The 40 best iPhone and iPad games right now

The 40 best iPhone and iPad games right now

How we scoffed when people suggested the iPhone would one day be a leading games platform. Had they not seen how rubbish mobile phone games were? Had they not noticed the iPhone was bereft of a D-pad and buttons? The fools! Only things didn’t turn out as expected: games became increasingly immersive as you interacted directly with content, ushering in new experiences through no longer being able to rely on traditional controls. And then the iPad did it all again – only bigger! This list includes the very best premium and free titles the iPhone and iPad have to offer.

1) GRID AUTOSPORT

You hear the term ‘console quality’ quite a lot with mobile games, but GRID Autosport actually is the Codemasters AAA hit shoved into your iPhone or iPad. This means you get 100 cars, 100 circuits, and a ton of options to adjust how everything works. If you’re a beginner, keep all the driving aids on and tootle around in a Touring Car, until you get to grips with everything. A veteran? Go for the toughest difficulty and get your cockiness handed to you by losing control and driving your shiny race car into a wall.

2) NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED

Fortunately, Most Wanted’s gameplay isn’t nearly as grey as the tracks that you find yourself zooming along for street-racer glory. You find yourself hurling your car recklessly off clifftops (having, naturally, crashed through an advertising hoarding first), drifting around bends, or smashing up the Fuzz, if they’re stupid enough to get in the way of your race-winning ambitions while partaking in high-octane thrills.

3) AG DRIVE

Beaming in from the future, AG Drive is more or less Wipeout for your iOS device. It looks superb, gleaming metal tracks flinging you about like the most furious of rollercoasters, while a gorgeous sunset or fierce electrical zap threatens to distract your attention for a fraction of a second too long.

4) RECKLESS RACING 3

This third entry in the Reckless Racing series balances charm with depth, letting you power-slide through a wide range of settings, including an airport, a European hilltop village and, worryingly, an abandoned and very clearly leaking nuclear plant. The physics is a bit light, and the AI a touch aggressive, but this is as fun a top-down racer as you’ll find on mobile.

5) PIGEON WINGS

Imagine a blazingly fast side-on racer that marries the twitch instadeath appeal of ALONE… with the slipstreaming of MarioKart, and adds an awful lot of pigeons. That’s Pigeon Wings. Your heroic bird is charged with saving the city from an evil person with too much money, and trains by racing other pigeons between tower blocks and through subway tunnels. Naturally, they all pilot tiny planes rather than use their own wings.

6) SUPER STICKMAN GOLF 3

A larger-than-life side-on mini-golf extravaganza, Super Stickman 3 sees you thwacking balls about giant forests, space stations distinctly lacking in gravity, and strange fortresses with a suspiciously high deadly laser count. The single-player game’s fun, but SSMG 3 comes into its own in multiplayer, whether you’re taking the more sedate turn-by-turn route or ball-smacking at speed in the frenetic race mode.

7) TOUCHGRIND SKATE 2

This one takes a rather literal stance regarding controlling a sports game with your fingers. The board appears on the screen and your fingers become tiny legs, enabling you to perform gnarly and rad tricks, man! Irksome lingo aside, this is a fantastic title that’s initially demanding but hugely rewarding once mastered.

8) MOTORSPORT MANAGER MOBILE 2

Football management’s fine, but do you really want to spend your time micro-managing entitled pig-skin hoofers? How about delving into motor racing instead, watching nutcases blaze around circuits at breakneck speed? That’s more like it! In Motorsport Manager Mobile 2, you run a team, juggling drivers, sponsors, cash, and kit, before heading to the track for race days. Despite depicting discs zipping about a top-down circuit, races are tense and exciting – unless you lose, in which case they’re of course rubbish.

9) ACTIVE SOCCER 2 DX

Forget your FIFAs and Pro Evos – on mobile, they either desperately miss a gamepad, or get stripped back to the point the game’s almost playing itself. Active Soccer 2 DX, though, skirts right on the edge of controllable, with high-octane footie that marries the beautiful game with an absurdist pinball. And, beyond the arcade smarts, there’s loads to dig into – over 1000 teams, several camera views, and various competitions.

10) WORLD TOUR GOLF

With EA having deserted ‘proper’ golf games on mobile for the arcadey nonsense of King of the Course, WGT thwacks a ball and gets a realism hole-in-one. This really is a quite astonishing game, from the delicate controls through to the eye-popping photo-realistic courses you play on. A word of warning: it also takes no prisoners. There’s no nonchalantly spinning a ball in mid-air when you fluff a shot.

11) MINI METRO

For anyone immersed in the daily hell of a commute involving an underground, the notion of designing such a system might seem unappealing. But Mini Metro is captivating from the first train you unleash. It builds slowly. You connect a few stations by drawing a line, and passengers are ferried about, alighting at the first station that matches their shape. But he calm doesn’t last: as time passes, new passengers and stations appear, ramping up the tension and forcing you to juggle scant resources.

12) CIVILIZATION VI

You don’t get ‘proper’ games on an iPad, apparently. Which probably comes as a shock to anyone who’s installed Civilization VI. They’re probably also a bit gobsmacked that this really is the full 4X (eXplore; eXpand; eXploit; eXterminate) PC game shoved into Apple’s tablet. It works really nicely, too, with smartly designed controls, and the kind of depth that can feasibly have a single game last for days. (Which might be a concern to Civ obsessives, now it’s on a properly mobile device.)

13) CARD THIEF

Although it’s since departed this particular list, we at Stuff remain big fans of Hitman GO, which cleverly reimagined stealth as turn-based puzzling. Card Thief does much the same, but adds Solitaire to the mix. This means all your sneaking about involves figuring out pathways across a three-by-three grid of cards dealt on to the table.

14) SPELLTOWER

At first, SpellTower seems very simple and innocuous. You get a tower of letters, and drag out words. Tiles disappear and gravity reminds any floating tiles they should perhaps consider obeying natural phenomenon. Rinse and repeat. But then you unlock Puzzle Mode, where every word you clear adds another row of letters. Finally, Rush Mode showcases the title’s devious streak, a timer relentlessly ticking, rapidly adding new rows of tiles, many of which come badged with numbers denoting the minimum letters a word needs in order to remove them.

15) TYPESHIFT

It turns out the newspaper crossword was ripe for subversion in the digital realm. TypeShift uses this ancient puzzle formula but reimagines it for mobile play. Instead of a static grid, you get columns of letters that move, the aim being to make a word in the central row. When all letters have been used, the puzzle is complete.

16) DROP WIZARD

The jolly tunes, pixelated graphics and single-screen action here bring to mind 1980s platform games Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros. However, Drop Wizard is a thoroughly modern creation, perfectly suited to mobile. It boasts a bite-sized pick-up-and-play structure, short level sets ending with battles against ginormous bosses. Most importantly, the controls are pitch-perfect. Instead of run/jump/fire, you can only auto-run left or right and fall down holes.

17) MILES & KILO

Although this one initially resembles a sweet-natured platform game from the 1980s, Miles & Kilo has a vicious streak that’d sooner take your face off. With its auto-runner controls and carefully choreographed levels, there’s a whiff of Super Mario Run. But this effort’s faster, tougher, and better than Nintendo’s.

18) TELEPAINT

Described as ‘Portal meets Lemmings’, Telepaint finds you helping clockwork automaton paintpots reach their paintbrush pals. Each single-screen test involves figuring out how to utilise teleporters to blast your pot in the right direction, simultaneously splattering the otherwise gloomy industrial surroundings with vibrant colour. Early levels are just simple enough for you to get cocky, whereupon Telepaint gleefully smacks your brains out with a Dulux catalogue wrapped around a brick.

19) LIMBO

We usually wear our suspicious look when faced with platform games on iOS, because most of them are terrible; even more so when they’ve been punted across from another platform. Amazingly, LIMBO loses nothing in its translation from consoles. The spooky, grim, creepy experience, akin to Groundhog Day in hell, remains a nightmarish vision of genius on the touchscreen, whether your tiny adventurer is being impaled by a giant spider or inching his way past deadly blades.

20) KALIMBA

Are you the kind of person who finds Canabalt a bit too simple? Reckon you could play two leapy games at once? Kalimba will deflect such bluster right back at you. In a game at times almost akin to juggling, you simultaneously control two totem pole pieces. At first, you’re just jumping over the odd hole, but before long you’re switching colours to speed through mystical barriers, while being chased by a terrifying screen-high demon.

21) YEAR WALK

Rich in Swedish folklore, Year Walk has you venture into the cold, dark woods, where strange creatures lurk and terrible events blur reality and fiction, past and present. With an interface that resembles a creepy, twisted picture book, you must discern clues, unravelling the dark secrets of the forest. Literal horror awaits, along with one of the finest conclusions of any modern adventure title.

22) DEVICE 6

You know you’re in for a treat as soon as Device 6 launches, unleashing a ballsy credits sequence any classic spy show would be proud to call its own. It then dumps you on a remote island with a name (Anna) and absolutely no idea of how you got there or what to do next. You navigate the story — literally, since words form corridors you travel along — trying to make sense of what you see and hear, to complete cryptic puzzles and unravel the island’s secrets.

23) DEATH ROAD TO CANADA

This game is like if someone had made The Walking Dead on the SNES, fashioning a home conversion lacking in gore but laced with black humour. The randomly generated road trip has you travel from Florida to the reported safety of Canada. One moment, you’ll be scavenging for supplies with your little crew, smacking zombies with brooms, and finding a surprising amount of petrol hidden in toilets.

24) LOVE YOU TO BITS

Love You to Bits is an old-school point-and-click adventure reimagined for touchscreen. Rookie space explorer Kosmo searches planets for parts of his robot girlfriend (don’t think too hard about that), regularly finding himself immersed in challenges littered with pop-culture references.

25) HER STORY

In Her Story, your device is temporarily transformed into an ancient desktop PC. As it whirrs and clanks into life, you see a window for the L.O.G.I.C. Database, ominously pre-populated with a search term: MURDER. Hit ‘Search’ and video fragments appear, all of a woman being interviewed by police. If you’re a remotely inquisitive sort, that’ll be it for you. Hours will be spent eking out clues from everything the woman says, and trying to unravel mysteries within mysteries.

26) EUCLIDEAN LANDS

This stunning turn-based puzzler borrows from Monument Valley’s minimalist isometric views, Hitman GO’s turn-based puzzles, and the twisty-turny nature of a Rubik’s Cube. Your aim across 40 tiny geometric worlds hanging in space is to figure out how to reach and brutally stab enemies who can be lurking on any surface.

27) THREES!

Threes! is one of those rare things in puzzle games: a new idea. As you swipe, every tile on the four-by-four board moves, and pairs merge and level up. Matters are complicated by a new tile being added on the edge you swiped from during every move. The aim is therefore to keep going until you run out of space, planning ahead to create upgrade chains that put off the inevitable deadlock.

28) WORLD OF GOO HD

2D Boy’s beautiful and surreal physics puzzler didn’t start out on iOS, but it really made sense once converted to it. The story centres on the World of Goo Corporation — seemingly a global leader in wrecking a planet — and the curious little Goo Balls that inhabit and power the world. Puzzles mostly involve inventive ways of using Goo to build structures to a pipe that sucks the oblivious blobs to ‘Goo Heaven’ (i.e. a power plant).

29) FROST

FROST doesn’t feel like a conventional puzzle game. Instead, it’s more like several dozen sandboxes, which allow you to play with living works of art composed of flitting swarms and neon streams that scythe their way across the screen. But there is a point behind the beauty: to guide the swarms to orbs. This largely involves carving pathways that interact with on-screen elements in different ways.

30) SNAKEBIRD

This puzzle game looks sweet and innocent with its grumpy cartoon birds and vibrant colours. The mechanics seem simple too: swipe to guide your snakebird to fruit, which when munched expands the crabby freak of nature; then make for the exit. But Snakebird was designed by a sadist seemly determined to smash your brains out. Pretty soon you’re staring at the screen, having made judicious use of the generous unlimited undos, convinced a puzzle is impossible.

31) GEOMETRY WARS 3: DIMENSIONS EVOLVED

This is the kind of blaster you want to shove in the face of anyone who whines that mobile can’t do proper console games. As with previous entries in the Geometry Wars series, Dimensions Evolved is a twin-stick shooter where you face legions of lurid beasties intent on your destruction. Only this time, everything’s in 3D.

32) STEREDENN

A retro-infused shooter with attitude, Steredenn is all raucous rock guitar soundtrack and chunky graphics. As the riffs are squealing in your ear, you pit your ship against waves of aliens, randomly hurled your way. Some are massive bosses, which when you defeat them replenish your shields. Others are nippy little buggers with giant chainsaws welded to their cockpits.

33) DARKSIDE

This twin-stick shooter takes classic arcade title Asteroids and wraps it around gorgeous planetoids. The visuals are a treat, from the organic, spinning space rocks, to the pyrotechnics on display as your ship attempts to obliterate everything around it.

34) THE BUG BUTCHER

Scientists have got a lot to answer for, what with their creating massive genetic monsters. In The Bug Butcher, most have apparently answered by being devoured by said horrors, which happen to have huge teeth; but one hapless survivor remains, which you must protect by shooting ALL THE THINGS. (Except for the scientist.)

35) TANKS! – SEEK & DESTROY

Formerly known as Panzerkampf 3, Tanks! – Seek & Destroy now has a far more sensible name to match its no-nonsense gameplay. You’re essentially dumped in a sparse vector landscape, and charged with blowing away endless hordes of tanks. Visually, the game echoes arcade classic Battlezone, but the controls are reminiscent of a racer’s, and the frenetic, breakneck gameplay offers the relentless intensity of the most vicious modern shooters.

36) OSMOS

Osmos is best described as an ambient arcade game. Although demanding quick thinking and fast reflexes, it also rewards planning and patience. The aim is to grow your mote, which can absorb those smaller than itself and get about the place by ejecting matter. In moving and causing your mote to shrink, you discover an uneasy balancing act must be continually played out as you explore playgrounds that echo microscopic primordial soup through to solar systems with deadly sun-like ‘attractors’ and dozens of orbiting motes.

37) BEAT SNEAK BANDIT

Beat Sneak Bandit is a combination of arcade, stealth, rhythm action, platformer, and path-finding game, all controlled by a single thumb tapping the screen. Ambitious? You bet. But one of the best games on iOS? Undoubtedly. You play as the titular thief, sneaking about single-screen levels, trying to grab all the clocks and not get spotted by guards and spotlights. The snag: you can only move on the beat.

38) ELISS INFINITY

When Eliss arrived in 2009, it was a game that defined the iPhone, fully taking advantage of multitouch. You had to contain and manipulate planets, which could be torn apart or merged before being dragged to portals of appropriate size and colour. Years later, this semi-sequel still feels fresh, and in later levels success demands intricate yet speedy finger gymnastics.

39) POWER HOVER

In a world devoid of humans, robots have seemingly taken up hoverboarding and kleptomania. This could have all been painfully generic, but Power Hover pushes everything to the max. The simple controls — left or right, and that’s it — are twinned with floaty physics that lends the game a unique feel.

40) HOPIKO

Gaming’s dead. A virus infected hardware worldwide and enslaved the HoPiKo who ran the games. Except one. You know what comes next. Yep: muggins must rip through hundreds of levels, obliterating evil code by punching it in the face. HoPiKo plays out at serious speed. This is super-fast twitch action that feels like someone strapped a top-down leapy game to Super Hexagon.