Free iPhone games have a reputation for being rubbish and full of IAP. But whether you've got an iPhone 14 Pro Max, an iPhone SE (2022), or any other model, loads of superb free titles await your twitchy gaming thumbs – if you know where to look.
To save you the effort of finding them, we’ve compiled the best here, split into handy categories. So if you fancy an arcade blast, a brain-bending puzzle, or a thrilling racer – for free – read on.
Plus, check back every month for our latest favorite free iPhone game, which you'll find below.
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Best new free iPhone game
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Kitty Death Room
Kitty Death Room tasks a cute little moggie with uncovering the secrets of a mysterious tower – which happens to be full of deadly traps. Fortunately, the cat can munch green pills dotted about and then expel ghost-like versions of itself that subsequently act as solid platforms.
Figuring out where to place these spectral stepping stones is often key to accessing hard-to-reach areas, including each level’s goal.
There’s a lot going on in the game, from brain-thumping route-finding to tense boss areas. There’s an underlying current of eeriness tinged with melancholy too, not least when the cat converses with other figures in the tower. In all, it’s an excellent install, whether you choose to breathe in the atmosphere or just blaze through every area in speedrun fashion.
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The best free arcade games for iPhone
Our favorite free iPhone arcade games, including brawlers and fighting games, auto-runners, party games, pinball, and retro classics.
That’s a cow
That’s a cow amounts to a bovine-oriented level-based take on classic one-thumb leapy game Canabalt. Cowabalt, if you will. But rather than tapping to make the mooing protagonist jump over gaps in the landscape, you drag a finger to have the star pump out a seemingly endless supply of milk. Along with plastering the scenery and dealing with enemies, this dairy delight acts as your means of propulsion.
Levels are short, but that doesn’t mean getting to the end is easy. The controls take a while to grasp, and each of the brief tests is full of hazards to avoid, foes to deal with, and coins and other bonuses to collect. It’s all extremely silly and rather charming. And if you do well, you get the chance to pluck a new cow from an amoosing toy machine mini game.
Catchee
Catchee is a happy musical catching game where Catchables scroll down from the top of the screen and you scoop them up in a bowl. Well, at least in theory. Once it gets going, this is the kind of breakneck arcade test that will leave your heart thumping when you reach the end of a song without all your Catchables ending up a splattered mess on the floor.
Fortunately, it’s not random. There are patterns you can learn and tricks to perform – have a Catchable bounce on the edge of the bowl and then scoop it up and you ramp up your points – and your energy meter. It’s exhilarating stuff. And although the game shows everything it’s about within the first few minutes, like the best arcade tests it only gets better with repeat play.
Froglike: The Frog Roguelike
Froglike: The Frog Roguelike rethinks Frogger for the modern mobile era. Rather than tasking an amphibian with crossing a road and a river, everything’s a bit more ambitious here. You must keep the Lily of Time alive, in order to stop the end of time itself. Yikes!
What this means in gameplay terms is jumping around lily pads and ideally parking your froggy butt on the biggest lily, to charge it up until a portal appears. You can then choose a power-up before returning to the fray. The entire game is quite a brawl, featuring all kinds of enemies keen to send you plunging into the deadly drink surrounding the lilies.
With responsive controls, vibrant visuals and in-game upgrades, this top-notch high-score chaser radically improves on the decades-old classic that served as its inspiration.
Zombie Football
Zombie Football is a deranged mash-up of exciting touchdown runs, The Walking Dead, and classic coin-op Gauntlet. In each level, the traditional green football field is peppered with obstacles, and hordes of lurching, ravenous undead. Clearly, the ratings needed a nudge.
Your aim in this free iPhone game is to not get horribly killed. You must figure out how to coax zombies this way and that (thereby clearing a path for your touchdown), avoid speed-sapping mud, and grab energy-boosting food that’s lying around. (Don’t think too much about the hygiene ramifications.)
It’s an entertainingly daft blast, not least when you realize your burly footballer can’t even stomp through cones, and so must gingerly thread his way through the gnashing, toothy opposition. Also, there are no ads, timers, or other cruft – free really does mean free here.
Yokai Dungeon
Yokai Dungeon is a fast-paced arcade title that involves running about and squashing demons. It’s set in a series of linked arenas, which are peppered with movable objects you can use to unsportingly squash your adversaries against a wall.
The Japanese-themed game looks superb, whether you’re moseying to the between-stages shop or taking on one of the large bosses in an end of stage battle. Most importantly, it plays really well, with fluid and intuitive controls.
With its grid-like structure and non-stop action, old hands might detect a hint of Bomberman; veterans will find Pengo coming to mind. But despite such retro inspiration, and the old-school pixel art, Yokai Dungeon feels every bit the modern iPhone title, with a sleek design, bite-sized battles, and approachable gameplay that’s suited to newcomers and seasoned gamers alike.
Knight Brawl
Knight Brawl takes the amusingly bouncy physics and frenetic skirmishes from Colin Lane’s mobile sports gems – Dunkers 2; Touchdowners; Rowdy Wrestling – and applies them to knights who fancy getting a bit stabby.
Your knights leap about the place in a somewhat controllable manner. With deft button taps – and a little luck – you can quickly relieve opponents of helmets and shields, prior to delivering the killing blow.
Only that’s barely scratching the surface, because Knight Brawl is absurdly generous with what you get. There are multiple battle modes and also quest-like missions, where you get to leap into a castle and duff everyone up. It’s bonkers, entertaining, superb stuff, and seriously raises the bar on Lane’s work – which was already impressive to start with.
Project Loading
Project Loading is a speedrun arcade test about the adventures of a loading bar on its way to reach 100%. Yes, you read that right: the star here is the bane of many computer users’ existence – a loading bar.
In Project Loading’s universe, though, loading bars don’t slowly inch from left to right – they must cope with slow-down and speed-up mats, deadly giant crosses and bouncers. To aid their way, there are restart points, and gold stars to collect, but everything happens against the clock. There’s no dawdling for loading bars here.
It’s an interesting conceit, lifted by clever level design, arty visuals, and responsive tilt controls. However, given how tricky later stages are, you’ll likely never gripe about a standard loading bar again.
Boost Buddies
Boost Buddies is a twitch-based arcade effort, where you’re a cat in a box, trying to reach a crown. Fortunately for the cat, the box is rocket-powered, boosted every time you tap. Less fortunately, between the cat and the crown are… things.
Sometimes you’re pitted against massive laser beams or swinging axes. Occasionally you’re blown about by fans, or chased by critters. Quite what’s going on, we’ve no idea, but it’s a lot of fun figuring out how to beat each test, and stringing together high scores.
Do well enough and you can add to your menagerie of boosting beasts, each of which get their own music and background visuals. And while the game’s basic nature means sessions don’t last an age, it’s always good for giving you a quick boost yourself.
Williams Pinball
Williams Pinball recreates – and augments – a range of classic Williams tables on your iPhone. It then bakes them into a freemium business model that’s, perhaps surprisingly, actually pretty good.
Select a starter table, and that one’s unlocked from the get-go. You’ll be playing this one a lot, so choose wisely. (The superb Attack From Mars is a good bet.) You then partake in daily challenges to boost your XP, win parts, and unlock other tables.
Eventually, tables are unlocked for offline play, and optionally have animated components, like Zen Pinball’s more fantastical tables. Getting there is a grind, but you’re playing superbly simulated pinball, so that’s no great hardship. And even though pinball is admittedly a bit fiddly on the iPhone, any progress made is instantly zipped across all your devices via iCloud.
Unicycle Giraffe
Unicycle Giraffe is a balancing game that features a unicycle and a giraffe. Unfortunately for the giraffe, it attempts to ride said unicycle – not a comfortable state of being for the typical ungulate. It’s all very comical, though, as your giraffe wobbles left and right, before seconds later inevitably crashing to the floor in a tangle of legs and neck.
Despite being a one-note game, Unicycle Giraffe rewards mastery with the sheer thrill of staying seated for a few precious extra seconds. Rescuing yourself from very nearly overbalancing is fun, and extra risk comes by way of coins and bombs to tap elsewhere on the screen.
There’s little longevity, of course (short of ‘upgrading’ the animal with new hats and skins), but this one’s endearing, and always good for a quick blast.
Don’t Trip
Don’t Trip has you direct stompy feet through increasingly surreal terrain. You start off in a kitchen that could do with a tidy-up. Last long enough and you find yourself avoiding crazed vacuum cleaners decked out with knives and axes. Eventually, you end up fleeing from lava, splashing in swimming pools and walking in space.
This all comes off as quite trippy, and that’s only exacerbated by the viewpoint and controls. Everything is zoomed in to the point you can barely see where to head, and the controls have you press the screen to plant a foot, and rotate your phone to find space for the next step. Don’t Trip! really is a game very much designed with mobile in mind – and it’s all the better for it.
Train Party
Train Party is an arcade-oriented puzzle game designed for multiple people to play together. Between two and 12 people on the same Wi-Fi network do their best to keep the train on time, largely by laying down tracks in front of it. In order to avoid disastrous derailment, you must also figure out how to deal with roaming wildlife and a renegade track bomber.
There are two ways to play: collaboratively and competitively. In the former case, the train always heads to the player with the most complete track, so you can keep going for as long as possible. In competition mode, though, the train goes around devices in order, and the winner is the last person not to turn the 9:45 to Washington Union Station into a crumpled heap of twisted metal.
