Thursday, March 28, 2024

The best Apple Arcade games you should play right now

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The iPhone has always been a great place for gamers, but Apple Arcade puts a new spin on things. After a free one-month trial it costs $5 per month to subscribe, but that fee gives you and your family unrestricted access to a wonderland of great games with no in-app subscriptions or advertisements in sight. The service launched with more than 100 new and exclusive games, alongside a few familiar titles from other platforms, and more will be added over time. Apple Arcade works on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, but also on Macs and the iPod Touch.

To help you get started we’ve picked out our 10 favorites, the cream of the crop, these are the best Apple Arcade games you can play right now. You may also want to check out our picks for the best iPhone games.

Sayonara Wild Hearts

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8IUcFQ8upQ]

Beautifully animated and well-designed, this game immediately draws you in and doesn’t let go.  You’ll run, fly, and guide skateboards, motorbikes, and even a deer through a smooth, super stylish, psychedelic, indie-pop dreamscape that pulses along with the music. Ostensibly, you’re guiding a girl with a broken heart as she races through spectacular neon landscapes grabbing heart-shaped shards, avoiding obstacles, and trying to defeat enemies. There’s also Tarot card styling and narration by Queen Latifah. The gameplay is mesmerizing as it challenges you to time your taps and swipes correctly but offers forgiving instant replays if you mess up. Clearly inspired by Rez, this game leans a little more towards style than substance, but it’s so nicely made and such immersive fun that it’s well worth at least one playthrough, which should only take you about an hour, though it’s likely you’ll be back for more.

Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLtFwvoV3u4]

The original Oceanhorn was a fantastic adventure RPG that challenged you to grow from a boy into a legend and this follow-up is bigger and better. There are treasure-filled dungeons to loot, quests to complete, and evil enemies to defeat. Set in Gaia, you’ll play as a noble, young knight tasked with defeating the Warlock Mesmeroth and his evil hordes. Luckily, you have a bit of help, some of the time, in the shape of a samurai robot called Gen and the granddaughter of Arcadia’s leader Archimedes called Trin. The hack-and-slash gameplay is occasionally broken up by a brain-teasing puzzle. With a cute art style and a sense of wonder, this is clearly inspired by Zelda, but that’s no bad thing and it has been thoughtfully designed to provide enough challenge to hook you without ever feeling frustrating.

Chu Chu Rocket Universe

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHOWToD7wuE]

This quirky action puzzler is all about guiding astronaut mice to the rocket that will take them to safety, being careful to avoid obstacles, traps, and cats. The mice have a mind of their own, so you’ll have to plot safe passage carefully and then set them on their way to see if your plan worked out. A series of planets gradually ramps up the difficulty, from flat to 3D environments, with ever-increasing complexity and new mechanics, including teleporters and switches. Keeping your mice alive requires some thoughtful route planning, but you can always try again if things wrong. Whether you remember the original Chu Chu Rocket on Dreamcast or not, this is easy to pick up and proves to be an engaging puzzle game.

Skate City

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqP1DPNWi28]

You may be more likely to try this out if you are, or were, a skater, but you really don’t need to know an ollie from your elbow to pick it up. Skate around cityscapes in this side-scrolling title, holding on screen to build up speed and swiping in different directions to pull off tricks. Mastering the timing is the tricky part at first, but things get increasingly complex as you progress. Luckily, some solid mechanics, including the need to balance when grinding, make for a relatively gentle challenge and there’s a free-skate mode if you prefer to do your own thing. You’ll start in Los Angeles, but you’ll get to skate in Barcelona and Oslo later on. All look great and combine well with a chilled score and weather effects to create an atmospheric feel.

Where Cards Fall

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2PoSWgupUM]

A stunningly beautiful and thoughtful puzzle game, Where Cards Fall is an unmissable Apple Arcade title. Your task is to guide the unnamed protagonist through a series of levels, helping him get from point A to point B, and you can collapse and expand houses of cards to help you do it. Muse a little more on the strange cutscenes in between and you can see that this is a journey through time, as well as space. It’s a dreamy coming-of-age tale that riffs on the importance of memories, but it’s also an engaging spatial puzzler that will have you swiping and pinching to try and unveil the way forward. Naturally, your journey gets trickier and requires more thought the further you progress.

Sneaky Sasquatch

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd2qG2dn_nY]

Can you guide an adorable Sasquatch through a large park and ensure that he purloins enough grub to keep him alive without spooking the campers or drawing the angry attention of the park ranger? It’s tougher than it sounds, but you’ll definitely have a lot of fun trying. Luckily there’s a raccoon to guide you, a bear who’ll buy excess food for cash, and all manner of handy gear to buy or loot. The stealth gameplay is really fun and intuitive, the art style is irresistibly cute, and there’s even an overarching plot that slowly unfolds as you rob the place blind. This is wholesome, Yogi Bear-style fun for the whole family and it gets sillier and sillier as it goes on.

Spek

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDv2ChyquOQ]

You really have to play this puzzle game to get your head around it. Screenshots of the sparse art style simply don’t convey the challenge here as you work your way through a string of colorful puzzles that blend into one another as you solve them by guiding your dot to collect fragments and avoid dangers. It’s a stylish experience that requires you to think in terms of 3D space and objects, even though all you have on screen is 2D representations.

Cat Quest 2

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp4NnLocNMI]

This is a cat-themed, action-fantasy RPG, do you really need to know more? With adorably cute graphics and feline puns aplenty, but a surprisingly deep, classic RPG underneath, Cat Quest 2 is purrfect for a spot of mobile gaming. This time around a doggo accompanies our feline protagonist and you can switch between them or, even better, play co-op with a friend. There are magic powers to acquire, or you can accumulate heavy armor and a dangerous arsenal as you loot dungeons, fight a large array of different monsters, and try to use the environment to your advantage. This is best enjoyed as a co-op experience and it’s a great game for kids and adults alike.

Assemble with Care

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3GCGOfeNLg]

Playing as Maria, you have to tap and drag things around the screen to repair them in this refreshingly different puzzle game. You’ll work on cameras and cassette recorders and a handful of other objects — there are 13 in all. The game is somewhat reminiscent of the Room series, but each item you take apart and put back together again reveals something about the owner and it transpires that you’re not just fixing the object itself, but also the owners and their relationships. It’s a soothing game to play with a lovely art style and animation, fitting music and voice acting, and some unexpectedly poignant moments. If you want something relaxing and pleasurable, Assemble With Care will serve you well.

Overland

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvAzyeKrA0]

Prepare to be eaten and killed in other horrible ways quite a lot if you decide to delve into the turn-based, post-apocalyptic horror that is Overland. There’s no hand-holding here as you try to scavenge gas and escape from certain death at the hands or jaws of a bunch of creepy monsters. You’ll need to spend your movement points carefully each turn, sneaking through levels and searching in the right places to find what you need to escape to the next level. You’ll encounter other survivors as you progress, which presents you with more quandaries — do you team up and work together or take your chances as a lone wolf? It looks deceptively pretty considering how bleak this world is and it’s frustrating at times — indecision is your enemy. If you’re sick of the cute titles, this is a healthy dose of violent misery.

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