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Volkswagen Think Blue Challenge

Most racing games are about tearing round corners at high speed, your only concern being to not smash into things. Think Blue turns the genre on its head, providing you with limited fuel. The game becomes a unique and intriguing survival-based challenge as you try to eke out an extra few metres each go.

Hoggy

Hoggy resembles VVVVVV smashed into Nintendo's Kirby, combining platforming and puzzles. The game tasks you with grabbing fruit within jars that are peppered around a maze. Complete a jar and you get a key; with a certain number of keys, new maze areas open up. Although occasionally a mite frustrating, Hoggy's a great-looking, fun and innovative freebie.

Bam Bam Dash

Imagine Monster Dash with the cast of The Flintstones and you've got Bam Bam Dash. Your auto-running caveman has to avoid plummeting to his death and being eaten by things with sharp teeth. Nice graphics and helpful dinosaurs you can ride add extra flavour to the game.

Alice in the Secret Castle

If brutally difficult old-school games are your thing, Alice in the Secret Castle will appeal. The game boasts 64 rooms of NES-style hell, with a curious game mechanic that hides walls when you hold the 'A' button. Progression therefore becomes a case of mastering taxing and relentless (but rewarding) puzzle-oriented platforming.

Minimalist Shooter

Tilt to Live took the twin-stick format pioneered by Robotron: 2084 and subverted it, removing your weapon and having you rely on colliding with contact-based explosives to destroy lethal foes. Minimalist Shooter is along the same lines, but it's free and resembles a pyrotechnic abstract art display.

PicoPicoGames

It's clear you'll never see Nintendo games on iOS, but PicoPicoGames is the next best thing: a collection of tiny, addictive NES-like minigames. Frankly, we'd happily pay for scrolling shooter GunDiver and the Denki Blocks-like Puzzle; that they're free and joined by several other great games is astonishing.

Escape from NOM

Another entry in the physics game genre, Escape from NOM differentiates itself by lacking a price-tag but nonetheless rolling in nice graphics and gameplay. The aim is to drop 'Alan' and use obstacles and bumpers to get him safely into coloured goo at the bottom of the screen. However, he must be the same colour as said goo when he reaches it and avoid hungry NOMs.

Need For Cheese

This tilt-based avoid 'em up has you steering clear of cats (especially red ones that home in on you), munching cheese and grabbing power-ups to smash evil cats off the screen. Need For Cheese is simple, but a first-rate quickfire highscore game that rivals Bit Pilot for best-in-class.

Froggy Jump

At first, Froggy Jump seems like Doodle Jump, starring a frog. That's probably because Froggy Jump pretty much is Doodle Jump, starring a frog. However, its character, unique items, themes and lack of price-tag makes it worth a download, especially if you're a fan of vertically scrolling platform games.

StarDunk

Another game showing that simplicity often works wonders on mobile titles, SlamDunk is a straightforward side-on basketball game. The time-attack nature of the title gives it oomph, though, and there's also the option for online competition against players worldwide.

Trainyard Express

Developer Matt Rix is bonkers. That's the only explanation for Trainyard Express, which isn't so much a demo version of the wonderful Trainyard as an entirely separate edition. The mechanics are great: draw tracks to lead trains to like-coloured stations, combining or crossing them on the way, as necessary. It starts out easy, but soon hurts your brain, and the 60 puzzles aren't repeated in the paid-for version. Bargain.

Putt Golf

Anyone can whack a ball with a stick - real skill comes from putting. (Cue: enraged golfers attacking TechRadar Towers with pimped-out golf carts.) In Putt Golf, you get an oscillating targeting system, prod to putt, and then use tilting to amend the ball's path with digital Jedi-mind skills as it trundles towards the hole. Three game modes; hugely addictive.

Top Trumps Collection

If you spent a good part of your childhood wondering if the length of a Triceratops was enough to defeat your opponent's hidden dinosaur card, Top Trumps Collection will inject nostalgia directly into your brain. The AI can be a tad suspect, but this is nonetheless a decent reworking of the classic card game, with multiple modes of play and additional packs available via IAP.

Drop7

What do you get if you cross Drop7 with Zynga? A free version of Drop7! Luckily, the game's far more entertaining than that attempt at a joke: drop numbered discs into a grid and watch them explode when the number of discs in a column or row matches numbers on the discs. Drive yourself mad trying to boost your score by chaining! Forget to eat! (Also: ignore the bugs!)

Galaga 30th Collection

In the old days, invaders from space were strange, remaining in a holding pattern and slowly descending, enabling you to shoot them. By the time of Galaxian, the aliens realised they could swoop down and get you, and Galaga 30th Collection is the game you get here, with minor updates that improve its graphics and pace, albeit for a weighty 135 MB footprint on your device. Galaga fanatics can unlock other remakes in the series via IAP.

Candy Train

The cute little train is out of Control! Eek! Rotate pieces of track in Candy Train to help the chuffing hero collide with gigantic sweets, which results in points rather than a candy-based derailing disaster on the 6 o' clock news.

X-Baseball

It's a little-known fact that baseball mostly involves trying to hit colourful birds flying overhead and bananas lobbed in your direction by a mischievous fan. But X-Baseball provides a perfect, accurate one-thumb iOS recreation of America's favourite banana-thwacking pastime. (What?)

Rogue Runner

Rogue Runner is another one of those endless games, where you leap over gaps and shoot things until you fall down a chasm and ponder why your in-game avatar doesn't learn to stop once in a while. Rogue Runner stands out by offering a ton of skins and a smart overhead dodge-and-shoot variation, which is a bit like Spy Hunter if someone knocked the original arcade cabinet on its side - the vandal.

Road Hog

It's another one of those endless games, but this one has you… moving into the screen. Actually, Road Hog's a bit more than that, because you can move left and right, jump, use power-ups and grab stars to boost your score. Therefore, the game's a bit closer to a 3D Mario, if he was in a car that he drove recklessly along an endless road. Which we're pretty sure is what he does on his day off.

Chuck's Challenge

Chuck's Challenge is a sweet puzzle game that challenges you to solve a few dozen overhead levels, which are essentially tightly designed logic puzzles. Mooch about, find keys, open doors, and try very hard not to get killed. If your spiky-haired character manages to survive, more level packs are available via IAP.