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The iPhone Appvent Calendar Review – Are the Free Games Worth it?

You might be thinking to yourself that a free game is totally worth it. I argue that isn't always the case. My iPhone's screens are pretty full, and although I'm fine with storage space, I can imagine there are plenty of 8GB or original iPhone owners who are running a little low on bits. Then there's the time you spend downloading and trying a game to see if it's fun for you.

As I'm writing this introduction, we're on day 8 of blacksmithgames' Appvent Calendar 09. As an advertising promotion in conjunction with other developers, they are dropping the price of a game each day till December 22 to $0, FREE for one day only. There also appears to be a random Featured Free Game in the upper left hand corner.

Continue reading for quick rundowns on the free games. I'll update this post when subsequent titles are released for free. This has to set some sort of record for number of iPhone game reviews in a single post.

33rd Division

Price: $0.99
This was the first day and I'm annoyed that I didn't find out about the promotion until the day 2. I may have to actually buy this game but I suck at the line drawing games. I already own Flight Control and Harbor Master so maybe this would be superfluous. Reading the description, it looks like the unique aspect here is stealth. Not being a fan of stealth, I think I'm going to skip my possible purchase. I originally thought there was some sort of shooting mechanic in this, like a line drawing Real Time Strategy Game.

TriDefense

Price: $2.99
Now we move on to my favorite genre of iPhone game: Tower Defense. TriDefense takes the genre in a slightly different direction with 'deformable terrain'. What this basically means in game terms is that units arrive via land, air, and water. The land and air units behave like they normally would in a tower defense game. Land based enemies follow the shortest path to the destination while working around the tower maze you build and flying units travel as the crow flies. With the introduction of water units, part of the game map is made up of water. You can cheaply remove land to create water pathways and then place turrets around the water which in turn creates land underneath them. Overall I'm pretty happy with the game and will probably continue to play it though I'm not sure if I would have given the $2.99 price tag.

Snorkeling

Price: $0.99
I guess everyone could use a simple arcade game once in a while. Admittedly, I was at a loss for how to control this game to start out. You have this odd creature in the water and you have to eat the good fish and avoid the bad fish. Relatively simple though I could figure out how to make your guy move. After reading the directions I learned you swipe, not tap like I was trying to do. Snorkeling could be a lot of fun if this is your kind of thing.

Totemo

Price: $0.99
Totemo is a fun little puzzle game. It reminds me a little of those peg jumping puzzle games. You have to eliminate dots in a square grid. The dots however are spaced out in different patterns. The challenge in this game is that you have to select dots in certain groupings of numbers. So to start out with you have to select 2 at a time. The next difficulty is 3 at a time. When you select them, they must be contiguous and in a row or column. It boils down to order of operations. Even if you don't get how the puzzles work, randomly guessing different orders of removal will eventually get you to the solution via order of operations. Like with Sudoku puzzles, I quickly get bored of these kinds of challenges. Decent fun that might be worth the normal $0.99 price tag depending on your gaming preferences.

Samurai: Way of the Warrior

Price: $1.99
Another game that might appeal to certain audiences. It's a very attractive action game. Viewed from overhead, you tap and your samurai moves there. You swipe in the direction of enemies and he swings his sword. The visuals and audio are very nice. The animation is also well done. Everything is in a cell shaded style done in the Unity game engine. Tapping to move is annoying since your samurai stays in the center of the screen. My hand keeps obscuring my view of the game.

smackBOTS

Price: Free
Apparently the developer still has this game priced at free for the release of their new game. Frankly, I do not enjoy smackBOTS. There are two robots on the screen that look like rock'em sock'em robot toys. Cool. You then tilt the screen left and right to make your robot move towards and away from the other robot. Tap the left or right hand side of the screen to make your robot swing it's two arms. There are tapping combos to do special attacks. There are unlockable robot parts to customize. The game just feels fast and loose to me while still maintaining a slow pace. It's very difficult to judge the hit boxes and when you're supposed to swing. Who knows, you might like it.

Polyhedra

Price: $0.99

I actually like this action puzzle game. Your goal is till fill up the screen with a certain amount of shapes. You create the shapes by holding down your finger on the screen. The shape grows until you let go. When you reach a certain percentage threshold for the level you advance to the next. Complicating this simple mechanic are little dots that bounce around the level. If one of these touches your growing shape it's cancelled out and you have to start with a new shape. You can move the growing shape by dragging your finger around, enabling you to dodge. There's a similar problem here I have with other action games that require touching random spots on the screen: my fat hand blocks my view. It's really easy to obscure the enemy dots with my hand. Maybe that's part of the challenge? When you tile the screen around the shapes will fall and move with gravity. This enables you to trap and block the enemy dots to make it easier to create your shapes. You get more points for less amounts of shapes used as well as time.

Ickle Count

Price: $0.99
Ickle Count is a relatively simple game mechanic combined with really odd design. I have no idea what the story behind the sea monster is, but he's hungry for divers. Divers appear with numbers on their chest. They're numbered sequentially starting at 1. Tap the divers in order to keep the fork away from your sea monster. Do you know what an ickle is? I don't, but the game is neat for some quick fun. The game does suffer a little from the problem of your hand obscuring the screen. I suppose that's going to be a problem that all touch screen games have that don't feature fixed controls. And on screen controllers style buttons are pretty lame. This is a compromise that we'll all have to deal with until there's a controller accessory dock/case.

Wheeler's Treasure

Price: $0.99
Wheeler's Treasure is a platformer. The main movement ability you have is jumping. You touch and drag to set your jump trajectory and let go to execute. However your character is inside a giant destructible hamster wheel. Unlockable items give you other options for movement like a grappling pirate hook hand. The pirate theme feels pretty tacked on here, but it's done with a lot of polish. There are high production values all around. I'm not a fan of the genre, especially on the iPhone but I could see it being a fun game for a lot of people.

Blimp

Price: $0.99
Great game! This is a great clone of those games where you have a spaceship or helicopter and you're trying to rescue people. The controls are tilt for direction and tap the screen for upwards thrust. I would probably buy this game for $0.99. The controls are good, especially when compared to similar entries on the iPhone. Some of which utilize tiny buttons that make controlling the game very difficult for those of us with pudgy fingers. This is another game that has a lot of polish and style. It doesn't quite ooze polish, with some of the screens and menus being just a little off, but overall it's great.

Crazy Snowboard - Holiday Special

Price: $2.99
Wow, that's expensive. Crazy Snowboard almost plays and feels like a snowboarding video game for a normal video game system. Your boarder rides down a mountain and you hold to prep for a jump and then tap different buttons to do different tricks and combinations of tricks. Unfortunately it really feels like you're on rails. Also the buttons in this case are different regions on your touch screen. The big problem is definitely the feel though. Sometimes your dude is moving down the mountain while your board is pointing in the wrong direction. It's just sort of odd. Unlockable boards, moves, and dudes is kinda cool though.

iPharaoh

Price: $0.99
iPharaoh is a fun action puzzle game. It presents you with a top down view of mazelike tombs. Your goal is to protect the treasure from an Indiana Jones style treasure hunter. The defenses are made up of mummies, magical floating blocks, and other things that fit the environment. They move until they hit a wall and then choose a random direction. You can flick them in a direction to move, sort of like one of the control schemes in Pac Man Championship Edition on iPhone. It's a fun game with a nice presentation even with it's tacked on Egyptian setting and silly "i" name.

iBlast Moki

Price: $1.99
Two dollars is entirely worth it. This is a great puzzle game that I actually purchased a while ago. I'm very surprised to see it as part of this promotion. There are many physics puzzlers on the iPhone platform but iBlast Moki stands apart with a neat concept. You have a sequence of bombs that you use to get your Mokis to the exit. You can set timers on the various bombs you place on the maps so that they explode at just the right times. There are movable pieces on the boards that are all affected by the explosions. You can also create your own boards and share them.

Elf

Price: $0.99
This is not good. DO NOT WANT. I guess it's a simple game that some people might enjoy. You tap the screen to start the elf jumping. Then you tilt the phone left and right to steer him towards the holiday goodies that are floating in the air. Each time he gets something good he shoots up higher. Miss too many and he'll fall back to the ground ready for you to start over again. It's a very casual game with seemingly no penalty for failure. I really hope the normal price isn't very high.

Cheese Collect

Price: ?
Wow this is bad. The graphics are okay I guess. You choose one of 8 directions to move your mouse in to get him to the cheese. There are mouse traps in the way. You have to get to the cheese within a maximum number of moves.
Okay, after doing some reading this game isn't as bad as I initially thought. It just didn't explain itself very well. The cheese moves directly away from you unless it hits an obstacle. I suppose it's like the reverse of those games like Daleks where the robots are trying to get you. I'm not a fan of the silly art style and presentation though. I'm willing to just merely give Cheese Collect a pass as opposed to piling on the hate.

Cabby

Price: $0.99
Cabby would be awesome fun if it weren't for the controls. there are tiny buttons to control upward thrust and left/right directions. These make the game artificially difficult to play. It's the game I complain about in my critique of Blimp further up in this same post. You fly your flying cab around picking up customers and taking them to their requested destinations. The unlockable vehicles and challenging maps go a long way towards me wanting to like this game. I just wish the buttons were 10 pixels taller. If the controls aren't a problem for you then Cabby is definitelyawesome!

Alphabattle

Price: ?
The iPhone is crowded with word games.  I own probably half a dozen myself.  Alphabattle tries to be different by utilizing a fairly original game mechanic.  Like many of the others in the genre, the main gameplay consists of tapping letters in order to spell words.  Creating a word and then swiping right will attempt to lock in that word and then remove the tiles.  The catch here is that the vowels are in a row across the top and the consonants are in a row across the bottom.  They are slowly encroaching towards the middle.  If the letters touch the center it's game over.  There are also various power ups to clear the map, etc.  In practice this makes for a pretty hectic and divided experience.  I've found that I like my word games to be nice and slow, but there might be some value here for those who like intellectual action.

Imp or Oaf

Price: $0.99
Are guessing games like this supposed to be fun?  You're shown a zoomed in portion of a picture.  You have to guess if it's an imp or an oaf.  It's not entirely clear on what the specifications are for either of those categories.  Maybe Imps are smiling and Oafs are not?  Each time you tap you see a different portion of the image to help you but you also decrease your score when you do so.  The art style is cute and nice but there's not much of a game here.  I believe the developer is at work on a board game style RPG which I am excited for, but this is definitely a pass for me.

MiniSquadron

Price: $2.99
I'm pretty sure I'm in love with MiniSquadron.  What we're looking at here is a side view shooter of sorts.  You control an airplane via a virtual joystick in the lower left corner of your screen.  The plane responds to your direction control by appropriately looping or diving and climbing to best match your input.  Holding down your finger in the lower right corner of the screen will make your fighter plane shoot.  There are waves of enemy planes on the screen and the view will pan around to follow as you shoot them down.  At certain points in each level you unlock new planes to use in the future.  There are also checkpoints so you can continue a level from a certain wave if you fail to finish a level.  The different planes you unlock have different stats for speed, armor, turning, fire rate, and type of weapon.  MiniSquadron brings back memories for me of this dogfight game I had for the Intellivision.  Great game with fun graphics and sound!

Doodle Golf

Price: ?

Doodle Golf is basically an advertisement for a more challenging version of the same game.  You're shown a drawing of a golf hole.  Your goal is to drawn a line from the ball to the hole without hitting and obstacles.  The trick is that as soon as your start drawing the line, the picture starts to fade out.  Having a visual memory, this game isn't very difficult for me.  Maybe the more difficult version of the game would be more fun, but as it is, this version of the game isn't enough to get me interested.  It does feature a nice art style with whimsical drawings of fantastical golf holes and courses.  There are also plenty of levels to keep you playing if you're interested.

Sponge Dude

Price: ?
Wow, really?  Sponge Dude?  Sponge Dude crashes his ship from the moon on to the earth.  His boss says he's been demoted.  Amazing story no?  The grammar and language of the actual script needs some work too.  Maybe the game would be more entertaining for kids, but then again I wouldn't want kids subjected to this kind of butchering of the English language.  Anyway, the game plays out like a simple puzzle physics platformer.  You can tap the screen to make Sponge Dude jump.  This control however is pretty flaky.  Sometimes he would jump, other times not.  As he slides along, you'll come across objects to help you.  In my short play session I came across a 'pusher' and a bomb.  The graphics are done up in a doodle or sketch style, but childishly enough to look like a child drew them.

Featured Free Games

Green Fingers, Payload, and Navy Patrol Coastal Defense have been free at certain times during this promotion. Out of all the games obtained during this free sale, Green Fingers has been the one that I've played the most.

UPDATE 12/18/2009: There are now 4 free featured games on the appvent calendar.  I'm a big fan of Uniwar as a turn based strategy game.  It was one of the first on the app store and uses hexes.  Monster Ball is a little odd.  It's a turn based strategy game where your units are balls that eat each other to get bigger.  Minim is a neat order of operations puzzler.  Numbers are connected to each other via lines.  You tap two connected numbers that are the same to increase their number by 1.  When you only have one node left, you complete the puzzle.  The 4th today is Trigger Happy Christmas.  It's a fun little side scroller where santa has to defend and collect presents from renegade elves encroaching from the left and right side of the screen.  There are powerups!

Green Fingers

Price: $0.99
Great falling puzzle game. You have flower pots on the bottom of the screen. The goal is to end up with flowers sprouting in the pots. Pictured on each pot is the next item that the pot requires for the flower to grow. First is seeds. Then there might possibly be a requirement for sun, water, bees, clippers, etc. Instead of moving these falling items tetris style, you swap the flower pots around. If an item falls in to a pot that doesn't require it, game over. It's a great simple game that I would never have given a second look given it's name and game type.

bitFLIP

Price: ?
I'm still undecided on bitFLIP. It's a game in the populated genre of match 3. The same old swap one thingy with a thingy next to it in order to create lines of 3 or more of matching thingys is there. The difference here is that you can flip each pair of thingys over. On the other side is a different thingy. Is that enough to make the game different and engaging? I found it more annoying than anything else. In my brief attempt at playing, I didn't see an easy way of reorienting which pairs of bits I was trying to flip without first dragging to swap two bits first, swapping them back, and then double tapping to flip them.