The best of mobile gaming
It would take approximately 34,506,455 years to play through every single iPhone game on the App Store. Well, OK, we might have made that number up, but surely we can't be too far off.
The App Store is crammed 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 games as humanly possible in order to tell you which are best. After many trials and tribulations, we arrived at the list you're about to dive into: the best games you can enjoy on your iPhone today.
New: Glitchskier ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)
Although Glitchskier is a fairly typical vertically scrolling shooter, it lives in its own strange little world that provides a unique sense of character.
The conceit is Glitchskier is all happening inside an ancient PC. It begins with a clacking keyboard, PC hum, and icons to click. The shooty bit involves your little ship blasting chunks of code and squadrons of letter Vs, all intent on your destruction.
A clever power-up system that restricts you to only holding the most recent two forces you to strategize. Power-ups also work as shields: get hit and you lose one, but the game world temporarily slows, Matrix-style, so you can get out of a scrape.
It’s all very smart – but over far too rapidly, when you best the last of four bosses. But then you can enter an endless world, which is far more ferocious.
Bean Dreams ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)
Precision platformer Bean dreams is more bouncing bean than jumping bean. The edible hero, decked out in a natty sombrero, bounds about colorful environme iming to grab fruit, free a hidden axolotl (a Mexican salamander, if you didn’t know), and reach the exit without getting impaled. Your part in all this: guiding the bean by prodding left or right on your iPhone.
Bean Dreams offers plenty of replay value – you can spend time learning each small level, but only on committing to memory every nook and cranny can you aim for the tiny number of bounces that unlocks a gold medal award.
And to succeed in grabbing the axolotl or getting all the fruit, you’ll often need to play again, shaking up your approach.
With plenty of variation in its stages, alternate beans with special powers, and devious puzzles lurking within, Bean Dreams is ample proof platform games can work on iPhone – when specifically designed for the system.
Towaga ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)
A novel take on a shooting game, Towga plonks protagonist Chimù atop a tower, arms him with a beam of light, hurls hideous, deadly denizens his way, mumbles something about a ‘ritual’, and then sits back and waits for the sorcerer to get his face torn off.
Suffice to say Towaga isn’t an easy game. Foes come from all directions, and need blasting until they glow. Once that’s done, they’re only vanquished when you lift your finger – at which point you temporarily stop shooting. You can see the problem: at any moment, all kinds of creatures are heading your way with a murderous glint in their eye and you have to stop shooting.
But persevere with Towaga and what is, in effect, a twin-stick shooter with the movement stick removed starts to click. You learn patterns, how to best use a second, more powerful weapon, and feel like a boss on completing your task – right before you’re dumped into the next, tougher stage.
Super Mario Run (free + $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)
Mario on iPhone could have been a disaster – a lazy port of a DS title with virtual buttons. But that’s not very Nintendo. Instead, Super Mario Run rethinks Mario for touchscreen and mobile, in a manner that initially seems reductive – even regressive – but that in time reveals a clever game with surprising depth.
In essence, it’s an auto-runner, where you tap to jump. But this isn’t Canabalt in Mario’s dungarees. Clever level design forces you to master – and subvert – perceived limitations should you want to scoop up all of the coins.
This transforms each of Super Mario Run’s admittedly smallish number of stages into a compelling mix of puzzling, precision timing, and gradual mastery of the game’s tiny worlds.
Undoubtedly, traditionalists will grumble, cheapskates will baulk at the price, and gamers on the go will rightly gripe at Nintendo’s infuriating decision to require an internet connection to play.
But we nonetheless reckon Super Mario Run is a worthy addition to the Mario canon – and a polished, playable title for iPhone.
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