The Friday Five: This week's best iPhone games (April 22 2011)

Welcome back to the Friday Five, a weekly round-up of the best in iPhone gaming. We take all the touchscreen apps that have hit iTunes in the last seven days, separate the wheat from the chaff, and present the top five.

This week, the sun has almost definitely got his hat on. In fact, it's so hot that he might be wearing a sombrero or even a novelty-size stetson. Whatever the case, it means plenty of hot weather for BBQs, beaches, picnics, and pool parties.

Or, you could just sit indoors and grind through Sword & Sworcery and 18 new Angry Birds levels. It's really up to you - we're not your mother.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP Micro
iPhone - £1.79 - Capybara Games

Sword & Sworcery, the misspelled mouthful from a trio of Canadian creatives, has finally hit the small screen. It's been an iPad exclusive for the last month, and now Capy and friends have squished this epic lunar adventure onto the iPhone in a new Micro app. The iPad original, meanwhile, is now universal.

Sworcery is a jolly jaunt through pixel-art forests and alternate dreamscapes, where you tap, twist, shake, and stroke your iPhone to explore the world around you. It's laidback, zen-like play that focuses on exploration and fiddling rather than stat-heavy heroes or endless battles.

In a devious marketing ploy, every line uttered in Sworcery can be parroted to your Twitter feed with an omnipresent 'tweet this' button. Its pithy lines can easily denigrate into noise on the social network, so be a responsible player and choose your tweets carefully.

Angry Birds Seasons: Easter Eggs
iPhone - Free update to 59p Angry Birds Seasons - Rovio

Funnily enough, this Easter-themed update to Angry Birds Seasons doesn't broach the touchy subject of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In fact, it sidesteps the religious overtones entirely, choosing to focus on the universally-agreed-upon iconography of eggs, bunnies, and chocolate.

What's left is classic Angry Birds fun, a vicious physics puzzler that sees you flinging avian assassins at the rickety tenements of egg-thieving pigs. Much like the St Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, and Christmas packs before it, Easter Eggs is a free update to the Angry Birds Seasons app.

You get 18 new stages, including some seriously tricky new levels for Angry Birds veterans. If you've never played Rovio's worldwide phenomenon before, this isn't the best place to start: you'll be ripping your hair out in minutes.

It also includes ten new Golden Eggs to hunt down (find them with our Angry Birds Seasons walkthrough) and more achievements in Game Center.

Golden Axe II
iPhone - 59p - Sega

Continuing in its attempt to port every Mega Drive game ever made to the iPhone, Sega now presents side-scrolling fantasy brawler Golden Axe II.

It's typical '90s beat-'em-up territory: as in last week's Streets of Rage, you saunter through several stages, decking endless bad guys with a few different fighting moves.

Because it's a fantasy game you get to fight walking skeletons and cast magic spells - instead of wailing on street thugs and wielding baseball bats - but it's all the same, really.

Golden Axe II is alarmingly similar to the first game. You've got the same three characters - the hilariously named Gilius Thunderhead, Ax Battler, and Tyris Flare - a pretty familiar fighting system, and hardly any noticeable improvements.

That might have been a problem when you dropped £30 in 1991, but for a few quid on iTunes its worth it if you're craving more side-scrolling fun.

It seems like point-and-click creator Telltale will actually release an entire game season on the iPad, for once, rather than cherry picking a random episode, porting it over, and calling it quits.

These cinematic spin-offs are typical point-and-click affairs, where you pick up useful items, chat with random characters, and solve logic puzzles to advance the plot.

In Get Tannen, the second episode of Telltale's time-travelling Back to the Future epilogue, Marty's got to make sure '50s Doc has his date with scientific destiny, while also working with '80s Doc to outsmart gang boss Kid Tannen from wreaking havoc. Complicated stuff.

The Back to the Future series is particularly notable because of the big names behind the credits: Christopher Lloyd reprises his role as the eccentric Doc Brown, and trilogy creator Bob Gale is on hand for help.

Final Fantasy III
iPad - £9.99 - Square Enix

If you've missed Square's Japanese-only Final Fantasy III before, now would be an excellent time to jump in. It's got the addictive stat-battling gameplay from the NES, the cute and colourful character models from the DS, and now some new and improved 3D story sequences exclusive to the iPad.

Final Fantasy III is about four kids, picked out by some sentient crystals, who bash monsters and loot treasure on a quest to save the world.

The game introduced the job system, which the Final Fantasy series is now famous for, where your heroes can mix and match classes, switching between abilities on the fly.

While the monster price tag might be off-putting, this is one seriously long RPG quest that'll stay on your home screen for weeks. There's no danger of feeling ripped off once you're neck deep in this complicated, stat-heavy role playing adventure.