iPhone game recommendations

Cullen · February 2010

I've just got a shiny new iPhone and I'm looking for some recommendations for games. Do we have a slash signal for them? Anywho I'm looking for:

- Puzzle games: like Tetris etc
- Strategy/sim games: there's ports of Settlers and Sim City on the app store. Are they any good?
- Anything quirky or particularly well suited to the iPhone

BugBoy · February 2010

I've found some fantastic apps in here:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=79144

m3k · February 2010

chinatown wars

AngryPuppy · February 2010

You're probably going to be directed to this thread, however I share your predicament and if anyone can suggest some good resources for separating the wheat from the chaff I'd be all ears. The current thread has turned me on to some great games but it's still a bit too sprawling to be of much use. In particular I'm looking for wifi/bluetooth multiplayer games - especially co-op - since a pal of mine recently joined the club.

Edit: Oh, and for my own paltry recommendations; Canabalt and Angry Birds. Also I'm checking freeappaday.com or something like that daily - there was this thing at Xmas called the Appvent calender where you could get apps which usually cost money for free (Minisquadron was a particularly good catch) and this is a similar scheme although the content so far hasn't been amazing.

ben_bot · February 2010

Rolando and Rolando 2 are excellent games with lots of replayability.

In both games you control round creatures called Rolandos. You move them through platforming-puzzle type levels by tilting the iPhone to the left or right. Rolando 2 is better than the first, but the first is excellent as well.

Lunker · February 2010

AngryPuppy wrote: »

You're probably going to be directed to this thread, however I share your predicament and if anyone can suggest some good resources for separating the wheat from the chaff I'd be all ears. The current thread has turned me on to some great games but it's still a bit too sprawling to be of much use. In particular I'm looking for wifi/bluetooth multiplayer games - especially co-op - since a pal of mine recently joined the club.

Edit: Oh, and for my own paltry recommendations; Canabalt and Angry Birds. Also I'm checking freeappaday.com or something like that daily - there was this thing at Xmas called the Appvent calender where you could get apps which usually cost money for free (Minisquadron was a particularly good catch) and this is a similar scheme although the content so far hasn't been amazing.

As someone who lives and breathes the iPhone gaming thread, I agree with you. It's tough to keep a main sticky list of "Recommended Games" because so many come out constantly, so it's really more of a moving target, and they're so cheap that you'll easily end up with five pages of apps and games before you know it. It also doesn't help that Xagrath has pretty much abandoned the thread.

Once it reaches the 100-page limit, I might take a crack at organizing the OP or work on it together with some people.

To answer this OP's specific query:

- Puzzle games: like Tetris etc
- Strategy/sim games: there's ports of Settlers and Sim City on the app store. Are they any good?
- Anything quirky or particularly well suited to the iPhone

Definitely check out the version of Civilization Revolution, which is AFAIK the entire DS game's content. I'm not really a big strategy/sim fan, but Mecho Wars is a pretty servicable Advance Wars clone that also has online multiplayer. In terms of tower defense, GeoDefense Swarm is highly regarded, even in that overly saturated genre. And the version of Sims 3 is pretty good.

Some of my favorite puzzlers are:
- Aztec Quest (kind of like an Incredible Machine tile-based physics game)
- Drop7 (a clever math-based spin on the dropping-block genre)
- Unify (kind of Tetris-y, only you play left and right sides simultaneously)
- Eliss (a frantic space-themed game that uses multi-touch brilliantly)
- Puzzle Quest
- Critter Crunch

Other games that stand out as being awesome on iPhone:
- Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor (a clever puzzle-platformer that uses background narrative in a fascinating way)
- Canabalt (a port of the free Flash game, and it's a little pricey at $2.99, but it really sings on iPhone)
- Space Invaders: Infinity Gene (a crazy acid-induced reimaginging of Space Invaders that makes it into a awesome trance-infused bullet-hell shmup)
- Point-and-click adventures really thrive here: Broken Sword 1, Secret of Monkey Island SE, Beneath a Steel Sky Remastered, Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2
- Word Ace, Card Ace and Card Ace: Blackjack are awesome free online-multiplayer games. Card Ace is straight up Texas Hold 'Em, Word Ace is a mashup of Texas Hold 'Em and Scrabble, and Blackjack is self-explanatory. All are 100 percent free to play online, but they have donation/add-on DLC you can buy if you want to support the devs.

I've found the best way to find out about iPhone games is to hunt for free demos (Lite versions) or look up YouTube videos of the games in question.

Cullen · February 2010

Thanks for the recommendations chaps. I've picked up drop7, card ace, and beneath the steal sky for now. I'd be all over the other point and click adventures but I've just played both Monkey Island and Broken Sword recently on the 360 and DS respectively.

Are the iPhone versions of Monkey Ball and Katamari worth looking at?

Raiden333 · February 2010

A friend of mine let me borrow his iPhone to play this game that I think was called "DoodleJumper."

He practically had to fight me to get it out of my hands.