50 Must-Play iOS Games

The App Store isn’t just the largest games marketplace in the world, it’s also the most dynamic. It’s a virtual shop-front that’s capable of ensuring Top 50 lists are comfortably out of date before the last full stop has been typed. The games gathered below all have one thing in common, however: they’ve endured, earning their space on your iDevice while other distractions come and go.

While a quick glance will reveal racers, RPGs, puzzlers, and many other familiar genres, you may also notice that smart designers have focused on making their games feel at home on a device with no buttons and no thumbsticks. Angry Birds might dominate the headlines and the charts but, playable as it is, it’s not the full story.These are the iOS games that are changing the way an entire industry thinks about play.

It's far from exhaustive, of course - and we'd love to hear your own recommendations in the comments thread below - but here's our selection of 50 of the best games on iOS and why we think they deserve your time.

You can read our in-depth article on how Apple became the hottest property in portable videogaming, of which this list forms part, in issue 236 of Edge. And you can keep abreast of all our iOS game reviews by visiting the iPad/iPhone topic page or following it using My Edge.

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Groove Coaster

Taito Corp

Blending precision beat-matching with stylish wireframe obstacle courses allows Taito to bring a cinematic simplicity to iOS music games. The genius, though, lies with the hidden ad-libbed notes that are scattered, invisibly, throughout each of the tracks. Trust your instincts if you want to find them all.

Numba

Cobra Mobile Ltd

The maths are kept to a minimum while the score chains take centre stage in this ugly but entirely compulsive pattern-spotting game. To call it a true puzzler might be to overstate the case, but perhaps Numba’s brilliance always lay with its simplicity in the first place.

Fox Vs Duck

Supermono

Beneath Supermono’s stylishly bare visual design lies a horror game of unusual force, in which you use tilt controls to steer your chicks to safety, avoiding the wiles of a determined predator. Elegant and simple, there’s nothing abstract about Fox Vs Duck’s queasy examination of the animal kingdom.

Trainyard

Matt Rix

A series of complex logic tests disguised with just the thinnest coating of locomotive fiction, Matt Rix’s lo-fi masterpiece will squeeze your brain until the correct solution pops out. And then you’ll head back and submit yourself to even more bruising and brilliant torture.

Drop7

Zynga, Area/Code

The best app on iTunes is also the purest puzzle game since Tetris: a blend of abstract geology and tangible mathematics that rewards the committed player with endless strategic opportunities and a never-ending learning curve. Intricate and precise, Drop7 is a genuinely beautiful piece of design.

Quarrel

Denki

Quarrel’s multiplayer component may still be missing in action, but this demanding mixture of Risk and Scrabble is game enough by itself. Anagrams and territory control mechanics fit together surprisingly well across a range of colourful levels, while some excellent AI players make for bruising, and occasionally humiliating, encounters.

SteamBirds

Radial Games, Spry Fox

Turn-based air combat is an idea filled with obvious potential, but SteamBirds is even better than you could hope for, its precise controls allowing you to slip elegantly between volleys of enemy shots, while its campaign rewrites a large chunk of modern history to fascinating effect.

Spy Mouse

Firemint

The creators of Flight Control drag stealth out of the military bases and into a series of bright 1950s cartoon interiors with this brilliantly cheeky cat and mouse adventure. The tracing controls are the perfect fit for a game about monitoring guards’ patrol routes, and boss fights blend humour and challenge very smartly.

Trundle

Mobile Bros.

The App Store isn’t short on decent obstacle course games, but there’s always room for something as thoughtful as Trundle. With a sharp, silhouetted aesthetic and short levels that encourage repeated playthroughs, Mobile Bros. has crafted a chic timewaster, while post-release DLC has provided some real treats.

Canabalt

Semi Secret Software

This stylish monochrome delight spawned a dozen imitators and has even kicked off its own genre of sorts, but it’s yet to be beaten either in terms of its stylish, dove-cluttered cityscape or its ingenious central mechanics that see you endlessly adjusting your speed as you race from one rooftop to the next.