This is part 6 of our Apple Arcade rankings. Quick navigation to other parts:

1-25 | 26-50 | 51-75 | 76-100 | 101-125 | 126-150 | 151-175 | 176-200 | 201+


126. Neversong

Description:

Neversongis a strange mishmash of games. It’s a mediation on mental health, but it’s also an action platformer. You play as a boy Peet, who’s girlfriend was stolen away from him, causing him to fall into a coma. After waking, he sets off on a strange and surreal adventure to find his girlfriend while battling bug-like enemies and swinging around environments.

Rank Explanation:

I think the odd blending of tones and genre conventions gives Neversong a truly unique flavor, but I’d like it more if the things it implemented felt a little better. The platforming itself is serviceable, but Peet’s hitbox in combat doesn’t feel right, and the swinging mechanics that the game introduces later on don’t work well on touch at all. I want to see where Neversonggoes, but I’ll only be enjoying it in small bursts using a controller unless some updates come through to improve the touch experience.



127. Speed Demons

Description:

Speed Demons is technically an auto-runner, I guess, but it feels more like a racing game because it involves cars. Race your way down winding roads across a variety of event types, most of which ultimately want you to drive fast and keep others from doing that better than you. To enhance the experience, Speed Demons relies heavily on an high frame rate and a propulsive soundtrack.

Rank Explanation:

When you’re in the zone in Speed Demons, it feels incredible. This involves the convergence of a lot of moving parts, though. You yourself have to be in the right mental (and physical) space to concentrate on the game. Then, the soundtrack needs to land on the right tune (thankfully, you can control this relatively easily). Finally—and most crucially—the game actually needs to be running at 60 frames per second or higher, which is sometimes a struggle. If any of these ingredients aren’t just right, the magic of Speed Demons doesn’t quite work.


128. ChuChu Rocket! Universe

Description:

In ChuChu Rocket! Universe, you have to lead mice to a rocket using arrows you draw on the ground. In this particular entry, there’s a single-player focus full of levels with various puzzles and challenges. Universe still features multiplayer, but it is relegated to a small sub-menu.

Rank Explanation:

I don’t have any nostalgia for the original ChuChu Rocket!, so this game doesn’t do a whole lot for me. It’s a lot like heaps of other puzzle games on the App Store, and features a multiplayer mode that is so fast-paced that I’m not really sure what’s going on at any given moment. Still though, it’s a really well made puzzle game.


129. BADLAND+

Description:

This side-scrolling platformer has you tapping to control a flapping, fuzzball-like creature through mysterious environments. There are lite obstacles in your way, but they basically only pose a problem because the screen is always scrolling over to the right as you play. If you take too long in your navigation, you have to start over.

Rank Explanation:

Badland is another one of those high-profile mobile games I never got around to playing, but after playing it I have a hard time understanding what made it special. It's brand of puzzle platforming seems fine, but not especially revelatory. It would also be a lot more fun to play if controlling it didn't feel so floppy and imprecise.


130. Assemble With Care

Description:

Assemble With Care is a narrative puzzle game about a young girl named Maria who repairs things. As she fixes objects for the people of Bellariva—a town she is just passing through—she learns a lot about them and their lives. The gameplay here mostly consists of poking and prodding at broken objects with virtual tools to get them in working order again. Every time you fix an object, you then get a small dose of story that leads you to the next puzzle.

Rank Explanation:

I’m starting to think there’s something I’m missing when I play ustwo games. I love the attention-to-detail in games like Monument Valley and Assemble With Care, but I don’t find the overall experience all that compelling. It probably doesn’t help that Assemble With Care doesn’t really give itself room to develop its ideas. On the plus side, this is an easy title to burn through if you’re using a free trial of Apple Arcade.


131. Little Orpheus

Description:

Who would’ve thought that the creators of Dear Esther, a plodding and cerebral meditation on trauma, would be the same studio to make a game with a pitch like "what if we made Inside but with bright colors and there are cosmonauts and dinosaurs?" This is essentially what Little Orpheus is: A hollow, meandering romp of simple platforming set pieces accompanied by voiceover narration.

Rank Explanation:

Little Orpheus gestures at great ideas and fails to really execute on any of them. It looks great in screenshots, but is really clunky and borderline unplayable using touch. It evokes Inside, but does not have the same clever puzzle design or creativity. It’s supposed to be funny, but it’s voice actors charmingly quip without ever really landing a punchline. To its credit, I was intrigued by the game’s overarching narrative and its general style to see the whole thing through in short order, but I walked away from it being pretty disappointed.


132. Layton's Mystery Journey+

Description:

Follow private detective Katrielle Layton in her first major foray in investigating. Solve a series of cases across London while also trying to uncover the mysterious past of your initial client, a talking dog. Along the way, you meet plenty of colorful characters, most of whom serve up logic and lateral thinking puzzles for you to solve to move forward.

Rank Explanation:

I'm honestly not sure why more "Layton"-style games keep getting made. The puzzle format is fine, but every iteration past the first couple scrapes the bottom of the logic puzzle barrel, resulting in a lot of challenges that are either obtuse in a dumb way or entirely too easy. The story and adventure here is fun and charming, but doing all of these puzzles is just not that appealing.


133. Tales of Memo

Description:

What starts as a simple memory game quickly evolves into a frenetic twitch-based puzzle experience. Tales of Memo is more or less about just finding matching numbers from opening random chests, but you need to use these matches strategically to take down enemies and advance to the next level.

Rank Explanation:

The first level or two of Tales of Memo are dumbed down to the point that it’s hard to tell what the game is supposed to be. Then, there are a couple more levels where finding matches is dead simple. It’s not until you push through all of this to find what is actually a pretty solid game build around the mechanics of basic memory games. It’s kind of impressive, though ultimately boils down to speed and a little bit of luck to pass stages.


134. wurdweb

Description:

wurdweb is a word game that's like Scrabble but all the words are already fully formed. You place them on a board at intersection points with various goals in mind. Some challenges want you to reach a specific square on the board, while others challenge you to squeeze as many words into the play space as possible. It also comes with different modes and modifiers to always give you a new thing to try.

Rank Explanation:

This game is pleasant and cute, but most of its gameplay is not particularly compelling. There is no challenge to your own vocabulary abilities here, and the spatial manipulation is a little unweildy, not to mention the fact that there's basically one best strategy to keep your board open for stacking in new words. Doing all of this not exactly boring, but I can think of other word games on Apple Arcade I'd rather play.


135. Marble It Up: Mayhem!

Description:

Marble It Up: Mayhem! is a platfomer that puts a lot of emphasis behind momentum and physics. You roll a marble around levels and you need to hop over gaps, gather gems, and reach and exit, while making sure not to roll too fast that you accidentally slide of a ledge or hit a bumper to send your marble flying.

Rank Explanation:

I have never really understood why you’d want to play a platformer where your ability to control things feels muddy and slow, but games like Marble It Up: Mayhem prove there is some kind of audience for these things. Even placing my personal hang-ups aside, I’m not sure Marble It Up is great at what it’s trying to do.


136. Gibbon: Beyond the Trees

Description:

Swing and slide your way across jungle canopies as a pink gibbon. Gibbon: Beyond the Trees tells the story of a primate family as they deal with increasing human contact. Along the way, you can work together with other gibbons to fling yourself through the air and slide down trees to launch yourself skyward in a game all about maintaining fast and fluid movement through an environment.

Rank Explanation:

There are a lot of neat ideas in Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, but none of them actually feel very good to pull off. Or rather, the game seems to have designed its environments to limit your ability to do cool things often, which--as it turns out--makes a majority of the movement mechanics feel bad or unhelpful. For a game that is all about movement, this is not good.


137. Goat Simulator+

Description:

Goat Simulator+ is a goofy game where you are essentially given free reign to a strange open-world sandbox that you run around in as a goat and complete challenges like "get 6 seconds of air time" which you can do by jumping off trampolines or activating a jetpack strapped to your goat.

Rank Explanation:

I'm actually kind of surprised how much I enjoy Goat Simulator+ conceptually. It's just dumb fun. The only problem is the camera controls and a lot of the collision detection in the game are pretty busted, which are a big killjoy when trying to do goat stunts.


138. Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis

Description:

Take control of Nickelodeon favorites like Spongebob Squarepants or Catdog as they compete an arcade form of tennis that includes powerups, special moves, and special rackets.

Rank Explanation:

I'm a fan of arcade sports games, but Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis doesn't have enough going on in it. You have very poor control of your actual tennis shots and everything seems very dependent on your ability to grind out and upgrade gear. It's also not super easy to find multiplayer matches, which isn't something you want from a competitive game on your phone.


139. Cut the Rope Remastered

Description:

Cut the Rope Remastered takes all of Zeptolab's previous candy-feeder physics puzzle titles and rebundles them into a single game with updated graphics. The basic idea is simple: cut ropes to get a piece of candy to fall into a little monster's mouth, but the Cut the Rope games quickly escalate where you're manipulating bubbles, magnets, and other items that keep you guessing.

Rank Explanation:

Guessing is the operative word to me when playing Cut the Rope Remastered. Aside from the first couple levels, I'm really lost as to how to get three stars on every level. I guess that's a good sign for supplying me with challenges to wrap my head around, but it'll take more than some updated graphics to get me interested in a puzzle game that felt shallow when it released over a decade ago.


140. Takeshi and Hiroshi

Description:

Takeshi is a 14-year-old who also happens to be an amateur game designer. When his little brother, Hiroshi, gets sick, Takeshi decides to make a game for him. The only problem is, the game isn’t finished, so Takeshi has to go in and direct the action to try and make sure his little brother has a fun time. Playing Takeshi and Hiroshi consists of watching animated cutscenes and then choosing waves of enemies for Hiroshi to fight. Your ultimate goal is to create a satisfying challenge that doesn’t over or underwhelm Hiroshi.

Rank Explanation:

Takeshi and Hiroshi is absolutely adorable to watch, but dreadfully boring to play. The game Takeshi made for his brother isn’t particularly interesting or good. Even the meta system where you have to manage Hiroshi’s stress and thrill levels fails to add dimension to the flavorless rpg placeholder used as the bond between these two brothers. Although there’s some great animation work and cute storytelling going on in Takeshi and Hiroshi, it doesn’t always feel worth the sloggy gameplay.


141. Really Bad Chess+

Description:

Chess is one of the most flawlessly designed games ever conceived. Really Bad Chess is not that. It uses the same rules and board as traditional Chess, but mixes up all the pieces so that you might have four queens or five knights. The game generates piece assortments to try and keep a semblance of balance across a variety of modes, all of which have you facing off against an AI opponent.

Rank Explanation:

I want to like Really Bad Chess... really badly. Something about it just doesn't click for me. It's one of those games that sounds incredible, but is more fun to think about than actually play. The chaos of having such wild board compositions is almost too overwhelming, but it still follows such a rigid set of rules that it doesn't feel as whimsical or irreverant as it should.


142. Cooking Mama: Cuisine!

Description:

Cooking Mama: Cuisine! brings the queen of Nintendo DS food preparation games to Apple Arcade. The core of the game is very straightforward, pick some ingredients, prep and cook them via a series of minigames, and voila! You've just cooked a virtual dish.

Rank Explanation:

I have never played a Cooking Mama game before, but I was expecting something more robust. This game largely feels like the Masterchef game on Arcade already, but stripped of its competitive and speed-oriented challenge, making for a more chilled-out, but also less engaging, experience.


143. EarthNight

Description:

EarthNight is a strange auto-runner. You play as two of Earth’s last remaining fighters who are defending the planet from dragons. At the start of each run, you dive out of a spaceship and skydive toward Earth, and each dragon you land on becomes a auto-runner level that ends with you trying to kill said dragon by stabbing it in the head a bunch. Along the way, you gather tons of little collectibles, which you can use to purchase upgrades or unlock new items to help you get further in the game.

Rank Explanation:

There’s something so distinct about EarthNight’s style that I really love. Sure, it’s an auto-runner, but it has a lot of personality and specific ideas about how its game works. I don’t love how repetitive it is, but there is something cool about playing a few runs every once in a while, which allows it to it to sit higher on this list than it would otherwise.


144. Crossy Road Castle

Description:

The follow up to Crossy Road is a simple platformer who’s main selling point is that up to four players can wander through its micro stages together. Players collect coins while trying to avoid spikes, enemies, and giant bird bosses, all while piloting voxel animals that reflect the iconic styling of Hipster Whale’s breakout mobile hit.

Rank Explanation:

Crossy Road Castle feels like it has so much potential for zany antics, but is mostly just a pretty mild platformer. Players can’t interact with each other in multiplayer, and the levels themselves don’t feel particularly special aside from being pretty small. The game also has a weird structure where you always start the game from the very beginning and play stages in a random order. The levels aren’t procedurally-generated though, so you end up seeing and playing a lot of the same levels repeatedly.


145. The Enchanted World

Description:

Take control of a young fairy who must navigate a environments that have been disrupted by dark forces. You do this by rearranging the environment like a classic sliding block puzzle to create paths, restore waterways, and even attack enemies.

Rank Explanation:

This game is essentially a fancy version of a sliding block puzzle. There are some nuances to the mechanics that definitely change things up, but the core remains a pretty tired puzzle archetype. Although I really like the way The Enchanted World looks, I find it hard to muster too much enthusiasm for each new level I come across.


146. Dodo Peak

Description:

Dodo Peak is a retro-inspired platformer that is much more intense than it appears. You swipe to control a dodo as it hops up and down slopes, gathering baby dodos behind it before finding an exit. All the while, you need to avoid boulders, snakes, spikes, and all kinds of other threats not just to your dodo, but also the little babies following you from behind.

Rank Explanation:

Dodo Peak has some really clever level design, and it wastes no time getting nice and challenging. It would be much higher on this list if not for two particular problems. First are the swipe-based controls, which feel sluggish, plus they cause you to obscure the screen as you’re trying to see what’s going on in a level. Dodo Peak also presents everything at a strange angle that makes it hard to see level features that can block or kill your dodo.


147. Warped Kart Racers

Description:

You know Mario Kart? Well, what if instead of Mario, Peach, Bowser and other members of the Mushroom Kingdom were racing around in high powered go karts it was Peggy Hill, Peter Griffin, and Roger (i.e. the alien from American Dad). That is Warped Kart Racers in a nutshell.

Rank Explanation:

There's something magical about Mario Kart that other kart racers have a hard time capturing. I don't think it's just Nintendo nostalgia (especially since I have very little of that, personally), but Warped Kart Racers just doesn't feel like an especially fun treatment of the properties it includes nor is its racing particularly satisfying.


148. Solitaire by MobilityWare+

Description:

Solitaire by MobilityWare+ is a no-nonsense Solitaire game, specifically for the Klondike version. You stack cards in descending number order by alternating color with the ultimate goal of filling the top four rows with each card sorted by suit and number. Solitaire+ has a lot of customization options multiple ways to play, including a daily challenge with a leaderboard.

Rank Explanation:

Solitaire is fine, but it doesn't really make me excited about my Apple Arcade subscription. I like that this version has options to play with Vegas scoring and a lot of neat card faces, backgrounds, and card backs to choose from, but it's still just Solitaire, and a version that defaults to Draw One mode, the objectively worst way to play Solitaire.


149. Possessions.

Description:

Possessions. is a game about rotating dioramas around to solve perspective-shifting puzzles. A picture might be hanging in midair, for example, and you need to slide your camera perspective so that it fills an empty space on the gallery wall of the bedroom. As you complete levels, you’re also treated to mini-cutscenes that tell a small story about the people that inhabit these spaces.

Rank Explanation:

The puzzle mechanics of Possessions. are really neat, but I’d like to see them in a more compelling package. The challenge in this game never really evolves, and only gets harder by adding more objects to fix (and sometimes via a fixed order or logic that is never really explained). The story this game tells is also so vague that it might as well not even be there. It seems like it’s going for something emotional, but there’s not enough detail or information to really tell what is going on, making it just feel like a bunch of filler.


150. Gear.Club Stradale

Description:

Gear.Club Stradale brings some more realistic auto racing to the App Store, and along with it some social features that aim to make its racing action feel like a fun (but competitive) car-focused vacation in Tuscany.

Rank Explanation:

Racing simulation is a dubious endeavor on mobile at best, but especially when this game does so much to drive for you and doesn't offer a whole lot in the way of competition outside of grinding for upgrades that let you compete at the power levels required to advance. If I were picking good-looking car games to play on Apple Arcade, I'd choose to play Asphalt 8 over Gear.Club Stradale every time.

The list continues here, or see below to jump to another page:

1-25 | 26-50 | 51-75 | 76-100 | 101-125 | 126-150 | 151-175 | 176-200 | 201+

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