Tired of scrolling through titles and top ten lists, unsure which games for iPhone and iPad are worth your money or download? I'm here to separate the wheat from the chaff, the gems from the rocks: Here are my picks for week's best iOS games — the ones that stick out from the crowd with memorable mechanics, cute graphics, clever story-lines, catchy music, and more.
1. Ball King
Ball King starts out fairly straightforward: You control the trajectory of a basketball into a hoop. Soon, that basketball gets replaced by a baseball... then a bucket of popcorn... then a vinyl record. After a few successful swishes, the wind and the rain start coming down, complicating the object's direction. No matter how many times you hit it with various flying objects, however, the police car underneath the hoop never seems to light up and stop the fun — probably the most fantastical aspect of the entire game.
- Free - Download now
2. Triangulae
This deceptively simple puzzle game stumped me and delighted me in turns. The player must slide triangles into place to complete multicolored squares; you can earn more points by combining boxes with multiple triangles. I'm not yet good enough at Triangulae to understand whether the colors or positions of each triangle affects my final score, nor do I understand the ominous mention of "the number 34" on the game's "About" page — but I'm hooked, and I hope to solve these mysteries soon.
- $1.99 - Buy now
3. 'Til Morning's Light
Remember how hard it was to be a teen? The popular kids were so mean, always playing cruel pranks like boarding people up inside of haunted houses and abandoning them. Okay, so maybe that didn't happen to everybody, but this game's heroine Erica Page has the puzzle-solving, flashlight-smashing skills to get out of a tight spot and prove to her school's cool kids that she ain't 'fraid of no ghosts.
- $6.99 - Buy now
4. Sleep Furiously
I played Sleep Furiously after a night of sleep deprivation, and it gave me enough giggles to make up for my own lack of real-life dreams. The game generates a cloud of words that the player must connect into a grammatical sentence, no matter how nonsensical; the resultant word strings are even better than my favorite dream memories. (The screenshot above features my own favorite in-game creation.)
- $2.99 - Buy now
5. Queen's Gambit
So technically, this game came out a couple months ago, but I didn't hear about it until this week — and it wowed me. Voltage has made many excellent dating sims, but this is their first title to feature a bisexual heroine. Queen's Gambit's protagonist is a secret agent with a diverse collection of past lovers and potential new flames; you can play through the prologue of each romance for free, then decide which storyline to pursue, which will require an in-app purchase. If you only want to buy one, however don't settle for anything less than the best: super spy Emily Verna.
- Free - Download now
What else is out there?
Those are my top five for the week; which iOS games have struck your fancy? Whether it's these or some other awesome picks, let me know what I missed in the comments!
