Best Apple Arcade games

Apple Arcade is a subscription service that lets users play premium iPad, iPhone, Mac and Apple TV games as often as they like for a set monthly fee. But which ones are worth your time?

We test primarily on iPhone. We also recommend you get a hardware controller, given how many of the games benefit from one: we test with an Xbox controller and a Rotor Riot wired controller to see if this works and how well it suits the gameplay. Many games support Bluetooth controllers despite not mentioning this fact in their App Store description.

1. SP!NG

A puzzler that’s original, clever, sadistic, fun and frustrating in that ‘let me keep trying until I crack this’ way that’s always a sign of quality. There’s essentially one control: tap the screen and the free-falling shape that you control will hook on to the nearest fulcrum and swing around it. Using this mechanic and various interactive level furniture you must collect the jewels and exit without landing on any nasty spikes.

The music’s great, as is the simple but eye-catching aesthetic. But it’s the compulsive quality – the way you automatically start the next level, without the least thought of doing something else for a bit – that really marks it out as a winner. An exceptional, must-play game.

Puzzle • Age 4+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controllers

2. WHAT THE GOLF?

This bizarre and genuinely funny sports sim – ‘Golf for people who hate golf’ – hits a hole in one for relentless ingenuity. The courses feature exploding barrels, cats and runaway cars, and half the time you find yourself playing with a cow or a carpet instead of a ball.

There are levels in both portrait and landscape orientation; there are huge variations in difficulty and graphical style and gameplay mechanics; there are even witty parodies of other games. As soon as you feel like the makers must have exhausted the possibilities of the format they surprise you yet again. There’s masses of golf to be played here, and all of it feels fresh.

Sport • Age 9+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controllers (but this isn’t recommended)

3. GRINDSTONE

Here’s Arcade’s take on the Bejeweled/Candy Crush template, and as you’d expect it’s both gorgeous and far more interesting than most of the clones in that space.

Trace a path across matching creatures – accounting for certain complications, such as treasure chests, boss monsters and magic stones that let you transition to a different colour – and then hit Go. Instead of a gentle tinkling of jewels, you’ll be rewarded with a ridiculously gory (albeit cartoonish) animation.

Far easier to pick up than it is to put down, Grindstone also wins the prize for the most addictive Arcade game I’ve yet tried.

Puzzle • Age 12+ • Single player only • Supports hardware controllers (awkwardly)

4. BLEAK SWORD

Devolver’s low-fi action RPG takes the style and atmosphere of Dark Souls and puts it through a super-cool 8bit filter. It looks like nothing else.

The difficulty ramps up crazily as you dodge, parry and slice your way through increasingly dangerous mobs of monsters and bad hombres: some levels are so demanding that you virtually have to plan them out, Hotline Miami style. You get as many continues as you like – the game’s quite forgiving like that – but a single death results in the loss of all your equipment… unless you can beat the level that killed you on your very next try, which makes for some high‑stakes tension.

Bleak Sword is fast, exciting and masses of fun. It’s also occasionally infuriating, in a way you only get with very good games: something about the way it manages to make you care so intensely about your little stick man, and take it personally when he suffers. This is a roundabout way of admitting that this game