Best Apple Arcade games
The second part of our guide to Apple Arcade. David Price reports
Last month we published the first part of our guide to Apple Arcade. This issue we continue revealing our favourite games. We test primarily on iPhone. We also strongly recommend that you get a hardware controller, given how many of the games benefit from one: we test with an Xbox controller and a Rotor Riot wired controller to see if this works and how well it suits the gameplay. Many games support Bluetooth controllers despite not mentioning this fact in their App Store description.
61. NEXT STOP NOWHERE
In classic noir ‘wrong guy in the wrong place’ traditions, you’re a humble but good-hearted space courier who stumbles into danger and mystery by accident. Your job in Next Stop
Nowhere is to untangle the mystery, escape the danger and keep various violent elements onside.
The likeable, imperfect characters in this point-and-click adventure game feel a lot more real than the cartoon graphics would lead you to expect. The dialogue is well written and witty and the voice acting top-notch, even if sound and on-screen text don’t always match up, confusingly.
Aside from pleasant but unchallenging exploration and dialogue-choice sections, there are bits where you fly a spaceship and try to avoid obstacles. These are more difficult, mainly because the camera view is unhelpful: sometimes a gap looks big enough to fit through but isn’t, and when playing with touchscreen controls your thumb gets in the way.
Adventure • Age 12+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controller
62. NUTS: A SURVEILLANCE MYSTERY
I get the pun, but that’s still an odd choice of name for such a sedate and laborious game. When I am told that something is nuts, I expect and demand wackiness, horseplay and zany hijinks, not methodical nature research.
The aim of the game is to track squirrels to and from their homes (dreys – at least I’ve learned something) by setting up cameras and watching back the tapes. You’ll notice that the little guy enters the frame
through a crack in the rock, so the next night you put a camera on the other side of the crack – and so on, and so on, until you find the secret den, or stash of nuts.
Nuts looks terrific, its restful forest jazzed up with psychedelic colours, and features a fresh structure and an intriguing central mystery. But it all feels a bit too much like hard work for my taste.
Adventure/Exploration • Age 9+
• Single player only • Supports hardware controller
63. SLASH QUEST!
This jolly puzzle RPG has tank controls, the rotational system you may remember from early Resident Evil games. In Resident Evil I always assumed this was intended to increase the sense of panic when a zombie appeared (although some argue tank controls are superior for fixed-camera scenarios); here, perhaps because the view is clearer and the enemies considerably less dangerous, it just feels fresh – a break from mobile convention.
And the game in general is a lot of fun. You’re running around with an intelligent sword chopping up vegetation (which produces a delightful Fruit Ninja animation) and monsters (which makes the sword bigger – eventually to a preposterous extent). Amusingly even the puzzles are sword-based, with you carrying fire and bombs around on its blade, using it to shunt blocks, or sticking it in various machines in order to be whisked to a new area.
There are normal levels, in which you have to solve puzzles and collect orbs, various challenges and mini games, and a wide range of collectibles, outfits and so on. It’s not massively challenging, but great for short sessions.
64. OVER THE ALPS
“Better with sound”, this game proclaims at the start, and the audio department clearly have talent. It’s a slight shame there isn’t more music in normal gameplay, but what there is to be had is excellent.
This is a wartime adventure spy story in which your path is based on dialogue and map choices: there’s no combat, or even any animation of your character. The things you decide to say or the routes you decide to take have consequences, in terms of the police tracking you down or events just unfolding differently.
Atmospherewise Over the Alps is top-notch, and the story is enjoyably twisty and confusing. It occasionally feels like you’re being railroaded into making specific choices, but there’s clearly a lot of content here: no matter what situation you get into, there will be multiple witty remarks for you to choose from.
Adventure • Age 12+ Single player only Supports hardware controller
65. NECROBARISTA
A cafe in a bad part of town welcomes patrons from the really wrong side of the tracks, and the conversation gets existential. That’s the setting and pretty much the entire gameplay of Necrobarista, an interactive comic book with witty writing and a great look. I
say interactive, but you’re required to do very little: most of the time you’re just tapping to activate the next line of dialogue. Still, you may be surprised how compelling it all is, thanks to the mysterious premise and believable characters.
Perhaps we could quibble with the lack of an option to invert the Y axis, and note that the on-screen controls are a shade oversensitive, but these controls are used so little that it’s not much of a hindrance. The real deciding factor is your capacity to sit back and listen to a fascinating story; if that sounds appealing, this is the game for you.
Adventure • Age 12+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controller
66. FLEDGLING HEROES
Single-button 2D platformer in the Flappy Bird vein, bolstered by varied level design and lots of collectibles.
There are six birds with disparate play styles – a parrot flies as you tap, a penguin swims, a partridge runs and jumps – and a surprising amount of depth, with dozens of levels split across three big worlds. An ingenious addition to this is a level editor, which allows you to create fiendish challenges of your own, and play those devised by others (which are frequently ludicrously difficult).
It says a lot about Fledgling Heroes that I found it frustrating to play, yet persisted far beyond the time necessary to write up a fair review: it’s undeniably moreish. I haven’t got every single achievement yet – some are extremely tricky – but just can’t stop trying.
Platformer • Age 9+ • 1-2 players • Supports hardware controller
67. DOOMSDAY VAULT
There’s something very restful about this robotic eco-puzzler.
You wander around the wreckage of an ominously familiar fallen
civilization, Wall-E style (although you look more like his co-star Eve), collecting endangered plants and the nutrients required to sustain them. There are walls to climb, buttons to press, pressure pads to weigh down with boxes and obstacles that need to be blown or powered up by tools you acquire over the course of the game.
There’s little jeopardy in all this, with no time pressure and comparatively little chance of failure (without the puzzles ever becoming boringly straightforward), and the whole thing, from the look and level design to the excellent music, is very lovely. My only quibble is Doomsday Vault’s occasional tendency to boot you out of a session with the loss of recent progress: this seems most common when you go from off- to online play and vice versa, and adds an incongruously stressful element to an otherwise soul-soothing game.
Puzzle/Adventure • Age 4+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controller
68. CHARRUA SOCCER
The first thing you notice about Charrua is that it’s fast: you zip around the field and the ball sticks to your feet. You can literally run rings around the defenders, until your player gets tired and you have to pass or get tackled.
And the way you pass and shoot is weird too: the longer you hold the button, the harder you kick it. Your guy literally pauses to charge up, which gives the other team a chance to get in there with a tackle. Oddly this mechanic hurts defenders most, because you rarely have time to wind up for the classic Tony Adams hoof upfield.
In objective terms this isn’t a great game. An update seems to have ironed out the balance issues – the days of 7-1 victories appear to be gone – but issues remain with the AI, which is still prone to eccentric kick-offs, defensive howlers and similar. Nevertheless it’s quirky and good-looking and masses of fun, so it’s a recommendation.
Sport • Age 4+ • 1-2 players • Supports hardware controller
69. BEYOND A STEEL SKY
Quite a coup, this: Apple managed to get the long-awaited sequel to the 1994 classic Beneath A Steel Sky to launch first on Arcade, with the Steam release delayed until the following month. This too is a point-and-click adventure game set in a dystopian near-future Australia, and there’s much to like. The distinctive cartoonish graphics are vividly lovely and the voice acting is excellent; the puzzles are tricky but highly rewarding when you crack them; and the game has real substance to it. It’s pretty funny, too.
When it first came out I warned that BASS contained a worrying number of bugs and other imperfections, some of them game-breaking. But the makers have taken the criticism on board and things seem to be much improved.
Adventure • Age 12+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controller
70. BLEK+
Minimalist, brainpummelling puzzler in which you create little line animations that then repeat themselves until – hopefully – they’ve touched all of the targets on the level while avoiding the obstacles.
There’s quite a lot of trial and error, and the total lack of explanation can be daunting at times. But it’s unlike anything else on Arcade, and maybe even on the App Store.
Puzzle Age 4+ • Single player only • No controller support
71. OCEANHORN: CHRONOS DUNGEON
The App Store listing calls this a co-op adventure, which is odd given that it doesn’t support multiplayer. It’s got a definite Gauntlet vibe going on and having four of you zipping around at once would have been joyous. Blue wizard needs food!
In the absence of multiplayer you’re left with a very different kind of co-op action game: one where a single player cycles between the four characters as and when their various strengths are appropriate. In reality you don’t need to swap all that much – it’s all combat with a touch of dungeon exploration rather than actual puzzles requiring special abilities – and I tended to just play my favourite mage character
unless and until he died (which is rare because he’s so great).
Conceptually, then, this isn’t groundbreaking stuff. But the game succeeds by offering nostalgic, evocative graphics, great music and addictive gameplay.
RPG • Age 9+ • 1-2 players • Supports hardware controller (recommended)
72. MARBLE IT UP: MAYHEM!
Games tend to get more complicated as they go on. Marble It Up is a case in point: the first few levels just get you to zoom around a track as fast and as recklessly as possible, but it later adds power-ups, moving platforms, gems that need to be collected and an overall requirement that you slow things down and be a bit more patient.
It’s all good fun, and I understand the need for variety, but the game is most compelling when it keeps things simple. There’s something about that tight first-person view: you’re right there with the marble, pelting along at top speed, following it down into the void every time you miss a jump. I love it.
Sadly, however, the on-screen controls are awkward and a hardware controller is virtually required, even though Marble It Up occasionally got confused about button labelling.
Arcade • Age 4+ • 1-10 players • Supports hardware controller
73. SPEED DEMONS
Simple-looking but kickass top-down racing game that’s terrific at creating a sense of speed and danger. The music is exciting, there’s a huge variety of missions – sometimes you’re trying to make checkpoints, sometimes you’re deliberately wrecking targets, sometimes you’re running away from baddies – and weaving through a particularly mad traffic jam feels great.
One potential weak spot, however, concerns the controls. Acceleration is
automatic, so you just need to handle the steering by swiping left or right; but the tight portrait layout and a natural tendency for your thumb to creep upwards means you often end up obscuring the vehicle. A hardware controller makes things easier.
Driving • Age 4+ • 1-10 players • Supports hardware controller
74. EXIT THE GUNGEON
Fiendishly difficult bullet-hell shooter with lo-fi graphics and a great sense of humour. You’re trying to escape from the ‘Gungeon’ by ascending through levels infested with gun- and pun-toting bad guys. Fortunately you have a gun of your own (which continually changes form, enabling you to shoot skulls, bubbles and musical notes as well as the more traditional bullets) and the ability to evade danger with dodge rolls.
Early runs will end in swift death, but stick with it; the game rewards perseverance. If you liked Super Crate Box – and who didn’t? – then you’ll love this.
Shooter • Age 12+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controller
75. SHOCKRODS
Exhilarating shooter in which