Axonoid

Introduction

There is a lot to browse in the app store. And there is more than 1,000 games out there! Since we like free stuff, I decided to try a bunch of free games, not afraid of what could happen to my iPod. It wasn’t always easy to try that much apps, I had to reboot my iPod and I got infected by the infamous “grey icon of death” or GID (yeah I made that up). Am I actually the only one to get this annoying thing? Anyway, I was able to get over it with some voodoo magic (and by rebooting my little gadget 3-4 times).

Here is the Infamous GID (Grey Icon of Death) by the way :

Time For Some Ranting

One sad thing is that I got a lot of free apps a couple of weeks ago, but now they are all “pay apps”. I think that the “app makers” are just putting it free so that they can get some downloads, get on the “TOP” page, and then poof… a price tag appears. I’m not sure about it, but it could be their diabolic strategy, what do you think?

If you think that you found a better free game than the ones that are in my Top 5, don’t be afraid to tell us in the comments! I couldn’t try all of them because my fingers got tired to scroll all the time. You know, in the app store, when you access it trough your iPod or iPhone, you cannot go to a particular point in the list. You can just scroll and scroll and scroll… The guy that got the last game in that enormous list is probably crying like a little girl right now! Nobody will ever scroll down there.

Seriously, Apple should do something about that scrolling thing. Just let us choose a point in the list by clicking on the “elevator”… you know, like we can do since windows 3.1! Oh right, yeah, it will probably be implemented after the copy paste! Copy paste, that NEW technology…

OK, enough of that bad attitude, let’s see that Top 5! I hope you’ll enjoy it!

#5 Guess the Number Game

OK, this is childish. Easy, stupid, whatever but I enjoyed it anyway! Here is how you play : You have six tries and you must guess the number between 0 and 100 that the iPhone / iPod Touch choose at random. As you guess, the game tells you if you are over or below the magic number. Being able to guess it under five tries is almost sorcery and will bring you that weird feeling of accomplishment where you are really proud of yourself, but also when you don’t want to show it to anybody as this is so stupid to be proud of such a thing!

Guess the number is a simple yet relaxing game. You can play it easily as you wait for the bus and when you brain just doesn’t need stimulation anymore.

#4 Toy Bot Free

This game is a just a demo of the paid app “Toy Bot Diaries”. In Toy Bot, you impersonate a round metallic happy looking robot, running around to get I don’t know what. And that little guy can swing like Tarzan with his special arm that can stretch and hang at metallic structures. Also, he has magnetic feet. With them, he just grab giant dimes here and there and has to put the money in slots to open doors and continue his quest.

Sometimes though, the game can be frustrating as you’ll be there, swinging your iPod and this little robot for five minutes trying to touch a little light. But generally, it’s a really entertaining and nice looking game to play with. You won’t have fun for hours with it, as the demo is pretty small, but it’s still nice to see what they were able to come up with on the iPod / iPhone. It’s really ingenious and for a free game! Here’s a Youtube clip to see what Toy Bot Diaries (the full game) looks like.

#3 Chess Puzzles

If you love puzzles and chess, well this game is for you! This is also a reduced version of a full game, but you still get 50 puzzles to solve! The puzzles, as you probably guessed, are made with chess. You’ll have to put the opponent (the computer) check and mate in two moves or more, in a “prepared” game.

Sometimes it can be really challenging and hard to figure it out. But to help you, there is this “hint” button, so you can just hit it and say “of course”, like I did a couple of times!  This isn’t visually stunning, this isn’t a new concept, this is only food for thought.

#2 Galcon Lite

Yes, another “Lite game”, but I really fell in love with this one. It’s some kind of mini-risk but in real time. You begin with one planet with ships and you need to conquer other planets. When you select a planet to conquer, some of your ships leave the first planet and go to the one you just selected. The numbers on the “virgin” planets represents the number of ships you’ll need to launch to own the planet.

Also, ships can be produced on planets that you own and the bigger the planet, the faster the production rate. So you need to plan your attacks ahead. Also, you can launch attacks from multiple planets at once by selecting them, than on tapping on the planet that you wish to attack. You can also choose the percentage of ships leaving a planet (25, 50, 75 or 100%). OK, it’s probably not really clear as the way I explain it, but you need to try it for yourself.

If you want to see what it looks like, you can see a video of the gameplay (on YouTube). There is also a PC version of this game (with a better gameplay of course), you can even play it with other humans (like in the paid version of the iPod game) on the Internet! Watch out though, this game is highly addictive!

#1 Aurora Feint

Aurora is the kind of game that we like to get our hand onto, for free. Seriously, I think that they could easily sell this great adventure and make money with it. Anyway, this is a full length game, so no tricks here. It could be redundant for some people, but if you love the principle and the “small puzzle” kind of game (not too hard on your brain), you’re going to love Aurora.

The goal of the game is simple, you must align three blocks of the same kind together. What’s cool though, is that you can rotate your iPhone / iPod around and the blocks will “fall” on the side of the iPhone that is toward the floor. Also, to make it more interesting, you accumulate “diamonds” from “mining” (playing) so that you can buy special abilities afterward.

I think it’s the best free game I played so far, and it really has a long live. If you haven’t tried Aurora, download it, it won’t be a wasted megabyte (or maybe a couple of megabytes) on your iPod or iPhone! If you want to see what it looks like, check out this Aurora Feint Youtube clip.

Also at an Internet Near You

• From Mashable.com, a one month old article that presents 12 great free games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Most of the games there are still free and on the app store, so take a look if you need more than five games to fill your needs
• Nice little article from Daily Wireless with a Top iPhone Games and also a Top website list where they review iPhone games.
• Tilt Gamer is a great little website where they review iPhone and iPod touch games and give them a note out of 10.

Don’t forget to tell us what’s your favorite iPhone / iPod touch games in the comments!

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