Perhaps you've just bought an iPad, or just been given one for the first time. Or maybe you're thinking that your Apple tablet is old and boring and there's nothing fun left that it can do.

Well, friend, you're entirely wrong. Fortunately, the App Store offers loads of gaming greats for you, even if you've forked out your last bit of cash to buy the iPad itself.

Our lists cover the best free iPad puzzle games, racers, platform games, and more, split into categories (one on each page) for your perusing pleasure.

Plus, check back weekly for our free iPad app of the week, where you'll find that below as we look at new titles all the time.

Free iPad game of the week: OCO

OCO strips back platform gaming and combines it with minimal modern art. Each single-screen level is based around a circular design. Your polygonal protagonist automatically moves, and you prod the screen to leap, aiming to scoop up collectables before making your way to the goal.

The trick is in figuring out how to get to your targets, which often requires rebounding off of walls, and making use of jump mats and other objects. As you play, OCO provides a treat for your eyes, your pathways simultaneously building a dazzling visual spectacle and procedurally generated soundtrack. And when you’ve beaten all 135 levels, you can make your own in an editor.

With console-like platform games on iPad, you might reason there’s no space for one-thumb contenders. OCO suggests otherwise.

Best free iPad arcade games

Our favorite iPad arcade games, including brawlers and fighting games, auto-runners, party games, pinball, and retro classics.

Williams Pinball

Williams Pinball brings a selection of classic pinball tables to your iPad, and then adds animated remastering – at least, if you’re prepared to work for it.

Initially, you just get to unlock one table for unlimited play. (Pick a good one – Attack from Mars, The Getaway, or Medieval Madness – because you’ll be playing it a lot.) Through daily challenges, you’ll then slowly acquire the parts to gradually unlock other tables – unless you fancy splashing out on IAP to buy them outright.

This probably sounds a bit awful, but the truth is you’re ‘grinding’ by playing pinball. Also, the challenges often give you unlimited balls, so you can learn the tables. Stay the course, and eventually you can boost these already top-notch recreations with tough pro-level physics and animated components.

Fly THIS!

Fly THIS! echoes early App Store hit Flight Control, having you draw paths for planes to follow. But whereas the older title was an endless test that relentlessly ramped up the panic, this newer game feels more strategic and bite-sized.

The planes are fewer in number, but the maps are more claustrophobic. Also, you’re not just making planes land – instead, you ferry passengers between airports. Further complications come in the form of weather, and massive mountains you really don’t want to fly planes into.

Because each level has a set points target, Fly THIS! is great for playing in short bursts as well. In all, it’s a smart reimagining of a long-lost iPad favorite, which in many ways is more appealing than the game that presumably inspired it.

Skullgirls

Skullgirls is an impressive tappy brawler – akin to Street Fighter II reimagined for touch, by someone very much against the concept of virtual joypads.

This means swipes and taps are the order of the day, swift finger movements being used to duff up opponents. Buttons merely exist to fire off special moves, or tag in a team-mate when you’ve been punched in the face one time too many. It all works very well for the game’s fast pace.

Visually, Skullgirls dazzles, too, recalling an amped-up take on classic 1940s cartoons and manga. Character design – bar questionably skimpy clothing choices here and there – is especially impressive: one fighter’s Lovecraftian hair has a life of its own; another is a humanoid brass instrument that transforms into a massive French horn that mows down foes. Parp!

Super Fowlst

Super Fowlst is the follow-up to the unhinged Fowlst. Whereas the original was Flappy Bird in a box, reimagined as a hard-as-nails arena shooter, this sequel gives you more room to breathe.

The controls remain the same – tap left or right to ‘flap’ in the relevant direction, moving in an arc as you do so. But multi-screen levels and a lower concentration of enemies makes for an experience that has space for exploration and unearthing secrets, rather than solely being an ongoing frantic dash for survival.

That’s not to say Super Fowlst is easy – far from it. The boss battles in particular are extremely tough, and it will take you some time before you can last a dozen levels. But this one feels like anyone has a crack at becoming ‘super’ rather than only gaming gurus.

Train Party

Train Party is a multiplayer game for between two and twelve people. In cooperative mode, you all work as a team, trying to keep a train going for as long as possible. You lay tracks for it to chug along, move wildlife from its path, and deal with a renegade track bomber. In competitive mode, Train Party gets added bite, the winner being the last person to survive without wrecking the train.

In either mode, this is a fun game, and it works particularly well on iPad. The larger display means even the sausage-fingered can play with an excellent degree of accuracy. Also, an iPad is a much weightier device to whack a chum with should they get a bit cocky after their fifth Train Party win in a row…

Shadow Fight 3

Shadow Fight 3 is a side-on one-on-one brawler set in a world of shadows that stands on the edge of a great war. In gaming terms, though, it’s mostly an excuse to whip your sword out, slice up your opponent, and then give them a few kicks and punches for good measure.

The fighty action works especially well on the iPad. The large screen provides plenty of space for the lush visuals, and your thumbs don’t cover anything important up while they battle with the surprisingly responsive virtual controls.

Your ongoing mission is a bit grindy at times, with an underlying RPG-lite mechanic of upgrades, but the brawls are great, whether you’re mastering a new weapon, unleashing shadow powers, or figuring out how to get the odd punch in when you’ve lost your sword and an opponent is moving in for the kill.

Beat Street

Beat Street is a love letter to classic scrolling brawlers, where a single, determined hero pummels gangs of evil-doers and saves the day. In Beat Street, giant vermin are terrorizing Toko City, and will only stop when you’ve repeatedly punched them in the face.

On iPhone, Beat Street is a surprisingly successful one-thumb effort, but on iPad you’re better off playing in landscape. With your left thumb, you can dance about, and then use your right to hammer the screen (and the opposition).

The iPad’s large display shows off the great pixel art, but the fighty gameplay’s the real star – from you taking on far too many opponents at once to gleefully beating one about the head with a baseball bat. It turns out they do make ’em like they used to after all.

Up the Wall

Up the Wall is an auto-runner with an edge. Or rather, lots of edges. Because instead of being played on a single plane, Up the Wall regularly has you abruptly turn 90-degree corners, some of which find you zooming up vertical walls.

The speed and snap twists make for a disorienting experience, but the game’s design is extremely smart where, most notably, each challenge is finite and predefined. Up the Wall isn’t about randomness and luck, but mastering layouts, and aiming for that perfect run.

It nails everything else, too. The game sounds great, and has sharp, vibrant visuals, with imaginative environments. It’s not often you’re frantically directing a burger in an abstract fever dream of milkshakes and ketchup bottles, nor a skull in a world of flames, lava, and guitars.

Stranger Things: The Game

Stranger Things: The Game is a rarity: a free tie-in videogame that’s not rubbish. In fact, it’s a really good old-school action-adventure that should delight old-timers and also click with people who follow the TV show.

The idea is to figure out what’s going on in Hawkins, Indiana, where things have gone deeply weird. You start off playing Officer Hopper, who scowls and punches his way about, but soon find kids to join your crew, including Lucas and his wrist rockets, and bat-swinging Nancy.

Occasionally, the game echoes old-school fare a little too well, with set-piece sections that are tough to crack (although you do get infinite attempts) – and the map is if anything too big; for the most part, though, Stranger Things: The Game is a clever, engaging, and compelling slice of mobile adventuring.

Aiohows.com is not responsible for third party website content. The media files you download with aiohows.com must be for time shifting, personal, private, non commercial use only and remove the files after listening. Kumkum bhagya full story. It is illegal for you to distribute copyrighted files without permission.

Silly Walks

Silly Walks is a one-thumb arcade game, featuring wobbling foodstuffs braving the hell of nightmarish kitchens (and, later, gardens and gyms), in order to free fruity chums who’ve been cruelly caged.

The hero of the hour – initially a pineapple cocktail – rotates on one foot. Tapping the screen plants a foot, causing him to rotate on the other foot and changing the direction of rotation. Charitably, this could be called a step, and with practice, it’s possible to put together a reasonable dodder.

And you’ll need to. Although early levels only require you to not fall off of tables, pretty soon you’re dealing with meat pulverizers, hero-slicing knives, and psychotic kitchenware in hot pursuit.

It’s admittedly all a little one-level – Silly Walks reveals almost all in its initial levels – but smart design, superb visuals, and a unique control method make it well worth a download.

Transformers: Forged to Fight

We shouldn’t encourage them, really. Transformers: Forged to Fight is packed full of horrible free-to-play trappings: timers; gates; a baffling currency/resource system. And yet it’s a horribly compelling title. Much of this is down to how much fun it apparently is to watch giant robots punching each other in the face.

If you’re unfamiliar with Transformers, it’s based around robots that disguise themselves as cars and planes as a kind of camouflage - and then they forget about all that, transform into bipedal robots, and attempt to smash each other to bits.

This game has various Transformers universes colliding, which for fans only increases the fun – after all, old hands can watch with glee as old-school Optimus Prime hacks Michael Bay’s version to pieces with a massive axe. But for newcomers hankering for one-on-one Street Fighterish brawls on an iOS device, it’s still a freebie worth grabbing.

Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert

The world’s stretchiest canine’s found himself in a world full of sticky desserts and a surprising number of saw blades. His aim: get to the other end of this deadly yet yummy horizontally scrolling world. The snag: the aforementioned blades, a smattering of puzzles, and the way this particular pooch moves.

In Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert, the canine hero doesn’t pootle along on tiny legs – instead, you swipe to make his body stretch like an angular snake until he reaches another surface, whereupon his hind quarters catch up.

The result is an impressive side-scroller that’s more sedate puzzler than frantic platformer – aside from in adrenaline-fueled time-based challenge rooms, which even Silly Sausage veterans will be hard-pressed to master.

• Keep your iPad secure with one of these best free VPN apps

You've got your iPad, and now you are ready to fill up with great apps. But what should you download? The only downside of having the most popular app store on the planet is that some really great apps can become lost in a sea of possibilities. We'll cover a wide range of the best apps on the app store, so no matter your interest, you'll be able to find a few great apps to get you started. ​

Still unsure of how the whole app store process works? Get a quick lesson in downloading apps.

Crackle

Move over Netflix and Hulu Plus, there's a new best movie app in town. Crackle not only delivers great movies and TV shows with an interface that stands up to Hulu Plus and exceeds the one found in the Netflix app, but it does so as a free download with no subscription costs. That's right: free movies and TV shows. That's perhaps the very definition of a must-have app​ and definitely makes it one of the best free apps on the App Store.

iWork

Apple began giving away the iWork suite of office apps to anyone who purchased a new iPad or iPhone after the release of the iPhone 5S in late 2013. The great part about this deal is you don't even need to buy the latest generation iPad, you simply need to buy a new iPad. The iWork suite includes a word processor (Pages), spreadsheet (Numbers) and presentation software (Keynote).

How do they stack up to Microsoft Office? The iWork suite isn't quite as complete as Microsoft Office, but it is also not quite as bloated. Most of us don't need all the extra features packed in with our word processor or spreadsheet, and for us, iWork is perfect.

Facebook

You can use Facebook perfectly fine from the iPad's web browser, but to get the best experience, you should download the official app. And if you like sharing your photos and videos, you should also connect your iPad to Facebook. This is done in the iPad's settings and will allow you to tap the Share button in Photos and send an image to Facebook. You can also send web links from Safari, update your status using Siri and other neat tricks.

Google Maps

When Apple replaced Google Maps with their own Maps app, it created such a backlash that Tim Cook apologized. Apple Maps has come a long way since its initial release, but many people still prefer Google Maps. If you want to use your iPad like a GPS, or simply map out your route before you get into the car, Google Maps is definitely one of the must-have apps on the App Store. Apple's Maps app would certainly win the award for prettiest, by Google Maps is still the most functional.

Evernote

Evernote works similar to the Notes app that comes with the iPad but includes a number of super-charged features. Evernote is cloud-based, so you sign into your account to retrieve your notes. This means you can sign in with your PC, iPad or even Android device. You can create notes and task lists, email them from your Evernote account and organize them by tags. Need more help with note-taking? Take a look at these apps.

Pandora

Thus far, we have books, movies, and tv among our must-have iPad apps, but we aren't about to leave out music. Pandora for the iPad is both simple and sleek, offering the versatility of the website without too much clutter, and allowing you to play the music in the background while you do other things. When you combine Pandora with the ability to use Home Sharing to gain access to your entire music collection, it's easy to see how the iPad can replace your home stereo. Pandora is easily one of the best apps available for the iPad. And (like the rest of this list) it is free. Learn how to get the most out of Pandora Radio.

Yelp

Bored with the same old restaurants? Want to find something new? There's nothing quite like Yelp for finding the best restaurants around you. Combined with a great audience of reviewers, you'll not only find out which restaurants are nearby, but you'll be able to choose the best. And for most restaurants, you can even get a peek at the menu.

Yelp also works on almost any other type of business, so you'll be able to find a dry cleaner or an auto repair shop. Have a bad experience somewhere? You can tell everyone else all about it on Yelp. It may not erase the experience, but it usually makes you feel a little better about it.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a great way to get 2 GB of free storage on your iPad. This cloud-based storage solution also lets you easily share files between your devices, so if you want an easy way to transfer photos from your iPad to your PC without bothering with a cable, you can use Dropbox. And if you have a lot of documents on your PC you want to access from your iPad, you can use Dropbox to store them. How to Set Up Dropbox on the iPad

Dropbox works with most devices, so you can use it to share files between your PC and laptop, your laptop and your iPad or your iPad and your iPhone. And it's a more sophisticated and easier-to-use solution than iCloud Drive once you get it up and running.

IMDB

If the iPad is the ultimate couch potato device, IMDB is the ultimate couch potato app. With access to the Internet Movie Database, you'll never be left wondering why an actor's face looks familiar or what other movies were made by a certain director. And you'll quickly become an ace at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

YouTube

Like Google Maps, YouTube used to be one of the default apps on the iPad. But when Apple had their break up with Google, YouTube disappeared. The YouTube app is great for those who want an app-based experience when browsing YouTube. The app will also be used an external player for YouTube videos, so if you browse YouTube in the Safari browser, videos will open in the YouTube app.

Flipboard

Are you ready to turn your social experience into an interactive magazine? Flipboard ties together Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social websites with traditional news and magazine sites like CNN and Sports Illustrated to create a magazine tailored to your own social experience. If you think Facebook is cool or Twitter is informative, you should see the turned into a magazine.

Ookla Speedtest

Speedtest allows you to test the overall speed of your Internet connection measured in megabits-per-second (Mbps). While it may sound like something only a techno-geek would want on their iPad, it's actually quite handy for anyone, especially if you have an area of the house where you don't get a good Wi-Fi signal. Speedtest will help you determine just how bad your connection gets and help you test solutions.

The actual numbers will vary based on the top speed of your Internet connection. Many people these days have connections capable of 25 to 50 Mbps or even faster. It generally takes about 8-12 Mbps to stream an HD movie without getting a lot of interruptions, though 15+ is ideal.

USA Today

If you need to get your news fix, USA Today is one of the best news apps in the app store. And not only will you get a free dose of daily news, you'll also get a daily crossword puzzle. Do you prefer your news to be more visual? CNN's iPad app is made for you. And for those who like news from as many different sources as possible, Fluent News does a great job of bringing a cornucopia of news feeds together in a streamlined app.

Dictionary.com

We've covered entertainment, news and the social experience, but the iPad can also be quite educational. Dictionary.com will give you one of the best online dictionaries without paying the high cost of an actual dictionary, which could cost upwards of $25. Along with the dictionary comes a Thesaurus and a Word of the Day. You'll also get vocal pronunciations of each word, so you can make sure you are saying it right.

iHeartRadio

Pandora may be the best music app for creating your own custom radio stations, but it won't help you listen to real stations. iHeartRadio is a combination of both, allowing you to create custom stations based on a favorite band or playing real radio stations from around the world. So why isn't it listed before Pandora? While this list isn't in any absolute order, there's no debating that Pandora is great at creating custom radio stations and finding similar music based on your input. But with iHeartRadio's ability to listen to real radio stations, any music lover will love having both installed.

Epicurious

Do you love to cook? The iPad is a handy helper in the kitchen plus you can download Epicurious, which is packed with over 30,000 recipes. That's enough recipes to have three meals a day for over 27 years. And it will cost you a grand total of a download. For all the cooks out there, Epicurious is among the great apps available on the app store.

Calculator HD Pro Free

The trusty calculator has long been one of those tools that almost everyone needs from time to time, and this free calculator app does a great job of translating that to your iPad. The app features both a standard mode, which is great for simple calculations, and a scientific mode, which is great if you are taking an advanced math class.

Mint Personal Finance

Mint is the best personal finance and budgeting app available on the iPad. Mint will automatically collect data from your accounts and put it into easy to digest groups, such as breaking your spending down into food, gas, rent, etc. This makes it easier to set budget goals and determine how well you are doing with your personal budget. You'll need a Mint.com account to use the app, but it is free to sign up.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a great companion for any student, whether they are in college, high school or middle school. The app includes lessons that span a wide variety of topics and classes. It even helps with SAT preparation. But Khan Academy isn't just for students. Anyone can use it as a virtual classroom, so if you love watching the history or science channels on your TV, you'll love watching history and science videos with Khan Academy.

Temple Run 2

And let's not forget about gaming. There are any number of great free games you can download on your iPad, but if you are looking for something that combines the unique controls of the iPad with frantic action and addictive game play, the choice is simple: Temple Run 2. The sequel to the game that really defined the endless runner genre is a whole lot of fun in an unassuming package. Looking for something a little different? Check out some of the other great games available for free.

Remote

If you own an Apple TV or if you stream a lot of music from iTunes on your PC, Remote is a must-have app. It is basically a remote control for Apple TV, which is great because the rather small remote that comes with Apple TV is easy to lose. The Remote app will also let you play music from your PC if you have iTunes loaded and Home Sharing turned on. Find out more about home sharing.

FitnessClass

If you wake up every morning ready to do some yoga or section of a quarter-hour each evening to get rock hard abs, FitnessClass is the app for you. It has a whole host of exercise routines available as either 30-day rentals or purchases, and you can preview each routine to see what you are getting for your money. For anyone that likes to mix up their routines, this is a great app to download.