Top 20 best free iPad games

So you’ve got your shiny new iPad and come to the dawning realisation that you’ve no cash left to buy any games for it.

Have no fear, because the App Store offers plenty of iPad gaming goodness for the (unintentional or otherwise) skinflint. Our pick of the 20 best free iPad games are listed below.

Note that apps marked ‘universal’ will also work on an iPhone or iPod touch, scaling down controls and graphics accordingly.

1. Air Hockey Gold (universal)

Air hockey games work much better on the iPad than the iPhone, simply due to the iPad’s larger screen. Air Hockey Gold isn’t the only free game of this type, but it was the one that felt best during testing, and the two-player mode works nicely.

2. Aurora Feint 3

Aurora Feint 3 is essentially Puzzle Quest (Bejeweled welded to a basic RPG). Slide gems and match three to gain energy or smack your foe during battles. The horizontal-only sliding combined with accelerometer-based gravity-shifting in the well means you have to think fast in this game, which is well-suited to the iPad.

3. Bub – Wider

This curious creation is a tranquil arcade game, where you tilt your iPad to guide a bubble around forests. The aim of Bub is to snare strangely named seeds and avoid foes. There’s little new here over the iPhone release, and the fuzzy graphics desperately need an upgrade, but Bub works well on iPad due to the precision the larger device offers.

4. Checkers Free HD

It’s checkers. On an iPad. For free. What more do you want to know? Oh, OK, then – Checkers Free HD is a pretty decent version of the popular board-game, with a variable difficulty level, configurable player names, an ‘undo’ function for wusses, and a toggle for forced captures.