3 best free iPhone games: Brilliant iOS games that cost nothing
Asphalt 8: Airborne
Reality’s taken a leave of absence in Asphalt 8. In fact, given how nitro-happy the game is, reality’s likely been burned to a crisp and gleefully blasted into the wind, dispersed ashen fodder for sports cars that zoom past, mostly on the ground but often spinning, whirling and leaping through the air.
This game is the antithesis to the staid grind of Real Racing 3. It’s joyful, colourful, smashy fun that doesn’t take itself seriously and is all the better for it. Branched courses weave through hyper-real cities, occasionally coming to life by way of a shuttle launch or deadly avalanche. All the while, you’re aiming to reach the chequered flag, ramming competition aside, and driving like an idiot.
Given that this is a Gameloft title, it of course has an IAP-sized bubble dome welded to its dayglo Bugatti Veyron, and some events are cynically locked by requiring specific (frequently expensive) cars. But there’s plenty of absurdly fun racing larks to be had for nowt, and in a good racing game you’ll want to replay tracks time and again anyway. And one thing’s for sure: this is definitely a very good racing game.
Bejeweled Blitz
This ultra-moreish puzzle game takes the ‘match three’ mechanic and squashes it into minute-long blasts of dazzling colours and crazy point tallies. It’s astonishingly addictive.
You have to swap coloured jewels within a grid, using simple finger swipes, so that three or more line up; the matched jewels will disappear and more will replace them. The tense gameplay, drip-feed of rewards and social-media integration combine to make a game that will expand to fill any time period available.
Cally’s Caves 3
You’ll probably be some way into Cally’s Caves 3 when you start to wonder what the catch is. „Surely,“ you’ll say, „the developers haven’t given me an expansive and beautifully designed – if frequently frustrating and challenging in an old-school kind of way – platform game with oodles of blasting.“ At least that’s what we said, cursing our thumbs whenever we died, and wondering at what point the game would lock up and start demanding money.
As it turns out, the developers are hardcore gamers and have no truck with terrible monetisation. Therefore, you get unobtrusive ads on static screens, and are otherwise left to your own devices. And the game is excellent.
The backstory involves Cally’s parents being kidnapped for a third time by an evil scientist. She therefore resolves to rescue them, primarily by leaping about the place and blowing away all manner of adversaries using the kind of high-powered weaponry not usually associated with a young girl with pig-tails. Level layouts are varied, and weapon power-ups are cleverly designed, based around how much you use each item. The one niggle is the map, which is checkpoint-based – it’s a bit too easy to find yourself replaying a trio of levels again and again to get to a place further along in your journey where you can restart.
Still, that merely forces you to take a little more care, rather than blundering about the place, and to breathe in the delicately designed pixellated landscapes. And should you decide you want to throw money at the developers, there are optional IAPs that unlock new game modes, or a load of coins if you want to splurge in the in-game store without working for your money.
