Many people think that for games that you carry around, it is difficult to beat the iPhone. After all, you always have your phone with you, so it’s a convenient way to play. And most iPhone models are also quite powerful in graphics and processing.
If you subscribe to Apple Arcade you already have access to a curated collection of high quality games for $4.99 per month. If it weren’t, it would be hard to find great iPhone games, so here’s a roundup of the 20 best iPhone free games, with a selection of fun and innovative games, visual quality, and the least annoying in-game ads and purchases.
1. Super Auto Pets
If you like to research statistics and abilities, and like to arrange units in the best order to take advantage of everyone’s skills in battle – not to mention the idea of elephants fighting lobsters – Super Automatic Pet is for you. This auto-combat game looks cute, in this turn-based game, various animal units are lined up in a row for automatic combat. The game is free, but there are paid expansion packs to choose from.
Download: Super Auto Pets
2. Among Us
Among Us is one of those games that helped many people find entertainment during the pandemic, and it remains one of the most fun multiplayer games around. Up to 10 friends work together as crew members of the ship, racing against time to find out who among them are the impostors who killed everyone. Whether you’re looking for a secret killer or you’re a real imposter, it’s fun to kill as many people as you can before you get caught.
Download: Among Us
3. Badlanders
Badlanders is one of the few good combat shooters on the iPhone, and it’s a “Predator Shooter” combat game where you explore a combat area, knock down opponents and steal their gear. If you can safely reach a extraction point, everything you plunder belongs to you. The graphics are clear and the developers haven’t reinvented the wheel, so if you’ve played a similar game, you’ll quickly understand its mechanics.
Download: Badlanders
4. Asphalt 9: Legends
As the latest iteration of the popular Asphalt series of racing games, Asphalt 9 largely leans toward an arcade experience, which works well on small iPhone screens. For example, with TouchDrive enabled, the game automatically steers, just like a car on track, which means you can focus on speed, stunts, and drift.
Download: Asphalt 9: Legends
5. Idle Magic Academy
If you already run your own zoo, amusement park, and candy store in other business simulators, try your hand at running a regular version of Hogwarts. The Leisure Magic Academy lets you recruit non-magical students and teach them the basics of magic, while you expand the school building by unlocking dormitories, classrooms, classes, spells, and potions. The gameplay is very low-key, of course, you have to tolerate ads to play for free.
Download: Idle Magic Academy
6. Tower Madness 2
One of the all-time great tower defense games, Tower Madness 2 forces you to expend a ridiculous amount of firepower to keep persistent aliens from stealing a handful of sheep. The tech upgrades are fun, the visuals are charming, and some of the puzzle-like battlegrounds are quite challenging.
Download: Tower Madness 2
7. Cards of Terra
This card-based puzzle game, part solitaire, part magic: collecting, requires you to clear the cards through battle to show the gold cards, you need to collect these cards. There are quite a few strategies here, because you have to learn how to best deploy cards with special abilities to fight each other, but the basic principles of the game can be mastered in about 5 minutes.
Download: Cards of Terra
8. The Battle of Polytopia
Like a pocket-sized version of Civilization, Polytopia is all about growing your city and building an empire. But in keeping with the pocket-sized concept, you get just 30 turns to earn victory. There’s a tech tree to research, warriors to train, neighboring empires to conquer, and more. And you can play solo or multiplayer.
Download: The Battle of Polytopia
9. Dadish 2
You’re a radish in a clever platformer that challenges you to collect your children while jumping, running, and dodging — you know, all the usual things you do in an action platform game. The graphics are colorful and adorable and the gameplay is crisp, essential in a fast-paced game like this. And game mechanics aside, there’s a lot of personality and charm here, which is more than enough to keep you coming back for more.
Download: Dadish 2
10. Sky: Children of the Light
Not every game requires quick action or quick reflexes; Some games can be enjoyed like a good book. Sky: Children of the Light is a fascinating adventure game in which you explore a strange alien wasteland, discover other characters, and work together to restore fallen stars to the sky. The game is full of relatively simple puzzles that propel you forward in a beautifully designed world.
Download: Sky: Children of the Light
11. Williams Pinball
Some mobile pinball games tend to be fantasistic, cartoon-inspired pinball games, but Williams Pinball gives you a real-world classic pinball machine. They are rendered precisely into rich detail and have seemingly precise physics, so the gaming experience is as realistic as what you might get on an iPhone. The game includes single player and multiplayer tournaments.
Download: Sky: Williams Pinball
12. Call of Duty: Mobile
Few PC and console games have been as successful as Call of Duty, so it’s no surprise that there’s an iPhone version. And Call of Duty: Mobile didn’t disappoint, with great graphics, responsive two-finger controls, and excellent multiplayer support, including a 100-player battle royale mode. If you have an iPhone controller like the Backbone, call of Duty is more fun to play because that way your hand doesn’t obscure any part of the screen.
Download: Sky: Call of Duty: Mobile
13. SimCity BuildIt
Build your own city with SimCity BuildIt. Like the full-size desktop version of the game, SimCity BuildIt lets you make all the key decisions — where roads and buildings are headed, how to spend your limited budget, and how to control the increase in population, traffic, and pollution. You can wield a lot of power, such as adding famous landmarks to your civilization and trading with other players who build their own cities.
Download: Sky: SimCity BuildIt
14. pink (game)
This is the sort of game you can imagine Andy Warhol would have made had he lived in the iPhone era. Each level is a different puzzle, and the nature of the puzzle isn’t necessarily apparent until you start to play with it. Perhaps you need to paint all the pieces on screen the same color, or maybe you need to realign pipes or coax a flamingo to walk offscreen. The only thing every level has in common is that each screen eventually has to turn completely pink to move on to the next challenge. And you’ll come to crave the satisfying musical cue when each puzzle is cleared.
Download: pink (game)
15. Rocket League Sideswipe
Rocket League Sideswipe is the kind of fast-action game that requires a lot of practice to master, especially when you’re no longer 17 years old. This is mainly because of the basic mechanics of the game: you control the Rockets in a large arena and need to maneuver them to move ridiculously oversized balls into the opponent’s goal. You’ll gallop on the pitch, flying through the air most of the time to hit the ball and divert your opponent’s car. It’s fun, but it’s also stressful, and floating physics takes some time to get used to. But when everything finally changes, it’s completely addictive.
Download: Rocket League Sideswipe
16. Doodle Jump 2
You’ll probably never get tired of a Doodle Jump. While some high-concept, story-oriented games can eventually become obsolete, this action game has something enduring that you need to jump from one platform to a higher place. And there’s surprising diversity here, whether it’s random game mechanics (the occasional jetpack helps you climb while some platforms are dangerous, or stepping on them is deadly) or changing visuals. Beware, though. The number of ads in this game can be annoying compared to the other games on this list.
Download: Doodle Jump 2
17. Froglike: The Frog Roguelike
The title of this game says it all; you play a heroic frog in a swampy version of a procedurally generated, hack-and-slash dungeon crawl. But instead of a dungeon, you’re hopping around on lily pads, keeping the Lily of Time powered up (by sitting on it as long as you can), and avoiding the villainous insects.
Download: Froglike: The Frog Roguelike
18. Data Wing
You’re equipped with an asteroid-like triangular spaceship with three controls (left, right, and stop), and you navigate through the data Wing’s unpretentious 2D levels with a street racing-like game mechanic. While the game starts out as a simple race car, there’s surprising depth here: puzzles, timed trials, and even some story depth.
Download: Data Wing
19. Super Fowlst 2
Super Fowlst 2 is clearly crazy. You are an alien-dimensional chicken capable of flying through a procedurally generated maze, tasked with hitting demons before they hit you with deadly projectiles, thus stopping them. As you open chests and collect coins, you can take advantage of the power and go from one level to another to see what crazy stuff awaits you next. Get your fingers ready because you have to do a lot of knocking motion to keep your chicken flying in the air (unlike Flappy Bird or the old-fashioned arcade game Jooust).
Download: Super Fowlst 2
20. Golf Odyssey
Called “a zen and relaxing game” by its developers, Golf Odyssey is an 8-bit retro arcade-style golf game that offers a new course every day. You can play this game with one hand, driving the ball against a neon background and on a dark mountain field.
Download: Golf Odyssey
Yes, the list above is just some of the best and free iPhone games that should make your leisure time more fun.
