetition and rhythm action-style beat matching. It’s all set to a noisy techno soundtrack.

As an experimental fusion between classic boardgame, dance mat peripheral, and modern video game, Loopz is pretty intriguing. It’s quite a polished – if inherently limited – little app that’s well worth checking out.

Pick of the week

Digital Heist
By Triniti Interactive
Type Full

We featured a Triniti Interactive game last week in the shape of Bowman Attack, but Digital Heist manages to go one better. It’s a potent mix of Tron and The Matrix-influenced fiction and one of those buzzy loop games that demands a steady hand.

You must guide a little blob of pixels through each hazard-strewn maze by tilting your iPhone. Once you’ve collected the dollar sign at the end a timer starts counting down, which means you back-track with considerable urgency.

It’s such a simple concept, and it works beautifully thanks to the responsive yet tricky controls (don’t even think of switching to the touch-based alternatives) and artfully retro visuals.

This is another Free App A Day offering, so it won’t be free for long.

Crap apps

Paul the fortune-teller
By Federico Bigliocca
Type Full

There are a few tributary applications to Paul the psychic octopus (who apparently predicted the winner of all of Germany’s matches at the recent World Cup) on the App Store. All are pretty inane, but most have had at least some degree of effort and skill lavished upon them.

Not Paul the fortune-teller. Whereas other apps allow you to type in the optional answers to your dilemmas, this stringy fish-turd of an effort can’t even be bothered to go that far. Instead it simply asks you to think of two options before pressing the ‘Guess’ button, at which point a shoddy cut-out of an octopus slides over to a number one or a number two.

The background seems to be a snap of someone’s fish tank.

Having produced a number of these Trawler Reports, we’ve come to expect that a certain number of crap apps will bob to the App Store surface. But even Paul himself can’t have predicted that it would get this bad.