This week's best free iPhone games (Dec 9 2008)

The App Store has only been live for a couple of months, but we've already blown a huge amount of money on iPhone games. Well, there are a fair few good ones, after all.

However, as you'll know if you've been frequenting the Store, there's a lot of free iPhone games, too. Some are cut-down demos of paid games, while others are simply gratis, released by developers who are trying new ideas out.

Well, we want to shine the spotlight on free iPhone games, which is why we've been rooting through this week's releases and updates. Read on for our tips.

OmNomNom Lite is a free version of the existing OmNomNom game, which itself is essentially a rewrite of mobile gaming classic Snake. So, you steer your snake around the screen, munching apples, avoiding walls, and trying not to eat your own tail.

The Lite version is pretty fully featured – the main difference is that your snake can only get so big before the apples stop appearing, whereas in the full version, you can keep growing.

That said, the full version also lets you enter a Hall of Champions contest, with the promise of an iTunes Gift Card as the top prize.

Another Lite game is Tangrams Lite, which is another freebie designed to get you hooked on a game so you upgrade to the paid version.

In this case, it's a modern reworking of the ancient Chinese puzzle, which sees you fitting shapes into a variety of, well, bigger shapes. You choose from seven little shapes (or 'tans') twirling them around using the touchscreen controls.

It makes sense when you see it, honest: just check out that screenshot.

Anyway, the full game has more than 500 puzzles, so the Lite version really just gives you a flavour of how the game works.

That's enough Lite demos, how about full free games? FreeBee Sudoku proudly claims to be "the best free sudoku game for the iPhone and iPod touch", offering more than 10,000 grids to solve.

There are four skill levels, it keeps track of your game statistics, and as you'd expect, you can make pencil marks for boxes you're not sure about (this is more a necessity for sudoku games, mind, rather than a feature).

The competition in the sudoku category is certainly stiff, but FreeBee Sudoku has production values above what you'd expect for a free title, so we reckon it could do well.

Still on a 'games that make you think' tip, Scramboni is pretty intriguing. It's a word game, where you're given a certain number of letters onscreen, and have to unjumble them into a word.

It's like an iPhone version of the Countdown Conundrum. Sort of.

You score points by getting the words correct. However, here's the innovative thing: it's a multiplayer online game, so you're competing against other people in real-time.

You get bonus points for submitting quicker than them, too. It's certainly one to watch – if it takes off, it could become a craze.

We were hugely impressed with Toy Bot Diaries when it came out as a paid iPhone game, so we're happy to report that developer IUGO has released a free demo version, too.

It gives you a good sense of how the game works, and its controls. If you haven't heard of it, you control the titular toy bot, who has to make his way through the game by swinging from the ceiling, sticking to metal objects, and generally leaping about.

You should buy the full version, if you want our opinion, but this demo will at least help you make up your mind.

Crossword Light has better navigation and the ability to get rid of the onscreen keyboard, which improve what was already a decent crossword game. Finally, freebie giant Aurora Feint: The Beginning has got a bunch of bug fixes.