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This is Free-App Hero

Posted on February 07, 2011 by

Many of you will know about this already, but for various reasons it's never actually been made official before now. Friends, colleagues, alert WoSblog viewers and the world in general, please welcome into your hearts and minds the infinite majesty of Free-App Hero.

Free-App Hero is an App Store tracker app with a difference – it delivers hundreds of fantastic free games without wasting your time with any of the thousands and thousands of terrible ones. Who wouldn't want that?

Something any vaguely alert new iThing user will quickly notice as soon as they start trying to navigate through the vast swamp of app releases is that there are already dozens of automated price-trackers. But while they're useful for telling you absolutely everything that's gone on promo they do nothing to actually filter out the stuff that's worth your time, and I was astonished when I realised that there wasn't a single one even trying to.

And with literally hundreds of apps going temporarily free every single day, who's got time to wade through all of those discarding the ad-infested "Lite" versions, money-sucking "freemium" affairs and the just plain awful to find the gems? Nobody with any common sense or an interesting and valued life to lead, that's who. Which only left me, as usual.

Free apps are big business now (as I write this three of the top five apps in Apple's all-important Top-Grossing chart are free downloads which make their money from ads and/or in-app purchases), and in addition to all the tracker apps there are dozens of individual sites and organisations all taking money from developers (sometimes thousands of dollars at a time) to promote their apps with freebie days.

The trouble with them (apart from it being a giant pain to check 20-odd different sites a day) is that none of them apply any quality judgements – if you've got the money to pay their fees, they'll hype up any old garbage.

Free-App Hero was created to be something very different – it filters the avalanche of daily freebies down to only the quality gear, and is answerable to no-one but its users. It doesn't feature freemium games which are basically just short demos where all the good stuff needs to be paid for, and it has an iron rule of NEVER including anything with in-game adverts – because we all hate in-game adverts, right?

FAH has two lists – a Recent one which details all the latest new freebies and temporary promos (which currently has around 50 games on it), and a Permanent list featuring well over 100 that as far as I can tell are always free, yet aren't hideously disfigured by ads.

(Presumably they're funded by the Mafia or Al-Qaeda and used to transmit secret messages to terrorists or something.)

And rather than just being a list of links, every game comes with a review so you know why it's worth your time. If you'd downloaded FAH when it came out, you'd have read over 330 of them by now, because that's how many games have appeared in the two lists since the app was launched.

Anyway, basically, Free-App Hero is awesome and if you have an iPod or an iPhone it'd be awfully nice if you bought it. (If you don't, buying it would be even nicer but somewhat beyond the call of duty.) In the ten weeks or so that it's been on sale so far it's gathered a pretty respectable audience of 15,000 users, scored a 9/10 review and climbed as high as No.29 in the Utilities chart, so you won't be alone.

There's even a free version (Free-App Hero Cheapskate Edition) for the sort of people who feel that £1.19 is too much to have someone find you top-notch games at the rate of over 100 a month (and you'd be amazed at how many people that is, even though the vast majority of FAH users have the full version).

FAH CE is ad-supported and has 100 fewer games in the Permanent list, but is otherwise identical and gets the same daily updates as the proper version. So hey, what have you got to lose?

THIS ADVERTISEMENT IS NOW OVER.

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Jayminer

Awesome! Bought it and checking it out right now!

monkey

I knew it wasn't Lindsey Lohan!
Nice work on the app – it's awesome, just needs push notifications.

Górecki

Congratulations Stu. I've tried the full version and I'm impressed, very, very nice. It's immediately replaced OpenFeint's terrible GameChannel on my iPod. I hope this is a success for you.
Now having stumped up a whole £1.19 I now feel a sense of entitlement to tell you how you to make the app better.
I think the Permanently Free Apps section needs another way to organise the list, other than just Most Recent First. It's not much of a problem at the moment as their are 'only' a few hundred in there but over time this could easily increase to thousands and it'll be difficult to find older gems that might appeal.
Maybe you could add tags to each game so that PFA could be filtered according to genre. Maybe even a basic user rating system that put the most popular apps first. They could be a good up-sell from CE to the full version, too.

MojoJojo

Bought it… there is a lot on the permanent list which I haven't heard of, which is good.
Two things:
1) (BOLLOCKS – This comment is complete rubbish, it turns out the list is just a lot longer than I expected, and I was recognising stuff Stu has reccomended in the past. Uh, so it's even more awesome than I realised.)
2) "Created by professional game reviewers…" Why the lack of credit – I find it a bit odd, and I'm surprised you would agree to it.
Guessing it's British from the "rubbish"… do we know the others behind this, and we can know?

Górecki

"I like the “lucky dip” feel"
 
I completely agree and you're right to have it as the default option. I'm just thinking that someday I might suddenly feel in the mood for a racing game or a vertical shooter or a head scratching puzzle game and having the option to filter the recommendations would be a great addition

Dave Wallace

Having bought the app a couple of hours ago, i've spent much of that time messing around with the pretty awesome "Cat Physics", so the app has already proved mightily worthwhile 😀

Gabe

I still don't have an iThing, but this is a bloody BRILLIANT idea. And a rather clever way of being paid directly by 'readers' for your reviewing expertise. Hope it does really well for you.

PS: One tip, promote the FRIG out of it now, and later, and again,
so it becomes well known as 'the original' before the inevitable clones arrive.

Lewie Procter

Sounds good. I understand that there are a few free app finder apps already, but is this the first that is curated by humans rather than just indiscriminately scraping all the freebies from the app store?
After having actually played a 3DS, I've decided I don't want one, and am probably going to get an iThing at some point this week (assuming Gamestation have any in stock, since I have a shedload of credit there I want to use). I'll be sure to grab this if/when I do get one.

Lewie Procter

Do you not think you'd make more money pricing it at 59p though?

Blucey

Yeah this is decent.  A cursory look yesterday nabbed me five apps that I'd never heard of before.  Well worth the £1.19.

Constructively, the only thing that annoyed me a little was the app resetting after you go to the App Store.  Still, that's only a tap and a bit of scrolling so it's a minor niggle.

Jon

Any chance of a version for the Mac app store?
I know there's not as much stuff on there but it's a pain to navigate.

AFMG

I'm still puzzled by what happened at Podgamer, and i guess the story will never be told, at least not in a while. Anyway, great app. I'm trying the free version, but i'm pretty sure i'll buy it soon.

GeeZa

Bought this yesterday and have to say it's a brilliant idea, I mean really genuinely useful. Picked up a couple of vertical shooters that were far better than I expected, the Chess problem game, Cat Physics, Rainy Day, and the Madworld/Streets Of Rage thingy. All justified the initial price of admission right there so it's all filthy profit from here on in. Great app but it'll consume my gaming free-time *completely*.

Frederik

Just bought it, this is what I needed for my newly bought iPod Touch.

Frederik

…and great, now I´ll be up all night. Well worth the money!

Ryan

£2.39??? Christ on a bike.

Ryan

I'm waiting! I'd love to take a punt on it, but that's nowhere near the realm of "impulse buy" iStore kinda money.

Ryan

Aye, course. Sounds like a fair deal my friend.


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