20. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Genre: Sim
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
Because no one wants to wait any longer for Animal Crossing on Switch. It doesn’t quite have the infinite joys of its handheld cousins but there’s adorable charm to be found here as you design your own campground and play host to your favourite Animal Crossing stars. Plus, there’s no real reason to invest with actual cash either as you fish, catch bugs, pick fruit, design your camper, and even water flowers to pass the time before a full game arrives.
Download Animal Crossing Pocket Camp here
19. Limbo
Genre: Platformer
Price: $3.99 | £3.99
Hopefully, you've played Limbo by now, but if you missed it, it's right at home on mobile. This black and white cinematic platformer is full of deadly traps, creepy shadow kids, and giant spiders. Assuming you can stomach all of that, it's also one of the best platformers, and indies in general, of the past 20 years. Play it, then find Inside and play that too.
18. Very Little Nightmares
Genre: Puzzle-platformer
Price: $6.99 | £6.99
If you've already loved and finished Little Nightmares and Little Nightmares 2 on PC and consoles, this mobile spinoff captures the essence of the series while providing a different, third entry in the series that fans shouldn't miss. It lacks some of the qualities of the main games, but the atmosphere in this puzzling side-story is still rich here just like it famously always has been.
17. Monument Valley 2
Genre: Puzzle
Price: $4.99 | £4.99
Take the Escher-like art of the first game, make it prettier, more challenging, and grander overall. That's the blueprint for Monument Valley 2, it seems because it seems the team at Ustwo Games nailed it. While the sequel didn't light the mobile world on fire the same way the original did, it's actually the better game overall, though both are worth playing so maybe start with the first one if you haven't tried them yet.
16. PUBG Mobile
Genre: Battle royale
Price: Free with in-game purchases
PUBG lit the fuse for the gaming world's obsession with battle royale, and though today it's often been supplanted by other games in the genre, for the purists, there's still nothing better. PUBG Mobile is a bit of a strange entity when compared to the console and PC versions, as the in-game events get much wackier than the grounded main game ever does, but the tough-as-nails survival and gunplay is still there in all its admittedly janky beauty.
15. Madden NFL 21 Mobile
Genre: American football
Price: Free with in-game purchases
Not many sports sims translate to mobile so well, but Madden is the best of the good ones. With plenty of crossover content between Madden Mobile and the main game, diehards can keep pace with the competition no matter where they're playing, and there are some unique modes that allow you to experiment with new ways to play when you're away from your PC or console. If it's in the game, it's on your iPhone.
14. Jeopardy!
Genre: Trivia
Price: Free with in-game purchases
Maybe it's old-fashioned, but I find Jeopardy to still be the very best game show out there. Its longevity implies it's doing something right, and I attribute that largely to its breadth of categories and the depth of knowledge one must have to compete. Jeopardy on iPhone translates all of that to a live multiplayer experience that is packed with fun challenges and bragging rights too.
13. What Remains of Edith Finch
Genre: Adventure
Price: $4.99 / £4.49
It'll only take you two hours to finish What Remains of Edith Finch, and the game wants you to do it that way to keep its pacing intact. In that short runtime is one of the most beloved "walking sims" yet seen. The Finch family is cursed, and it's your job to figure out why and how seemingly everyone in your family has died in tragedies going back decades. Yeah, it's a bit of a downer--can't lie--but it's also beautifully put together and impressively diverse in its gameplay mechanics, with each tragic memory unfolding in its own unique way.
12. Genshin Impact
Genre: RPG
Price: Free with in-game purchases
We'll probably never get Breath of the Wild on mobile phones, but Genshin Impact is the next best thing. This open-world gacha game draws heavily from Zelda, especially in the world design, but the anime makeover and deeper item and leveling systems make it stand out as its own worthwhile game too. It's one of the finest examples of a true open-world game on mobile.
11. Oxenfree
Genre: adventure
Price: $4.99
Oxenfree is one of the finest adventure games of the past decade, so wherever you play it, it'll be worth it. But the fact that you can play this supernatural teen thriller right on your iPhone or iPad is a great proposition because the 2D dialogue-driven system feels right at home for the touch screen. Oxenfree revolutionized the choose-your-own-adventure genre with a remarkably lifelike dialogue tree that flows like real conversations, which takes the spotlight off any would-be janky talking sections and lets you focus on the out-of-dimension ghosts crashing your party.
Turn to page five for our top 10 best iPhone games...
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