Best Apple Arcade games bundles fun, premium mobile and tablet games in a low-cost, $6.99-per-monthly subscription. Check out The Best Apple Arcade Games titles that will make you ditch free-to-play cash grabs.
Over the past decade, mobile devices became gaming platforms on par with devoted consoles. New phones and tablets pack enough power to deliver beautiful, complex gaming experiences, and not simply the causal fare that’s the subject of the space. But there’s nothing wrong with casual gaming!
Unluckily, the mobile gaming market has slowly devolved to the point where. Now only exploitative, free-to-play (f2p) games that extract your cash via psychological traps and microtransactions can thrive. In posse, it’s because audiences don’t want to pay money upfront.
Maybe publishers realize this model lets them earn extra profit with less work. But the reason is, we’re now at the sad point where. You can spend more money on the mediocre Mario Kart Tour than the proper Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
That’s why, as someone who believes in mobile gaming’s strength, Apple Arcade’s launch was so exciting. Per monthly for $7, Apple gives you access to a fast-developing library of nearly 200 premium games to enjoy on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV with a real controller connected. None of these games give-and-take their design with garbage (F2P) mechanics, and that’s so refreshing to see in this space.
It harkens back to mobile gaming’s promising and exciting days. For the same price, Best Apple Arcade Games arguably offers extra exclusive, high-quality original content to gamers than Apple TV offers to movie and TV fans. That streaming video service’s best show, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, happens to be about video games, anyways.
A new update lately expanded the types of games you will find on Best Apple Arcade Games. Alongside exclusive originals from most popular developers. Along with Game Club, Best Apple Arcade Games helps mobile gaming take its history seriously.
Here are the Apple Arcade titles to play right now. Note that you won’t find these games on other mobile devices, or available for purchase in the App Store outside of Apple Arcade, with some available on other dedicated gaming console and PC stores. Still, Best Apple Arcade Games is the only place you can play them in a convenient, affordable, Apple One bundle.
Table of Contents
Best 20 Apple Arcade Games in 2024
1. Air Twister
Yu Suzuki is a game design legend thanks to his work on classical Sega right, such as Out Run, Shenmue, and Virtua Fighter. Air Twister is such a delightful surprise because it’s excellent, much a spiritual successor to one of Suzuki’s greatest games: Space Harrier. In it, you soar by the sky and blast everything in sight in this apple arcade-style, on-rails shooter.
2. Assemble With Care
Assemble With Care takes tasks as mundane as unpacking a suitcase or fixing a tape recorder and fills them with the soft. Intimate puzzle—receive fun you’d expect from the makers of Monument Valley. Few developers are skilled at gearing the touch screen’s pregnant interface capabilities.
3. Card of Darkness
Card of Darkness has pleasing aesthetics, casual remixes of familiar but elegant strategy systems, and number-based card game mechanics. It’s what we’ve come to expect from Zach Gage, creator of other mobile artists, such as Really Very Bad Chess and SpellTower.
4. Cat Quest II
The original Cat Quest required it to be “Skyrim With Cats” and somehow delivered on that promise. Cat Quest II is extra of the same: an accessible, yet surprisingly deep and addictive action-RPG starring cats. This time you can play now with a friend.
5. ChuChu Rocket! Universe
ChuChu Rocket! Cosmos puts a new spin on the clever 3D, spatial puzzles of the original Sega Dreamcast games. It doesn’t change my lukewarm opinions of Sega’s final home console all the way back from 1999, but I’m glad this series made a return.
6. Crossy Road Castle
Crossy Road requested“What if Frogger was about a chicken crossing the road?” And becoming one of our all-time favorite mobile games for kids or anyone else who wants a job. Crossy Road Castle tries something else.
Instead of crossing endless roads, you control a chicken who goes to platforming levels in an endless tower. Change in genre aside, Crossy Road Castle’s challenge is still fun now. The Crossy Road right is mobile gaming royalty, after all.
7. Disney Melee Mania
Disney Melee Mania brings simultane icons, such as Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, and Princess Elsa, for madcap multiplayer action. In this simplified take on the very not easy MOBA genre, two teams of three players use their characters’ unique skills to dominate the battle arena. Forget Kingdom Hearts, here’s the real crossover you have been waiting for.
8. EarthNight
EarthNight is essentially an auto-runner, one of the most common mobile gaming genres, punctuated by the occasional bit where it feels like you’re falling from the sky. But the art is so distinct, the music so fresh, and the pace so free and fluid, that you can’t help but get into it. Also, you stab a dragon in the eye with a sword.
9. Quit the buzz
Exit the Gungeon Not a great name for a sequel to Enter the Gungeon. It retains the original ability to marry simple 2D arenas with surprisingly concise and action-packed gunfight mechanics. In this case, the touch screen actually makes firefighting a lot easier.
10. Fantasian
The creator of Final Fantasy no longer works for Square Enix, but that doesn’t mean he’s done making high-quality JRPGs. Fantasia is the latest project from Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker Studio. The turn-based gameplay may harken back to the past, but the gorgeous, bright visuals feel straight out of the future.
11. Grindstone
Grindstone is already great enough as a block-matching puzzle game where you occasionally worry about biting blocks. But it’s the satisfying carnage that happens as your beefy fantasy hero chops through the monsters that puts this game over the top. If you’ve heard of an Best Apple Arcade Games title, it’s probably this one, and for good reason.
12. Manifold Garden
Manifold Garden has been operating for years. When you play the puzzle game, you will understand why. Traveling through its impossible geometry feels like an effortless dream, but designing these trippy challenges must have been a stressful nightmare.
13. Mutazione
Mutazione is a story-heavy, melancholic adventure through a spiritual mutated natural environment. As if Game Night in the Woods was a cool version of the movie Annihilation. If you get those references, you’ll dig this game.
14. NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition
Don’t let the “arcade version” fool you. While 2K’s beloved basketball sim on Best Apple Arcade Games is somewhat simplified, you’ll still need technical skills to achieve your hoop dreams. Maintain a strong defense. Accurately time your shot on the touch screen. It looks like serious basketball, and the game’s high production quality means NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition looks like serious basketball, too.
15. Neo Cab
Neo Cab presents a barely futuristic world where you are the final human driver competing against automated rideshare services. While trying to find your missing friend. It’s really impressive. That said, I just can’t get behind being a taxi driver who talks so much to customers, which I would never want in real life.
16. Oceanhorn 2
Where the original Oceanhorn ripped The Wind Waker for its Zelda influences, Oceanhorn 2 has its hungry eyes on Breath of the Wild. But, the overall structure is still close to a traditional 3D Legend of Zelda game. It remains pretty ambitious and beautiful for a mobile adventure.
17. The Oregon Trail
Best Apple Arcade Games Oregon Tail modernizes the classic educational game for today’s youth. Not enough children know how to avoid dying from dysentery. A particularly cool update is the increased input of Aboriginal people, ensuring that cultural elements like hairstyles and music are accurately represented. Live your American pioneer life however you want.
18. Overland 2
It’s easy to say that Overland was inspired by Into the Breach, but the game has been in development for so long that it definitely isn’t. However, both are turn-based roguelikes that emphasize desperate tactics in the face of random odds rather than high, overarching strategy.
As you travel across the tiny grids that make up the desert, you’ll have to make tough decisions like how to quietly find valuable gas, when to heal your dog, and whether you should bail. The interface is designed to make the famously dense strategy genre more accessible to tabletop players, and as a result, it looks cleaner. At least, as clean as the post-apocalyptic interface can look.
19. Pinball Wizard
In a world where pinball-inspired games are becoming increasingly abstract, Pinball Wizard is relatively expansive. Each dungeon floor is a relatively traditional table, but they are full of monsters that you defeat by bouncing the adorable wizard between them.
20. Pocket Card Jockey
Developer Game Freak makes extra than just Pokemon games. The original Pocket Card Jockey is a beloved and whimsical Nintendo 3DS game that tasks you with mastering a card game to help your horse win the race. Sure! Basically, this mobile version was exclusive to Japan. But now Best Apple Arcade Games customers can gamble and race everywhere.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Unlockables with DLC Characters
Finally, we hope you will be inspired to play the games by looking at our Best Apple Arcade Games Review in 2024. Because we know these games will suit you.
