If you're looking for some acrobatic reptile fun this weekend, head on over to the App Store where Hurdle Turtle [Link] has gone free for today, Saturday the 19th, only. Hurdle Turtle is an endless running game with cute pixel graphics and retro chip-tunes that launched last November. The initial version of Hurdle Turtle was fairly bare bones, with just one environment to run in and one character to play as. Still, something about this silly turtle doing double front flips over hurdles while running faster and faster down a track captured the hearts of both myself and fellow TouchArcader Eli Hodapp.

Then in December, Hurdle Turtle was updated to version 2.0 with a ton of new features, and the whimsy of this game could be ignored no more. We promptly reviewed version 2.0 which featured 3 different environments and 11 turtle characters to choose from. These were tied to a clever unlock system based on distance ran, which gave a more compelling reason to continue playing beyond just reaching a higher score. Game Center and OpenFeint are used in tandem for online leaderboards and achievements.

Check out this new trailer developer Holmade Games put together that shows off the new features of Hurdle Turtle 2.0:

With today's free promotion, Holmade Games is running a contest over on their blog that will result in Hurdle Turtle swag for some lucky winners if the game can reach the top 50 free games chart. While the allure of free Hurdle Turtle gifts is strong, at the very least everybody should give this game a download while it's free. It doesn't do anything drastically different from your average endless runner, but it's well put together, cute, silly, and most importantly fun. There's a discussion thread in our forums for the game, and make sure to grab Hurdle Turtle while it's free for the rest of today.