It’s been nearly five years since Apple Arcade launched, and while the service hasn’t fully delivered on Apple’s promise back in 2019, it can still be worth paying for. Of course, that’s provided you’re willing to hunt through the 200-ish games currently available on the service. I’ve been playing Apple Arcade games since it launched and these are just a few of my favorites that have stood the test of time.
Quick Overview
Threes!+
What the Golf? / What the Car?
Mini Motorways / Mini Metro+
Grindstone
Alto’s Adventure / Alto’s Odyssey
Sp!ng
Monument Valley+ / Monument Valley 2+
Crossy Road Castle
Stardew Valley
Tiny Wings+
A Slight Chance of Sawblades
Ridiculous Fishing EX
What is Apple Arcade?
Apple originally released Apple Arcade with the promise of high-quality, exclusive games that are playable across basically every device the company makes. That includes the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV (though you need a controller for the latter). Over time, Apple started allowing games originally launched in the App Store as well, provided that they met certain criteria. All Apple Arcade games are ad-free and have no in-app purchases, something that really helps differentiate its offerings over the flood of low-quality games in the App Store.
While Apple Arcade launched with a pretty excellent lineup, additional games have unfortunately been fewer and farther between in recent years. Apple has also pulled a number of games from the service, including some of the best ones you could get like Sayonara Wild Hearts, Cozy Grove, Assemble with Care, Shinsekai: Into the Depths and numerous others. It’s a reminder that with a subscription service, things can go away at any time.
While we’re not seeing the same cadence of high-quality original games on Apple Arcade as we did a few years ago, I still think the service is worth the $7 per month or $50 per year subscription if you do a lot of gaming on your phone. Some of the best games in the history of the App Store are here (anything with a “plus” symbol denotes a game that was originally sold in the App Store and then brought to Apple Arcade), and there are still a number of excellent originals worth playing. It is worth noting that the “plus” games were not designed with Mac or Apple TV playback in mind and thus only work on an iPhone or iPad. These 16 games are some of the best you can play, and there are a bunch more I want to try for future inclusion on this list. In the meantime, this should be more than enough to get you started.
Apple
Threes!+
Threes! took the mobile gaming world by storm about a decade ago — it was the original “sliding numbers” puzzle game. Because the three-person development team behind Threes! had the audacity to charge for their game, tons of lesser clones quickly followed. But Threes! is the most satisfying experience, and it’s now part of Apple Arcade.
As with most perfect mobile games, the mechanism here is extremely simple and very satisfying. You slide numbers across a four-by-four grid, trying to combine a 1 and 2 into a 3, and then combining threes to make increasingly larger numbers. Each new number greets you with a goofy catchphrase, and the game has a delightful score that never gets old. If you never tried Threes! in its heyday, this is your excuse to get sucked in.
$0 at App StoreApple
What the Golf? / What the Car?
For sheer bizarre gameplay, What the Golf? and What the Car? cannot be beat. As the names suggest, golf and racing are the base-level inspirations for these games, but things get weird immediately. The first course has you drag on the screen and then release it to hit a golf ball, but after that your projectiles could be anything from a cat that needs to knock a giant frog off his perch to an egg that you need to land in a frying pan. Truly terrible puns abound, pretty much every time you finish a level; different areas of the map also have ridiculous names (“A hole new world” is just the first I noticed while writing this up). It also pulls in all sorts of different sports to keep things fresh, so expect to find yourself “golfing” on a soccer pitch, for example.
What the Car? uses the same “anything goes” ethos, applied to getting from one end of a level to the other. Of course, you’re usually not driving something that resembles a real car — instead, your car might sprout legs and run, or strap on a rocket pack for an extra vertical boost. Or your car has a set of lawn clippers and needs to cut the grass in a yard before it can exit. In almost all cases, you’re racing the clock to get as fast a time as possible, and the game cleverly puts shortcuts in places most people wouldn’t think to look. Both games are delightful in their absurdity and have a ton of content to keep you busy.
$0 at App StoreApple
Mini Motorways / Mini Metro+
Mini Motorways and its predecessor Mini Metro are the kinds of games that can be simultaneously chill and extremely stressful. The chill comes from developer Dinosaur Polo Club’s simple animations, bright but somehow also muted color schemes and minimalistic music and sound effects. The stress comes from the gameplay, which always ends up spiraling out of control.
In Mini Motorways, you’re tasked with building roads to connect houses and businesses and keep traffic flowing. It starts off simple enough, with a couple houses and a few different destinations, but your city keeps getting larger, there are more cars on the road and the layout that was so effective a few minutes earlier is suddenly strained. Mini Metro has a similar vibe, as you build subway lines and stations on a map vaguely resembling some of the world’s biggest cities.
Both games end when stations get too crowded, or cars aren’t able to get to and from their destinations. The last few minutes before it all comes crashing down is incredibly stressful, as you try to reorganize streets or completely change subway designs to keep up with the influx of passengers all in service of getting a higher score. But there’s an undeniable sense of calm that can happen when your subway line is just humming along, or when everyone in your city can get to the store. There’s nearly endless replay-ability here, too.
$0 at App StoreApple
Grindstone
I’ve been playing Grindstone on and off since Apple Arcade launched in 2019. The puzzler does just about everything right, introducing you to the marauding viking-type Jorj who has to do battle with boards full of cute but creepy enemies. From your starting point, you can trace a bath through the baddies, cutting through ones of the same color all in one move. Make a big enough combo, and you get a grindstone — this lets you switch to another color of enemies in the same chain, making it possible to string together bigger and more complex runs across the board. To beat a level, you usually need to take down a certain number of enemies, or beat a few of the higher hit-point baddies that spawn.
That’s the core mechanic, but developer Capybara Games put a ton of variety into Grindstone. Enemies get more aggressive the longer you’re on the board — so while you can rack up a lot of loot, you might also end up in a situation you can’t escape. There are world bosses that use the mechanics of the previous levels in clever ways, tons of items you can unlock and use to even the odds and a handful of extra game modes that keep things fresh. Not to mention ridiculous outfits you can equip to give Jorj additional powers, like the Santa suit that gives you random power-ups. If you asked me the first game you should download from Apple Arcade, I’d have to recommend Grindstone.
$0 at App StoreApple
Alto’s Adventure / Alto’s Odyssey
These two games are among my favorites that ever hit the App Store. The extremely chill snowboarding (and then sandboarding) games are beautiful to look at, have excellent music and sound design and there’s a ton of variety in the ways you interact with the world. That’s despite jumping being the main mode of interaction. Once you get good air, you can start pulling tricks like backflips and grinds, and eventually unlock a tool called the wingsuit that lets you float and take flight in limited fashion. It’s the kind of game you can pick up and understand immediately that also has plenty of challenge and replayability.
Perhaps the best trick of these games is the balance between a zen-like play experience and the way that the games nudge you to get better and go further. You’ll be presented with three challenges when you start a run (collect 30 coins, travel a certain distance, do 10 backflips and so forth); once you accomplish those, you’ll level up and get three more. And they can get very challenging! If you want to chase high scores, long distances and make it all the way to level 60, feel free — but if that’s not your jam, the game is still rewarding and enjoyable to play for a few minutes or the entirety of a cross-country flight.
$0 at App StoreApple
Sp!ng
Sp!ng is a classic, casual puzzle game, albeit one with a ton of polish and style. In each of the hundreds of levels included, you need to move your ball-like avatar from one end of a maze to the other. But the only way to move is if you get close to an anchor point — when that happens, you tap and hold on the screen and your ball gets pulled into orbit around that anchor. Remove your finger from the screen and your ball is flung in whatever direction it would naturally go, before gravity pulls it down. The trick is to link your path between anchors to collect gems and reach the exit while avoiding traps like spike pits.
This isn’t a very elegant description, I’ll grant you, but it’s the kind of game mechanic that you can immediately grasp. It also lends itself to a wide variety of different challenges. As the game progresses, it gets trickier to grab all the gems in a level without throwing yourself into a trap. But figuring out the right path and timing for a challenging level is extremely satisfying. It’s a classic pick-up-and-play for five minutes or two hours kind of game, and there are a ton of game modes you can unlock and different ways to customize your experience. Plus, beating your friends on a leaderboard is always fun.
$0 at App StoreApple
Monument Valley+ / Monument Valley 2+
Monument Valley and its sequel were two of the buzziest mobile games of the last decade, and they’re all about atmosphere. The artwork, minimal story, music and gameplay all combine to give an atmosphere of serenity with an undercurrent of something unexpected waiting to burst forth.
The gameplay is all about impossible geometry, as you manipulate the world around you to get your character from one end of a level to the other.
While the first game has a vague sort of story about the central character looking for forgiveness, the sequel made things a bit more concrete. You’re playing as a mother, trying to guide your child through the mazes with you, and there are various meditations both explicit and implied throughout the game. But you don’t need to be a parent to enjoy the game’s clever puzzles and extremely chill vibes. With a third Monument Valley game finally on its way, now is a great time to catch up on the first two.
$0 at App StoreApple
Crossy Road Castle
Crossy Road Castle is a quintessential platformer, designed specifically with the iPhone in mind. The game features 10 castles, each with an “infinite” number of levels (though things start getting remixed and recycled after level 100 or so). The game was built with the common portrait orientation of smartphones as the only experience, so levels typically involve a fair bit of vertical climbing. It’s the classic “avoid obstacles, grab coins, stomp on baddies” formula, but the art style and variety of animals you can unlock to control adds a unique bit of charm to the experience. It’s also a well-balanced game, not too tough, but with enough tricky challenges to keep you from mindlessly running from one stage to the next. There’s even a co-op multiplayer mode, either locally or through random online matching, for extra chaos.
$0 at App StoreApple