Best iPhone games introduction

It would take approximately 34,506,455 years to play through every single
iPhone game on the App Store. We might have made that number up, but surely we can’t be too far off.
The App Store is rammed with gaming goodies to keep thumbs busy, but
not all iPhone games are born equal – which is why we’ve done the
difficult job of playing through as many game as humanly possible in
order to tell you which are best. It’s a tough job, but someone has to
do it.
In addition to our ongoing list of the 50 best iPhone games money can
(or can’t) buy, this article will also be updated every week with the
latest top-tier titles that you’ll want to be sure to check out. (Just
skip ahead a few slides if you want to dive right into the top 50.) This
week’s offerings include Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Afterpulse,
Guitar Hero Live, and more!
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons ($4.99/£3.99/AU$7.99)
New this week (10/22/15)! In order to save their
father’s life, two brothers set out on a journey of adversity that
requires them to work together to survive. Full of emotion and moments
that make you want to hug someone,
Brothers
is as much a tale of brotherly bonds as it is a game of environmental
puzzles. Using two virtual joysticks, you’ll control the big brother and
little brother, who are each capable of doing different things, and
figure out a solution to the many obstacles you’ll face. Short but
immensely satisfying, this emotive game is sure to pull you in as you
play.
Click here to buy Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
The Beggar’s Ride ($3.99/£2.99/AU$5.99)
New this week (10/22/15)! Gods come in all shapes
and sizes, but when a homeless man dons the mask of a fallen deity, he
not only becomes one but discovers an entire world to explore. Whether
you call upon the rains or move the earth, this gorgeous platformer
features environmental puzzles that let you utilize the beggar’s
newfound powers, plus it also tells a rich narrative that unfolds right
before your eyes. Collectibles and a few secrets put the finishing
touches on this impressive title.
Click here to buy The Beggar’s Ride
Pokaboo ($2.99/£2.49/AU$4.99)
New this week (10/22/15)! Simple, cute, and featuring some great casual puzzles,
Pokaboo
is a game that has you matching colored blobs together until all shapes
have been cleared from the screen. Your ghost companion can move
through walls, so you’ll need to figure out the best ways to match them
all in the least amount of moves of possible—if you want to earn a
elusive perfect score, that is. Otherwise, enjoy the increasingly
challenges that will have you making unique shapes with all those blobs
you wrangle up.
Click here to buy Pokaboo
X-Mercs (free)
New this week (10/22/15)! Set in a post-apocalyptic world that has mutated most of Earth’s wildlife,
X-Mercs
is an engrossing turn-based strategy game that also doubles as a
civilization builder and lets you attack other players to steal their
resources. The missions you’ll go on require you to plan your moves
carefully and complete your objectives as efficiently as possible for
better rewards which you can then use to craft more weapons, manage your
base of operations, or enlist new troops to fight with. If you run out,
visit other player bases and engage in PvP raids for loot. Do whatever
it takes to survive.
Click here to buy X-Mercs
Please Don’t Touch Anything ($4.99/£3.99/AU$7.99)
New this week (10/22/15)! If someone tells you not
to touch something, chances are curiosity will take over and you’ll be
itching to see what happens if you do.
Please Don’t Touch Anything
is a game that lets you practice being disobedient and encourages you
to figure out its many riddles that lead to multiple endings only you
can discover. Touch the panel, press the red button, maybe do some math,
and eventually something good is bound to happen.
Click here to buy Please Don’t Touch Anything
Mind the Cubes (free)
New this week (10/22/15)! Simple and challenging,
Mind the Cubes
is a great puzzler for anyone looking to sharpen their logic skills.
Each level requires you to clear out colored cubes by moving them
together, but the catch is that each one has a limited number of moves.
You’ll need to move blocks around and use them as walls for others until
you figure out the best way to solve each puzzle and earn golden cubes
that unlock even more. 65 levels that can be replayed are sure to
provide you with hours of brain-training.
Click here to buy Mind the Cubes
Impossible Super Ninja (free)
New this week (10/22/15)! Tap your screen to jump
and avoid any spikes or shurikens that can end your life in this
challenging auto-runner. Each dangerous level features a string of
trap-riddled that have you timing your jumps as you climb higher and
higher up various towers to steal the chest full of gold at the end.
Collect optional emeralds to unlock new ninjas to play as or simply
focus on getting to the next level. Think your finger can handle it?
Click here to buy Impossible Super Ninja
Afterpulse (free)
New this week (10/22/15)! Stunning visuals and solid
online features await fans in this futuristic third-person shooter.
Practice your shooting skills in offline mode and reap some rewards and
weapons before making your mark in multiplayer matches with players
around the world. Whether you play free-for-all or 8-player team
deathmatch, you’ll want to come out winning to ensure you get enough
prize money to customize your soldier to your liking.
Click here to buy Afterpulse
Guitar Hero Live (free)
New this week (10/22/15)! Tap into your inner rock star as you tap your screen to the music in
Guitar Hero Live,
the mobile version of the console game that comes free with two songs
to try. Crowds will cheer you on if you’re performance is solid, but
miss too many notes and your bandmates will be seen shaking their heads
and the audience will let you have it. The full game can also be played
with a separate guitar controller and comes with over 40 songs and even
more you can stream online.
Click here to buy Guitar Hero Live
Zombie Match Defense ($1.99/£1.49/AU$2.99)
New this week (10/22/15)! We all know zombies just want to eat brains, so why not use them to lure and trap the undead? In
Zombie Match Defense,
you’ll need to match brains of different shapes and, err, flavors to
clear out zombies that land on them before they reach a group of
scientists on the other side. Clear our rows or columns of brains as
fast as you can and try not to let anyone die as you make your way
through dozens of levels that get harder as you play. There’s even a
friendly ice cream man that sells you power-ups and items for your
survival. Nifty.
Click here to buy Zombie Match Defense
1. 80 Days ($4.99/£3.99)
In this decidedly steampunk take on 1872, you must get around the
world in 80 days, because Phileas Fogg has a big mouth and last night
bet a fortune on doing so. Gameplay involves you as the loyal valet,
planning routes, managing your inventory, and making decisions as the
story plays out, all while Fogg gripes and drinks, the lazy swine.
Click here to buy 80 Days
2. AG Drive ($3.99/£2.99)
We’ve been after a decent futuristic racer on the
iPhone
for some time, but none of them really felt right. AG Drive bucks the
trend, echoing Wipeout and F-Zero: breakneck speed is married with
pitch-perfect tilt controls and suitably shiny graphics. Also, there’s
absolutely no IAP, so the only way you’re going to win is with mastery
and skill.
Click here to buy AG Drive
3. ALONE… ($1.99/£1.49)
There are so many endless survival games for
iPhone
that we tend to gloss over when a new one appears. ALONE… is different,
primarily because it’s so brutal. It’s one of the few games to take
Canabalt’s lightning-fast pace – and then ramp it up a notch or 10.
Every game becomes an exhilarating adrenaline-fuelled rush through
deadly canyons and meteor showers, with you urging your tiny ship on an
extra few hundred metres.
Click here to buy ALONE
4. Asphalt 8 (free)
Some time long ago, the gaming gods apparently decreed that racing
games should be dull and grey, on grey tracks, with grey controls.
Thankfully Gameloft chose to ignore their foolish omniscient notions –
along with a large chunk of real-world physics – with
Asphalt 8: Airborne.
Here, then, you zoom along at ludicrous speeds, drifting for miles
through exciting city courses, occasionally being hurled into the air to
perform stunts that absolutely aren’t acceptable according to the car
manufacturer’s warranty.
Click here to buy Asphalt 8: Airborne
5. Framed ($.99/£.79)
If you’re looking for a hidden gem of a game, Framed has your name
written all over it. It’s a unique puzzle game that makes good and novel
use of the touchscreen.
Each scene looks like a page ripped out of a comic book and it’s up
to you to guide the character through it. Starting from left to right,
you have to organize each panel so that you can run through and avoid
harm.
Click here to buy Framed
6. Beat Sneak Bandit (£2.29)
One thumb is plenty when a game’s so cleverly designed.
Beat Sneak Bandit
is part rhythm-action, part platformer and part stealth game, with the
titular hero aiming to steal back the world’s clocks from the nefarious
Duke Clockface. You move on the beat, rebounding off walls, and avoiding
guards and alarms. It’s clever, charming and brilliant.
Click here to buy Beat Sneak Bandit
7. You Must Build A Boat
It’s always great when a savvy developer rethinks a genre and comes
up with something that feels fresh. EightyEight Games welds auto-running
to match-three in
You Must Build A Boat.
Deft fingerwork must be married with careful timing, matching keys as
the hero approaches locked chests, or swords at the moment an incoming
enemy prepares to get all stabby. Get shoved off of the left-hand side
of the screen and you’re told YOU WIN!, because every step potentially
adds to your coffers. There are missions to complete, abilities to
power-up, and a cheeky sense of humour that sets the title apart from
its frequently comparatively po-faced contemporaries.
8. Beyond Ynth (£1.99)
This fantastic platform puzzler stars a bug who’s oddly averse to
flying. Instead, he gets about 2D levels by rolling around in boxes full
of platforms.
Beyond Ynth
hangs on a quest, but each level forms a devious test, where you must
figure out precisely how to reach the end via careful use of boxes,
switches and even environmental hazards.
Click here to buy Beyond Ynth
9. Blek ($2.99/£2.49)
Blek
is akin to shepherding semi-sentient calligraphy through a series of
dexterity tests. Each sparse screen has one or more dots that needs
collecting, which is achieved by drawing a squiggle that’s then set in
motion. To say the game can be opaque is putting it lightly, but as a
voyage of discovery, there are few touchscreen games that come close.
Click here to buy Blek
10. Coolson’s Pocket Pack (free)
This word puzzler’s all about chaining. You drag tiles from the
bottom of the well and make short words; do so without swapping any
letters from the well’s bottom row or the area you create the words and
you start amassing huge points.
Coolson’s Pocket Pack is then a test of nerve, and your ability to not forget every single short word in the dictionary when under pressure.
Click here to download Coolson’s Pocket Pack
11. Crossy Road (free)
This endless take on Frogger finds your cuboid character confronting
countless deadly roads, train lines and rivers, before inevitable
squashage. It’s the characters that make the game, though – a varied
roster of people, animals and ‘things’ won using a one-armed bandit, fed
with coins collected en route (you can just buy stuff, too, but Crossy
Road also lets you earn by watching videos and bestows regular coin
top-ups anyway, making it the least obnoxious free-to-play game with IAP
imaginable).
Click here to download Crossy Road
12. Dark Nebula 2 HD ($2.99/£1.99)
One of the first titles to truly make use of the
iPhone
gyro, Dark Nebula was a beautiful tilt-based steampunk adventure and
dexterity test, with you leading a strange craft through maze-like
levels.
Dark Nebula 2
ramped up the beauty and complexity, and the HD reissue added iPad and
Retina support. The title still feels fresh and is perfectly suited to
mobile, rewarding speed-runs and careful exploration of each level
alike.
Click here to buy Dark Nebula 2 HD
13. Device 6 (£2.99)
Device 6
is first and foremost a story — a mystery into which protagonist Anna
finds herself propelled. She awakes on an island, but where is she? How
did she get there? Why can’t she remember anything? The game fuses
literature with adventuring, the very words forming corridors you travel
along, integrated puzzles being dotted about for you to investigate.
It’s a truly inspiring experience, an imaginative, ambitious and
brilliantly realised creation that showcases how iOS can be the home for
something unique and wonderful.
Click here to buy Device 6
14. Doug dug ($1.99/£1.49)
Doug likes to dig, and he’s an even bigger fan of bling. You,
therefore, must help him go deep underground in Doug dug, unearthing
gems and hacking to death any creatures that fancy a dwarf-shaped snack.
Danger also lurks in lava that’s dotted about and regular cave-ins –
the latter of which are caused mostly by you getting a bit too greedy.
Click here to buy Doug dug
15. Her Story (£3.99/$4.99)
An intriguing little game that lets you play detective, Her Story has
received rave reviews for its incredibly engrossing gameplay. As a
British woman is interviewed about her missing husband, it’s up to you
to search through the clues and discover what happened. An impressive
achievement.
Click here to buy Her Story
16. Drop Wizard ($1.99/£1.99)
Single-screen platformer Drop Wizard is infused with the soul of
classics such as Snow Bros. and Bubble Bobble, but it’s also part
auto-runner. You can only run left or right, and your wizard blasts
magic on landing. Strategy, therefore, involves careful timing, to avoid
and zap foes, and then kick them into a tumbling combo that will bounce
about in a pleasingly destructive manner before turning into fruit.
Because that’s what vanquished platform-game enemies all did in the
1980s.
Click here to buy Drop Wizard
17. Drop7 (free)
One of mobile’s most perfect puzzlers, Drop7 is all about dropping
numbered discs into a tiny well. If a disc’s face value matches the
number of discs in its row or column, it blows up. But every few moves, a
row of grey junk pushes up from the bottom of the well. Survival
therefore depends on creating combos – well, that and a smattering of
maths.
Click here to download Drop7
18. Eliss Infinity (£2.29)
Eliss was the first game to truly take advantage of iOS’s multitouch
capabilities, with you combining and tearing apart planets to fling into
like-coloured and suitably sized wormholes.
Eliss Infinity,
a semi-sequel, brings the original’s levels into glorious Retina and
adds a totally bonkers endless mode. Unique, challenging and fun, this
is a game that defines the platform.
Click here to buy Eliss Infinity
19. Forget-Me-Not ($1.99/£1.49)
One of the finest arcade games made for any platform, Forget-Me-Not dumps you in procedurally generated mazes. T
he aim is to eat all the flowers, grab a key and reach the exit without
dying. That’s easier said than done, given that various critters
regularly teleport into the maze, and set about not only attacking you
but annihilating each other. Within a minute, the entire screen always
erupts into a tiny retro war zone.
Click here to buy Forget-Me-Not
20. FOTONICA ($2.99/£2.29)
Evidence that even the most basic concept can wow when injected with
some dazzling beauty, FOTONICA takes Canabalt’s basic jump-and-survive
gameplay and places it in a wireframe 3D world. The fragmented
dream-like environments and floaty gravity mesmerise as the soundtrack
slowly worms its way into your skull; the entire experience becomes
hypnotic as vector platforms whirl in the distance and you enter ‘the
zone’ to survive each stage.
Click here to buy FOTONICA
21. PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX ($4.99/£3.99).
We fear
PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX
is destined to be overshadowed by 2015’s <em>other</em>
superb Pac-Man game, namely Pac-Man 256, which happens to be free. But
Namco should be congratulated for DX, because it at the last minute
ditched a horrible freemium model while simultaneously unleashing the
best version of Pac-Man to date, jammed full of screaming-fast
dot-munching, using the split-screen format introduced in the original
Pac-Man CE.
Clear half a maze of dots and a special bonus appears on the other
half. Grab that and the cleared section refills with a new dot pattern.
All the while, you’re avoiding roaming ghosts and brushing past snoozing
ones that follow you as a shimmering spectral conga. Soon, you’re
facing an intoxicating breakneck combination of Snake and Pac-Man that,
despite its heritage, feels thoroughly modern.
22. Gridrunner (Free)
Jeff Minter is a shoot ’em up genius, and his
Gridrunner
series has a long history, starting out on the VIC-20, at the dawn of
home gaming. This update riffs off classic Namco arcade machines but
also shoves modern bullet-hell mechanics into a claustrophobic single
screen. And in this version’s survival mode, you have just one life.
Argh!
Click here to download Gridrunner
23. Helix ($2.99/£2.29)
Helix is all about quick thinking within a confined space. Your
little craft is fragile and unarmed, but it can eradicate enemies by
encircling them. Deft finger work is required to survive even a few
waves, and things only get tougher when foes appear that force you to
encircle them in a particular direction.
Click here to buy Helix
24. Hitman GO (£3.99)
Square Enix would have been on a hiding to nothing converting its
free-roaming 3D game to touchscreens, and so it’s great to see the
company do something entirely different with
Hitman GO.
Although still echoing the original series, this touchscreen title is
presented as a board game of sorts, with turn-based actions against
clockwork opposition. You must figure out your way to the prize, without
getting knocked off (the board). It’s an oddly adorable take on
assassination, and one of the best iOS puzzlers.
Click here to buy Hitman GO
25. Icycle ($2.99/£2.29)
Cycling into an imaginative world of madness, Dennis’s mission in
iCycle is to grab blocks of ice and try very hard not to die. The
animated, beautifully conceived environments make survival tough, but
even as Dennis is impaled yet again, you’ll be dazzled by the
Gilliam-esque landscapes he’s attempting to work his way through.
Click here to buy Icycle
26. Implosion ($9.99/£7.99)
Humans are again getting a kicking at the hands of nasty aliens and
it’s up to you to stop them. Cliches aside, Implosion offers a stompy
slash-and-shoot experience that feels entirely at home on the iPhone but
scratches that itch when you fancy playing something that resembles
what you’d find on a ‘proper’ games console.
Click here to buy Implosion
27. Leo’s Fortune (£3.99)
Leo’s Fortune
finds gruff hairball Leo in search of his gold, which has been dropped
in a suspiciously trail-like manner across typically platform-game
environments. As he scoops up coins, he finds himself whizzing round
Sonic-style loops, solving puzzles by manipulating the environment, and
negotiating increasingly complex and deadly pathways. It’s a beautiful
game, full of character, and well-suited to quick bursts on your iPhone.
Click here to buy Leo’s Fortune
28. Letterpress (free)
What mad fool welds Boggle to tug o’ war Risk-style land-grabbing?
The kind who doesn’t want anyone to get any work done again, ever,
that’s who.
Letterpress
is, simply, the best word game on the App Store. You make words to win
points and temporarily ‘lock’ letters from your opponent by surrounding
them. The result is a tense asynchronous two-player game with plenty of
last-move wins and general gnashing of teeth when you realise ‘qin’ is
in fact an acceptable word.
Click here to download Letterpress
29. Limbo (£3.99)
A boy awakens in hell, and must work his way through a deadly forest.
Gruesome deaths and trial and error gradually lead to progress, as he
forces his way deeper into the gloom and greater mystery. Origina
ting on the Xbox,
Limbo
fares surprisingly well on iOS, with smartly designed controls; and its
eerie beauty and intriguing environments remain hypnotic.
Click here to buy Limbo
30. Magnetic Billiards (free)
A game that could have been called Reverse Pool For Show-Offs,
Magnetic Billiards
lacks pockets. Instead, the aim is to join like-coloured balls that
cling together on colliding. Along the way, you get more points for
trick shots and ‘buzzing’ other balls that must otherwise be avoided. 20
diverse tables are provided for free, and many more can be unlocked for
$1.99/£1.49.
Click here to download Magnetic Billiards
31. Mikey Hooks ($1.99/£1.49)
If iOS is supposed to be no good for traditional 2D platform games, it’s a good job no-one told the developer of
Mikey Hooks.
The mechanics aren’t a million miles away from Nintendo titles starring
a certain plumber, but Mikey’s also armed with a rope that can attach
to hooks dotted about the levels, enabling him to speedily swing to
glory. An emphasis on time-attack racing and surprisingly solid controls
round out a first-rate title.
Click here to buy Mikey Hooks
32. Monument Valley (£2.99)
In
Monument Valley,
you journey through delightful Escher-like landscapes, manipulating the
very architecture to build impossible paths along which to explore.
It’s not the most challenging of games (nor one with the most coherent
of storylines), but each scene is a gorgeous and mesmerising bite-sized
experience that showcases how important great craft is in the best iOS
titles.
Click here to buy Monument Valley
33. Need For Speed Most Wanted ($4.99/£3.99)
Racing games are all very well, but too many aim for simulation
rather than evoking the glorious feeling of speeding along like a
maniac.
Most Wanted
absolutely nails the fun side of arcade racing, and is reminiscent of
classic console title OutRun 2 in enabling you to effortlessly drift for
miles. Add to that varied city streets on which to best rivals and
avoid (or smash) the cops, and you’ve a tremendous iOS racer.
Click here to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted
34. Mos Speedrun 2 ($1.99/£1.49)
The original Mos Speedrun was a smart, stripped-back platformer that actually worked on iPhone. Now the bug is back, in
Mos Speedrun 2.
Again, this is old school leapy platforming action, with rewards to win
on each level for speed, collecting all the gold coins, and finding a
hidden skull.
Cleverly, these objectives are typically mutually exclusive in a
single run, forcing you to replay levels and approach them with new
tactics. This time round, though, Mos has learned some new tricks: wall
jumping; rope swinging; jelly swimming; and spider-web battling. Sadly
for him, this bug hasn’t learned to not die very regularly indeed.
Playing against your dead ghosts after repeated failure therefore
remains as both a clever means of encouragement and a reminder of the
ineptitude of your sausage thumbs.
35. Osmos (£2.29)
This superb arcade puzzler is at times microscopic and at others
galactic in nature, as you use the power of physics and time to move
your ‘mote’ about. Some levels in
Osmos
are primordial soup, the mote propelled by ejecting bits of itself, all
the while aiming to absorb everything around it; elsewhere, motes
circle sun-like ‘Attractors’, and your challenge becomes one of
understanding the intersecting trajectories of orbital paths.
Click here to buy Osmos
36. Rayman Fiesta Run (£2.29)
The iOS Rayman games are considered by some to be reductive, overly
simplifying console-style platforming to an instant runner with bells
on. We instead consider Ubisoft’s games distilled: they take the essence
of platforming action — running, jumping, timing — and make it truly
fit for mobile. Smart, varied level and character design, along with a
well-considered unlock mechanism, ensure
Rayman Fiesta Run‘s an iOS classic.
Click here to buy Rayman Fiesta Run
37. Hearthstone (free)
Yes, the insanely popular online card game Hearthstone has been
squashed down to fit your iPhone screen – and it works surprisingly
well. With less space to play with, the creators have rejigged the
deisign slightly; it’s still the same game, just a bit more considerate
to your thumbs. It’s also still compatible with the tablet and desktop
versions so you’ll be able to play against your friends on the move.
Requires at least an iPhone 4S or 5th generation iPod Touch.
Click here to buy Reckless Racing 3
38. RGB Express ($2.99/£2.29)
RGB Express is seemingly set in some kind of courier’s clockwork
hell. Little vans must pick up packages and drop them off,
colour-matching vehicles, boxes and buildings where appropriate. To
complicate matters, roads can be used only once. What follows is a
brain-bending game of route finding as you attempt to grow your tiny
delivery company.
Click here to buy RGB Express
39. Ridiculous Fishing (£2.29)
If
Ridiculous Fishing
is what fishing’s really like, we’ve been missing out all these years.
An angular fisherman casts his line into the inky gloom, where you
cunningly avoid fish by tilting your device. Snag one and the hero reels
the line back in, and you jerk your
iPhone
from side to side, aiming to catch as many fish as possible. At the
surface, the catch is flung into the sky, to be blasted to pieces by
powerful weaponry. Longevity’s secured by an amusing in-game store and
social network parody, along with several fishing spots to visit.
Click here to buy Ridiculous Fishing
40. SpellTower ($1.99/£1.49)
SpellTower
is a fantastic word game that starts off easy. You get a grid of
letters and remove them by dragging out words. Your only foe is gravity,
letters falling into empty space as completed words disappear. But then
come new modes, with ferocious timers and numbered letters that won’t
vanish unless you craft long enough words. And there always seem to be
too many Vs!
Click here to buy SpellTower
41. Super Hexagon (£2.29)
Ah,
Super Hexagon.
We remember that punishing first game, which must have lasted all of
three seconds. Much like the next — and the next. But then we recognised
patterns in the walls that closed in on our tiny ship, and learned to
react and dodge. Then you threw increasingly tough difficulty levels at
us, and we’ve been smitten ever since.
Click here to buy Super Hexagon
42. Lara Croft GO (£3.99/$4.99/AU$6.49)

Following in the footsteps of Hitman GO, which astonishingly managed to transform that series into an adorable board game,
Lara Croft GO
reworks the adventures of the world’s most famous tomb raider. It’s
another turn-based affair, with lashings of atmosphere, finding Lara
carefully working her way past traps crafted by an ancient civilisation
with a penchant for blocky design and elaborate moving parts.
There are also lots of snakes and deadly lizards about, which she’s
quite keen on shooting in the head. The five chapters are quite brief,
but savour the game rather than blazing through, and you’ll find
something that merges early Tomb Raider’s sense of adventure and
solitude, Monument Valley-level beauty, and bite-sized touchscreen
gaming that’s perfect for iPhone.
43. Horizon Chase ($2.99/£2.29)

Time was racing games were all about ludicrous speed, gorgeous
graphics, and the sheer rush of weaving through a sea of cars to the
finish line.
Horizon Chase
briefly reverses back to such halcyon days, grabs the best bits from
the likes of Lotus and Top Gear, before zooming back to the present as a
thoroughly modern arcade racer.
It looks gorgeous, with some stunning weather effects, and an odd but
pleasing low-poly roadside-object style; it sounds great with veteran
games musician Barry Leitch on soundtrack duties; but most importantly,
it handles perfectly, and is a joy until the very last track.
44. Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP (£3.99)
Apple’s mobile platform has become an unlikely home for traditional point-and-click adventures.
Sword & Sworcery
has long been a favourite, with its sense of mystery, palpable
atmosphere, gorgeous pixel art and evocative soundtrack. Exploratory in
nature, this is a true /adventure/ in the real sense of the word, and
it’s absolutely not to be missed.
Click here to buy Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP
45. Threes! ($1.99/£1.49)
Threes!
is all about matching numbered cards. 1s and 2s merge to make 3s, and
then pairs of identical cards can subsequently be merged, doubling their
face value. With each swipe, a new card enters the tiny grid, forcing
you to carefully manage your growing collection, and think many moves
ahead. The ingenious mix of risk and reward makes it hugely frustrating
when you’re a fraction from an elusive 1536 card, but so addictive
you’ll immediately want another go.
Click here to buy Threes!
46. TouchTone ($2.99/£2.29)
There are two sides to TouchTone. The foundation is a topical story
about intercepting communications, ostensibly to make the world safer.
The game itself involves reflecting signals to receivers, using a tiled
grid where every item on a row or column moves as one. The story gives
you added impetus to keep going, even when you’ve been racking your
brains for days to come up with a solution to a particular puzzle.
Click here to buy TouchTone
47. Traps n’ Gemstones ($4.99/£3.99)
There’s some superb level design in this touchscreen take on Metroid,
with you helping a tiny explorer bound about a pyramid. There are gems
to collect, critters to kill and secret areas to unlock via the magic of
cunning object placement. Equally cunning is the scoring mechanism – it
resets on every death, unlike progress, which always continues. This
means casual gamers can gradually work through the quest while the
hardcore aim to get every gem in a single sitting.
Click here to buy Traps n’ Gemstones
48. Walking Dead (free)
We do like a good zombie yarn, as long as we’re not the subject matter, having just had our brains eaten.
Walking De
ad successfully jumped from comic to TV screen, and it’s just as
good in its interactive incarnation. The first part of the story is
free, and you can then buy new episodes; if you survive,
season 2 is also available.
Click here to download Walking Dead
49. Year Walk (£2.99)
Year Walk
preceded the same developer’s iOS masterpiece Device 6, but is equally
daring. It’s a first-person adventure of sorts, with more than a nod
towards horror literature and, frankly, the just plain weird. It’s
unsettling, clever, distinctive and beautifully crafted — another
unmissable and original touchscreen creation.
Click here to buy Year Walk
50. Zen Bound 2 (£2.29)
One of the most tactile puzzlers around,
Zen Bound 2
doesn’t sound terribly exciting, in that you’re wrapping sculptures in
rope. But the atmosphere and polish combine with a nagging percentage
bar, urging you to perfect each level. With no time limit, it’s one of
the more soothing puzzlers in this round-up, but it also never drifts
towards the noodle.
