Friday £5 - Super Crate Box, Pocket League Story, and Lunar Racer

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the first Friday £5 of 2012, a weekly feature where we look at all the new iOS games of the week and try to find the best apps you can get for a fiver.

We didn't run this feature through December - we were a little too busy with our end-of-year list-making shenanigans

But, with all that hullabaloo behind us, we're back to finding more games within this painfully frugal price limit.

See how I've got on this Friday by reading the following 13 paragraphs. Go on: count them if you dare.

Super Crate Box
Universal - 69p - Vlambeer

Dutch indie factory Vlambeer has come to iOS with this bona fide version of frantic gun-juggler Super Crate Box.

The game is a single-screened arcade caper in which you gun down enemy critters while picking up randomly dropped crates.

Each time you nab a box, your score goes up and you'll change weapons. It opens up this interesting dynamic of wanting to hang onto your awesome mini gun, but knowing you need to grab the next weapon-filled crate to up your score.

It's absolutely bonkers stuff, and it all moves at lightning pace. You'll also have to be a champion multitasker, as you grab boxes, avoid enemies, and make sure all monsters are killed before they hit the bottom. If an enemy escapes into the fiery hatch below, they'll re-appear up top, albeit faster and more deadly than before.

The game is filled with content (you're constantly unlocking new levels, weapons, and character skins as you jimmy open boxes - plus, more free junk is on the way after the Super Crate Box community grabbed 5 million crates), and has Game Center support for friendly rivalries and impossible achievements.

Pocket League Story
iPhone - £1.99 - Kairosoft

In essence, Pocket League Story is Kairosoft's heavily streamlined take on footy boss franchise Championship Manager. It's just simplified and way more approachable for football newbies. Plop in some cutesy Japanese pixel-art graphics and you're got pretty much the entire picture.

Much like Kairosoft's 37 million other micro-management sims, Pocket League Story is about hiring and firing a bunch of humorously named folk, and spending dosh to train them up. Only this time, they're football players instead of game designers or cruise ship staff.

You'll have to use your points and money to improve skills, start convincing sponsors to pay up, and improve fan facilities before you go onto the pitch. Once there, the game turns into an isometric footy game, with players literally busting into flames if they're in the zone. You get to choose the tactics, but you don't get to play. This ain't FIFA 12.

As ever, this is a Kairosoft game through and through. Lots of fiddling with stats and cycling through characters as you build a run-down soccer club into a championship-level team of super players. It's also, just like every Kairosoft game, rather addictive. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Lunar Racer
Universal - 69p - Noodlecake Studios

Underground developer Noodlecake Studios won our hearts with the dangerously compulsive mini golf romp Super Stickman Golf. We've been looking forward to whatever the studio did next with bated breath, and here it is: Lunar Racer.

Not surprisingly, it's a side-on game about bouncy physics, unlockable doodads, and fierce competition. This time around, it's a sort of side-scrollling WipEout, as springy lunar buggies do laps around the Moon.

During the races, which are as much about blasting opponents with weapons as they are about wrestling with the low-gravity physics, you'll collect coins (the wonderfully named Moon Bux). These let you buy buggy bits, allowing you to make a custom lunar car.

This handmade vehicle will either help you secure first place in the single-player solar cup or give you the advantage in four-man multiplayer races over wi-fi or Bluetooth.