The free iPhone game Trawler Report: Fastar!, Sight Point, Minimalist Shooter

Welcome back to the Trawler Report. After a week of wallet-troubling gaming, sooth yourselves with this latest batch of freebies collected from the four corners of the App Store.

We’ve got the usual blend of blockbusters and lost gems for you, including a recently released spin on the action-RPG genre, an oddly addictive picture game, and a delightfully odd shoot-‘em-up from out of left field.

And finally, a riddle: when is an app really handy, yet at the same time absolutely useless? Read our Crap Apps section for the answer.

Fastar!
By Cat In A Box Games
Type Full

RPGs, eh? They’re pretty distinctive in their amalgamation of absorbing worlds, epic quests, lots of fighting, and character progression. That’s all very well, but why do they have to be so serious? And why do they take so much time to play? Meet Fastar! You can pick it up and play it in a spare five minutes, and it’s deeply, deeply silly. Admittedy, it’s not really a role-playing game, but more of an action game with RPG trimmings.

You send your little feller scurrying to the right, hacking away at squares (you’ll see), and levelling up your stats – all in the least boring way possible. It’s free on the Free App A Day scheme, so embark on your own mini-quest to download it, pronto.

Sight Point
By Minimalistic Dev
Type Full

Sight Point goes one better in the immediacy stakes. In fact, it's the very definition of a pick-up-and-play game.

It’s unbelievably simple – you’re briefly presented with a pixel-art picture, before the view swings round and zooms in to show it from another angle.

From any other angle, each picture is a mess of scattered pixels. As such, you must touch the screen and drag the view around until the picture manifests itself again (and it must be the right way up, too).

The game won’t last you more than a few minutes at a time, but it’s so attractive and satisfying to see pictures popping out of nothing that you’ll probably come back for the odd bash when you don’t have time for anything meatier.

Rhythm Spirit
By Monad Games
Type Full

Another slice of Free App A Day goodness, Rhythm Spirit is a rhythm-action game in the spirit of DS hits like Ouendan and Rhythm Heaven. That means that you hit virtual buttons in time to the music, while your little ninja avatar fights for his life according to how successful you are.

It’s pulled off with some style, with bold, comic book-inspired visuals and a suitably high octane (if instantly forgettable) techno soundtrack.

There’s a nice amount of variation to the missions, with chases and boss fights thrown into the mix. While you’re essentially doing the same thing for all of them, it works well enough to have you wondering what’s around the next corner.

Pick of the week

Minimalist Shooter
By Grannies Games
Type Full

Minimalist Shooter is the kind of simple, innovative, and achingly stylish experience you’d expect to see in Nintendo’s bit Generations series.

It’s not kidding when it says it’s minimalist – there aren’t even any in-game instructions. Your perpetually falling little white dot drops off the bottom of the screen only to reappear at the top again. You can alter its course by tilting the handset left and right.

Your goal is to avoid the purple squares that inhabit the playing field, and to attack them by colliding with the little coloured power-ups that are floating about. This sets off a striking 8-bit fireworks display, which acts as a kind of automatic smart bomb.

Minimalist Shooter is a strangely beautiful experience that really deserves to be played. As it’s going for free, there really is no reason not to.

Crap apps

Kamane
By Just Be Nice studio
Type Full

This week’s Crap App continues our recent preference (if you can call it that) for conceptually whiffy productions - apps that may not be technically poor, but which are built on ridiculously flawed ideas.

Kamane lets you “use your iPhone to play Rock Paper Scissors with your friends.” You shake your handset and a photo of a hand flicks up in one of the three classic shapes.

Why on earth you’d need such an app is unclear, unless you have no hands. But then, we doubt an iPhone would be much use to you in that case. The blurb says that it eliminates cheating, but come on - RPS is hardly poker, is it?