The Best Apple Arcade Games for 2025

Assemble With Care takes tasks as mundane as unpacking a suitcase or fixing a tape recorder and fills them with the gentle, intimate puzzle-solving fun you’d expect from the makers of Monument Valley. Few developers are as skilled at harnessing the touch screen’s expressive interface capabilities.

Balatro was the surprise indie hit of 2024. The irresistible roguelike puts a chaotic solo spin on poker that’s impossible to put down. The Apple Arcade version features zero microtransactions, so you experience the thrill of high-stakes virtual gambling without the risk.

Card of Darkness has pleasing aesthetics (courtesy of Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward), unexpected remixes of familiar but elegant strategy systems, and number-based card game mechanics. It’s what we’ve come to expect from Zach Gage, creator of other mobile masterpieces, such as Really Bad Chess and SpellTower.

The original Cat Quest claimed to be “Skyrim With Cats” and somehow delivered on that promise. Cat Quest II is more of the same: an accessible, yet surprisingly deep and addictive action-RPG starring cats. This time you can play with a friend.

ChuChu Rocket! Universe puts a new spin on the clever 3D, spatial puzzles of the original Sega Dreamcast game. It doesn’t change my lukewarm opinions of Sega’s final home console all the way back from 1999, but I’m glad this series made a comeback.

Crossy Road asked “What if Frogger was about a chicken crossing the road?” and wound up becoming one of our all-time favorite mobile games for kids or anyone else who wanted in on the action. Crossy Road Castle tries something different. Instead of crossing endless roads, you control a chicken who traverses platforming levels in an endless tower. Change in genre aside, Crossy Road Castle’s challenge is still fun. The Crossy Road franchise is mobile gaming royalty, after all. 

Disney Melee Mania brings together icons, such as Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, and Princess Elsa, for madcap multiplayer action. In this simplified take on the very not simple MOBA genre, two teams of three players use their characters’ unique skills to dominate the battle arena. Forget Kingdom Hearts, here’s the real crossover you’ve been waiting for. It turns out the true league of legends was inside the Disney Vault this whole time.

EarthNight is essentially an automatic runner, one of the most common mobile gaming genres, occasionally broken up by bits where you fall from the sky. But the art is so distinct, the music so fresh, and the motion so freeing and fluid, that you can’t help but get swept up into it. Plus, you stab a dragon in the eye with a sword.

Exit the Gungeon is more than just a great name for a sequel to Enter the Gungeon. It maintains the original’s ability to marry simple 2D arenas with surprisingly nuanced and action-packed gunfight mechanics. In this case, the touch screen actually makes firefights a lot easier.

Final Fantasy’s creator doesn’t work for Square Enix anymore, but doesn’t mean he’s done making high-quality JRPGs. Fantasian is the latest project from Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker studio. The turn-based gameplay may harken back to the past, but the gorgeous, shining visuals feel straight from the future.

Grindstone is already cool enough as a block-matching puzzle game where you sometimes worry about the blocks biting back. But it’s the satisfying carnage that happens when your beefy fantasy hero chops through those monsters that put this game over the top. If you’ve heard of any Apple Arcade title, it’s probably this one, for good reason.

Hello Kitty and the rest of her Sanrio friends have earned their spots as pop culture icons. In Hello Kitty Island Adventure, you explore a seaside community helping friends and solving puzzles. If you want to play an adorable, Animal Crossing-like game, this is it.

Manifold Garden has been in the works for years and years. When you play the puzzle game, you’ll understand why. Traveling through its impossible geometry feels like an effortless dream, but designing these trippy challenges was surely a stressful nightmare.

Mutazione is a story-heavy, melancholic adventure through an otherworldly mutated natural environment. It’s as if the game Night in the Woods was also a chill version of the movie Annihilation. If you get those those references, you’ll dig this game.

Don’t let “Arcade Edition” fool you. While 2K’s beloved basketball sim is a bit simplified on Apple Arcade, you’ll still need technical skill to achieve your hoop dreams. Maintain a strong defense. Properly time your shots on the touch screen. It feels like serious basketball, and the game’s high production value means NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition looks like serious basketball, too.

Neo Cab presents a barely futuristic world where you are the last human driver competing against automated rideshare services, while trying to find your missing friend. It’s really engrossing. That said, I just can’t get behind being a taxi driver that talks to customers this much, something I never want in real life.

Whereas the original Oceanhorn ripped off The Wind Waker for its Legend of Zelda influences, Oceanhorn 2 has its hungry eyes set on Breath of the Wild. However, the overall structure is still closer to a traditional 3D Legend of Zelda game. It remains quite ambitious and beautiful for a mobile adventure.

The Oregon Trail on Apple Arcade modernizes the classic educational game for today’s youth. Not enough kids know how to avoid dying of dysentery. A particularly cool update is the increased input from indigenous people, making sure that cultural elements like hairstyles and music are accurately represented. Live out your American pioneer life wherever you want.   

It’s easy to say that Overland was inspired by Into the Breach, but the game has been in development so long that it’s definitely not the case. Still, both are turn-based roguelikes that emphasize desperate tactics in the face of random odds rather than grand, overarching strategy. As you travel across the small grids that make up the wasteland, you need to make tough decisions such as how to quietly look for precious gas, when to heal your dog, and whether you should just bail. The interface is designed to make the famously dense strategy genre more accessible to, say, tabletop players, and it looks clean as a result. At least, as clean as a post-apocalyptic interface can look.

For years, Pac-Man 256 has been one of our absolute favorite mobile games. It marries classic Pac-Man gameplay with an endless twist, presented through an awesome glitchy retro art style. This Apple Arcade version removes all in-app purchases, so can you focus on pellets.

In a world where pinball-inspired games are becoming increasingly abstract (Creature in the Well, Yoku’s Island Express) Pinball Wizard is relatively straightforward. Each dungeon floor is a relatively traditional table, but they’re full of monsters that you defeat by bouncing the adorable wizard into them.

Developer Game Freak makes more than just Pokemon games. The original Pocket Card Jockey was a beloved and bizarre Nintendo 3DS game that tasked you with mastering a card game to help your horse win the race. Sure! Originally, this mobile version was exclusive to Japan. But now Apple Arcade subscribers everywhere can get in on the gambling and galloping action.

Developer Zach Gage is the absolute king of taking familiar casual games and turning them into innovative, approachable art. Really Bad Chess is chess where all of your pieces are random. Sometimes you’re blessed with five queens. Other times, you’ll need to wrangle an entire herd of knights. With so much of traditional chess dominated by the need to memorize specific strategies, this twist adds exciting unpredictability for both players and viewers, alike.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a synesthesia synthesis of visuals and music that render word-based descriptions almost useless. It’s a vaporwave/blur/pop art album of a video game that’s like the musician Saint Pepsi made a new Rhythm Heaven game. Or, if Thumper’s industrial beats didn’t hate you. Or, if Persona 5 was made in the West, but was also Tetris Effect. Or, if that Daft Punk animated movie got a sequel. Does that make any sense? Who cares? Queen Latifah is in this.

Shantae and the Seven Sirens continues the journey of the half-genie hero and her cheesecake friends, finally combining modern illustrated graphics with the classic nonlinear structure for the exploratory action-adventure platforming. Just make sure to play this one with a controller.

Shinsekai is one of the most traditionally AAA Apple Arcade games. It’s a beautiful Metroidvania from Capcom about exploring and surviving an essentially wordless undersea world. Everything is made to look like sculptures, and trudging through the depths feels as weighty and as floaty as it should. Your air supply is both your health and your means to propel yourself. Use your melee weapon to club enemies or send out sonar pulses to spot new treasures. Craft spears to shoot from your gun. Fight huge bosses. Enter the depths.

As the Sneaky Sasquatch, you don’t just dig through trash to find food to live. You also have fun ruining race car competitions or invading posh golf clubs. The low-stakes life-sim reminds me of Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. There’s some light stealth, too, as you’ll need to move quietly or wear a disguise to infiltrate human spaces, Octodad-style. Or, tell the park ranger to shove it and openly be Sasquatch.

3D Sonic the Hedgehog platformers don’t have the same sterling reputation as their 2D counterparts, but Sonic Dream Team is a surprising exception. Race and bounce around creative, colorful, and contained 3D levels in this sleeper Sonic hit.

Threes! remains one of the best puzzle games of the past decade. No amount of 2048 rip-offs will ever change that. On Apple Arcade you can play the original game, ad-free, in all of its adorable, number-sliding glory.

Ultimate Rivals lets you build an all-star team from a selection of famous athletes, and get funky with what they play. Wayne Gretzky kicks a soccer ball. Megan Rapinoe throws an American football. LeBron James swings a baseball bat. This is the Super Smash Bros. of arcade sports games, and it’s a lot of fun.

What The Golf? makes you question the limits of what constitutes a golf game. Is it just about hitting a ball into a hole? What about hitting a hole into another hole? Hitting your club with another club? The answers to these questions, and more, are waiting.

When you see the PlatinumGames logo, you expect stylish, high-flying action and deceptively deep combat. World of Demons delivers. Dodging and executing sword combos on the touch screen feels surprisingly fluid, while the ability to summon powerful slain monster souls expands your attack options. The cel-shaded, Japanese art style looks like a painting come to life.