Roll, roll up. The iPhone 5’s just around the corner, but before it arrives we’re here to whet your appetite with our list of not 10, not 40 but 100 of the best iPhone games ever! Spanning the three years since the iPhone arrived, we’ll cover every genre from physics puzzlers to guts and gore shooters. To keep you on your toes, we’ve split the list up into five parts which will be coming to you throughout this week. So, as you may have guessed, in this first piece we’ll be running down numbers 100 to 80.
We’ve done our best to give you the widest spread of games, so only one game per series has been included, and if a game is completely eclipsed by a rival, it won’t make the cut.
Don’t forget to check out the other parts as well –
100 Best iPhone games 100-81
100 Best iPhone games 80-61
100 Best iPhone games 60-41
100 Best iPhone games 40-21
100 Best iPhone games 20-1
100. Pinball HD
By OOO Gameprom
Released August 2010
OOO Gameprom makes the most realistic pinball games on iPhone, and Pinball HD compiles its early efforts – Wild West Pinball, The Deep Pinball and Jungle Style Pinball – into one download. It doesn’t have some of the over-the-top mini games and stylising loaded into some iPhone pinball “sims” but does offer realistic physics (the most important factor of all), great 3D visuals and convincing sound effects. For the feel of the arcade pinball table in your palm, this is it.
99. Super Mega Worm
By Deceased Pixel
Released August 2010
iPhone gaming has helped popularise a number of different gaming genres. Super Mega Worm is representative of a fairly recent trend we’ll call the Giant Worm Disasterfest. You control a giant, many-toothed worm that’s out to wreak havoc, after pesky humans polluted your natural environment. You leap through the air, sailing on pure momentum, and chomp through anything in your way. With 16bit-style retro visuals this game is instantly charming. Other highlights from this side-on action sub-genre include Mini Squadron and Death Worm.
98. DrawRace
By RedLynx
Released June 2009
DrawRace does something that, as a cartoony casual game, you wouldn’t expect. It makes you think about how driving physics works – perhaps as much as that £40 ultra-realistic racer on your home console. Why? Because you draw the path of your car before the race, moving your finger quickly to tell the car to accelerate, and slow down your finger to ease off the pedal a bit. When the race starts you simply watch. Sure, there’s no ultra-involved physics at work here – it’s not modelling each bit of grit stuck between the tire tread – but if you’re the kind of gaming racer that refuses to put a foot on the brake pedal DrawRace will get you thinking.
97. Gangstar: West Coast Hustle
By Gameloft
Released August 2009
Gameloft’s often accused of nicking the style of popular console games. We wouldn’t dream of such a thing, of course, but if we did, we might say that Gangstar: West Coast Hustle is a Grand Theft Auto rip-off. At release back in 2009, it impressed hugely because it offered a proper open 3D world, not the top-down 2D we saw before in games like Car Jack Streets. The script’s cringe-worthy and Gameloft has since made better-looking games, but if Rockstar’s own Chinatown Wars won’t satisfy, this is the game to get.
96. Bumpy Road
By Simogo
Released May 2011
In most games featuring a car, you control the car. In Bumpy Road, you control the ground underneath the car. You raise it with a ringer to alter the car’s speed, or give it a sharp flick to make the car jump over a gap. It sounds bizarre, but it works. It’s packed full of charm too – in the car are an old couple, and you collect the memories of their life together as you drive along. How sweet is that?
95. Transformers G1: Awakening
By Glu
Released Febraury 2010
Although Transformers G1: Awakening was released after Michael Bay had resurrected the Transformers series with his big-budget movie LaBeouf-fests, it’s not based on the new movies. Instead, it’s based on the classic TV series. And it’s not an action game either, but a turn-based strategy game in the vein of Advance Wars. The result? It’s bags of fun to play. More proof that movie games are a bad idea. As if we needed any more…
94. Siege Hero
By Armor Games
Released May 2011
Every smash hit iPhone game will spawn an array of copycats. It might be argued that Siege Hero is an Angry Birds wannabe, but it is – at least a little bit – different. Instead of flinging birds, you fire rocks and bombs. And it’s not the trajectory that’s important (you don’t fling here, just pick a target) but what block you choose to hit. You have to dispatch all the enemy soldiers in each level, by causing their defences to crumble down on top of them. More of a thinking person’s game than Angry Birds, some even prefer it.
93. Perfect Balance: Harmony
By ttursas
Released April 2009
A pure, plain and simple puzzler, Perfect Balance: Harmony was overlooked by some at its release, but if you’re out for a relaxing-but-challenging game, it’s… well, perfect. In each of the 100 levels you have a selection of objects you have to balance within a few immovable obstacles, using the laws of physics as your guide. The series branched out and became even more challenging in the sequels Inferno and Lost Trials, but it’s the soothing original that wins our 69p vote.
92. Enigmo 2
By Pangea Software
Released September 2009
The original Enigmo was one of the early puzzle classics of iPhone gaming. It has since largely been forgotten, but the gameplay of it and its successor Enigmo 2 stand up well to this day. You have to deliver water, plasma or laser beams from one end of a level to another, using various types of bouncy, reflective and absorbing blocks. It’s challenging, but in a way that’s (eventually) very satisfying.
91. Nick Chase: A Detective Story
By Big Fish Games
Released Oct 2009
There are plenty of hidden object games, but most of them only lay a very thin veneer of story on top of the basic mechanics. Not so here. You are Nick Chase, a Chandler-esque PI with a shabby office and too much time on his hands. The game is still packed with hidden object gameplay, but at each juncture you feel hooked into the plot. With a film noir style and hand-drawn graphics, this is our top pick from a very crowded genre.
90. Archibald’s Adventures
By Rake in Grass
Released January 2009
Archibald’s
Adventures won’t lure you in and get you salivating from its
screenshots alone, but from just a few minutes of playing you can tell this is a
quality title. It’s a clever platform puzzler that’ll challenge your
cranium much more than your fingers. The full game offers a massive 191
levels, fit for hours and hours of gameplay.
89. Alive 4-Ever RETURNS
By Meridian Entertainment
Released April 2010
The Alive 4-Ever games are a progression of the twin-stick shooter craze that infected the App Store in 2009. They’re packed full of zombie-blasting action, but add a bit of depth too, letting you buy new weapons and upgrade your character with experience earned in the field. The sequel, Alive 4-Ever Returns doesn’t add a great deal to the original formula, so feel free to purchase whichever of the two games is cheaper on the day you head over to the App Store.
88. The Heist
By Tap Tap Tap
Released March 2011
A puzzle compendium with a difference, The Heist features 60 levels based around four different kinds of puzzle, and completing them gets you closer to opening a safe. Solve a certain number of each and you’ll break through another layer of security. Its story is largely a device to keep propelling you through the levels, but it works remarkably well. If you dislike the wire-swapping, log-sliding puzzles within the game the story won’t convince you otherwise, but for puzzle fans it’s a must-download.
87. Undercroft
By Jagex
Released September 2010
Although a new title, roleplaying game fans who were doing the rounds back in the 90s won’t fail to recognise its style. Before full 3D games took over the world, grid-based roleplaying games like Undercroft were extremely popular, and very common. Eye of the Beholder, Ishtar, Lands of Lore and the Might and Magic games captured the imaginations of geeks worldwide. And now a new generation (or perhaps just the old one again) can discover this kind of game on iOS. Undercroft claims to offer 20 hours of gameplay, but if that’s not enough check out the equally-good The Quest series from Chillingo – which also has a handful of expansion packs.
86. Carcassone
By The Coding Monkeys
Released June 2010
The most famous German boardgame of them all, Carcassonne lets you create a world out of tiles. The more successful you are at creating this world, the more followers you’ll have. And followers are what you need to win. It’s not quite as simple as just randomly plonking down tile “cards” though. You have to continue road tiles with other road tiles, and city tiles with other city tiles and so on. A bit like dominos, with a side order of megalomania chucked in for good measure.
85. Zenonia 2
By Gamevil
Released March 2010
The Zenonia series was alive and well for more than six months before it launched on iPhone, but it was iOS that won it popularity in the West. The Koreans loved it from the start though. Taking cues from 90s 16-bit roleplaying games, Zenonia 2 is a top-down cartoony adventure with visuals influenced by anime. The dialogue is cheesy, many of the quests are a bit banal, but there’s still something enduringly charming about this series.
84. Zombie Gunship
By Limbic Software
Released July 2011
Over the past few years, zombies have become one of the top gaming themes, to the extent that we’re now pretty bored of rotting flesh and hideous gore. Whoudda thunk it? Thankfully, Zombie Gunship takes a very different approach to the walking dead. You blast them from an airborne gunship with guns and rockets – making sure not to accidentally vaporise any nearby humans – ensuring they never reach your base. Its novel approach to a tired theme wins it a place here.
83. Super Quickhook
By Rocketcat Games
Released June 2010
Few games maintain a sense of momentum better than Super Quickhook. Here’s it’s supplied by a grappling hook, wielded by our little blocky protagonist. Part platformer, part race game, you tear through levels doing your best not to bump into anything to slow you down. Hold a finger on-screen and he fires out the grappling hook, take your finger off and it’s pulled back in. There’s a fearsome difficulty curve at work, but it’s worth scaling.
82. Castle of Magic
By Gameloft
Released June 2009
Several genres required several killer games before we were convinced they could “work” on iPhone. The first-person shooter was one, and the humble traditional platformer was another. Castle of Magic wasn’t the first great platformer to come to iPhone, but it is one that sticks in the memory. Painted in dazzling colours and packed with enough nods to old 8bit and 16bit games to make us go misty-eyed, this is one to check out if it flew under your radar back in ’09.
81. Myst
By Cyan Worlds
Released May 2009
Myst was one of the key games to prove the potential of CD-ROM technology, back in the old days. Making use of all the extra storage offered by the medium, it featured (for the time) sumptuous graphics that caused many a jaw to drop. They even look pretty good today, thanks to the small size of the iPhone’s screen. The iPhone edition of Myst is a straight port of the original 1991 adventure. Its sequel, Riven, is also available. We suggest buying whichever stokes your nostalgia flames the most.
Come back tomorrow for part two, in which we’ll run down from position 80 to 61.