This site’s goal is to introduce you the best games for your iPad and give you hints, tricks and cheats when you need it in order to see the apps from the most positive angle. We also tell how you can save money with the help of apps when you buy something or where you can get a free download for certain apps.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Ipad Games
Alien: Isolation
($14.99/£12.99/AU$22.99)
Alien: Isolation is a survival horror game that sits between the first two Alien movies. Your job is to investigate the disappearance of the original film’s lead, Ellen Ripley. Added emotional heft comes from you playing as her daughter.
The game itself initially involves getting to grips with the interface and finding your way around. Later, you’ll be trying to stay one step ahead of a terrifying xenomorph that’s dead set on having you for lunch. Unfortunately, you’re not armed to the teeth like the marines in Aliens – you must use stealth and cunning to survive.
For people keen on the Alien franchise or the original PC/console version of this title, there’s plenty to like here. The game looks great, has well-conceived touchscreen controls, and bundles the original’s add-ons, including one that provides an alternative take on Ellen’s battle to escape the Nostromo in the original film. Finally, thanks to iPadOS 15, you can use a keyboard and mouse to control the game as you would on a PC, as long as you have an iPad-comaptible peripheral available.
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Best adventure games for iPad
Our favorite iPad immersive adventures, point-and-click games, and story-led narratives.
A screenshot showing Night in the Woods
(Image credit: Finji)
Night in the Woods
($5.99/£4.99/AU$9.99)
Night in the Woods finds college dropout (and anthropomorphic cat) Mae returning to her hometown, a place in decline, where people glumly look for work that mostly doesn’t exist. Also: there’s something in the woods. Eek!
It’s part platform game, part adventure, with an awful lot of narrative. The game also really doesn’t want to barrel through its runtime. If you’re an impatient type, look elsewhere. But if you’ve an interest in an adventure full of character, which sometimes digs into tricky subject matter, and that peppers proceedings with (optional) fun arcade sequences, this game is ideal.
It looks superb, with wonderful cartoon-like animation. It sounds great. But it’s the writing here that wins out. It’s frequently moving, occasionally mysterious, and fully immerses you in the game’s world – assuming you’re willing to stay the course, even when the pace is slow.
Five Dates
(Image credit: Wales Interactive Ltd.)
Five Dates
(Free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
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Five Dates is a virtual dating game, set in lockdown London. You play the role of Vinny, a millennial who’s signed up to a dating app. Your aim: to help him find a soulmate – or at least not to make a complete idiot of himself.
We’re in FMV territory here – much of the game comprises lengthy video clips. Now and again, you make a decision on Vinny’s behalf, which can impact on the ongoing conversation. This is where the ‘game’ element comes in. You can play based on your own personality and morality, or respond to questions in a way you think will best continue the conversation.
However you choose to play, Five Dates is interesting. As with any FMV title, it can be clunky, and repeat play is limited; but there’s humanity and personality within these dates, and even the potential to find out something new about yourself along the way.
unmemory
(Image credit: Plug In Digital)
unmemory
($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)
unmemory initially resembles a conventional illustrated mystery novel. You awake with blood on your hands, with no idea where you are. A telephone has a button to press, but it doesn’t do anything. Scroll down and more story is revealed, but interaction beyond reading is minimal.
A few minutes in, everything changes. The phone rings and you scroll up to receive a message (that’s best jotted down). You soon realize what once appeared to be a scrolling page of storyline is an intricate network of interlinked puzzles. And once you’re done, there are several more to tackle.
It’s rare to see truly fresh games on iPad, but unmemory manages to thrill and intrigue in equal measure, doing clever things with narratives, adventures and puzzling to an extent we’ve not seen since classic iPad game Device 6.
The Unfinished Swan
(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)
The Unfinished Swan
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($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
The Unfinished Swan begins with a classic tale: boy loves mom; boy loses mom; boy bestowed painting of a swan; painted swan comes to life and disappears one night through a mysterious doorway through which boy follows. Okay, maybe not that last bit.
It’s an intriguing start, though, not least when you discover the space through the doorway is blank – apparently due to a minimalist king having painted everything white. Fortunately, you’re armed with endless balls of paint; throw them around and you bring form to your surroundings so you can explore.
This basic interaction – throw stuff; make a mess; explore – remains throughout, but The Unfinished Swan continues reinventing itself as you progress. It’s a sweet, imaginative tale, and especially rewarding when played with a physical games controller.
Figment: Journey Into the Mind
(Image credit: Bedtime Digital Games)
Figment: Journey Into the Mind
(free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
Figment: Journey Into the Mind is a curious beast. Its cartoonish whimsy at first puts you in mind of a children’s adventure, but the grumbling protagonist’s world, peppered with puzzles and battles, turns out to be dark and demanding.
The premise is that a mind once at peace now very much isn’t, and Dusty – a former voice of courage – has been charged with making things right. This means traipsing around a surreal, beautifully realized dreamworld, solving basic puzzles, and frequently hacking to bits various nightmarish critters.
Ultimately, there’s little new to this iPad game in gameplay terms – this is part old-school adventure mixed with action-RPG battles. But the soundtrack and animation make the world come alive, creating an experience to be savored. If you’re not quite sure, you can try the first two chapters for free; a one-off IAP unlocks the rest.
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Journey
(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)
Journey
($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
Journey is as much an invitation to poke around as it is an iPad game. It dumps you in a vast desert, and leaves you to it. At that point, it’s down to you to unravel the strange world’s secrets – and how to proceed. At first, it’s a blast to just explore, with your traveler surfing along dunes, and making occasional discoveries. But Journey is more than a gaming sandbox – there is a progression path in this adventure.
It seems obvious you should head to a mountain, but getting there requires understanding the world around you, singing to cloth creatures, confronting ancient guardians, and uncovering glyphs. There are moments of tension, but mostly this is an alien, otherworldly experience about the joys of freedom and discovery, working at your own pace, and staring at the beautiful visuals.
Telling Lies
(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)
Telling Lies
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($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)
Telling Lies is essentially an expansive, relatively big-budget follow-up to surprise scrappy hit Her Story. The basics are quite similar: you find yourself staring at an oddball database of video recordings, into which you can type search terms. Results lists are limited – the conceit being that this is due to privacy concerns, but obviously it’s to make your search harder.
But the search for what? Well, that’s really the point of Telling Lies – unwrapping its many layers, watching video footage of conversations, trying to figure out the links and the central mystery.
That you can only ever hear one half of interactions means you gradually piece things together – it feels properly investigative. There’s a digital notepad, but you’ll likely want a real one; and you’ll marvel at how creator Sam Barlow has again breathed life into the once derided genre of FMV.
Sky: Children of the Light
(Image credit: thatgamecompany)
Sky: Children of the Light
(free + IAP)
Sky: Children of the Light is an open multiplayer adventure, set in a world of magic and delight. It features the titular children of the light, tasked with freeing fallen stars, and returning them to their constellations.
The actual gameplay involves a lot of poking around lush landscapes, looking for hidden secrets, and lighting candles that charge up your ‘winged light’. This lets you leap from clifftops and temporarily fly above the world.
It’s the feel of Sky that first draws you in – a mix of dazzling visuals and freedom that’s like nothing else on iPad. What keeps you there is the game’s clever multiplayer, where you must share with others, wordlessly working on solutions to puzzles, and occasionally having your hand grabbed before the pair of you soar majestically into the heavens.
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Minit
(Image credit: Devolver Digital)
Minit
($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
Minit is a quirky adventure title with roots firmly planted in retro RPGs. The visuals look like they were cooked up on a 1980s console, and the gameplay has you scour a tile-based map to find objects, secure quests, and complete basic tasks.
However, rather than allowing you to amble about, Minit pits you against the clock. Every session lasts just 60 seconds. You’ll emit a howl on reaching a target, but then running out of time before you grab an object or flick a switch – and then resolve to shave precious seconds off your route next time.
Minit is short; given how it’s constructed, that’s perhaps inevitable. But its sense of focus – and the razor-sharp focus it forces on the player – is to be championed, not criticized.
Best ipad games free
The best new free iPad game
Screenshots showing Linia super on iPad
(Image credit: Blackrobot Games)
Linia super
Linia super sits part-way between methodical swordplay and observational puzzler. It takes place in a world of abstract, geometric, animated artworks. Shapes and objects shift and twirl in a regular and repeating pattern, which when combined with the chill-out soundtrack makes for a relaxing and almost hypnotic experience.
A sharp sense of precision and study is required for what comes next, though, with you aiming to match a sequence of colored dots by dragging a line through the on-screen shapes. Get it right and you move on to the next level in the sequence. Get it wrong and you end up in an increasingly tense situation, trying to get past the current challenge with a diminishing reserve of virtual ‘ink’.
It’s great stuff, whether you’re in it for the tension, the imaginative design, the art, or all of these things.
Best free iPad arcade games
Our favorite iPad arcade games, including brawlers and fighting games, auto-runners, party games, pinball, and retro classics.
Super Fowlst 2
(Image credit: Thomas Young)
Super Fowlst 2
Super Fowlst 2 is the third entry in a series of free iPad games (following Fowlst and Super Fowlst) that finds a heroic chicken saving the world from a demon invasion. You tap the sides of the screen to flap your principled poultry, whereupon they arc upwards until gravity makes itself known. Roaming enemies are defeated by bonking them on the head.
The game’s speed, odd control method, and level design – peppering the landscape with explosive crates full of bees, spike-filled corridors, and literal pinball table components – make for frenetic and chaotic play. Visually, the game’s a treat as well, with delicate pixel art and plenty of character.
There’s longevity, too, in being able to upgrade your chicken (so it can poop bombs and gain a downwards-smash move), and procedurally generated levels that ensure you never quite get the same game twice.
Astalo
(Image credit: Tree Men Games)
Astalo
Astalo finds your tiny fighter atop a square hunk of land with sheer drops at every edge. It’s also packed full of monsters determined to tear you limb from limb. If you don’t want to die horribly, you might need to get a bit stabby…
To attack, you drag a finger in the direction you want your fighter to head, and let go to watch them scythe through skeletons and other foes. The pace is frenetic – not least in endless mode, which resembles arcade classic Robotron in its relentless, claustrophobic nature.
Similarly, Astalo typically leaves you staring at a game over screen in short order. But story and endless modes alike provide plenty of replay value, and the game works especially well on iPad due to your finger not covering up half the screen while you swipe for your very survival.
Fancade
(Image credit: Martin Magni)
Fancade
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Fancade is a game construction kit that puts its money where its mouth is, since all of the mini-games within were made using the app itself.
This is quite an achievement, given what you get. There are over 50 game styles, which echo fare found elsewhere on iPad, such as auto-runners, puzzlers, racing games, and an architectural path-finding title that resembles the creator’s own Mekorama.
If you so desire, you can use Fancade to create your own miniature masterpieces, either starting from scratch or by using one of the built-in kits. A gallery lets you delve into what others have made as well.
Even if you never make your own games, Fancade is a must-have, offering countless levels of bite-sized gaming bliss. And taken as a whole, it’s one of the most impressive and ambitious freebies the App Store is ever likely to see.
Oddman
(Image credit: JoyPac)
Oddman
Oddman is a high-intensity brawler, set in a world of strange bouncy protagonists, floating islands, and instant death. Like a deranged take on sumo, you fling your character at your opponents, trying to knock them to their doom.
Although you’re hardly equipped with a wide range of moves – nor any real semblance of subtlety – Oddman attempts to add variety to your life. Over time, you encounter new types of foe – including massive bosses – and different environments that shake up how you approach bouts. It’s immediate and very silly – although mastery takes a while, and you’re never more than an errant swipe from disaster.
Neatly, this free iPad game moves beyond solo play, too. You can pit your swiping digit against a friend, on same-device two-player brawls that make good use of the iPad display’s relative acres.
The King of Fighters ALLSTAR
(Image credit: TechRadar)
The King of Fighters ALLSTAR
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Free iPad game The King of Fighters ALLSTAR comes across like a restless take on Double Dragon or Final Fight. This means you mostly duff up all manner of bad guys along side-scrolling streets, prior to laying into a big bad.
Like other King of Fighters titles, you have a team, so you can tag in others from your trio during battles. The game includes arena-style modes as well, unlocked when you’ve worked through enough of the story.
On iPhone, this game’s button-mashing is fiddly, but it works well on the iPad’s larger display, which also lets the lovely visuals shine. Newbies are catered for with ‘auto’ movement, but veterans can opt for ‘manual’, which echoes console fighting games, and provides far more nuance than the comparatively canned fare found in the Marvel and Transformers mobile brawlers.
Snake Rivals
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Snake Rivals
Snake Rivals comes across like classic mobile title Snake got smashed into Fortnite. Dozens of reptiles are dumped into an arena, and the last snake standing – er, slithering – wins.
There are three modes to pit your tubular terror against: Classic allows endless respawns so you can learn the ropes and build tactics; Gold Rush is all about obliterating other snakes to turn them into gold to grab; and Battle Royale has you take out the opposition while the arena gradually shrinks to a tiny island surrounded by lava.
Although a simple arcade game, Snake Rivals works particularly well with an iPad flat on a table, giving you the space to spot rivals, without your fingers obscuring the display. Its freemium aspects aren’t too venomous either – largely being limited to optional snake customization.
Knight Brawl
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Knight Brawl
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Knight Brawl is to 2D fighters what Anchorman is to journalism. That is, Knight Brawl is absurd, silly, and entertaining, but it’s very knowingly not trying to be realistic – and it’s all the better for it.
Side-on battles have knights attempt to relieve opponents of their armor before delivering the final blow. Only the controls and physics – like in Colin Lane’s other games – make for an anarchic experience where characters bounce around like they’re on trampolines.
If that was all you got, this would have been fun – a medieval take on Rowdy Wrestling, with pointy weapons. But along with multiple battle modes, there are also missions where you raid castles and steal bling. This isn’t just a throwaway gag, then, but a game for the long-term – a serious slice of iPad comedy.
Williams Pinball
Williams Pinball
Williams Pinball brings a selection of classic pinball tables to your iPad, and then adds animated remastering – at least, if you’re prepared to work for it.
Initially, you just get to unlock one table for unlimited play. (Pick a good one – Attack from Mars, The Getaway, or Medieval Madness – because you’ll be playing it a lot.) Through daily challenges, you’ll then slowly acquire the parts to gradually unlock other tables – unless you fancy splashing out on IAP to buy them outright.
This probably sounds a bit awful, but the truth is you’re ‘grinding’ by playing pinball. Also, the challenges often give you unlimited balls, so you can learn the tables. Stay the course, and eventually you can boost these already top-notch recreations with tough pro-level physics and animated components.
Fly THIS!
Fly THIS!
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Fly THIS! echoes early App Store hit Flight Control, having you draw paths for planes to follow. But whereas the older title was an endless test that relentlessly ramped up the panic, this newer game feels more strategic and bite-sized.
The planes are fewer in number, but the maps are more claustrophobic. Also, you’re not just making planes land – instead, you ferry passengers between airports. Further complications come in the form of weather, and massive mountains you really don’t want to fly planes into.
Because each level has a set points target, Fly THIS! is great for playing in short bursts as well. In all, it’s a smart reimagining of a long-lost iPad favorite, which in many ways is more appealing than the game that presumably inspired it.
Beat Street
Beat Street
Beat Street is a love letter to classic scrolling brawlers, where a single, determined hero pummels gangs of evil-doers and saves the day. In Beat Street, giant vermin are terrorizing Toko City, and will only stop when you’ve repeatedly punched them in the face.
On iPhone, Beat Street is a surprisingly successful one-thumb effort, but on iPad you’re better off playing in landscape. With your left thumb, you can dance about, and then use your right to hammer the screen (and the opposition).
The iPad’s large display shows off the great pixel art, but the fighty gameplay’s the real star – from you taking on far too many opponents at once to gleefully beating one about the head with a baseball bat. It turns out they do make ’em like they used to after all.
Up the Wall
Up the Wall
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Up the Wall is an auto-runner with an edge. Or rather, lots of edges. Because instead of being played on a single plane, Up the Wall regularly has you abruptly turn 90-degree corners, some of which find you zooming up vertical walls.
The speed and snap twists make for a disorienting experience, but the game’s design is extremely smart where, most notably, each challenge is finite and predefined. Up the Wall isn’t about randomness and luck, but mastering layouts, and aiming for that perfect run.
It nails everything else, too. The game sounds great, and has sharp, vibrant visuals, with imaginative environments. It’s not often you’re frantically directing a burger in an abstract fever dream of milkshakes and ketchup bottles, nor a skull in a world of flames, lava, and guitars.
Silly Walks
Silly Walks
Silly Walks is a one-thumb arcade game, featuring wobbling foodstuffs braving the hell of nightmarish kitchens (and, later, gardens and gyms), in order to free fruity chums who’ve been cruelly caged.
The hero of the hour – initially a pineapple cocktail – rotates on one foot. Tapping the screen plants a foot, causing him to rotate on the other foot and changing the direction of rotation. Charitably, this could be called a step, and with practice, it’s possible to put together a reasonable dodder.
And you’ll need to. Although early levels only require you to not fall off of tables, pretty soon you’re dealing with meat pulverizers, hero-slicing knives, and psychotic kitchenware in hot pursuit.
It’s admittedly all a little one-level – Silly Walks reveals almost all in its initial levels – but smart design, superb visuals, and a unique control method make it well worth a download.
Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert
Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert
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The world’s stretchiest canine’s found himself in a world full of sticky desserts and a surprising number of saw blades. His aim: get to the other end of this deadly yet yummy horizontally scrolling world. The snag: the aforementioned blades, a smattering of puzzles, and the way this particular pooch moves.
In Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert, the canine hero doesn’t pootle along on tiny legs – instead, you swipe to make his body stretch like an angular snake until he reaches another surface, whereupon his hind quarters catch up.
The result is an impressive side-scroller that’s more sedate puzzler than frantic platformer – aside from in adrenaline-fueled time-based challenge rooms, which even Silly Sausage veterans will be hard-pressed to master.
Conclusion
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