Friday Freebie

It's demo central this week on the Friday Freebie, and all of you noggin scratching puzzle fiends are in for a treat no matter what your platform.

First up, a collection of demos for mobile phones from Norwegian mobile game company gdhal-games. And in keeping with this week's theme, it's chock full of…you guessed it, puzzle games!

The demos are available for free download via the gdhal WAP portal (wap.gdahl-games.com) and include Sodoku, Mind Master, Mrs Pac Man and a space touring game called Sky Roads. But should your noodle start to smart with exertion, there's also some gentle mindless basting fun to be had in StarFire, a classic shoot-'emup science fiction game.

It may be about a month old (we don't know how this freebie got by us) but a web-based demo of Trioncube – the cutesy Tetris-alike puzzler – is available now at the Namco Bandai site. Best of all it's all in English, although given the nature of the game an inability to understand Japanese wouldn't have been much of a hindrance: Trioncube is a pleasing if simple little puzzler.

Best to keep the sound off: after the third repetition the looped music will make you want to trample on flower beds and murder puppies. For those of you who already own the game, there are twelve Trioncube PC wallpapers available for free download on the site, too.

Puzzle Quest for DS and PSP has sort of slipped under the radar since we first came across it last December, but those dozens of you dying for a Connect 4 / RPG hybrid are in luck (actually in Puzzle Quest you only ever need to 'connect three') as a demo of the game has surfaced. It's no web-based flash effort either, this is a full-on 34MB download for use on a PC.

While the demo's homepage focuses on the fact that Puzzle Quest is coming to the DS and the PSP, the demo feels suspiciously like it's a segment chopped straight from the PC version. That said, the title looks destined to be almost identical on all three platforms (with minor tweaks for DS) and this demo helps to clear up some of the murkier aspects of Puzzle Quest's genre-bending gameplay.

And that dear readers is your lot for this week. Click 'Track It!' to make sure you don't miss next week's handful of handheld gaming gratuities.