The best Apple Arcade games bring fun to your Apple device, whether that’s an iPhone or an iPad. Many of the games that get added to the service (and new games are added every single month!) are enhanced to let you comfortably play them on your iOS device of choice, and you can find exclusives as well as mobile versions of big indie hits.
Whether you just want to play mobile classics such as Jetpack Joyride or take a PC favourite with you, any iOS device will play Apple Arcade games, such as the iPhone 14 or the Apple iPad Pro 12.9. We’ve found you both the best upcoming games on the service as well as those games that are as fun (or even more fun) to play on the go on a touch-based system. The times that people thought of mobile gaming as a largely casual affair are well and truly over, as a large percentage of games on the service proves.
There’s currently no subscription service that offers the same amount of choice like Apple Arcade, and it’s this fantastic diversity of games to choose from that we want to highlight with our list of the best Apple Arcade games.
Best Apple Arcade games
New Apple Arcade games
Best Apple Arcade games: Action
Baldo: The Guardian Owls
Genre: Action
Best played with: iPhone
Italian development studio Naps Team has forged an alchemical mix of anime-visuals and classic Zelda mechanics into its new game Baldo: The Guardian Owls.
This is a fun journey through magical lands with puzzles to solve and mysteries to unravel every step of the way.
TechRadar spoke to Domenico Barba, the Naps Team programmer and studio co-founder. “There is about 50 to 100 hours of gameplay depending on if you’re a skilled player, or want to do every side quest, so it’s quite huge,” Barba tells us.
“There’s a lot of Monkey Island influence in there,” reveals Barba. “It's more about the humor, some puzzles stuck out in our memory. And also there are some cameos. There are some places in chapter two where it's a direct homage to the Monday Island series. But the main inspiration is Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki - it’s our homage to those masters.”
The game is also available on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
Play Baldo: The Guardian Owls on Apple Arcade
Bleak Sword
Genre: Action
Best played with: iPhone
Fire up the likes of Dark Souls on a PlayStation 4, and you can stomp about a beautifully rendered environment, hacking to bits all manner of adversaries with your medieval-era weapons. Bleak Sword is to a great extent the same game – albeit stripped back for mobile play, and with visuals that appear to have escaped from a 1980s PC.
Protagonists and enemies alike are stylized pixelated stickmen, but the controls are all modern gestures. It quickly becomes second nature to roll, parry, and hack to pieces anything that comes your way, from giant forest critters to enemies with unfeasibly large swords.
Curiously, Bleak Sword doesn’t work nearly as well with a controller. It really pays to spend a little time learning the touchscreen controls on an iPhone, and marveling at how such a game can work so well when you’re pawing at glass instead of having your mitts wrapped around a gamepad.
Play Bleak Sword on Apple Arcade
Disney Melee Mania
Genre: Action/Battle
Best played with: Any system
This fun battle-style game allows you to play as some of your favorite Disney and Pixar characters, like Wreck-It Ralph, Elsa, Moana, Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear.
Enter a virtual arena and battle in 3v3 matches with friends and enemies to become the ultimate Disney champion. To make things even more fun, the fighting is fast and frenzied (great for playing a quick game while you're on the move) and there are obstacles to dodge as you battle it out.
There are different game modes to choose from, ways to customize your character's costumes and one-off events to bag yourself points and prizes, too.
Play Disney Melee Mania on Apple Arcade
Pac-Man Party Royale
Genre: Arcade
Best played with: Any system
Pac-Man has been around the block many a time and is reportedly the sole videogame character with more widespread recognition than Mario.
Party Royale Pac-Man's modus operandi, with him zooming about a maze whilst eating dots and avoiding ghosts. Only this time, you’re playing against friends (or AI ‘Pac-Bots’, which adorably have little antennae on their heads). As you munch dots, you'll gain speed and raise your chances of catching a marching Super Pellet that transforms you into a temporarily-unstoppable, foe-devouring chomping machine.
To win, you must be the last Pac-Man standing. And if you get gobbled, you at least don’t have to sit twiddling your thumbs – you come back as a colorful ghost to haunt and pursue anyone still left in the game.
Play Pac-Man Party Royale on Apple Arcade
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Genre: Rhythm action
Best played with: Apple TV/iPad with controller, Mac
Described as a pop-album video game, Sayonara Wild Hearts finds The Fool, a heartbroken woman, charged by all-powerful beings with bringing balance back to the universe. As if she didn’t already have enough to deal with.
The game plays out as a rhythm-action game. You blaze along in 3D, scooping up collectibles by getting yourself into the right lane at the right moment. With vibrant scenery whizzing past you at a mile a minute, it’s easy to be distracted and crash plenty of times at first. This game is really made for a controller.
When better placed to move The Fool around, though, you can learn a level’s choreography, and get fully into the zone. The effect is wonderful – akin to Guitar Hero smashed into Rez, but also its own thing. Finish the game and you unlock a superb bonus, where you can take in the entire intoxicating experience from beginning to end and soak up the essence of the full album.
Play Sayonara Wild Hearts on Apple Arcade
Super Impossible Road
Genre: Racing
Best played with: iPhone
At some point in the future, humanity gets a bit bored with having people race on tarmac. Instead, they’re dumped inside metal balls and hurled along terrifying roller-coaster tracks that twist and whirl through space.
Initially, your aim is merely to keep on the impossible road – either for as long as you can, or in the time gate mode until the clock runs down. But then there are the races, whereupon one other cunning tactic comes into play: cheating.
In Super Impossible Road, you can leap off of the track and rejoin later, sneakily getting ahead of your opponents. Only if you miss, you’ll end up back at a restart point, with a bruised ego and ground to make up.
This one’s tricky to master, but a dizzying thrill-ride once it clicks. And multiple modes, tracks, and vehicles should keep you playing for the long term.
Play Super Impossible Road on Apple Arcade
Survival Z
Genre: Survival
Best played with: iPhone
You know the zombie drill – there's been some big event and now the living dead are roaming the Earth. You've survived and your mission is to find other survivors while not getting gobbled up by all the walking corpses. There's a lot of zombie shooting in this game, but there's also puzzles and obstacles to work your way through, equipment to collect, different characters and ever-changing routes mean a replay feels fresh.
Play Survival Z on Apple Arcade
Best Apple Arcade games: Adventure
NUTS
Genre: Simulation
Best played with: iPad, iPhone
Fancy yourself as a mini Attenborough in the making? Nuts is a first-person puzzle sim that casts you as a wildlife researcher, attempting to figure out what a group of wily squirrels are up to. Along the way, you may even conspire a bigger conspiracy. The game's stylised pastel colors and unique wildlife theme set it apart.
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Genre: Adventure
Best played with: Apple TV, Mac
We all need a little reminder of life beyond our immediate surroundings, what with the state the world is in. And Alba is a great reminder of what a wonderful world we live in.
A love letter to nature and conservationism, your sole goal here is to explore a Mediterranean paradise, documenting and protecting its animal kingdom and being helpful to its human residents. From the developers behind Monument Valley and Assemble With Care, it's a real treat.
Play Alba: A Wildlife Adventure on Apple Arcade
Mutazione
Genre: Adventure
Best played with: iPad, iPhone
One hundred years ago, a meteor struck a holiday resort in the tropics. Those few that survived showed strange mutations, rescuers took flight, and everyone left behind then tried to transform the island into a paradise. Now as teenager Kai, you travel for the first time to the island to visit a dying relative.
This is every inch the exploratory adventure. It’s heavy on conversation – and just poking around. Although next steps are heavily signposted in a journal, Mutazione is often at its most rewarding when you just live life, learning how the island functions.
The slow pace may irk those who like to fast-forward through games. And a gardening element at the heart of the production may well prove to be the last straw. But should you want a relaxing, engaging, stimulating handheld experience, full of heart and character, you, too, should make the journey to Mutazione.
Play Mutazione on Apple Arcade
Oceanhorn 2
Genre: Adventure
Best played with: Apple TV/iPad with controller, Mac
We’re going to use the Z word: Oceanhorn 2 is the closest you’ll get to Zelda on Apple Arcade, short of Nintendo doing an about-face and abandoning its strategy of hideous freemium mobile titles.
As in the original Oceanhorn, you’re again a young knight with the fate of the world in their hands. (No pressure.) In typical RPG fare, this means you must comb varied locations, scrap with plentiful enemies, complete missions, and solve the odd puzzle.
On-boarding is poor – the game oddly assumes you’ll know how to perform certain actions, and won’t tell you how. But it looks great, and once you get to grips with the controls, you’ll forgive those early blips. The title also shines on the big screen, feeling like proper console fare. Whether you consider that a compliment perhaps depends on your gaming tastes, but there’s no doubting Oceanhorn 2 is quite the achievement.
Play Oceanhorn 2 on Apple Arcade
Sneaky Sasquatch
Genre: Stealth-lite
Best played with: Any system
For reasons unknown, a sasquatch’s existence is tolerated in a massive campsite. Why, we’ve no idea, given that the hairy critter is quite the thief, pilfering food from unwary guests, before wolfing it down at a nearby table.
You play the sasquatch, in a game that manages to simultaneously echo Yogi Bear and stealth titles. One minute, you’ll have a duck ask you to steal back a suspiciously human-sized hat from an RV; the next, you’ll be tip-toeing past campers, dressed as a bush.
This entire game could so easily have been a gimmick, but Sneaky Sasquatch is brilliantly designed. The controls are tight; the animation is wonderful; and the game slowly expands in a smart way that keeps you hooked. Stick around long enough, and the hairy hero may even be able to play some golf, or do some go-karting. Just stay away from that mean old ranger!
Play Sneaky Sasquatch on Apple Arcade
The Last Campfire
Genre: Adventure
Best played with: Mac, Apple TV
You'll know developer Hello Games best for its epic No Man's Sky game, the universe -spanning space-faring adventure. The Last Campfire is a journey on a very different scale – an intimate puzzle adventure full of mystical creatures and mysterious ruins.
It's a beautiful title, with each brain teasing puzzle memorable, melding the world around you with the enigmas you most solve. Inventive at every turn, it's one of Apple Arcade's best.
Play The Last Campfire on Apple Arcade
Wonderbox: The Adventure Maker
Genre: Adventure
Best played with: Mac, Apple TV
Not only will Wonderbox let you explore great adventures, like a diorama take on the Zelda franchise, but it'll also let you build your own levels and challenges to share with your friends and the community.
this way you can build your on adventure with Wonderbox diverse set of tools. This is a world builder that the whole family can enjoy, and it looks beautiful to boot.
PlayWonderbox: The Adventure Maker on Apple Arcade
The best Apple Arcade games: Platformers
Crossy Road Castle
Genre: Platformer
Best played with: Apple TV, iPhone
Crossy Road Castle, is a lighthearted multiplayer platformer in a procedurally generated castle. The game is similar in spirit to the original Crossy Road in that it's mostly about getting as far as you can, rather than actually reach the end. It's all about the fun of the game.
The multiplayer component allows up to four players cooperate locally, which definitely adds to the hilarity of it all, and the Frogger-style 'just-one-more-go' feeling of the Crossy Road franchise stays intact.
Play Crossy Road Castle on Apple Arcade
Little Orpheus
Genre: Platformer
Best played with: Apple TV, Mac
The Chinese Room is best known for its 'walking simulators', story-driven first person titles like Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. But Little Orpheus is something very different.
A smart, ambitious platformer, it's the closest thing Apple Arcade has to its own Ori title, a colorful and inventive side scroller that sees a Soviet Cosmonaut seeking the center of the Earth. Designed in easily consumable (commutable) bite-sized chunks, it's a fantastic journey, a nod to the B-movie sci-fi films of old.
Play Little Orpheus on Apple Arcade
Shinsekai Into the Depths
Genre: Platformer
Best played with: Any system
Instead of global warming leading to Mad Max, this Capcom platform game finds mankind living in a world of ice. Humanity’s tried to escape the cold by heading below the ocean waves, but that territory is now also beginning to freeze. As terrifyingly large chunks of ice rapidly encroach on your home, your lone aquanaut must venture forth, in a bid for survival.
Right from the off, this game feels unique and tantalizing. Whether you’re using slightly slippy touchscreen gestures or a gamepad, it’s fun to blast your aquanaut around, slash at underwater horrors, and prospect for resources.
There’s a temptation to continue zooming about, killing anything that moves; but Shinsekai’s world is full of peril, from fearsome underwater creatures to the mundane – yet no less dangerous – threat of running out of oxygen. The title therefore quickly resolves itself as a tense, electrifying balancing act as you head further into its unexplored depths.
Play Shinsekai - Into the Depths on Apple Arcade
The best Apple Arcade games: Puzzlers
Assemble with Care
Genre: Narrative puzzler
Best played with: iPhone, iPad
As much short story as puzzle game, Assemble with Care finds globe-trotting restorer whizz Maria passing through the sunny town of Bellariva. At each stage of her journey, she meets an inhabitant who asks her to fix something precious.
Your job is to manipulate these on-screen items, take them to bits, figure out what’s wrong, and put them back together again. Which probably sounds terrifying, but this game’s intuitive, smartly conceived interface will make you think you, too, can repair an ancient watch or slide projector. (TechRadar hint: probably don’t try this at home.) It’ll also make you realize that relationships often need fixing more than mere objects.
For a short game – you’ll be done in an hour – it packs quite the emotional wallop. One to be savored, then, and a title that really highlights the benefit of Apple Arcade’s try-anything subscription model.
Play Assemble with Care on Apple Arcade
Frenzic: Overtime
Genre: Arcade-style puzzles
Best played with: iPhone, iPad
Frenzic: Overtime is a remake of the popular puzzle game Frenzic. It's all about short, fast-paced and super engaging game play. You can work your way through the levels, or just pick it up and play for a few minutes if you've not got much time on your hands. There are lovely colorful visuals and you feel like you're playing in an arcade – which is the whole point of Apple Arcade games, after all.
The idea is you're working on the factory floor of Frenzic Industries and your job is to assemble Power Cores for the new ZAPBOTs. Meet your goals and you get a new position in the assembly line. There are 45 levels, a bunch of different modes, as well as lots of mini-goals throughout.
Play Frenzic: overtime on Apple Arcade
Grindstone
Genre: Match puzzler
Best played with: iPhone, iPad
Creeps are everywhere in Grindstone Mountain, and so it’s time to clean the place up – and nothing cleans things up better than a massive sword. (And then quite a lot of water to get rid of all of the creep blood, but whatever.) Only this isn’t a hack-and-slash brawler, but a surprisingly thinky puzzler.
You enter each screen with a set number of creeps to dispatch. Tap out a path through creeps of a single color, and then let rip. (If you once loved Dungeon Raid, Grindstone may scratch that particular itch.) Over time, new features appear, like treasure chests and deadlier adversaries, and you can counter with upgradable kit and sheer brainpower.
There’s a whiff of freemium in the lives and weapons system – as if the title was quickly adjusted prior to appearing on Apple Arcade. But even that grumble doesn’t knock one of the best Apple Arcade games.
Play Grindstone on Apple Arcade
Hidden Folks
Genre: Cute puzzler
Best played with: iPhone, iPad
Think Where's Wally, but in a sketchbook with more fun and more cuteness. Search for hidden folks in a series of beautifully-drawn, miniature landscapes. But this game is interactive, too, so you need to unfurl tents, cut through bushes and poke crocodiles to find what you're looking for.
This game won 'game of the year' back in 2017 and is still one of the best Apple Arcade games you can play, and not to mention soothing, to pick up and play. There are more than 30 hand-drawn environments to explore, 300+ targets to spot and 500+ unique interactions. If the sketchbook style isn't quite your thing, you can also see the game in sepia or night mode.
Play Hidden Folks on Apple Arcade
Pilgrims
Genre: Puzzle
Best played with: iPhone
The team behind Pilgrims has form in adventure games packed full of character, seeing as their other games include point-and-clickers/tappers Machinarium and Samorost. Pilgrims heads further back in time gaming eras, with mechanics echoing 2D arcade adventures on 1980s eight-bit home computers.
The aim in Pilgrims is simply to find items and use them in the right locations in order to progress. That probably doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but this game’s all about the execution. On trying an item on whoever (or whatever) stands before you, you’re treated to a little animation. Even failure can provide amusement.
On iPhone in particular, Pilgrims is a joy – a hand-drawn slice of perfectly realised interactive entertainment. And because of the flexibility within the system, even when you finish Pilgrims, you’ll want to play through again to find alternative routes and anything else you’ve missed.
The best Apple Arcade games: RPG
Game Dev Story+
Genre: RPG/Simulation
Best played with: iPad
The idea behind the simulation Game Dev Story Plus – which has long been a hit on other gaming platforms and consoles – is you own a gaming company and you're trying to create a million-copy selling game. If that sounds stressful already, don't worry. The idea of the game is more about developing your console and levelling up your staff members than all the stress that comes with making a game IRL.
You need to hire talented people, train them up and you can do all sorts of things as the company gets rolling, like unlock a wider array of game genres and content to develop. Your staff members can have a variety of game-related professions, from programmer to sound engineer.
Play Game Dev Story+ on Apple Arcade
Guildlings
Genre: RPG
Best played with: iPad
When a tried-and-tested genre tries to ‘get down with the kids’, that’s usually a recipe for disaster. But Guildlings – by the team behind classic mobile puzzler Threes! – nails the balance between fantasy and modern life, in an offbeat and entertaining RPG that exists in a world of ‘wizards and Wi-Fi’.
The script appears directed at a young adult audience, but it doesn’t talk down to them, and so works well enough for adults as well. Conversations fly by like text messages, packed with breezy jokes. Exploration is fast and precise, and battles carefully balance challenge with a forgiving nature.
It all feels very pleasant, with success often depending on keeping characters happy, and fights broadly about defence and tiring foes out rather than kicking their faces off. Chances are, the first chapter’s four or five hours will whizz by, and you’ll be left clamoring for more.
Play Guidlings on Apple Arcade
Monster Hunter Stories+
Genre: RPG
Best played with: iPad
Monster Hunter Stories+ was available for iOS devices already, but you had to pay a premium for it. Although Apple Arcade isn't free, it gives you access to more than 200 games, some of which are otherwise quite pricey, so it's great to see this RPG game has arrived on the service enabling more people to play.
This is an RPG set in a land where monsters and dragons roam free and people hunt them, just like Monster Hunter Rise. However, in a quiet village people don't hunt the monsters (known rather adorable as 'monsties'), but live alongside them and ride them. The monsters bond with the riders and develop special powers.
In the game, you play as a rider and must find eggs, hatch more monsties and avoid the hunters to protect your best friend, who may or may not be a mythical monstie.
Play Monster Hunter Stories+ on Apple Arcade
The best Apple Arcade games: Shooters
Butter Royale
Genre: Battle Royale
Best played with: iPhone, iPad
You've no doubt heard of Fortnite - the biggest battle royale game on the planet that puts 100 players against one another in a big open arena. That game is great for gamers of a certain age, but for littler ones, even Fortnite might be a bit too much.
For that crowd there's Butter Royale, a food-based battle royale game that swaps sub-machine guns for croissant launches and ketchup bottles. This one keeps all the core tenets of what makes battle royale games so fun but puts it in a PG-rated package for everyone to enjoy.
Play Butter Royale on Apple Arcade
Exit the Gungeon
Genre: Shoot ’em up
Best played with: iPhone, iPad
There’s a smattering of a story here about a ‘Gungeon’ falling to bits, and you needing to escape. But, really, this is full-on high-octane bullet-hell shooty larks, with you leaping about in confined spaces, blowing everything away, and trying very hard to not get shot.
This game is tough. The pace brings to mind Super Crate Box, as does the weapons system that finds your firearm regularly mutating. Typically, the better you are, the more powerful the weapon you’ll end up with.
You’ll die a lot – a lot at first. But you’ll gradually lengthen your runs, and give bosses a serious kicking. Not quite feeling it? Try switching control methods – there’s the full-speed high-octane take with a controller, but go touch-only and everything slows down while you leap, like the game’s merged with The Matrix.
Play Exit the Gungeon on Apple Arcade
The best Apple Arcade games: Sports
Skate City
Genre: Sports
Best played with: iPhone
While Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is all about impossible tricks in ludicrous environments, later skating games like Skate focused more on the fundamentals of boarding and the laid-back attitude that the sport still exudes in places like Southern California. Skate City from Agens Games takes that idea and fits it into a pocket-sized mobile game that has you kickflipping over staircases and grinding on rails while you cruise the streets of some of the world's most famous cities.
It's perfectly built for on the go play, building your flow with perfected runs of tricks, with a killer soundtrack to go with it.
Play Skate City on Apple Arcade
Sociable Soccer
Genre: Sports
Best played with: iPhone
These days, soccer games seem desperate to look like real-world footage – and they have the speed and responsiveness to match (as in, not as much as you’d like). It wasn’t always like this, and Sociable Soccer harks back to a different era, when Sensible Soccer and Kick Off were kings.
Although there is a side-on viewpoint, this game’s best played from above. Switch to top-down matches and what you get is a fast-paced game that’s part pinball and part how you always imagined soccer to be in your mind.
There’s a player card system lurking, and a league that’s like nothing in the real world. Still, none of that will bother you when you’re hoofing the ball about and belt a 30-yard drive goalwards with five seconds until the final whistle.
Play Sociable Soccer on Apple Arcade
What The Golf?
Genre: Sports-ish
Best played with: iPhone, iPad
What the Golf? gets weird very quickly indeed. Initially, it looks every inch the cartoon golfing experience, of the kind that littered the App Store in its early days. Only when you swing, it’s the golfer who ends up hurtling through the air.
The game barely lets up from this initial surprise, chucking all kinds of craziness at you with merry abandon. Some holes have you pick your way through bombs. Others have the ball sling itself around a side-on landscape like Spider-Man. Then there are takes that echo racing games, or have you attempting to pilot a missile to the green.
It’s so relentlessly bonkers you’ll even be glad of the more sedate in-between bits, which find you pinging a ball around a maze to find your next challenge. Not one for purists, then, but all the better for it – unless you hate fun games packed full of imagination.
Play What The Golf? on Apple Arcade
The best Apple Arcade games: Strategy
Card of Darkness
Genre: Strategy
Best played with: iPhone
From the mind of the guy who reinvented everything from pool to crosswords for iPhone and the illustrator of Adventure Time, comes this epic quest smashed into the framework of a card game.
Each challenge has you staring at piles of cards, knowing that beneath any one of them could be a stack of gold, a weapon, or a fearsome monster. Your aim is to forge a path through the cards to the exit, but once a pile’s disturbed, you must use every card within.
There’s a lot going on here, and pretty soon your head will be swimming with the many critters and their varied powers and effects. But stick with it and take your time, and you’ll unearth one of the very finest mobile strategy games around (along with a massive bitey spider that’ll take your face off).
Play Card of Darkness on Apple Arcade
Overland
Genre: Strategy
Best played with: iPad
An isometric turn-based strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic America, Overland sees you try to cross from the East to West Coast in a bid for survival. Cue scavenging for petrol, aiding other lost travelers, and escaping giant burrowing insects. You know, a normal road trip.
There are nods here to XCom, Fallout, The Last of Us and more, but Overland has a vibe all of its own, a patient and methodical take on the end of the world.
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