This one guzzled an entire battery charge this morning.
Basically Canabalt meets Hook Champ, Hellkid: Hook & Jump is a really nicely put-together stab at the "running man" genre.
(Warning: contains Spotify. But if you don't have it, read on.)
Users of the controversial legal music-streaming service have become accustomed of late to more songs disappearing off their playlists than being added to them, so the sudden addition of Tranmere troubadours Half Man Half Biscuit to the archives was a pleasant surprise indeed.
It might be trying to look like Grand Theft Auto or Car Jack Streets, but Crime Spree (currently on limited-time free promo) is actually Rally-X.
In keeping with its theme, this is a straight respray of Namco's classic maze-chaser, fast-paced and tricky with responsive swipe controls, and it'll cost you less money than the smallest measurable unit of money in existence. Speaking as a neutral observer who'd never tell you what to do, you should get it right now.
There are scores of would-be Geometry Wars imitators on the App Store, most of them flawed in various ways, but this is just about the best effort I've found at the twin-stick vector-graphics arena shooter on iPod.
Geofighter – Light Wars is as basic as they come, with Wave modes and a Survival mode that picks up the difficulty quickly after a gentle start, but it's smooth and enjoyable, has a clever auto-centering system that minimises the problem of enemies hiding behind your thumbs, and it's going free.
Be quick, though, you've only got a few hours to snag this one.
Experience England's exit from the tournament on penalties early with this simple but compelling target-shooter, free for an unspecified limited time.
Progressive Mode is the most fun part.
Sequel to the splendid Mr AahH!, not quite as brilliant but every bit as stylish, your "games I got for free" collection isn't complete without this fab little slice of hyperintense arcade action.
It's Mr. Space!!! Woo!
This is another personal favourite of mine, that I bought for cash money but which you can have for nothing. It looks better in action than in stills.
Racer is the closest thing yet on the App Store to the immortal and beloved Monaco GP, and since the addition of the Career game it's got a mode for however much time you want to kill. Give it a once-over.
More big-name giveaways of relatively high-priced games: normally £2.99, you can now pick up the life-consuming match-3 action puzzler previously seen on DS, PSP and XBLA for nothing, this weekend only.
So hey, maybe think about doing that. If you like.
(Chapter 1 and 2 is basically the whole original game plus some extra bits from an expansion pack, such as new character classes.)
It's pinball! It's dreamy! It's Pinball Dreams!
And now it's free! (One day only.) Hurry! Hurry quickly!
Sadly, while Apple have fixed many of the traditional irritating failings of the videogames industry, they still perpetrate the idiocy of region-locking. For no acceptable reason, a significant number of apps are still restricted to certain territories, even when they're free.
The most annoying aspect of the policy is that users of the US App Store alone can take advantage of the promo codes that many developers issue to give away some free copies of their games to alert users via forums and such. Fortunately, it turns out that it's really easy to get round it.
WoSland – now at wosland.podgamer.com