The free iPhone game Trawler Report: Escape from NOM, Multitask Madness, Guns’n’Glory

Controversy drops onto the serene decks of the App Trawler this week. Okay, it doesn’t. But one of the games on the list has made the headlines, leaving a trail of disgruntled (and subsequently appeased) gamers in its wake.

Still, for the rest of us the game is a treat. Read on to find out more.

Elsewhere we have multitasking thrills and racing spills. Oh, and one awful mess of an entertainment app in our weekly Crap Apps sections.

Enjoy your weekend.

Escape from NOM
By Glu
Type Full

The offending game referred to in the intro is none other than this loveable slice of whimsy from Glu. How could such a game offend anyone? Well, like this. Never mind about that though. What’s important is that this Free App A Day offering is a fun slice of physics-based puzzling. As Tracy said in his hands-on, it’s a bit of a mix between Peggle and Isaac Newton's Gravity.

You must drop Alan the blob into a series of pools of coloured stuff, using bumpers to bounce him towards bonus points and away from danger. It’s great fun regardless of how much you paid for it, so getting it for free (which won’t last long) is a bit of a steal.

Multitask Madness
By Qvik
Type Full

This ingenious little game throws an increasing number of problems your way. Starting with a simple game of matching a virtual compass direction by tilting your device, you’re then asked to keep a pair of green orbs out of the way of their deadly pink counterparts. The twist is, you still have to carry out the previous task at the same time. As the problems escalate, the game turns into a veritable juggling act. It’s all enhanced by a very clean and crisp neon-drenched visual style, as well as a pounding techno sound track that matches your increasing heart rate beautifully. LilRacerz Pro Rally
By Mark Fennell
Type Full This is a great little racer modelled after such top-down classics as Super Sprint and Micro Machines. The key difference here is that the cars have a real sense of weight, leaning over on their springs as they go through each turn.

In keeping with the Rally setting, you really feel when you’re at the limits of traction, although the game stays well away from simulator status – there’s a healthy (but subtle) auto-correct system in play to prevent you from losing the back end of the car.

There’s a nicely varied tournament structure, and the ability to upgrade and buy new cars. Another top Free App A Day offering.

Pick of the week

Guns’n’Glory Free
By HandyGames
Type Full

Don’t be put off by that ‘Free’ at the end of the title. Guns’n’Glory is, in the words of the developer, “full-featured.”

Thanks to ad-funding, you get to experience this original take on the tower defence genre in all its glory without paying a penny. You just have to put up with the odd banner cropping up, which really isn’t too bad.

Guns’n’Glory differentiates itself through much more than its Wild West setting. It allows you to move your defences (including cowboy bandits and Mexican dynamite-wielders) around at will, in order to chase down a fleeing settler or to double up where your enemies are most numerous.

There are also highly entertaining special units, such as cannons and a moveable train (complete with attachable Gatling guns). The whole settler-butchering premise is in slightly poor taste, but it’s all done chirpily enough (and it’s just plain fun enough) to ease most of your misgivings.

Crap apps

Secret Paintball
By Swartz Enterprises
Type Full

Many of the apps that make it into Crap Apps are here because they’ve surpassed all others on a conceptual level. It’s rarely enough merely to be bad – an app has to be profoundly stupid in order to fight its way through the legions of merely ‘meh’ apps.

Take this week’s example, Secret Paintball. It uses your iPhone’s camera as a cross hair to “Shoot paintballs at anyone you want without them ever knowing.” Stop and think about that for a second. Let it sink in.

Why in Steve Jobs's name would you want someone to not know that you’re shooting them? Do you ever have the urge to throw a water bomb at someone and that they not know that they’re soaked? Do you flick an elastic band at your sister’s behind in the hope that it won’t sting?

The very idea of Secret Paintball stinks, and for that it deserves to be shot down in flames. And not in secret, either.