The iPhone revolutionized gaming through multitouch, but the iPad provided a larger canvas and power for fully immersive and expansive experiences.

Apple’s tablet remains a powerful, engaging gaming device, whether you delve into innovative touchscreen games, or use a controller for a more console-style experience.

Whatever you prefer, the very best games are found in our lists. Check back every two weeks for our latest favorite.

iPad game of the week: Bomb Chicken ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Bomb Chicken finds a once ordinary chicken able to rapidly lay an inordinate number of eggs that look and act exactly like bombs. Said chicken is annoyed, too - there’s something fishy at the heart of the facility, and he needs to find out what.

It’s your job to help this feathered hero succeed, by leaping about, avoiding being sawn in half by the suspicious number of saw-blades strewn about, and booting the odd bomb in the general direction of any enemy stupid enough to be hanging around.

On iPad, Bomb Chicken shines. The visuals are sharp and clear, the music’s great, the level design is varied and smart, and the controls work well. We’re quite sure you’ll never get a better mash-up of Bomberman, a 2D platform game, and poultry on your iPad.

Our favorite iPad immersive adventures, point-and-click games, and story-led narratives.

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.

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 ($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 (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.

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.

Thimbleweed Park ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Thimbleweed Park is a love letter to classic point-and-click adventures, designed by two of the industry’s most devious minds. Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick were the brains behind classics Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island, and Thimbleweed Park is no less tricksy as you ostensibly attempt to solve a murder mystery.

We say ‘ostensibly’ because the dead body you quickly find is the least of your problems. Over the game’s length, you end up playing several characters, including feds, an aspiring game developer and a vulgar, down-on-his-luck clown.

The interface is a bit of a 1980s throwback, as is the difficulty level. Thimbleweed Park can be absurdly obtuse, and a little awkward. But there are few iPad adventures that match this one’s humor, heart and cunning – and no others that feature plumbers who happen to be paranormal investigators who dress as pigeons.

Subsurface Circular ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Subsurface Circular exists in a gray area between novella, short film and videogame. Set in a single carriage within an automated transit system, it features a cast of Teks – androids that have replaced humans in many of society’s roles.

You play a detective Tek, which spends its life interrogating other robots on the Subsurface Circular, and are immediately embroiled in a mystery. To say more would spoil things, so take it from us that the story entrances, twists and turns over its few hours.

Despite the single-scene setup, the game looks superb, with a cast of varied Teks and a familiar messaging-style interface that has a distinctly futuristic sheen. And if you’re concerned about the game’s brevity, be mindful you’d spend as much renting a film, and probably wouldn’t have nearly as much fun.

Flower ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Flower is a game that revels in bombing along as a petal on the wind, scything your way through fields of lush grassland, and soaring into the air above mountains and windmills.

Each environment starts with you playing as an individual petal. As you collide with other flowers, they bloom and offer a petal of their own to join yours, which soon becomes a spinning, swooping conga of color, wheeling above Flower’s tiny, beautiful worlds.

There’s a smattering of exploration and light puzzling in Flower, primarily to unlock more parts of each level, and discover secrets. But mostly this game is about enjoying an immediate, accessible, beautiful journey that has an emotional core and an exhilarating edge.

Samorost 3 ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

From the creators of Machinarium and Botanicula, Samorost 3 is an eye-dazzlingly gorgeous old-school point-and-tap puzzler.

It follows the adventures of a gnome who sets out to search the cosmos and defeat a deranged monk who's smashed up a load of planets by attacking them with a steampunk hydra.

The wordless tale primarily involves poking about the landscape, revealing snatches of audio that transform into dreamlike animations hinting at what you should do next.

Although occasionally opaque, the puzzles are frequently clever, and the game revels in the joy of exploration and play. It's also full of heart – a rare enchanting title that gives your soul a little lift.

Love You to Bits ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Love You to Bits has a heart as big as a thousand iPads. It's a tap-based adventure that finds a little space explorer trying to retrieve pieces of his android girlfriend that have been scattered across the galaxy.

The mechanics are right out of classic point-and-click gaming, essentially having you amble about 2D locations, unearth items and then drop them in the right spot.

But the game is so relentlessly creative and inventive with its environments — full of dazzling visuals, references to movies and other games, and increasingly clever mechanics and ideas — that you can't help but love it to bits yourself.

Device 6 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Device 6 is first and foremost a story — a mystery into which protagonist Anna finds herself propelled. She awakes on an island, but where is she? How did she get there? Why can't she remember anything? The game fuses literature with adventuring, the very words forming corridors you travel along, integrated puzzles being dotted about for you to investigate.

It's a truly inspiring experience, an imaginative, ambitious and brilliantly realised creation that showcases how iOS can be the home for something unique and wonderful. It's also extremely tough at times. Our advice: pay attention, jot down notes, and mull away from the screen if you get stuck.

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP has in its DNA the essence of point-and-click classics, and is infused with a substantial sense of adventure. It’s a game that very much wants you to explore and interact with its mysterious and atmospheric world. It also happens to be a concept album.

That might sound weird, but you soon find your time within this game’s world is anything but usual. The delicate pixel art has many surprises and strangeness buried within, and the evocative soundtrack is a high point on the platform.

The storytelling is sparse and smart (if sometimes too knowing), and combat is rhythmic (if a touch clunky). In all, the mixture of music, occasional swordplay, and exploration is not to be missed.

Our favorite iPad arcade titles, including retro games, pinball, slice ’em ups, multiplayer party games, and innovative touchscreen creations.

Vectronom ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Vectronom is a psychedelic world of dancing geometric shapes. Your particular shape – a beat-nodding cube – is charged with getting from one point to another, across a constantly shifting obstacle course packed full of spikes and holes.

The key to this iPad game is to recognize the choreography before you, and swipe to partake in something that’s part rhythm action, part slalom, and part dancing. You often swipe into empty space, safe in the knowledge a platform will appear on the beat – assuming you get things right.

Each of the game’s zones has a distinct personality, from Autobahn’s sea of marching squares to the psychotic Spike Jump. All the while, Vectronom’s soundtrack shifts from thumping electronic ear-smashing to relatively gentle waltz numbers. Aside from a few overly frustrating moments (again, Spike Jump), it’s a hypnotic, tantalizing experience.

Witcheye ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Witcheye is a platform game without the platforming. The platforms themselves still exist – and the usual enemies roam back and forth, occasionally chucking things in your general direction. But rather than hop about, you take the form of a floating eye. (This is apparently what happens these days when a witch wants to get her belongings back from a kleptomaniac knight).

The controls are simple: swipe to move and tap to stop. What really makes Witcheye, though, is the level design. Sometimes, you can dart to the end, but if you want to grab all the collectables, you’ll need to carefully maneuver yourself to smash your foes. This is even more apparent in the frequent, entertaining boss battles.

On the iPad, Witcheye works especially well. There’s plenty of space for your swiping digit, and the old-school pixel artwork looks superb.

Pulse: Volume One ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Pulse: Volume One is a rhythm action game that comes across like a futuristic piano. The instrument – such that it is – comprises a neon pulse that expands across concentric circles. 

Notes travel along those circles, like planets orbiting a star, and you must tap them at the exact moment the pulse reaches them. Miss and there’s a sickening crunch. 

That likely all seems pretty simple – and it is at first. The early songs offer a kind of mindless noodly entertainment. But the compositions quickly ramp up in complexity, testing your dexterity and sense of rhythm.

This is the kind of game that can only really work on the iPad’s acres. It’s an engaging and tactile title that offers a unique spin on rhythm games.

Jumpgrid ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Jumpgrid is a twitch arcade game that pits you against a psychopathic abstract obstacle course dedicated to making you fail. Your only means of escape is to leap to another spot on a claustrophobic three-by-three grid, munch all of the spinning cubes, and then make for the teleporter that will take you to the next – tougher – test.

It feels a lot like a minimal Frogger/Pac-Man crossover smashed into Super Hexagon with a hammer - and then that hammer mashes your ego as any sense of smugness you may have enjoyed regarding your gaming prowess quickly becomes a sticky pulp.

But this white-knuckle ride is one to stick with. Commit the clockwork patterns to memory and you can start to string together speed runs that will make you feel like a gaming genius. And when you crack all 100 levels, there’s a furiously addictive endless mode to try your hand at.

Helix ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Helix has the appearance of a rough-and-ready 1980s arcade game. Your character, a chunky blinking eye, scoots about as adversaries rapidly appear from screen edges. The aim is survival, but fortunately you can do more than dodge (albeit less than shoot).

Move around an enemy and a line begins to encircle them. If the line is closed, the enemy explodes, giving you some breathing space. Some enemies require more orbits, or for you to encircle them in a specific direction, and that’s about it.

But Helix’s simplicity isn’t to its detriment. This is a focused, brilliantly conceived arcade blast that’s ideal fodder for iPad. The touchscreen controls are responsive, the lurid visuals are captivating, and the hard-as-nails gameplay has that one-more-go factor that will have you clamoring for more.

Alto’s Odyssey ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Alto’s Odyssey is a one-thumb side-on endless survival game. It features the titular Alto, who has a thing for sandboarding on huge dunes, hurling himself into the air, performing all manner of tricks, and then trying to not land (i.e. crash) in a manner that results in a face full of sand.

This is perfect iPhone fodder, and perhaps not the kind of game you’d usually associate with iPad. But like its predecessor – the similarly impressive Alto’s Adventure – Alto’s Odyssey is a gorgeous game that’s deeper than it first appears.

Visually, it’s a treat, with arresting weather effects and day/night cycles. As you complete challenges, you slowly unlock new goals, environments, and abilities, but if at any point it all feels too much, you can switch off with the zero-risk Zen Mode, which leaves you with a serene soundtrack and endless desert.

FROST ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

FROST is a thoughtful, tactile game that feels like a living piece of art. Across dozens of scenes, sparks and barriers scythe across the screen while you direct flocking neon creatures towards orbs. Once the orbs fill, you can move on to the next challenge.

Ultimately, FROST is a path-finding puzzler. You use logic to understand the conditions before you, and how to meet your goal. But FROST feels very different from its contemporaries. The abstract visuals are exciting and fresh, but also it really wants you to play, experiment and discover.

Most of the puzzles tend to be simple, and you could probably blaze through the entire game in a few hours. But doing so would miss the point, because FROST is an iPad experience to bask in and savor.

Osmos for iPad ($4.99/$4.99/AU$7.99)

Osmos for iPad is an ‘ambient’ arcade game, and although it started life on PC, it’s a game that only really makes sense on a touchscreen.

Across eight distinct worlds, you control a tiny ‘mote’, propelled by ejecting pieces of itself, its direction of travel determined by your taps. Collide with a smaller mote and it’s absorbed. Your aim is to ‘become the biggest’.

When other motes are stationary, victory’s relatively easy – although very crowded levels require careful taps and judicious use of a time-warp slow-down feature.

But when levels feature ferocious motes intent on your demise, or the game shifts from microscopic warfare to motes speeding around a central giant – like celestial bodies orbiting a sun – brains and fingers alike will suddenly find Osmos a much sterner test.

At every point in the journey, Osmos is magnificent. Convince a friend to buy the game and engaging multiplayer arenas await too.

INKS. ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Pinball games tend to either ape real-world tables or go full-on videogame, with highly animated content that would be impossible on a real table. INKS. tries something different, boasting a modern 'flat design' aesthetic, and having coloured targets on each table that emit an ink explosion when hit with the ball.

Each of the dozens of tables therefore becomes a mix of canvas and puzzle as you try to hit targets while simultaneously creating a work of art. Neatly, as the ball rolls through ink splats, it creates paths across the table, which is visually appealing and also shows when your aim is off.

Because each level is short — usually possible to complete in a minute or so — INKS. manages to be both approachable enough for newcomers and different enough for experts to get some enjoyment out of.

Badland 2 ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)

The first Badland combined the simplicity of one-thumb 'copter'/flappy games with the repeating hell of Limbo. It was a stunning, compelling title, pitting a little winged protagonist against all kinds of crazy ordeals in a forest that had clearly gone very wrong.

In Badland 2, the wrongness has been amplified considerably. Now, levels scroll in all directions, traps are deadlier, puzzles are tougher, and the cruelty meted out on the little winged beast is beyond compare. Still, all is not lost - the hero can now flap left and right. We're sure that comes as a huge consolation when it's sawn in half for the hundredth time.

ALONE... ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Because of the nature of touchscreen controls, there's a tendency to slow things down on iOS. ALONE… throws such caution to the wind, flinging you along at Retina-searing speed as you try in vain to save a little ship hurtling through rocky caverns of doom.

This is a game that's properly exciting, and where every narrow escape feels like a victory; that all you're doing is dragging a finger up and down, trying in vain to avoid the many projectiles sent your way, is testament to you not needing a gamepad and complex controls to create a game that genuinely thrills.

Power Hover ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

It turns out the future will involve hoverboards, only it'll be robots piloting them. In Power Hover, all the humans are gone, but so too are the batteries that power your robot village. So you hop on your flying board and pursue a thief through 30 varied and visually stunning levels.

Whether scything curved paths across a gorgeous sun-drenched sea or picking your way through a grey and dead human city, Power Hover will have you glued to the screen until you reach the end of the journey. And although it's initially tricky to get to grips with, you'll soon discover the board's floaty physics and controls are perfectly balanced.

Our favorite iPad games where you find objects cleverly hidden on-screen and use them to escape from virtual prisons.

The House of Da Vinci 2 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

The House of Da Vinci 2 is a hidden object game very much in the vein of The Room. In fact, the initial moments of your quest might have you wonder if it’s part of the same series (it isn’t), such is the game’s similarity. You start off in a dungeon (hello, The Room Three!), figure out how to escape, and are then charged with becoming da Vinci’s apprentice – while in the employ of a mysterious benefactor.

Aside from the backstory, The House of Da Vinci 2 really starts becoming its own thing when you encounter time travel. A gadget you collect early on in the game lets you travel back in time at key moments to make adjustments to your locale, which impact on the future so you can solve problems. It adds another dimension to the game – while gleefully punching your brains in.

Little Things Forever ($0.99/49p/AU$0.99)

Little Things Forever is the purest example of a hidden object game you’re likely to find on the App Store. There’s no overarching quest – no desire to be a sort-of adventure. Instead, you’re presented with a jumble of objects (that, when you squint, form cartoonish artwork), and things to find.

Depending on the challenge you’re tackling, you either get a full list, and aim to get through it as quickly as possible, or a timer and one item at a time to discover. Sporadically, the game has you complete basic jigsaw puzzles, in order to unlock new levels.

On the iPad’s larger screen, the game shines. It’s full of charm, and although the timers add some incentive for those who need it, Little Things Forever is perfectly relaxed if you feel like taking 'forever' on a single puzzle.

realMyst ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

realMyst is a new take on Myst, a Mac classic from the early 1990s. It dumps you on a strange island, giving you no clear ideas what to do next. The idea is to explore, check out every nook of the island, find clues, solve puzzles, and find new places in which to poke around.

To say realMyst is obscure is putting it mildly. Its puzzles can be baffling and cryptic, and smart players will arm themselves with a notepad – and a huge amount of patience.

However, this iPad version is a fantastic way to experience a gaming classic, with a more free-form approach to movement, beautiful revamped graphics, and the simple fact you can play it anywhere.

The Room: Old Sins ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

The Room: Old Sins pits you against devious puzzle boxes. Like previous games in the series, Old Sins is obsessed with the impossible. This time, you’re investigating the disappearance of an engineer and his wife. You spot what appears to be a corpse in a gloomy attic and are abruptly swept inside a doll house.

At this point, it’s all tap, swipe and drag, manipulating objects using your very best logical deduction until things happen. At one point you’ll discover a seemingly unending number of hidden compartments in a tiny model train. Elsewhere, something horrific and otherworldly will scream before forcibly ejecting you from a room.

If you’re a newcomer and puzzle fan, Old Sins is a no-brainer – a superb, coherent title with multiple-location challenges and none of the tedious walking around found in the likes of Myst. As for existing fans, you’ve probably already bought and finished the game anyway. If not, what are you waiting for?

Hidden Folks ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Hidden object games are often dull and can be heavy on the pocket, demanding you spend lots of money on IAP. Hidden Folks isn’t either of those things, and has the added bonus of being hugely charming.

You’re presented with hand-drawn scenes, each of which has a strip across the bottom, depicting objects to find. You can tap any of them for a clue, but the scene can also be interacted with, for example to rustle bushes to find someone lurking behind them.

Cute mouth-originated sound effects pepper proceedings, and the pace is varied with differing map sizes, and the odd playable scene, such as helping someone to a destination by adjusting the landscape.

Thus, with its wit and smarts, Hidden Folks very much stands out from the crowd – unlike some of the tiny critters it tasks you with locating.

The Lost City ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

The Lost City broadly echoes Myst, in that it places you in a fantastical location, and challenges you to explore. In this case, you’ve discovered the titular city recounted to you by an elderly relative that no-one else believed.

As ever, the game involves examining locations, finding useful-looking objects to stash in your inventory, and using them to unlock pathways to further your adventures. But The Lost City has an intriguing hook: you can change the seasons. So if you can’t get past a river, perhaps you might be able to at a different time of year…

With lush (if static) visions, and a journal that handily automatically tracks symbols and clues, The Lost City proves to be a compelling and atmospheric experience.

All That Remains ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

All That Remains starts off in a harrowing manner, with you waking up in your father’s bunker. An old two-way radio crackles into life, and your distressed sister explains that the world has gone to hell, and that you’ve been locked up for your own safety. You resolve to rescue her from the chaos.

Unfortunately, your father turns out to be part sociopath, part crazy inventor. Rather than furnish you with a serviceable door handle with which to escape, you must figure out the convoluted path to an exit. Cue: lots of poking around, finding clues, figuring out the meaning behind symbols, and piecing everything together. At its best, this is tense, challenging stuff – ideal if you find your existing hidden object games something of a pushover.

Agent A ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Agent A combines an escape game with the swagger of a spy movie. It starts with you following Ruby La Rouge, who obliterates a boat – and your boss. Deciding that’s rather out of order, you break into Ruby’s house – and she locks you in. Presumably the glass is very tough, because you can’t smash through it. Instead, you must figure out an absurdly convoluted path to make your escape.

This game has a pleasingly spiky, angular art style, and breezy responses when you interact with objects. The actual puzzles are perhaps a bit pedestrian, but the game frequently neatly ties together details and clues across multiple locations. Also, rather generously, Agent A has expanded from its initial sole chapter to a five-part episodic tale, offering plenty of espionage bang for your bucks.

Forever Lost ($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)

The Forever Lost series (three games, available separately if you don’t want the bundle) begins with you waking up in an unfamiliar room. Freaky as though that is, getting out is simple; the scary bit is it’s clear others have been here before you.

Also, when you do escape your confines, you merely find yourself in the bigger prison of an abandoned asylum. The game then follows a familiar pattern of scanning rooms for objects and clues, using them to move your quest onward.

Although visually bleak and drab, Forever Lost’s atmosphere and weirdness keeps you gripped. And you can’t help but love a game with its own in-game camera, to snap objects for later reference, so you don’t have to manually make notes elsewhere.

Our favorite iPad platform games, including free-roaming adventures, retro-infused titles, and modern console-style classics.

GRIS ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

GRIS is – in terms of mechanics – a side-on platformer. You run left or right, leap about, and try to find items that unlock more areas in which you can explore. In this sense, the game is quite traditional – perhaps a little too much so when you hit areas that require pixel-perfect precision.

But along with these conventions, GRIS infuses the heart of an artist deep into the game. The wordless story follows the titular Gris, a woman who’s lost her voice. You can perhaps infer the desolate world in which she finds herself – and the obstacles she faces – are her trying to find herself again.

Throughout, the game is an aesthetic delight, with a stunning soundtrack and gorgeous hand-drawn art, with many moments of pure joy to be found in the details.

Death Hall ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Death Hall is a platform game where protagonist and player alike find themselves in a kind of hell. The hero’s surroundings are decidedly unfun – all manner of deadly spikes, nightmarish bitey horrors, and axes swinging from the ceiling. Health and safety should have a word. But this is hell for the player, too, given that Death Hall is tough.

In fact, ‘merciless’ would perhaps be a better description for a game that seems determined to kill you often and repeatedly. Death Hall may look gorgeous on the iPad, and give you plenty of opportunity to spot what’s coming, but avoiding death is hard.

Still, keep trying, and you’ll gradually master the nuances in the controls. You’ll complete one level, and eventually another. The way forward is not easy – but it is deeply rewarding.

Bubbles the Cat ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Bubbles the Cat is a platformer that initially comes across as a mite too familiar. Cute animal protagonist? Check. Retro visuals? Yep. Auto-running to remove the need for problematic virtual controls? Sure. Short levels with multiple targets to encourage repeat play? That’s there, too. So why are we recommending this one? In short, it’s all about the bubbles.

In Bubbles the Cat, you don’t just double-jump – you can jump until your bubbles run out. That gives you up to six airborne leaps – and those bubbles are replenished on landing. Later levels unlock other bubble types, including wall-creators, wrecking balls, and dimension hoppers.

The result is a game that’s surprisingly fresh, and that opens things up for some seriously interesting level design and route-finding. Top stuff.

Spitkiss ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Spitkiss is unique in the App Store, what with it featuring tiny creatures that communicate by lobbing bodily fluids at each other. But how you get spittle and the like from one to the other plays like Angry Birds became a single-screen platformer, and then had Matrix-style slo-mo welded to it.

To get started, you aim and fling some spittle, and then direct it from surface to surface until the blob reaches its goal. Hold the screen and time slows, allowing you to prepare your next shot – essential given the claustrophobic and hazard-strewn screens you face.

This all works particularly well on iPad. You’ve plenty of space to move your finger, and can be far more accurate on the larger screen. The vibrant visuals are arresting, too, even if you might feel squeamish about flinging spit.

Suzy Cube ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Suzy Cube is a platform game set in a world with a thing for straight edges. Assuming you’ve played a platformer before, you know the drill: explore; grab gold; unsportingly jump on the heads of enemies to obliterate them.

But Suzy Cube goes beyond the stripped-back 2D fare we often see on iOS for something akin to Super Mario 3D Land. This means you may find yourself quickly swapping between skidding down icy mountains in 3D, following Suzy Cube as she runs side-on around a tower, and then delicately leaping between floating platforms, as seen from above.

Bar some duff boss battles, it’s ambitious, entertaining fare, with tight touchscreen controls, and a great sense of pace and variety as you delve into the world and discover its many hidden secrets.

Oddmar ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Oddmar is a Viking who’s not good at being a Viking, but he’s forced into action when his village vanishes and an evil takes over the land. Cue: swiftly munching a magic mushroom to get some special powers, followed by quite a lot of platforming action.

And what platforming action! Oddmar looks and feels like nothing else on iPad. Although the gameplay mechanics are familiar (leap about, explore, collect bling, hack up enemies, don’t get killed), the production values here are something else. Oddmar’s world feels alive, and each level has been painstakingly constructed, imbuing the game with smarts and pace.

Peppered with set pieces, survival-oriented ‘dream’ levels, and varied challenges, and blessed with pitch-perfect touchscreen controls, Oddmar is only to be missed if you can’t stand this kind of game. And even then, we suggest taking a look anyway – just in case.

VVVVVV ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

VVVVVV is an old-school twitch platformer. It strings a bunch of single-screen challenges together, gives them silly names, peppers restart points about, and then sits back with an evil grin as you blunder into traps time and time again.

The main twist is VVVVVV’s use of gravity. Instead of jumping, your running man can switch between ceiling and floor. Most rooms within the game cleverly play with this gravity mechanic. There are bounce pads, roaming enemies, and columns of screens where you weave your way down through columns of spikes, and then head back, all because some nutcase didn’t think to install a small bridge.

Visually, the game is odd – 1980s-style graphics, which also look blurry on iPad. The virtual controls are occasionally slippy too. Mostly, though, it’s a joy (albeit sometimes a head-bangingly frustrating one), with smart writing and clever puzzle-infused level design.

Thomas Was Alone ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Thomas Was Alone is a platform adventure that tells the tale of a self-aware artificial intelligence. Said AI is represented as a little red rectangle, charged with leaping about blocky environments, and reaching the exit. Along the way, other AIs appear, each with its own distinct abilities, which you must make best use of to get everyone to their goals.

What sets Thomas Was Alone apart is its storytelling. The little rectangles are imbued with big personalities, and a voiceover gives you a window into their thoughts, which is often meta and frequently entertaining. After all, it’s hard not to love a game that finds the hero peering at certain doom, before the voiceover notes: “Something about the boiling, toxic, glowing water intimidated Thomas. He didn’t like it, and he certainly didn’t want to swim in it.”

Still, you’ll want to swim in this game, because it’s a beautifully realized production.

Mushroom 11 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Mushroom 11 finds you controlling a living pile of green gunge that gloops its way around a post-apocalyptic world. Its mission appears to be hoovering up whatever life is desperately clinging on in this harsh landscape, from tiny spiders to mutated plants that spit fire.

If you had to label it, Mushroom 11 is a fairly traditional side-on platform puzzler, but the manner in which it’s controlled proves transformative. There’s no virtual joystick here – instead, you touch to ‘erase’ bits of the green blob, which then rapidly grows back.

This mechanic is used inventively throughout the game, whether you’re figuring out how to zoom through tunnels, make the blob ‘jump’, or split it in two, so one part can trigger a switch while the rest moves onward. On iPad, the game is one of a kind and a tactile joy.

INSIDE (free + $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 IAP)

INSIDE is a puzzle-heavy platform game that charts a boy’s adventures in a chilling dystopia. It begins with him fleeing from armed men. You must duck behind trees and flee from ferocious dogs or end up dead, face-down in the dirt.

But death is not the end; like INSIDE’s predecessor, the equally disturbing LIMBO, the hero here seems doomed to repeat every failure until it becomes a victory.

It’s trial and error time, then. You run through a building, get horribly killed, take some mental notes, and then try again. Occasionally, this gets old; some sequences in the game are too long, and a couple have a margin of error that’s too tight.

For the most part, though, this is a game of intriguing puzzles and a mesmerizing – if extremely dark – world, packed full of surprises, horror and tiny victories.

Drop Wizard ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Drop Wizard is a single-screen effort that initially resembles a tribute to arcade classics Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros – but it turns out Drop Wizard is a very different beast.

It's part auto-runner, which might infuriate retro-gamers, but this proves to be a brilliant limitation in practice.  Your little wizard never stops running, and emits a blast of magic each time he lands. You must therefore time leaps to blast roaming foes, and then boot the dazed creatures during a second pass.

This is a vibrant, fast-paced, engaging game. And since you you only ever move left or right, it’s nicely optimized for touchscreen play.

Our favorite iPad brain-teasers, logic games, sliding puzzlers, match-three games, and path-finding titles.

Splice: Tree of Life ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Splice: Tree of Life is an experimental puzzler set in a microbial world. In each level, you face a cluster of cells, which must be rearranged into a target structure, defined by a white outline. To achieve your goal, you have a limited amount of moves – and a specific number of actions.

The first is the splice, which splits a cell – and those hanging beneath it – in two. Later, cells can have other actions performed on them, mutating what’s before you in all kinds of ways.

Limitations in how cells can be positioned initially make the game feel quite rigid and baffling – this isn’t the sort of title you wade into without thinking. But if you want a puzzler to properly fizz your own cells (as in ‘brain’), you’ll find few iPad games better than this engaging, unique design.

Rooms: The Toymaker’s Mansion ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Rooms: The Toymaker’s Mansion is a creepy puzzler that once again acts as an excellent answer to the question: “Should I venture into that ominous, sinister mansion, not least given that I’m a child?”

One ill-advised bout of trespassing later, you find yourself in a weird building of clockwork rooms. The game is played side-on, and taps shift rooms about the grid, enabling you to grab a key, unlock the exit, and move ever deeper into the oddball structure.

Rooms really looks the part on iPad, and the extra screen space proves helpful to avoid errant taps. This becomes increasingly important as you discover the mansion isn’t just full of dank smells and locked doors, but also teleportation phones, bombs, and psychotic evil puppets. See: we told you not to go in there, but would you listen? Tsk.

Block Droppin Blitz ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Block Droppin Blitz offers a unique spin on Tetris. Rather than shapes falling to the bottom of a well, they must be constructed using a sliding puzzle full of colored squares. Swipe across four adjacent tiles that form a line, square, T or L, and they drop to the section at the bottom.

As ever, your aim is to complete solid lines, freeing up more space for new shapes. Get enough points – more are scored when clearing multiple lines at once – and you clear the current level, and can then head to the next.

It’s a pity Block Droppin Blitz doesn’t also offer an endless mode; but what’s there should nonetheless keep happy any block-dropping fans frustrated about the lack of decent Tetris variants on iPad.

The Witness ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

The Witness is ultimately a puzzle game, but describing it as such feels reductive. Really, it feels more like a full-fledged world – a beautiful, deserted, abandoned island you’re stranded on, with the aim of figuring out why.

You soon discover the island is peppered with maze-like puzzles connected together by massive lengths of piping. Completing enough of these opens gates, and shoots light beams at a distant mountain. It’s all very mysterious.

A wordless game bereft of hand-holding, The Witness nonetheless cleverly – and only gradually – reveals its logic to you in a manner similar to learning a language. Touch controls arguably better the awkward keyboard/mouse combination on PC versions, and the visuals are every bit as lush on the screen of your iPad. With dozens of hours of game time, this is a title to lose yourself in.

Photographs - Puzzle Stories ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Photographs - Puzzle Stories is a fusion of narratives and puzzling. A story is slowly revealed in each of the five vignettes, and between scenes you’re tasked with finding an object on the screen, before completing a logic test.

Each vignette has its own type of puzzle, and these are broadly related to the narrative. For example, a story about diving is more or less a side-on shooting game, where you must crack the correct trajectory. The paths get more complex as the competition heats up.

Where Photographs really hits home, though, is in the emotional punch of its stories. These aren’t a facile veneer, but instead dig deep into decisions and consequences. Rare is it that a puzzler can leave you heartbroken, but Photographs will keep you glued to the screen through to its conclusion.

Snakebird Primer ($7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99)

Snakebird Primer features worm-like birds that live on strange levitating islands. The grumpy tube-like avians spend much of their time asleep, or making strange burping noises, but are tasked with reaching a portal. Your aim is to figure out how to get them there.

Despite each level only being a single screen in size, there’s plenty of imagination and complexity in the routes you have to take. Sometimes, you must make birds eat fruit, whereupon they grow, and can be used as bridges for other birds. Elsewhere, you need to manipulate massive Tetris-like blocks someone’s left lying around.

Veteran gamers may find the going a bit easy, but every one of Snakebird Primer’s levels is grin-inducing fun; and if on completion you hanker for a tougher test, there’s always the original – and brain-thumpingly difficult – Snakebird.

Pipe Push Paradise ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Pipe Push Paradise is a puzzle game about pipework. You’ve arrived on a desert island that has some seriously dodgy plumbing. The aim is to get the water flowing, albeit not in the usual manner. Here, the pipes are massive and strewn about claustrophobic grid-based rooms. 

The only way to get things working is to shove them into place. There’s more than a hint of box-shifting games like Sokoban here, but Pipe Push Paradise adds some twists of its own. Move pipes in a certain way and they rotate. Other times, they must be dumped into pits.

These new ideas radically shake things up, and complicate puzzles that might otherwise have been simple. Although the controls are occasionally a touch fiddly, Pipe Push Paradise proves to be a superb, sunny brain-smasher.

7 Billion Humans ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

7 Billion Humans takes place in a world run by benevolent robots who do all of the work. But, of course, the humans still aren’t happy, and so the robots give them jobs – stupid, pointless jobs. In effect, doddering folks become parts of a living computer, and you’re tasked with ‘programming’ them to pick up boxes and put them down somewhere else.

It sounds dull, but it’s actually riveting. Like predecessor Human Resource Machine, this is a game that takes real-life programming concepts and infuses them into a turn-based puzzler.

On the iPad particularly, the drag-and-drop interface for crafting coding logic works wonderfully, and the screen’s big enough that you can spot precisely what’s going on with your work. The larger display doesn’t hurt when taking in the bitingly satirical (but generally good-natured) cut-scenes either.

Evergarden ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Evergarden is a strategy-oriented match game set in a fantastical forest of geometry and surprisingly demanding wildlife.

Every game begins as a hexagonal grid on which flowers of varying sizes are arranged. Each of your limited turns has you work through the flowers, deciding whether they should spit a seed into an adjacent space, or combine with a matching bloom. It comes across like a glossy and noodly gardening take on Threes!

But there’s more to Evergarden than these basics. Creature guide Fen makes demands that hugely ramp up your potential for high scores when achieved, and a narrative plays out alongside the puzzles.

This adds extra heart to the game, but also depth – things you find on your journey unlock new strategies, and provide added impetus for doing even better during your next go.

Gorogoa ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Gorogoa is a perplexing puzzle game that plays with your perception of space, and challenges you to find links between images that aren’t remotely obvious on an initial glance.

The entire thing takes place in a two-by-two grid, within which comic-book panes can be opened up and manipulated. Often, part of an image can be separated and overlaid on another.

For example, a stairs overlay may enable the protagonist to reach a previously inaccessible space, or what appears to be a star-like decorative element might be a cog in an impromptu machine.

Occasionally, Gorogoa baffles; later on, you may hit mental dead-ends, juggling various components, locations and possibilities in your head. But as a tactile, novel, engaging puzzler, there’s little else like Gorogoa on iPad – and you’ll feel like a genius when you reach its conclusion.

Causality ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Many path-finding puzzlers have you use arrow tiles to direct auto-running critters to goals. (Long-time gamers may fondly remember ChuChu Rocket! as a shining example).

Causality is in similar territory, only you also get to control time itself, by dragging up and down the screen.

Early on, this primarily allows you to fix errors – going back to try again when a sprinting astronaut is eaten, or when you run out of your limited number of steps. Before long, though, you’re hurling people through time portals, so they can assist their past selves.

It’s mind-bending stuff, but also one of the finest puzzle games of modern times. It’s also perfect for iPad, due to its visually dazzling and tactile nature.

Splitter Critters ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

The basic mechanics of Splitter Critters resemble 1990s arcade puzzler Lemmings, in that you guide marching creatures to a goal. But whereas you armed lemmings with tools, Splitter Critters has you slice up the screen with a finger, so you can adjust the landscape to create new pathways.

This is clever, but Splitter Critters isn’t done. The undo button reverts your last cut, but not the position of critters. Undo therefore becomes a device vital for completing levels, rather than merely a means of reverting errors.

Throughout its length, the game keeps adding new elements, such as ocean worlds and a grim underground base full of critter-frying lasers. And although the challenge never rises above slight, the charm and tactile nature of Splitter Critters makes it a joyful journey, especially on the iPad’s larger display.

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

The little monster at the heart of A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, wants some friends, and so sets about making them from crisp snow covering the ground. But as the game's title states, making snowman is hard — largely because of strict rules governing the monster's universe.

Snowmen must comprise precisely three balls of gradually decreasing size, and any snowball rolled in the snow quickly grows. A Good Snowman therefore becomes a series of brain-bending puzzles - part Soko-Ban, part Towers of Hanoi - as you figure out how to manipulate balls of snow to build icy friends for a monster to hug. 

Our favorite iPad 3D, space, retro, top-down, and on-rails racers.

Rush Rally 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Rush Rally 3 is a rally simulation that echoes the kind of experience you’d usually only get on a ‘proper’ console under your telly.

From a visual standpoint, the game looks the part, whether you’re grinding metal with aggressive competitors on tarmac tracks, or blazing through alpine forests, with a co-driver bellowing instructions in your ears.

There’s plenty of customization on offer. You can race with your car in front of you, or try your hand at a much tougher cockpit view. The controls can also be fine-tuned, increasing or reducing manual control, depending on your skill levels. 

This ensures Rush Rally 3 is a great option for old-hands and beginners alike, and means it easily ends up in the points when it comes to the best iPad racers.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit [US store] | [non-US stores] is an old-school high-octane racer that echoes pursue-and-smash classic Chase HQ. You tear along in your police car, aiming to batter nasty criminals into submission. Then, during your downtime, you and your cop chums partake in dangerous high-speed races.

Visually, Hot Pursuit is sometimes a touch crude, with background pop-up betraying the original game’s age, but the cars and roadside objects still look nice enough on a Retina iPad. Most importantly, the game feels really good – not least during moments when you fire up the nitro, drift round a bend, and smash the baddie into a roadblock. And if you don’t fancy being the fuzz? You can leap into your sports car in a parallel storyline and become mouse rather than cat.

Grid Autosport ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Grid Autosport feels like the first of a new breed of iPad games, where a claim of ‘console quality’ isn’t hyperbole. This really is a pretty much direct conversion of the hit PC and PlayStation racer, squeezed into your iPad.

There’s no messing about with grinding and currencies here – you can immediately delve into everything the app has to offer, choosing from its huge range of challenges, cars, and circuits. Everything from a quick race in an open-top to a full Touring Cars season is just a few taps away.

With a range of control options and difficulty settings, the game manages to cater to arcade fans and simulation nuts alike; and when armed with an iPad and an MFi controller, the only thing betraying the fact you’re not playing on a console is the size of the screen.

Fluid SE ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)

Fluid SE appears to have arrived from the unholy union of Pac-Man and a brutally difficult time-trial racer set in a hostile underwater world of black fish and deadly red ghosts.

Each test has you zoom about, scooping up dots, and attempting to beat time targets. If you’re fast enough, you get the stars needed to unlock new levels; if not, you’ll need to work on shaving fractions of a second off of your best times.

The snag is levels rapidly increase in complexity, and dots you eat spawn the aforementioned ghosts, which relentlessly chase you around the screen. There are ways of dealing with them, but often that involves slowing down.

Fluid SE therefore becomes a thrilling game of risk versus reward, where everything plays out at breakneck speed – right up until you’re devoured by an angry ghost.

Reckless Racing HD ($0.99/49p/AU$0.99)

Reckless Racing HD is a top-down racer that first graced the App Store way back in 2012. It’s different from its contemporaries in having you coax battered vehicles around ramshackle tracks.

There’s no slick tarmac – bar a mall parking lot that forms part of a course. More often, you’re zooming about the likes of a wrecker’s yard, or dirt roads near an old church that rises majestically out of the screen like it’s about to poke you in the eye.

Given a 64-bit reprieve in mid-2017, Reckless Racing HD is a fantastic blast from the past. The cars have a great sense of weight – the physics when racing is just about perfect. And although it now looks a bit rough and ready, it’s decidedly more reckless (and fun) than its overly polished sequel, and includes the online multiplayer that the most recent entry in the series lacks.

AG Drive ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

In the future, it turns out people have tired of racers zooming about circuits on the ground. In AG Drive, tracks soar into the air – akin to massive roller-coasters along which daredevil racers of the day speed, gunning for the checkered flag.

This is a pure racing game – all about learning the twists and turns of every circuit, and the thrill of breakneck speed. The only weapons you have available are strategy and skill. And this suits the kind of stripped-back controls that work best on iPad – tilting to steer, and using thumbs to accelerate, brake, and trigger a turbo.

Also, while some slightly irksome IAP lurks, there’s little need to splash out. The game’s difficulty curve is such that you can gradually improve your skills and ship, working your way through varied events until you become an out-of-this-world racing legend. (Or, if you’re a bit rubbish, an ugly stain on the side of a massive metal building.)

Riptide GP: Renegade ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Riptide GP: Renegade is the third entry in the Riptide series, and again finds you in a souped-up jetski called a hydrojet, bombing along watery circuits flanked by futuristic metal skyscrapers.

But unlike its (equally impressive) predecessor’s official racing championship, Renegade’s splashy racing involves illegal bouts set in flooded ruins and deadly factories – playing for reputation rather than an adoring TV audience.

The racing is still superb, with its mix of insane speed and ridiculous stunts – hit a ramp and it’s expected you’ll show off by spinning your hydrojet around or performing a handstand on top of it. Despite some dodgy story bits and a slightly grindy upgrade path, Renegade is an exhilarating racer – and one that also gets away from tarmac and gleaming metal tracks.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Need for Speed: Most Wanted [US store] | [non-US stores] thumbs its nose at simulation racing, but still parks itself somewhat in the real world.

Mostly, it’s all about speeding along like a maniac, with arcade-style controls reminiscent of classic console and arcade title OutRun 2. You’ll drift for miles, soar through the air in a manner cars are most definitely not designed for, and smash into other road users with merry abandon.

But being that this is a Need for Speed title, all this happens in a grim and gritty city, packed with cops. It’s a bit too drab at times – we’d love to see a bit of blue sky – but is nonetheless a tremendous iOS racer that feels great to play.

Our favorite iPad twin-stick shooters, FPS titles, precision shooting games, and scrolling shoot ’em ups.

Backfire ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Backfire features an exorcist trying to cleanse an ancient curse; for some reason, this is achieved by piloting a neon-green ship around hellish arenas. From the viscous walls come demons, emitting guttural growls as they close in for the kill.

Naturally, the plan is to shoot them, but your ship only fires from behind. You must therefore forget everything you’ve learned about arcade blasters, and figure out how to obliterate ravenous foes while firing from your ship’s bottom.

Although hard as nails, Backfire is a delight, with smart design, and a great ship upgrade path. The controls, note, are odd – tap where you want to head – meaning on iPad you’re best off playing on a table. But that merely means your thumbs won’t obscure an enemy desperate to tear you to pieces.

ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun is a murderously difficult yet gripping auto runner/shooter. Like the mutant offspring of ALONE… and Jetpack Joyride, it has you blast your way through neon-soaked corridors packed with enemies, spikes, bullets and massive saw blades.

The tiny snag is the protagonist is a massive idiot. Rather than pick his way through the carnage, he belts along, using a gun to blast ahead (whereupon he loses altitude) or downward (in order to gain height). Juggling these minimal options while figuring out a route – and getting the timing right to stay alive – is extremely tricky.

Amusingly, levels also contain collectables – a gift for ‘self-hating completionists’. If that all sounds a bit much, there is a slightly less deranged Shield mode, which will only leave you 50% of a nervous wreck.

Holedown ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Holedown has you fire strings of balls at numbered blocks to obliterate them and dig deeper toward a planet’s core. You have limited shots and a set number of balls per shot, so you must carefully aim and strategize, prioritizing ‘fixed’ bricks that won’t fall if those beneath them are destroyed.

The basic premise may be familiar – plenty of freebies are broadly similar – but whereas they ruin things with difficulty gates and IAP, Holedown is a premium, polished game. Upgrades come by way of gems found during digs, rewarding skill rather than your ability to open your wallet.

Although the game is repetitive, it’s more hypnotic than grindy, and fun when you nail a perfect shot, sending a group of balls through a tiny gap for them to bounce around like wasps trapped in a jar.

Jydge ($8.99/£8.99/AU$13.99)

Jydge plonks you in a grubby, neon-lit dystopia, with nasty ideas about law enforcement. As the titular ‘jydge’, you go on missions that largely involve shooting bad guys, ‘confiscating’ loot, and rescuing the odd hostage.

The anything-goes nature of Jydge initially wrong-foots, because the viewpoint and setup scream stealth shooter. You think you’ll be sneaking about, like a ninja with a gun. In reality, it’s often more like a brains-free twin-stick blaster.

That said, Jydge does have some tactical nous when it comes to challenges that are initially impossible. Actions can affect levels permanently, meaning with a little thought – and quite a lot of violence – you can by way of a few ‘stacked’ attempts in fact clear a tricky scene in 20 seconds, assuming your thumbs can keep up as you revel in the mayhem.

Steredenn ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Steredenn is an endless horizontal shooter, infused with the beating heart of the best retro blasters around, topped off with a head-nodding guitar-laden soundtrack.

Unlike most games of its ilk, it works brilliantly on iPad. The responsive controls have you drag the left of the screen to move your ship, and tap the right to fire at incoming waves of enemies. A flick of your right thumb switches weapons, and if your ship darts beneath a digit, crosshairs pinpoint its position.

And you’ll need that knowledge at all times, because enemies come thick and fast in all their chunky-pixel glory. But so too do power-ups – and learning the effectiveness of weapons against specific opponents boosts your long(er)-term survival.

Well, that and sometimes bolting a massive whirling saw blade to your ship, like some kind of space lunatic. It’s superb, raucous, shooty fun.

Death Road to Canada ($13.99/£13.99/AU$21.99)

Zombies have taken over the USA, and so it’s road trip time in Death Road to Canada, the aim being to flee to the safety of the land of the moose. The tiny snag: the aforementioned zombies, and the fact you start out in Florida.

The game itself is an action-oriented role-playing title, switching between top-down shooting/scavenging scenes, choose-your-own-adventure text sections, and claustrophobic and downright terrifying sieges that lock you for a set time in a confined space with hundreds of the undead.

Actually, it’s not that terrifying, given that Death Road to Canada looks like a game from the 1990s. But it is excellent fun, despite some slightly slippy virtual controls. (If you’ve an Made for iPhone controller, use that to boost your zombie-killing prowess.)

Darkside ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

In the inky blackness of space, humans have started mining massive space rocks, and it turns out aliens have a big problem with that.

Enter: the hero of Darkside, who has to blow up said aliens and, for some reason, all the rocks the humans are supposed to be mining. Videogame logic!

It all comes across like someone gleefully mashed together two classic arcade titles – Asteroids (shoot rocks until they’re tiny enough to obliterate) and Robotron (the original twin-stick shooter) – and wrapped the result around beautifully rendered planetoids.

Although there’s a free version, splash out for the paid release and you get smart bombs in the arcade mode, and two extra modes to try: one being mission-based, and the other being a tough endless mode for cocky veterans.

The end result is tons of shooty fun that’s accessible enough for newcomers, but that provides a stern test for even the swiftest of trigger fingers.

AirAttack 2 ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)

You get the feeling creators of classic vertically scrolling shooters would sit in front of AirAttack 2 in a daze, dumbfounded at what's possible on modern home-computing devices.

That's not down to the gameplay, though: like its predecessor, AirAttack 2 is a straightforward shooter - you're piloting a fighter in World War II, downing enemies while optionally yelling "tally ho" at an annoyingly loud volume.

But this World War II is decidedly different from the one that occurred in our reality: Germans own limitless squadrons and building-sized tanks (versus the Allies, seemingly relying on a single nutcase in a plane to win the war).

It's the jaw-dropping visuals that really dazzle, effortlessly displaying swarms of enemies to down, colossal bosses to defeat, and a destructible environment to take out your frustrations on. For the low price (not least given that there's no IAP whatsoever), it's an insane bargain.

Our favorite iPad extreme sports, soccer, tennis, golf, and management games.

Football Manager 2020 Touch ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Football Manager 2020 Touch puts you in charge of a soccer team and immediately makes you realize things aren’t quite as easy as you thought they might be when yelling at the TV. That’s because Football Manager is a full-on simulation – more or less the same experience you get on PC.

Along with the usual slew of stats, live matches, and blissful automation that enables you to offload some of the busywork, 2020’s incarnation of the game gives you the chance to develop the club’s culture, nurture the youth team, and coo at improved visuals.

Fans might gripe that that’s not enough to put last year’s version in for a transfer. Still, if you want the latest and greatest soccer management game for an Apple device, or are a newcomer, there’s nothing better on iPad.

Astro Golf (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Astro Golf is a chill-out side-on golf game set in space. Rather than whacking a ball along fairways, you instead blast it between planets, cunningly using gravity to pull off mind-bending slingshots.

The standard zen mode echoes mobile favorite Desert Golfing, in terms of simplicity (drag and let go to aim/fire), and also in not being terribly bothered how many shots it takes you to get to the hole. Stats are recorded, but there’s no real sense of urgency.

A hard mode ramps the challenge up a notch, demanding you get a hole in one to proceed to the next hole. But even there, you get some assistance, your previous shot’s arrow lurking like a ghost for you to use as guidance for your next. In all, then, a relaxing and novel take on the genre.

Desert Golfing ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Desert Golfing is about the most minimal take on golf imaginable. The side-on game gives you a tee and a hole to reach. You drag to aim and set power, and then take your shot. Smack your ball out of bounds and you start from scratch; make the hole with one or more shots and you can continue.

It feels never-ending, as you find yourself dozens and then hundreds of holes in, and it should get boring – but it really doesn’t. Your scorecard builds but ceases to have meaning as you relax into a hypnotic chill-out take on a sport that wasn’t exactly frenetic in the first place.

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a racing game that has you holding the purse strings rather than the steering wheel. So instead of coaxing your car around complex turns, and blasting along straights, you manage your drivers (and their egos), plan HQ and car upgrades, and figure out when during races they should push their engines or change their tires.

The game’s sense of balance is very smart. It’s immediate and intuitive enough for newcomers, with a gentle first season, but gradually unlocks complexity, depth, and challenge to make you stick around for the long term.

And although races merely feature colored discs whizzing round diorama-like circuits, they are nonetheless tense, exciting affairs – not least when one of your drivers is vying for a podium finish.

Super Stickman Golf 3 (free + IAP)

If you find golf a bit dull, Super Stickman Golf 3 offers a decidedly different take on the sport. Instead of rolling greens, a sprinkling of trees and the odd sandpit, golfers in this bizarre world pit their wits against gravity-free space-stations, floating islands, and dank caverns with glue-like surfaces.

The game's side-on charms echo Angry Birds in its artillery core, in the sense that careful aiming is the order of the day. But this is a far smarter and more polished title, with some excellent and imaginative level design.

With this third entry, you also get the chance to spin the ball, opening up the possibility of otherwise impossible shots. And once you're done with the solo mode, you can go online with asynchronous turn-based play and frenetic live races.

Table Tennis Touch (free + IAP)

Table Tennis Touch brings ping pong to your iPad in glorious fashion. You get a set of training mini-games, to hone your aim and power, after which point you can delve into a full career mode.

Matches involve you taking on a levitating bat rather than an actual person on the other side of the table. The places in which you play, though, are beautifully rendered, although your focus will mostly be on the tiny white ball being belted around as you smash and spin your way to the big leagues.

This aspect of the game feels the part, capturing the speed and intensity of a properly gripping ping pong rally – and all without those moments where you subsequently step on and crush the ball like an idiot.

Touchgrind Skate 2 ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

Touchgrind Skate 2 presumably had a development process that began with someone realizing fingers look like legs if you put a tiny skateboard underneath them. And that’s what you get here – a virtual board, which you control with two digits.

Although that might feel gimmicky, it’s intuitive. But don’t mistake Touchgrind Skate 2 for an arcade pushover. As you roam urban locations, tasked with performing gnarly stunts, you’ll wipe out – often.

What you must do is learn to master the board, and then slowly chain together tricks. Only then will you get enough points to unlock new parks. On iPad in particular, this works very well, the larger screen giving you space to breathe. And it’s a great example of touchscreen innovation and physical interaction — Touchgrind Skate 2 just wouldn't be the same with a gamepad.

Our favorite iPad card games, turn-based strategy titles, and digital board games.

Book of Demons: Tablet Edition ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Book of Demons: Tablet Edition uses hack-and-slash dungeon crawlers like Diablo as a foundation, but radically reworks them for the touchscreen.

Rather than roaming about in freeform fashion, your wanderings are limited to set pathways. As foes attack, your fighter automatically responds, but you can use a finger to adjust their focus – and unleash magical fury by way of powers from collectable cards. It plays like an action-oriented RTS – and it’s great.

Over time, you upgrade your kit, figure out spell combos that obliterate entire hordes of enemies, and thereby give yourself a fighting chance of reaching the dungeon’s depths. And with the game’s many neat touches – papercraft characters; a mode that effectively pauses the game when you aren’t touching the display; game length predictions and customization – you’ll surely want to.

Maze Machina ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Maze Machina takes a mouse, plonks him in an ever-changing maze, and has him fight it out with mechanical foes designed by the evil Automatron. His only hope: to survive 15 rounds by grabbing keys and making it to the exit.

It’s brain-pounding stuff. The arena is a four-by-four grid, and each time you swipe, all objects and characters head in that direction. Swiping also triggers object use – and the objects themselves are dictated by the icon on which each character stands.

However, the iPad’s large display gives the game room to breathe – and you a fighting chance of strategizing in a manner that will finally bring an end to the clockwork horror, rather than the heroic and smart but also easily breakable rodent.

Bad North ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Bad North is a real-time strategy game for iPad that pulls off the trick of being accessible to genre newcomers, but is tricky enough to give old-hands a challenge. It centers around defending an idyllic island kingdom from Viking invaders. As they appear from the gloom in their boats, set on a bout of stabbing and arson, you must position defenders accordingly.

The controls are straightforward, involving taps to select and move any given group of soldiers. Fighting is automatic, based on nearby enemies. No two games are the same – islands are procedurally generated. And as you win battles, you kit out soldiers with upgrades, which heavily impacts on subsequent victories.

Each game of Bad North also has a sense of permanence, because if your commanders die, they are gone forever. Strategy is often about the choices you make between battles in this elegant, tactile title.

P1 Select ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

P1 Select is a turn-based dungeon crawler. You move within a randomized maze, duffing up monsters, grabbing bling, and making for an exit. And in a twist you probably weren’t expecting, your powers change after every move you make.

The P1 Select screen is split in two. On the left, there’s the maze. On the right, there’s a player select grid. Each ‘player’ – Midas, X-Ray, Vish; and so on – has unique powers, and its own lives count. When you swipe in the maze, the player selection moves accordingly.

Initially, this is deeply weird – even off-putting. But stick with P1 Select and its unique way of working lodges in your brain. The game’s finite nature (nine rooms) makes it great for quick-fire strategy sessions, and also honing your skills, given that the high score is an average of recent runs.

Tropico ($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)

Tropico is a dictator simulator masquerading as a strategy game. Well-known to PC players, Tropico finds you in control of a Caribbean island – and aiming to stay in power at all costs.

The free-form nature of the game affords you various routes to dealing with your people. Resources must be carefully balanced, so you can build the structures that will make hard cash, and keep people entertained and healthy. And if everything kicks off, you must quickly figure out the best way to deal with uprisings.

On iPad, this could all have been a complex mess, but the interface has been cleverly redesigned for touch, providing fast access to key commands through your ‘Dictator’s Desk’. It’s a great addition to a classic title – one that fully showcases the power that’s in the hands of any gamer armed with an iPad.

Kingdom Rush: Vengeance ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Kingdom Rush: Vengeance is the latest iteration of the best tower-defense game on mobile. This time, you get to play bad guy Vez’nan – a wizard tired of getting repeatedly beaten, and determined to conquer the kingdom.

How conquest and tower defense align is hard to say, but it makes for a great game. As ever, you drop towers in pre-defined spots, unleash special powers, and send a mighty hero into the fray for ad hoc smashing.

Like other entries in the Kingdom Rush series, Vengeance looks great, is finely balanced, and keeps things interesting with new surprises. There is one bad surprise, though, in IAP stinking up the place a bit. However, have patience, learn from your mistakes, and avoid temptation, and you’ll find there’s no need to pay more – right through to Vez’nan’s final victory.

Euclidean Skies ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Euclidean Skies is the follow-up to the superb Euclidean Lands, a turn-based strategy game that takes place on floating constructions akin to Rubik’s Cubes. In that title, manipulating the landscape is as important as the physical moves the protagonist makes – and that’s even more overt in this sequel.

In Euclidean Skies, each individual ‘block’ within the landscape has the potential to be spun about any axis. This provides scope for brain-bendingly complex solutions, whether battling a gigantic monster by obliterating its spine with rotating chunks of land, or gradually unraveling what was once a flat surface, creating ‘arms’ to prod switches and fashion bridges to doors.

This isn’t an easy game, but it is hugely satisfying when you crack one of its puzzles. And, like the original, it also feels unique, which alone makes it worthy of consideration.

FTL: Faster Than Light ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

FTL: Faster Than Light is a real-time strategy game that finds you hurtling through space, trying to get essential data to the safety of the federation. Unfortunately, you’re being pursued by shooty rebels, and so must keep jumping to new sectors.

Every time you do, surprises await – you might make some cash, or end up in a frantic scrap with pirates. During action scenes, you direct your crew to make repairs, and fling explosives and lasers in your enemy’s general direction. At any point, you can pause to take a breather and strategize a bit.

The game is procedurally generated, and so every mission is different. But there are some constants: pitch-perfect controls, a sense of immersion, and palpable tension when half your ship’s on fire but you know one carefully aimed shot will obliterate your foe.

Infinite West (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP)

Infinite West casts you as a cowboy in the wilderness, taking down a gang that murdered his family. That hackneyed scenario might put you in mind of a shoot ’em up, and so it’s a surprise to find Infinite West is more like chess – only with pieces shooting each other.

The turn-based play across semi-randomized levels forces you to consider every action. Your gunslinger can only move one space horizontally or vertically at a time, and each foe has unique weaponry ranges. Further complexity comes from a health counter, a ‘dash’ power and an ongoing upgrades system.

There are echoes of Square Enix’s GO games, but if anything Infinite West has more depth and brains. You’ll certainly need your wits about you when, many levels into a mission, you suddenly find yourself faced with a dozen gang members intent on your untimely demise.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (free + $59.99/£54.99/AU$89.99 IAP)

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI properly showcases the iPad’s potential as a gaming device. Previous takes on Civilization for iPad have been weirdly cartoonish and simplified. Not Civilization VI – this is the game you get on PC, with all its inherent depth and complexity.

This means you get one of the finest 4X (eXplore; eXpand; eXploit; eXterminate) games around. You aim to make your civilization dominant by becoming a trading giant, heading to the stars, or getting all stabby/shooty until no-one else is left standing.

The game demands time and attention, is hugely rewarding, and should keep you going for months. Just as well, given its price tag. Still, you get 60 moves for free, and ‘proper’ games cost real money.

Bar some slightly blurry visuals on iPad Pro, this is the real deal – one of the best games in existence, carefully optimized for the touchscreen.

Card Thief ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

It takes quite a lot to make a solitaire game tense, but Card Thief manages, mostly by smashing dealing out cards into turn-based stealth-oriented puzzling.

As the titular villain, you map out pathways across the cards on the screen, figuring out how to grab loot without losing too many stealth points, which are depleted on battling adversaries.

Repeat play is rewarded by improving your strategies, unlocking new kit to help increase your score, and eventually finding your way to new missions with different foes.

Like any take on solitaire, Card Thief does get a bit repetitive, but this is also a game you’ll be able to happily play a round of a day for many weeks, gradually improving your ability to sneak about and become a master pickpocket.

Mini Metro ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Traveling on underground railways can be a fairly hideous experience, which is perhaps why Mini Metro is such a pleasant surprise. The game is all about designing and managing a subway, using an interface akin to a minimal take on the schematics usually found hanging on subway walls. And it’s glorious.

Periodically, new stations appear. You drag lines between them, and position trains on them, in order to shepherd passengers to their stops. All the while, movement generates a hypnotic, ambient soundtrack.

Over time, things admittedly become more fraught than during these relaxing beginnings. The demands of an increasing number of passengers forces you to juggle trains and rearrange lines until you’re inevitably overwhelmed. But the nature of the game is such that this never frustrates – instead, you’ll want to take another journey - hugely unlike when suffering the real thing.

Hitman GO ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

It's great to see Square Enix do something entirely different with Hitman GO, rather than simply converting its free-roaming 3D game to touchscreens. Although still echoing the original series, this touchscreen title is presented as a board game of sorts, with turn-based actions against clockwork opposition.

You must figure out your way to the prize, without getting knocked off (the board). It's an oddly adorable take on assassination, and one of the best iOS puzzlers. There's also extra replay value in the various challenges (such as grabbing a briefcase or not killing guards), each of which requires an alternate solution to be found.

Our favorite iPad games that have you battle with crosswords, anagrams, and letters.

SpellTower+ (free or $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

SpellTower+ updates the 2011 classic. The basics are the same: you’re faced with a jumble of letters, and must snake pathways through them to select and remove words. Gravity then makes floating tiles fall.

Varied modes force unique approaches. Tower is a finite pile of letters. Puzzle and Rush have towers that grow, adding Tetris-like arcade panic. Search offers a single shot at one word, where you must use as many double-score tiles as possible.

Although the iPad game is free to download, SpellTower is at its best when you pay the one-off IAP. Ads are removed, and you gain access to new modes, like the aforementioned Search, and meaningfully reworked arcade ones that double their speed or remove word-length restrictions for a more ‘zen’ experience. However you play, though, SpellTower+ is among the very best word games on iPad.

Word Forward ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Word Forward is a strategic take on making words from a grid of letter tiles. But this game demands you remove every tile, in order to succeed – easier said than done when a level starts with a jumble of letters that don’t make for neat sets of obvious words.

Still, Word Forward provides you with weapons beyond your brain: you get tiles you can swap with those already on the board, a special tile for shuffling the grid, and a bomb to obliterate a single awkward letter.

Through demanding a kind of chess-like think-ahead strategy, rather than getting a high score primarily through finding massive words, Word Forward ends up being a bit different from its contemporaries – a more cerebral effort, and one that’s an excellent buy for solo players.

Sidewords ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Each puzzle in Sidewords starts with an empty grid that has words along its top and left edges. You select letters from both to create new words. Each chosen letter shoots a line into the grid, and the squares where those lines meet become solid blocks, which display the words you’ve created.

The idea is to fill in every square on the grid. This is easier said than done – you might consider yourself a genius on finding a massive, extremely clever word, but later find your grid peppered with tiny gaps. Completed words can be removed with a tap at any point, Sidewords clearly wanting you to experiment and try new things on your way to a solution.

It’s a great concept – immediate, fresh, and also very challenging when you start tackling larger grids.

Supertype ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Supertype is a strange word game, in that it’s primarily interested in the physical form of letters and how they interact in animated 2D environments. Each puzzle tasks you with using the letters to collide with dots that are littered about – you type some characters, press the tick mark, and watch as everything starts to move.

One puzzle has a dot up some stairs, and is easily dealt with by placing a lowercase l on each step, and a p to knock them all down. Elsewhere, you use letters to swing from the scenery like tiny action heroes, or roundish characters that rain down like a typographic avalanche. It’s great stuff – imaginative, original, and definitely not yet another Scrabble clone!

SpellTower ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

There’s something gleefully classic about SpellTower. It marries very old-school word games – in the sense of paper-based crosswords and word searches – with much-loved arcade puzzlers. The result is the best word game on iOS.

Tower mode has you face a stack of letters, tapping out snaking words that disappear when submitted, the tiles above then falling into the gaps. A keen sense of planning is required to balance letter stacks and ensure tiles aren’t left stranded.

Additional modes soon open up: Puzzle adds a new row of letters for every word you submit; Rush throws in a timer; and Debate pits two players against each other. iPad Pro owners also get Super Tower mode, offering a colossal 432 tiles and the potential for blockbuster scores – if you can find the right words lurking within the jumble.

Puzzlejuice ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Puzzlejuice shoves Tetris and SpellTower into a blender, adds a load of power-ups, and leaves you – the somewhat bewildered player – to make sense of the chaos. It’s entirely appropriate that the game states it will “punch your brain in the face”.

It starts with The Tetris bit, falling blocks being used to create lines. But complete lines don’t vanish – they turn into letters. Tapping blocks of color gets you further letter tiles. You then find words snaking through the jumble to submit, freeing up room for new shapes falling into the well.

On iPhone, it’s all a bit too fiddly to be fun; but the iPad’s extra acres transform Puzzlejuice into an entertaining and quirky genre mash-up.

Scrabble Premium ($9.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

Scrabble Premium [US store] | [non-US stores] is the famous word game on your Apple tablet. You and your opponents use dished out letters to gradually build a crossword. Cleverly utilizing a combination of show-off big words and/or score-boosting board tiles will have you zoom ahead of opponents, who’ll hate you for repeatedly placing the Q in qi on a triple letter tile.

On the iPad, the game works nicely, displaying the complete board without scrolling, and at a finger-friendly size. It includes a dictionary, and chat for when playing human opponents. Computer players exist, too, although they do love using bafflingly obscure words – and chastising you when you fail to do the same, which isn’t very congenial (12 points).

AlphaPit ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

AlphaPit is a cleverly designed word game based around grids of letters. The aim is to remove them all. The snag is that the letters are jumbled up, and you must therefore strategically remove words, otherwise you can end up with tiny islands of characters that are impossible to use.

Fortunately, the game provides you with special powers to ease your progress: you can shuffle letters, undo an error, or merrily blow up a tile that’s getting in your way. But the smartest bit about the game is when you realize these are all hand-crafted puzzles. AlphaPit isn’t random – it’s all about you finding the best solution for any given problem.

Typeshift (free + IAP)

Typeshift at its core is a mix of traditional word games that you might find in a newspaper – crosswords; anagrams; word searches. But this is all presented on your iPad in an ultra-modern mix of minimal visuals and swish tactile gameplay.

The basic idea is to slide columns of letters up and down, to make complete words in the central row. Do this and the letter tiles change color. Change them all to complete a puzzle – unless you’re playing one that also requires you to match completed words to crossword clues.

Each puzzle is hand-crafted, and they’re sold in sets. But even if you don’t fancy splashing out too often, TypeShift gives you a new puzzle every day. Either way, it’s a must-install.

Free iPhone games have a reputation for being rubbish and full of IAP. But loads of superb free titles await your twitchy gaming thumbs – if you know where to look.

To save you the effort of finding them, we’ve compiled the best here, split into handy categories. So if you fancy an arcade blast, a brain-bending puzzle, or a thrilling racer – for free – read on.

Plus, check back every two weeks for our latest favorite free iPhone game, which you'll find below.

Free iPhone game of the week: Cyber Drive

Cyber Drive ostensibly recreates that scene from The Fifth Element, where Bruce Willis dives his cab down through layers of traffic in a gigantic neon-tinged futuristic city, weaving through obstacles, until he hits city bottom.

We say ‘ostensibly’ primarily on the basis that Cyber Drive is an oddly chilled-out take on this idea. The music has a relaxed vibe, the visuals are bright, and the action is more relentlessly ‘quite tricky’ rather than terrifyingly exhilarating.

But for all that, this is nonetheless a really fun game. In endless mode, what’s in your way gradually becomes more crowded, forcing you to start planning your snaking pathway rather than just reacting. If you don’t have that much time to kill, there are finite handcrafted levels to tackle as well.

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Our favorite free iPhone arcade games, including brawlers and fighting games, auto-runners, party games, pinball, and retro classics.

Zombie Football

Zombie Football is a deranged mash-up of exciting touchdown runs, The Walking Dead, and classic coin-op Gauntlet. In each level, the traditional green football field is peppered with obstacles, and hordes of lurching, ravenous undead. Clearly, the ratings needed a nudge.

Your aim in this free iPad game is to not get horribly killed. You must figure out how to coax zombies this way and that (thereby clearing a path for your touchdown), avoid speed-sapping mud, and grab energy-boosting food that’s lying around. (Don’t think too much about the hygiene ramifications.)

It’s an entertainingly daft blast, not least when you realize your burly footballer can’t even stomp through cones, and so must gingerly thread his way through the gnashing, toothy opposition. Also, there are no ads, timers, or other cruft – free really does mean free here.

Yokai Dungeon

Yokai Dungeon is a fast-paced arcade title that involves running about and squashing demons. It’s set in a series of linked arenas, which are peppered with movable objects you can use to unsportingly squash your adversaries against a wall.

The Japanese-themed game looks superb, whether you’re moseying to the between-stages shop or taking on one of the large bosses in an end of stage battle. Most importantly, it plays really well, with fluid and intuitive controls.

With its grid-like structure and non-stop action, old hands might detect a hint of Bomberman; veterans will find Pengo coming to mind. But despite such retro inspiration, and the old-school pixel art, Yokai Dungeon feels every bit the modern iPhone title, with a sleek design, bite-sized battles, and approachable gameplay that’s suited to newcomers and seasoned gamers alike.

Knight Brawl

Knight Brawl takes the amusingly bouncy physics and frenetic skirmishes from Colin Lane’s mobile sports gems – Dunkers 2; Touchdowners; Rowdy Wrestling – and applies them to knights who fancy getting a bit stabby.

Your knights leap about the place in a somewhat controllable manner. With deft button taps – and a little luck – you can quickly relieve opponents of helmets and shields, prior to delivering the killing blow.

Only that’s barely scratching the surface, because Knight Brawl is absurdly generous with what you get. There are multiple battle modes and also quest-like missions, where you get to leap into a castle and duff everyone up. It’s bonkers, entertaining, superb stuff, and seriously raises the bar on Lane’s work – which was already impressive to start with.

Project Loading

Project Loading is a speedrun arcade test about the adventures of a loading bar on its way to reach 100%. Yes, you read that right: the star here is the bane of many computer users’ existence – a loading bar.

In Project Loading’s universe, though, loading bars don’t slowly inch from left to right – they must cope with slow-down and speed-up mats, deadly giant crosses and bouncers. To aid their way, there are restart points, and gold stars to collect, but everything happens against the clock. There’s no dawdling for loading bars here.

It’s an interesting conceit, lifted by clever level design, arty visuals, and responsive tilt controls. However, given how tricky later stages are, you’ll likely never gripe about a standard loading bar again.

Boost Buddies

Boost Buddies is a twitch-based arcade effort, where you’re a cat in a box, trying to reach a crown. Fortunately for the cat, the box is rocket-powered, boosted every time you tap. Less fortunately, between the cat and the crown are… things.

Sometimes you’re pitted against massive laser beams or swinging axes. Occasionally you’re blown about by fans, or chased by critters. Quite what’s going on, we’ve no idea, but it’s a lot of fun figuring out how to beat each test, and stringing together high scores.

Do well enough and you can add to your menagerie of boosting beasts, each of which get their own music and background visuals. And while the game’s basic nature means sessions don’t last an age, it’s always good for giving you a quick boost yourself.

Williams Pinball

Williams Pinball recreates – and augments – a range of classic Williams tables on your iPhone. It then bakes them into a freemium business model that’s, perhaps surprisingly, actually pretty good.

Select a starter table, and that one’s unlocked from the get-go. You’ll be playing this one a lot, so choose wisely. (The superb Attack From Mars is a good bet.) You then partake in daily challenges to boost your XP, win parts, and unlock other tables.

Eventually, tables are unlocked for offline play, and optionally have animated components, like Zen Pinball’s more fantastical tables. Getting there is a grind, but you’re playing superbly simulated pinball, so that’s no great hardship. And even though pinball is admittedly a bit fiddly on the iPhone, any progress made is instantly zipped across all your devices via iCloud.

Unicycle Giraffe

Unicycle Giraffe is a balancing game that features a unicycle and a giraffe. Unfortunately for the giraffe, it attempts to ride said unicycle – not a comfortable state of being for the typical ungulate. It’s all very comical, though, as your giraffe wobbles left and right, before seconds later inevitably crashing to the floor in a tangle of legs and neck.

Despite being a one-note game, Unicycle Giraffe rewards mastery with the sheer thrill of staying seated for a few precious extra seconds. Rescuing yourself from very nearly overbalancing is fun, and extra risk comes by way of coins and bombs to tap elsewhere on the screen.

There’s little longevity, of course (short of ‘upgrading’ the animal with new hats and skins), but this one’s endearing, and always good for a quick blast.

Don’t Trip

Don’t Trip has you direct stompy feet through increasingly surreal terrain. You start off in a kitchen that could do with a tidy-up. Last long enough and you find yourself avoiding crazed vacuum cleaners decked out with knives and axes. Eventually, you end up fleeing from lava, splashing in swimming pools and walking in space.

This all comes off as quite trippy, and that’s only exacerbated by the viewpoint and controls. Everything is zoomed in to the point you can barely see where to head, and the controls have you press the screen to plant a foot, and rotate your phone to find space for the next step. Don’t Trip! really is a game very much designed with mobile in mind – and it’s all the better for it.

Train Party

Train Party is an arcade-oriented puzzle game designed for multiple people to play together. Between two and 12 people on the same Wi-Fi network do their best to keep the train on time, largely by laying down tracks in front of it. In order to avoid disastrous derailment, you must also figure out how to deal with roaming wildlife and a renegade track bomber.

There are two ways to play: collaboratively and competitively. In the former case, the train always heads to the player with the most complete track, so you can keep going for as long as possible. In competition mode, though, the train goes around devices in order, and the winner is the last person not to turn the 9:45 to Washington Union Station into a crumpled heap of twisted metal.

Beat Street

Beat Street is a touchscreen brawler that wears its influences on its sleeve. The pixelated art recalls classic beat ’em ups, and the stop-start gameplay - with occasional unsporting use of baseball bats to bash enemies around the head - smacks of Double Dragon and Streets of Rage.

Yet this isn’t slavish retro fare. The game feels familiar, but its set-up is entertainingly oddball (liberating a city being terrorized by sentient, bipedal, suited rodents), and everything is controlled by a single thumb.

The controls could have spelled the end for Beat Street, but - amazingly - they work brilliantly, enabling deft footwork, punches, kicks, special moves, and the means to smash an evil rat’s face in with a brick. Apart from unnecessary grind-to-unlock levels, Beat Street’s the perfect freebie iPhone brawler.

PinOut!

If you’re a fan of knocking metal balls about, you’re likely frustrated with iPhone pinball. Even an iPhone Plus’s display is a bit too small, resulting in a fiddly experience replete with eye strain. Enter PinOut!, which rethinks pinball in a manner that works perfectly on the smaller screen.

In PinOut’s neon-infused world, you play against the clock, hitting ramps to send your ball further along what’s apparently the world’s longest pinball table. Rather than losing a ball should it end up behind the flippers, you merely waste vital seconds getting back to where you were. When the clock runs out: game over.

The result is exciting and fresh, and the relatively simple mini-tables are ideal for iPhone. Moreover, the game’s immediacy makes it suitable for all gamers, overcoming pinball’s somewhat inaccessible nature.

Our favorite free endless iPhone games where you sprint, jump, drive, hoverboard, dig or pinball to victory – or your doom.

Star Jolt

Star Jolt puts you in a spaceship, bathes the screen with faked old-school CRT visuals, and then laughs mercilessly as you crash. Repeatedly. This is an endless game of the Flappy Bird variety – but that also means it has the kind of compulsion loop that doesn’t let go.

Ostensibly, you’re collecting space garbage, but this is for some reason lined up neatly in square packages dotted along winding corridors. Also, you belt along at insane speeds, sliding your finger left and right to rotate the landscape, constantly trying to point yourself at empty space rather than a wall.

Death comes often, but because games are so short, you’ll instantly want to try again – not least because of Star Jolt’s humor, entertaining hidden features, and eye-popping visuals.

Saily Seas

Saily Seas has echoes of Alto’s Adventure and Tiny Wings, as you seek to survive as long as possible in a beautifully rendered hilly environment. But instead of snow-capped mountains and valleys at sunset, you’re pitting your gaming digit against the high seas.

Your little boat climbs often humongous waves as you tap the screen. Other gestures enable you to dive or jump and briefly hang in the air before an inevitably wet landing. At first, such show-off antics are entirely unnecessary, but the game soon lobs all kinds of sea life at you to avoid – and a single collision is game-ending.

With vibrant visuals, gorgeous weather effects, a meditative soundtrack, smartly included checkpoints, and a massive whale always in hot pursuit, Saily Seas deserves to make a splash on the App Store.

Dungeon Drop

Dungeon Drop is an endless faller. It finds you plunging ever deeper into a layered dungeon with an encroaching spiked ceiling in hot pursuit. 

Your tiny protagonist can’t move of its own accord. In order to escape, you drag platforms left or right, lining up holes to plunge into. However, traps pepper the dungeon, meaning you must ensure you grab objects to get past them unscathed.

It’s not like you need much brainpower to realize you need a sword to stab a monster, or a key to unlock a door. But Dungeon Drop moves at serious speed, transforming it into a relentlessly tense affair as you try to beat your high score – and end up horribly killed yet again when your fingers can’t quite keep up.

Race the Sun Challenge Edition

Race the Sun Challenge Edition is an endless flyer. You zoom along in your craft, zigzagging between minimalist structures, and trying very hard to not fly into a wall. But collisions aren’t your only enemy – and that’s because your craft is solar powered.

Apparently, no-one in Race the Sun’s universe has mastered battery storage, because the second the sun sets, your race is over. Fortunately, you can delay the inevitable by grabbing boosts that reverse the direction of the sun for a few moments. Staying in the light also helps you eke out a few extra yards.

With an eminently fair energy system, gorgeous visuals, and a daily challenge, this is a must-download, whether or not you’re familiar with the not so free original.

Pigeon Wings Strike

Pigeon Wings Strike is an endless flyer, which marries the speed of ALONE, the bullet hell of many a Japanese shooter, and the cute factor of an animated cartoon.

It initially features a pigeon in a biplane, which you must direct through twisting corridors and caverns, and periodically have shoot down drones and massive enemy airborne battle stations.

The controls are pitch perfect, with one button for speed, another for boost or blasting, and vertical tilt controls for subtle or abrupt changes in altitude. 

It’s simple stuff, but hugely compelling. And although there’s not a ton of depth, Pigeon Wings Strike has multiple characters (each with unique skills) to unlock, and a cleverly designed upgrade system that encourages you to take extra risks when belting along at speeds no pigeon should be subjected to.

PAKO Forever

PAKO Forever seemingly takes place in a world where law-enforcement really doesn’t want you mucking about in what appears to be the world’s largest parking lot. The second you move, police cars are on you like a shot, and if one smashes into you, that’s your lot.

Pretty quickly, you figure out that you need to drift and snake about to survive – and then you start seeing gigantic gift boxes bouncing along. Snag one of those and your car temporarily balloons to giant size, or acquires a handy ball and chain to smash the cops.

Visually, the game’s quite crude, and the staccato nature of missions can pall, but for a quick blast of breezy endless driving larks, it’s a decent install.

Will Hero

Will Hero is a superb one-thumb arcade game that features a blocky hero dashing through a world of levitating islands, being all heroic and duffing up enemies. His foes are mostly bouncing cubes, and you must carefully time dashes to pass beneath them, or engineer collisions to knock them into the abyss.

Crack open a chest you find on your travels, and you’ll get weapons that transform dashes into violent attacks. Add in the game’s collectible helms (from unlocking loot crate chests), and you’ll end up with many potential weapons to choose from, including missiles and colossal swords.

Will Hero is fast-paced, inventive, and a lot of fun. It has a unique feel, and pleasingly bucks convention when you rescue a princess. When you do so, she tags along on subsequent adventures, gleefully hacking away at the enemies who once imprisoned her.

Power Hover: Cruise

Power Hover: Cruise is three endless runners (well, surfers) for the price of one. It borrows the boss battle levels from the superb, beautiful Power Hover, and expands on them. You get to speed through a booby-trapped pyramid, avoid projectiles blasted your way by an angry machine you’re chasing through a tunnel, and whirl around a track that snakes through the clouds.

This is a gorgeous game, with silky animation and minimal, but vibrant objects and scenery. The audio is excellent, too – the rousing electronic soundtrack urging you on.

There are a couple of snags: games can abruptly end due to difficulty spikes, and the controls initially seem floaty. But we grew to love the inertia, which differentiates Power Hover: Cruise and makes it feel like you’re surfing on air. As for the difficulty, spend time learning the hazards and mastering the game, and you’ll soon be climbing the high score tables.

Dashy Crashy

Although, at its core, this is a fairly standard lane-based survival game (swipe to avoid traffic; don’t crash), Dashy Crashy has loads going on underneath the surface. It’s packed full of neat features, such as pile-ups, a gorgeous day/night cycle, and random events that involve maniacs hurtling along a lane, smashing everything out of their way.

It also cleverly adds value to mobile gaming’s tendency to have you collect things. In Dashy Crashy, you’re periodically awarded vehicles, but these often shake up how you play the game. For example, the cop car can collect massive donuts for bonus points, and an army jeep can call in tanks – just like you wish you could when stuck in slow-moving traffic.

Disney Crossy Road

Disney Crossy Road builds on the endless Frogger-style hopping shenanigans found in Crossy Road, mostly by mashing it into a ton of famous Disney properties.

It kicks off with a fairly humdrum take on the original, just with Mickey Mouse instead of a chicken, trying very hard to move ever onwards and not get run over by cars or drown in a river. But you soon start winning coins, enabling you to unlock new characters.

When you get to visit blocky endless takes on Toy Story, Lion King, Wreck-It Ralph, Monsters Inc, and more, sound and vision alike get a major overhaul. Even better: many of these worlds offer subtle changes to the way the game plays, making it more varied, and boosting long-term appeal.

Our favorite free iPhone gem-swap, tile-match, and rhythm action games.

Tetris

Tetris deserves its fame. Decades after the title’s emergence on PC – and subsequent mainstream breakthrough on the original Game Boy – it remains compelling. And it’s all so simple: rotate falling blocks to make complete lines, which then disappear, leaving you with more space. Over time, the game speeds up, until eventually the well is full.

With Tetris having been designed for platforms with keys or buttons, it can be a tricky proposition on touchscreens. But N3TWORK’s take is responsive, giving you a fighting chance at high scores. It’s also the most ‘retro’ iPhone Tetris we’ve seen in a long time, eschewing bells and whistles for a straightforward take on the game, with only a single optional IAP to remove the ads.

No marks for ambition, then, but this free iPhone game is a refreshingly streamlined take on a retro classic.

Sprint RPG

Sprint RPG, with its black-and-white stylings and basic first-person maze, instantly transports you back to the halcyon days of retro gaming. Quite some way back, in fact, since it’s reminiscent of the ancient (yet terrifying) 3D Monster Maze. 

Here, though, the aptly named Sprint RPG ramps up gameplay speed. Everything plays out against the clock, and you’ve mere fractions of a second to make decisions. When confronted by a monster, you need to tap the optimum sequence of actions to proceed. Get the order wrong and you’re dead.

Despite its RPG and speedrun trappings, then, Sprint RPG is effectively a match game – and one that feels very much suited to quick missions on an iPhone, obliterating gigantic spiders and skeletons until your overworked thumb begs for mercy.

Six Match

Six Match is a match-three game with a twist. Rather than arbitrarily swapping gems, you control a character with the oddly literal moniker Mr Swap-With-Coins, and as the game’s name suggests, he has just six moves after every successful match to make another.

The game wrong-foots you from the start. Any muscle memory you have from the likes of Bejeweled evaporates as you figure out the most efficient way to make the next match. The result is a game heavy on puzzling and light on speed.

Just when you think you’ve got it worked out, Six Match throws new mechanics into the mix: diamonds you clear by dropping them out of the well, deadly skulls and cages that push entire lines of coins. The layered strategy should keep you matching for the long term, as you figure out new ways to crack your high score.

Tappy Cat

Tappy Cat is a rhythm action game, with you playing as a musical moggie. Your cat sits before a ‘tree guitar’, and notes head out from the middle of the screen along two rails. These must be tapped, held, or tapped along with another note, depending on their color.

This is routine for a rhythm action game, but it’s the execution that makes Tappy Cat delightful. It feels perfectly tuned for iPhone (your thumbs can always reach the notes), and there’s a cat-collection meta-game, rewarding you with new kitties when you totally nail a tune.

The only bum notes are a lives system (a video ad will give you five lives – although there is also a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 endless lives IAP for those who want it), and the way in which a single major blunder ends your latest attempt at musical superstardom of the furry kind.

Finger Smash

Finger Smash is more or less whack-a-mole with fruit - and a big ol’ dose of sudden death. You get a minute to dish out tappy destruction, divided up into seconds-long rounds.

In each case, you’re briefly told what to smash, and set about tapping like a maniac. Hit the wrong object, and your game ends with a flaming skull taunting you. (Lasting the full minute is surprisingly tough.)

This is a simple high-score chaser, and so there’s understandably not a lot of depth here. However, there are plenty of nice touches. The visuals have an old-school charm, and the music is suitably energetic.

But also, there’s the way you can swipe through multiple items, the bomb that ominously appears during the final ten seconds, and varied alternate graphics sets if you feel the need to squish space invaders, fast food, or adorable cartoon robots. Great stuff.

Higher Higher!

Minimal arcade game Higher Higher! is another of those titles that on paper seems ridiculously simple, but in reality could result in your thumb and brain having a nasty falling out.

A little square scoots back and forth across the screen, changing color whenever it hits the edge and reverses direction. Your aim is to tap a matching colored column when the square passes over it.

The snag is that the square then changes color again; furthermore, the columns all change color when the square hits a screen edge.

To add to your troubles, Higher Higher! regularly speeds up, too, thereby transforming into a high-octane dexterity and reactions test. Combos are the key to the highest scores and, as ever, one mistake spells game over.

Blokout

Blokout is a furious, high-speed color-matching game that punishes you for the slightest hesitation. The initial mode plonks you in front of a three-by-three grid, and you have to swap colored squares, Bejewelled-style, to make complete lines, which then vanish.

The timer is the key to the game. A clock sits in the upper-left of the screen and rapidly counts down, giving you only a few moments to complete a line. If the timer runs dry it's game over; make a line and it resets, giving you another few seconds.

The intensity is therefore always set to maximum, nicely contrasting with the game's friendly, bold colors (which amusingly turn stark black and white the instant you lose); and if you stick around, you'll find further challenges by way of boosters and tougher modes.

Threes! Freeplay

Threes! Freeplay is a sliding puzzler with the same kind of compulsion loop found in the likes of Tetris. That might sound like a bold claim, but Threes! really is one of those rare games that’s easy to understand but that has enough depth and strategy to potentially keep you playing for years as you master your tactics.

It takes place on a grid, on which you slide cards. Those that match merge to create ever higher numbers, and new items appear on the side of the grid they moved from. Also, all the cards move as one. It’s clever stuff, which becomes apparent the more you play; as does the care and polish within, from the pleasant background ditty to the character and charm infused even into the very cards you move.

Triple Town

Triple Town is a think-ahead match game, where you combine trios of things to make other things. Three bushes make a tree, and three trees become a hut. Through careful positioning and a chess-champion’s ability to think ahead, you can chain moves together, thereby freeing up the space required to continue evolving your tiny town.

Then there are the bears. For some reason, the place is full of them. Some roam about the place in a semi-random fashion. Others are leapy ninjas. All of them need to be taken into consideration when laying down new objects. If you fancy a surreal, novel, challenging match game, then, this is definitely a game to bear in mind.

Groove Coaster 2

Groove Coaster 2 is a rhythm action game twinned with a roller-coaster. Everything’s on-rails, with you zooming along Rez-like vector pathways, all manner of colorful blocky pyrotechnics spinning and exploding beneath the track. All you need to do is get your timing right, tapping, swiping and rubbing when the icons tell you to.

Only it’s not that simple. The track flips and lurches, and the stages are designed to give your thumb a serious choreographic workout. As ever, perseverance reaps rewards, by way of massive score-enhancing chains, and, frankly, just the smugness that comes from knowing your prodding perfection means you’ve got rhythm.

Our favorite free iPhone platform games, from classic side-on 2D games to ambitious console-style adventures.

Tombshaft

Tombshaft is a game stuffed full of high-octane platforming action. But rather than mirroring Mario’s horizontally scrolling larks, you’re heading deep into the bowels of the planet.

You get just two buttons, which direct your tiny tomb raider left and right. Depending on their particular power, they might be able to slide down walls to slow their descent, or hover for a bit.

This is vital, because Tombshaft auto-scrolls. End up at the very top or bottom of the screen and you lose a life. But all the bits in between are no picnic either, with enemies aplenty, spikes falling from distant ceilings, and the occasional very angry boss monster who wants you gone from his tomb – and in pieces will do!

OCO

OCO is a platform game of a decidedly minimalist stripe. Its levels all take place on circular courses that fit within a single screen. As they rotate, you prod the screen to jump – and that’s it.

This could all have been reductive and awful, but OCO excels due to gorgeous visuals reminiscent of modern art coupled with superb level design. You really have to think about how to grab all of the collectibles and reach your goal. And once you get there, you’ll discover move-limit and speedrun challenges that force you to upend your existing tactics and figure out new paths to your goal.

As if that’s not enough, OCO makes a case for a permanent spot on your iPhone with a daily challenge, and a built-in level editor that lets you share creations with friends.

Yeah Bunny 2

Yeah Bunny 2 features a little rabbit sprinting around colorful landscapes, squashing enemies, collecting coins, freeing trapped chicks, and generally being awesome before reaching a goal. Pretty standard platforming territory, then – Mario with bunny ears.

Only this game’s different, because all your direction for the running rabbit comes from a single digit. Tap and the bunny leaps. Hold the screen and the leap is higher. You must therefore figure out how to traverse levels by bouncing the auto-running rabbit off of walls, and ensure during boss-battle pursuits you don’t get inadvertently rebounded towards your doom.

You get vibrant visuals, loads of varied levels, and an endearingly cute lead character. It’s a fab little platformer, ideally suited to one-thumb mobile play and quick bouts of gaming on the go.

Super Cat Tales 2

Super Cat Tales 2 is a platform game that works brilliantly on your iPhone. That in itself is rare, but also this isn’t a stripped-back one-thumb leapy game. Instead, it’s a full-fledged 2D platforming experience reworked for the touchscreen.

The game features a group of cats, determined to save their world from a robot invasion. They sprint, jump, grab coins, and occasionally hop into tanks to eradicate the metal aggressors.

It’s a visual treat – all vibrant colors and chunky pixels. The controls are fab too – a two-thumb system that’s ideal for touchscreens, flexible enough to allow for a range of actions, and that transforms challenges into feats of choreography. In short, this is one of the very best platform games on mobile, and it would be an insult to the creator to not give it a try.

Soosiz

Soosiz is a side-on classic platformer – of a sort. Most such games echo Super Mario Bros, having you sprint from left to right, jumping on enemy heads, grabbing bling, and hot-footing it to an exit. Soosiz takes that basic framework, but has you explore tiny chunks of land floating in space, each of which has its own gravitational pull.

As you run, the screen flips and lurches; your brain flips, too, as you try to figure out which way is up, locate a bunch of tiny critters who’ve got themselves lost, and not accidentally careen into the void due to a misdirected jump.

But once everything clicks, what amounts to a 2D take on Super Mario Galaxy proves to be a smart, engaging mobile platformer, putting a new spin on the genre.

It’s Full of Sparks

It’s Full of Sparks finds you in a world where firecrackers are cruelly imbued with sentience. Aware of their imminent demise, they make a beeline for water to extinguish their spark and therefore not explode. Your aim is to help them make a splash.

Each of the 80 hand-crafted levels takes a mere handful of seconds to complete – at least when you master the precise choreography required. Before then, there’s plenty of trial and error as you tap colored buttons to turn hazards and chunks of the landscape on and off, and grab rotors that let you soar heavenward.

Despite occasionally slippy controls, this one’s a joy – full of personality and smart level design. It’s likely to put a smile on your face even when your firework goes out with a bang.

Cally’s Caves 4

Cally’s Caves 4 continues the adventures of worryingly heavily armed pigtailed protagonist Cally, a young girl who spends most of her life leaping about vast worlds of suspended platforms, shooting all manner of bad guys.

For once, her parents haven’t been kidnapped (the plot behind all three previous games in the series) – this time she’s searching for a medallion to cure a curse. But the gameplay remains an engaging mix of console-like running and shooting, with tons of weapons to find (and level-up by blasting things).

But perhaps the best sections feature Bera, Cally’s ‘ninja bear cub’ pal. His razor-sharp claws make short work of enemies, resulting in a nice change of pace as the furry sidekick tears up the place.

Super Phantom Cat 2

Super Phantom Cat 2 is an eye-searingly colorful side-scrolling platform game. Like its predecessor, this game wants you to delve into every nook and cranny, looking for hidden gold, unearthing secrets, and finding out what makes its vibrant miniature worlds tick.

It’s also a game that never seems content to settle – and we mean that in a good way. It revels in unleashing new superpowers, such as a flower you fire at walls to make climbing vines, or at bricks to increase their fragility. It also wants you to experiment, figuring out how critters who are ostensibly your enemies can be coerced into doing your bidding.

The only downside is the presence of freemium elements (ads and an ‘energy’ system) - although both can be removed with inexpensive IAP if you agree this is one cool cat to hang out with.

Drop Wizard Tower

Drop Wizard Tower is a superb mobile take on classic single-screen arcade platform games like Bubble Bobble. Your little wizard has been thrown in jail by the evil Shadow Order, and must ascend a tower over 50 levels to give his enemies a good ‘wanding’ (or something.)

It’s all very cute, with dinky pixelated enemies, varied level design (skiddy ice; disappearing platforms; watery bits in which you move slowly), and fast-paced boss battles against gargantuan foes.

Most importantly, it’s very much designed for mobile. You auto-run left or right, and blast magic when landing on a platform. Said blasts temporarily stun roaming enemies, which can be booted away, becoming a whirling ‘avalanche’ on colliding with cohorts.

The auto-running bit disarms at first – in most similar games, the protagonist stays put unless you keep a direction button held. But once the mechanics click, Drop Wizard Tower cements itself as a little slice of magic on your iPhone.

Swordigo

Swordigo is a love letter to the classic side-scrolling platform adventures that blessed 16-bit consoles. You leap about platforms, slice up enemies with your trusty sword, and figure out how to solve simple puzzles, which open up new areas of the game and move the plot onwards.

The plot is, admittedly, nothing special – you’re embarking on the kind of perilous quest to keep evil at bay that typically afflicts videogame heroes. But everything else about Swordigo shines.

The virtual controls are surprisingly solid, the environments are pleasingly varied, and the pace ranges from pleasant quiet moments of solitude to intense boss battles you’ll struggle to survive. All in all, then, a fitting tribute to those much-loved titles of old.

Mikey Jumps

The Mikey series has evolved with every entry. Initially a speedrun-oriented stripped-back Mario, it then gained swinging by way of grappling hooks, before ditching traditional controls entirely, strapping jet boots to Mikey in a kind of Flappy Bird with class.

With Mikey Jumps, the series has its biggest shift yet. Scrolling levels are dispensed with, in favor of quick-fire single-screen efforts. Now, Mikey auto-runs, and you tap the screen to time jumps so he doesn’t end up impaled on a spike or plummet to his death.

It sounds reductive, but the result is superb. Devoid of cruft and intensely focused, Mikey Jumps is perfect for mobile play, makes nods to previous entries in the series (with hooks and boots peppered about) and has excellent level design that sits just on the right side of infuriatingly tough.

Our favorite free iPhone logic tests, path-finding challenges, bridge builders, and turn-based puzzlers.

Tile Snap

Tile Snap is based around matching clicky tiles. As in classic gem-swappers, you flip two, and if that move matches three or more tiles, they all disappear. Here, however, nothing appears to fill gaps you make, and so to clear each board, you must be strategic. (Sounds familiar? That’s because this is essentially a free version of the excellent Dissembler.)

Initially, Tile Snap won’t give you much trouble, but it eventually ramps up the difficulty level to become a proper head-scratcher. However, for a free iPhone game, it’s very generous, enabling you to undo moves and experiment. (The only IAP is for ‘hints’.)

Visually, it’s very smart, too – like an ultra-modern take on 1970s wallpaper patterns (which is a lot nicer than it sounds). Couple that with clever puzzles and its tactile feel, and you’ve got one of the best freebies on iPhone. 

Total Party Kill

Total Party Kill finds a mage, a knight, and a ranger lost in a maze of dungeons. And the architect of these dungeons clearly wasn’t planning on anyone escaping. The floors and walls are littered with spikes and traps, and each single-screen room’s exit is far out of reach.

How you get out turns out to be novel – you kill off your allies, and use their corpses in a darkly comic yet enterprising manner. The knight’s sword can hurl a lifeless friend at switches; the mage can freeze allies into blocks of ice; and the ranger’s arrows can pin bodies to walls, which can then be used as impromptu platforms.

The concept is fresh and brilliantly realized – the game taking a turn towards being properly brain-smashing as you work towards its conclusion.

XOB

XOB describes itself as a kinetic puzzle game with a psychedelic poetic aesthetic. It’s certainly nailed the psychedelic part – its visuals are an arresting mix of low-fi TV fuzz, color-cycling, and chunky shapes.

Fortunately, the game’s not merely visually arresting – the puzzling bit has a lot going for it, too. The aim is to grab a bunch of collectables before reaching a goal. To do so, you drag to tilt the entire landscape. Land on a ceiling, and everything flips. Pathfinding therefore requires precision and thought.

The game exudes confidence from every pore. Also, it has one of the most user-friendly ad models in existence. You’ll never see more than 24, and you can watch them all in one go, if you like, for a subsequently permanently ad-free experience. Nice.

Invaders 2048

Invaders 2048 is, as its name might suggest, a mash-up of arcade classic Space Invaders, and tile-sliding mobile phenomenon 2048. Usually, we wouldn’t be recommending a 2048 game, given that it’s a massive rip-off of the far superior Threes!, but Invaders 2048 does plenty to differentiate itself.

As ever, you merge tiles by sliding matching pairs together, doubling their face values. Above, alien craft lurk menacingly. At any point, you can unleash your numbers as missiles, depleting your foes’ energy reserves. 

Invaders 2048 is rounds-based, and so the challenges and pace are shaken up as you play. And because levels are short, it’s a super little title to dip into for a few minutes, rather than requiring hours of your life, as Threes! quite often does.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle is more or less classic sliding puzzler Sokoban infused with South Park-style humor, and dressed in the garb of a famous horror series.

As horror icon Jason Voorhees, you slide around each tiny scene to capture campers, cops, inmates, and more besides. On grabbing them, you’re greeted to a splattering of cartoon gore, while the levitating decapitated undead head of your mother offers sagely advice.

This could so easily have been a gimmicky release, but Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle gets everything right. The puzzles are smartly designed, forcing you to find labyrinthine paths to targets; there’s a sense of progression as you unlock new worlds; and the dark sense of humor at the heart of the game gives it a real sense of character.

A Way to Slay

A Way to Slay is a game of epic sword fights reimagined as time-attack turn-based puzzling. You begin each round surrounded by enemies eager to separate your head from your shoulders. A quick double-tap on any of them and you strike with a killing blow – but then your opponents get their chance to move, and if you’re too near one of them, your innards end up sprayed across the sparse landscape.

Assuming you don’t mind quite a lot of ‘red’ as you go about solving its challenges, A Way to Slay proves itself to be a novel take on turn-based puzzling. And even though your view’s more limited on an iPhone than an iPad, you can use gestures to pan and zoom the screen like you’re directing your very own stabby Hollywood epic.

King Rabbit

King Rabbit has some unorthodox enemies. Having kidnapped his rabbit subjects, said foes have dotted them about grid-based worlds they’ve filled with meticulously designed traps.

Mostly, this one is a think-ahead puzzler, with loads of Sokoban-style box sliding. But instead of being purely turn-based fare, King Rabbit adds tense swipe-based arcade sections, with you running from scary creatures armed with rabbit-filleting weaponry.

Really, this isn’t anything you won’t have seen before, but King Rabbit rules through its execution. Visually, everything’s very smart, from the clear, colorful backgrounds to the wonderfully animated hero (and the little jig he does on rescuing a chum). But the puzzles are the real heroes, offering a perfect balance of immediacy and brain-scratching.

Moveless Chess

There’s a bit of cheating going on in Moveless Chess. Although your opponent plays a standard game, you’re some kind of wizard and apparently don’t want the hassle of moving pieces.

Instead, you’ve limited action points, which are used to transform pieces you already have on the board. (So, for example, with three points, you can cunningly change a pawn into a knight.) The aim remains a game-winning checkmate, and, presumably, avoiding the ire of your non-magic opponent.

It’s chess as a puzzler, then, and with a twist that’ll even make veterans of the game stop and think about how to proceed at any given moment.

After all, when you get deep into the game’s challenges, you might find wizarding powers don’t always make for a swift win when you can’t move your pieces.

Mekorama

Mekorama finds a little robot ambling about mechanical dioramas, trying to reach a goal. It’s a tactile game, where you spin the tiny world with a finger, tap to direct the android, and sometimes urge it on by using a lift, or flinging it across the screen with a pulley system.

It’s a ponderous game but that suits the aesthetic. There’s polish and consideration in every moment that deserves to be breathed in. Also, it’s a very generous game, from how it always provides several levels to tackle, to the built-in construction kit when you’ve finished all the built-in challenges and fancy creating some of your own. If you enjoy your time in Mekorama, do fling the creator some (entirely optional) IAP.

Our favorite free iPhone on-rails, 3D and 2D racers, and trials games.

Beach Buggy Racing 2

Beach Buggy Racing 2 is a fast-paced kart racer from the team behind the visually-stunning Riptide series. This one takes place on dry land, though, as you barrel along, grabbing power-ups and flinging them at your opponents.

The courses aren’t as bonkers as those in an Asphalt game, but certainly have their moments. One has a dragon that unsportingly barbecues racers, while a pirate-themed course gets all splashy as you race through a half-sunken ship.

You do sometimes wish this was a premium effort. There’s grind and loot boxes, and difficulty spikes are overly apparent when you level up. Even so, Beach Buggy Racing 2 manages to be an exciting, great-looking kart racer, on a platform with far too few entries on this sub-genre’s starting grid.

Asphalt 9: Legends

Asphalt 9: Legends is a madcap, streamlined racer. Much like Super Mario Run has the plumber ‘auto-run’, leaving you to time jumps, Legends corners and steers while you focus on timing. You must perform show-off drifts, jumps, and control frequent blasts of nitro.

The notion of a driving game stripped of steering might seem odd, but it works. Races are exhilarating and the courses become puzzle-like as you figure out where and when to perform the correct actions. If letting the game do the work is not your cup of tea, there is also a manual option which puts you back in control.

As with all Asphalt games, you spend an unfeasibly long time hurtling through the air; car pinwheeling in a manner that would make even the most maverick stunt-person’s eyes widen.

For a visually dazzling, entirely over the top slice of mobile-focused arcade racing, Asphalt 9: Legends is hard to beat.

Retro Highway

Retro Highway marries the accessibility of modern mobile titles with the high-skill challenge and aesthetics of old-school racers. Visually, it comes across like Hang On and Enduro Racer (or, if you’re not old enough to recognize those titles, those weird games your dad used to play). But in gameplay terms, we’re very much in endless survival territory.

As you zoom along, you collect coins and jump high into the air using ramped trucks, gradually unlocking better bikes and new places where you can ride them. It’s not a very deep experience, but Retro Highway is fun to dip into when you fancy an exhilarating blast of weaving between lorries at breakneck speed, regularly leaping from ramps, and only occasionally splattering your hapless rider against an overpass.

Disc Drivin’ 2

Disc Drivin’ 2 is a turn-based racing game. That might make no sense on paper, but it translates well to the screen, effectively mashing up shuffleboard with high-tech levitating tracks full of speed-up mats, gaps, and traps.

You can play alone, tackling a daily challenge or partaking in speed-runs. The latter option is ideal for getting to know the tracks – essential when battling other players online. You then swap moves – bite-sized chunks of gameplay where you inch your disc around the circuit, in races that can last for days.

There are freemium shenanigans going on, mostly for cards that unlock new disc powers, and the fixed camera can be frustrating – although if you’re facing the wrong way, you should probably resolve to learn that track’s layout a bit better. Those minor niggles aside, this is a compelling, entertaining racer that rewards extended play.

Data Wing

Data Wing is a neon-infused story-driven racing adventure. It’s also brilliant - a game you can’t believe someone has released for free, and also devoid of ads and IAP.

It starts off as an unconventional top-down racer, with you steering a little triangular ship, scraping its tail against track edges for extra boost. As you chalk up victories, more level types open up, including side-on challenges where you venture underground to find bling, before using boost pads to clamber back up to an exit.

The floaty world feels like outer-space, but Data Wing actually takes place inside a smartphone, with irrational AI Mother calling the shots. To say more would spoil things, but Data Wing’s story is as clever as the racing bits, and it all adds up to the iPhone’s most essential freebie.

Built for Speed

Built for Speed is a top-down racer with chunky old-school graphics, and a drag-and-drop track editor. Make a track and it’s added to the pool the game randomly grabs from during its three-race mini-tours; other users are the opposition, with you racing their ‘ghosts’.

Handling’s simple – you steer left or right. Winning is largely about finding the racing line, not smacking into tires some idiot’s left in the road, and not drifting too much.

Initially, though, the game’s so sedate you wonder whether someone mistook an instruction to make it “very 80s” by having it seem like the cars are driven by octogenarians. But a few upgrades later and everything becomes nicely zippy.

The only real snag is the matchmaking doesn’t always work, pitting you against pimped-out cars you’ve no chance against. Still, even if you take a sound beating, another tour’s only ever a few races a way.

One Tap Rally

One Tap Rally distils the top-down mobile racer into a one-thumb effort. Press the screen and you accelerate; let go and you slow down. In the nitros mode, you can also swipe upward for an extra burst of speed.

It feels a bit like slot-racing, but the tracks are organic and free-flowing, rather than rigid chunks of plastic. Learning each bend and straight is essential to get around without hitting the sides – important because such collisions rob you of precious seconds.

You’re also not alone – One Tap Rally pits you against the online ghosts of other players. Each time you better your score, you improve your rank on the current track, ready to face tougher opponents. This affords an extra layer of depth to what was already an elegant, playable mobile racer.

Crazy Taxi

Crazy Taxi is a port of a popular and superb Dreamcast/arcade title from 1999. You belt around a videogame take on San Francisco, hurling yourself from massive hills, soaring through the air like only a crazy taxi can, and regularly smashing other traffic out of the way.

Given the ‘taxi’ bit in the title, fares are important. Getting them where they want to go in good time replenishes the clock. Excite them and you’re awarded bonuses. Go ‘crashy’ rather than ‘crazy’ and the fare will take their chances and leap out of your cab, leaving you without their cash.

Crazy Taxi looks crude, but still plays brilliantly, and even the touchscreen controls work very nicely. For free, you must be online to play, however – a sole black mark in an otherwise fantastic port (and one you can remove with IAP).

Asphalt 8: Airborne

Asphalt 8: Airborne is a nitro-happy racer with four tires firmly planted in arcade racing. That said, tires don’t remain planted for long, because this game has a need for speed, having you bomb along larger-than-life courses peppered with fantastical set pieces (Rocket launches! Active volcanos!), and hurling you into the air at every available opportunity.

There’s a ton of content to unlock, although the game regularly cynically nudges you towards IAP to hurry things along. This in itself feels like someone’s welded massive unwieldy bumpers to what’s otherwise a sleek iPhone sportscar racer. But for the most part, Asphalt 8 is a madcap, exciting blast, insane drifts and mid-air barrel rolls pushing your car way beyond anything the manufacturer ever envisioned.

Our favorite free iPhone FPS games, precision shooters, twin-stick blasters, and vertically scrolling shoot ’em ups.

InfiniBugs

InfiniBugs is a shooter with a decidedly retro bent. The basic gameplay of this free iPhone game resembles arcade classic Caterpillar, with worm-like aliens snaking down from the top of the screen. Blast one in the middle and it splits in two. All the while, you’re having to contend with skulls that appear on the spots anything was blasted, and more nimble individual crafts that flit about.

The chunky visuals and fast pace make for a hectic and claustrophobic experience. Every shot counts, given that the second you’re hit, it’s game over – something that becomes instantly apparent when you first encounter ship-smashing walls to blast through during bonus waves.

If you fancy something more forgiving, the one-off premium pack IAP opens up new modes, including one with a traditional three lives. But even for free, this is top-notch iPhone blasting action.

Kazarma

Kazarma is a shooter seemingly set on a neon-colored world’s longest – and worst-maintained – bridge. As you zip along, all manner of nasties are out to blow up your tiny ship. Naturally, your aim is to atomize them first.

Ultimately, it’s a modern take on Space Invaders, in 3D. You move left and right, avoiding neon death, and blast away at everything in your path. Over time, your enemies become more powerful and adept, keeping you on your toes – not least the extremely durable bosses.

On the easiest difficulty level, the game remains almost zen-like as you lazily use a single thumb to dish out wanton destruction. But ramp up the difficulty and Kazarma becomes a vicious, challenging shooter – especially when you grab a speed power-up and belt along like a maniac.

Yuseong

Yuseong comes off like someone has shoved an arcade machine from 1979 into your phone – albeit a machine with broken controls. The basic game resembles a cross between Asteroids and Space Invaders, with your ship obliterating space rocks before they hit the planet below. Too many strikes and you’re out; a single hit to your ship and it’s game over for you.

The twist is the aforementioned controls. Instead of a joystick and fire button, this is one-thumb fare, your ship shooting and switching direction when you prod the screen. Muscle memory goes out the window as you battle with this new minimalism, but what starts off seeming impossible and frustrating soon transforms into a smart, tight shooter once you understand its idiosyncrasies.

Heli 100

HELI 100 comes across like a hyper-casual take on a twin-stick arena shooter, albeit without the twin stick bit. You merely steer left and right, while your ship automatically targets and blasts away at enemies. It seems a bit dull. But hang on, because HELI 100 gets much better.

Something happens around level ten. Mostly, the game ramps everything up, and it becomes clear you’ve been trundling around on training wheels. You suddenly find the arena boundaries rapidly close in. You weave between bullet hell, making use of pick-ups that enable your craft to spew all manner of projectile death – or encase itself in a huge shield.

So give this one a chance – recognize the slightly dull early levels are primarily there to help you get to grips with HELI 100, and then prepare to have a blast.

Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs

Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs provides a new dimension on one of mobile’s biggest hits. As ever, you catapult deranged feathered missiles at rickety contraptions housing rotund green pigs. The aim: eradicate the pigs, and the structures they’re hiding in. Their shoddy construction – along with quite a lot of ill-advisedly stored TNT – helps.

Unlike previous Angry Birds efforts, this one’s AR-based. You set up a virtual 3D game on a table or the floor, and can investigate each level from every angle to figure out the optimum shot.

This adds freshness to a concept that has become tired since its 2009 iPhone debut. Here’s hoping Rovio can keep the momentum going with new levels – although the dozens you get make this a no-brainer download, given the game’s lack of a price tag.

Piffle

Piffle is a shooter that has you blast away encroaching blocks, which are under the control of the nefarious Doc Block, and on landing will presumably do something terrible and evil. To keep them at bay, you lob strings of piffle balls – cat-like critters that bounce around while emitting endearingly cute meowing noises.

As the sort-of cats ricochet around, the numbers on the blocks drop until they’re finally destroyed. Rinse, repeat, and the world is saved. Only, things aren’t quite that simple due to tricky layouts that demand precision aiming, blocks that annoyingly duplicate or deflect your piffles in the wrong direction, and setups that demand you grab and master powerups to aid you in your task.

Fun stuff to dip into when you fancy some colorful, destructive action.

Fortnite

Fortnite is a massively multiplayer online ‘battle royale’. You’re dropped into a playfield with 100 other players, each aiming to be the last standing. To achieve that goal, you must explore your surroundings, find a dangerous weapon, and use it to do some serious violence.

This in itself isn’t unique – even on mobile. But Fortnite differentiates itself in key ways. It has a sense of humor – and a sense of style that isn’t dull military fare. Also, rather than just shooting things, Fortnite encouragers you to build, creating strategic defensive barriers.

The relatively complex controls are, naturally, a problem on iPhone, and can frustrate in the heat of a battle. For the most part, though, this is impressive and ambitious multiplayer gaming that makes your iPhone feel like a console.

Shadowgun Legends

Shadowgun Legends is a first-person shooter with swagger, which depicts you as a show-off gun for hire, partaking in a probably prescient mix of wiping out evil aliens and reality TV.

After arriving in the game’s hub, you immediately find yourself on missions, which mostly involve following fairly linear pathways, violently shooting everything that moves – and some things that don’t. Control mostly happens by way of two thumbs (movement and gaze), with the odd trip to special power-up buttons.

For anyone deep into the world of console shooters, Shadowgun Legends may feel stripped back and reductive, but you’d have to be a misery to not have fun blasting away, gradually working your way through dozens of missions. Just remember when your worryingly eager fans build a statue of your wonderful self to worship, they’ll ditch you the second their next hero comes along.

Darkside Lite

Darkside Lite is a visually stunning twin-stick shooter that has you protecting outer-space mining colonies under attack from aliens who’d rather humans weren’t messing up the place.

The tiny snag is the mining bit – the bases you patrol are surrounded by massive ship-smashing rocks slowly ambling about. In classic Asteroids-style, you must make short work of them, while ensuring you don’t get blown to pieces by alien foes.

It’s a dizzying, thrilling ride as you zoom over the planetoids, dodging installations, blasting space rocks, and taking out UFOs coming in for the kill. Should you hanker for more, additional modes (and handy smart bombs) are available in the full Darkside game.

Smash Hit

Smash Hit is a 3D on-rails shooter, seemingly aimed at people who really like smashing things. You float in ghostly fashion through its various scenes, hurling your limited cache of metal balls at glass objects minding their own business, or huge panes of glass that rather unwisely block your path.

Initially, you’ll fling balls with merry abandon, but you soon realize getting deep into the game requires a solid aim and sparing use of ammo – not least when the camera starts to spin and the shots become increasingly tough. You’ll need to be a pretty hardcore smasher and a crack shot to reach the end – although you can ease the journey by way of a one-off IAP that unlocks checkpoints.

Time Locker

Time Locker is a vertically scrolling shoot ’em up with a twist: when you stop, time stops. This means that although you’re often weaving between bullet hell and blowing up swarms of enemies, you at least get the chance to think for a bit and consider your next move.

That said, Time Locker doesn’t make things too easy: hang around and a relentless world-consuming darkness gobbles up your craft. This means although you can pause for a bit, you must remain on the move, utilizing power-ups to zoom ahead wherever possible.

It’s a unique, engaging shooter, and its distinctive nature is further cemented by its vibrant low-poly world, which at any moment may see you attacked by gigantic tanks, dinosaur herds, or deadly waddling penguins.

Our favorite free iPhone soccer, golf, tennis, basketball and other sports games.

Super Over!

Super Over! strips back cricket to an almost ludicrous degree. A sport where a single match in the real world can take up to five days is here distilled into mere minutes – and many would argue is all the better for it.

The single-player game has you in bat, chasing a total from a limited number of balls. Your bat whizzes once back and forth across the screen. You must tap to stop it on a number, whereupon you get the requisite number of runs – or lose the game if you hit W (for wicket).

The best bit, though, is the same-device two-player mode. It’s faintly absurd playing this on an iPhone, but the simple interface and very silly gameplay seem entirely appropriate to such larks, as you attempt to smack your ball toward the boundary.

Golf Blitz

Golf Blitz is a side-on crazy golf game, with emphasis on the crazy. Infused with the DNA of the Super Stickman Golf series, its larger-than-life courses have you thwacking balls about islands suspended in space, often with walls covered in sticky goo, or massive wooden contraptions spinning around.

As if this wasn’t enough, each Golf Blitz contest also happens to be a multiplayer race. You take on three other golfers, all aiming to be first to putt. Those who win get kudos and XP. Those who don’t lick their wounds and try again.

It’s fast, breezy fun, and although there’s a mite too much randomness, regular play yields rewards by way of player upgrades, without you having to dip into your golf bag for a pile of cash to spend on IAP.

Nano Golf: Hole In One

Nano Golf: Hole In One is mini golf in fast forward, redefined as a pastime of perfection. Every tiny course you’re presented with must be completed in a single shot. Miss just once and your game is over.

Shooting, at least, is simple enough – you drag your finger back to aim/set power, and then let go. The game’s also rather generous regarding how near to the hole you need to be in order to succeed.

Given the hazards on these courses, that’s just as well. Along with the usual awkward corners and bumps, there are ball-frying heaters and teleporters, and some courses take place underwater. It’s all simple stuff, but the compulsion loop here is strong – not least because you can rattle through a complete game in a matter of minutes.

Rowdy Wrestling

Rowdy Wrestling is a sports game that doesn’t take itself remotely seriously – and that says a lot, given the spectacle it’s simulating. But all the weirdness of pro wrestling has nothing on this game, which features ludicrously bouncy physics and fighters whose arms whirl around in an entertainingly cartoonish manner.

There’s the feeling throughout that you’re only just in control, whether trying to dropkick an opponent in the face, or unceremoniously hurl them out of the ring. But when Rowdy Wrestling clicks, it grabs hold for good. Just as well, then, that you get a range of modes – Tag Team; a solo career; and the ‘last man standing’ Rumble – along with multiple fighters to unlock.

Golfing Around

Golfing Around transports you to a simpler age of golf video games. You don’t get lush 3D visuals, enough club choices to give a pro caddie a nervous breakdown, or inch-perfect takes on real-life courses. Instead, you have basic controls, minimal top-down visuals, and a handful of holes dreamed up by the developer.

On iPhone, though, this works really well. The visuals provide clarity, and the straightforward controls afford Golfing Around immediacy. There’s some nuance too – push the power meter into the red and your aim wobbles about, your dream of extra distance at risk from potentially smacking the ball in the wrong direction.

All this ensures Golfing Around makes the cut, but it’s boosted up the leaderboard by a construction kit. Making and sharing your own courses is a cinch. Probably don’t spell out “I prefer soccer actually” using water traps, mind.

Kind of Soccer

Kind of Soccer will be catharsis in gaming form for anyone who ever felt their soccer team was wronged by an official. That’s because although this game has a pitch and a ball, points are scored by belting the ball directly at the referee’s head.

The controls are a straightforward slingshot – just drag an arrow indicator and let rip. At first, your only danger is bad aim – kick the ball out of bounds and a point is awarded against your team – but in later rounds, defenders attempt to save the ref from a beating.

Fortunately, you can continue your unsporting rage by using bonuses that pop-up, including laser sights, and one option that entertainingly turns every opposition player into a tree.

Pocket Run Pool

Pocket Run Pool reimagines pool for the solo player. It gives you a table from above, with the twist that each of the pockets has a multiplier on it. Your score comprises the number on the ball multiplied by the number on the pocket, and you lose one of your three lives every time you miss a shot or pocket the white.

Aficionados of videogame pool may grumble at this game’s basic nature. The visuals are 2D and minimal, and there’s some major hand-holding regarding aiming. But any such complaints miss the point.

Pocket Run Pool isn’t about slavish realism, but taking a fresh look at pool, and fashioning a modern, quick solo game around scoring and taking risks, rather than getting soundly beaten again and again by a computer opponent on a 3D table.

Flick Soccer 17

Flick Soccer is all about scoring goals by booting a ball with your finger. It looks very smart, with fairly realistic visuals and nicely arcade-y ball movement. You can unleash pretty amazing shots as you aim for the targets, and occasionally bean a defender.

The game includes several alternate modes, providing a surprising amount of variation on the basic theme. There’s a speed option that involves flicking at furious speed, and the tense sudden-death Specialist, which ends your go after three failed attempts to hit the target.

Rather more esoteric fare also lurks, demanding you repeatedly hit the crossbar, or smash panes of glass a crazy person has installed in the goalmouth.

Like real-world sport on the TV, Flick Soccer is a bit ad-infested. You can, though, remove ads with a one-off $0.99/99p/AU$1.99 IAP, or – ironically – turn them off for ten minutes by watching an ad.

Frisbee Forever 2

Flinging a plastic disc about isn’t the most thrilling premise for a game, which is why it’s a surprise Frisbee Forever 2 is so good. The game finds a little toy careening along rollercoaster-like pathways, darting inside buildings and tunnels, and soaring high above snow-covered mountains and erupting volcanos.

You simply dart left and right, keeping aloft by collecting stars, and avoiding hazards at all costs – otherwise your Frisbee goes ‘donk’ and falls sadly to the ground. Grab enough bling and you unlock new stages and Frisbees.

This game could have been a grindy disaster, but instead it’s a treat. The visuals are superb – bright and vibrant – and the courses are smartly designed. And even if you fail, Frisbee Forever 2 lobs coins your way, rewarding any effort you put in.

PKTBALL

PKTBALL is tennis on fast-forward – a racket game that appears to have absorbed the pace and power from air hockey, squash, and a demented take on classic videogame Pong.

Each match features cute characters facing off, smacking a ball back and forth at insane speed. Bonuses regularly appear on the court, and if you can direct the ball over one, you might end up with some shields – or find the ball unhelpfully turns into a fish.

It’s like Wimbledon as reimagined by Salvador Dali. And PKTBALL’s bonkers nature only increases once you start collecting characters. Courts become strewn with rainbows, searing neon-nightmares, or have games of Tetris running in the background.

Our favorite free iPhone RTS and turn-based strategy games, board games, and card games.

Void Tyrant

Void Tyrant is a semi-randomized card-based adventure, where you scoot about the galaxy, giving bad guys on various planets a jolly good kicking. At first, it seems quite basic, more or less being based on blackjack – only here you go bust when you hit 13. Quickly, though, you’re hurled down a bonus-deck rabbit-hole.

It’s these additional cards where most of the strategy lies. Each requires energy to play, and has a unique effect. You need to time your plays right to ensure you defeat your enemy. And because a string of victories is required for you to successfully get back to your ship, Void Tyrant becomes a constant balancing act of risk versus reward.

There’s no risk in trying the game, though, because it’s very rewarding – one of the best card battlers around.

Bounty Hunter Space Lizard

Bounty Hunter Space Lizard is a bite-sized turn-based strategy game, with a smattering of RPG. It features the titular reptile, previously down on its luck, but now having a go at being a bounty hunter as a way to “feel alive”.

Naturally, feeling alive (and staying alive) means killing everyone else – and that requires brainpower. You must with your limited number of moves figure out how to off your foes, and position yourself so you’ll take no damage when they get to move.

The visuals are crude, but there’s a lot going on here, with cleverly designed rules, and plenty of variety in the challenges you face. The mission is also finite, meaning that when you’ve put in the hours to crack level 20, you’ll discover whether this previously despondent – and now rather murdery – lizard gets a happy ending.

Chessplode

Chessplode is of the opinion that what chess really needs is a whole lot of explosions. But this isn’t some kind of Battlechess with dynamite. The big bangs in this game aren’t just aesthetic – they shake up everything you knew about chess.

Capturing a piece is what leads to the explosions – friends and enemies alike in the taken piece’s row and column are obliterated. The exception is when a king is in the same row or column as a captured piece, at which point you get the standard chess capture. 

To rewire your brain, Chessplode offers basic levels to get you started, and then a bunch of puzzle-like set pieces. A level editor lets you upload your own creations – once you win – and multiplayer bouts are in the mix, too. This isn’t the first mobile alternative take on chess, but it might well be the best.

Pocket Cowboys

Pocket Cowboys is a strategy game in a Wild West that exists in a permanent state of high noon. You pit your trio of gunslingers against those controlled by other humans, the aim being to be the first to rack up three kills.

Where Pocket Cowboys excels is in its mix of immediacy and depth. Each turn gives you the option to move, shoot, or reload – and everyone takes their turn at the same time. The mix of strategy and guesswork proves a lot of fun, in what ultimately amounts to four-player rock/paper/scissors.

The game of course also comes lumbered with the usual in-game currencies and upgrades. But it always seems to place you in fair fights, rather than giving you no chance to avoid pushing up the daisies.

King Crusher

King Crusher comes across like someone compressed an epic fantasy RPG and turn-based strategy into a shoebox and squirted the result into your iPhone. It has all the trappings of its more expansive cousins, but is perfectly streamlined for mobile play.

Your little band embarks on quests that mostly take the form of grid-based battles. As adversaries try to shoot, flatten or even eat the heroes, you must swipe them about, getting them into the best positions to mete out some punishment of their own.

With dozens of events and 12 character classes, there’s plenty to discover in King Crushe, but its bite-sized nature means it won’t rule over your day, instead filling odd moments with tiny procedurally-generated adventures fit for a king.

Sneak Ops

Sneak Ops is a stealth game that wants you to “get to the chopper”. The snag: between you and your airborne escape route are rooms packed with enemy soldiers, traps, and – occasionally – inconveniently unbreathable air. Also, you’re unarmed. Thanks, budget cutbacks!

You must therefore sneak about, avoid detection and unsportingly wallop enemies over the head whenever you get the chance. Along the way, you grab floppy disks, which for some reason are used to buy restart points. Perhaps evil dudes are all retro gamers at heart.

It’s tense, pacy stuff, with some fab visuals. Even better: there’s a new mission every day – and everyone gets the same one, thereby pitting you against many thousands of other wannabe strategic operators.

Look, Your Loot!

Look, Your Loot! takes the basics of free-roaming RPGs and shoves them into a grid-based interface not dissimilar from puzzlers like Threes!

The rodent protagonist – a heavily armed mouse – moves about the grid as you swipe, his energy being depleted during battles or replenished on grabbing elixirs and shields. Whenever you enter a new tile, something new appears from the opposite side of the grid.

The key to survival – and a high-score – is carefully planning your route, ensuring you don’t end up trapped between a number of powerful and angry adversaries. It’s the sort of RPG-lite that’s perfect to quickly fire up during a few minutes of downtime; but multiple level layouts and surprising depth in the mechanics also make Look, Your Loot! a rewarding game to master over the longer term.

Flipflop Solitaire

Flipflop Solitaire reasons that a card game you play on an iPhone should be designed for its screen and mobile play rather than a table. To that end, it takes spider solitaire as a basic framework, then messes around with the formula.

You’re still working with stacks of cards, aiming to sort them back into suits. However, in this game you have only five columns to work with and the height of your iPhone’s display provides a vertical limit.

Flipflop Solitaire shakes things up more by letting you stack cards in increasing or decreasing value. This single change proves transformative, turning every deal into a solvable puzzle, and games with a single suit into frantic, entertaining speed-runs.

The Battle of Polytopia

The Battle of Polytopia is more or less a classic version of Civilization played in fast-forward. You start off with a single city, surrounded by the unknown. You then explore, research technologies, and give anyone who gets in your way a serious kicking.

Unlike the sprawling Civilization games, Polytopia is focused and sleek. The technology tree stops before guns arrive, the standard game mode limits you to 30 moves, and new cities cannot be founded – only conquered.

For the more bloodthirsty, there’s a domination mode, where you aim to be the last tribe standing. The maximum map size expands and online asynchronous multiplayer opens up if you pay for more tribes. However you play, this is a furiously addictive, brilliantly realized slice of mobile strategy.

Spaceteam

Spaceteam is the best multi-device party game for iPhone. The backstory is that you’re attempting to outrun an exploding star, in a ship that’s seen better days. Unhelpfully, the control panel for your craft was seemingly designed by an engineer who considers user-friendliness an offensive abomination.

The system provides instructions, but they’re usually not related to controls on your display. Games therefore turn into people desperately screaming “will someone turn on the dangling shunter?”, while combing every inch of their own screen for an elusive ‘eigenthrottle’ switch.

With Spaceteam offering cross-device play, up to eight players can immerse themselves in this madness, as long as they’re on the same Wi-Fi network.

Hearthstone

Hearthstone is a one-on-one card battler set in a magical world of mystics and warriors. You and an opponent take it in turns to attack, using cards that unleash spells, minions, and other acquired skills.

Given how complicated card games of this sort can be, Hearthstone proves intuitive and welcoming to the newcomer – and it’s also extremely well balanced. It’s possible, if you take the time and effort to master the game, to top the leaderboards without splashing out IAP on new cards – although such temptation might get the better of you anyway once you’re immersed in this engaging world of strategy, chance, and fantasy.

Our favorite free iPhone games all about crosswords, anagrams, and playing with letters.

Sticky Terms

Sticky Terms is more or less a set of jigsaw puzzles, but for oddball phrases. At the start of each level, you’re presented with a mess of shapes, some of which resemble recognizable letters. Your aim is to drag them together to make a coherent form. You’ll then be told what the phrase actually means, and where it comes from.

Making this all tricker is the fact Sticky Terms is all about untranslatable words. So although you’ll be familiar with some of the terms, you won’t know most of them. Instead, your path to completing a challenge usually rests in recognizing parts of letterforms, and shoving words back together in a process of trial and error.

It’s unique stuff on the App Store – rare for a word game - along with being tactile and smart.

AI Dungeon

AI Dungeon resembles a classic text adventure from the dawn of gaming. But unlike the canned, scripted likes of a Zork, this game is potentially endless, providing new chunks of storyline on the fly. This is achieved by the ‘AI’ bit, via an engine trained on reading the internet.

You can start your adventure with a generic pre-defined setting, like fantasy, and select a character type. But it’s more fun to construct a scenario of your own (just type a few lines of text), and see where it takes you.

Given that AI Dungeon isn’t hand-crafted, its grasp on reality and consistency can be creaky. Objects and names can be forgotten or switched, and stories often have whiplash-like shifts that upend everything. This might prove annoying to old-school traditionalists, but if you’ve got an open mind, you’ll find AI Dungeon dreamlike and fascinating.

Typochondria

Typochondria is a game about typos. You sit before an algorithmically generated crime novel, looking for mistakes in each of its pages. Tap one and you move on to the next. Which probably doesn’t sound all that thrilling, but Typochondria is played against the clock.

When you’re deep into a round, the timer running dry at ferocious speed, it’s surprisingly exciting partaking in a videogame take on proofreading. And if that isn’t quite enough challenge for you, an alternate mode has you figure out how many mistakes are on any given page.

Should you get fully drawn in, but need a bit of a break during your downtime, there’s a risk-free zen mode, too, along with a bunch of additional genre options available via IAP.

Alphabear 2

Alphabear 2 introduces you to a world where bears have made a major blunder with a time machine, and need you to fix things by… spelling words. Even the in-game protagonists don’t seem convinced by that setup, but it’s a fun hook on which to hang the sequel to one of the iPhone’s best word games.

As in the original Alphabear, you make words from Scrabble tiles on a grid. When tiles are used, bears expand into the gaps. Tiles also have countdown timers, and turn to stone if you don’t use them in time, thwarting your ability to make full-screen bears.

There’s a lot going on, including several modes, oddball ‘bear speech’ victory screens, a smattering of (horrors!) education, and a mildly baffling bear collection meta-game. In all, though, it’s furry much worth a download.

Wordgraphy

Wordgraphy looks like a stripped-back crossword puzzle with letters crammed into a grid, but the letters are muddled up and you can’t just drag them wherever you fancy. Tap any letter and you’ll be presented with a small set of possible destinations.

The aim is to ensure you create complete words. It’s often easy enough to make one or two, but then you’ll be left with the likes of CCRZK along one axis, and a realization that perhaps your other words aren’t the right ones.

A smart, interesting piece of logic word puzzling, then, and a game that’s suitably different from its contemporaries when you’re getting bored with more conventional fare.

Letterpress

Letterpress is a mix of Boggle and Risk. Two players (you and an online or computer opponent) face a five-by-five grid of letters and take turns tapping out words. But the key isn’t to show off your vocabulary; instead, you must strategize to secure territory.

Captured letters turn your color, but those surrounded by your tiles become a darker shade and cannot be flipped by your opponent during their turn. With careful play, you gradually chip away at the board; to win, you must secure every tile.

It’s a simple premise, but one that makes for surprisingly exciting battles. Games can turn on a smart play you didn’t see coming; many become like a tug of war, with you and an opponent trading blows. The claustrophobic board further adds to the intensity, and makes a nice change from countless Scrabble clones.

Scrabble

Scrabble [non-US App Store link] is a digital take on the famous boardgame. You play the computer or human opponents (over Wi-Fi or the internet), carefully placing letters on the grid, trying to position them over bonus spots for double and triple points.

Crossword games of this ilk are now commonplace, but Scrabble’s board layout remains the best. It also gives you the option for ponderous play or a kind of time-attack take, forcing everyone to quickly make moves.

On the iPhone, things are perhaps a touch cramped compared to on larger devices, and you’ll quite often get ads thrown in your face. Even so, Scrabble remains a solid download, not least if you’re a fan of the original.

The Impossible Letter Game

The Impossible Letter Game isn’t actually impossible, but it does get decidedly tricky once you’re deep into the game. Each challenge presents you with a grid of letters, the idea being to find the odd one out. This might be a W in a grid of M’s, or a 2 sneakily nestled within rows and columns of Z’s.

Initially, the letters are fairly large, but they soon shrink, and even start animating, to try and throw you off the scent of your prize. The smallish screen of an iPhone adds an extra layer of difficulty to the mix. Good for your powers of observation; not so much for resting your eyes!

Bonza Word Puzzle

Bonza Word Puzzle deconstructs classic crosswords – and then has you put them back together again. You’re given a clue, hinting at the words you need to make, and then a bunch of fragments that resemble tetrominos.

The game ends up coming across like a mix of Scrabble and jigsaws as you slowly piece together the puzzle. And just like with jigsaws, everything gets a mite tougher when you’re grasping with a larger number of pieces.

Packs in the game are split between free, IAP, and those you can buy with coins earned in-game. There’s also a daily freebie, and the option to create your own puzzles – a nice touch for people who get seriously into the game.

Four Letters

Four Letters is a word game based around speed. You get four letters, a rapidly depleting timer, and a handy note that says how many words can be made from the letters in front of you. Tap out a word and your game gets to continue for a bit longer.

Once you’re a few dozen words in, Four Letters becomes a fast, frantic, panic-inducing flurry of quick thinking and super-fast tapping. In some ways, it’s perhaps a pity there’s no timer-free mode for training purposes (and the faint hearted), but Four Letters is a great bet if you fancy a simple, entertaining word game that doesn’t let you dawdle.

Apps set the iPad apart from other tablets, whether you need to work on office tasks, learn something new, make music, watch a movie or become a digital artist.

But which apps are worth your cash and time? We’ve tested thousands to come up with our definitive list of the best apps for iPad right now.

You'll find them split into categories on the following pages, but first see below for our favorite iPad app of the last two weeks.

iPad app of the week: iOrnament Pro ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

iOrnament Pro resembles a hugely powerful customizable kaleidoscope. As you draw, the app repeats your strokes across the screen on the basis of rulesets you choose to define symmetry types. There’s a range of pen types and brushes, along with bling-like glitter effects; and if you don’t fancy going freehand, you can use geometric shapes or import a photo.

The basics are simple enough for a child, but iOrnament Pro’s toolset lets seasoned artists delve deeper. There’s a layers system, an option for wrapping your work around a sphere, and several export options, including the entire image, single tiles, and a time-lapse recording.

In some ways, iOrnament Pro is a curious beast. It’s not an image editor you necessarily need; but as everything from an experimental design tool to a relaxation aid, it’s one you may well want.

The best iPad art and design apps

Our favorite iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, CAD, pixel art, graphic design and animation.

Procreate ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Procreate is a painting app that marries the kind of clout pros need with an immediacy that makes it approachable for newcomers. The interface is stripped back, with tools accessed from a bar at the top of the screen, and brush size/opacity from sliders on the left. Two-, three- and four-finger taps trigger undo, redo, and full-screen respectively.

Beyond the basics, Procreate has a range of tools for all kinds of creative endeavors. Animation Assistant converts layers to frames in a GIF. Quickline snaps strokes to straight lines and shapes. Powerful transform and adjustment tools allow you to warp a selection and tweak colors.

For artists, Brush Studio will be the real prize. It can import Photoshop brushes (and run them faster than Photoshop), or you can fashion custom creations from a dizzying array of settings and sliders. So whether you’re an old master or a budding artist, this is a superb, affordable, powerful, usable app.

Imaengine Vector (free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Imaengine Vector is two apps in one. In its most basic form, it’s a photo filter app. Load a picture or use your iPad to take a photo, and you can select from a number of filters. Most of them are eye-popping, transforming your image to anything from ink sketch to abstract art.

That alone is worth the outlay, but tap the ‘editor’ button and Imaengine Vector transforms into a full editing package, enabling you to adjust every stroke, and add to the image with lines and shapes of your own.

The app’s interface is a touch esoteric, and would do better if it avoided shoving all the buttons right at the edge of the iPad’s display. But that’s the only major shortfall in this powerful app, which can produce some seriously arresting visuals.

Live Home 3D (free + IAP)

Live Home 3D is for people who fancy partaking in some interior design. Whether you want to experiment with your own home, or design an entirely new one, there are plenty of tools here for doing so – in 2D and 3D alike.

Even for free, there’s loads to delve into, from creating bespoke floor plans to projecting your finished masterwork on to real-world surroundings in AR. Thousands of materials and models are available to deck your virtual home out so that it resembles the real thing.

There are two paid tiers: Standard ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99) removes watermarks and is flexible regarding import/export; Pro ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99) gives you more customization in terms of drawing, output quality, and light editing. In all versions, the app is powerful, usable, and entertaining.

Linea Sketch ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Linea Sketch carefully balances power, ease of use and control to help you capture visual ideas.

Rather than drowning you in features and toolbars, tools sit in slimline strips at the side of the screen.This makes it a cinch to select colors, work across five layers (into which you can import photos), choose backgrounds and grids, and get on with sketching. You can adjust the thickness of pen lines, block in areas with a fill tool, use a blend tool to make your work feel less digital, and convert rough scribbles to adjustable geometric polygons by way of ZipShapes.

This still isn’t a full-fledged artist package – you’d need Procreate for that – but as a base for visual notes, quick design sketches, and drawing without fuss, there’s nothing better on iPad.

Affinity Designer (US$19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Affinity Designer brings desktop-grade vector illustration to iPad. Its huge range of tools are ideally suited to anything from high-end illustrations through to interface design. Every stroke always remains editable, and you can zoom to an absurd degree, and never lose detail.

The app works nicely with Apple Pencil or your own digits, and has a smart gestural system where holding fingers on the screen mirrors desktop keyboard modifiers. Elsewhere, you can pinch layers to group them, or drag one layer on to another to create a mask.

This is an app you can get lost in – but in a good way. The more you use it, the more you realize its sheer scope. And it even shares a file format with Affinity Photo, so you can bounce documents between the two without losing anything.

Core Animator ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

Core Animator is an app for creating motion graphics on your iPad. If you’ve ever seen Adobe Animate (formerly Flash), you’ll feel at home. If not, the app might take longer to get to grips with, but you’re helped along by built-in tutorials and Core Animator’s usable, logical interface.

The basics involve adding objects to a canvas and manipulating them at various ‘keyframes’ on the timeline. You can adjust each one’s position, rotation, scale, and opacity, and Core Animator deals with all the frames in between.

It’s worth noting there are no drawing tools, so you must import elements created elsewhere. The app also demands time and patience, but give it both and you can end up with superb results.

Concepts (free + various IAP)

Concepts is an advanced vector-based sketching and design app. Every stroke remains editable, and similar flexibility is evident elsewhere, with varied grids (dot; lined; isometric), definable gestures, and an adjustable interface.

With version 5, Concepts’ design revamp transformed the main toolbar into a space-efficient tool wheel, from which Copic swatches pleasingly explode when you switch colors. As such, the app’s a touch alien at first, and can be fiddly if you don’t have a Pencil.

But Concepts soon becomes natural and fluid in use, and it’s apparent the app’s been designed for touch, rather than a developer hammering desktop concepts into your iPad.

If you’re not a professional architect, illustrator or the like it might be overkill, but if you’re unsure, you can get a feel for the app for free. IAPs subsequently allow you to unlock shape guides, SVG and PDF export, infinite layers, and object packs.

Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga ($8.99/£6.99/AU$11.49 monthly)

Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga brings the popular PC desktop app for digital artists to the iPad. And we mean that almost literally – Clip Studio looks pretty much identical to the desktop release.

In one sense, this isn’t great news – menus, for example, are fiddly to access, but it does mean you get a feature-rich, powerful app. There are loads of brushes and tools, vector capabilities, effect lines and tones for comic art, and onion skinning for animations. It also takes full advantage of Pencil, so pro artists can be freed from the desktop, and work wherever they like.

The app could do with better export and desktop workflow integration, and even some fans might be irked by the subscription model. But Clip Studio’s features and quality mean most will muddle through the former issues and pay for the latter.

Pixaki ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

With visible pixels essentially eradicated from modern mobile device screens, it’s amusing to see retro-style pixel art stubbornly clinging on.

But chunky pixels are a pleasing aesthetic, evoking nostalgia, and you know thought’s gone into the placement of every dot. Pixaki is an iPad pixel art ‘studio’, ideal for illustrators, games designers, and animators.

At its most minimal, the interface shows your canvas and some tool icons: pencil; eraser; fill; shapes; select; color picker. But there are also slide-in panels for layers/palettes, and the frame-based animation system.

Bar a slightly awkward selection/move process, workflow is sleek and efficient (not least with the superb fill tool, which optionally works non-contiguously across multiple layers), and the app has robust, flexible import and export options.

Perhaps most importantly, Pixaki’s just really nice to use – more so than crafting similar art on a PC or Mac, and although pricey it’s worth the money for anyone serious about pixel art.

Stop Motion Studio Pro ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Animation can be painstaking, whether doing it for your career or just for fun. Fortunately, Stop Motion Studio Pro streamlines the process, providing a sleek and efficient app for your next animated masterpiece.

It caters to various kinds of animation: you can use your iPad’s camera to capture a scene, import images or videos (which are broken down into stills), or use a remote app installed on an iPhone. Although most people will export raw footage to the likes of iMovie, Stop Motion Pro shoots for a full animation suite by including audio and title capabilities.

There are some snags. Moving frames requires an awkward copy/paste/delete workaround. Also, drawing tools are clumsy, making the app’s claim of being capable of rotoscoping a tad suspect. But as an affordable and broadly usable app for crafting animation, it fits the bill.

Comic Life 3 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

There are plenty of apps that enable you to add comic-like filters and the odd speech balloon to your photos, but Comic Life 3 goes the whole hog regarding comic creation. You select from pre-defined templates or basic page layouts, and can then begin working on a Marvel-worrying masterpiece.

Importing images is straightforward, and you get plenty of control over sound effects and speech balloons. For people who are perhaps taking things a bit too seriously (or actual comic creators, who can use this app for quick mock-ups), there's a bundled script editor as well.

Oddly, Comic Life 3's filters aren't that impressive, not making your photos look especially hand-drawn. But otherwise the app is an excellent means of crafting stories on an iPad, and you can export your work in a range of formats to share with friends - and Stan Lee.

The best education apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for learning something new – from astronomy to human history.

Codea ($14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99)

Codea wants you to use your iPad for creating things – specifically other iPad apps and games. Built around the Lua programming language, Codea is a code editor with a friendlier face than most – to change a color, you just tap and drag; if you get stuck, reference materials are built in. Once you’re done, press play and you can watch your code run, and interact with what you’ve made.

Although you can’t expect to fire up Codea and be troubling the App Store charts within a week, there are many examples you can mess around with, which help you understand the fundamentals of a game or 3D graphics.

If you’re still a bit suspicious that an app exists for creating other apps, do be mindful that there are already apps and games made with Codea available for download. So why not make one yourself?

Brian Cox's Wonders of Life ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)

Brian Cox's Wonders of Life hints at the future of consumable media. At its core, this is an educational journey into over 30 creatures and their habitats. You learn how living things on Earth are interlinked, and the way in which everything is constructed from the same fundamental building blocks.

It’s the presentation, though, that sets the app apart. The main interface comprises sets of 3D scenes you can twirl and explore. Embedded within, you’ll find over a thousand high-res images, short videos narrated by Brian Cox and engaging essays.

The result is something that borrows from magazines, books, television and apps, successfully merging them all into something new. Especially on the larger screen of the iPad, the dazzling visuals and text alike all get a chance to shine.

Solar Walk 2 - Planet Explorer ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Solar Walk 2 is a digital orrery. It offers a stylized 3D view of the solar system, and tapping on any planet or moon whisks you toward it within seconds, like you’re piloting a rocket from NASA’s dreams.

The view can be manipulated by standard iOS gestures, although this app is also really nice to just leave in a docked iPad so you can watch moons and planets orbit their parents.

When you want to science things up a bit, though, the app’s ready and willing. An interactive facts panel provides stats, graphs, and the means to crack open a planet to see what’s inside. Add some IAP and you can travel with famous space missions like Voyager 1. In all, it’s a cracking alternative to a real-world orrery – and a lot more portable and interactive, too!

Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 represents a leap forward for iPad education apps and digital textbooks alike. In short, it turns your iPad into an anatomy lab – and augmented reality extends this to nearby flat surfaces.

You can explore your virtual cadaver by region or system. Additionally, you can examine cross-sections, micro-anatomy (eyes; bone layers; touch receptors, and so on), and muscle actions. If you want to learn what makes you tick, it’s fascinating to spin a virtual body beneath your finger, and ‘dissect’ it by removing sections.

But the AR element is a real prize, giving you a captivating, slightly unnerving virtual body to explore. Ideal fodder for medical students, then, but great even for the simply curious. And although it’s pricey for the latter audience, the app’s often on sale, and has dropped as low as $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49. Snap it up if you see it cheap.

LookUp ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

There are quite a few dictionary apps on iPad, and most of them don’t tend to stray much from paper-based tomes, save adding a search function. LookUp has a more colorful way of thinking, primarily with its entry screen. This features rows of illustrated cards, each of which houses an interesting word you can discover more about with a tap.

The app is elsewhere a mite more conventional – you can type in a word to confirm a spelling, and access its meaning, etymology, and Wikipedia entry.

The app’s lack of speed and customization means it likely won’t be a writer’s first port of call when working – but it is an interesting app for anyone fascinated by language, allowing you to explore words and their histories in rather more relaxed circumstances.

Redshift Pro (($17.99/£17.99/AU$27.99)

The ‘pro’ bit in Redshift Pro’s name is rather important, because this astronomy app is very much geared at the enthusiast. It dispenses with the gimmickry seen in some competing apps, and is instead packed with a ton of features, including an explorable planetarium, an observation planner and sky diary, 3D models of the planetary bodies, simulations, and even the means to control a telescope.

Although more workmanlike than pretty, the app does the business when you’re zooming through the heavens, on a 3D journey to a body of choice, or just lazily browsing whatever you’d be staring at in the night sky if your ceiling wasn’t in the way.

And if it all feels a bit rich, the developer has you covered with the slightly cut down – but still impressive – Redshift, for half the outlay.

Sky Guide ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

There are quite a few apps for virtual stargazing, but Sky Guide is the best of them on iPad. Like its rivals, the app allows you to search the heavens in real-time, providing details of constellations and satellites in your field of view (or, if you fancy, on the other side of the world).

Also, when outside during the daytime (at which point stars are inconveniently invisible to the naked eye), you can use augmented reality to map constellations on to a blue sky.

Indoors, it transforms into a kind of reference guide, offering further insight into distant heavenly bodies, and the means to view the sky at different points in history. What sets Sky Guide apart, though, is an effortless elegance. It's simply the nicest app of its kind to use, with a polish and refinement that cements its essential nature.

Earth Primer ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.

Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.

Journeys of Invention ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Touch Press somewhat cornered the market in amazing iOS books with The Elements, but Journeys of Invention takes things a step further. In partnership with the Science Museum, it leads you through many of science's greatest discoveries, weaving them into a compelling mesh of stories.

Many objects can be explored in detail, and some are more fully interactive, such as the Enigma machine, which you can use to share coded messages with friends.

What's especially great is that none of this feels gimmicky. Instead, this app points towards the future of books, strong content being married to useful and engaging interactivity.

The best movie and entertainment apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether reading, watching TV, using Twitter or delving into interactive art.

EōN by Jean-Michel Jarre ($8.99/£8.99/AU$13.99)

EōN by Jean-Michel Jarre exists in a similar territory to the algorithmically generated audio apps released on iPad by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers. Only instead of an endless river of generative ambient audio, you get something akin to an infinite Jarre remix.

This all works better than you might think, with Jarre’s trademark synth washes, electronic beats, and flickering riffs dancing about in a mix that never repeats itself. Although there are quite clearly defined ‘tracks’ of sorts, they’re different every time you fire up the app.

On iPad in particular, the visual component gets a chance to shine. On the larger display, the resulting effect is a little like a desktop Jarre concert – and unlimited iterations for the price of a single new album seems like quite the bargain.

Tayasui Color 2 ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Tayasui Color 2 is a rare iPad coloring app, in that it’s properly premium and doesn’t delve into the murky world of subscriptions. That means it’s more limited than its contemporaries – you get just 18 illustrations – but you’re not forking out for something you may only dip into on occasion.

The app has other benefits, too, not least a beautiful design that makes it feel like the most tactile offering on the platform. The illustrations sit within a flip book of virtual stiff card pages. As you color, sound effects mimic real-world tools, which is especially mesmerizing if you’re using a stylus. 

There is one minor issue, in the illustrations not scaling as well as they might when you zoom in – they get a bit blurry. But otherwise, this is a wonderful premium take on iPad coloring.

Infuse Pro 6 ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

Infuse Pro 6 is a video player for people who prefer hoarding over streaming. If you’ve curated a collection of favorites, Infuse can get them on your iPad, wherever they happen to be stored.

Unlike equivalent apps, Infuse doesn’t need a server running. Point it at a local network drive, a PC/Mac, or cloud storage, and it will browse folders, load cover art, and – on a tap – stream whatever you choose. There’s support for a wide range of formats, subtitles can be downloaded in an instant, and iCloud syncs your library and playback progress across devices (including Apple TV).

If you’re unsure, a free version exists. Unless you upgrade via subscription, it has fewer features, although remains extremely capable. But if you’re really serious about video on your iPad, this pay-once edition is well worth the outlay.

Reeder 4 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Reeder 4 is a premium RSS client. You subscribe to website feeds, which can be browsed individually or as a whole, ensuring you never miss an article from favorite sources.

Although you can opt to view the original web pages, you’re better off with Reeder’s own reader, which removes cruft, leaving you with just text and images. For sites that only provide synopses, entire articles can be loaded with a touch of a button. There’s also a ‘Bionic Reading’ mode can also be invoked, emboldening specific letters in words to slow you down, so you take in more of the text.

Despite the odd flub (a default theme that very much needs the ‘increase contrast’ option on; finicky animations), Reeder remains ahead of the pack. It’s a must-buy if you want a better way to take in news and other articles on your iPad.

David Bowie is… ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

David Bowie is… takes 2013’s blockbuster Bowie exhibition and stuffs it inside of your iPad as an AR experience.

Curated by theme rather than chronologically, the exhibition is a set of interactive scenes, ‘projected’ onto your desktop. Optional narration by Gary Oldman adds backstory as you examine lyrics, costumes and videos, exploring the life of a music icon.

On iPad, David Bowie is… works especially well. The screen’s squarer aspect ratio makes examining content less awkward than on iPhone, and the larger display lets everything shine. The only thing that might give you pause is the price, but for far less than a ticket to the original exhibition, you get unlimited access to all the goodies – including dozens of songs and videos – without having to peer over other people’s shoulders.

Bloom: 10 Worlds ($7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99)

Bloom: 10 Worlds is the follow-up to 2008’s Bloom, which never made it to iPad. That app had you tap the screen to simultaneously play notes and create spots of color. The former looped and slowly evolved; the latter disappeared into the background like ripples in a pond.

10 Worlds expands this premise out from a ‘single’ into a full album. There are 10 takes on the format to enjoy, each with its own visuals and audio. The visuals in particular have been significantly improved from the original Bloom, replacing that app’s hard geometric forms with a more painterly approach.

However, it’s the intriguing mix of instrument, album, and art that still shines through. The result is an essential addition to iPad, perfectly complementing existing Eno/Chilvers collaborations Scape and Reflection. 

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged takes a warehouse-sized art exhibit and transforms it into a virtual space. This means instead of getting a digital book, where you swipe between stills, you instead experience the context and atmospherics of the original show, dragging the screen to move, or actually walking around in AR, adjusting your view on the basis of where you hold your iPad.

Fairey – creator of the iconic ‘Hope’ image of Barack Obama – is on fine form here, exploring issues relating to social media, celebrity, and the notion of constructing your own reality. Optionally, his narrative can accompany your journey around his work, adding extra insight. But however you check out Damaged, it proves itself to be the finest example of a virtual gallery on mobile, looking to the future rather than the past.

Tweetbot 5 (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Tweetbot 5 is a premium Twitter client. Unlike Twitter’s own client, which is determined to present tweets as it sees fit, Tweetbot lists tweets in order, omits ads, and doesn’t clutter up your mentions feed with notifications about retweets and likes. There’s a night mode, for tweeting in the dark, iCloud sync across devices for keeping your place, and nice sound effects that make the app feel alive.

On iPad, the app of course supports Split View and Slide Over, but it also has its own built-in column view. This means if you’re the kind of person who lives on Twitter, you can, for example, simultaneously scroll through your feed in the main pane, while chatting with people via direct messages in another. Top stuff for power users – or anyone who wants to avoid social network noise.

Chunky Comic Reader (free or $3.99/£3.99/AU$4.49)

There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.

Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low-res comics look good.

Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.

Scape ($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)

Pop music is about getting what you expect. Ambient music has always felt subtly different, almost like anything could happen. With generative audio, this line of thinking became reality. Scape gives you a combined album/playground in this nascent genre, from the minds of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers.

Each track is formed by way of adding musical elements to a canvas, which then interact in sometimes unforeseen ways. Described as music that "thinks for itself", Scape becomes a pleasing, fresh and infinitely replayable slice of chillout bliss. And if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can sit back and listen to an album composed by the app's creators.

The best health, diet, and exercise apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for cooking, relaxing, de-stressing and keeping fit.

Streaks Workout ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Streaks Workout is a personal trainer squeezed into your iPad. But unlike many of its contemporaries, Streaks doesn’t make assumptions about your skill level and environment. You don’t need any equipment, and the app is flexible enough to fit around your capabilities and interests.

To rapidly kick things off, you can select exercises to use within random workouts, and choose from one of four timers. These range from the reasonable six-minute Quick to the arduous half-hour Extreme. As you exercise, the app records how you do, building up a log of your efforts.

At any point, you can create your own custom exercises, making the app truly yours. And with data syncing across the cloud, there’s no excuse for not working up a sweat, since Streaks can always be with you on iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.

Cosm ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Cosm is a mash-up of mental wellness aid and ambient instrument. Fire up a new session, prod the screen, and a calming note will play. Tap a few more times, and you’ll soon realize you’ve composed a custom loop to serenade you into the infinite.

So far, so Brian Eno’s Bloom – but Cosm takes things further. You get control over tuning, volume, and instrumentation. Most importantly, your compositions can be saved, whereupon the app encourages you to add a written note about how you feel.

The idea is to create a kind of journal that’s driven in part by the compositions you make – or at least to make compositions that give you a boost when you later return to them. Whether or not you’re a fan of Eno’s iPad apps, Cosm is well worth investigating.

Paprika ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Paprika is ideal for people who live in the kitchen. Whereas other cooking apps are content to serve up some recipes and a shopping list, Paprika is a full-fledged scrapbook and meal planner you can use for every aspect of your culinary world.

Recipes can be added manually or snipped from favorite websites. Anything added to the app can be adjusted, if you decide you’ve figured out a way to improve the dish or preparation methods, or fancy adding some photos. Beyond that, there’s an ingredients tracker, meal planner (with Calendar integration), menu creator, and the means to print recipes.

It’s not as visually flashy as the likes of Kitchen Stories and Tasty, but Paprika feels like the best bet for anyone whose iPad spends almost as much time in the kitchen as they do.

Streaks (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Streaks is habit-forming – in a good way. It’s effectively a to-do manager that focuses on what you want to do in your life – and bad habits you want to eradicate.

To get started, you create tasks, assign icons, and define durations. The app’s flexible regarding how often tasks should be done; and you can create time-based ones (whereupon the app temporarily becomes a timer), those that interact with Apple’s Health app, and ‘negative’ ones you don’t want to ‘complete’. Streaks then tracks your progress in handy graph form.

The app’s iPhone origins are obvious, not least in the main display that’s optimized for six tasks and therefore looks comical on iPad. But it’s nonetheless great to have this superb app in native form on Apple’s tablet, and iCloud sync ensures any changes you make are accessible across all your Apple gear.

CARROT Fit ($3.99/£3.99/AU$4.49)

CARROT Fit is the answer if a more sensible exercise app just isn’t doing it for you. Like CARROT Weather, this fitness tool is helmed by a snarky, sarcastic AI. Here, she comes across like the deranged offspring of HAL 9000 and a personal trainer. To wit, she’ll threaten, ridicule and bribe you, in order to “prevent your body from blimping up.”

The actual exercise bit is, broadly speaking, conventional, in that you partake in recognizable routines. But even there, CARROT Fit has a very distinct character, referring to push-ups as ‘Kowtows to Cthulhu,’ and subtly renaming the seven-minute workout ‘7 Minutes in Hell.’ Still, you’ll likely need some humor when sitting on the floor in a sweaty heap after a few minutes of exercise, and CARROT Fit has that over its straight-laced contemporaries.

White Noise+ (free + US$2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP)

White Noise+ is a sound machine designed to reduce distractions by way of ambient noise. Many apps in this space are a bit new age and flowery, and quite a few are, frankly, rubbish. Fortunately, White Noise+ is none of those things, instead providing a thoroughly modern, tactile take on noise generation.

The app’s based around a grid akin to smart drums in GarageBand. Here, you get 16 slots, into which you drag icons that represent different sounds. Those toward the top play more loudly, and those toward the right have more complex loops. Your mixes can be saved, and sleep timers and alarms are available if you want to use White Noise+ for meditation sessions – or for waking you up should you doze off.

You get a handful of sounds to play with for free, but the full set requires a one-off IAP. Given the quality of the app, it’s well worth the outlay.

Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

We're not sure what makes this edition of the famous mockney chef's recipe book 'ultimate', bar that word being very clearly written on the icon.

Still, Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes is certainly a very tasty app. The 600 recipes should satisfy any given mood, whether you're after a sickeningly healthy salad or fancy binging on ALL THE SUGAR until your teeth scream for mercy.

Smartly, every recipe offers step-by-step photos, so you can see how badly you’re going wrong at any point. And when you've nearly burned down the kitchen, given up and ordered a pizza, you can watch the two hours of videos that reportedly tell you how to "become a real kitchen ninja".

Note: this doesn't involve wearing lots of black and hurling sharp objects at walls, sadly.

The best kids apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps, learning tools and games for toddlers and children.

Thinkrolls Space ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Thinkrolls Space continues the great tradition of the Thinkrolls series, giving young children a play experience that marries dexterity tests and puzzle-solving logic. Here, over 200 mazes are set across seven unique planets, and the player is tasked with getting trundling protagonists to the exit. As ever, there are all kinds of hazards in the way.

Given that this game is set in space, there’s a sci-fi/fantasy vibe to proceedings. Plasma fields, teleporters, and vanishing rainbow bridges must be dealt with, along with a cast of oddball aliens, including sleeping robots and cheese monsters that helpfully devour tunnels of moon cheese.

This iPad app has no timers, no IAP, and its challenges are specifically designed for different skill levels, making it a good bet for families with kids of different ages. Top stuff all round, then. (Pun intended.)

Pango Musical March ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Pango Musical March is arguably not at the educational end of the children’s apps on our list. However, it is a lot of fun for any kid with a musical bent – or who just loves watching colorful cartoon critters do their bidding.

On selecting a musical style (or all four at once), a bar with instruments appears at the foot of the screen. Drag one up to an empty spot and a band member starts to play and march. Add to the musical menagerie for a suitably disciplined slice of marching band goodness – or a barely listenable cacophony.

With no ads, time limits, nor competitive elements, this is a playful and relaxing app for younger children to experiment with, and the visuals look superb on the iPad’s large display.

Sago Mini Village ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Sago Mini Village was reportedly inspired by Minecraft, but designed very much with young children in mind. Therefore, you’re still building your own world from blocks, but these are a bit chunkier than Minecraft’s, and this is a resolutely solo experience.

It’s colorful fare, as you’d expect from a Sago Mini title, set in a fantasy land populated by gnomes. The more buildings that are constructed, the more gnomes move in – and then they start exploring and interacting. There are plenty of entertaining animations and fun surprises throughout.

With offline support and no IAPs, Sago Mini Village is ideal fodder for any young child who loves to build, during those times when it’s not possible to litter your real-world environment with piles of plastic bricks.

Pango Paper Color ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Pango Paper Color is akin to coloring in a living world of origami. Across four scenes, including a forest and a farm, you see objects constructed before your very eyes. You then tap to add colors, whereupon the objects spring to life. Everything looks superb on the iPad’s large display.

Although primarily designed for children, Pango Paper Color is a really nice experience for all kinds of iPad user. Fans of animation will appreciate the effort that’s gone into it; or if you just want something different to relax with, it fits the bill.

For kids, though, this one should really hit home. They can learn to mix colors, photograph and share their scene; and when they’re done coloring, they can fold up all that virtual paper – and then start all over again!

Sizzle & Stew ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Sizzle & Stew shows why young children – along with sloths and llamas – need supervision in the kitchen. Your kid helps the furry duo concoct culinary ‘delights’ that would give a Michelin Star chef chills.

Creating dishes involves partaking in all manner of havoc in the kitchen. Want to microwave a carrot into oblivion? Go for it. Stick broccoli in the oven until it’s unrecognizable? Sure. In the washing machine, too? That’s even tastier. (Just as well, then, that these beasts will eat anything.)

With its absurdist, open-ended, risk-free nature, Sizzle & Stew is bound to appeal to kids. Even better, on iPad a simultaneous two-player split-screen mode has room to breathe, so you can pit your skills against your kid’s – shortly before finding out neither of you’s likely to get a TV chef gig.

Toca Life: Office ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Toca Life: Office gives your kids a chance to play out what they imagine their working parents get up to all day – albeit in exciting environments likely more colorful and interesting than the real thing.

For young children, there’s plenty of fun to be had simply in moving the little figures about, and poking backgrounds to see what happens. For slightly older kids, exploration can prove rewarding in other ways – there’s a secret exit from the jail, a working copy machine in the office, and a cafe where you can merrily experiment with what’s on the menu.

Neatly, there’s even a recording feature, so kids can get creative and act out a scene, which can then be shared with friends. In all, this is another superb Toca Boca creation that ticks all the right boxes.

Bandimal ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Bandimal is a music toy for the rest of us. Actually, its App Store description states it’s a music composer for kids, but ignore that because Bandimal is great fun for everyone.

It offers three slots into which you swipe an animal. A quick tap opens a dotted grid, on to which you assign notes by prodding the dots. These trigger loops when the playhead moves over them, and there are no wrong choices.

There’s a drum track too, along with some basic effects and a speed dial. And as you’re composing, your little menagerie will bop to the beat, with animation that’s so much fun it’s sure to make any cartoonists in the vicinity a touch envious.

You might avoid Bandimal because you’re not a musician. Don’t. This app’s only to be avoided if you hate fun.

Zen Studio (free + IAP)

Zen Studio is a unique, beautifully conceived painting and coloring app. Instead of giving you a blank canvas for free-form scribbling, Zen Studio opts for a triangular grid. Tap spaces and they fill with your selected color as a note plays. This combination of coloring and ad-hoc melody proves very relaxing – for children and adults alike.

In its free version, this is an entertaining app, but it’s worth grabbing the main $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP. This lets you save unlimited drawings (rather than just eight), and unlocks white paint, which acts as an eraser on compositions with white backgrounds.

It also provides access to a slew of tutorials. These have you build up a picture by coloring inside stencils, which even a two-year-old should be able to cope with – and then subsequently scrawl over when the stencils disappear.

Little Digits ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Little Digits is a new spin on finger counting, making use of the iPad’s large screen, and its ability to recognize loads of fingers pressing down at once.

The app’s most basic mode responds to how many fingers are touching the screen. Use a single digit, and the app chirps ONE! while a grinning one-shaped monster jigs about. Add another finger and the one is replaced by a furry two. You get the idea.

Beyond this, the app offers some basic training in number ordering, addition and subtraction, making it a great learning tool for young children.

But the smartest feature may well be multiple language support and recording. This means you can use the app to learn to count in anything from French to Swedish, and record custom prompts if your own language isn’t supported.

Metamorphabet ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.

The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.

Toca Nature ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

On opening Toca Nature, you find yourself staring at a slab of land floating in the void. After selecting relevant icons, a drag of a finger is all it takes to raise mountains or dig deep gullies for rivers and lakes.

Finishing touches to your tiny landscape can then be made by tapping to plant trees. Wait for a bit and a little ecosystem takes shape, deers darting about glades, and fish swimming in the water. Using the magnifying glass, you can zoom into and explore this little world and feed its various inhabitants.

Although designed primarily for kids, Toca Nature is a genuinely enjoyable experience whatever your age.

The one big negative is that it starts from scratch every time — some save states would be nice, so each family member could have their own space to tend to and explore. Still, blank canvases keep everything fresh, and building a tiny nature reserve never really gets old.

Foldify Dinosaurs ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.

But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.

The best music and audio apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for sampling, being a DJ, making music and listening to podcasts.

AudioKit Hey Metronome ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

AudioKit Hey Metronome is a bit different from most iPad apps for music-making, in that it’s designed to help you work on songs using real instruments. Specifically – as its name likely suggests – it’s all about keeping you in time, as you write something new or work on nailing an existing song.

However, there’s also the ‘hey’ bit; like Siri, this is a metronome you can bark orders at. That might seem an odd idea, but it’s great to have a hands-free metronome when you’re holding your instrument.

This app offers more than just 4/4 beeps, too. Along with a range of time signatures and drum sounds, you can construct playlists that echo your current set – or select from a range of popular tracks, when you fancy jamming along to someone else’s tune.

AudioKit L7 – Live Looper ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

AudioKit L7 – Live Looper is an audio recorder inspired by Roland’s Boss RC-505 Loop Station. You record short snippets of audio that continue to loop, and gradually build a soundscape – a technique often used by beatboxers and guitarists to impressive effect.

As an iPad app, AudioKit L7 is robbed of some portability – you won’t hold an iPad like a mic and make mouth sounds into it. However, what you do get is a bigger surface on which to tinker with any noises you record.

The app also enables you to mix in imported audio and add effects, resulting in a playground for creativity. It’s a different take on music making, but one that’s ideal for jobbing musicians looking for new ways to be inspired, or newcomers after a user-friendly entry point.

AudioKit FM Player 2 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

AudioKit FM Player 2 is an open-source iPad synth that’ll beam you back to the 1980s. Its many and varied presets are based on over 150 samples, and bathe your ears in classic sounds from the likes of Yamaha’s DX7 and TX81Z.

A slew of knobs to twiddle, along with an arpeggiator and 16-step sequencer, give you plenty of scope for shaping sound. This is the kind of synth where you can merrily hold down a single key, fiddle with settings, and suddenly realize half an hour’s zoomed by.

The app plays nicely with the iPadOS music ecosystem, too. It will work with MIDI keyboards, and also other music apps – in fact, AUv3 support means the entire interface can be loaded into GarageBand, whenever you fancy getting your Kraftwerk on.

NanoStudio 2 ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

NanoStudio 2 is the successor to NanoStudio, an iPhone app that let musicians bash out songs on iPhones before GarageBand for iOS was a twinkle in Apple’s eye. Now less ‘nano’ (being iPad-only), the follow-up is a remarkably powerful tool for recording, sampling, editing, and mixing.

The app was six years in the making – and it shows. Built-in synth Obsidian is among the best on iOS, and is hugely versatile in the noises it can create. Drum machine Slate adds rhythm, and if that’s not enough, NanoStudio 2 lets you effortlessly incorporate Audio Units like Poison-202 and Minimoog Model D.

There is an electronic bent to NanoStudio 2, so it’s not ideally suited to people into more traditional sounds. Otherwise, this usable, feature-rich music production environment is a must-have for iPad musicians.

djay (free + $4.99/£4.49/AU$7.49 monthly)

djay is a full-featured DJ solution for iOS. You get a two-deck mode with crossfader, looping, and effects for free, but splash out on the pro subscription and you’re instantly equipped with enough DJ power to keep you spinning decks into the small hours.

You get a two-deck view with flanking libraries – and a four-deck view when two isn’t enough. There’s VJ mixing when you fancy adding some video, support for a slew of controllers, and over 1GB of samples you can fire off to stamp your personal style over whatever’s blasting from the local sound system.

Naturally, it’s total overkill (albeit fun total overkill) for the typical home user; but if you’re a pro DJ armed with an external controller, it may well be enough to chuck all that traditional kit on eBay.

Ferrite Recording Studio (free or US$28.99/£28.99/AU$46.99)

Ferrite Recording Studio at first looks like a souped-up voice memos app, but beneath lies a powerful multi-track editor, so if you’re armed with an iPad, the app and some time, you can create your own podcast.

For free, there are limitations: an hour of recording, ten-minute projects and three tracks. Go Pro and Ferrite gives desktop editors a run for their money: 32 tracks, projects up to a day long, and recording time limited only by the space on your iPad.

The pro version adds further handy tools for improving recordings, such as effects, auto-leveling, MP3 chapters and dead air removal, bt the most impressive thing is how this all comes together. Ferrite might be powerful, but it’s also extremely usable. It therefore comes highly recommended if you’ve any interest in multi-track voice recording projects.

Audiobus 3 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

There are so many amazing music-making apps on iPad that it’s hard to choose between them. With Audiobus 3, you sort of don’t have to, because it acts as a kind of behind-the-scenes plumbing.

Virtual cabling might not sound sexy, but it hugely boosts creative potential. You can send live audio or MIDI data between apps and through effects, mix the various channels, and then send the entire output to the likes of GarageBand.

Much of these features are new to Audiobus 3, and this latest update also adds Audio Unit support, enabling you to open some synths and effects directly in the app.

With support for over 900 iOS products in all, Audiobus 3 is an essential buy for anyone serious about creating music on an iPad.

Poison-202 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

So, you’ve picked up an iPad synth to compose music, play live, or bound about like a maniac, pretending you're on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, Poison-202 is ideal for all such sets of circumstances.

The moody black and red graphic design is very 1990s, but it's Poison-202's sounds that hurl you back to the halcyon days of electronic music. Aficionados of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Orbital will be overjoyed at the familiar (and brilliant) sounds you can conjure up simply by selecting presets and prodding a few keys.

And if you're not satisfied by the creator's (frankly awesome) sound design smarts (in which case, we glare at you with the menace of a thousand Keith Flints), all manner of sliders and dials enable you to create your own wall-wobbling bass and ear-searing leads.

There are iPad synths that have more ambition, and many are more authentic to classic hardware; but few are more fun.

Fugue Machine ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.

For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning.

(Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)

Korg Gadget ($39.99/£38.99/AU$62.99)

Korg Gadget bills itself as the "ultimate mobile synth collection on your iPad" and it's hard to argue. You get well over a dozen varied synths, ranging from drum machines through to ear-splitting electro monsters, and an intuitive piano roll for laying down notes.

A scene/loop arranger enables you to craft entire compositions in the app, which can then be shared via the Soundcloud-powered GadgetCloud or sent to Dropbox. This is a more expensive app than most, but if you're a keen electronic-music-oriented songwriter with an iPad, it's hard to find a product that's better value.

Overcast (free)

Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.

The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.

The best office and writing apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for writing, email, editing PDFs, spreadsheets, coding and file management.

Moleskine Journey ($4.99/£3.99/AU$6.49 per month)

Moleskine Journey is an organizational tool pitched at “creative minds,” “independent workers,” and “free spirits.” It blends productivity tools and wellness, looking after you whether you’re at work or trying to achieve personal goals.

The app can pull in events from your Apple calendar data, and augment them with imagery, links, and PDFs. A task-based to-do list is included, along with a project manager, for grouping complex requirements by topic. Under My Day, you see your day’s schedule, along with a food diary, and a custom habits log.

On iPad, Moleskine Journey isn’t quite as streamlined as on iPhone, in part due to a dual-pane view. But the flip-side of that is gaining access to a lot more information at once. Regardless, it’s an interesting take on personal organization that successfully caters to work and play.

Textastic Code Editor 8 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Textastic is a text editor for coders. It’s tasteful and minimal, yet packed full of features for optimizing workflow.

When using just an iPad, the custom keyboard row provides fast access to a range of characters. If you’ve got a physical keyboard, you can configure keyboard shortcuts for important actions. Fonts can be customized, and new themes selected.

The built-in file transfer manager enables you to access documents stored remotely; and although Textastic cannot be used as a Files location, you can get at local content via On My iPad. Want to go old school? Try printing off your code on paper.

As ever, there are limitations to an iPad coding editor, meaning you’re unlikely to create web pages or apps from scratch using the app, but it’s ideal for making edits when on the move – or on the sofa.

Cardhop ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Cardhop reimagines the Contacts app – in a manner that makes it far more usable and useful. It uses existing iCloud data (and can integrate other address books), but rethinks how you get to data and actions.

A powerful search field utilizes natural language. This can be used to get at data that’s otherwise buried deep – ‘phone John’ or ‘FaceTime Jane’ – or to rapidly add new contacts by typing in a few of their details prior to tapping a button.

When browsing, notes are always accessible – handy if you use that field. There’s a tab specifically for birthdays, and another for recently accessed contacts – and that syncs across iCloud. Also, tap a piece of data in a card, and an action (like a call or email) isn’t immediately triggered – instead, you get a pop-up with options. Every detail feels considered and polished.

FE File Explorer Pro ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

FE File Explorer Pro plugs a hole in iPad file management – namely, getting at things that aren’t stored on your iPad or on iCloud. The usable, Apple-like interface makes it a cinch to connect to, explore, and preview or download your files, whether they’re on a PC or Mac, a network drive, or on remote cloud services other than Apple’s.

There’s drag-and-drop awareness, the means to flag files as favorites, and password support if you want your documents locked down. Perhaps best of all for people who work a lot on their iPads, FE File Explorer Pro integrates directly into Apple’s Files. Activate it as a location, and Apple’s app then gains seamless access to a huge range of storage options that are otherwise out of reach. Top stuff.

Memento: Modern Reminders ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Memento: Modern Reminders is an alternative to the Apple Reminders app. It uses the same database, meaning you can at any point switch between the two apps; the main reason for splashing out some cash on Memento is speed – the app just makes it much easier to do stuff.

For example, when creating or editing a reminder, a smart keyboard row gives you speedy access to time and location alerts. The former provides useful options like ‘this evening’ and ‘tomorrow morning’.

Beyond that, there’s a Reminders feed that shows everything in a single scrolling pane, a tab for reminders with time alerts (‘For You’), powerful notifications management, and a visual design that looks far more like something Apple would create than Apple’s own app.

PDF Expert by Readdle ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

On the Mac, PDF Expert by Readdle is a friendly, efficient, usable PDF editor. If anything, the app’s often even better on iPad.

You can grab PDFs from iCloud or Dropbox. Pages can be rearranged by drag-and-drop, and you can add or extract pages with a few taps. Adding pages from another document sadly remains beyond the app, but you can merge two PDFs in its file manager.

As a reader, PDF Expert fares well, ably dealing with large PDFs, and the text-to-speech mode can read documents at a speed of your choosing. Similarly, the app makes short work of annotations, document signing, and outline editing.

Buy the ‘Edit PDF’ IAP ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 on top of the original price) and you can directly update text, redact passages, and replace images. You’re obviously a little limited by a document’s existing fonts and layout, but this functionality is great if you spot a glaring error while checking a vital PDF on your iPad.

iA Writer ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

iA Writer provides a writing environment suitably focused for iPad, but that also makes nods to the desktop.

The main screen is smartly designed, with a custom keyboard bar offering Markdown and navigation buttons; if you’re using a mechanical keyboard, standard shortcuts are supported.

Further focus comes by way of a typewriter mode (auto-scrolling to the area you’re editing) and graying out lines other than the one you’re working on.

Elsewhere, you get an optional live character count, iCloud sync, and a robust Markdown preview. We’d like to see a split-screen mode for the last of those (as per the Mac version), but otherwise iA Writer’s a solid, effective and affordable minimal writing app for iPad.

Scrivener ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

On the desktop, Scrivener is widely acclaimed as the writer's tool of choice. The feature-rich app provides all kinds of ways to write, even incorporating research documents directly into projects. Everything's always within reach, and your work can constantly be rethought, reorganised, and reworked.

On iPad, Scrivener is, astonishingly, almost identical to its desktop cousin. Bar some simplification regarding view and export options, it's essentially the same app. You get a powerful 'binder' sidebar for organizing notes and documents, while the main view area enables you to write and structure text, or to work with index cards on a cork board.

There's even an internal 'Split View', for simultaneously smashing out a screenplay while peering at research. With Dropbox sync to access existing projects, Scrivener is a no-brainer for existing users; and for newcomers, it's the most capable rich text/scriptwriting app on iPad.

1Password ($2.99 per month)

Although Apple introduced iCloud Keychain way back in iOS 7, to securely store passwords and payment information, 1Password is a more powerful system. Along with integrating with Safari, it can be used to hold identities, secure notes, network information and app license details.

But there are other benefits: the app’s cross-platform nature means it gives you a solution if you also use Windows and Android. And with it being a standalone app, accessing and editing your information is fast and accessible.

The app is free to try for 30 days, after which point you must pay a monthly $2.99 subscription ($4.99 for a family of five). For the peace of mind and usability the app brings, it’s well worth the outlay.

The best iPad photo and video editing apps

Our favorite iPad apps for shooting and editing photos and videos and adding filters.

Pixelmator Photo ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Pixelmator Photo is an iPad app designed to make your photos better. Its machine learning button, trained on 20 million pro photos, corrects lighting, exposure and shadows with a tap. The results are pleasing and natural compared to the over-saturated fake-looking fare produced by rival apps.

Film-like filters, together with a sidebar of buttons and sliders, let you unlock your creative and experimental side, and the tools within the sidebar are befitting of pricey desktop-grade software.

But here, too, efficiency is key. There’s direct integration with Files and Photos, and edits are saved in non-destructive fashion, so they can later be reverted. Batch editing lets you edit an entire photoshoot with just a few taps. And pictures can be resized during export.

Even if you only use the machine learning button, Pixelmator Photo’s low price makes it a steal. But once you’ve delved into the app’s other controls, you’ll be hooked.

Darkroom (free or $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Darkroom is a photo editor for iPad. On a device that’s not exactly short of photo editors, that might not excite you, but Darkroom differentiates itself from the crowd.

Open the app and it immediately presents your existing images. Tap one and you’re ready to edit. Tap a tool and a sidebar slides in, providing fast access to a superb range of tools for cropping and making adjustments. Throw some IAP at Darkroom, and these expand into even more professional territory by way of curves and color-correction tools.

None of that probably sounds all that different, but Darkroom’s no-nonsense approach, sleek interface and deep integration with iOS/iPadOS set it apart. It’s user-friendly and straightforward, yet powerful, and feels like something Apple at its very best might have created itself.

Glitch Art Studio (free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 IAP)

Glitch Art Studio is an effects app that aims to make even dull photos and videos look interesting. The filters are based around glitches and animated distortion, and can be edited to the point you can barely tell what the subject was.

Depending on whether you’re in it for speed or control, you can delve into presets or a bunch of individual menus respectively. Either way, you’ll end up concocting something resembling the display of a barely working old television, or some kind of deranged hallucinogenic episode.

On iPad, the larger canvas lets you fully appreciate the effects on offer – which are deeply impressive. If you’re fed up with filters that ape old paintings, use Glitch Studio to bring your creative photographic endeavors kicking and screaming into the (relatively) modern era.

VideoGrade (US$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

VideoGrade is a color-grading app for video, giving you a taste of Hollywood on your iPad.

It’s a powerful app, but one that’s nonetheless straightforward to use. On launch, it finds all your videos. Select one and tools are displayed at the right-hand side of the screen. Open a menu, drag a slider, and changes are made instantly. Any tool used gets a handy green dot next to its name, helping you keep track of complex adjustments.

Filters (color changes, levels, pixelation and so on) are applied live, and a single tap fires up a full preview. Combinations of settings can be saved for later reuse. Also, the app’s various presets are available as a Photos extension. That means you needn’t even delve headlong into VideoGrade itself to apply some of its magic to your favorite videos.

Retrospecs (free or US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Retrospecs is a photo filter app that revels in the history of computing and gaming. Rather than turning any photo or image into a tiny Picasso with a tap, it instead reimagines whatever you load as if it was on the screen of a Game Boy, Apple Mac or C64.

In fact, over 40 systems exist once you pay for the IAP (you can test Retrospecs for free with a small selection), and if that’s not enough, you can fashion your own custom emulations. For properly authentic retro output, you can edit dither modes, add glitch animations, tweak CRT effects and more.

Full support for video combined with some bonkers filters (PETSCII! Teletext!) adds scope for YouTube weirdness. But even if you only grab Retrospecs because you’ve always wondered what your face would look like on a NES, it’s worth the outlay.

Typorama (free + IAP)

Typorama is about adding text to your photos – or creating typographic designs from scratch – with a minimum of effort. Select a photo, flat color, or a stock image background, choose an output size, and you’re ready to get started.

Other apps in this space let you select fonts, but Typorama has you select designs. Enter some text, tap a design style, and what you typed is instantly transformed. If you’re not keen on what you see, tap the style again for variations.

You can add multiple type layers, and apply shadows and gradient effects to each one. There’s also a 3D rotation/perspective tool, and a selective eraser. Some features are locked in the free version and you must put up with watermarks, but there are various IAP available, including the ability to unlock everything for $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99.

Affinity Photo ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Affinity Photo extinguishes any lingering doubt regarding the iPad’s suitability for creative professionals. In short, it’s Serif’s impressive Mac/PC Photoshop rival, carefully reimagined for the touchscreen.

This is pro-level photo/image-editing fare, and you need the hardware to match – at least an iPad Air 2, but preferably an iPad Pro – but with the right kit, you get a huge range of features for image editing, creation and retouching.

The live filters and liquify tools are particularly impressive, responding to edits in real time. Working with a finger or Pencil is pleasingly tactile in a manner desktop equivalents can’t match.

RAW shooting/processing support, the ability to add fonts, layer isolation, and robust Files integration all cement Affinity Photo’s place among the iPad app greats. And if you become an expert, there’s even a ‘Show Touches’ option for making tutorials that other users can follow.

Artomaton - The Motion Painter (free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP)

Artomaton - The Motion Painter is an ‘artificial intelligence artist’ – recreating photos as sketches and paintings. For free, you get a small selection of media, but pay a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP and you unlock the full range, including the arresting ‘Pointil’ (as in ‘lism’), scribbly crayons, and a lovely sketch/watercolor combo.

Unlike most competing apps, this one has many settings for adjusting properties, such as vignettes, stroke width, hatching angle, and color saturation.

It even works with video, and although it takes some time for Artomaton to draw all of the individual frames (just a 20-second clip will need close to 200), output with ‘Sketch&Water’ has a gorgeous scratchy hand-drawn quality.

For free, then, this is a great download; but grab that paid IAP for something really special.

Mextures ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

The iPad may not be an ideal device for shooting photos, but its large screen makes it pretty great for editing them. And Mextures is perhaps the finest app around for anyone wanting to infuse their digital snaps with character by way of textures, grunge, and gradients.

The editing process is entirely non-destructive, with you building up effects by adding layers. In each case, textures, blend modes and rotation of scanned objects can be adjusted to suit, and you can experiment without fear of edits being ‘burned in’.

Particularly interesting combinations can be saved as ‘formulas’ and shared with the Mextures community – or you can speed along your own editing by downloading one of the many formulas that already exist.

LumaFusion ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

If you find iMovie isn’t quite doing it for you from a video editing standpoint, take a look at LumaFusion. This multitrack editor is designed with the more demanding user in mind, and is packed full of features to keep you editing at your iPad rather than nipping to a Mac or PC.

The main timeline provides you with three tracks for photos, videos, titles and graphics, and you get another three audio tracks for complex audio mixes involving narration and sound effects. Should you wish to take things further, LumaFusion includes a slew of effects and clip manipulation tools seemingly brought over from the developer’s own – and similarly impressive – LumaFX.

Occasionally, the app perhaps lacks some of the elegance iMovie enjoys, and LumaFusion is certainly a more involved product than Apple’s. But if you want fully-fledged video editing on your iPad, it’s hard to think of a better option.

VideoGrade ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

iPad video editors tend to have a bunch of effects and filters lurking within, but with VideoGrade you can go full-on Hollywood. On launch, the app helpfully rifles through your albums, making it easy to find your videos. Load one and you get access to a whopping 13 colour-grading and repair tools.

Despite the evident power VideoGrade offers, the interface is remarkably straightforward. Select a tool (such as Vibrance, Brightness or Tint), choose a setting, and drag to make a change. Drag up before moving your finger left or right to make subtler adjustments.

Smartly, any tool already used gets a little green dash beneath, and you can go back and change or remove edits at any point.

All filters are applied live to the currently shown frame, and you can also tap a button to view a preview of how your entire exported video will look. Want to compare your edit with the original video? Horizontal and vertical split-views are available at the tap of a button. Usefully, favorite filter combinations can be stored and reused, and videos can be queued rather than laboriously rendered individually.

Snapseed (free)

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image.

You get all the basics - cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app records applied effects as separate layers, and each remains editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else. Combinations of edits can be saved as custom filters you can subsequently apply to more images with a tap.

The best productivity apps for iPad

Our favorite iPad apps for being productive with notes, to-dos, reminders, mind-mapping, calendars and calculators.

Fantastical (free or $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 per month)

Fantastical’s developer reasons that a calendar is most helpful when it saves you time, rather than merely keeping track of where your time goes. Therefore, although this iPad app works with your existing calendar data (be that iCloud, Exchange or Google), it also offers various clever features to help speed things along.

In the main view, a scrolling ticker quickly gets you to events, past and present. Integrated weather forecasts ensure you won’t be caught unawares by a sudden shower – at your current locale or wherever an event is taking place.

There are also very ‘human’ touches – the way Fantastical can quickly interpret natural language while you create events; the means to offer event participants multiple time slots, and have the app figure out scheduling based on responses. In all, it amounts to a calendar that’s just as usable as Apple’s, but that helps you become far more productive.

1Blocker (free or $14.99/£14.99/AU$24.49 per year)

1Blocker removes the junk from web browsing – intrusive adverts and trackers, pop-ups, cookie notices, comments, social media inserts, and more. Install the app, and Safari is transformed – all the more important on a modern iPad where you get the desktop experience, which often comes with associated desktop cruft. 

This is no one-size-fits-all solution. You can delve into seriously extensive settings, to toggle entire sets of tools (if, for example, you want comments on by default), or fine-tune things on a per-site basis, including defining custom rules regarding cookies and CSS blocks.

Originally a paid app, 1Blocker now requires a subscription for most of its features, but this comes with the benefit of monthly cloud rule updates and unlocks Mac support. If you hate paying a smallish outlay every year, there’s also a permanent premium IAP for $38.99/£37.99/AU$60.99.

Magpie (free + $2.99/£2.49/AU$4.49 per month)

Magpie is a mash-up of a notes app and a reminders system, designed for anyone who tends to remember things using photos. Of course, Apple’s own Notes app enables you to add imagery, but Magpie is fully optimized for the task.

In each named list, you can store unlimited numbers of notes. Photos are given prominence within the interface, but you can add text notes, along with a price, link, and location map. The layout of entries is excellent – a big plus over what Notes offers.

The lifetime purchase price of $35.99/£34.99/AU$55.99 is perhaps a touch ambitious, and it would be good to see exported notes match the app’s own gorgeous layouts. But Magpie nonetheless proves its worth for gift lists, and as a means for creative types to craft organized sets of visual reminders.

NordVPN (various IAP)

NordVPN is a VPN for your iPad. It secures and encrypts all internet traffic from your device, making it almost impossible for anyone else to decipher. Because you can connect to servers in specific countries, you can also use it to get around geographic restrictions.

This might all sound a bit suspicious, but VPNs are increasingly vital. They enable you to secure your connection on public Wi-Fi, and to access key websites and services that would otherwise be inaccessible – whether for political or commercial reasons.

NordVPN works very nicely on iPad. It’s easy to set things up, and a breeze to use. Connections tend to be reliable and only rarely noticeably slower than standard Wi-Fi. Do, though, subscribe via the NordVPN website rather than through the app, because you’ll get much better offers.

MindNode 6 (free + $14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99)

MindNode 6 is a desktop-quality mind-mapping tool. You can start with a blank canvas and a central thought, and add further nodes to connect. Or there’s a Quick Entry system that converts a bullet-point list to a mind map with a single tap.

Either way, once you get going, you’ll appreciate MindNode’s flexibility. The app makes good use of the touchscreen, allowing free-form diagram construction, or you can enforce stricter layouts by way of pre-defined positioning. 

Should your mind map become complex, you can focus on one part, fading out the rest. Stickers, images, and color options ensure what you create can have added context and visual interest.

With iCloud support, your mind maps are available to other iOS devices as well. And a wide range of export formats means the ideas you get out of your head are easily shareable with others.

1Blocker X - Adblock ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

1Blocker X - Adblock blocks annoyances that may otherwise worsen your internet browsing experience on iPad.

Approve 1Blocker X in Settings, then configure it to block adverts, trackers, social widgets and more on a global basis. You can also hide specific web page elements, if they annoy or bother you. The net result is nippier browsing and more privacy.

If there are sites you’d like to support by not blocking their ads, 1Blocker makes this easy, too. You can manually define a whitelist in the app itself, or whitelist directly in Safari from the Share sheet.

With 1Blocker X being a premium app, and the indie creators prizing privacy, you can be sure this is the real deal. In short, it’s best-in-kind on iPad, and highly recommended.

Yoink (US$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

Yoink is what’s known as a ‘shelf’ app – a kind of souped-up clipboard that can be used to collate files and content from disparate sources.

On iPad, Yoink proves especially useful, working in Split View and Slide Over, and making it a cinch to gather images, text, URLs and documents. You can import items as well, and even get at things you’ve stashed on other devices by way of iCloud sync.

With extended use, Yoink feels like an app that sweats the details. Copying and removing items depends on the status of a padlock icon. What you’ve saved in Yoink can be browsed in Apple’s Files app. You can edit text documents within Yoink, and interact with it via Siri. In all, it’s indispensable for power users – or anyone wanting a place to quickly store items before subsequently sharing them. 

LiquidText PDF Reader (free + US$29.99/£29.99/AU$46.99)

LiquidText PDF Reader has a misleading name. Although it is for reading and annotating PDFs, thinking it only capable of those things does the app a disservice. Really, you should consider it a hugely powerful product for dynamically gathering your thoughts, and quickly getting at important content within documents.

For free, you can import PDFs (along with Microsoft Office files), make highlights, and drag excerpts to a work area. Go pro and you can gather and link information across multiple files.

The app feels perfectly suited to the touchscreen. You can use Apple Pencil to scribble live ink lines that become dynamic links between documents. Gestures enable you to quickly collapse lengthy documents to read highlights, search results, or non-contiguous pages. For students, researchers, and anyone who wants to go beyond paper, LiquidText is a must-have.

Noted (free + $0.99/79p/AU$1.49)

Noted cleverly combines an audio recorder and notepad. The rich text editor is like a simplified Pages, with predefined styles for headings and lists, image support, and a highlighter for drawing a reader’s attention to important bits.

That’s nothing new on iPad, but the way text and audio integrate is. During recordings, tapping the tag button adds an inline ‘#TimeTag’. Tapping this tag later will jump to the relevant point in the recording. This means you can spend more time in meetings and lectures listening, and later return to flesh out brief notes, adding context based on the audio.

Naturally, Noted’s own format is bespoke, but you can share notes with other users via iCloud. Otherwise, you can export audio to M4A format, and everything else to PDF. In all, then, an ideal productivity aid for a wide range of scenarios.

OmniOutliner 3 (from $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

OmniOutliner 3 is a desktop-quality outlining tool that aims to bring structured writing to the masses.

It’s effectively two apps in one. Essentials is about quickly getting down and organizing ideas hierarchically. It’s quick and easy to add, promote and demote items (including with a physical keyboard, so you don’t have to keep reaching for the screen), and to shift rows around with drag and drop. The built-in search further elevates the app from more basic tools, filtering out non-matching rows so you only see only what’s relevant.

If your needs are greater, you can opt for Pro (US$39.99/£38.99/AU$62.99). This pushes the app towards word processing and spreadsheet territory, adding automation, styling options for document types (lists, book drafts, mathematical and so on) and section navigation from a sidebar. In either incarnation, the app is excellent, and a free two-week trial lets you switch between both versions to see which best suits.

Things 3 ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Things 3 is a powerful task manager based around to-dos. Its ultimate aim is to ensure you get more done, and this is achieved by a smart and sleek workflow model that makes it simple to collect your thoughts, figure out your day, and plan far into the future.

The app can be as expansive or as simple as you need it to be. You can live in the Today and Upcoming views, working from basic to-dos, or add extra context and nested lists for more complex tasks. As of iOS 11, Things 3 added support for Split View and drag-and-drop, so you can drag links or emails right to a to-do.

This is the kind of app where you quickly wonder how you lived without it. And although it’s pricey when you buy it across iPad, iPhone and Mac, the time you’ll gain ensures it’s good value for money.

Soulver ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Soulver is more or less the love child of a spreadsheet and the kind of calculations you do on the back of an envelope. You write figures in context, and Souvler extracts the maths bits and tots up totals; each line's results can be used as a token in subsequent lines, enabling live updating of complex calculations. Drafts can be saved, exported to HTML, and also synced via Dropbox or iCloud.

Initially, the app feels a bit alien, given that people have been used to digital versions of desktop calculators since the dawn of home computing. But scribbling down sums in Soulver soon becomes second nature.

The best iPad weather and travel apps

Our favorite iPad apps for weather forecasts and planning a journey.

Ventusky ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Ventusky is a weather app that feels at home on iPad. Instead of filling your screen with stats and figures, it focuses on a beautifully animated map. Wind patterns streak across your display, helping to outline where weather’s coming from (and heading to).

The map is interactive. Layers can be switched between conditions, including temperature, rainfall, and cloud cover. You can pinch to zoom, shrinking the map to a tiny globe you can spin with a finger. (A 2D alternative exists in the settings.)

Drag the location forecast upward and you can dig down into further details: an hourly forecast; precipitation graphs; moon phases. It lacks the ‘Will I get soaked?’ imminent rainfall warning from Dark Sky, but as an exploratory large-screen iPad app, Ventusky is an excellent purchase.

CARROT Weather ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 + IAP)

CARROT Weather is a weather app helmed by a human-hating AI. As you check whether it will be sunny tomorrow, CARROT will helpfully call you a ‘meatbag’ and threaten to hurl cows at you.

It sounds gimmicky, but the constant snark adds color and personality to a kind of app usually devoid of both. That’s the case elsewhere, too: the forecasts are beautifully illustrated, and make fantastic use of the iPad’s large screen. The Today view widget is excellent, and the multi-layered maps are detailed.

The main downside is this comes at a cost – literally. Mapping data is pricey – as are notifications. If you want the best of both, you’ll need an IAP sub. But even in its standard incarnation, CARROT gives you information and entertainment, propelling it ahead of strait-laced competitors.

WeatherPro for iPad (US$0.99/79p/AU$0.99)

WeatherPro for iPad is a weather app for people at the geekier end of the spectrum when it comes to meteorology and forecasts. It’s far from the prettiest app in the world, but it does pack a ton of information into your iPad’s display.

Set up several locations and their current conditions sit in a scrolling pane at the side of the screen. For the current selection, you can in the main pane check out a rainfall radar, along with the outlook for the coming week. And that’s way beyond a few symbols and temperature predictions – graphs and wiggly lines outline sun hours, precipitation, wind, and more.

For at-a-glance forecasting, you’re probably better off with Dark Sky. But for digging into the details, Weather Pro’s a good bet, especially considering the small outlay. 

Dark Sky Weather ($3.99/£3.99)

Dark Sky Weather provides weather forecasts with an emphasis on hyperlocal rainfall. The Forecast tab displays current conditions, with a handy map indicating the movements of nearby storms. If rain’s imminent, its severity is shown in graph form.

Below that are outlooks for the next 24 hours and upcoming week. The app also includes notifications, including the means to make custom ones triggered by changes in temperature, rain/snowfall, wind, UV, and humidity.

In the past, Dark Sky never felt optimized for iPad. It’s still a bit wasteful of space (notably in the tricky-to-parse Next 24 Hours view), but the latest redesign feels more considered and less like a blown-up iPhone app.

Also, the Map view is best experienced on a tablet, where you can watch the ebb and flow of temperatures and rainfall across a virtual Earth you spin with a finger.

Poison Maps ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Poison Maps is an app for finding points of interest – POIs – on maps. Hence: Poison Maps. If you were hoping it’d provide insight into finding toxins, you’re out of luck, but for restaurants, hotels, banks, tourist attractions, parking, shops, hospitals and so on, it does the job – millions of such POIs can be found by way of the efficient search function.

This might strike you as unnecessary, given the existence of the entirely free Google Maps, but Poison Maps has some trump cards. First, it has interesting and useful interface components, such as signs that clearly denote the distance to and direction of off-screen POIs.

Beyond static POIs, cycling and transport routes are built-in. Poison Maps also works offline, so should you find yourself in a new town and without a data connection, you’ll still have a fighting chance of finding the things you need.

Tinyclouds (US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Tinyclouds is an adorable weather app. That’s perhaps a slightly odd description to use for something that’s usually utilitarian, but then Carrot Weather (elsewhere in this list) showcases how weather apps can have a character of their own, and Tinyclouds is certainly unique.

Select a location (you can store several within the app) and it provides a big temperature reading at the top of the sidebar, along with a forecast for the rest of the day and an outlook for the coming week. The rest of the screen is an ever-changing isometric city, with cars zipping about, its weather mirroring that of your chosen location.

The app does, admittedly, feel like a sketch – it could do with more detail, and at least a wider range of views. Still, as a simple, great-looking weather app for a docked and charging iPad, it’s well worth a couple of bucks.

Living Earth ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

As a combination clock and weather app, Living Earth works well across all iOS devices, but use it with an iPad in a stand and you've got something that'll make other clocks in the immediate vicinity green with envy.

As you might expect, your first job with the app is to define the cities you'd like to keep track of. At any point, you can then switch between them, updating the main clock and weather forecasts accordingly. Tap the weather and you can access an extended forecast for the week; tap the location and you get the current times and weather for your defined locations.

But it's the Earth that gets pride of place, taking up the bulk of the screen. It shows clouds by default, although weather geeks can instead choose colors denoting temperature, wind speed or humidity values. Then with a little swipe the globe rotates, neatly showing heavily populated locations during night time as lattices of artificial man-made light.

Google Maps (free)

You might argue that Google Maps is far better suited to a smartphone, but we reckon the king of mapping apps deserves a place on your iPad, too. Apple's own Maps app has improved, but Google still outsmarts its rival when it comes to public transport, finding local businesses, saving chunks of maps offline, and virtual tourism by way of Street View.

Google's 'OS within an OS' also affords a certain amount of cross-device sync when it comes to searches. We don't, however, recommend you strap your cellular iPad to your steering wheel and use Google Maps as a sat-nav replacement, unless you want to come across as some kind of nutcase.

It's the apps that really set iOS apart from other platforms - there are higher quality apps available on the App Store for the iPad than any other tablet. So which ones are worth your cash? And which are the best free apps?

Luckily for you we've tested thousands of the best iPad apps so that you don't have to. So read on for our selection of the best iPad apps - the definitive list of what applications you need to download for your iPad now.

• Haven't bought an iPad yet and not sure which is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.

If you are looking for games, then head over to Best iPad games - where we showcase the greatest games around for your iOS device. Or if you're using an iPhone X or iPhone 8 head over to our best iPhone apps list. And if you're a professional, you may want to head straight to our top business apps.

New: Linea Sketch ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Linea Sketch carefully balances power, ease of use and control to help you capture visual ideas.

Rather than drowning you in features and toolbars, tools sit in slimline strips at the side of the screen.This makes it a cinch to select colors, work across five layers (into which you can import photos), choose backgrounds and grids, and get on with sketching. You can adjust the thickness of pen lines, block in areas with a fill tool, use a blend tool to make your work feel less digital, and convert rough scribbles to adjustable geometric polygons by way of ZipShapes.

This still isn’t a full-fledged artist package – you’d need Procreate for that – but as a base for visual notes, quick design sketches, and drawing without fuss, there’s nothing better on iPad.

Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!

David Bowie is… takes 2013’s blockbuster Bowie exhibition and stuffs it inside of your iPad as an AR experience.

Curated by theme rather than chronologically, the exhibition is a set of interactive scenes, ‘projected’ onto your desktop. Optional narration by Gary Oldman adds backstory as you examine lyrics, costumes and videos, exploring the life of a music icon.

On iPad, David Bowie is… works especially well. The screen’s squarer aspect ratio makes examining content less awkward than on iPhone, and the larger display lets everything shine. The only thing that might give you pause is the price, but for far less than a ticket to the original exhibition, you get unlimited access to all the goodies – including dozens of songs and videos – without having to peer over other people’s shoulders.

Glitch Art Studio is an effects app that aims to make even dull photos and videos look interesting. The filters are based around glitches and animated distortion, and can be edited to the point you can barely tell what the subject was.

Depending on whether you’re in it for speed or control, you can delve into presets or a bunch of individual menus respectively. Either way, you’ll end up concocting something resembling the display of a barely working old television, or some kind of deranged hallucinogenic episode.

On iPad, the larger canvas lets you fully appreciate the effects on offer – which are deeply impressive. If you’re fed up with filters that ape old paintings, use Glitch Studio to bring your creative photographic endeavors kicking and screaming into the (relatively) modern era.

djay is a full-featured DJ solution for iOS. You get a two-deck mode with crossfader, looping, and effects for free, but splash out on the pro subscription and you’re instantly equipped with enough DJ power to keep you spinning decks into the small hours.

You get a two-deck view with flanking libraries – and a four-deck view when two isn’t enough. There’s VJ mixing when you fancy adding some video, support for a slew of controllers, and over 1GB of samples you can fire off to stamp your personal style over whatever’s blasting from the local sound system.

Naturally, it’s total overkill (albeit fun total overkill) for the typical home user; but if you’re a pro DJ armed with an external controller, it may well be enough to chuck all that traditional kit on eBay.

Sizzle & Stew shows why young children – along with sloths and llamas – need supervision in the kitchen. Your kid helps the furry duo concoct culinary ‘delights’ that would give a Michelin Star chef chills.

Creating dishes involves partaking in all manner of havoc in the kitchen. Want to microwave a carrot into oblivion? Go for it. Stick broccoli in the oven until it’s unrecognizable? Sure. In the washing machine, too? That’s even tastier. (Just as well, then, that these beasts will eat anything.)

With its absurdist, open-ended, risk-free nature, Sizzle & Stew is bound to appeal to kids. Even better, on iPad a simultaneous two-player split-screen mode has room to breathe, so you can pit your skills against your kid’s – shortly before finding out neither of you’s likely to get a TV chef gig.

Bloom: 10 Worlds is the follow-up to 2008’s Bloom, which never made it to iPad. That app had you tap the screen to simultaneously play notes and create spots of color. The former looped and slowly evolved; the latter disappeared into the background like ripples in a pond.

10 Worlds expands this premise out from a ‘single’ into a full album. There are 10 takes on the format to enjoy, each with its own visuals and audio. The visuals in particular have been significantly improved from the original Bloom, replacing that app’s hard geometric forms with a more painterly approach.

However, it’s the intriguing mix of instrument, album, and art that still shines through. The result is an essential addition to iPad, perfectly complementing existing Eno/Chilvers collaborations Scape and Reflection. 

SquareSynth 2 is an iPad synth that recalls the era of 8-bit computing. Its capabilities and pre-sets blast audio goodness into your ears that might once have emanated from a NES or a Commodore 64. And although such sounds are of their time, they can provide some much-needed punch to any contemporary composition.

For dabblers, the noises alone will be fun enough. But start playing with the editor and you’ll find plenty of scope for working up your own ear-smashing sounds.

Audiobus and AudioUnit support means custom creations aren’t stuck in the app either – you can wire up SquareSynth 2 to all manner of iPad apps, or even squirt the entire thing into GarageBand. Good stuff, then, for twanging your nostalgia gland, or just getting lo-fi electronic sounds into your tracks.

Paprika is ideal for people who live in the kitchen. Whereas other cooking apps are content to serve up some recipes and a shopping list, Paprika is a full-fledged scrapbook and meal planner you can use for every aspect of your culinary world.

Recipes can be added manually or snipped from favorite websites. Anything added to the app can be adjusted, if you decide you’ve figured out a way to improve the dish or preparation methods, or fancy adding some photos. Beyond that, there’s an ingredients tracker, meal planner (with Calendar integration), menu creator, and the means to print recipes.

It’s not as visually flashy as the likes of Kitchen Stories and Tasty, but Paprika feels like the best bet for anyone whose iPad spends almost as much time in the kitchen as they do.

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged takes a warehouse-sized art exhibit and transforms it into a virtual space. This means instead of getting a digital book, where you swipe between stills, you instead experience the context and atmospherics of the original show, dragging the screen to move, or actually walking around in AR, adjusting your view on the basis of where you hold your iPad.

Fairey – creator of the iconic ‘Hope’ image of Barack Obama – is on fine form here, exploring issues relating to social media, celebrity, and the notion of constructing your own reality. Optionally, his narrative can accompany your journey around his work, adding extra insight. But however you check out Damaged, it proves itself to be the finest example of a virtual gallery on mobile, looking to the future rather than the past.

Oilist comes across like someone’s trapped over 40 painters inside your iPad. Feed the app an image, and it’s recreated in the style – and level of abstraction – of your choosing.

You also get to be a back-seat artist, if you so desire. By tapping buttons at the side of the screen, you can fiddle with mood and brush types, or introduce ‘chaos’ and ‘gravity’ in a disruptive manner that probably makes the virtual artist want to stab you in the eye with their brush.

At any point, you can save a snap of the current work, which in 4K resolution is suitable for printing. Superb stuff, then, whether you want to turn treasured holiday snaps into a Van Gogh, or just fancy some mesmerizing living art to stare at. 

Tweetbot 5 is a premium Twitter client. Unlike Twitter’s own client, which is determined to present tweets as it sees fit, Tweetbot lists tweets in order, omits ads, and doesn’t clutter up your mentions feed with notifications about retweets and likes. There’s a night mode, for tweeting in the dark, iCloud sync across devices for keeping your place, and nice sound effects that make the app feel alive.

On iPad, the app of course supports Split View and Slide Over, but it also has its own built-in column view. This means if you’re the kind of person who lives on Twitter, you can, for example, simultaneously scroll through your feed in the main pane, while chatting with people via direct messages in another. Top stuff for power users – or anyone who wants to avoid social network noise.

VideoGrade is a color-grading app for video, giving you a taste of Hollywood on your iPad.

It’s a powerful app, but one that’s nonetheless straightforward to use. On launch, it finds all your videos. Select one and tools are displayed at the right-hand side of the screen. Open a menu, drag a slider, and changes are made instantly. Any tool used gets a handy green dot next to its name, helping you keep track of complex adjustments.

Filters (color changes, levels, pixelation and so on) are applied live, and a single tap fires up a full preview. Combinations of settings can be saved for later reuse. Also, the app’s various presets are available as a Photos extension. That means you needn’t even delve headlong into VideoGrade itself to apply some of its magic to your favorite videos.

Yoink is what’s known as a ‘shelf’ app – a kind of souped-up clipboard that can be used to collate files and content from disparate sources.

On iPad, Yoink proves especially useful, working in Split View and Slide Over, and making it a cinch to gather images, text, URLs and documents. You can import items as well, and even get at things you’ve stashed on other devices by way of iCloud sync.

With extended use, Yoink feels like an app that sweats the details. Copying and removing items depends on the status of a padlock icon. What you’ve saved in Yoink can be browsed in Apple’s Files app. You can edit text documents within Yoink, and interact with it via Siri. In all, it’s indispensable for power users – or anyone wanting a place to quickly store items before subsequently sharing them.

WeatherPro for iPad is a weather app for people at the geekier end of the spectrum when it comes to meteorology and forecasts. It’s far from the prettiest app in the world, but it does pack a ton of information into your iPad’s display.

Set up several locations and their current conditions sit in a scrolling pane at the side of the screen. For the current selection, you can in the main pane check out a rainfall radar, along with the outlook for the coming week. And that’s way beyond a few symbols and temperature predictions – graphs and wiggly lines outline sun hours, precipitation, wind, and more.

For at-a-glance forecasting, you’re probably better off with Dark Sky. But for digging into the details, Weather Pro’s a good bet, especially considering the small outlay.

Ferrite Recording Studio at first looks like a souped-up voice memos app, but beneath lies a powerful multi-track editor, so if you’re armed with an iPad, the app and some time, you can create your own podcast.

For free, there are limitations: an hour of recording, ten-minute projects and three tracks. Go Pro and Ferrite gives desktop editors a run for their money: 32 tracks, projects up to a day long, and recording time limited only by the space on your iPad.

The pro version adds further handy tools for improving recordings, such as effects, auto-leveling, MP3 chapters and dead air removal, bt the most impressive thing is how this all comes together. Ferrite might be powerful, but it’s also extremely usable. It therefore comes highly recommended if you’ve any interest in multi-track voice recording projects.

Dark Sky Weather provides weather forecasts with an emphasis on hyperlocal rainfall. The Forecast tab displays current conditions, with a handy map indicating the movements of nearby storms. If rain’s imminent, its severity is shown in graph form.

Below that are outlooks for the next 24 hours and upcoming week. The app also includes notifications, including the means to make custom ones triggered by changes in temperature, rain/snowfall, wind, UV, and humidity.

In the past, Dark Sky never felt optimized for iPad. It’s still a bit wasteful of space (notably in the tricky-to-parse Next 24 Hours view), but the latest redesign feels more considered and less like a blown-up iPhone app.

Also, the Map view is best experienced on a tablet, where you can watch the ebb and flow of temperatures and rainfall across a virtual Earth you spin with a finger.

Drafts 5 initially looks like a straightforward text editor, albeit one with a heavily loaded custom keyboard bar. As you type, a word/character count keeps track in the corner, and you can prod the aforementioned bar’s buttons to perform actions, and adjust the cursor’s position.

What sets Drafts apart is its flexibility. For one thing, the keyboard bar can be customized. When a text is completed, it can be tagged for easier subsequent retrieval in the app’s inbox. And actions enable you to process text or send it elsewhere.

That’s all in the free tier, but splash out on Pro and Drafts becomes a seriously powerful tool. You can create and edit automation actions, change the app’s theme, adjust your workspace, and explore pro-oriented widgets. It feels like the spiritual successor to Editorial, and in either incarnation is a must-have for writers.

Streaks is habit-forming – in a good way. It’s effectively a to-do manager that focuses on what you want to do in your life – and bad habits you want to eradicate.

To get started, you create tasks, assign icons, and define durations. The app’s flexible regarding how often tasks should be done; and you can create time-based ones (whereupon the app temporarily becomes a timer), those that interact with Apple’s Health app, and ‘negative’ ones you don’t want to ‘complete’. Streaks then tracks your progress in handy graph form.

The app’s iPhone origins are obvious, not least in the main display that’s optimized for six tasks and therefore looks comical on iPad. But it’s nonetheless great to have this superb app in native form on Apple’s tablet, and iCloud sync ensures any changes you make are accessible across all your Apple gear.

Patterning 2 offers a decidedly different spin on drum machines and rhythm making. Rather than you smacking a set of virtual pads, or tapping out notes on a grid, Patterning 2 gives you a wheel. In fact, it gives you several – one for each of eight selectable drum samples.

The interface might be unique, but it’s also versatile. You drag sliders to set an item’s properties. Depending on the selected layer, you can quickly adjust velocity, panning, and tuning; the last of those opening up many possibilities for melodies.

Patterning 2 also wants you to experiment - automation, per-sample directional playback, and randomization can make for complex, rich rhythms you’d be hard pressed to make in any other music app on your iPad.

Procreate is the kind of digital painting app that could feasibly tear jobbing artists away from the desktop. Feature rich, it also has an immediacy that makes it approachable for relative newcomers looking to paint on a touchscreen.

The interface is unobtrusive; by default, tools are accessed from a strip at the top of the screen, and brush size and opacity sliders sit at the left. Simple gestures can take you full screen, or undo a duff stroke.

This simple interface is augmented with a slew of features: custom, sharable brushes; layers with masking; drawing guides (such as isometric grids); live symmetry effects; Quickline for snapping strokes to straight lines; warp and liquify. As your skills advance, you can export video of you painting your masterpiece – or a 30-second timelapse ready for social media.

Affinity Designer brings desktop-grade vector illustration to iPad. Its huge range of tools are ideally suited to anything from high-end illustrations through to interface design. Every stroke always remains editable, and you can zoom to an absurd degree, and never lose detail.

The app works nicely with Apple Pencil or your own digits, and has a smart gestural system where holding fingers on the screen mirrors desktop keyboard modifiers. Elsewhere, you can pinch layers to group them, or drag one layer on to another to create a mask.

This is an app you can get lost in – but in a good way. The more you use it, the more you realize its sheer scope. And it even shares a file format with Affinity Photo, so you can bounce documents between the two without losing anything.

LiquidText PDF Reader has a misleading name. Although it is for reading and annotating PDFs, thinking it only capable of those things does the app a disservice. Really, you should consider it a hugely powerful product for dynamically gathering your thoughts, and quickly getting at important content within documents.

For free, you can import PDFs (along with Microsoft Office files), make highlights, and drag excerpts to a work area. Go pro and you can gather and link information across multiple files.

The app feels perfectly suited to the touchscreen. You can use Apple Pencil to scribble live ink lines that become dynamic links between documents. Gestures enable you to quickly collapse lengthy documents to read highlights, search results, or non-contiguous pages. For students, researchers, and anyone who wants to go beyond paper, LiquidText is a must-have.

Pixelmator is a full-featured but approachable photo and image editor. Loosely based on its desktop cousin, it provides a raft of creative tools, whether you need to make a few tweaks to a favorite photo, or have a burning desire to craft a multi-layered composition comprising images, drawings, text and shapes.

The app doesn’t try to ape desktop editors in terms of interaction. Brush selection, for example, provides a full-screen view with large tappable previews. And although adjustment controls sit within a sidebar, this still feels friendly rather than complex; the last thing Pixelmator wants to do is pack the screen with palettes.

If nothing else, this app also represents astonishing value for money. Pixelmator is the logical next step when Snapseed doesn’t meet your creative demands, and you desire the freedom to begin photographic artwork from a blank canvas, rather than just tweak the odd snap.

Scanbot Pro is a scanner app that uses your iPad’s camera to snap documents. Assuming there’s sufficient contrast, outlines are automatically cropped, whereupon you can rotate, color-adjust, and save the result.

To some extent, this echoes functionality now built into Apple’s Notes app, but there’s an advantage to having a standalone app for scanning. It’s faster and more efficient, for one. But also, this app does more than just scan.

Your documents remain within the app and can be signed and annotated. OCR technology attempts – with some success – to create searchable text from your images, and to extract important details. These are presented as action triggers, for example to kick off a phone call or visit a website. In all, then, probably more useful than a hardware scanner – and rather more convenient to carry around with you too.

Lily invites you to make music from geometric, minimal spinning flowers. You select a color and shape – the former dictating the instrument, and the latter the lily’s petals. Open the flower and you then gain access to a pulsating playback head.

At this point, you get to set notes by dragging bars across horizontal regions. Repeat the process with multiple lilies and you’ll soon have an oddly delicate cacophony serenading your ears. This music can be exported, and you can save your current composition when you want to start a new one.

Lily is a very sweet app. It’s rather too abstract to be as immediate is it would like, but if you fancy a decidedly different and exploratory, playful take on music-making, it’s a joy.

Noted cleverly combines an audio recorder and notepad. The rich text editor is like a simplified Pages, with predefined styles for headings and lists, image support, and a highlighter for drawing a reader’s attention to important bits.

That’s nothing new on iPad, but the way text and audio integrate is. During recordings, tapping the tag button adds an inline ‘#TimeTag’. Tapping this tag later will jump to the relevant point in the recording. This means you can spend more time in meetings and lectures listening, and later return to flesh out brief notes, adding context based on the audio.

Naturally, Noted’s own format is bespoke, but you can share notes with other users via iCloud. Otherwise, you can export audio to M4A format, and everything else to PDF. In all, then, an ideal productivity aid for a wide range of scenarios.

Poison Maps is an app for finding points of interest – POIs – on maps. Hence: Poison Maps. If you were hoping it’d provide insight into finding toxins, you’re out of luck, but for restaurants, hotels, banks, tourist attractions, parking, shops, hospitals and so on, it does the job – millions of such POIs can be found by way of the efficient search function.

This might strike you as unnecessary, given the existence of the entirely free Google Maps, but Poison Maps has some trump cards. First, it has interesting and useful interface components, such as signs that clearly denote the distance to and direction of off-screen POIs.

Beyond static POIs, cycling and transport routes are built-in. Poison Maps also works offline, so should you find yourself in a new town and without a data connection, you’ll still have a fighting chance of finding the things you need.

CARROT Fit is the answer if a more sensible exercise app just isn’t doing it for you. Like CARROT Weather, this fitness tool is helmed by a snarky, sarcastic AI. Here, she comes across like the deranged offspring of HAL 9000 and a personal trainer. To wit, she’ll threaten, ridicule and bribe you, in order to “prevent your body from blimping up.”

The actual exercise bit is, broadly speaking, conventional, in that you partake in recognizable routines. But even there, CARROT Fit has a very distinct character, referring to push-ups as ‘Kowtows to Cthulhu,’ and subtly renaming the seven-minute workout ‘7 Minutes in Hell.’ Still, you’ll likely need some humor when sitting on the floor in a sweaty heap after a few minutes of exercise, and CARROT Fit has that over its straight-laced contemporaries.

Away is an ambitious, multi-layered relaxation aid. It depicts a single scene, focused on a large blossom tree near a stream. Chill-out music begins when you tap the play button, mixed with sounds from the scene.

Tap the settings button to select from three background tracks and adjust the mix. You can also shift the visual scene from sunrise to night time, with each period of day offering new sounds. There’s also a mixing disc that you can use to determine which sounds you’d like to be more prominent, such as leaves in the wind, the babbling stream or twittering birds.

There’s a timer for defined meditation sessions, and if you hanker for more, the app’s developer offers several similar themed multi-scene apps based around wind, rain, and water sounds.

Pause puts relaxation at your fingertip as you use a digit to slowly track a pulsating blob. It gradually fills the screen, whereupon the app urges you to close your eyes and keep mindfully moving your finger. A bell sounds when it’s time to return to the real world.

The app’s creator talks of Tai Chi principles and EEG-technology validation, and it’s easy to be skeptical of such claims, but Pause can be effective. Slow, deliberate movements provide a sense of focus and calm, augmented by ambient audio.

Pause could be more helpful in some ways – it stops if you move too fast, when an audible warning would be better, and you may find using it on iPad unwieldy. With the right setup and frame of mind, however, Pause provides a beautiful, tactile route into mindfulness on your iPad.

Tinyclouds is an adorable weather app. That’s perhaps a slightly odd description to use for something that’s usually utilitarian, but then Carrot Weather (elsewhere in this list) showcases how weather apps can have a character of their own, and Tinyclouds is certainly unique.

Select a location (you can store several within the app) and it provides a big temperature reading at the top of the sidebar, along with a forecast for the rest of the day and an outlook for the coming week. The rest of the screen is an ever-changing isometric city, with cars zipping about, its weather mirroring that of your chosen location.

The app does, admittedly, feel like a sketch – it could do with more detail, and at least a wider range of views. Still, as a simple, great-looking weather app for a docked and charging iPad, it’s well worth a couple of bucks.

White Noise+ is a sound machine designed to reduce distractions by way of ambient noise. Many apps in this space are a bit new age and flowery, and quite a few are, frankly, rubbish. Fortunately, White Noise+ is none of those things, instead providing a thoroughly modern, tactile take on noise generation.

The app’s based around a grid akin to smart drums in GarageBand. Here, you get 16 slots, into which you drag icons that represent different sounds. Those toward the top play more loudly, and those toward the right have more complex loops. Your mixes can be saved, and sleep timers and alarms are available if you want to use White Noise+ for meditation sessions – or for waking you up should you doze off.

You get a handful of sounds to play with for free, but the full set requires a one-off IAP. Given the quality of the app, it’s well worth the outlay.

Streaks Workout wants you to get fit. Such apps are usually associated with iPhone – hardly surprising, seeing as you’re unlikely to go jogging with an iPad strapped to your arm – but for quick sessions of personal training, it fits the bill.

You select from the exercises you’re happy to perform, and choose a workout length – from six minutes (‘quick’) to 30 (‘pain’). The app then randomly sends exercises your way, which are impossible to miss on the large display.

When you’re done with an exercise, you tap the screen to continue, but if you find that a distraction, you can switch from rep counts to timed exercise periods. You can create bespoke custom workouts, too.

During downtime, you can collapse in a heap and flick through saved statistics, mulling that iCloud support means Streaks Workout can follow you to every device, meaning you’ve no excuse to ever stop exercising.

Ventusky is a weather service that started out online, but feels like it was always destined for iPad.

Select a location and the main view enables you to switch the large map between various weather layers, including temperature, precipitation, snow cover, and air pressure. If you’re a weather nerd (and/or British), drag upward and you get an extended forecast to scroll through, along with a ton of graphs and data to bury yourself in.

The one snag is Ventusky lacks Dark Sky’s animated radar, and so you don’t see storms rolling in – just where they will be during a three-hour window. Even so, the wind streaking across your display as tiny white lines helps you understand why conditions are the way they are.

In short, then, this app looks great, is wonderfully tactile, and is pleasingly different from its contemporaries.

Samplebot on the iPhone is primarily about collecting sounds and using them to make a noise (by way of live playback on a pad grid), or turning them into oddball songs via an easy to use built-in sequencer. This is still possible on iPad of course, but with a less portable device, Samplebot’s other abilities transform it into a subtly different app.

Although you can of course still record you tapping pots, pans, glasses, and your own head, Samplebot can also bring in audio from Music, iCloud Drive, or the iOS clipboard, and sample from other apps if you’ve got Audiobus installed.

The end result is a grid pad and sample editor that’s immense fun to play around with, twinned with a sequencer that’s simple, but still powerful enough to sketch out the basics of your next hit record.

Retrospecs is a photo filter app that revels in the history of computing and gaming. Rather than turning any photo or image into a tiny Picasso with a tap, it instead reimagines whatever you load as if it was on the screen of a Game Boy, Apple Mac or C64.

In fact, over 40 systems exist once you pay for the IAP (you can test Retrospecs for free with a small selection), and if that’s not enough, you can fashion your own custom emulations. For properly authentic retro output, you can edit dither modes, add glitch animations, tweak CRT effects and more.

Full support for video combined with some bonkers filters (PETSCII! Teletext!) adds scope for YouTube weirdness. But even if you only grab Retrospecs because you’ve always wondered what your face would look like on a NES, it’s worth the outlay.

Monster Park - AR Dino World figures everyone should have their own dinosaur park, and enables you to create one on a table, in a garden, or in a mall when you’re feeling hemmed in by concrete and glass.

Fire things up and a T-rex stomps about and bellows while pteranodons fly overhead. A US$0.99/99p/AU$1.49 IAP adds extra beasts, and the app enables you to augment your prehistoric critters with a virtual jungle.

Alternatively, position the experience at a distance to create a ‘portal’ into an ancient world, with the T-rex terrifyingly poking its head through and threatening you with its massive teeth.

Interaction is limited (tap the ground to make a dinosaur move, tap it repeatedly to unsportingly knock it down, and record any of your escapades), but this is nonetheless an entertaining take on augmented reality for kids of any age.

OmniOutliner 3 is a desktop-quality outlining tool that aims to bring structured writing to the masses.

It’s effectively two apps in one. Essentials is about quickly getting down and organizing ideas hierarchically. It’s quick and easy to add, promote and demote items (including with a physical keyboard, so you don’t have to keep reaching for the screen), and to shift rows around with drag and drop. The built-in search further elevates the app from more basic tools, filtering out non-matching rows so you only see only what’s relevant.

If your needs are greater, you can opt for Pro (US$38.99/£38.99/AU$62.99). This pushes the app towards word processing and spreadsheet territory, adding automation, styling options for document types (lists, book drafts, mathematical and so on) and section navigation from a sidebar. In either incarnation, the app is excellent, and a free two-week trial lets you switch between both versions to see which best suits.

FileBrowser makes it easy to grab documents from just about anywhere, then view and edit them. Think of it like a companion app to Files. Although Apple’s file manager supports iCloud and integrates with the likes of Dropbox, FileBrowser can explore connected Macs and PCs, FTP servers, NAS servers and more.

Setting things up is straightforward, and the app’s tabbed interface makes it a cinch to quickly switch between sources. Unfortunately, tabs aren’t drag-and-drop aware, but sidebar shortcuts are. File viewing works well, and you can annotate PDFs and create/unpack ZIP archives.

It’d be good to see FileBrowser more fully embrace the space available on iPad – an optional two-pane view, for example. The lack of Share sheet support is also a pity. Other than that, it’s a solid option when your file management needs exceed what Files can do.

Typorama is about adding text to your photos – or creating typographic designs from scratch – with a minimum of effort. Select a photo, flat color, or a stock image background, choose an output size, and you’re ready to get started.

Other apps in this space let you select fonts, but Typorama has you select designs. Enter some text, tap a design style, and what you typed is instantly transformed. If you’re not keen on what you see, tap the style again for variations.

You can add multiple type layers, and apply shadows and gradient effects to each one. There’s also a 3D rotation/perspective tool, and a selective eraser. Some features are locked in the free version and you must put up with watermarks, but there are various IAP available, including the ability to unlock everything for $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99.

Toca Life: Office gives your kids a chance to play out what they imagine their working parents get up to all day – albeit in exciting environments likely more colorful and interesting than the real thing.

For young children, there’s plenty of fun to be had simply in moving the little figures about, and poking backgrounds to see what happens. For slightly older kids, exploration can prove rewarding in other ways – there’s a secret exit from the jail, a working copy machine in the office, and a cafe where you can merrily experiment with what’s on the menu.

Neatly, there’s even a recording feature, so kids can get creative and act out a scene, which can then be shared with friends. In all, this is another superb Toca Boca creation that ticks all the right boxes.

Affinity Photo extinguishes any lingering doubt regarding the iPad’s suitability for creative professionals. In short, it’s Serif’s impressive Mac/PC Photoshop rival, carefully reimagined for the touchscreen.

This is pro-level photo/image-editing fare, and you need the hardware to match – at least an iPad Air 2, but preferably an iPad Pro – but with the right kit, you get a huge range of features for image editing, creation and retouching.

The live filters and liquify tools are particularly impressive, responding to edits in real time. Working with a finger or Pencil is pleasingly tactile in a manner desktop equivalents can’t match.

RAW shooting/processing support, the ability to add fonts, layer isolation, and robust Files integration all cement Affinity Photo’s place among the iPad app greats. And if you become an expert, there’s even a ‘Show Touches’ option for making tutorials that other users can follow.

Core Animator is an app for creating motion graphics on your iPad. If you’ve ever seen Adobe Animate (formerly Flash), you’ll feel at home. If not, the app might take longer to get to grips with, but you’re helped along by built-in tutorials and Core Animator’s usable, logical interface.

The basics involve adding objects to a canvas and manipulating them at various ‘keyframes’ on the timeline. You can adjust each one’s position, rotation, scale, and opacity, and Core Animator deals with all the frames in between.

It’s worth noting there are no drawing tools, so you must import elements created elsewhere. The app also demands time and patience, but give it both and you can end up with superb results.

Things 3 is a powerful task manager based around to-dos. Its ultimate aim is to ensure you get more done, and this is achieved by a smart and sleek workflow model that makes it simple to collect your thoughts, figure out your day, and plan far into the future.

The app can be as expansive or as simple as you need it to be. You can live in the Today and Upcoming views, working from basic to-dos, or add extra context and nested lists for more complex tasks. With iOS 11, Things 3 adds support for Split View and drag-and-drop, so you can drag links or emails right to a to-do.

This is the kind of app where you quickly wonder how you lived without it. And although it’s pricey when you buy it across iPad, iPhone and Mac, the time you’ll gain ensures it’s good value for money.

Bandimal is a music toy for the rest of us. Actually, its App Store description states it’s a music composer for kids, but ignore that because Bandimal is great fun for everyone.

It offers three slots into which you swipe an animal. A quick tap opens a dotted grid, on to which you assign notes by prodding the dots. These trigger loops when the playhead moves over them, and there are no wrong choices.

There’s a drum track too, along with some basic effects and a speed dial. And as you’re composing, your little menagerie will bop to the beat, with animation that’s so much fun it’s sure to make any cartoonists in the vicinity a touch envious.

You might avoid Bandimal because you’re not a musician. Don’t. This app’s only to be avoided if you hate fun.

Concepts is an advanced vector-based sketching and design app. Every stroke remains editable, and similar flexibility is evident elsewhere, with varied grids (dot; lined; isometric), definable gestures, and an adjustable interface.

With version 5, Concepts’ design revamp transformed the main toolbar into a space-efficient tool wheel, from which Copic swatches pleasingly explode when you switch colors. As such, the app’s a touch alien at first, and can be fiddly if you don’t have a Pencil.

But Concepts soon becomes natural and fluid in use, and it’s apparent the app’s been designed for touch, rather than a developer hammering desktop concepts into your iPad.

If you’re not a professional architect, illustrator or the like it might be overkill, but if you’re unsure, you can get a feel for the app for free. IAPs subsequently allow you to unlock shape guides, SVG and PDF export, infinite layers, and object packs.

Artomaton - The Motion Painter is an ‘artificial intelligence artist’ – recreating photos as sketches and paintings. For free, you get a small selection of media, but pay a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP and you unlock the full range, including the arresting ‘Pointil’ (as in ‘lism’), scribbly crayons, and a lovely sketch/watercolor combo.

Unlike most competing apps, this one has many settings for adjusting properties, such as vignettes, stroke width, hatching angle, and color saturation.

It even works with video, and although it takes some time for Artomaton to draw all of the individual frames (just a 20-second clip will need close to 200), output with ‘Sketch&Water’ has a gorgeous scratchy hand-drawn quality.

For free, then, this is a great download; but grab that paid IAP for something really special.

MindNode 5 is a mind-mapping app. That might sound dull, given that such tools are associated with boring business meetings that involve massive whiteboards... and the hope the ground will swallow you up.

But MindNode 5 is different. It’s sleek and fun to use as you smash out ideas. You can start with a Quick Entry list, which the app then turns into a mind map; or you can manually create and position nodes. For more context, it’s possible to add photos, stickers, and notes to your maps. And for when you do have to get properly businesslike, there’s a vertical layout for organizational charts.

Whatever you’re working on, MindNode 5 is far better than paper equivalents – it’s flexible, sharable, and always comprehensible.

Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 represents a leap forward for iPad education apps and digital textbooks alike. In short, it turns your iPad into an anatomy lab – and augmented reality extends this to nearby flat surfaces.

You can explore your virtual cadaver by region or system. Additionally, you can examine cross-sections, micro-anatomy (eyes; bone layers; touch receptors, and so on), and muscle actions. If you want to learn what makes you tick, it’s fascinating to spin a virtual body beneath your finger, and ‘dissect’ it by removing sections.

But the AR element is a real prize, giving you a captivating, slightly unnerving virtual body to explore. Ideal fodder for medical students, then, but great even for the simply curious. And although it’s pricey for the latter audience, the app’s often on sale, most recently dropping as low as $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49. Snap it up if you see it cheap.

Zipped largely fixes a major shortcoming of the iOS Files app for iPad – its inability to deal with ZIP archives. The default Files app merely lets you peek inside a ZIP and extract items one at a time, but Zipped is far more capable.

If you need to unpack an archive, that can be done with a couple of taps. The files within are then saved to a user-defined location – either as they are, or within a named folder.

Creating archives is simple, too, and works via drag and drop in Split View or – an often better option – Slide Over. The one snag is Zipped only recognizes specific file formats, although the most common are covered.

Still, the low price makes it worth grabbing even if you only use it to quickly get at files within ZIPs, rather than laboriously extracting them one by one.

Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga brings the popular PC desktop app for digital artists to the iPad. And we mean that almost literally – Clip Studio looks pretty much identical to the desktop release.

In one sense, this isn’t great news – menus, for example, are fiddly to access, but it does mean you get a feature-rich, powerful app. There are loads of brushes and tools, vector capabilities, effect lines and tones for comic art, and onion skinning for animations. It also takes full advantage of Pencil, so pro artists can be freed from the desktop, and work wherever they like.

The app could do with better export and desktop workflow integration, and even some fans might be irked by the subscription model. But Clip Studio’s features and quality mean most will muddle through the former issues and pay for the latter.

Zen Studio is a unique, beautifully conceived painting and coloring app. Instead of giving you a blank canvas for free-form scribbling, Zen Studio opts for a triangular grid. Tap spaces and they fill with your selected color as a note plays. This combination of coloring and ad-hoc melody proves very relaxing – for children and adults alike.

In its free version, this is an entertaining app, but it’s worth grabbing the main $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP. This lets you save unlimited drawings (rather than just eight), and unlocks white paint, which acts as an eraser on compositions with white backgrounds.

It also provides access to a slew of tutorials. These have you build up a picture by coloring inside stencils, which even a two-year-old should be able to cope with – and then subsequently scrawl over when the stencils disappear.

Percolator is a photo filter app for ‘brewing’ circular mosaics using a custom recipe. The coffee theme is fanciful, but it is admittedly lovely to see your photo explode into a bunch of bubbles that disappear and then reform when major changes are made to the ‘grind’ (circle size and effect) settings.

Mostly, though, we were impressed by Percolator because its effects range from the bizarre to the beautiful. Some have a kind of classical feel, a few look like high-end art posters, and with careful tweaking of ‘brew’ (pattern and blend) and ‘serve’ (effect and texture) settings, you can even approximate painterly effects.

It’s a pity you can’t save your own custom presets, although the app does at least offer some examples to get you started. For the most part, though, Percolator’s a tasty treat.

Prompts is a writing tool designed for anyone having a hard time getting started. Create a new document and the app draws from over 300,000 unique starting lines and prompts. If you’re not keen on what it provides, tap refresh until you get something suitably inspirational.

As you’re typing away, the app then leaves you alone, but you can at any point tap the prompts icon to get a further helping hand. Often, the suggestions are rather obvious, but that doesn’t mean they’re not helpful.

The app also includes a tracking and statistics system, to try and get you writing regularly. On that basis, it’s a useful training aid to keep your writing ‘muscles’ fit and healthy, even if you naturally gravitate towards Scrivener and iA Writer when it’s time to get down to serious writing.

Little Digits is a new spin on finger counting, making use of the iPad’s large screen, and its ability to recognize loads of fingers pressing down at once.

The app’s most basic mode responds to how many fingers are touching the screen. Use a single digit, and the app chirps ONE! while a grinning one-shaped monster jigs about. Add another finger and the one is replaced by a furry two. You get the idea.

Beyond this, the app offers some basic training in number ordering, addition and subtraction, making it a great learning tool for young children.

But the smartest feature may well be multiple language support and recording. This means you can use the app to learn to count in anything from French to Swedish, and record custom prompts if your own language isn’t supported.

SoundForest is a creative sound toy that mashes up minimalist animal stickers and song-making.

Across four environments, you drag stickers from a strip at the bottom of the screen onto your canvas. Each one – be it animal, plant, or landmark – makes a sound that rarely recalls reality. A mandrill, for example, blasts forth a raucous slap bass. It’s colorful, entertaining, and encourages discovery and experimentation.

Once you’ve dotted your stickers about, you can fire up your composition. The sun or moon acts as a playback head, and your stickers animate as your oddball musical masterpiece blasts forth.

Pros may be frustrated by the app’s lack of export functionality, but really SoundForest is more for the masses than them – an approachable, fun way to make a noisy music loop, using a vibrant, unique interface.

Toca Life: Farm is an ambitious and rich exploratory title for kids, inviting them to manage a farm and fashion their own stories.

There are four locations: barn, house, field, and store. Each of them is packed full of elements to interact with. For youngsters, there’s plenty of fun to be had just poking around, making noises, and dragging colorful characters about.

Toca Life: Farm encourages older kids to think a little more. They can grow their own ingredients, which can subsequently be made into food. Animals can be fed and cared for, whereupon it’s possible to reap the rewards of eggs from chickens and milk from cows.

There’s no stress - this title is all about moving at your own pace. Importantly, it also eschews advertising and IAP, ensuring your little farmer can’t accidentally spend real-world cash on virtual hay bales.

Chambers Thesaurus is a thesaurus for your iPad. You might argue that doesn’t sound like the most exciting app in the world – and you’d be right. But if you do any writing on your iPad, it’s pretty much essential.

On macOS, Apple bundles a thesaurus with its Dictionary app, but this is absent on iOS, which merely attempts to correct spellings. Chambers’ offering therefore fills a void – and it does so in a straightforward, unassuming, highly usable manner.

Entries are clearly laid out, and you get a handy search sidebar in landscape. Pages can be bookmarked, and shared, or sent to equally impressive sister app Chambers Dictionary. If you fancy both, grab the bundle to save a few bucks.

MaxCurve is a professional-quality photo editor, designed for people who want plenty of control over the images they’re working on. Much of the app is based around curves you typically find in high-end editors such as Photoshop.

Adjusting curves is pleasingly tactile, enabling you to make dramatic or subtle adjustments to colors and exposure settings with ease. It makes many of MaxCurve’s iPad contemporaries seem comparatively crude. Smartly, edits are stored as virtual layers, which can be toggled, and there are also tools for cropping and vignettes.

The app feels at home on iPad, which provides enough space to see your photo and tools, without the latter obscuring the former. MaxCurve could probably do with some quick-fix solutions for things like exposure, but then perhaps that’s missing the point of an app more about careful, considered edits rather than speed.

The Brainstormer is designed to spark ideas when you’re working on a story. In its default state, it’s something of a visual oddity, with three wheels that you spin for a random set-up of plot/conflict, theme/setting, and subject/location. Individual wheels can be locked, and you can swap the wheels for a ‘slot machine’ interface if you prefer.

Although that might seem a bit gimmicky, The Brainstormer can be genuinely useful if you need a little nudge to get going. Also, the app is extensible, vastly broadening its scope. You can buy additional wheels via IAP, such as creature and world builders.

You can also directly edit existing wheels, or create your own from scratch. When you’re fresh out of ideas, a couple of bucks for endless new ones could be a bargain buy that sends you on your way to a best-seller.

Textastic is a text editor geared towards markup and coding. It’s an app that takes a no-nonsense approach – very evident the second you sit before its tasteful, minimal interface.

But that doesn’t mean the app’s heavily stripped back. As you work with Textastic, you realize it’s been cleverly optimized to speed your work along. The custom keyboard row is superb, providing fast access to a slew of handy characters.

Not keen on the way code is presented? Quickly flip to the settings, and tweak the fonts or choose an entirely new theme.

As ever, there are limitations to an iPad editor of this kind, most notably local previews when coding web pages. On that basis, you’re probably not going to create a site from scratch with Textastic.

But with its smart editor, useful settings, Split View support, and a built-in file-transfer system, it’s ideal for making quick changes or typing up Markdown notes when on the move – or on the sofa.

Thinkrolls Kings & Queens is a set of logic and physics tests for children disguised as a game.

Like other Thinkrolls titles, it involves rotund protagonists working their way to the bottom of a series of blocky towers. Their way is regularly barred by various elements that must be successfully manipulated to fashion a way onward.

For example, gears and racks might need combining to create a conveyor belt, or a mirror shifted to reflect light and remove a ghost.

It’s all clever stuff, and also broadly stress-free. There are no time limits at all, and multiple profiles can be set up to cater for several kids on a single device.

And although Kings & Queens is intended for kids between five and eight years old, the interface and design is such that younger children should be able to delve into the adventure, too – albeit perhaps with supervision to initially help them understand the trickier challenges.

CARROT Weather is a weather app helmed by a HAL-like artificial intelligence that hates humans. As you check whether it’ll be sunny at the weekend, or if you’ll be caught in a deluge should you venture outside, CARROT will helpfully call you a ‘meatbag’ and pepper its forecasts with snark.

That probably sounds like a throwaway gimmick, but it’s actually a lot of fun – adding color and personality to a kind of app usually devoid of both. Most importantly, though, CARROT Weather is a really good weather app.

The forecasts are clearly displayed, the interface is superb, and the Today view widget is one of the best around. There’s even an amusing mini-game for finding ‘collectable’ hidden locations.

There are some downsides: the rainfall/cloud maps are weak, and there are no notifications. But if you’re bored of the straight-laced, dull competition, and fancy a weather app that’s informative and entertaining, CARROT Weather’s well worth the outlay.

Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Safari is an entertaining digital take on those children’s games where you create weird and wonderful (and occasionally terrifying) creatures by combining different body parts. Here, you get tops and bottoms to swipe between, in order to construct the likes of a ‘zeboceros’ or ‘crocingo’.

Each animal is nicely illustrated and comes with two verses of text, which the app can optionally read aloud. Also, note you don’t have to create strange new animals – you can instead match halves to make normal ones.

Perfect for when your resident tiny person is getting a bit perplexed at seeing a grinning elephant propped up by a spindly pair of flamingo legs.

On the Mac, PDF Expert 6 is a friendly, efficient, usable PDF editor. If anything, the app’s often even better on iPad.

You can grab PDFs from iCloud or Dropbox. Pages can be rearranged by drag-and-drop, and you can add or extract pages with a few taps. Adding pages from another document sadly remains beyond the app, but you can merge two PDFs in its file manager.

As a reader, PDF Expert 6 fares well, ably dealing with large PDFs, and the text-to-speech mode can read documents at a speed of your choosing. Similarly, the app makes short work of annotations, document signing, and outline editing.

Buy the ‘Edit PDF’ IAP ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 on top of the original price) and you can directly update text, redact passages, and replace images. You’re obviously a little limited by a document’s existing fonts and layout, but this functionality is great if you spot a glaring error while checking a vital PDF on your iPad.

With visible pixels essentially eradicated from modern mobile device screens, it’s amusing to see retro-style pixel art stubbornly clinging on.

But chunky pixels are a pleasing aesthetic, evoking nostalgia, and you know thought’s gone into the placement of every dot. Pixaki is an iPad pixel art ‘studio’, ideal for illustrators, games designers, and animators.

At its most minimal, the interface shows your canvas and some tool icons: pencil; eraser; fill; shapes; select; color picker. But there are also slide-in panels for layers/palettes, and the frame-based animation system.

Bar a slightly awkward selection/move process, workflow is sleek and efficient (not least with the superb fill tool, which optionally works non-contiguously across multiple layers), and the app has robust, flexible import and export options.

Perhaps most importantly, Pixaki’s just really nice to use – more so than crafting similar art on a PC or Mac, and although pricey it’s worth the money for anyone serious about pixel art.

The iPad may not be an ideal device for shooting photos, but its large screen makes it pretty great for editing them. And Mextures is perhaps the finest app around for anyone wanting to infuse their digital snaps with character by way of textures, grunge, and gradients.

The editing process is entirely non-destructive, with you building up effects by adding layers. In each case, textures, blend modes and rotation of scanned objects can be adjusted to suit, and you can experiment without fear of edits being ‘burned in’.

Particularly interesting combinations can be saved as ‘formulas’ and shared with the Mextures community – or you can speed along your own editing by downloading one of the many formulas that already exist.

There are quite a few dictionary apps on iPad, and most of them don’t tend to stray much from paper-based tomes, save adding a search function. LookUp has a more colorful way of thinking, primarily with its entry screen. This features rows of illustrated cards, each of which houses an interesting word you can discover more about with a tap.

The app is elsewhere a mite more conventional – you can type in a word to confirm a spelling, and access its meaning, etymology, and Wikipedia entry.

The app’s lack of speed and customization means it likely won’t be a writer’s first port of call when working – but it is an interesting app for anyone fascinated by language, allowing you to explore words and their histories in rather more relaxed circumstances.

There are so many amazing music-making apps on iPad that it’s hard to choose between them. With Audiobus 3, you sort of don’t have to, because it acts as a kind of behind-the-scenes plumbing.

Virtual cabling might not sound sexy, but it hugely boosts creative potential. You can send live audio or MIDI data between apps and through effects, mix the various channels, and then send the entire output to the likes of GarageBand.

Much of these features are new to Audiobus 3, and this latest update also adds Audio Unit support, enabling you to open some synths and effects directly in the app.

With support for over 900 iOS products in all, Audiobus 3 is an essential buy for anyone serious about creating music on an iPad.

Young children love wooden puzzles, where you plug a load of letters into letter-shaped holes (with a little luck, ones that actually fit). The thing is, those puzzles never change, whereas Endless Alphabet has over a hundred words to play with.

On selecting a word, a horde of colorful monsters sprints across the screen, scattering the letters, which must then be dragged back into place. As you do so, the letters entertainingly grumble and animate. Once the entire word’s complete, a short cut-scene plays to explain what it means.

From start to finish, Endless Alphabet is an excellent and joyful production. The interface is intuitive enough for young toddlers to grasp, and the app’s tactile nature works wonderfully on the iPad’s large display.

The ‘pro’ bit in Redshift Pro’s name is rather important, because this astronomy app is very much geared at the enthusiast. It dispenses with the gimmickry seen in some competing apps, and is instead packed with a ton of features, including an explorable planetarium, an observation planner and sky diary, 3D models of the planetary bodies, simulations, and even the means to control a telescope.

Although more workmanlike than pretty, the app does the business when you’re zooming through the heavens, on a 3D journey to a body of choice, or just lazily browsing whatever you’d be staring at in the night sky if your ceiling wasn’t in the way.

And if it all feels a bit rich, the developer has you covered with the slightly cut down – but still impressive – Redshift, for half the outlay.

Generally speaking, music apps echo real-world instruments, as evidenced by the piano keyboards found in the likes of GarageBand. KRFT is different – along with creating loops and riffs (either by bashing out a tune on a grid of pads, or tapping out notes on a piano roll), you also create the play surface itself.

Designing your instrument in KRFT is all based around shapes and icons – diamonds trigger loops, dials adjust sound properties, and squares can be set to trigger several loops at once.

Admittedly, staring at a blank canvas can intimidate, because you must consider composition and instrument construction as one. But KRFT bundles several inspirational demos to show what it can do – and they’re so much fun they might be worth the entry fee on their own.

If you’re the kind of person who likes spinning virtual decks, you’ll tell right away with djay Pro that you have in your hands something special. On the iPad – and especially on an iPad Pro – the app has room to breathe, lining up all kinds of features for being creative when playing other people’s music.

You get four-deck mixing, a sampler, varied waveform layouts, and useful DJ tools like cue points and beat-matching. There are also 70 keyboard shortcuts for quickly getting at important features, such as matching keys and adjusting levels.

For a newcomer, it’s perhaps overkill, and the similarly impressive djay 2 is cheaper. But if you’ve got the cash, djay Pro is a best-in-class app suitable for everyone – right up to jobbing DJs.

Even iPads with the largest amount of storage can’t cope with a great deal of on-board video. Infuse Pro is designed to access your collection, without any of it needing to be on your device.

The app connects to local drives and cloud services, and plays a wide range of file types, including MOV, MKV and VIDEO_TS. If the files are named sensibly, Infuse downloads cover art and can optionally grab soft subtitles. The interface throughout is superb.

On iPad, you also get full support for Split View and picture-in-picture, so you can pretend to work while watching your favorite shows. And if you continue on another device – this universal app is compatible with iPhone and Apple TV – cloud sync lets you pick up where you left off.

If you find iMovie isn’t quite doing it for you from a video editing standpoint, take a look at LumaFusion. This multitrack editor is designed with the more demanding user in mind, and is packed full of features to keep you editing at your iPad rather than nipping to a Mac or PC.

The main timeline provides you with three tracks for photos, videos, titles and graphics, and you get another three audio tracks for complex audio mixes involving narration and sound effects. Should you wish to take things further, LumaFusion includes a slew of effects and clip manipulation tools seemingly brought over from the developer’s own – and similarly impressive – LumaFX.

Occasionally, the app perhaps lacks some of the elegance iMovie enjoys, and LumaFusion is certainly a more involved product than Apple’s. But if you want fully-fledged video editing on your iPad, it’s hard to think of a better option.

On iPhone, Hipstamatic lets you switch between a virtual retro camera and a sleek modern camera app. On iPad, it all goes a bit weird, with the former option giving you a camera floating in space, and the latter making you wonder why you’d use a tablet for taking snaps.

But Hipstamatic nonetheless gets a recommendation on the basis of other things it does. Load an image from your Camera Roll, and you can delve into Hipstamatic’s editor. If you’re in a hurry, select a predefined style – Vintage; Cinematic; Blogger – and export.

Should you fancy a bit more fine-tuning, you can experiment with lenses, film, and flashes. And plenty of other adjustments are available, too, such as cropping, vignettes, curves, and a really nice depth of field effect.

Carl Burton’s Islands: Non-Places is listed in the App Store as a game, but don’t believe a word of it. Really, this ten-scene artistic endeavor is a surreal, mesmerizing semi-interactive animated film.

Each ‘non-place’ is somewhere you’d usually ignore or stay only on a very temporary basis, but here, the mundane is subverted through unusual and unexpected juxtapositions.

You’ll find yourself staring at a luggage carousel, before the bags begin a lazy Mexican wave. Elsewhere, palm trees ride mall escalators, while a run-of-the-mill seating area is suddenly flooded, a warning siren slicing its way through inane background chatter.

The result is frequently disorientating, but Islands also has the capacity to surprise, and is often oddly beautiful.

It’s concert time for the motley crew of Toca Band, in this toy designed to help kids explore music creatively. (And, um, adults who might get sucked in a bit.)

It’s all very simple: drag weird cartoon characters (each of which plays their own instrument) to spots on the stage, and they automatically jam along with the only song that Toca Band appears to know. Lob a musician at the star and they start a unique solo improv with a modicum of user control.

Toca Band is a very sweet app, which even toddlers should be able to grasp. A word of warning, though: that Toca Band riff will quickly become an earworm you’ll be hard pressed to remove. 

iA Writer provides a writing environment suitably focused for iPad, but that also makes nods to the desktop.

The main screen is smartly designed, with a custom keyboard bar offering Markdown and navigation buttons; if you’re using a mechanical keyboard, standard shortcuts are supported.

Further focus comes by way of a typewriter mode (auto-scrolling to the area you’re editing) and graying out lines other than the one you’re working on.

Elsewhere, you get an optional live character count, iCloud sync, and a robust Markdown preview. We’d like to see a split-screen mode for the last of those (as per the Mac version), but otherwise iA Writer’s a solid, effective and affordable minimal writing app for iPad.

We're not sure what makes this edition of the famous mockney chef's recipe book 'ultimate', bar that word being very clearly written on the icon.

Still, Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes is certainly a very tasty app. The 600 recipes should satisfy any given mood, whether you're after a sickeningly healthy salad or fancy binging on ALL THE SUGAR until your teeth scream for mercy.

Smartly, every recipe offers step-by-step photos, so you can see how badly you’re going wrong at any point. And when you've nearly burned down the kitchen, given up and ordered a pizza, you can watch the two hours of videos that reportedly tell you how to "become a real kitchen ninja".

Note: this doesn't involve wearing lots of black and hurling sharp objects at walls, sadly.

So, you’ve picked up an iPad synth to compose music, play live, or bound about like a maniac, pretending you're on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, Poison-202 is ideal for all such sets of circumstances.

The moody black and red graphic design is very 1990s, but it's Poison-202's sounds that hurl you back to the halcyon days of electronic music. Aficionados of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Orbital will be overjoyed at the familiar (and brilliant) sounds you can conjure up simply by selecting presets and prodding a few keys.

And if you're not satisfied by the creator's (frankly awesome) sound design smarts (in which case, we glare at you with the menace of a thousand Keith Flints), all manner of sliders and dials enable you to create your own wall-wobbling bass and ear-searing leads.

There are iPad synths that have more ambition, and many are more authentic to classic hardware; but few are more fun.
 

As a combination clock and weather app, Living Earth works well across all iOS devices, but use it with an iPad in a stand and you've got something that'll make other clocks in the immediate vicinity green with envy.

As you might expect, your first job with the app is to define the cities you'd like to keep track of. At any point, you can then switch between them, updating the main clock and weather forecasts accordingly. Tap the weather and you can access an extended forecast for the week; tap the location and you get the current times and weather for your defined locations.

But it's the Earth that gets pride of place, taking up the bulk of the screen. It shows clouds by default, although weather geeks can instead choose colors denoting temperature, wind speed or humidity values. Then with a little swipe the globe rotates, neatly showing heavily populated locations during night time as lattices of artificial man-made light.

Animation can be painstaking, whether doing it for your career or just for fun. Fortunately, Stop Motion Studio Pro streamlines the process, providing a sleek and efficient app for your next animated masterpiece.

It caters to various kinds of animation: you can use your iPad’s camera to capture a scene, import images or videos (which are broken down into stills), or use a remote app installed on an iPhone. Although most people will export raw footage to the likes of iMovie, Stop Motion Pro shoots for a full animation suite by including audio and title capabilities.

There are some snags. Moving frames requires an awkward copy/paste/delete workaround. Also, drawing tools are clumsy, making the app’s claim of being capable of rotoscoping a tad suspect. But as an affordable and broadly usable app for crafting animation, it fits the bill.

On the desktop, Scrivener is widely acclaimed as the writer's tool of choice. The feature-rich app provides all kinds of ways to write, even incorporating research documents directly into projects. Everything's always within reach, and your work can constantly be rethought, reorganised, and reworked.

On iPad, Scrivener is, astonishingly, almost identical to its desktop cousin. Bar some simplification regarding view and export options, it's essentially the same app. You get a powerful 'binder' sidebar for organizing notes and documents, while the main view area enables you to write and structure text, or to work with index cards on a cork board.

There's even an internal 'Split View', for simultaneously smashing out a screenplay while peering at research. With Dropbox sync to access existing projects, Scrivener is a no-brainer for existing users; and for newcomers, it's the most capable rich text/scriptwriting app on iPad.

Your eyes might pop at the price tag of this iPad synth, but the hardware reissue of this amazing Moog was priced at a wallet-smashing $10,000. By contrast, the Model 15 iPad app seems quite the bargain. To our ears, it's also the best standalone iOS synth on mobile, and gives anything on the desktop a run for its money.

For people used to messing around with modular synths and plugging in patch leads, they'll be in heaven. But this isn't retro-central: you can switch the piano keyboard for Animoog's gestural equivalent; newcomers can work through straightforward tutorials about how to build new sounds from scratch; and those who want to dive right in can select from and experiment with loads of diverse, superb-sounding presets.

There are plenty of apps that enable you to add comic-like filters and the odd speech balloon to your photos, but Comic Life 3 goes the whole hog regarding comic creation. You select from pre-defined templates or basic page layouts, and can then begin working on a Marvel-worrying masterpiece.

Importing images is straightforward, and you get plenty of control over sound effects and speech balloons. For people who are perhaps taking things a bit too seriously (or actual comic creators, who can use this app for quick mock-ups), there's a bundled script editor as well.

Oddly, Comic Life 3's filters aren't that impressive, not making your photos look especially hand-drawn. But otherwise the app is an excellent means of crafting stories on an iPad, and you can export your work in a range of formats to share with friends - and Stan Lee.

This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.

For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning.

(Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)

There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.

Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low-res comics look good.

Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.

You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.

The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.

Pop music is about getting what you expect. Ambient music has always felt subtly different, almost like anything could happen. With generative audio, this line of thinking became reality. Scape gives you a combined album/playground in this nascent genre, from the minds of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers.

Each track is formed by way of adding musical elements to a canvas, which then interact in sometimes unforeseen ways. Described as music that "thinks for itself", Scape becomes a pleasing, fresh and infinitely replayable slice of chillout bliss. And if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can sit back and listen to an album composed by the app's creators.

The lofty boast with RealBeat is that you can use the app to make music with everything. The remarkable thing is, you really can. The app has eight slots for samples, waiting for input from your iPad's mic.

You can record snippets of any audio you fancy: your voice; a spoon smacking a saucepan; a pet, confused at you holding your iPad right in front of its face. These samples can then be arranged into loops and songs using a familiar drum-machine-style sequencer and pattern editor.

Completed masterpieces can be exported using Audio Copy and iTunes File Sharing, and the app also integrates with Audiobus.

Previously known as iDraw, Graphic is now part of the Autodesk stable. Visually, it looks an awful lot like Adobe Illustrator, and it brings some suitably high-end vector-drawing smarts to Apple's tablet.

All the tools and features you'd expect are present and correct; and while it's admittedly a bit slower and fiddlier to construct complex imagery on an iPad than a PC, Graphic is great to have handy when you're on the move. Smartly, the app boasts plentiful export functions, to continue your work elsewhere, and will sync with its iPhone and Mac cousins across iCloud.

iPad video editors tend to have a bunch of effects and filters lurking within, but with VideoGrade you can go full-on Hollywood. On launch, the app helpfully rifles through your albums, making it easy to find your videos. Load one and you get access to a whopping 13 colour-grading and repair tools.

Despite the evident power VideoGrade offers, the interface is remarkably straightforward. Select a tool (such as Vibrance, Brightness or Tint), choose a setting, and drag to make a change. Drag up before moving your finger left or right to make subtler adjustments.

Smartly, any tool already used gets a little green dash beneath, and you can go back and change or remove edits at any point.

All filters are applied live to the currently shown frame, and you can also tap a button to view a preview of how your entire exported video will look. Want to compare your edit with the original video? Horizontal and vertical split-views are available at the tap of a button. Usefully, favorite filter combinations can be stored and reused, and videos can be queued rather than laboriously rendered individually.

Korg Gadget bills itself as the "ultimate mobile synth collection on your iPad" and it's hard to argue. You get well over a dozen varied synths, ranging from drum machines through to ear-splitting electro monsters, and an intuitive piano roll for laying down notes.

A scene/loop arranger enables you to craft entire compositions in the app, which can then be shared via the Soundcloud-powered GadgetCloud or sent to Dropbox. This is a more expensive app than most, but if you're a keen electronic-music-oriented songwriter with an iPad, it's hard to find a product that's better value.

There are quite a few apps for virtual stargazing, but Sky Guide is the best of them on iPad. Like its rivals, the app allows you to search the heavens in real-time, providing details of constellations and satellites in your field of view (or, if you fancy, on the other side of the world).

Indoors, it transforms into a kind of reference guide, offering further insight into distant heavenly bodies, and the means to view the sky at different points in history. What sets Sky Guide apart, though, is an effortless elegance. It's simply the nicest app of its kind to use, with a polish and refinement that cements its essential nature.

When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.

Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.

You might argue that Google Maps is far better suited to a smartphone, but we reckon the king of mapping apps deserves a place on your iPad, too. Apple's own Maps app has improved, but Google still outsmarts its rival when it comes to public transport, finding local businesses, saving chunks of maps offline, and virtual tourism by way of Street View.

Google's 'OS within an OS' also affords a certain amount of cross-device sync when it comes to searches. We don't, however, recommend you strap your cellular iPad to your steering wheel and use Google Maps as a sat-nav replacement, unless you want to come across as some kind of nutcase.

Adult colouring books are all the rage, proponents claiming bringing colour to intricate abstract shapes helps reduce stress - at least until you realise you've got pen on your shirt and ground oil pastels into the sofa.

You'd think the process of colouring would be ideal for iPad, but most relevant apps are awful, some even forcing tap-to-fill. That is to colouring what using a motorbike is to running a marathon - a big cheat. Pigment is an exception, marrying a love for colouring with serious digital smarts.

On selecting an illustration, there's a range of palettes and tools to explore. You can use pencils and markers, adjusting opacity and brush sizes, and work with subtle gradients. Colouring can be 'freestyle', or you can tap to select an area and ensure you don't go over the lines while furiously scribbling. With a finger, Pigment works well, but it's better with a stylus; with an iPad Pro and a Pencil, you'll lob your real books in the bin.

The one niggle: printing and accessing the larger library requires a subscription in-app purchase. It's a pity there's no one-off payment for individual books, but you do get plenty of free illustrations, and so it's hard to grumble.

Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.

The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.

On opening Toca Nature, you find yourself staring at a slab of land floating in the void. After selecting relevant icons, a drag of a finger is all it takes to raise mountains or dig deep gullies for rivers and lakes.

Finishing touches to your tiny landscape can then be made by tapping to plant trees. Wait for a bit and a little ecosystem takes shape, deers darting about glades, and fish swimming in the water. Using the magnifying glass, you can zoom into and explore this little world and feed its various inhabitants.

Although designed primarily for kids, Toca Nature is a genuinely enjoyable experience whatever your age.

The one big negative is that it starts from scratch every time — some save states would be nice, so each family member could have their own space to tend to and explore. Still, blank canvases keep everything fresh, and building a tiny nature reserve never really gets old.

The fairly large screen of the iPad means you can access desktop-style websites, rather than ones hacked down for iPhone. That sounds great until you realise most of them want to fire adverts into your face until you beg for mercy.

Old people will wisely suggest 'RSS', and then they'll explain that means you can subscribe to sites and get their content piped into an app.

Reeder 3 is a great RSS reader for iPad. It's fast, efficient, caches content for offline use and — importantly — bundles a Readability view. This downloads entire articles for RSS feeds that otherwise would only show synopses.

Like on the iPhone, Reeder's perhaps a bit gesture-happy, but it somehow feels more usable on the iPad's larger display. And we're happy to see the app continue to improve its feature set, including Split View and iPad Pro support, font options for the article viewer, and the means to sync across Instapaper content.

Although Apple introduced iCloud Keychain in iOS 7, designed to securely store passwords and payment information, 1Password is a more powerful system. Along with integrating with Safari, it can be used to hold identities, secure notes, network information and app licence details. It's also cross-platform, meaning it will work with Windows and Android.

And since 1Password is a standalone app, accessing and editing your information is fast and efficient. The core app is free – the company primarily makes its money on the desktop. However, you’ll need a monthly subscription or to pay a one-off $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 IAP to access advanced features (multiple vaults, Apple Watch support, tagging, and custom fields).

Apple's own Calendar app is fiddly and irritating, and so the existence of Fantastical is very welcome. In a single screen, you get a week view, a month calendar and a scrolling list of events. There's also support for reminders, and all data syncs with iCloud, making Fantastical compatible with Calendar (formerly iCal) for macOS.

The best bit, though, is Fantastical's natural-language input, where you can type an event and watch it build as you add details, such as times and locations. On iPad, we do question the layout a little - a large amount of space is given over to a month calendar view. Still, in portrait or, better, Split View, Fantastical 2 is transformative.

Touch Press somewhat cornered the market in amazing iOS books with The Elements, but Journeys of Invention takes things a step further. In partnership with the Science Museum, it leads you through many of science's greatest discoveries, weaving them into a compelling mesh of stories.

Many objects can be explored in detail, and some are more fully interactive, such as the Enigma machine, which you can use to share coded messages with friends.

What's especially great is that none of this feels gimmicky. Instead, this app points towards the future of books, strong content being married to useful and engaging interactivity.

There are loads of note-taking apps for the iPad, but Notability hits that sweet spot of being usable and feature-rich. Using the app's various tools, you can scribble on a virtual canvas, using your finger or a stylus. Should you want precision copy, you can drag out text boxes to type into. It's also possible to import documents.

One of the smartest features, though, is audio recording. This enables you to record a lecture or meeting, and the app will later play back your notes live alongside the audio, helping you see everything in context. Naturally, the app has plenty of back-up and export options, too, so you can send whatever you create to other apps and devices.

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image.

You get all the basics - cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.

Soulver is more or less the love child of a spreadsheet and the kind of calculations you do on the back of an envelope. You write figures in context, and Souvler extracts the maths bits and tots up totals; each line's results can be used as a token in subsequent lines, enabling live updating of complex calculations. Drafts can be saved, exported to HTML, and also synced via Dropbox or iCloud.

Initially, the app feels a bit alien, given that people have been used to digital versions of desktop calculators since the dawn of home computing. But scribbling down sums in Soulver soon becomes second nature.

We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.

But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.

Free apps sometimes have a bad reputation, but many are gems that are so good you won’t believe they’re free. We’ve scoured the App Store to find the very best, and sorted them into handy categories, which you can find on the following pages.

On this page you'll find the app of the last two weeks - our top new selection to try out, and check back every fourteen days where you'll find a new option to test. After that, it's the best entertainment apps (surely the best reason to own an iPad...) and a variety of categories on the following pages to tickle your fancy.

Free app of the week: Splash

Splash instantly puts the power of live remixing and DJing at your fingertips, through triggering loops on a grid. Simply select a track from the library, and then tap to kick off drum, bass, synth, and vocal loops. Fire up the effects, and you can make your tune go all strange and wobbly by way of flange, filter, reverb and delay. 

Although immensely tappable on the iPad’s display, Splash unfortunately demands you swipe between two screens rather than enabling access to every loop on just one. But other than that, this is an immediate, fun, and entirely free entry point into the world of making music. And should you want to retain a performance for posterity, the means to record and share is also built right in.

The best free entertainment apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether shopping, coloring, reading, watching TV or using Twitter.

Google News

Google News might seem redundant in the age of Apple News, but it serves a purpose. Like Apple’s equivalent, this free news app for iPhone learns as you use it, aiming to serve up stories you’ll be interested in. And in a similar fashion to Apple News, you can flag specific publications and topics you like to read.

Where Google News diverges from Apple is with the ‘full coverage’ button. Tap this and you can view a story across a range of publications, and check out a reports timeline – useful in an era of increasingly partisan coverage.

Beyond that, there are many other reasons to make the app one of your go-tos for news: fast access to any source’s list of stories; the means to hide any publication; a regularly updated briefing; an optional daily news email; and a stripped-back, cruft-free reading experience.

GIFwrapped

GIFwrapped is designed for GIF obsessives. If you can’t get through an entire social media message without welding a looping animation to it, this is the app for you.

Universal search provides fast access to more GIFs than you could conceivably hope to use in several lifetimes, even if you tried very hard. It’s also possible to import your own Burst and Live Photos. Whatever you find can be saved to your local library; GIFs can then be shared from the app itself, or in Messages by using the GIFwrapped iMessage app.

For other use-cases, stashing GIFwrapped in Slide Over seems to work particularly well. And if you get very deeply into the app, affordable subscription IAP removes ads, powers up search, and lets you remove the watermark from shared GIFs.

Lake: Coloring Books

Lake: Coloring Books seems ideally suited to iPad owners who like dabbling in coloring – especially if they also own an Apple Pencil. The One A Day feature provides a daily freebie for 60 days, and each of the varied coloring books also offers you a free image to try your hand at.

The coloring experience is solid. Friendly tool panels sit at the side of the screen. You can quickly swap palettes or switch from a brush to a spray can. If you don’t want to go over the lines, a single button press gives you a hand there, too.

Beyond scribbling inside of someone else’s lines, you can make your own with a blank canvas option, and your masterpieces can be saved to a gallery, so you can later show them off online.

Twitterrific

Twitterrific is a client for Twitter that wants you to use the social network on your own terms. This means you get a slew of customization options – and a much richer user experience – compared to when using the official Twitter app.

On iPad, this is very apparent on exploring the tabs at the top of the screen. You get five. Home returns you to your main feed, but the other four can be set to open anything from mentions to lists – it’s up to you. As is how the app looks, given its range of built-in themes.

Twitterrific excels elsewhere, too. Next to the search field is a Center Stage button, which you press to browse through media tweets. Muting and sync are fully supported. All of this is free, in return for a single unobtrusive always-on ad banner.

Infuse 6

Infuse 6 enables you to watch your video collection – without first loading any of it on to your iPad. Instead, the app streams footage from files stored on local PCs, Macs, or network drives. Should you want to store some content on your iPad, though, Files integration makes that a cinch.

In fact, the interface throughout is superb – usable and sleek. It serves up not only your videos, but also cover art and background information – assuming you’ve named your files reasonably sensibly. Subtitles can be downloaded with a tap.

The free version doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles. Library/progress sync, streaming from cloud sources, AirPlay, and HD audio require a pro account, or the purchase of the standalone Infuse Pro 6. But even without these, you won’t find a better or more feature-packed free video player on your iPad.

Feedly

Feedly bills itself as a smart news reader. However, rather than attempting to second-guess what you’d like to read, based on you having tapped a few vague category buttons, Feedly takes a more old-fashioned approach: subscriptions.

In short, using the magic of RSS, you (for free) subscribe to the newsfeeds of your favorite websites – anything from news corporations down to the most niche of blogs. New articles are then sent to Feedly, and can be read in-app.

If you fancy discovering content beyond what you usually read, there’s an Explore tab; but Feedly’s best when you’re curating what you end up checking out, through focusing primarily on sources you trust.

As an added bonus, if you like the idea but not the interface, a Feedly account can be used to power other RSS readers such as TechRadar favorite Reeder. 

Pocket

Pocket is a read-later app. What this means is that rather than ending the day staring at dozens of unread browser tabs, you fling items of interest in Pocket’s direction. It then converts them into a streamlined personalized magazine you can peruse at your leisure.

The default iPad interface is an appealing grid, and individual articles are stripped back to words and images. This can be a major improvement over the original websites, letting you delve into content without distractions.

A night mode flips colors late in the day, to ensure you don’t get eye strain, but Pocket also allows you to ‘read with your ears’. This turns your reading list into an on-the-fly podcast. It’s an odd experience, but it can be nice to work through your reading list while cooking, walking or driving.

Infuse 5

Infuse 5 is a video player that lets you get at video from pretty much anywhere. This means if you have a massive video collection, you needn’t load it all on to your iPad. Instead, you can quickly copy across items as and when you want to play them – or just stream from local network storage.

This app isn’t unique in the field, but it’s friendly and sleek. Set-up is a breeze, and even when streaming from your local network, metadata (cover art; item information) is automatically downloaded. It’s also possible to download subtitles on the fly.

The free version has restrictions that require an annual subscription to unlock: some video/audio formats; AirPlay and Google Cast support; background playback; library sync. But as a freebie for anyone who wants to stream videos to their iPad, Infuse 5 really can’t be beaten.

Fiery Feeds

Fiery Feeds is a full-featured RSS reader. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, it enables you to subscribe to almost any website’s content. You’ll then in Fiery Feeds get a list of headlines whenever you open the app, ensuring you don’t miss articles from sources you trust.

Most free RSS readers are clunky, but Fiery Feeds bucks the trend with a sleek two-pane interface, and a slew of customization options. It feels modern, but gives you very direct control over what you read, unlike the likes of News or Flipboard.

There’s a paid tier, too – US$9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 per year – which unlocks additional features, including a ‘must read’ folder, a text view mode (which loads full articles for sites that otherwise only send you synopses), and custom actions. Whichever flavor you plump for, Fiery Feeds is well worth installing on your iPad.

VLC for Mobile

VLC for Mobile is an iPad take on the popular open source media player.

On iPad, it has two main uses. The first is offline playback. You can load up VLC with videos, and – broadly speaking – be secure in the knowledge it’s actually going to be capable of playing them. During said playback, you can fiddle with the picture and audio, and use gestures to skip through boring sections – or backwards if you missed a bit.

VLC is also good for streaming. You can stream movies from a PC or Mac right to your iPad, rather than having to sit in front of a computer like it’s 2005. The interface throughout is sleek and minimal (irritating zooming to the options sidebar aside), and impressive for a video streaming app that’s entirely free.

JustWatch

JustWatch solves one of the biggest problems with the way we consume television and movies. With streaming services and on-demand increasingly rendering traditional schedules redundant, the key is usually finding out where and how to watch something, not when.

JustWatch asks you to confirm your location and the services that interest you. If you’re still into the big screen, there’s a tab for currently showing movies, which makes it a cinch to access local showtimes.

But this app’s mostly about TV, providing filterable feeds that list popular shows and bargains – and where to find them. Select a show, tap on an icon, and you’re whisked away to the relevant app. Whatever you want to see, JustWatch makes reaching it a whole lot easier.

Letterboxd

Letterboxd is an iPad take on a social network for film lovers. Sign up, and you can do all the usual following friends and bellyaching, only here you’re complaining about whether Blade Runner 2049 is 2049 times worse than the original, and who’s the best James Bond. If that sounds awful but you’re a film lover, Letterboxd has another use: the ability to log everything you’ve ever watched.

You can quickly assign ratings and ‘likes’ to your personal favorites, which are subsequently displayed as a grid of artwork that can be sorted and filtered. Beyond that, you can add tags, a review, and the date when you last watched the film. On the iPad’s large display, the entire app looks great – not least when you start checking out trailers of those films you’re keen to see.

Attenborough Story of life

If you’ve any interest in wildlife films, Attenborough Story of Life is a must-have. It features over a thousand clips picked from Attenborough’s decades-long journey through what he refers to as the “greatest story of all…how animals and plants came to fill our Earth”.

The app is split into three sections. You’re initially urged to delve into some featured collections, but can also explore by habitat or species, unearthing everything from big-toothed sharks to tiny penguins skittering about. Clips can be saved as favorites, or grouped into custom collections to later peruse or share with friends.

Some of the footage is noticeably low-res on an iPad – there’s nothing here to concern your Blu-Rays, and that’s a pity. Still, for instant access to such a wealth of amazing programming, this one’s not to be missed.

Chunky Comic Reader

The majority of comic-book readers on the App Store are tied to online stores, and any emphasis on quality in the actual apps isn't always placed on the reading part.

But with many more publishers embracing DRM-free downloads, having a really great reading app is essential if you're into digital comics. Chunky Comic Reader is the best available on iOS.

The interface is smart, simple and boasts plenty of settings, including the means to eradicate animation entirely when flipping pages.

Rendering is top-notch, even for relatively low-res fare. And you get the option of one- or two-up page views. For free, you can access web storage to upload comics. A single $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99 pro upgrade adds support for shared Mac/PC/NAS drives.

Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!

• For a mix of free and paid apps, check out our amazing Best iPad apps chart. If you're more into a smaller form-factor or have your eye on the iPhone X check out our list of the best free iPhone apps.
• Haven't bought an iPad yet and not sure which is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.
• Are you a professional? Then our pick of the 10 best business apps should have something for you.
• Want a free app to keep your iPad safe? Check out the best free VPNs

The best free art and design apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, graphic design and animation.

Charcoal

Charcoal is a sketchpad for people who don’t want complexity. Fire up the free iPad app and you can choose from three canvas sizes. When said canvas appears, it’s flanked by a selection of tools to the left, and a scrollable color picker to the right.

With a finger or an Apple Pencil, the tools prove responsive, and there’s a tactile ruler you can drag and twiddle about for laying down straight lines. And that’s about it – at which point you might ask after brush sizes, text tools, and layers.

To do so is to miss the point. Charcoal is basic on purpose. If you want an all-singing, all-dancing free digital sketching tool, Autodesk SketchBook fits the bill. But if that kind of app overwhelms you, Charcoal will scratch your digital drawing itch.

Vectornator X

Vectornator X is a pro-grade vector art app for iPad that lacks a price tag, but has the kind of toolset that should appeal to everyone from jobbing artists and designers to people who just fancy transforming their favorite photos into sleek, poster-like works of art.

If you’re an illustrator, you’re well catered for with features that let you quickly work up projects with shapes, paths, type, and templates. Plentiful import/export options enable the app to be a mobile sketchpad for ideas you can then continue on the desktop.

But if you’re a mere norm, it’s worth picking up, too. Load a photo, select the Layers palette, unlock the layer, tap the photo on the canvas, tap the style tab, and then tap Auto Trace. Within seconds, you’ve gone from snap to vector art – and endlessly editable art at that.

FlipaClip

FlipaClip wants to unleash your inner Disney animator. Set up a project and you gain access to a streamlined interface for crafting your own scribbly moving pictures. The toolset is straightforward, but with enough flexibility for nuance. The brushes have multiple sizes, there’s a selection tool for grabbing chunks of art, and a flood fill for quick coloring.

The layers system enables you to separate elements, such as line art and coloring. Grids and onion-skinning (to see previous frames faintly on the canvas) provide further aid as you put together your masterpiece. And audio capabilities ensure you’re not just making silent movies. It all feels rather swish and professional – but also approachable.

There are limitations on the free version of this iPad app, plus full-screen ads that obnoxiously spring up when you open a project. However, if these irk you, they’re easily removed with a one-off IAP.

Desyne

Desyne makes it a cinch to quickly put together graphical layouts, which can then be used for flyers, posters and online banners.

You get started by picking a template. Unlike with many ostensibly similar apps, pretty much everything here can be edited. This means although you could just make a quick change to some text and export the result, you can also work with the built-in tools to fashion something radically different from what you started with.

The app of course locks a bunch of content behind subscription IAP, and welds a watermark to your creations – albeit only a small one in a corner. However, the free version has a lot going for it, not least fun stickers, a simple but powerful layers system, the means to save projects, and a range of export options.

Universe – Website Builder

Universe – Website Builder suggests you should be able to create a website in 60 seconds. That time scale’s a bit of a stretch, but Universe’s building-blocks system does make getting something online dead easy.

Each page is a grid. You drag out a section, and then decide what should fill it – a photo, text, social media buttons or video. You can start from scratch, or work with a theme. When you’re done, prod a button and your efforts are uploaded.

Should you want more pro-oriented features – analytics; a store; a proper domain – you’ll need to pay $9.99/£8.99/AU$14.49 per month. But for free, Universe is a usable, smart, simple way to get a personal website online, with little effort, and in a manner that feels entirely suited to the touchscreen.

Autodesk SketchBook

Autodesk SketchBook is a drawing and sketching app. Toolbars sit at the screen edges, providing quick access to a slew of editable brushes, a comprehensive layers system, and tools for drawing shapes, adding text and manipulating selections. Flow and size sliders sit on the brushes palette, so you can easily adjust your brush’s properties.

Tap the full-screen button and most of the interface falls away, leaving you with your canvas, but brushes, color pickers and layers always remain within easy reach, accessed by pressing a small on-screen switch.

This means that with a little time spent getting used to the interface, SketchBook provides as much power as you need – and for no outlay whatsoever. That makes it a good bet whether you’re an occasional doodler, or a jobbing artist wanting something powerful yet usable for working on their iPad.

Unsplash

Unsplash is an app that gives you fast access to many thousands of images generously gifted to the Unsplash website by the photographic community. These photographs can be used entirely for free, for any purposes you wish, and can be modified as you see fit.

The app and available photographs are both rather good. You can search for something specific, browse new photos, or explore by themes. The large iPad display is the perfect lean-back way to look through dozens of images, flicking between them in full-screen mode.

It’s a pity there’s no download option, nor a means to follow specific photographers. But then this one’s all about effortlessness and immediacy, and knowing that whenever you do find something that inspires you, it can be downloaded to your iPad’s Photos app with a single tap.

Artomaton - The Motion Painter

Artomaton - The Motion Painter is a little like Prisma, in that it uses AI to transform photos into something that looks like it was painted or sketched. However, this isn’t a single-tap filter app; Artomaton wants to afford you at least some control over your creations.

To start with, you paint in the natural media effects to the degree you’re happy with. Do so lightly and you get the subtlest of sketches; cover every inch of the canvas and you end up with a more complete piece of art. Beyond that, there are plenty of settings to fiddle with.

The resulting images aren’t always entirely convincing in terms of realism, but they always look good. And although many materials are locked behind IAP, you get plenty for free.

Autodesk SketchBook

We tend to quickly shift children from finger-painting to using much finer tools, but the iPad shows there's plenty of power in your digits — if you're using the right app.

Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll.

The core app is free, but it will cost you $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 to unlock the pro features.

Brushes Redux

The original Brushes app was one of the most important in the iPhone's early days. With Jorge Colombo using it to paint a New Yorker cover, it showcased the potential of the technology, and that an iPhone could be used for production, rather than merely consumption.

Brushes eventually stopped being updated, but fortunately went open source beforehand. Brushes Redux is the result.

On the iPad, you can take advantage of the much larger screen. But the main benefit of the app is its approachable nature. It's extremely easy to use, but also has plenty of power for those who need it, not least in the layering system and the superb brush designer.

Canva

The idea behind Canva is to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating great-looking layouts based on your photos. Select a layout type (presentation, blog graphic, invitation, and so on) and the app serves up templates to work with.

These are mostly very smart indeed, but the smartest thing about Canva is that these starting points can all be edited: swap out images for your own photos, adjust text boxes, and add new elements or even entire pages.

Because of its scope, Canva isn't as immediate as one-click automated apps in this space, but the interface is intuitive enough to quickly grasp. Our only niggle is the lack of multi-item selection, but with Canva being an online service, you can always fine-tune your iPad creations in a browser on the desktop.

Pixel art editor - Dottable

Despite being lumbered with an awkward name, Pixel art editor - Dottable is a usable and nicely-conceived app. Choose a canvas size and then the interface is split between your drawing area, layers, and tools.

The basics are all there for creating old-school pixel art, but beyond brushes and fills, Dottable adds some fairly sophisticated shapes and transform tools.

If you want to trace an image, it can be imported, and optionally converted to pixel art form. Exports are also dealt with nicely, either exporting your image as a PNG, or converting each layer into a single frame of an animated GIF.

None of this is enough to trouble the pro-oriented Pixaki, but as a freebie for pixel artists, Dottable is mightily impressive.

Folioscope

One of the great things about the app revolution is how these bits of software can help you experience creative fare that would have previously been inaccessible, unless you were armed with tons of cash and loads of time. Folioscope is a case in point, providing the basics for crafting your own animations.

We should note you’re not going to be the next Disney with Folioscope – the tools are fairly basic, and the output veers towards ‘wobbling stickmen’.

But you do get a range of brushes (of differing size and texture), several drawing tools (pen, eraser, flood fill, and marquee), and onion-skinning, which enables you to see faint impressions of adjacent frames, in order to line everything up.

The friendly nature of the app makes it accessible to anyone, and there’s no limit on export – projects can be shared as GIFs or movies, or uploaded to the Folioscope community, should you create an account.

MediBang Paint

MediBang Paint feels like one of those apps where you’re always waiting for the catch to arrive. Create a new canvas and you end up staring at what can only be described as a simplified Photoshop on your iPad. There are loads of drawing tools, a layers system (including photo import), and configurable brushes.

Opening up menus reveals yet more features – rotation; shapes; grids – but palettes can also be hidden, so you can get on with just drawing. Judging by the in-app gallery of uploaded art, MediBang is popular with manga artists, but its tools are capable enough to support a much wider range of digital painting and drawing styles – all without costing you a penny.

PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator

You won’t trouble Hollywood with PicsArt (or PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator to use its unwieldy full name). However, it is a great introduction to animation and also a handy sketchpad for those already immersed in the field.

A beginner can start with a blank slate, paper texture, or photo background, on to which an animation frame is drawn. Add further frames and previous ones faintly show through, to aid you in making smooth transitions.

Delve further into the app to discover more advanced fare, including brush options and a hugely useful layers system. When done, export to GIF or video – or save projects to refine later. That this all comes for free (and free from ads) is astonishing.

The best free education apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for learning new things – from coding to astronomy.

Night Sky

Free iPad app Night Sky brings the planets and stars to your iPad, with gorgeous visuals and a rich feature set.

The basic view can be dragged around or be oriented by holding your iPad in front of your face. Illustrated constellation overlays appear and ‘melt’, and an expandable search box makes it a cinch to rapidly find and store favorite objects.

Once you’ve found something interesting, you can pluck it from the main view, explore the item in 3D, and share it with your friends. Twiddling constellations provides fuller insight into their depths and the distances between stars. With planets, you can land on them, to explore their night skies.

Grab a subscription and Night Sky takes things further with live sky tours and an AR orrery, but in its free form, it remains a generous and first-rate astronomy app.

Big Bang AR

Big Bang AR is an AR experience that blazes through 13.8 billion years of history in a matter of minutes. 

It begins with your outstretched hand, which you turn into a fist, and then open up, only for the Big Bang to explode out of it – a neat trick, if a bit awkward when you’re holding an iPad in the other hand. After that point, though, it’s all rather wondrous as you find yourself surrounded by the earliest components of the universe, which eventually form into our solar system.

With narration by Tilda Swinton, the odd bit of interactivity, further reading sections, and a nice ‘we are all made of stars’ selfie at the end, Big Bang AR is a rather lovely example of an immersive, immediate educational experience for iPad.

Civilisations AR 

Civilisations AR is an augmented reality app that puts over 30 historical artifacts in front of your face, ranging from an ancient Egyptian mummy to iconic modern art. It feels like a thoroughly modern way of exploring the past, enabling you to check out every nook and cranny of these famous objects.

Spin a globe to see where the items are from, then tap to select one and it will appear before you, ready to be resized and spun around. Discoverable hot-spots offer up more information by way of voiceovers.

Surprisingly, even paintings work really nicely in this app, enabling you to put your nose right up to the virtual canvas and inspect individual paint marks. An iPad display is big enough for you to truly appreciate these works of wonder.

JigSpace

JigSpace uses augmented reality (AR) to educate, by way of 3D models you can fiddle about with before your very eyes. Although the range isn’t exactly in Wikipedia territory, you get quite the variety of ‘jigs’ for free. There’s the anatomy of a trebuchet, a floating eye to fiddle around with, a manual car’s transmission, and many more.

JigSpace rapidly finds a flat surface onto which your object is projected. You can then pinch to resize it, or spin it with a swipe. Objects aren’t static either – many animate, and are gradually disassembled across a series of slides. For example, an alarm clock opens to show its gears and mechanisms – and because this is AR, you can check everything out from any angle.

Khan Academy

Maybe it's just our tech-addled brains, but often we find it a lot easier to focus on an app than a book, which can make learning things the old fashioned way tricky. That's where Khan Academy comes in. This free app contains lessons and guidance on dozens of subjects, from algebra, to cosmology, to computer science and beyond.

As it's an app rather than a book it benefits from videos and even a few interactive elements, alongside words and pictures and it contains over 10,000 videos and explanations in all.

Everything is broken in to bite-sized chunks, so whether you've got a few minutes to spare or a whole afternoon there's always time to learn something new and if you make an account it will keep track of your progress and award achievements.

Py

Py wants to teach you to communicate with computers. You provide some information about the kind of coding you fancy doing, and it recommends a course – anything from basic HTML through to delving into Python.

Lessons are very reminiscent of those in language-learning freebie Duolingo. A colorful, cartoonish interface provides questions, and you type out your answer or select from multiple choice options.

Py could be more helpful when you get something wrong, but its breezy, pacy nature gives it a real energy and game-like feel that boosts focus and longevity.

Unlike Duolingo, Py doesn’t have any interest in being free forever. A premium tier locks a chunk of content behind a monthly fee (along with access to mentors, who can help you through tough spots via an integrated chat). But for no outlay, there’s still plenty here for budding website - and app - creators to get stuck into.

Swift Playgrounds

Swift Playgrounds is an app about coding, although you’d initially be forgiven for thinking it a weird game. Early lessons involve guiding oddball cartoon cyclops Byte about an isometric landscape by way of typed commands, having him trigger switches and grab gems along the way.

This is, of course, sneakily teaching you the fundamentals of logic and programming, and the lessons do then gradually become more involved. However, at no point does Swift Playgrounds become overwhelming. And the split-screen set-up – instructions and code on the left; interactive world based on your work on the right – feels friendly and intuitive.

It’s not Xcode for iPad, then, but perhaps a first step in that direction. More importantly, Swift Playgrounds can act as a first step for people who want to start coding their own apps, but for whom the very idea has, to date, simply been too daunting.

Wikipedia

Often, third-party apps improve on bare-bones equivalents provided as the ‘official’ take on a product, but Wikipedia is an exception. This freebie app for browsing the online encyclopedia is excellent on iPad – and probably the best option on the platform.

The Explore page lists a bunch of nearby and topical articles; after a few uses, it’ll also recommend things it reckons you’d like to read. Tap an article and the screen splits in two – (collapsible) table of contents to the left and your chosen article to the right. Articles can be searched and saved, the latter option storing them for offline perusal.

It’s a pity Wikipedia doesn’t rework the Peek/Pop previews from the iPhone version (by way of a long-tap), but otherwise this is an excellent, usable encyclopedia for the modern age.

Yousician

Learning a musical instrument isn't easy, which is probably why a bunch of people don't bother, instead pretending to be rock stars by way of tiny plastic instruments and their parent videogames.

Yousician bridges the divide, flipping a kind of Guitar Hero interface 90 degrees and using its visual and timing devices to get you playing chords and notes.

This proves remarkably effective, and your iPad merrily keeps track of your skills (or lack thereof) through its internal mic. The difficulty curve is slight, but the app enables you to skip ahead if you're bored, through periodic 'test' rounds. Most surprisingly, for free you get access to everything, only your daily lesson time is limited.

TED

TED is a video app designed to feed your curiosity, by watching smart people talk about all kinds of subjects.

Although the organization’s name stands for ‘Technology, Entertainment, Design’, it’s fundamentally interested in ideas. Example talks we watched during testing included a piece about screen time for kids (and why related fears are not true), not suffering in silence from depression, and mind-blowing magnified portraits of insects. What we’re saying is: this app has range.

It also has smarts. Along with a standard search, you can have the app ‘surprise you’ with something courageous, beautiful, or fascinating, and revisit favorites by delving into your watch history and liked talks, which sync across devices.

TED’s perhaps not an app you’ll open daily, but it’s a breath of fresh air when you desire brain food rather than typical telly.

The best free health, food and exercise apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for cooking, relaxing and keeping fit.

Jour

On the surface Jour looks like a simple journal, but it’s mainly designed to help you feel good. It achieves this by encouraging you to concentrate on recording (for later posterity) good things that have happened in your life, and by guiding you to different ways of thinking.

You’re encouraged to dip in daily to record bite-sized memories, and over time this daily reflection proves effective. Guided journeys further encourage you to shake up your thinking, and how you approach your life, enabling you to better track goals, combat anxiety, and – as the app puts it – “live your best life”.

No free iPad app is a magic wand, but by spending a few minutes every day with Jour, you’ll at least have a record of good memories, get into the habit of writing things down and reflecting on them, and more easily identify what brings you joy.

Oak - Meditation & Breathing

Oak - Meditation & Breathing is an app that wants you to relax. It’s split into sections for meditation, breathing, and sleeping. A stats area provides the means to track progress, with you gaining streaks and winning badges through regular use.

Meditations can be guided or unguided, catering for all skill levels, and although you don’t get the wealth of options available in some apps, you can adjust instructor gender, session duration, and background noise. The three breathing exercises cover relaxation, focus, and invigoration. And the Sleep section offers guided breath exercises designed to help you unwind.

On iPad, the interface betrays the app’s iPhone origins and could do with optimization for the larger display. Other than that, Oak’s pleasing and effective – and won’t surprise you a few weeks in with a stressful demand for IAP.

Tasty

Tasty is a cookery app that wisely reasons modern-day cookbooks need to move beyond being digital equivalents of paper-based tomes. It achieves this by way of fast, filterable searches, and judicious use of video.

Rather than opening with a photo, your selected recipe instead initially shows the dish being made by way of a tightly edited video. Below that, you get an ingredients list (which can be exported), tips and step-by-step instructions.

Tap a button below the last of those and each step’s text and video loop is isolated – a great way, when cooking, to sanity-check you’re doing the right thing, and aren’t on the road to a culinary disaster.

Breathe+

Many of us are caught in high-stress environments for much of our lives, and electronic gadgets often do little to help. Apple has recognized this on Apple Watch, which offers a breathing visualization tool. But Breathe+ brings similar functionality to your iPad.

You define how long breaths in and out should take, and whether you want to hold your breath at any point during the cycle. You then let Breathe+ guide your breathing for a user-defined session length.

The visualization is reminiscent of a minimalist illustrator's take on a wave rising and falling on the screen, but you can also close your eyes and have the iPad vibrate for cues. For free, there are some ads, which aren't pretty, but don't distract too much. For $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99, you can be rid of them, along with adding themes and usage history stats.

Kitchen Stories

As you launch Kitchen Stories, you catch a glimpse of the app's mantra: "Anyone can cook". The problem is, most cooking apps (and indeed, traditional cookery books) make assumptions regarding people's abilities.

Faced with a list of steps on a stark white page, it's easy to get halfway through a recipe, look at the stodge in front of you, reason something must have gone terribly wrong, and order a takeaway.

Kitchen Stories offers firmer footing. You're first met with a wall of gorgeous photography. More importantly, the photographs don't stop.

Every step in a recipe is accompanied by a picture that shows how things should be at that point. Additionally, some recipes provide tutorial videos for potentially tricky skills and techniques. Fancy some Vietnamese pho, but not sure how to peel ginger, prepare a chilli or thinly slice meat? Kitchen Stories has you covered.

Beyond this, there's a shopping list, handy essentials guide, and some magazine-style articles to peruse. And while you don't get the sheer range of recipes found in some rival apps, the presentation more than makes up for that — especially on the iPad, which will likely find a new home in your own kitchen soon after Kitchen Stories is installed.

White Noise+

There are quite a few apps for creating ambient background noise, helping you to focus, relax, and even sleep. White Noise+ is perhaps the best we’ve seen – a really smartly designed mix of sound and interface design that is extremely intuitive yet thoroughly modern.

It works through you adding sounds to an on-screen grid. Those placed towards the right become more complex, and those towards the top are louder. Personalized mixes can be saved, or you can play several that are pre-loaded.

For free, you do get an ad across the bottom of the screen, only five sounds, and no access to timers and alarms. But even with such restrictions, White Noise+ is pretty great. Throw $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 at it for the extra features and noises, and it borders on exceptional.

7 Minute Workout

7 Minute Workout is designed to give you a complete fitness workout in just seven minutes. It’s far from alone on the App Store, but we like this take because it’s straightforward – and also properly free (rather than being riddled with IAP).

The exercise screens are basic, but bold. It’s always obvious where you are in a routine, and if you’re unsure about the next step, you can tap a video playback button to view a demonstration.

Beyond the exercises, the app enables you to track your weight and set the gap between exercises, which are regularly switched during the routine. The only downside is not being able to block specific exercises if, for example, you don’t have access to a chair, or cannot perform them due to accessibility reasons.

Epicurious

Epicurious is a massive recipe book for iPad. It provides access to over 35,000 recipes, and offers a magazine-like presentation. The entry screen is awash with new recipes with vibrant photography; you can quickly flick between that and dedicated pages for themed recipes and new videos.

The app’s search is excellent. You can select by meal type, and filter available recipes by selecting specific ingredients, cuisine types, and dietary issues (such as low-fat and wheat-free). Flicking back and forth between filters and results can irk, but the app at least does so quickly and efficiently.

The actual recipe pages are a touch basic – there’s no hand-holding like the step-by-step photos you get in Kitchen Stories. Still, if confident in your abilities, it’s a great app to broaden your culinary horizons.

The best free kids apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps, learning tools, and games for toddlers and children.

Toca Life: World

Toca Life: World mashes together all of the Toca Life apps into one big globe your kid can explore with a flurry of frantic tapping. New locations are built automatically if you have other Toca Life apps installed, or you can buy them with one-off IAPs.

Even for free, you get plenty to delve into. Bop City has a bunch of stuff to check out, including a hairdresser, theater, and mini mall, each with plentiful interactive elements. Figures can be dragged about, and you can make three custom ones in the free version of the character creator.

As a free app, it’s solid, generous stuff – especially on the iPad, where there’s more room to play. Combined with other Toca Life apps, it’s pretty much essential.

Noah’s Ark Animalibrium

Noah’s Ark Animalibrium might have the famous tale in its name, but this take on the story breaks with convention, to say the least. There’s no ark here – merely what appears to be a large wooden bowl. And rather than the animals heading in two-by-two, the colorful critters must all balance atop the wobbling craft.

It’s an amusing slice of interactive entertainment, and should help young players to improve their coordination and (virtual) stacking powers. Beyond the balancing act, there are buttons to prod to change the weather, and snap a photo. And for those kids who fancy a trip back in time, a one-off IAP ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99) unlocks a pack of dinosaurs to save from a prehistoric flood.

Tankee

Tankee lets kids watch other people playing and talking about video games. If you’re of a certain age, that might seem baffling, but it’s something kids really like to do.

Where Tankee differentiates itself is in curation: every video on the system has been watched by an actual human.This avoids issues found in certain other online video networks, where kids may suddenly find themselves viewing unsuitable fare.

Tankee also deals with another big concern: comments. It achieves this by omitting such functionality entirely, although some barebones ‘networking’ remains. Create an account and your kid can stash favorite videos for later and follow specific creators. If they particularly enjoy a show, they can madly hammer smiley stickers in real time to let everyone know.

Wonderbly Story Time Books

Wonderbly Story Time Books is an iPad take on personalized illustrated story books for children. The premise is the protagonist has forgotten their name, and must go on an adventure to collect it, one letter at a time.

The story is nicely presented, and the app deftly deals with multiple instances of the same letter by providing variations for each one. (In fact, this works to an entertaining degree – we tried using the name ‘Aaaaa’ and were presented with five non-repeating vignettes!)

Part of the point of the app is you’ll get to the end, and then buy a real copy of the actual book. But even if you resist those papery, spendy charms, the app’s a blast – and it even lets you store previous adventures, so none are ever lost.

Lego Creator Islands

Lego Creator Islands is for fans of the popular construction toy when there are no plastic bricks close at hand. It starts you off with a little island, on which you build a house. Construction is simple: tap piles of bricks and they magically combine into pieces of a finished Lego set, which you drag into place.

Rinse and repeat a few times and your kid will beam as they watch their island increasingly come alive, populated with Lego minifigs and bounding Lego animals, and dotted with buildings, trees and vehicles.

The experience is, admittedly, not that deep, and you can see most of what it has to offer in an hour or so. But it’s always fun to return to, and certainly beats treading on a Lego brick while barefoot.

Sago Mini Friends

Sago Mini Friends is a sweet-natured collection of adorable mini-games, ideal for young children. After selecting a character to play, you visit a neighborhood of colorful houses. Knock on a door and you’ll be invited inside for a playdate.

The activities are varied and smartly designed. There’s a birthday party, where gifts are gleefully unwrapped, and a birdhouse to fix by hammering in nails. Our favorite, though, is a cleverly conceived snack time that finds two friends sitting side-by-side. Feed one and the other looks a bit glum, which encourages the young player to learn to share.

Entirely lacking IAP and advertising, Sago Mini Friends is a no-brainer for any parent who wants a safe, free, fun, educational app for their youngster to spend a bit of quality time with.

Zen Studio

According to the developer's blurb, Zen Studio is all about helping children to relax and focus, by providing a kind of finger-painting that can only exist in the digital realm. Frankly, we take issue with the 'children' bit, because Zen Studio has a welcoming and pleasing nature that should ensure it's a hit with every iPad user.

You start off with a grid of triangles and a column of colored paints. Tap a paint to choose your color and then tap individual triangles or drag across the grid to start drawing. Every gesture you make is accompanied by musical notes that play over an ambient background soundtrack.

Bar the atmosphere being knocked a touch by a loud squelch noise whenever a new paint tube is selected, the mix of drawing tool and musical instrument is intoxicating. When you're done, your picture can be squirted to the Photos app, ready for sharing with the world.

This is, however, a limited freebie in some ways. You get eight canvases, which can be blank or based on templates. If you want more, you can buy an IAP to unlock the premium version of the app. Still, for no outlay at all, you get a good few hours of chill-out noodly fun — more, if you're happy drawing over the same canvases again and again.

Lego Life

Lego Life is a social network for kids whose lives revolve around plastic bricks. Once you’re signed up, you explore feeds and follow themes, to become a better builder, or just see what’s current in the world of Lego.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a nod towards advertising of a kind, in new product videos being liberally sprinkled about. But mostly, this is an app about inspiration. You’re regularly offered building challenges and knowledge tests; during lazy days, you can slap stickers all over a virtual Lego kit, or build a mini-figure for your profile.

Given that it’ll mostly be kids using the app, it’s worth noting usernames are anonymized. You can’t type your own, and instead select from semi-random word lists. EmpressSensibleMotorbike, meet ElderSupersonicJelly!

Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby

Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby is a two-part game designed for children as young as six months old.

In Level 1, your youngling – now armed with a worryingly expensive piece of technology – can tilt and tap the screen to make shapes appear and bounce around. But Level 2 ramps things up considerably.

“Let’s put on a show,” chirps the app as the five shapes wiggle and jig about on the screen, lurking above a colorful keyboard. And you know what’s next: maddeningly jaunty earworms, augmented by a deliriously happy baby smacking the huge piano keys.

Your slow descent into madness will be worth it for the smile on their little face.

Toca Tailor Fairy Tales

Toca Tailor Fairy Tales is a dressing up app. You choose from a male or female customer, and then set about giving them a new and exciting outfit.

As with other Toca Boca fare, this is a tactile, immediate app. Tap a garment to adjust its type; drag and you’ll change its length. Accessories can be added from an expanding box, if you decide your appreciative on-screen ‘manakin’ needs a trendy hat.

The best bit, though, is the materials section. For each part of the garment, you can drag and drop materials onto it. This isn’t a question of merely recoloring either – you can pinch/rotate to make all kinds of crazy patterns, and even import photos or snap a texture using the iPad’s camera. Great stuff for tiny wannabe fashion designers.

The best free music and audio apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for listening to podcasts, making music or being a virtual DJ.

Figure

Figure is an app designed to let you craft beats in seconds. It’s been around for a while on mobile, but the current iteration frees itself from irritating social media cruft. Create an account and you’re good to go.

Although primarily designed for one-fingered operation on a phone, Figure works really nicely as an iPad app. Blown up on the larger display its tactile interface affords you more precision as you tap out beats, construct melodies, and fiddle around with settings.

This isn’t an app for crafting a top-ten hit, note – at most, you’ll end up with eight-bar loops you can export elsewhere. But it’s fun, great for inspiring new ideas, ideal for non-musicians, and perfect for creating bespoke ringtones and alerts for your Apple devices.

Tonebridge

Tonebridge Guitar Effects has a different spin on the whole ‘turning your iPad into an amp’ thing. Rather than you painstakingly setting up a set of stomp-boxes, and pairing your creation with an amp, Tonebridge offers thousands of presets. Moreover, each one mimics the guitar sounds from an existing song.

This means whether you fancy being Clapton, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, or Led Zeppelin, all you need to do is prod a recommended option, or have a quick search of the catalog.

About half of the presets let you preview the sound using some of the original song’s melody or chords. All can be tweaked to suit, if you know better than the preset when it comes to the precise level of echo a pedal should be emitting – or how much the chosen amp has been cranked up!

djay

djay once existed in various forms on iOS, but is now a free, universal app that invites budding DJs to pay for the level of features that they want.

If you’re not willing to splash out, there’s still plenty to enjoy. You get the full two-deck classic mode, featuring a pair of virtual record decks to spin, a crossfade mixer, scrolling audio waveforms, and a bunch of effects. The interface is intuitive and tactile, although you can delve into AI-driven auto-mixing when manual control seems like too much effort.

Paying subscription IAP unlocks a slew of extra features, including a four-deck pro view, video, MIDI, and high-end mixing. For jobbing DJs, that’s perhaps the only option; for bedroom deck-spinners, the free app’s more than enough – and rather generous, given its high quality. 

Beatwave

Beatwave makes it easy to create music. You select a voice and tap out notes on a grid. The grid can be set to various scales, ensuring the notes you use always sound good. Go deeper into the app and you can layer/arrange multiple loops, each of which can have a unique sound assigned.

The app looks great, with an explosion of color bursting from each note as the playhead hits it. This is a welcome hangover from the app’s previous incarnation as a simplified digital take on the Yamaha Tenori-on.

The more conventional redesign elsewhere robs Beatwave of some immediacy and playfulness regarding the play surface, although accessing all of its features is now a lot more coherent. Overall, it’s a good bet for beginners but also musicians looking for a fun sketchpad.

AudioKit Synth One Synthesizer

AudioKit Synth One Synthesizer is an iPad synth bursting at the seams with dials to twiddle, buttons to push, and all kinds of exciting noises that blast forth from your speakers.

Even if you’re not overly musically inclined, there’s fun to be had here by selecting presets - many of which use a built-in user-friendly sequencer, so you can fire off a melody by holding down a single key. There’s loads for musicians to delve into, including Audiobus and IAA support, customizable filters, and touchpad play surfaces.

It’s hugely impressive and the sort of thing you’d usually expect to set you back north of 30 bucks, so it’s all the more surprising that Synth One is entirely free from ads and IAP - and that will always be the case, given that it’s also an open-source project.

Novation Launchpad

Novation Launchpad is about remixing electronic music using a grid of loops. For the beginner, it’s a friendly, intuitive introduction to music-making. You load a genre and just tap away, safe in the knowledge everything will always sound great. You can even record live mixes and share them with friends.

There’s depth to Novation Launchpad as well – effects to apply, filters to experiment with, and the option to mix and match pad sounds. If you’re prepared to dip into your wallet, you can take things much further, importing your own audio files and working with a larger range of effects.

On iPad, you can buy all of these things – and a MIDI sync feature – for a one-off $14.99/£14.99/$AU22.99 IAP. But even if you stick to the free version, Novation Launchpad proves to be suitably noisy fun.

Auxy Music Studio

The thinking behind Auxy Music Studio is that music-making - both in the real world and software - has become too complicated. This app therefore strives to combine the immediacy of something like Novation Launchpad's loop triggers with a basic piano roll editor.

For each instrument, you choose between drums and decidedly electronic synths. You then compose loops of between one and four bars, tapping out notes on the piano roll's grid. Subsequent playback occurs on the overview screen by tapping loops to cue them up.

For those who want to go a bit further, the app includes arrangement functionality (for composing entire songs), along with Ableton Link and MIDI export support. Auxy's therefore worth a look for relative newcomers to making music and also pros after a no-nonsense scratchpad.

Garageband

On an iPhone, music-making app GarageBand is mightily impressive, but on iPad, the extra space proves transformative. In being able to see more at any given time, your experience is more efficient and enjoyable, whether you’re a beginner tapping the grid view to trigger loops, a live musician tweaking a synth on stage, or a recording artist delving into audio waveforms and MIDI data.

Apple’s app also cleverly appeals to all. Newcomers can work with loops, automated drummers, and piano strips for always staying in key. Pros get seriously impressive track controls with configurable effects, multi-take recording, and Audio Unit support for bringing favorite synths directly into GarageBand.

If you don’t feel terribly creative sitting in front of a PC, GarageBand’s the perfect way to unleash your Grammy-winning songwriter in waiting.

Overcast

Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.

The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.

Seaquence

There are two ways to approach Seaquence, where the first is as a really bizarre interactive album. Select a track and a bunch of little creatures swim about on the screen, which results in spatialized sound mixes. (Stick some headphones on to hear how their movements affect the placement of sounds being played.) You can manually fling the creatures about, or tap-hold to remove them.

But Seaquence also enables you to edit. Add a new creature and it’ll instantly change the track. Tap a creature and you can delve into a scale editor, sound designer, and a sequencer for adjusting the notes of the current loop.

A $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 IAP opens up a bunch of pro features; but for free, Seaquence is entertaining whether you’re just listening and occasionally bothering the digital sea life, or figuring out how to construct your own tunes.

Beatwave

Beatwave is a grid synthesizer/sound toy, loosely based on Yamaha’s Tenori-on. This means you tap notes by turning on the grid’s lights. When the endlessly looping playhead collides with one, you get an explosion of color, and a sound plays.

Notes towards the top of the grid are higher, and those at the bottom are lower. Some instruments use the bottom two rows for drum sounds. Most importantly, though, Beatwave is designed to always make output listenable.

It’s actually quite difficult to create anything horribly discordant, short of filling every square on the grid.

For those who fancy more depth, the app offers plenty of alternate sounds, automated morphing, and the ability to save patterns to the sidebar, which you switch between with a tap. So it’s fun whether writing songs or just playing with sound and color.

The best free office and writing apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for writing, email, spreadsheets, presentations and calculations.

The Clocks

The Clocks is an alternative to Apple’s Clock app, and is primarily focused on a large, very legible display, rather than a bunch of tiny clocks telling you the time in a range of countries.

The free iPad app enables you to quickly flip between an analog clock, a lovely flip clock, and a colorful digital number that looks like it has escaped from the 1980s. Some elements can be configured: 12/24-hour time; whether seconds are displayed; the digital clock’s color.

The app has some extended features, too: there are alarms, and a double-tap on the top half of the screen launches a world clock view with six slots. Arguably, Apple’s app betters The Clocks for both things; but as a free great-looking display clock you can see from across the room, The Clocks can’t be beaten.

Documents by Readdle

Documents by Readdle might seem redundant on iPad now that the feature set of Apple’s own Files has improved. And, yes, it’s certainly less necessary now your iPad has traditional file system access and a means to create compressed ZIP archives – but that doesn’t mean Documents isn’t still useful.

The app makes it a cinch to connect to a wide range of local and remote storage types, and quickly import (not least with the new + button), manage, and share items. There are built-in media viewers, enabling you to play music and search PDFs. The built-in web browser is sleek, snappy, and now supports private browsing.

In fact, privacy is one area in which Documents excels. If you want Files to remain open, but hide some of your browsing/documents away from prying eyes, this app’s optional Touch ID/Face ID barrier may alone make it worth the download.

Hour Blocks: Day Planner

Hour Blocks: Day Planner is a calendar designed around razor-sharp focus. Rather than a week view with overlapping items, your day is broken down into the titular hour blocks. The idea is to avoid clutter and concentrate on one thing at a time.

This proves effective, and although the app will import existing Calendar data, you’re better off starting from scratch. On iPad, the minimalist nature does feel a little like a blown-up iPhone app, but it works well in Split View and Slide Over, and iCloud syncs your data between devices.

Should you feel the need, a pro IAP ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99) unlocks sub blocks for tasks, but it’s worth sticking with the free version initially, until you get that sense of focus to your day that traditional calendars just can’t bring.

Secure ShellFish

Secure ShellFish plugs one of the last remaining holes in the iPadOS Files app: the inability to natively access remote servers. 

Setting up SSH/SFTP connections is a breeze. Using the clear, simple interface, you can quickly connect to any shared drives the app can find, or manually configure servers to later access whatever’s stored on them. Define the app as a location within Files, and you’ll then be able to get at all your remote documents.

For free, Secure ShellFish is extraordinarily generous, with a feature-rich experience. For $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99, you can upgrade to remove interruptions and add offline features. But if you want something robust for the odd connection – and with no outlay – it’s hard to beat the vanilla version of this app.

Paper by WeTransfer

Paper by WeTransfer is the latest version of a much-loved iPad sketching app. It now echoes its earlier incarnation, in giving you a set of virtual journals that you then scribble pictures inside of.

The tools are straightforward, and designed for getting ideas down quickly. But although you’re not deluged with options, the look of pen strokes and dabs of watercolor is spot-on. When you’re done, you can export a page to share with others. It all feels rather sleek and elegant.

It’s worth noting that quite a few features are locked behind IAP: multiple image import; freeform cut; paste between pages; iCloud sync; multiple brush sizes. But the free take – despite its limitations – feels really nice to use, not least when you’re doodling with an Apple Pencil.

Otter Voice Notes

Otter is a voice memos app with a fine line in automatic transcription. Talk to your iPad, and the app should do an excellent job of getting your words down (punctuation and all), so you don’t have to bother typing them out later. You get 600 free minutes per month – 6000 if you move to a paid tier.

Notes can have imagery added inline, and you can highlight words or entire lines. Usefully, the app attempts to extract meaning from longer passages, giving you summary keywords to scan. Should you need to edit transcribed text, that’s possible, too.

Ultimately, the app’s perhaps less useful for recording on iPad – although it works well enough. But with cloud sync, and features for working in teams, it’s an excellent option for getting at and using content you've recorded on your iPhone.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser wants the internet to leave you alone. Specifically, it doesn’t want you being tracked. 

It comes across like a stripped-back alternative to Safari that’s determined to have you leave no trace. Third-party trackers won’t follow you as you browse, meaning no relentless and suspiciously targeted adverts because you several days back happened to check out a nice new TV online.

Sites are forced to use encrypted connections where available, and your searches are not tracked. The app grades sites you visit, too; and so even if you usually use Safari, DuckDuckGo gives you insight into any site’s underlying privacy measures.

Also, if all of that doesn’t go quite far enough, and you want your DuckDuckGo browsing history to be nuked from orbit, a tap is all that takes!

LastPass

LastPass in some ways echoes iCloud Keychain, in giving you a central repository for storing passwords and payment details. You might therefore wonder what the point is in using such a system.

First and foremost, LastPass is fully cross-platform, so if you also work with Windows and Android, it means you can take your passwords with you everywhere, securely. But there are other advantages, such as secure notes and form fill options, all of which seamlessly integrate with devices running iOS 12 or later.

There is a premium tier; US$24/£23/AU$38 per year adds sharing options, 1GB of encrypted file storage, and premium multi-factor authentication. For most users, though, the extremely generous free version should be enough.

Bear

A halfway house between full-fledged writing tool and capable note-taker, Bear provides a beautiful environment for tapping out words on an iPad.

The sidebar links to notes you’ve grouped by hashtag. Next to that, a notes list enables you to scroll through (or search) everything you’ve written, or notes matching a specific tag. The main workspace – which can be made full-screen – marries sleek minimalism with additional smarts: subtle Markdown syntax next to headings; automated to-do checkboxes when using certain characters; image integration.

There’s not enough here for pro writers – they’d need on-screen word counts, customizable note column ordering, and flexibility regarding notes nesting. Also, for iCloud sync, you must buy a $1.49/£1.49/AU$1.99 monthly subscription. But as a free, minimal note-taker for a single device, Bear more than fits the bill.

Numbers

With Numbers, Apple managed to do something with spreadsheets that had eluded Microsoft in decades of Excel development: they became pleasant (even fun) to work with.

Instead of forcing workmanlike grids of data on you, Numbers has you think in a more presentation-oriented fashion. Although you can still create tables for totting up figures, you’re also encouraged to be creative and reader-friendly regarding layout, incorporating graphs, imagery, and text. On iPad, it’s all tap - and finger - friendly, too.

With broad feature-parity with the Mac version, iCloud sync, and export to Excel format, Numbers should also fit neatly into most people’s workflow.

And although updates robbed the app of some friendliness (whoever removed the date picker needs a stern talking to), it still excels in that department, from nicely designed templates through to the handy action menu, ensuring common tasks are only ever a tap away.

PCalc Lite

PCalc Lite's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us. For anyone who wants a traditional calculator, it's pretty much ideal. The big buttons beg to be tapped, and the interface can be tweaked to your liking, by way of bolder and larger key text, alternate display digits, and stilling animation.

Beyond basic sums, PCalc Lite adds some conversions, which are categorised but also searchable. If you're hankering for more, IAP lets you bolt on a number of extras from the paid version of PCalc, such as additional themes, dozens more conversions, alternate calculator layouts, a virtual paper tape, and options for programmers and power users.

The best free photo and video editing apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for editing photos, working with filters, adding text to photos and editing video.

Graphite by BeCasso

Graphite by BeCasso is yet another filter app with aspirations of being an artist – or, rather, several artists. Load a snap, tap a filter, and you can instantly transform a photo into a pencil sketch, a watercolor, or even a blueprint.

These free iPad apps always produce results that are a touch mechanical, but Graphite’s attempts at art are some of the most natural looking and authentic we’ve seen. Head into the Edit tab and you can make further adjustments, to crop your shot or fiddle with saturation and brightness levels.

If you’re prepared to pay, you can take things further, choosing from a range of surface textures, and using your finger to make changes to the digital strokes. The control this affords you makes the IAP tempting stuff, but even for free, this one’s a must-have.

Darkroom

Darkroom is a premium photo editing experience for iPad, but one that bafflingly lacks a price tag. On launch, it immediately invites you to open one of your pictures. Do so and you gain access to a wealth of options, including superb cropping tools, a range of adjustment sliders, frames, and one-tap filters.

The app feels sleek and professional, but also immediate and usable. On first use, tools briefly explain what they’re for. The built-in help center provides added assistance for newcomers to editing.

Should you want to take things further, a one-off $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 IAP unlocks curves and color tools, along with many more filters. But even in its free incarnation, Darkroom is a no-brainer install if you want to make your digital snaps sing.

Visionist

Visionist echoes Prisma in having you load a photo that’s then transformed into something resembling a painting. However, you get more control in this app.

There are 10 free styles to choose from (a one-off $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP unlocks 60 more), but Visionist doesn’t stop the second you select one. Along with adjusting the effect’s strength, you can define how abstract it is, adjust the manner in which it interacts with the original image, and mix styles together.

Some labels on the styles would be useful, not least those based on real-world artists; also, the end results do look rather digital in nature, rather than like they’ve appeared from the hands of an actual painter. But the important thing is they’re arresting, adding interest to even the most mundane of snaps.

Infltr

Infltr stands for ‘infinite filters’. The app isn’t quite packed with endless options (there are ‘only’ around seven million), but feels limitless as you drag a finger across a photo and watch it change.

But this is only one tool packed into a versatile, usable editor. You can crop, make adjustments to temperature and hue, fix perspective, mess around with blurs, and more.

Edits are non-destructive, so you can always update or remove a setting. You can save up to three favorites for one-tap application as well.

That limitation goes away if you pay for the subscription IAP - which also gives you HD export and additional tools, including color shift and selective HSL - but as a freebie, Infltr ably does the business. A no-brainer download for iPad users keen on fixing their snaps.

Enlight Pixaloop

Enlight Pixaloop wants photographs to get animated – in a literal sense. Load one up and you can draw paths to denote the direction of your flowing, looping animation, and use anchors and masks to make everything else stay put. The effect is like a cinemagraph, but you only need a single still, rather than a sequence of shots or a video.

On iPad, Pixaloop benefits from the larger screen, and the accuracy an Apple Pencil affords. You can create some seriously intricate and eye-dazzling effects, even from fairly mundane source material.

If you’re short on snaps, the app enables you to grab something from Pixabay. And when you’re done, you can export your work to video (although, alas, not animated GIF). It’s smart, sleek, and even though optional IAPs lurk, offers plenty of functionality for zero outlay.

Pic Collage

Pic Collage is a powerful app for creating photo collages. You can start with a freeform canvas or a card template, but the pre-defined grids are better. Select some photos and a grid, and the app will automatically arrange everything.

Many apps stop there, but Pic Collage goes much further. You can tweak the frames, and perform adjustments on individual images. Movement can be added through importing up to three videos and later exporting your creation as a GIF. And if you’re feeling arty, you can scribble all over your grid-based masterpiece.

Pic Collage hits that sweet spot of unlocking creativity in an immediate, usable manner. You get results fast. The only real negative is exports have a watermark, but if that bugs you, they can be gone forever with a one-off US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP.

Clips

Clips is a video editor designed for people who don’t want to spend a great deal of time editing – or even shooting. Unlike Apple’s iMovie, Clips is intended for impulsive shoots, and super-fast clip arrangement – a video editor for the social media generation.

On iPad, you might question its relevance. After all, you’re not going to whip out an iPad Pro to quickly shoot someone larking about on a skateboard. But the iPad’s larger screen is superb for editing, making it easy to rearrange clips on the timeline and get a proper eye for the many included filters.

There’s more lurking here too, including automatic animated subtitles, posters with customizable text and iCloud sync. Clips won’t make you a Hollywood legend, but it might just propel you towards Instagram stardom.

Photoshop Fix

It's become apparent that Adobe - creators of photography and graphic design powerhouses Photoshop and Illustrator - don't see mobile devices as suitable for full projects. However, the company's been hard at work on a range of satellite apps, of which Photoshop Fix is perhaps the most impressive.

Built on Photoshop technology, this retouching tool boasts a number of high-end features for making considered edits to photographs. The Liquify tool in particular is terrific, enabling you to mangle images like clay, or more subtly adjust facial features using bespoke tools for manipulating mouths and eyes.

Elsewhere, you can smooth, heal, color and defocus a photo to your heart's content, before sending it to Photoshop on the desktop for further work, or flattening it for export to your Camera Roll. It's particularly good when used with the Apple Pencil (still a funny name) and the iPad Pro, such is the power and speed of that device and input method.

Quik

Formerly known as Replay, Quik is a video editor primarily designed for people who can't be bothered doing the editing bit. You select photos and videos, pick a theme, and sit back as Quik pieces together a masterpiece that can subsequently be saved and shared.

For tinkerers, there are styles and settings to tweak. Post-Replay, the app offers its 28 varied styles for free, and you can delve into the edit itself, trimming clips, reordering media, adjusting focal points, and adding titles.

Alternatively, the really lazy can do nothing at all and still get results - every week, Quik will serve up highlights videos, enabling you to relive favorite moments. These videos are quite random in nature, but are nonetheless often a nice surprise. Still, anyone willing to put in the slightest additional effort will find Quik rewards any minutes invested many times over.

Snapseed

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image. You get all the basics — cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.

• Want to know more? Discover all the very best video editing software

The best free productivity apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for being more productive with cloud storage, timers, iPad keyboards, automation and more.

Launcher with Multiple Widgets

Launcher with Multiple Widgets is like a home screen for Today view, but with the power to provide instant access to far more than just apps. You set things up in the Launcher app, mixing and matching shortcuts for apps/games, contacts, websites, and music.

Special launchers – some utilizing Apple’s Shortcuts – provide single-tap deep links into apps and services, such as setting up an ETA button in a mapping app, links to specific Settings panes, and the means to fire off emails to user-defined recipients.

With the ability to pin Today view to your iPadOS home screen, Launcher vastly increases the number of things you can get to in an instant. Pay for the pro version, and you can take things further, creating up to six widgets, and showing/hiding each one based on day, time, and location.

Focus - Time Manager

Focus - Time Manager will help you stay focused on the task at hand. Its system is based on Pomodoro-style work/break sessions, the idea being that you focus on a single task during the former, and have brief downtime during the latter. At the end of the fourth session, you have a longer break.

With Split View and Slide Over support, Focus fits nicely into your iPad workflow. Its interface is crystal clear, without being a distraction. Importantly, you can also customize the settings to suit, if you’re not keen on the default 25-minute focus session and five-minute breaks.

Splash out on monthly IAP and you can take things further, managing tasks and tracking activity over time. But when just used as a focus timer, this app is a top choice.

Agenda

Agenda is a mash-up of a notepad, a journal and a task manager. Notes can be organized into projects, have all manner of attachments (such as files or images), and be linked to existing Calendar and multiple Reminders entries.

Flagged notes appear in overviews, and the app’s timeline-oriented nature makes it ideal for tracking projects – before, during, or after the event. Agenda’s interface is clean, efficient, and usable: you can quickly get at a specific note, collapse items that aren’t a priority, and add important notes to Siri.

There’s optional IAP. A one-off $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 gives you premium features, which power up integration with Calendar and Reminders, add pinned notes, and flesh out formatting. But in its free incarnation, Agenda is still a great choice for anyone who lives in notes apps, and wants them to do more.

Authy

Authy is a system designed to house two-step verification tokens. If you’re not already using two-factor authentication, you should be. It helps protect accounts from hackers by adding an additional layer of security – a regularly updating token linked to a specific device.

A major benefit of Authy is how easy it is to synchronize tokens across multiple devices, rather than having to set things up on each one. This speeds things along when you, say, buy a new iPad or iPhone. The app can also generate tokens offline, rather than you having to wait for an SMS.

On iPad, the app makes good use of screen real estate, with tappable buttons for accounts in a sidebar, and token text you could probably see from across the street, meaning you’re definitely going to locate it when you need to.

Copied

Copied is a ‘shelf’ app – a means of saving snippets so you can use them later. This is advantageous over the iOS clipboard, which only offers a single slot.

Text, images, and web page links can be sent to Copied from the clipboard or Share sheet, and the app is also drag-and-drop aware. In Split View or Slide Over, Copied can be used alongside other apps while researching and writing. Items within Copied can be formatted prior to pasting them elsewhere, too (to extract a web page photo’s source URL rather than the image itself, for example).

Some features sit behind a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP, notably clip organization (lists/rearrangement) and sync, but even in its free  version, Copied is worth a download if you spend time copying words and images between iPad apps.

Speed Test SpeedSmart Internet

Speed Test SpeedSmart Internet might have a name that appears to have sprung forth from an annual meeting of search-engine optimization experts, but the utility itself proves a useful install on your iPad. Prod a button and it checks your internet speed, providing readings on latency (response time), download speed, and upload speed.

These tests don’t necessarily show the full speed your router is getting, but if you’re having connectivity issues over a period of time, SpeedSmart can be a useful way of logging results.

Not only do you get a full history, but also a handy details pane that shows your location, offers extended information about each test, and lets you add notes. All good stuff to send your internet service provider’s way.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts is Apple’s revamp of automation utility Workflow. Its main goal is to save you time by performing complex tasks with simple interactions (such as a button tap), rather than going through a list of steps manually in multiple apps and websites.

There are two ways to approach Shortcuts. The first is to delve into the gallery’s dozens of premade actions. These include everything from calculating tips to saving documents as PDFs. Everything you download can be experimented with, or you can start from scratch and construct your own workflows in the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.

This proves particularly effective on the iPad’s larger display, which gives you plenty of room to work. And this latest revamp makes workflows even easier to access, because you can trigger them using Siri voice commands.

Cheatsheet Widget

Cheatsheet Widget is a notes app for all those little things that you need to remember – but never do. Its items are designed to be quick, glanceable fare (like phone numbers, codes and combinations and a few words) and are made easier to spot by twinning them with icons.

Your list is created in the Cheatsheet Widget app, but the list can also be displayed as a Today view widget. Items within the widget can be deleted, or their content copied to the clipboard – ideal for things like open network passwords.

For free, the widget will display four items from your list, and you can opt to always place new ones at the top. As of iOS 12, there’s a dark mode; and if you splash out on the one-off IAP, you also get iCloud cross-device sync, a Cheatsheet Widget keyboard, and no ads.

Bundler

Bundler is a boon to anyone who regularly finds themselves having to collect a selection of files that then need to be sent elsewhere – a common task in many kinds of workplace.

Documents are added to ‘bundles’ using the Share sheet. In any compatible app, you share selected documents (or the current one) to Bundler and choose which bundle to place them in (or make a new one). On returning to Bundler, these documents can then be previewed and renamed. (In the latter case, ensuring your files have suffixes – JPG, TXT, and so on – is a good bet, or they aren’t always included on export.)

Sharing a bundle sends it to a location or app of your choosing as a ZIP archive. The process is sleek and simple, and the dual-pane view on iPad makes things even easier when you’re juggling a large number of files and bundles.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is a browser designed to make the internet less creepy, preventing websites following you around the web. It blocks every hidden tracker it can find, uses the privacy-oriented DuckDuckGo for search, and rates websites you visit in terms of how much they care about your privacy.

It’s a combination of educational aid and web browser, and the latter bit isn’t half bad. It’’s a bit stripped-back compared to Safari, but you can still bookmark sites, open pages in tabs, and share content with other people. When you’re done, you can nuke your session’s search history with two taps.

Even if it doesn’t become your primary browser, DuckDuckGo is worth installing. It’s ideal for browsing sensitive data such as financial and medical records, safe in the knowledge you’re not being tracked by nefarious scripts.

MultiTimer

Given the acres of space you get on an iPad display, it’s a bit odd that Apple’s own clock only provides a single timer. Fortunately, MultiTimer – as its name suggests – goes somewhat further by offering multiple options.

In fact, depending on the layout you choose, you can have twelve timers all ticking away at once. Each one of them can have its own icon, color and default time assigned, for those people who need to simultaneously exercise, boil eggs, and cook a turkey.

Smartly, the app works in portrait or landscape, and if you want a timer you can see clearly across the room, a single button press zooms it to fill almost the entire screen.

Should you want a bit more flexibility by way of multiple or custom workspaces, there’s a single IAP to unlock those features.

Slack

We're not sure whether Slack is an amazing aid to productivity or some kind of time vampire. Probably a bit of both. What we do know is that the real-time messaging system is excellent in a work environment for chatting with colleagues (publicly and privately), sharing and previewing files, and organising discussions by topic.

There's smart integration with online services, and support for both the iPad Pro and the iPad's Split View function.

Note that although Slack is clearly designed with businesses in mind, it also works perfectly well as a means of communicating with friends if you don't fancy lobbing all your worldly wisdom into Facebook's maw.

The best free travel and weather apps for iPad

Our favorite free iPad apps for planning a holiday, currency conversion, weather forecasts and mapping.

Air Matters

Air Matters flips weather apps on their head. Whereas most provide details of current conditions, and the briefest of nods to air quality and allergens, Air Matters does the reverse. When you check this app’s map, you won’t see whether it’s rainy or sunny in a location, but will instead peruse readings for the likes of AQI (air quality index) and pollen.

For anyone with allergies, this is great stuff – but it gets better. Settings allow you to define a primary index, and alter which AQI standard is being used. In some locations, you get individual readings for pollen types, such as grasses, alder and birch.

And if you’re planning a trip overseas, AQI rankings are built right into this free iPad app, which tend to suggest checking out Kobe, Japan or Stockholm, Sweden – and probably avoiding built-up regions in India, China, and Egypt.

Saildrone Forecast - Weather

Saildrone Forecast - Weather wants to be an app you gawp at because it’s so stunning. Even as the app delivers the news that your afternoon’s going to be ruined by freak torrential rain, it will do so in a way that at least bathes your eyes in visual bliss.

The dark UI is stylish, and looks very smart as bright clouds billow across the landscape, chased by snaking animated lines on an optional wind layer. It’s good at the forecasting bit, too. There’s unfortunately no next-hour’s rainfall graph, but you can delve into graphs for the next two days’ temperatures, rainfall, and wind speeds.

Given the polish and elegance here, Saildrone feels premium. It’s therefore quite the surprise to discover not only that it’s free, but also that there aren’t even any ads.

Today Weather

Today Weather is weather forecasting aimed at iPad owners with an eye for style. Launch the app and it displays a photo to represent the current weather in your location. Below that, you’ll see a brief overview of current conditions. Scroll and you get an extended forecast and further details (including rainfall, air quality and wind speed), all rendered in almost painfully cool neon tones atop a dark background.

If the photo’s a bit much, you can get rid of it. Either way, this is a great weather app for a docked iPad, and even the sole ad can easily enough be scrolled off-screen. Neatly, there’s also something for when forecasts don’t quite gel with your own observations: if you don’t get on with Today Weather’s data source, you can switch it for Dark Sky, Accuweather.com, or YR.no.

Google Earth

Google Earth is about exploring our planet. Search for somewhere specific and the app swoops and dives to its target. Important landmarks are rendered in 3D that’s surprisingly effective – if you don’t zoom in too far.

This is an entertaining, tactile app that encourages investigation. You can drag and spin the screen, and flick through cards that point towards local landmarks. Fancy looking at something new? Hit the random button, or tap on the Voyager icon for stories based around anything from UNESCO World Heritage Sights to trekking about Kennedy Space Center.

The app is effortless to use, and the iPad’s large screen enables you to more fully breathe in the sights; the result is armchair tourism that’s far more effective than what you’d get even on the largest of iPhones.

Google Maps

Google Maps is an app that might seem an odd fit for an iPad, but we’d argue it’s an essential install. First and foremost, it’s much better than Apple’s Maps for figuring out journeys: Google Maps can more easily find points of interest, and ably deals with public transport information.

Local areas can be explored in terms of amenities (food, drink, and sometimes entertainment), and in a more direct sense, with the road-level Street View. The latter is a great way to familiarize yourself with a place before you visit.

If you always have your iPad on you, Google Maps can save maps for offline use as well, so you don’t even need an internet connection to use it. Alternatively, sign up for a Google account, and the searches you make will be synced with the app on your iPhone.

Momondo

There are two things a good flight comparison apps needs to be: easy to use, and useful results. Broadly speaking, Momondo ably does the job in both cases.

Looking for flights is simple; the app allows a pleasing amount of vagueness regarding locations (including regions with multiple airports, such as ‘London’, or even entire countries, such as ‘New Zealand’), and it’ll happily enable you to search for singles, returns, or multi-city jaunts.

As search results gradually load in, the app points you to the cheapest and quickest options, along with what it considers ‘best’ when taking into account price, time and convenience. For some routes, a calendar graph lets you check nearby dates to see if you can snag a bargain.

Additional filters are available to further refine your results, and you can create an account to save favorites and receive fare alerts - plus hotel listing can be added in too, should you want a more comprehensive.

Townske

Townske seems to bill itself as an app akin to Foursquare – a place to find the best local cafes, restaurants, and sights in major cities. But really it’s more of a place where photo-bloggers can publish their unique take on amazing locations, thereby providing you with gorgeous photos and succinct chunks of writing to devour.

You can jump right into the main feed, or focus on a specific city. You then tap on a photo to open an individual story. Every one we tried was rich in superb imagery, with just enough text to add meaningful context without interrupting the flow of the visuals.

Neatly, you can tap a map icon to see where the various photos were all taken; and if you sign up for an account, favorite stories or individual images can be bookmarked for later. But even if you simply treat Townske as a regularly-updated lean-back digital take on a newspaper travel supplement, you can’t really go wrong.

Weather Underground

With a native weather app bafflingly absent from iPad, you need to venture to the App Store to get anything beyond the basic daily overview Notification Center provides. Weather Underground is the best freebie on the platform, offering a customizable view to satisfy even the most ardent weather geeks.

Current conditions are shown at the top, outlining the temperature, precipitation likelihood, and a local map. But scroll and you can delve into detailed forecasts, dew point readings, sunrise and sunset times, videos, webcams, health data and web links. The bulk of the tiles can be disabled if there are some you don't use, and most can be reordered to suit.

Although not making the best use of iPad in landscape, the extra screen space afforded by Apple's tablet makes the Weather Underground experience a little more usable than on iPhone, enabling faster access to tiles. And for free, it's a top-notch app, although you can also fling $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 at it annually if you want rid of the unobtrusive ads.

XE Currency

XE Currency is a currency converter that’s far from the prettiest of its kind – but it is useful and has all the right features.

Initially, it lists a few currencies, with the base one at the top. Tap an item in the list to select it as the new base currency; you can also adjust the base figure – tap on the number, and then enter something new in the calculator. The list of currencies can be changed at any point, and an item’s position adjusted by tap-holding and dragging it.

Beyond that, you can analyze rates, by punching in an alternate exchange rate, view graphs that outline rates for a pair of currencies over the past decade, and sign up to free rate alerts, which notify you when specific points are hit.

• Now check out the best paid iPad apps

If you've got a new or upgraded iPhone, or are simply just bored with what you've already got, then you'll be exhilarated to hear that you can revolutionise it, turning it into one of the greatest consoles of all time.

That's because the iPhone arguably kicked off the mobile gaming revolution, becoming home to exciting multitouch innovation through to ports of famous arcade titles. 

Today, most phones are capable, powerful handheld consoles – if you know the right games to buy.This round-up covers the best iPhone games available right now. It’s split into categories, so you can jump right to the top racers, puzzle games, adventures, platformers, and more.

We’ll also highlight one new game every two weeks, so remember to check back regularly to get a taste of the latest game to consume your waking hours.

iPhone game of the week: Reventure ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Reventure is a side-scrolling 2D platform adventure with a twist. Although you leap about, chance upon quests, and frequently get all violent to dispatch doddering enemies, your aim is to die.

In fact, your aim is to die in 100 different ways. Figuring out how, and collecting your various deaths, can be perplexing, challenging, and highly entertaining. Early on, you can usually meet your demise by unsportingly stabbing someone, but subsequent expiration is much trickier to reach.

The game, fortunately, plays with the concept to breaking point. When you die, you’re resurrected in often amusing ways, and sometimes death is the only way to unlock progress to a new section of the map. But this iPhone game takes itself seriously where it matters, in terms of tight controls and level design. Something of a miniature mobile classic, then.

The best iPhone strategy games

These are our favorite iPhone card games, RTS and turn-based strategy titles, and board games to check out right now.

Maze Machina ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Maze Machina finds you as a mouse in a maze. Unfortunately, it’s not a cardboard creation with cheese at the end, but a bewilderingly complex clockwork construction crafted by an unhinged robot testing his mini-mes.

The aim is to get to a key and then an exit. But every tile on the four-by-four grid acts as a power-up. As you swipe to move, everything else on the grid follows suit. You must therefore strategize to forge a path to your goal, not get impaled by tiny stabby robots, and avoid inconveniently blowing up the key with a bomb.

Every game feels like a new challenge with limitless combinations. But the slide-based mechanics make it approachable. It’s an excellent example of ‘simple to play, hard to master’, brilliantly compressing oodles of strategy into tiny spaces and short games.

Starbeard ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Starbeard features a race of space gnomes, attempting to defend their gardens from aliens that look an awful lot like garden pests. But in order to stab them, you must engage your brain rather than your sword arm, because Starbeard is a match puzzler.

The game happily plays with conventions. You can only move items on the bottom of each column, and your protagonist’s position within the grid is key when it comes to engaging bugs. However, your attacks rely on actions that only become available if fully charged by you matching certain items.

Starbeard therefore gives you something more than a typical gem matcher, demanding you think several moves ahead; and the strategy the game’s set-up demands ensures victory over those nasty bugs depends on your brain, rather than the dexterity of your digits.

P1 Select ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

P1 Select is a single-screen dungeon crawler with a twist. At the bottom half of the screen is a basic maze, with its walls, monsters, bling, and an exit. At the top half is a player select grid. As you move within the maze (in turn-based fashion), the player selection shifts accordingly.

This is, to put it mildly, perplexing. At first, P1 Select merrily smashes your brain out with a brick. Even though the game has just nine screens, getting to the end seems like a daunting prospect.

At some point, it just clicks. You figure out how to goad monsters, and better switch between players. Then you can work on improving your strategy – a must, given that your high score is actually an average of recent runs. Thinky stuff, then, and all the better for it.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Kingdom Rush Vengeance is the latest entry in mobile gaming’s foremost tower defense series. As ever, the basics involve using resources to buy towers that stem the flow of adversaries. If too many of them reach their goal, you’re defeated and must try again.

The twist – at least from a storyline perspective – is that you’re the bad guy. Vez’nan the wizard has had enough, and is now on the rampage, attacking his nemeses. (How this is achieved through tower defense, we’ve no idea, but, well, video games.)

It’s visually smart, with varied levels, plus added strategy in the form of heroes to deploy and special powers to unleash. Even though it’s a touch fiddly on iPhone, and gates some towers and heroes behind IAP, Vengeance should be immediately snapped up by any fan of the genre.

Twinfold ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Twinfold initially comes across a bit like iOS tile-sliding match classic Threes! You move cards within a claustrophobic grid, aiming to match pairs and double their face value, and cards all sport expressions, imbuing them with the kind of personality typically absent from such games.

Very rapidly, though, you realize Twinfold has more in common with turn-based dungeon crawlers than puzzlers. Your aim is primarily to survive; and this requires you learn and master rules and powers that enable you to efficiently deal with enemies roaming the mazes that shift and change every time you gulp down an energy-giving yellow card.

Despite the tight confines of the arena, there’s loads of depth here – but it sits behind a vibrant and inviting interface that ensures immediacy and accessibility. Top stuff.

Euclidean Skies ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Euclidean Skies takes the framework behind iOS classic Euclidean Lands and stretches it to breaking point. Lands had you move in turn-based fashion on floating structures akin to Rubik’s Cubes, attacking nearby foes in chess-like fashion. Manipulating the landscape was as important as the direction of your next step. But in Skies, the land itself can be pulled to pieces.

This means the original’s quiet clockwork elegance has been replaced with a kind of brain-thumping chaos. You may be tasked with obliterating a giant monster’s spine by reworking the landscape, or figuring out how to simultaneously carve a pathway to a switch and some doors.

It’s hard work, but hugely rewarding; and even though the game’s a touch fiddly on the smaller screen, iCloud sync means you can always pick up from where you left off on your iPad.

Reigns: Game of Thrones ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Reigns: Game of Thrones slaps a famous license on now-familiar Tinder-meets-kingdom management larks from the original Reigns, and follow-up Reigns: Her Majesty. You tend to the needs and desires of your subjects and enemies, keeping the army, church, people and bank happy – but not to the point they’ll instigate your untimely demise.

Flick cards left or right and your approval ratings change accordingly – and sometimes unpredictably. Quests and themes run throughout, providing surprising depth, given the basic nature of your interactions.

The writing is great, although the game is more enjoyable if you’re a fan of the TV show on which it’s based. But even if you’re a newcomer, this Reigns is fun, with you seeing how far you can get into its complex narrative web before being brutally taken down by any number of foes.

Sid Meier's Civilization VI (free + $19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99 IAP)

Sid Meier's Civilization VI is one of the PC’s finest 4X (eXplore; eXpand; eXploit; eXterminate) strategy titles. Its turn-based shenanigans have you explore a brand-new world, aiming to be the dominant civilization through conquering space, getting absurdly rich, or giving everyone else a kicking until your mob’s the only one left standing.

When the game arrived for iPad, that was an eye-opener, but now it’s on your iPhone. This isn’t a cut-back, cartoonish take either – it’s the full experience.

There are drawbacks beyond the high price – the game’s a touch fiddly on a phone, requires powerful hardware, and lacks cloud save sync. We’d love to play a few turns on the train and continue later on an iPad. Gripes aside, this game showcases the potential for immersive AAA experiences on iPhone like no other.

Card Crawl ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Card Crawl is solitaire reimagined as a dungeon crawler – or perhaps the other way around. Regardless, it pits you against a grumpy ogre’s deck of 54 cards. During each round, he deals four cards, which may be a mix of weapons, potions, spells, and hideous enemies.

Your own four slots are for the adventurer, your two hands, and a backpack to stash items in for later. The adventurer’s health is diminished when fighting monsters (unless armed), but you can counter by getting stabby with swords (or hiding behind a shield, like a coward).

Games are brief – only a few minutes long – but Card Crawl manages to balance randomness and strategy. Over time, you can unlock new abilities and figure out strategies to boost your high scores. It’s a polished, entertaining and clever take on card games that’s ideal for iPhone.

Exploding Kittens ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

High-octane card games don’t seem the greatest fit for iPhone gaming, but Exploding Kittens perfectly captures the manic chaos of the Oatmeal-illustrated original. As per that version, this is Russian roulette with detonating cats.

Players take turns to grab a card, and if they get an exploding kitten, they must defuse it or very abruptly find themselves out of the game.

Strategy comes by way of action cards, which enable you to peek at the deck, skip a turn, steal cards from an opponent, and draw from the bottom of the deck “like the baby you are”.

Local and online multiplayer is supported, timers stop people from dawdling, and a ‘chance of kitten’ meter helps everyone keep track of the odds. Large hands of cards rather irritatingly require quite a bit of swiping to peruse (although cards can be reordered), but otherwise this is first-rate and amusingly deranged multiplayer mayhem.

Warbits ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Nintendo fans probably wonder why the big N hasn't yet brought the superb Advance Wars to iPad, but Warbits now scratches that particular itch. However, although Warbits is influenced by Nintendo's turn-based strategy title, it isn't a copy — the iOS game brings plenty of new thinking to the table and is very much optimised for the iPad.

Working with 16 varied units, you conquer a series of battlefields by directing your troops, making careful note of your strengths and the enemy's relevant weaknesses. All the while, Warbits merrily has you and your opponent trading barbs, often about subjects such as whether tomatoes are fruit, because that's the kind of thing you'd go to war over.

Finish the 20-mission campaign and you'll have a decent grasp of Warbits, and can then venture online to take on other human players across dozens of different maps. With superb visuals, enough new ideas over the game that inspired it, and a single one-off price-tag, Warbits is a must-buy for any iPhone-owning strategy nut.

Our favorite iPhone point-and-click adventures, room escape games, narrative tales, and gamebooks.

Speed Dating for Ghosts ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Speed Dating for Ghosts is all about specters who want to find love after life. You select a room, and blaze through quick chats with potential partners; assuming you don’t annoy anyone too much, you then choose who to go on a date with.

This might sound a bit pat, but this isn’t a horror-tinged dating sim. Instead, it’s closer in nature to Florence - a heartfelt story (or, in this case, set of stories) with little interaction, but plenty of soul.

If you hanker for agency throughout your games, the presentation here will feel limiting. But if you’ve got time to delve into a set of tales tinged with sadness but peppered with hope - and with a suitably surreal spooky twist - this one has more than a ghost of a chance of winning your heart.

The White Door ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

The White Door is part classic point-and-click adventure, part puzzle, and part emotionally charged storytelling. It begins with the protagonist in bed, within the stark, white confines of a mental health facility. He has no memory of how he got there.

On poking around, you soon find a schedule pinned to the wall. When completing tasks – brushing your teeth; eating – the hands of the clock move, and days pass. Gradually, memories return, presented as animated comic-like cutscenes; but something’s off at the heart of this claustrophobic adventure – a creeping unease that grows as you dig deeper, and end up faced with various roadblocks to completing your goals.

The tale itself is short, but it feels very different from any other iPhone game. A door worth opening, despite the horrors you might then discover.

Sky: Children of the Light (free + IAP)

Sky: Children of the Light is an open-world multiplayer adventure, set in a place of lush open fields, rain-filled forests, and ruins that mask terrifying creatures of the dark. Your aim is to bring light back to the world, and return trapped constellations to their rightful place in the heavens.

Initially, Sky is a rare kind of game where you revel in just existing. You can run around the fields, flap your cape to briefly take flight, and then skid down hillsides when you land. But there’s plenty of game here, whether you’re poking around caves to find secrets, or working with other players to unlock a puzzle.

The challenges aren’t especially tricky, although the game’s opaque nature adds a splash of mysticism – and sometimes frustration. Mostly, though, Sky is a unique, premium iPhone gaming experience to be savored.

Minit ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Minit has all the trappings of an old-school RPG adventure. The sharp visuals look like they’ve beamed in from a ZX Spectrum or a Game Boy, and the tiled landscape peppered with buildings, forests and characters puts you in mind of an early Zelda.

The twist here is your adventures come to an end after precisely 60 seconds – although anything collected in your previous run stays with you for the next. You must use your time wisely, memorizing pathways and ensuring efficiency in your every step and action.

Minit’s setup ensures it’s more tightly constructed finite adventure than sprawling beast – a kind of RPG puzzle to unlock. However, the game’s bite-sized nature is not only innovative, but also makes it perfect for a few rounds on your iPhone during odd moments.

Maginary (free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Maginary exists in a gray area between novella and game. From the off, you get an inkling of what’s in store, on inputting your name and seeing it infused into the story. As you read on, it becomes clear interactions with your device affect what occurs within Maginary’s world.

There’s a great sense of atmosphere, from subtle sound effects to surprising animations that shake up the story in real-time – in narrative and visual terms. Events barrel along at some pace, too.

The story is resolutely linear, though – there’s no freedom to explore, unlike in, say, Device 6. But this doesn’t matter when you’re glued to the screen, and the interactive components are so cleverly designed. Entertainingly, even the one-off IAP to unlock the last two-thirds of the book is baked deep into the storyline – how very meta!

Florence ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Florence is really an interactive storybook, but there are game-like elements peppered throughout – and because it was created by the lead designer of Monument Valley, you know it’ll be full of heart.

It also features plenty of clever design elements. For example, you at one point create something as a child that later makes a reappearance in a box of mementos. After a crash, sliders are used to make the blurred vision of the protagonist coherent. And at one point you fashion speech balloons from puzzle pieces, which reduce in number as the people conversing with each other become more comfortable.

The downside is brevity – Florence is very short and lacks replay value. But it’s a heartwarming experience, and one that showcases the kind of innovation that occurs at the fringe of gaming.

Far From Noise ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Far From Noise is as much an exercise in self-reflection as a game. It begins with a car balanced precariously on a cliff edge. With no means of escape, what remains is to make sense of it all – not easy when you start possibly hallucinating a conversation with a surprisingly philosophical deer.

Interaction comes by way of balloons, which you tap to confirm thoughts and actions. As you make decisions, the narrative branches, leading you to one of several endings. Oddly, we could have perhaps done with fewer choices, because many seemed almost inconsequential. Although perhaps that’s the point.

Despite the situation (car wobbling; imminent death), the pace is very restful and the experience is unique. We suspect Far From Noise will nonetheless prove divisive, but it’s great to see such artistic games on iPhone.

Dark Echo ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Dark Echo is a weirdly creepy horror game that manages to make squiggly lines scary. As you stomp about in the dark, sound waves are represented as abstract lines that rebound off of objects you can’t otherwise see.

The soundtrack is all-important. Don a pair of headphones, and you can hear your footsteps, and the floor squelching beneath you. Flies buzz as you pass… well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. And then you hear things growling in the shadows, before one decides it fancies a snack.

Dark Echo will helpfully suggest RUN! as you bolt for an exit – or end up devoured in a dead end. It’s a great example of how the imagination can give you bigger scares than any rendered CGI beast on your iPhone’s screen. That and you’ll never look at red zig-zags in quite the same way again.

Sorcery! 4 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Gamebook-style text adventures have had something of a renaissance on mobile, and the adaptations of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series are among the very best. The fourth entry, suitably titled Sorcery! 4, again immerses you in a world of fantasy, with you attempting to ascend a mountain, infiltrate a fortress, and recover the Crown of Kings.

If you’ve played previous games in the series, you’ll find a familiar set-up akin to a single-player board game. You drag your character about, respond to scenarios, bash up monsters, and can (thankfully) flip back to save points should you mess up and get horribly killed.

But even for total newcomers, there’s a full standalone adventure here – one that perfectly marries and balances a book, interactive game, and touchscreen experience. (Note that should you fancy trying the rest of the series first, it’s available as a bargain-priced three-pack.)

The Room Three ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

The Room is a series about mysteries within mysteries. It begins with a box. Fiddling with dials and switches causes things to spring to life elsewhere, and you soon find boxes within the boxes, layers unraveling before you; it’s the videogame equivalent of Russian dolls meets carpentry, as breathed into life by a crazed inventor.

The Room’s curious narrative and fragments of horror coalesce in follow-up The Room Two, which expands the ‘boxes’ into more varied environments – a seance room; a pirate ship. Movement remains restricted and on rails, but you’re afforded a touch more freedom as you navigate your way through a strange clockwork world.

The Room Three is the most expansive of them all, featuring intricate, clever puzzles, as you attempt to free yourself from The Craftsman and his island of deranged traps and trials. Get all three games, and play them through in order, preferably in a dark room when rain’s pouring down outside for best effect.

Our favorite iPhone arcade titles, from breakout and one-thumb rhythm action to multitouch madness and gorgeous survival efforts.

Vectronom ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Vectronom is a visually arresting, ear-pleasing slice of demanding but captivating arcade gaming. In a world of geometric shapes, your cube wants nothing more than to reach an exit. But to get there, it must traverse a landscape that shifts and changes to the beat.

You soon work out that this is no freeform game of path-finding and timing. You must swipe to the beat, often moving into what appears to be thin air, because you’ve spotted the rhythmic pattern and know a platform’s about to save you.

Gradually, the game ramps up the complexity of the challenges and rhythms alike. By the end, you’ll be nodding along in manic fashion, your finger trying desperately to make the little cube dance its way to victory, knowing that losing your sense of rhythm even for a second means certain doom.

Witcheye ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Witcheye resembles a classic platform game, with its roaming monsters and chunky pixel art. But rather than run, leap and shoot, you control a flying eyeball that darts along with a swipe, stops dead on a tap, and causes wanton damage whenever it collides with something – or someone.

Said eyeball is in fact a witch, who’s transformed herself to pursue the knight who stole her stash. It’s an odd mode of transport, but the idea works nicely on the touchscreen, avoiding problems usually associated with controlling platform games on a glass surface.

The game is still occasionally fiddly on iPhone, though, particularly when you need to squeeze through narrow gaps. Mostly, though, it’s a blast, not least when taking on one of the many bosses – or all of them at once in the unlockable boss rush mode.

Solar Explorer: New Dawn ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Solar Explorer: New Dawn revisits ancient arcade game Lunar Lander, tasking you with getting a craft down intact on to a planet or moon’s surface. This is easier said than done, given that space is full of craft-smashing asteroids, and spacecrafts have limited fuel.

Each mission has three phases. The first two involve avoiding space debris while staying within a target path, to maintain an optimum speed for landing. For the final descent, the game switches to a traditional lunar lander view, where subtle puffs from boosters slowly direct your craft to the landing pad.

At least, that’s the theory. Often, in this intense game, your landers will be blown to bits, but with repeat effort comes mastery, and when you’re deep into Venus missions, you’ll wonder how you ever found it tough to land on the moon.

Jumpgrid ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Jumpgrid is an intense twitch arcade game where blinking can be enough to make you fail. Each of the 100 levels features clockwork obstacles keen to obliterate your little vessel. Your only means of escape: darting about a wraparound three-by-three grid, gobbling up spinning cubes, and then leaping into a teleporter.

From the off, with its urgent chiptunes, eye-searing visuals and ridiculous pace, this is a furious white-knuckle ride. You’re generously given endless retries, but your ego will take a beating when you fail a level for the umpteenth time.

But you’ll keep coming back for more, because Jumpgrid is so refined, balanced, and brilliantly designed – a superb take on a streamlined Frogger hurled into the maw of a Super Hexagon. A modern day classic, albeit one that might leave you a crumpled heap in the corner.

Microbian (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Microbian is a creepy arcade game that features a scuttling spider scurrying through the gloom. Its monochrome world is full of traps, and instant death is always but a second away.

To keep the arachnid hero alive, you tap to make it jump, thereby avoiding things liable to kill it. Tap again while it’s in mid-air, and it will leap to the ceiling – or back to the floor if it’s already upside-down. The procedurally-generated path is finite, but you’ll need the timing and focus of a champ to reach the end.

Even if you never make it, Microbian is well worth a look. The action is great for quick blasts, and the art style is gorgeous – from jump scares when spike-toothed monsters lurch from the dark, to flying fish that offer a brief ride to safer ground.

INKS. ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

INKS. is a pinball game. Each table has flippers and a ball to spang about, but INKS. differentiates itself from traditional fare by instilling proceedings with art and fine-tuning challenges so they heighten pinball’s demands for precision shots.

Tables are therefore stripped back, simple affairs, with a handful of targets, and you are rewarded for hitting them all in a minimum number of shots. Delightfully, targets splatter ink when hit, which the ball can subsequently pick up and create trails with, transforming every table into a tiny canvas.

Devoid of the clutter usually associated with pinball, INKS. is far more suited to iPhone play; and the unique presentation makes it a pinball game for people who didn’t even realize they might like pinball.

Spitkiss ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Spitkiss is an arcade game about lobbing bodily fluids about. That probably sounds a bit graphic, but Spitkiss actually comes across as a sweet-natured, cartoonish game, with cute characters in silhouette flinging little blobs at each other.

The mechanics are a bit like Angry Birds, but once you’ve fired your goop by slingshot, you get another shot if it hits a flat surface. Typically, you need many to get to your target – and this isn’t simple in levels packed with winding pathways, spikes, and monsters.

Fortunately, you can hold the screen for some slo-mo action, and plan your route before you start. It’s good stuff, in all – a quirky mix of shooter and platform game, and with a nicely conceived underlying narrative about love.

AR Smash Tanks! ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

AR Smash Tanks! is all about smashing tanks. Specifically, using yours to smash up your opponent’s.

Because this is an augmented reality game, you can project the rectangular arena onto anything from a table to a large garden – and then let battle commence. Whether using multiple devices or playing with pass-and-play, it’s great to be able to check out your next move from any angle.

Tanks are pinged around in slingshot fashion. If you’ve played Angry Birds, you’ll be right at home and, as with that title, the environments are destructible. That comes as a surprise first time round, when you knock a skyscraper on to your own tank. Later, you start trying for snooker-like trick shots, toppling towers, smashing up tanks, and escaping to safety.

In short, it’s tons of fun; an excellent example of the potential in AR gaming.

Beat Sneak Bandit ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Beat Sneak Bandit is one of the most audacious genre mash-ups you’re likely to find on an iPhone. Despite each level taking place on a single screen, the game manages to combine platforming, pathfinding, rhythm action, turn-based puzzling, and stealth.

The premise is that the nefarious Duke Clockface has stolen all the clocks, throwing the world into disarray. Benevolent pilferer Beat Sneak Bandit vows to get them back.

Amazingly, everything is controlled using a single thumb, which propels Bandit onwards. He must move on the beat, and you make use of walls to turn around, ensuring the rhythmic hero’s not spotted by a guard or security camera.

The game’s full of character, along with devious level design that requires seriously twisty routes and deft timing to crack. Great stuff.

Micro Miners ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Coming across like an auto-scrolling stripped-back Lemmings, Micro Miners features a team of excitable, tiny miners that toddle along tunnels you dig with a finger. On encountering a deposit of gold, silver or coal, they’ll gleefully hack it to bits with their tiny pickaxes.

At first, this all feels noodly and simple, but Micro Miners soon bares its teeth. You must commit each level’s layout to memory, in order to navigate underground hazards, often splitting and rejoining your little auto-running-team.

Before long, you’re carving complex pathways through the dirt, so you can grab large deposits and huge gems, circumvent lava, and avoid ferocious giant worms that eat anyone daft enough to stray into their path. The result is a fun, sometimes chaotic, and unique iPhone gaming experience.

Edge ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

In Edge, you control a cube that finds itself within a minimal geometric clockwork universe. As the cube trundles about, the blocky world frequently shifts and changes, often thwarting your attempts to find the goal. When you do finish a level, Edge dispassionately awards you a rating, which will probably be rubbish.

If you’ve got steely resolve, you’ll try again to see how rapidly you can speed through each isometric wonderland. If not, you’ll still have a great time exploring the dozens of varied worlds, regularly being surprised at how much imagination can be packed into landscapes comprising only cubes.

And if in either case, you exhaust Edge’s levels, you can start all over again in equally impressive sequel Edge Extended.

Eliss Infinity ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

The original Eliss was an early App Store darling, defining the iPhone in terms of multi-touch gaming. Eliss Infinity takes the basic premise of the original and runs with it, cementing itself as a modern-day classic.

The basic aim is to control (move; tear apart; combine) colored planets in order to fit into them into wormholes that sporadically appear. Should planets of different colors collide, your energy reserves are depleted – only replenished by mopping up space dust that appears after successful planet dumpage.

Each of Odyssey mode’s 25 levels demands unique tactics to conquer. Best them all and there’s the manic Infinity mode, ready to tie your fingers in knots.

Power Hover ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Power Hover is an impressive action game that takes you through a beautiful world to recover a village's stolen power. Hover through deserts, oceans, and highways, and grind on rails as you make your way to the finish line, chase down baddies, or play through arcade-style boss runs and challenge your friends for the best score. Collect dropped batteries to unlock even more gorgeous and thrilling levels.

It turns out the future will involve hoverboards, only it'll be robots piloting them. In Power Hover, all the humans are gone, but so too are the batteries that power your robot village. So you hop on your flying board and pursue a thief through 30 varied and visually stunning levels.

Whether scything curved paths across a gorgeous sun-drenched sea or picking your way through a grey and dead human city, Power Hover will have you glued to the screen until you reach the end of the journey. And although it's initially tricky to get to grips with, you'll soon discover the board's floaty physics and controls are perfectly balanced.

Our favorite iPhone games where you run, leap, board, and dodge your way to a high-score – or an abrupt end.

Summer Catchers

Summer Catchers subverts and expands the typical endless runner formula. It features a little girl desperate to visit foreign lands, but she’s only got a rickety cart, and many miles of unforgiving terrain stand in her way.

Your job is to get her as far as possible, but instead of prodding the screen to leap, you instead trigger power-ups at precise moments, giving you the boost you need to escape an enemy or blaze up a hill, or a battering ram to smash through objects in your path.

Failure leaves the protagonist dragging her cart back home, where it can be upgraded and kitted out with more power-ups. It’s like juggling - exhilarating and rewarding when mastered. And over time, you will indeed find those new lands - but not before confronting tricky bosses lurking in the wilds.

Alto’s Odyssey ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Alto’s Odyssey is a side-on endless sandboarding game. Alto zooms across windswept dunes, frequently hurling himself into the air to perform speed-boosting tricks that then enable him to leap across vast canyons.

In gameplay terms, it echoes Alto’s Adventure, and long-time players of that title might get a sense of deja vu. However, stick with Odyssey and you learn it’s more than just a reskin.

Complete achievements and new elements are slowly revealed: additional biomes to explore, and – more importantly – a rock-wall ride move that can have you reach greater heights than ever.

The main mission remains a curious combination of heart-poundingly exhilarating (when escaping a frenzied lemur, or completing a jump by a hair’s breadth) and relaxing; if you hanker after the latter, check out the Zen mode, which removes scores, coins and power-ups. At that point, it really is just you and the endless desert.

Impossible Road ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Impossible Road is an endless survival game, starring a featureless sphere belting along a ribbon of road suspended in space. Gates are placed along the road at intervals, each of which bestows a single point when you blaze through it. As the road bucks and lurches, it’s all you can do to stop yourself plummeting into the abyss.

But Impossible Road is sneaky. It turns out that if you’re careful – or lucky – you can soar briefly into the air and return to the track, taking massive shortcuts that would perhaps be best referred to as ‘cheating’.

Amusingly, high scores are logged not only for the farthest gate reached, but also the most skipped. And although the App Store has freebie riffs on the Impossible Road theme, none have the class, style, polish and razor-sharp focus of this premium title – so stick to the original.

Canabalt ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Canabalt popularized endless runners on the iPhone. Originally released in 2009, it strips back platform gaming to tapping the screen to make a little sprinting man leap over gaps rather than plummet to his doom.

You might wonder why such an ancient title is on this best-of list, but Canabalt is a classic that easily deserves a place. With a firm emphasis on speed, Canabalt’s breakneck pace makes it a pure adrenaline rush in a way that complex and slower rivals just can’t match.

The game hasn’t stood still for years, either. It’s optimized for modern iPhones and has eight variants on the basic theme. The aesthetics remain intriguing too – an ominous, urgent soundtrack accompanies a city’s destruction by massive machines, perhaps explaining why the leaping hero is so desperate to flee.

Sheep Goes Right ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)

Sheep Goes Right is an auto-scrolling arcade game that features a sheep that goes right. And also up. But mostly right.

For reasons unknown, the heroic Sheepy has been challenged to pick his way through 100 levels of mayhem, packed with swirling maces and massive spiked balls. Hitting one is baa-d, sending you back to the start of the level, and wiping out one of your three gold stars. Fail too many times and the game assumes you’re rubbish and helpfully offers to let you skip the level, at which point you woolly feel like a failure.

The game looks crude, but proves compelling as you figure out which combination of rightward steps and upward jumps will get you to the end without being turned into a kebab.

Run-A-Whale ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)

A friendly whale beckons a shipwrecked pirate to leap on its back. So begins their joint adventures, in Run-A-Whale, which is perhaps the iPhone’s most gorgeous endless runner.

Really, endless swimmer is more like it, seeing as you’re a massive aquatic mammal speeding through the sea. You hold the screen to dive and release your finger to surface and leap, grabbing coins in a manner akin to Jetpack Joyride in reverse.

But Jetpack Joyride was never this eye-dazzling, and Run-A-Whale is packed with wonderful moments, from soaring through the air after being blasted from a cannon, to zooming along as a volcano erupts in the distance.

Occasionally, the game irks with its demands – obstacles in succession you have little chance of avoiding, or unskippable tricky missions – but for the most part this is a gem that’s not to be missed.

Frutorious HD ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)

Slingshotting cartoon characters across your iPhone’s screen is a popular gaming pursuit. But if you’ve become bored rigid of catapulting miffed avians at kleptomaniac hogs (and, let’s face it, who hasn’t?), try Frutorious HD for something that’s somewhat familiar, but with far more spark and heart.

The story is that an evil skull’s turned all the protagonist’s friends into fruits, and so he must bound up vertically scrolling levels, making use of handy levitating platforms and cannons to collect fruit and avoid various nasties ambling about.

It’s a jolly, sweet-natured game with superb hand-made visuals that add plenty of character, and a slightly unhinged edge always lurking just beneath the surface.

Chameleon Run ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

You might have played enough automatic runners to last several lifetimes, but Chameleon Run nonetheless deserves to be on your device. And although the basics might initially seem overly familiar (tap to jump and ensure your sprinting chap doesn’t fall down a hole), there’s in fact a lot going on here.

Each level has been meticulously designed, which elevates Chameleon Run beyond its algorithmically generated contemporaries. Like the best platform games, you must commit every platform and gap to memory to succeed. But also, color-switching and ‘head jumps’ open up new possibilities for route-finding – and failure!

In the former case, you must ensure you’re the right color before landing on colored platforms. With the latter, you can smash your head into a platform above to give you one more chance to leap forward and not tumble into the void.

Super Hexagon ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Super Hexagon is an endless survival game that mercilessly laughs at your incompetence. It begins with a tiny spaceship at the centre of the screen, and walls rapidly closing in. All you need to do is move left and right to nip through the gaps.

Unfortunately for you, the walls keep shifting and changing, the screen pulses to the chip-tune soundtrack, and the entire experience whirls and jolts like you’re inside a particularly violent washing machine. It seems impossible, but you soon start to recognize patterns in the walls.

String together some deft moves, survive a minute by the skin of your teeth, and you briefly feel like a boss as new arenas are unlocked. And although complacency is wiped from your face the instant you venture near them, Super Hexagon has an intoxicating, compelling nature to offset its mile-long sadistic streak.

Our favorite iPhone platform games, from retro-style 2D titles to full-on console-style adventures.

GRIS ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

GRIS is a rare game that feels like a work of art. It contains a beautiful hand-illustrated world, splashed with watercolors. Alongside a soundtrack determined to squeeze every ounce of emotion from your core, this makes for an evocative, engaging experience – for what is, fundamentally, a side-on platformer.

The basics of play have you run, jump, and find stuff that unlocks new areas to explore. Sometimes, GRIS is fiddly. More often, it’s joyful, with grin-inducing set pieces, such as when you’re tracked through a forest by a tiny creature that thinks you can’t spot it. Occasionally, there are gut punches, too, when the protagonist is put through the grinder.

You get the full range here, then, in a masterful game that showcases there are still new things to say in side-scrolling platform games.

Death Hall ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Death Hall is a bit like Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong as reimagined by a psychopath. “This game is simple,” suggests the trailer, noting that all you need to do is run, jump, and escape the Death Hall. The tiny snag is said hall is jam-packed with massive spikes, uneven surfaces, and hideous toothy monsters. And there’s a deadly demon in hot pursuit – one touch from him and you’re dead.

The danger of this kind of approach is it can just be too much – and Death Hall can overwhelm. You might feel dispirited on being dispatched yet again, especially when so close to a level exit. But the polish and superb design here is enough to keep you coming back for more punishment – and that glimmer of hope that your thumbs will eventually be dextrous enough to help you escape.

Ordia ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Ordia is the marriage of flinging a protagonist about, Angry-Birds-style, and platform gaming. However, in this world of primordial ooze, resting places are rare, and some surfaces are liable to fire you across the screen like a sentient pinball.

At first, the going is mercifully easy, though. You line up your shots, reach each point of safety, grab collectables along the way, and eventually make your way to safety. But Ordia’s world quickly becomes hazardous, requiring perfect timing to get past a ravenous worm’s snapping jaws, or a steely nerve to outpace a predator in hot pursuit.

Mechanically, Ordia is familiar, and even the – admittedly lovely – graphic style is nothing new, but the execution is borderline perfect, making it a joyful experience on your iPhone.

Rolando: Royal Edition ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Rolando: Royal Edition is a love letter from the early days of iPhone gaming. It remasters one of the platform’s earliest hits, released way back in 2008: an inventive puzzle-platformer, where you trundle rotund Rolandos to their goal.

With drag-based selection in the multiple-character levels, gestural actions and tilt-based movement, Rolando always felt like a game designed for iPhone first. It’s stood the test of time remarkably well. With spruced-up visuals, it still feels like a modern, vibrant take on what mobile gaming can be.

There’s great variety in its challenges too, whether you’re rolling a chubby regal Rolando along, avoiding traps and pits, or whirling your iPhone around like a maniac, trying desperately to get to the end of a level in an extremely tight time limit. Buy it (again)!

see/saw ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

see/saw is a fast-paced platform game with a delicious streak of sadism. It features a subject who’s been invited to help with scientific tests of a distinctly dubious nature. 

Each single-screen test involves collecting three coins as rapidly as possible. This is easy at first, as your little player zips about, scooting up walls, and leaping around. But the professor in charge is a nutcase, and soon has you facing massive saw blades, spikes, and rockets. Helpfully, challenges often require the player to be killed in precisely the right manner to fling them at the final target.

With 150 bite-sized levels, this platformer is ideal for dipping into – and engaging enough that you may find yourself wanting to blaze through the entire thing in a handful of sittings.

Suzy Cube ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Suzy Cube is a platform game set in a world with a thing for straight edges. Assuming you’ve played a platformer before, you know the drill: explore; grab gold; unsportingly jump on the heads of enemies to obliterate them.

But Suzy Cube goes beyond the stripped-back 2D fare we often see on iOS for something akin to Super Mario 3D Land. This means you may find yourself quickly swapping between skidding down icy mountains in 3D, following Suzy Cube as she runs side-on around a tower, and then delicately leaping between floating platforms, as seen from above.

Bar some duff boss battles, it’s ambitious, entertaining fare, with tight touchscreen controls, and a great sense of pace and variety as you delve into the world and discover its many hidden secrets.

Oddmar ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Oddmar is a platform game featuring the titular protagonist, a selfish Viking who suddenly has to become the hero when his village vanishes and evil critters take over the land. It is a stunning mobile production, awash with dazzling visuals, and wonderful set pieces, such as trying desperately to outrun a massive troll in a boss battle, or riding a pig like you’re starring in a medieval Metal Slug.

But even the more typical platforming bits are something special. Wonderful animation ensures the game is full of life, while carefully placed hazards and enemies cleverly shift and change the game’s tempo as you pick your way through each level.

On iPhone, there’s the slight niggle of thumbs getting in the way of the action. That said, the controls are among the best we’ve ever seen on a mobile platformer, as – to be frank – are all other aspects of the game.

VVVVVV ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

VVVVVV is a love letter to classic games. Its visuals and soundtrack recall the Commodore 64, and its platforming action (each single-screen challenge also being amusingly named) echoes much-beloved 1980s fare, like Manic Miner and Bounty Bob.

However, VVVVVV’s speed and fluidity are thoroughly modern, as you zoom about a huge space station, trying to locate lost crew members. And unlike comparatively stodgy platformers of old, VVVVVV doesn’t have you leap over hazards – you instead invert gravity to flip between ceiling and floor in an excitingly disorienting manner.

The spike and alien-infested twisty corridors awaiting you require serious dexterity to conquer. Fortunately, death is not the end, because you get unlimited lives, and there are frequent checkpoints.

And in another nice nod to the old-school, even the 4:3 viewing area works in the game’s favor – you can control your character by swiping and tapping in black bars at the edges of your display, rather than covering up his on-screen exploits with your thumbs.

Bean Dreams ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Precision platformer Bean Dreams is more bouncing bean than jumping bean. The edible hero, decked out in a natty sombrero, bounds about colorful environments, aiming to grab fruit, free a hidden axolotl (a Mexican salamander, if you didn’t know), and reach the exit without getting impaled. Your part in all this: guiding the bean by prodding left or right on your iPhone.

Bean Dreams offers plenty of replay value – you can spend time learning each small level, but only on committing to memory every nook and cranny can you aim for the tiny number of bounces that unlocks a gold medal award.

And to succeed in grabbing the axolotl or getting all the fruit, you’ll often need to play again, shaking up your approach.

With plenty of variation in its stages, alternate beans with special powers, and devious puzzles lurking within, Bean Dreams is ample proof platform games can work on iPhone – when specifically designed for the system.

Leo’s Fortune ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

The bar's set so low in modern mobile gaming that the word 'premium' has become almost meaningless. But Leo's Fortune bucks the trend, and truly deserves the term.

It's a somewhat old-school side-on platform game, featuring a gruff furball hunting down the thief who stole his gold (and then, as is always the way, dropped coins at precise, regular intervals along a lengthy, perilous pathway).

The game is visually stunning, from the protagonist's animation through to the lush, varied backdrops. The game also frequently shakes things up, varying its pace from Sonic-style loops to precise pixel-perfect leaps.

It at times perhaps pushes you a bit too far — late on, we found some sections a bit too finicky and demanding. But you can have as many cracks at a section as you please, and if you master the entire thing, there's a hardcore speedrun mode that challenges you to complete the entire journey without dying.

Drop Wizard ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

This single-screen platformer initially resembles a tribute to arcade classics Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros., but Drop Wizard is a very different beast. It's part auto-runner, which might infuriate retro-gamers, but this proves to be a brilliant limitation in practice.

Your little wizard never stops running, and emits a blast of magic each time he lands. You must therefore time leaps to blast roaming foes, and then boot the dazed creatures during a second pass. It's vibrant, fast-paced, engaging, and — since you only need to move left or right — nicely optimized for iPad play.

Our favorite iPhone turn-based puzzlers, match games, path-finding tests, dexterity challenges, and open-world brain-smashers.

Song of Bloom ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Song of Bloom plays with the conventions of narrative and games. Ostensibly a puzzler with a smattering of hidden object smarts, you work through the game by spotting clues, and later drawing them on to the screen at the appropriate moment; but the second you start experiencing Song of Bloom, you immediately recognize it’s far more.

At its heart, it’s a story. Fragmented but meaningful, it tasks you as the viewer with formulating its whole in your mind. And as you do, scenes you explore bring to mind everything from classical abstract art to modern digital visual manipulation.

It’s clever without being over the top, and impactful without being too knowing. If you had to place Song of Bloom alongside other apps, there are echoes of Simogo’s The Sailor’s Dream, and breakout hit Florence; but this title’s very much its own thing.

Spring Falls ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Spring Falls is a unique puzzle experience, set on a geometric mountainside. Its various challenges are based around erosion, and task you with manipulating the landscape to bring wildflowers to life. This is essentially achieved by eroding (that is, swiping down on) sections of rock, which enables water to reach the thirsty plants.

This isn’t a game that holds your hand. You’re expected to figure out the various rules, and how this strange, angular ecosystem works. But Spring Falls is also a game that wants to engage you and be played, not frustrate you, so it encourages rather than punishes experimentation, giving you unlimited time and undos to play.

There are 60 levels in all. That will likely amount to several hours of serene but often tricky puzzling that’s a bit different from anything you’ve ever played before.

Path of Giants ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Path of Giants is a sweet-natured puzzle game with a penchant for path-finding. It features three chums dressed for the cold – although they’re frankly not well prepared for anything else.

They lack climbing gear, for a start, which is a bit of a problem when they’re faced with massive walls and perilous drops between them and their goals. Fortunately, these chums are happy enough to plonk their bottoms on the ground and let others clamber all over them to reach higher ground. 

Gradually, other mechanics are introduced, like landscape-shifting switches and gigantic windmill contraptions for sailing across ravines. It’s never exactly brain-smashing, but with nods to some of the best puzzlers around – Monument Valley; Lara Croft GO – Path of Giants is nonetheless a thoroughly rewarding experience.

Rooms: The Toymaker’s Mansion ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Rooms: The Toymaker’s Mansion follows the adventures of a young girl who – unfortunately for her – ends up locked within the mansion of a toymaker. We say ‘unfortunately’ because the toymaker is a lunatic who’s transformed the dwelling into a building-sized puzzle packed full of deadly traps.

The game more or less plays out as a sliding puzzler. The section of room you’re standing in can be moved into empty spaces. You need to get yourself to a key, and then to the exit – preferably before you’re attacked by a vicious exploding puppet, or get blown up by a bomb.

Although a tiny bit squint-inducing on an iPhone, Rooms is well worth a download. It looks great, and the control method affords immediacy, but the devious puzzles will keep you scratching your head for days.

The Witness ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

The Witness echos classic puzzle adventures like Myst. You emerge from a metal tunnel onto a lush island. You’ve no idea why you’re there – and the game isn’t saying. This wordless effort leaves you to figure out what’s going on.

What you do know is there are puzzles everywhere – maze and logic tests linked by massive lengths of piping. Learn the game’s ‘vocabulary’ and you can work yourself deeper into the island’s mysteries, eventually cracking the secrets of a distant mountain.

On iPhone’s smaller display, some of the visual spectacle is less dazzling, and interactions are more fiddly than on other systems. But for a game on the go, The Witness showcases the sheer clout and capabilities of modern iPhone gaming, and iCloud support means you can always continue your efforts on iPad.

Photographs - Puzzle Stories ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Photographs - Puzzle Stories wraps familiar puzzle tropes around emotionally charged narratives – or perhaps it’s the other way around. Either way, the combination in this unique game sucks you in and never lets go.

Each of the five vignettes slowly reveals its tale, alternating voiceovers and basic animated scenes with you searching a screen for clues, and then brief puzzle sections. The last of those cleverly shift and change as the narrative demands, ensuring Photographs is a coherent whole.

This all makes for a surprising and rewarding game. What you won’t be prepared for, though, is the hard-hitting nature of the stories, which pull on the heart-strings as you work your way to the bittersweet ending. It’s an excellent game that shows puzzlers can do far more than just test your brainpower.

Snakebird Primer ($7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99)

Snakebird Primer is a turn-based puzzler that has you direct worm-like birds around levitating islands. They need to get to a swirling rainbow goal; but often the gaps between bits of land are too big, resulting in the grumpy burping avians ending up in the drink – or getting horribly spiked.

So you need to figure out paths, which often involves multiple birds working together. Eating fruit lengthens a bird, potentially enabling it to reach a ledge, or become a bridge for another. On quite a few levels, Tetris-style blocks appear – to help and hinder.

Snakebird Primer feels right at home on iPhone. It’s colorful, and the challenges tease your brain without smacking it too hard. But if you do get to the end and want a much sterner test, there’s always the vicious, unforgiving and equally brilliant Snakebird. 

Pipe Push Paradise ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Pipe Push Paradise sends you to a desert island, but not to the beach. Nope – you’re there to sort out the island’s dreadful plumbing disasters. This involves moving massive pipes around confined angular rooms, aiming to make connections that get water flowing once again.

It echoes box-shoving games, but adds some ideas of its own. Pipes can be rotated and dropped into pits – and sometimes you’ll consider yourself victorious, but then realize your little character can’t get back out of the room, thereby forcing you to rethink.

On iPhone, the controls are a touch fiddly, but infinite undos ensure errors don’t frustrate, while also giving you space to experiment. With multiple challenges unlocked at any given time, this is a puzzler where you’ll want to plumb the depths.

Chuchel ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Chuchel is a very strange experience that sits somewhere between trial-and-error logic game and decidedly oddball animation. The premise involves a ball of angry fluff who’s desperate to devour a cherry. Unfortunately for the hairball hero, it’s snatched away by a giant hand after every hard-fought victory.

Actually, ‘logic game’ might be stretching things a bit. Ultimately, you’re tapping hotspots, seeing how things play out, and trying to crack the sequence that will temporarily get Chuchel his fruity prize.

This can be a bit of a grind, given that you may end up seeing a canned animation several times before cracking a level; but it’s hard to stay mad at a game that has so much to give in terms of charm, surprise, energy, and flat-out imaginative weirdness.

Where Shadows Slumber ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Where Shadows Slumber is a puzzle adventure featuring an old man with a mysterious lantern. Its special power is to change the landscape when shadows are cast on it, transforming treacherous drops into bridges, and blocked passages into doorways.

Much of this is a logic test, with you needing to figure out how to build a path to an exit, sometimes with the help of lights you can switch on and off, or people that march back and forth, triggering switches. The mechanics are engaging, as is the minimal yet vibrant art style.

There’s also a story underpinning your adventures, which has moments as dark as the shadows that are cast. If nothing else, though, these shocking moments only make you root for the protagonist more, and urge you to help him to victory.

Evergarden ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Evergarden is a gorgeous puzzler underpinned by an emotionally charged narrative adventure. The main game echoes Threes! and Triple Town, in being about merging elements on a board to boost your score. Only here, you’re combining plants into new forms, and having them strategically spit out seeds between rounds.

The game has a great sense of rhythm, and stunning visuals that make everything shine on the iPhone’s screen. It’s also layered, gradually revealing new ideas as you play. Early on, animal companion Fen will demand you match provided patterns to increase your score; within the adventure, you acquire new skills, and must strategically apply them within the main challenges.

In all, Evergarden is a distinctive, beautifully realized treat – even if you think you’ve already got quite enough mobile puzzlers installed on your device.

Dissembler ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Dissembler is a match puzzler that seemingly has you methodically dismantle tiny geometric works of art. The mechanics will be familiar to anyone who’s played the likes of Bejeweled – flip two elements (flat colored tiles in this case) and try to make a match of three or more – only there’s no gravity in this game to fill blank spaces.

Instead, your matches vanish, and nothing else appears, which sometimes leaves single tiles isolated. At that point, you must undo moves and think again, figuring out the precise sequence needed to consign the entire artwork to oblivion.

It’s a deliciously captivating, tactile game, which also builds on its many dozens of hand-made puzzles with an intriguing endless mode, and extra daily free puzzles. In all, it’s flipping great.

Threes! ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

In our opinion, Threes! is the iPhone’s Tetris – that absurdly addictive puzzler that’s perfect for the hardware, with simple rules but enough depth that you can conceivably improve your skills over a period of years.

It takes place on a four-by-four grid, within which you manipulate tiled cards. The aim is to merge matching pairs, which increases their face value and leaves an extra space for subsequent cards to appear.

Subtleties in the rules keep Threes! head and shoulders above countless App Store pretenders, and it’s also infused with personality. Even when you’re in a fix, it’s hard to be mad at a game where all the cards on the board have cute faces and natter away to each other.

Lara Croft GO ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Following in the footsteps of Hitman GO, which astonishingly managed to transform that series into an adorable board game, Lara Croft GO reworks the adventures of the world's most famous tomb raider. It's another turn-based affair, with lashings of atmosphere, finding Lara carefully working her way past traps crafted by an ancient civilisation with a penchant for blocky design and elaborate moving parts.

There are also lots of snakes and deadly lizards about, which she's quite keen on shooting in the head. The five chapters are quite brief, but savour the game rather than blazing through, and you'll find something that merges early Tomb Raider's sense of adventure and solitude, Monument Valley-level beauty, and bite-sized touchscreen gaming that's perfect for iPhone.

Our favorite iPhone trails games, top-down racers, 3D console racing sims, and quirky time-attack challenges.

Table Top Racing: World Tour ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Table Top Racing: World Tour more or less crashes Micro Machines into Mario Kart. It’s a zippy racer where you guide miniaturized cars around courses fashioned from tables, food, and various bits of hardware someone had lying around.

The controls are straightforward – this is arcade, not simulator fare. As such, the game’s easy to get into – although not to win. A few races in, you’ll feel the limitations of your vehicle, and be urged toward the garage.

At this point, most iPhone racers have you open your wallet, but World Tour is mercifully premium in nature. You earn coins by playing and racing well, and this income can be spent on upgrades. The progression curve is therefore gradual and rewarding. With multiplayer options, bright visuals, and a thumping soundtrack, this one’s a great bet if you’ve a need for speed.

Street Kart Racing ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Street Kart Racing eschews the kind of kart racing you most often see on consoles and mobile, which is usually packed full of cartoon characters and larger-than-life courses. Instead, this iPhone game seeks to portray a realistic take on belting along at 80mph an inch from the ground.

Despite a setup that suggests an uncompromising approach – no assists; no excuses – Street Kart Racing turns out to be quite approachable. The tilt controls are responsive, and you’re initially taken through the basics of mastering your kart and following the racing line.

After that, an almost overwhelming world of kart racing opens up, with you initially taking on AI opponents, but then battling other humans. With tracks that vary from professional circuits to grimy ones underneath city bridges, this racer has the stamp of authenticity, but most importantly is great fun.

Rush Rally 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Rush Rally 3 reasons rally simulations shouldn’t be restricted to PCs or consoles under your telly. Here, you get the full experience, whether you like belting along stages with a co-driver yelling in your ear in which direction to head, or grinding metal in furious rallycross competitions.

Visually, the game looks great. It runs at 60fps, and you get to race in all lighting and weather conditions. The game feels good, too – the car is weighty but responsive. And, sensibly, the controls can be tuned to make things more manual – or less, if you fancy a more arcade-oriented blast.

During testing, we had the rare odd moment, not least the car once rather unrealistically clambering up a steep incline. For the most part, though, this game really does feel like a slice of console racing on your iPhone.

Reckless Racing 3 ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Reckless Racing 3 is a top-down effort that features dilapidated cars and trucks battling it out across a surreal section of courses. Whereas the original in the series appropriately restricted itself to scrapyards and mall parking lots, Reckless Racing 3 features routes through a quaint European village, an airport, and a nuclear plant with a worrying amount of green goop sloshing about.

The handling feels a bit lightweight, but the races are amusingly smashy. And if you’re in the mood for something completely different, there’s a gymkhana mode for precision driving and drifting in your decrepit vehicle.

Grid Autosport ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Grid Autosport is a console-quality racer. That isn’t hyperbole; this is an accurate conversion of a game that has graced countless PCs and PlayStation 3s – all on your iPhone.

Naturally, not just any iPhone will do; you’ll need an iPhone SE or an iPhone 7 or newer, and at least 6GB(!) of storage space. But once the game’s installed, you can immerse yourself in by far the deepest racing experience mobile has to offer.

If you’re a simulation nut, turn off all driving aids, head into a full season and prepare to spend time spinning off into gravel traps. More cautious players can stick with quick races and rookie mode for a while, gradually learning car handling and tracks alike, and wondering why all mobile games can’t be made with such love.

Pigeon Wings ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Pigeon Wings is a deranged side-on racing game, featuring wide-eyed pigeons belting along in tiny planes. The backstory involves a rich nutcase aiming to destroy a city by way of a heavily-armed gigantic flying fortress; the birds race it out to decide who gets the chance to stop him.

The game switches things up between strings of races and occasional battles. In the former, you slipstream rivals, bob and weave through the air by tilting your iPhone, and power up your craft through trophies won in-game.

The shooty bits are brief and intense – a nice change of pace, despite the fact you’ll likely be blown to bits several times before claiming victory.

Should you hanker after something marrying the intensity of ALONE… and the frantic racing of Mario Kart, Pigeon Wings is a must – in fact, you’d be bird-brained to miss it.

Mini Motor Racing ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Mini Motor Racing is a top-down racer featuring tiny vehicles that blast about twisty-turny circuits. They auto-accelerate, so you’re left with steering, and periodic use of a turbo that rockets your vehicle forward a few car lengths, leaving you unable to steer in the meantime.

From the off, Mini Motor Racing is frenetic. The tracks are claustrophobic, and the cars respond (and even sound like) remote controlled vehicles – albeit ones seemingly driven by psychopaths. Once you’re a few dozen races into the game, it seems your opponents are keener on smashing into you than winning.

That grumble leaves Mini Motor Racing languishing in the slipstream of the best top-down effort on iPhone, Reckless Racing 3, but it still manages a podium finish. And that’s because it’s packed full of content, has a great multiplayer mode, and in its ‘remastered’ 2017 form looks stunning.

Riptide GP: Renegade ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

The core of Riptide GP: Renegade feels like it's been wrenched wholesale from the unhinged water-based faction of 1990s arcade racers. Renegade, for the most part, matches their energy and spirit, as you barrel along splashy tracks atop a souped-up futuristic jet ski, performing death-defying stunts to accrue boost that catapults you along at even more breakneck speeds.

The game's packed full of content, from single races to a challenging career mode, and the premium price means you need skill rather than cash to succeed.

There are times you wish the game would let go a little – the colors are drab and it at times takes itself too seriously - but when it fully unleashes as you blaze through factories or get hurled into the air by the wake from a rocket launch, Renegade is glorious.

Drift 'n' Drive ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Madcap racer Drift 'n' Drive somehow appears to have arrived from a 1980s home computer and yet feels perfect for mobile play. It's an old-school overhead racer that pits you against a grid of crazed opponents, all fighting to get to the finish line first.

The game only scrolls vertically, and the controls are simple: steer by tapping near a screen edge or prod the centre for a temporary boost of extra speed. Tracks snake left and right within the screen's narrow confines, but sometimes do so abruptly, causing plenty of opportunity for massive pile-ups.

Manage to not crawl in last and you move up the grid next time round. Place better and you start getting cash to upgrade your car. Before long, you're laughing like an idiot while barreling along in a race of two-dozen tiny cars buzzing around the track like flies, boosting into walls, and occasionally wondering why modern racers are rarely this much giddy fun.

Horizon Chase ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP)

Time was racing games were all about ludicrous speed, gorgeous graphics, and the sheer rush of weaving through a sea of cars to the finish line. Horizon Chase briefly reverses back to such halcyon days, grabs the best bits from the likes of Lotus and Top Gear, before zooming back to the present as a thoroughly modern arcade racer.

It looks gorgeous, with some stunning weather effects, and an odd but pleasing low-poly roadside-object style; it sounds great with veteran games musician Barry Leitch on soundtrack duties; but most importantly, it handles perfectly, and is a joy until the very last track.

AG Drive ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

In the future, it turns out people have tired of racers zooming about circuits on the ground. In AG Drive, tracks soar into the air – akin to massive roller-coasters along which daredevil racers of the day speed, gunning for the checkered flag.

This is a pure racing game – all about learning the twists and turns of every circuit, and the thrill of breakneck speed. The only weapons you have available are strategy and skill. And this suits the kind of stripped-back controls that work best on iPad – tilting to steer, and using thumbs to accelerate, brake, and trigger a turbo.

Also, while some slightly irksome IAP lurks, there’s little need to splash out. The game’s difficulty curve is such that you can gradually improve your skills and ship, working your way through varied events until you become an out-of-this-world racing legend. (Or, if you’re a bit rubbish, an ugly stain on the side of a massive metal building.)

Our favorite iPhone blasters, from precision shooters to classic arcade shoot ’em ups.

Pachoink! ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Pachoink! has its roots in pachinko, pinball’s ancient and dumber relative. But rather than having you pull back the plunger and hope, this iPhone game provides boards that require skill rather than mere luck to defeat.

You get an inkling of this from the start, when you notice the layouts of your various targets, and discover each of them requires multiple hits to shatter. But before long, you’re faced with tiny fairground rides wheeling about, and teleporters that hurl your balls all about the place.

Although the visuals aren’t that pretty, and there’s a chance the background music might drive you to distraction, Pachoink! quickly proves itself a smart purchase. It retains the immediacy of the game that inspired it, but meaningfully updates everything for strategic play and long-term interest.

NimbleNaut ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)

NimbleNaut is a vertical bullet-hell shooter with the cruft removed. So rather than having you blast through swarms of enemies, and only occasionally rewarding you with the prize of taking on a big bad, it throws bosses at you one after another.

Naturally, your ship is armed with a space-age peashooter. It spews out bursts of little green laser blasts, forcing you to strategize how, when, and where to attack your colossal foe – assuming you’ve time to think when you’re weaving between dozens of rockets or deadly (but pretty) neon bullets.

Progression is interesting: you can carry on when you die, but your score is reset. So if you want to see everything, you can do so in a single sitting. But proper shooter fiends will want to do things properly, and get a high score – right?

P.3 ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

P.3 uses retro stylings and squint-inducing CRT fuzz and blur to infuse shooty proceedings with a jolt of retro nostalgia. But although the basics echo ancient vertically scrolling blasters, the stripped-back mechanics and sheer speed result in something that feels much more modern.

In P.3, moving left or right emits a blast from your gun. Hold both directional buttons and you unleash your super weapon – but then can’t dodge. This juggling act recalls ATOMIK, and at first the difficulty in P.3 is similarly brutal.

Get into the groove, though, and you’ll start grabbing power-ups that enable you to survive for more than a handful of seconds. Even then, games are short – but you’ll be grinning from ear to ear even as your tiny craft is smashed to pieces yet again.

Backfire ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Backfire is a shooter that pitches you as a coward who runs away from fights, blasting behind you as you flee. That’s fair enough in this claustrophobic horror world, where you’re relentlessly pursued by swarms of ferocious demons – or, for an occasional change of pace, one massive, deadly boss.

It’s worth noting this is a vicious, tough game. It feels ponderous at first, but soon your foes multiply in number and you end up darting through tiny gaps, blasting behind you, trying to eke out a few extra seconds of survival. Fortunately, you can upgrade powers between games, for a fractionally better fighting chance next time around.

Stick with it and gradual success feels very rewarding. And especially on iPhone, the touch controls are superb, movement feeling like fish darting about a pond – albeit one filled with glowing, demonic piranhas.

Steredenn ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Steredenn is a side-on blaster with a retro bent but a modern feel. It’s packed full of delicate pixel art and you’d be forgiven for assuming it a port of a classic, but Steredenn takes full advantage of the iPhone’s power, flinging glowing bullet death about with merry abandon.

This is a smart shooter in every sense. There’s humor, with your ship endearingly expelling spent bullet cases, and a giant sword power-up, and you’re just as likely to find yourself battling swarms of craft with chainsaws strapped to their noses as laser-spewing behemoths. 

Procedurally-generated levels ensure Steredenn remains endlessly replayable, and refreshing your energy after beating a boss feels like a reward that also allows you to dig deeper into the game. 2019’s Binary Stars revamp – more ships, modes and content – further cemented its place as a mobile classic.

ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun finds the hero of the hour belting along hazard-infested corridors, attempting to obliterate evil-doers in a world where the local sun is dying. Unfortunately, said hero forgot their jet-pack, and relies on shooting a massive gun at the ground in order to stay aloft.

This becomes problematic when huge saw blades and the like need blasting. Shoot ahead and you plunge towards the ground (often covered in deadly spikes). The game therefore plays out like a choreographed juggling act, as you balance flying and shooting in its brutal, bite-sized levels.

Given how intense the game is (although you do get a shield and unlimited rewinds), it’s perhaps a good thing levels are short. But if you somehow don’t think it’s challenging enough, try grabbing every collectible; you can then rightly lay claim to being the toughest iPhone gamer around.

Super Crossfighter ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)

Super Crossfighter is a modern take on classic blasting action that harks back to Space Invaders. But instead of lobbing the occasional pot-shot at lumbering green beasts, Super Crossfighter is a neon-infused affair, with bullet hell aplenty, and a thumping techno soundtrack.

There’s also the ‘crossfighter’ bit, which alludes to the way you can leap back and forth between the top and bottom of the screen. This can be handy for grabbing power-ups, un-sportingly shooting an enemy in the back, or simply escaping certain death when facing a hail of projectiles.

The touchscreen controls work nicely, and there are over 150 waves and an upgrade system to sink your teeth into. The game’s perhaps a touch ‘relaxed’ in feel at times, rather than super-intense, but otherwise this is an excellent iPhone shoot ’em up.

Orbital ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

This neon-infused one-thumb single-screen shooter has you fire orbs into the void. When an orb stops, it expands into available space and is given a number. Hit it with subsequent orbs and the number decreases until the orb explodes, sometimes starting a chain reaction that obliterates its neighbors.

Your main concern is an orb returning over the line of death above your cannon. Orbital  therefore rapidly becomes a tense battle of nerves, accurate aiming, and space management.

Whichever of its three varied modes you try, it’s a gripping game, and there’s also a same-device two-player mode that pits you against a friend.

Our favorite iPhone extreme sports, golf, soccer, and sports management games.

Astro Golf (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Astro Golf puts an outer-space spin on mobile golf games. Instead of fairways, sand traps, and perfectly manicured greens, courses comprise celestial bodies. Your tee is on one planet or moon, and the hole often far away on another. The aim of the game, however, remains the same as ever.

Gravity is what shakes everything up in this title. Smack a ball into space, and its path changes as it whizzes by planets and moons. This often results in fancy slingshots that would leave even the Rory McIlroys of this world bewildered and jealous.

This is also a game that wants to be played. Scores are tracked, but they don’t really matter. Even the hard mode, which demands holes-in-one, is an exercise in stress-free, enjoyable play. Out of this world, then? Quite possibly.

Desert Golfing ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Desert Golfing streamlines smacking a ball with a big stick as far as it’s possible to go. It begins with you being invited to drag an arrow to direct a shot towards a hole. The course you’re faced with is side-on, jagged, and – as you soon discover – composed entirely of unfriendly sand.

There are no do-overs, but there is a score. Yet that becomes almost meaningless as you find yourself dozens of holes into a seemingly endless bout of golfing, deep in a minimalist desert.

What’s surprising is Desert Golfing is so compelling. Gradually, the colors change and the challenges increase in complexity. But even though some holes frustrate, you realize they’re ultimately fleeting. It’s a Zen take on golf, then – and an experience that’s far more satisfying than its appearance in still imagery would suggest.

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a racing management game without the boring bits. Rather than sitting you in front of a glorified spreadsheet, the game is a well-balanced mix of accessibility and depth, enabling you to delve into the nitty gritty of teams, sponsors, mechanics, and even livery.

When you’re all set, you get to watch surprisingly tense and exciting top-down racing (This being surprising because you’re largely watching numbered discs zoom around circuits.)

One-off races give you a feel for things, but the real meat is starting from the bottom of the pile in the career mode, with the ultimate aim of becoming a winner. It’s all streamlined, slick and mobile-friendly, and a big leap on from the relatively simplistic original Motorsport Manager Mobile.

Touchgrind BMX 2 (free + IAP)

Touchgrind BMX 2 invites you to coax a virtual BMX to the checkered flag in courses likely to usher in panic attacks and vertigo, while performing all kinds of stunts along the way. But unlike ostensibly similar fare on iPhone, there’s no rider on the bike – instead, you control it with two fingers.

You plant one finger on the saddle, and one on the handlebars, dragging left and right to steer. As you pick up speed and hurtle into the air on hitting a ramp, you perform stunts by flicking your fingers in various ways. Land safely and you get points.

Wonderfully tactile, and with superb track design, Touchgrind BMX 2 easily betters traditional BMX racing fare on iPhone. And although grabbing all the courses sets you back US$7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99, they’re worth the outlay.

Wonderputt ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)

Wonderputt is what might happen if Monty Python-era Terry Gilliam was hurled through time and charged with designing an iPhone minigolf game. The single 18-hole course is an exercise in surrealism and imagination from the moment tiny meteors smash into the ground to fashion the first hole.

Things then get weirder, with courses eaten into grass fields by cows (who are then whisked away by UFOs), and an impossible waterfall hole that looks like it’s escaped from a colored Escher print.

Fortunately, the game is more than a visual delight – it plays well too. Notably, a ‘smart zoom’ feature ensures you don’t need a magnifying glass to see what’s going on in the visually arresting miniature landscapes.

The only snag is there’s just that one course – but even if you only play it once, this game’s worth the outlay. And for perfectionists, there’s replay value in spotting visual details you may have missed, and getting all of the achievements.

Touchgrind Skate 2 ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

A criticism leveled at touchscreens since day one is how they robbed gamers of ‘proper’ controls. Touchgrind Skate 2 highlights how ridiculous such a statement can be, because rather than having you perform tricks on a little on-screen board by manipulating a gamepad, two of your fingers become legs that dictate how the board behaves.

This is not an pick-up-and-play game, though. You really need to work through the tutorials and fully master them, before you try your hand at competition and jam sessions where you’re punished for mistakes, but greatly rewarded for strings of amazing moves.

In a sense, it feels weirdly like the real thing in miniature – which is more than you can say when your hands are fashioned into claws, gripping a traditional console controller.

NBA JAM ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

If you’re a massive basketball fan whose nose will be put out of joint when rosters aren’t entirely accurate, or the game you’re playing is a bit weird, skip this game description and head on to our next entry.

Otherwise, try NBA JAM.

This game’s an updated take on a mid-1990s arcade game, which features weird photorealistic characters playing two-on-two matches. Sportsmanlike behavior’s left in the dressing room, as they muscle each other off the ball, and a big-head version of the visuals is deeply unsettling yet oddly hypnotic.

The controls are a bit of a virtual-joystick-and-buttons nightmare at first, but simple enough to grasp without sliding your fingers all over the place. And before you know it, you’ll be BOOM SHAKALAKAing it with the best of them. (Or hiding from the freaky oversized heads.)

Our favorite iPhone games based on anagrams, crosswords, and generally doing clever things with letters.

SpellTower+ (free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 IAP)

SpellTower+ harks back to classic word games – paper-based crosswords and word searches you’d find in newspapers  –  but by mixing this up with puzzle-oriented arcade fare, it gives you something fresh.

In Tower mode, you face a stack of letters, which vanish when you tap out a snake-like word. Gravity then takes over, and you realize planning is vital to ensure letter tiles aren’t left stranded.

Mastering this mode serves you well when you venture to others. Some add new rows over time or when submitting a word. Search instead refines Tower to a merciless point, giving you just one chance to construct a word using a special letter.

For fans of SpellTower, this release is more a case of subtle evolution than radical revision. Even so, SpellTower+ is  –  like the original  –  among the very best word games on iPhone.

Word Forward ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Word Forward injects strategy into the tried-and-tested formula of finding words in a grid. Rather than having you maximize your score from a randomized set of tiles, Word Forward demands forward thinking and precision. Each challenge is bespoke, and you must clear the entire grid.

Often, making big show-off words can later leave you stranded. But chipping away at the grid with very small words won’t build your collection of bonus tiles. And those can be vital, enabling you to swap letters, blow one up, or shuffle whatever’s left on the grid.

The interface is sleek, but it’s the mechanics here that take hold. Your brain gets more of a workout than your vocabulary, not least when you try to complete each puzzle without using special tiles, in order to win a bonus star.

Supertype ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Supertype is a word game more concerned with the shape of letters than the words they might create. Each hand-designed level finds you staring at a setup of lines, dots, and empty spaces in which to type. Tap out some letters, press the tick mark, and everything starts to move.

The aim is to get the letters you type to the dots. In some cases, the solution may be fairly obvious – for example, placing a lowercase l on each ‘step’ towards an out-of-reach dot at the top of a staircase, then having a p at the start tip over to set everything in motion.

More often, you’ll be scratching your head, experimenting, trying new approaches, and then grinning from ear to ear on cracking a solution.

Sidewords ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Sidewords is a word game with a new twist. Each single-screen puzzle has a grid with words along the top and left-hand edges. You use letters from those (at least one from each edge) to create each new word.

On selecting a letter, a line shoots into the grid; where lines from the left and top edges collide you get solid blocks, which display the words you create. Blocks can at any time be tapped to remove them.

The aim is to fill the grid with these blocks – simple early on, but not when you’re staring at a seven-by-seven grid annoyingly full of gaps. At that point, the devious nature of Sidewords becomes apparent.

But this game’s nonetheless also forgiving and relaxing – there’s no time limit, and the vast majority of puzzles are unlocked from the start. There’s replay value here, too, despite the static set-ups, since for each puzzle you can save a solution, clear the grid, and try to solve it in a different way.

Typeshift (free + IAP)

Games creator Zach Gage is seemingly on a mission to reimagine all those puzzle games that used to languish only in newspaper pages. With Typeshift, you get something that approximates anagrams smashed into a crossword.

But unlike on paper, the word grid here isn’t static – you drag columns to try and form words in the central row. When every letter has been used, the puzzle is complete.

For free, you get a smallish selection of puzzles, but many more are available via various IAP. If you’re at all into word games, you’re likely to devour them all.

The best of them roll another aspect of crosswords into the mix – cryptic clues. In these brain-benders, you can’t almost brute-force solutions by dragging the columns about and finding weird words – you must figure out what a clue means, eke it from the grid, and after a few of those probably go for a little lie down.

AlphaPit ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

To differentiate itself from a slew of Boggle and Scrabble clones, word game AlphaPit tries something a bit different. Although the aim is, as ever, to clear a grid of letters, there’s more to AlphaPit than simply dragging lines through the grid, making words to remove tiles.

There are bonuses, which you can use strategically, to shuffle letters, or blow to pieces a tile that’s particularly annoying you. Spare letters also lurk, which can be swapped in at an opportune moment.

Perhaps most importantly, though, AlphaPit isn’t random – instead, you get 200 predefined levels to work through. This proves rewarding, transforming the experience into a set of puzzles you know you can beat – if only you can figure out the solutions.

Blackbar ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Blackbar is fundamentally a game about guessing words. Yet it’s also a chilling commentary on the dangers of a dystopian surveillance society.

The game begins with you receiving letters from a friend who’s started work at the Department of Communication. Anything from them considered controversial or negative is censored – a ‘blackbar’ – which you must correctly guess to continue.

Over the course of a number of communications, the story escalates in a frightening manner, and you find yourself feeling like you’re beating the system (man), despite ultimately just tapping in words to best a basic logic test. If nothing else, this showcases the power of great storytelling; and filling in Blackbar’s blanks feels a lot more fulfilling than chucking more hours at a run-of-the-mill Scrabble clone.

Heads Up! ($0.99/99p/AU$1.49)

Heads Up! is a digital take on the party game where you guess something written on a piece of paper clamped to your forehead on the basis of guess clues yelled out by friends. Here, though, words are housed on your iPhone’s screen, and you can blaze through many.

To get started, you select a category (several are included, and more are available to buy). During a round, you flip the screen upwards to pass or downwards when you correctly guess. At the end of your minute of glory, you’ll get a score. It’s simple, smart, effective and fun.

There are loads of great games available for Android, but how can you pick out the gems from the dross, and amazing touchscreen experiences from botched console ports? With our lists, that’s how!

We cover the best titles on Android right now, including the finest racers, puzzlers, adventure games, arcade titles and more.

We've tried these games out, and looked to see where the costs come in - there might be a free sticker added to some of these in the Google Play Store, but sometimes you'll need an in app purchase (IAP) to get the real benefit - so we'll make sure you know about that ahead of the download.

Check back every other week for a new game, and click through to the following pages to see the best of the best divided into the genres that best represent what people are playing right now.

Android game of the week: Bomb Chicken ($4.99/4.99/AU$7.99)

Bomb Chicken is what happens when a superhero origin story collides with a ridiculous platform-game character – and an awful lot of explosives.

After a freak accident, our feathered hero becomes capable of laying a seemingly endless number of bombs – albeit with timers that last only a matter of seconds. This oddball ability must be used to explore a facility, obliterate enemies, and answer the ultimate question as to what’s going on.

Especially on larger screens, Bomb Chicken is a joy to play. The chicken scoots about, being propelled into the air when you rapidly lay a bunch of bombs, and blowing up enemies by booting a solitary device in their general direction. It can frustrate at times, but this short, silly game of fowl and firepower never outstays its welcome.

The best racing games for Android

Our favorite Android top-down, 3D and retro racers.

Tabletop Racing: World Tour ($5.99/£4.79/AU$8.99)

Table Top Racing: World Tour is a high-speed racer that has you guide tiny cars around circuits made from comparatively massive household objects. It’s like the offspring of Micro Machines and Mario Kart. Races are extremely competitive, and find you fending off crazed opponents by way of cunning maneuvers and unsportsmanlike weapons, in a mad dash to the finish line.

Although there are opportunities to upgrade your vehicle to better compete on tougher tracks, World Tour is devoid of IAP. Instead, it’s your skills that will see you take checkered flags – and end up with enough cash to buy swanky new cars.

With simple but responsive controls, this Android game is a breath of fresh air on a platform where arcade racing is often as much about the depth of your wallet as your skills on the track.

GRID Autosport ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

GRID Autosport is a racer, but also a challenge to Android gamers complaining they never get premium titles, and that freemium fare comes packed with ads and IAP. This is a full-on ad-free premium AAA hit, transferred intact to your phone (assuming your phone can run it – see the list on the game’s Google Play page).

Even on PC and consoles, GRID Autosport was impressive stuff on its release. Five or so years on, it’s no less astonishing as a mobile title, as you blaze around 100 circuits, battling it out in a huge range of cars.

This is, note, a simulation. It won’t go easy on you, or allow you to smash through walls at top speed and carry on as though nothing’s happened, but driving aids help you master what’s without a doubt the finest premium racing experience on Android.

Repulze ($1.49/£1.59/AU$2.39)

Repulze exists in a future beyond racers driving cars far too quickly; instead, they’re placed in experimental hovercraft that belt along at insane speeds. Track design’s traditions have also been ditched, flat courses being replaced by roller-coaster-like constructions that throw you around in stomach-churning fashion.

The game’s split into three phases. It begins with time trials that have you pass through specific colored gates, and ends with you taking on AI opponents, occasionally – and unsportingly – blowing them up with weapons.

There’s a sci-fi backstory about synthetic men and corporations, but really this one’s all about speed. At first, the twitchy controls will find you repeatedly smashing into tracksides and wondering if someone should take your hovercraft license away. But master the tracks and controls alike, and Repulze becomes an exhilarating experience as you bomb along toward the finish line.

Rush Rally 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$6.99)

Rush Rally 3 brings console-style rally racing to Android. For quick blasts, you can delve into single rally mode, with a co-driver bellowing in your ear; or there’s the grinding metal of rallycross, pitting you against computer cars apparently fueled by aggression. If you’re in it for the long haul, immerse yourself in a full career mode.

None of those options would matter a jot if the racing wasn’t up to much. Fortunately, it’s really good. The game looks the part, with very smart visuals and viewpoints, whether belting around a racing circuit or blazing through a forest.

The controls work well, too, providing a number of setups to accommodate a range of preferences (tilt; virtual buttons) – and skill levels. All in all, it’s enough for the game to get that coveted checkered flag.

Horizon Chase (free + $2.99/£2.79/AU$4.09 IAP)

If you're fed up with racing games paying more attention to whether the tarmac looks photorealistic rather than how much fun it should be to zoom along at insane speeds, check out Horizon Chase. This tribute to old-school arcade titles is all about the sheer joy of racing, rather than boring realism.

The visuals are vibrant, the soundtrack is jolly and cheesy, and the racing finds you constantly battling your way to the front of an aggressive pack.

If you fondly recall Lotus Turbo Esprit Challenge and Top Gear, don't miss this one. (Note that Horizon Chase gives you five tracks for free. To unlock the rest, there's a single £2.29/US$2.99 IAP.)

Need for Speed: Most Wanted ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Anyone expecting the kind of free-roaming racing from the console versions of this title are going to be miffed, but Need for Speed: Most Wanted is nonetheless one of the finest games of its kind on Android. Yes, the tracks are linear, with only the odd shortcut, but the actual racing bit is superb.

You belt along the seedy streets of a drab, gray city, trying to win events that will boost your ego and reputation alike. Wins swell your coffers, enabling you to buy new vehicles for entering special events.

The game looks gorgeous on Android and has a high-octane soundtrack to urge you onwards. But mostly, this one’s about the controls – a slick combination of responsive tilt and effortless drifting that makes everything feel closer to OutRun 2 than typically sub-optimal mobile racing fare.

Riptide GP: Renegade  ($2.99/£2.99/AU$3.99)

The first two Riptide games had you zoom along undulating watery circuits surrounded by gleaming metal towers. Riptide GP: Renegade offers another slice of splashy futuristic racing, but this time finds you immersed in the seedy underbelly of the sport.

As with the previous games, you’re still piloting a hydrofoil, and racing involves not only going very, very fast, but also being a massive show-off at every available opportunity.

If you hit a ramp or wave that hurls you into the air, you’d best fling your ride about or do a handstand, in order to get turbo-boost on landing. Sensible racers get nothing.

The career mode finds you earning cash, upgrading your ride, and probably ignoring the slightly tiresome story bits. The racing, though, is superb – an exhilarating mix of old-school arcade thrills and modern mobile touchscreen smarts.

Mini Motor Racing ($2.99/£3.19/AU$4.49)

Mini Motor Racing is a frenetic top-down racer that finds tiny vehicles darting about claustrophobic circuits that twist and turn in a clear effort to have you repeatedly drive into walls. The cars handle more like remote control cars than real fare, meaning that races are typically tight – and easily lost if you glance away from the screen for just a moment.

There’s a ton of content here – many dozens of races set across a wide range of environments. You zoom through ruins, and scoot about beachside tracks. The AI’s sometimes a bit too aggressive, but with savvy car upgrades, and nitro boost usage when racing, you’ll be taking more than the occasional checkered flag.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit exists in a world where the police seem to think it’s perfectly okay to use their extremely expensive cars to ram fleeing criminals into submission. And when they’re not doing that, they belt along the streets, racing each other to (presumably) decide who pays for the day’s doughnuts.

It’s a fairly simple racer – you’re basically weaving your way through the landscape, smashing into other cars, and triggering the odd trap – but it’s exhilarating, breezy fun that echoes classic racers like Chase H.Q.

And once you’ve had your fill of being one of the nitro-happy fuzz, you can play out a career as the pursued as well, getting stuck into the kind of cop-smashing criminal antics that totally won’t be covered by your car manufacturer’s warranty.

Final Freeway 2R ($0.99/79p/AU$0.99)

Final Freeway 2R is a retro racing game, quite blatantly inspired by Sega’s classic OutRun. You belt along in a red car, tearing up a road where everyone’s rather suspiciously driving in the same direction. Every now and again, you hit a fork, allowing you to select your route. All the while, cheesy music blares out of your device’s speakers.

For old hands, you’ll be in a kind of gaming heaven. And arguably, this game’s better than the one that inspired it, feeling more fluid and nuanced. If you’re used to more realistic fare, give Final Freeway 2R a go – you might find yourself converted by its breezy attitude, colorful visuals, and need for truly insane speed.

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$6.49)

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a racing management game without the boring bits. Rather than sitting you in front of a glorified spreadsheet, the game is a well-balanced mix of accessibility and depth, enabling you to delve into the nitty gritty of teams, sponsors, mechanics, and even livery.

When you’re all set, you get to watch surprisingly tense and exciting top-down racing. (This being surprising because you’re largely watching numbered discs zoom around circuits.) One-off races give you a feel for things, but the real meat is starting from the bottom of the pile in the career mode, with the ultimate aim of becoming a winner.

It’s all streamlined, slick, and mobile-friendly, and a big leap on from the relatively simplistic original Motorsport Manager Mobile.

The best Android adventure games

Our favorite Android point and click games, RPGs, narrative stories, choose your own adventures and room escape games.

The White Door ($3.49/£2.49/AU$4.79)

In The White Door, a man wakes in a mental health facility. He remembers almost nothing. What follows is a point-and-click adventure within these claustrophobic confines, as you take in every detail of your surroundings, and use that to progress.

Much of this Android game is based around routine – figuring out how to move the hours of the clock on, to reach the next day. But you’ll also regularly be presented by snippets of story as fragments of memories return, and moments of horror when it becomes clear that all around you is not what it seems.

The tale is finite, swift, and somewhat ambiguous. But in a manner similar to Florence, it showcases how succinct and emotionally charged narratives can excel within gaming frameworks, resulting in a few compelling hours for thumbs and brain alike.

Minit ($4.99/£4.19/AU$6.99)

Minit is a curious beast – a kind of time-attack RPG adventure. Given that RPGs usually let you roam at leisure, the prospect of a 60-second lifespan might horrify you. And so it goes in your initial tries at Minit, which prove baffling and confusing.

At some point, though, it all begins to make sense. Collected items survive to your next incarnation. You work out pathways to new prizes, and how to cut down your routes by the precious seconds required to perform key actions.

The net result is a game that looks like it has beamed in from 1985, and that will play like a noodly old-school RPG, but that’s in fact perfectly designed for pick-up-and-play on-the-go mobile gaming.

80 Days ($4.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Of all the attempts to play with the conventions of novels and story-led gaming on mobile, 80 Days is the most fun. It takes place in an 1872 with a decidedly steampunk twist, but where Phileas Fogg remains the same old braggart. As his trusty valet, you must help Fogg make good on a wager to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. This involves managing/trading belongings and carefully selecting routes.

Mostly, though, interaction comes by way of a pacey, frequently exciting branched narrative, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book on fast-forward.

A late-2015 content update added 150,000 words, two new plots and 30 cities to an adventure that already boasted plenty of replay value — not least when you've experienced the joys of underwater trains and colossal mechanical elephants in India, and wonder what other marvels await discovery in this world of wonders.

Her Story ($2.99/£2.69/AU$3.99)

In Her Story, you find yourself facing a creaky computer terminal with software designed by a sadist. It soon becomes clear the so-called L.O.G.I.C. database houses police interviews of a woman charged with murder.

But the tape's been hacked to bits and is accessible only by keywords; 'helpfully', the system only displays five search results at once.

Naturally, these contrivances exist to force you to play detective, eking out clues from video snippets to work out what to search for next, slowly piecing together the mystery in your brain.

A unique and captivating experience, Her Story will keep even the most remotely curious Android gamer gripped until the enigma is solved.

Oceanhorn (free + $5.49/£4.99/AU$6.99 IAP)

There’s more than a hint of Zelda about Oceanhorn, but that’s not a bad thing when it means embarking on one of the finest arcade adventures on mobile.

You awake to find a letter from your father, who it turns out has gone from your life. You’re merely left with his notebook and a necklace. Thanks, Dad!

Being that this is a videogame, you reason it’s time to get questy, exploring the islands of the Uncharted Seas, chatting with folks, stabbing hostile wildlife, uncovering secrets and mysteries, and trying very hard to not get killed.

You get a chapter for free, to test how the game works on your device (its visual clout means fairly powerful Android devices are recommended); a single IAP unlocks the rest. The entire quest takes a dozen hours or so – which will likely be some of the best gaming you’ll experience on Android.

Milkmaid of the Milky Way ($4.49/£3.39/AU$5.99)

Initial moments in point-and-click adventure Milkmaid of the Milky Way are so sedate the game’s in danger of falling over. You play as Ruth, a young woman living on a remote farm in a 1920s Norwegian fjord. She makes dairy products, sold to a town several hours away. Then, without warning, a massive gold spaceship descends, stealing her cows.

Fortunately, Ruth decides she’s having none of that, leaps aboard the spaceship, and finds herself embroiled in a tale of intergalactic struggles. To say much more would spoil things, but we can say that this old-school adventure is a very pleasant way to spend a few hours.

The puzzles are logical yet satisfying; the visuals are gorgeous; and the game amusingly provides all of its narrative in rhyme, which is pleasingly quaint and nicely different.

Samorost 3 ($4.99/£3.99/AU$6.49)

Samorost 3 is a love letter to classic point-and-click adventure games. You explore your surroundings, unearth objects, and then figure out where best to use them. Straightforward stuff, then (at least in theory – many puzzles are decidedly cryptic), but what sets Samorost 3 apart is that it’s unrelentingly gorgeous, and full of heart.

The storyline is bonkers, involving a mad monk who used a massive mechanical hydra to smash up a load of planetoids. You, as an ambitious space-obsessed gnome, must figure out how to set things right.

The game is packed with gorgeous details that delight, from the twitch of an insect’s antennae to a scene where the protagonist successfully encourages nearby creatures to sing, and starts fist-punching the air while dancing with glee. Just two magical moments among many in one of the finest examples of adventuring on Android.

Love You To Bits ($3.99/£3.79/AU$5.99)

Love You To Bits is a visually dazzling and relentlessly inventive point-and-click puzzler. It features Kosmo, a space explorer searching for the scattered pieces of his robot girlfriend, bar the lifeless head that’s still in his clutches. Which is a bit icky.

Don’t think about that too much, though, because this game is gorgeous. Through its many varied scenes, it plays fast and loose with pop culture references, challenging you to beat a 2D Monument Valley, sending up Star Wars, and at one point dumping you on a planet of apes.

Now and again, you’ll need to make a leap of logic to complete a task, and puzzles mostly involve picking things up and using them in the right place – hardly the height of innovation. But this game’s so endearing and smartly designed you’d have to be lifeless yourself to fail to love it at least a little.

Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery ($3.99/£3.49/AU$5.49)

Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery is an adventure game that’s about discovery and exploration. It’s a relentlessly beautiful experience, with rich retro-infused artwork and a lush soundtrack. The game encourages you to breathe everything in, take your time, and work at your own pace.

Unlike most adventures, which tend to be obsessed with inventories, Sworcery is mostly concerned with puzzles that are confined to one screen. Solutions are frequently abstract, involving manipulating your environment or even time itself. You may free woodland spirits with musical prowess, or discover a solution requires playing at set points during the lunar calendar.

It might come across as a bit worthy at times, and there are some missteps, such as the awkward, ungainly combat, but Sworcery is evocative and expressive, and full of pay-offs that tend towards the magical, unless you happen to be dead inside.

Minecraft ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

Minecraft on Android is the hugely popular sandbox PC game based around virtual blocks, right in the palm of your hand. Sort of.

In effect, it’s a stripped-back take on the desktop version, although you still get different ways to play. In creative mode, you explore and can immediately start crafting a virtual world. With survival mode come the added complications of gathering and managing resources during the day – and then battling against enemies during the night.

Although it’s a mite more limited than the full desktop release, Minecraft on Android still gives you plenty to do, and the randomly generated nature of the world provides potentially limitless gaming experiences. It’s certainly more than just a load of blocks.

The Room: Old Sins ($4.99/£4.99/AU$8.49)

The Room: Old Sins finds you investigating the disappearance of an engineer and his wife. The trail leads you to a spooky attic. On getting the lights working, you see a strange dollhouse, which then sucks you inside.

You discover the toy is in fact a full reconstruction of a mansion, with a side order of Lovecraftian horror. Unraveling the mystery at the heart of the game and its impossible world then happens by way of devious, complex, tactile logic puzzles.

Old Sins looks and sounds great, and moving around is swift – there’s none of the dull trudging you find in the likes of Myst. Of course, if you’ve played The Room, The Room Two, and The Room Three, you’ll know all this already. If you haven’t, grab Old Sins immediately – and its predecessors, too. They’re some of the finest games on Android.

The best arcade games for Android

Our favorite Android arcade titles, fighting games, pinball games and retro games.

Dig Dog - Treasure Hunter ($2.99/£2.79/AU$4.59)

Dig Dog - Treasure Hunter is a hectic arcade effort that plays out like Dig Dug or Boulder Dash in fast forward. The titular hound hunts for treasure, and must dig its way through levitating islands. Said islands are, naturally, populated by all manner of monsters, and happen to hang over spike pits.

Figuring out where the prize is, ensuring you’ve always got a route back toward the surface, and keeping baddies at bay, are all part and parcel of the pooch’s day – and it’s a hard life. Even when you master super-fast digging actions, it’s easy to miss a foe, or – after digging a little too far – find yourself rapidly heading towards the spikes.

Still, an easy mode gives you a fighting chance of getting to grips with a game that’s hugely rewarding when mastered, marrying old-school cool with modern app design.

Jumpgrid ($2.99/£2.89/AU$4.49)

Jumpgrid is the distillation of Pac-Man-style dot-munching, Frogger-like hopping, and manic Super Hexagon twitch gaming. Rather than you tackling mazes, though, each arena is an identical three-by-three grid. At its edges are eight spinning cubes; grab them all and you can dive into the exit that appears at the center. The problem is everything else.

Atop the basic playfield, you see, are whirling slices of geometric death. Shapes march across the screen, or pinwheel around like blocky weapons, ready to blast you to oblivion. Levels transform into a kind of clockwork mayhem, tasking you with spotting patterns within a blink of an eye, avoiding blocky protagonists to emerge victorious.

It’s demanding stuff, but this Android game is also a thrill ride that’s hugely rewarding once mastered – not least when you crack your high score in the compelling endless mode.

Vectronom ($5.49/£3.99/AU$6.99)

Vectronom is at its core a simple game: in minimalist 3D levels, you swipe to get your cube to an exit. The thing is, the entire world is hypnotized by pumping electronic beats, shifting and changing to the rhythm.

You soon realize that although it’s tempting to dart to the next piece of safe ground, you must instead understand the clockwork movement of the platforms – how and when they appear and disappear. You then swipe with the music. It’s like a puzzler’s been merged with a rhythm action title, where success depends on your ability to spot patterns and ‘dance’ your way to victory.

Defeat comes often, but the mix of polish, superb level design, and a kind of sadistic edge, sets Vectronom apart. What should be frustrating becomes grin-inducing. And although it’s quite brief, the experience will stick with you for a long time.

Witcheye ($2.99/£2.79/AU$4.69)

Witcheye has many of the ingredients of a retro platformer – colorful, chunky graphics; patrolling enemies; a difficulty level that can approach ‘punishing’. One thing it doesn’t have is platforming, because instead of leaping about, you control a floating eyeball.

It turns out that a witch is in hot pursuit of the knight who pilfered her stash. Naturally, being a witch, she transforms into a hovering eyeball to chase him down. (Broomsticks, apparently, are so last year.) Controls-wise, this leaves you swiping to move the eyeball and tapping to stop.

Sometimes, you can blaze through levels, avoiding bashing into enemies to dispatch them. But doing so robs you of the satisfaction of finding collectibles, and mastering eyeball movement so you have a shot at taking down bosses in wonderfully realized battles. In all, then, an iPad game that’s a great mix of old and new, ideally optimized for touch.

Solar Explorer: New Dawn ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Solar Explorer: New Dawn finds you guiding a worryingly fragile rocket towards a planet or moon, as it hurtles past rocket-smashing asteroids. Blasts of air from thrusters shift your position, keeping you within the path of approach, lest you take on too much speed.

The viewpoint switches. Now it’s all about slowing down, again avoiding deadly rocks. Survive, and you end up in a modern take on Lunar Lander, gently coaxing your craft to touchdown on the surface of another world. One wrong move can be enough to find it instead sickeningly cartwheeling towards an explosive end.

With shiny visuals, an intense soundtrack and adrenaline-infused gameplay, Solar Explorer is a quick-fix arcade blast that gives your Android phone a much-needed swig of rocket fuel.

Power Hover (free + IAP)

There's a great sense of freedom from the second you immerse yourself in the strange and futuristic world of Power Hover. The robot protagonist has been charged with pursuing a thief who's stolen batteries that power the city.

The droid therefore grabs a hoverboard and scythes across gorgeous minimal landscapes, such as deserts filled with colossal marching automatons, glittering blue oceans, and a dead grey human city.

In lesser hands, Power Hover could have been utterly forgettable. After all, you're basically tapping left and right to change the direction of a hoverboard, in order to collect batteries and avoid obstacles. But the production values here are stunning.

Power Hover is a visual treat, boasts a fantastic soundtrack, and gives mere hints of a story, enabling your imagination to run wild. Best of all, the floaty controls are perfect; you might fight them at first, but once they click, Power Hover becomes a hugely rewarding experience.

(On Android, Power Hover is a free download; to play beyond the first eight levels requires a one-off IAP.)

Forget-Me-Not ($2.49/£2.39/AU$3.89)

At its core, Forget-Me-Not is Pac-Man mixed with Rogue. You scoot about algorithmically generated single-screen mazes, gobbling down flowers, grabbing a key, and then making a break for the exit.

But what makes Forget-Me-Not essential is how alive its tiny dungeons feel. Your enemies don't just gun for you, but are also out to obliterate each other and, frequently, the walls of the dungeon, reshaping it as you play.

There are tons of superb details to find buried within the game's many modes, and cheapskates can even get on board with the free version, although that locks much of its content away until you've munched enough flowers.

If there was any justice, Forget-Me-Not would have a permanent place at the top of the Google Play charts. It is one of the finest arcade experiences around, not just on Android, but on any platform - old or new.

Captain Cowboy ($0.99/£1.09/AU$1.39)

Coming across like a sandbox-oriented chill-out ‘zen’ take on seminal classic Boulder Dash, Captain Cowboy has your little space-faring hero exploring a massive handcrafted world peppered with walls, hero-squashing boulders, and plenty of bling.

Much like Boulder Dash, Captain Cowboy is mostly about not being crushed by massive rocks – you dig paths through dirt, aiming to strategically use boulders to take out threats rather than your own head. But everything here is played out without stress (due to endless continues) and sometimes in slow motion (when floating through zero-gravity sections of space).

The result feels very different from the title that inspired it, but it’s no less compelling. Tension is replaced by exploration, and single-screen arcade thrills are sacrificed for a longer game. As you dig deeper into Captain Cowboy’s world, there are plenty of things awaiting discovery, and even tackling the next screen of dirt and stones always proves enjoyable. 

Edge ($2.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

There’s a distinct sense of minimalism at the heart of Edge, along with a knowing nod to a few arcade classics of old. Bereft of a story, the game simply tasks you with guiding a trundling cube to the end of each blocky level. Along the way, you grab tiny glowing cubes. On reaching the goal, you get graded on your abilities.

This admittedly doesn’t sound like much on paper, but Edge is a superb arcade game. The isometric visuals are sharp, and the head-bobbing soundtrack urges you onwards. The level design is the real star, though, with surprisingly imaginative objectives and hazards hewn from the isometric landscape.

And even when you’ve picked your way to the very end, there’s still those grades to improve by shaving the odd second off of your times.

Still not sure? Try out the 12-level demo. Eager for more? Grab Edge Extended, which is every bit as good as the original.

Pumped BMX 3 ($3.99/£3.49/AU$5.49)

Pumped BMX 3 might initially give you the wrong impression. Colorful visuals and basic controls have it initially come across as a casual take on a BMX trials outing. But pretty rapidly, it bucks any complacency from the saddle and leaves it a shattered mess on the floor.

Whereas Pumped BMX 2 (also recommended) went for a more relaxed take on hurling a BMX into the air with merry abandon, this sequel is all about mastery. Try to wing it and you’ll be crushed, but properly learn course layouts and timings, and you’ll gradually work your way through each level.

That’s rewarding enough, but with confidence you can start peppering your runs with stunts to boost your scores, with routines that would make even seasoned BMX pros break out in hearty applause.

Holedown ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Holedown is an arcade shooter that has you blast strings of balls at numbered blocks. When blocks are hit enough times, they blow up, allowing you to dig deeper. Some blocks hold up others, and should be prioritized – as should grabbing gems that allow you to upgrade your kit (more balls; new levels; a bigger gem bag) when you run out of shots and return to the surface.

The mechanics are nothing new on Android – there are loads of similar ball bouncers. What is new is the sense of personality, polish and fun Holedown brings to this style of game. This is a premium title and a labor of love. There’s still repetition at its core, but Holedown feels hypnotic and encouraging, rather than giving you the feeling that it’s digging into your wallet – in contrast to its freebie contemporaries.

Osmos HD ($2.49/£2.19/AU$3.39)

Osmos HD is a rare arcade game about patience and subtlety. Each unique level has you guide a ‘mote’, which moves by expelling tiny pieces of itself. Initially, it moves within microscopic goop, eating smaller motes, to expand and reign supreme.

At first, other motes don’t fight back, but the game soon immerses you in petri dish warfare, as motes tear whatever amounts to each-other's faces off. Then there’s the odd curveball, as challenges find you dealing with gravity as planet-like motes orbit deadly floating 'stars'.

It’s a beautiful, captivating game, with perfect touchscreen controls. And if you can convince a friend to join in, you can battle it out over Wi-Fi across six distinct arenas.

PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX ($1.99/£1.79/AU$3.09)

Since Pac-Man graced arcades in the early 1980s, titles featuring the rotund dot-muncher have typically been split between careful iterations on the original, and mostly duff attempts to shoe-horn the character into other genres. Championship Edition DX is ostensibly the former, although the changes made from the original radically transform the game, making it easily the best Pac-Man to date.

Here, the maze is split in two. Eat all the dots from one half and a special object appears on the other; eat that and the original half's dots are refilled in a new configuration.

All the while, dozing ghosts you brush past join a spectral conga that follows your every move. The result is an intoxicating speedrun take on a seminal arcade classic, combined with the even more ancient Snake; somehow, this combination ends up being fresh, exciting and essential.

The best endless runners for Android

Our favorite Android games where you hoverboard, jump, sprint, or even pinball to a high score – or a sudden end.

Summer Catchers ($3.99/£4.09/AU$6.49)

Summer Catchers offers a distinctive and relentlessly tense take on the endless runner. The protagonist’s aim is to reach sunny climes in a rickety wooden cart. The problem is that all kinds of hazards and ferocious creatures stand in her way.

Generally, prodding the screen makes you leap upwards in these kinds of Android games. Not here. Summer Catchers instead has you pack your car with abilities that are triggered by tapping buttons at an opportune moment – a rocket to escape from a pursuing beast; a battering ram to smash through a totem pole.

It can be a bit staccato and grindy at times, and the boss battles are extremely tough; but there’s so much heart and polish here that you’ll keep plugging away, to help the dinky heroine reach her ultimate goal.

Boson X ($2.99/£1.92/AU$3.66)

Boson X is an endless runner that features scientists sprinting at insane speeds inside particle accelerators in order to generate the high-speed collisions required to discover strange new particles. And if you’re thinking that’s probably not entirely scientifically accurate, that’s true; fortunately, Boson X gets away with this by virtue of being breezy and intoxicating fun. 

It comes across like Canabalt in 3D, mixed with Super Hexagon, as you leap between platforms, rotating the collider to ensure you don’t plunge into the void or smack into a wall. From the off, this isn’t exactly easy, but later colliders are truly bonkers – abstract and terrifying contraptions that shift and morph before your very eyes. Brilliant stuff.

ALONE... ($1.99/£1.49/$2.63)

People who today play mobile classic Canabalt and consider it lacking due to its simplicity don't understand what the game is trying to do. Canabalt is all about speed — the thrill of being barely in control, and of affording the player only the simplest controls for survival. ALONE… takes that basic premise and straps a rocket booster to it.

Instead of leaping between buildings, you're flying through deadly caverns, a single digit nudging your tiny craft up and down. Occasional moments of generosity — warnings about incoming projectiles; your ship surviving minor collisions and slowly regenerating — are offset by the relentlessly demanding pressure of simply staying alive and not slamming into a wall. It's an intoxicating combination, and one that, unlike most games in this genre, matches Canabalt in being genuinely exciting to play.

Doug Dug ($0.99/83p/AU$1.39)

This one's all about the bling - and also the not being crushed to death by falling rocks and dirt. Doug Dug riffs off of Mr Driller, Boulder Dash and Dig Dug, the dwarf protagonist digging deep under the earth on an endless quest for shimmering gems. Cave-ins aren't the only threat, though - the bowels of the earth happen to be home to a surprising array of deadly monsters.

Some can be squashed and smacked with Doug's spade (goodbye, creepy spider!), but others are made of sterner stuff (TROLL! RUN AWAY!). Endlessly replayable and full of character, Doug Dug's also surprisingly relaxing - until the dwarf ends up under 150 tonnes of rubble.

FOTONICA ($2.99/£2.59/AU$3.99)

One of the most gorgeous games around, FOTONICA at its core echoes one-thumb leapy game Canabalt. The difference is FOTONICA has you move through a surreal and delicate Rez-like 3D vector landscape, holding the screen to gain speed, and only soaring into the air when you lift a finger.

Smartly, FOTONICA offers eight very different and finite challenges, enabling you to learn their various multi-level pathways and seek out bonuses to ramp up your high scores. Get to grips with this dreamlike runner and you can then pit your wits (and thumbs) against three slowly mutating endless zones.

Impossible Road ($1.99/£1.49/AU$2.33)

One of the most exhilarating games on mobile, Impossible Road finds a featureless white ball barreling along a ribbon-like track that twists and turns into the distance. The aim is survival – and the more gates you pass through, the higher your score.

The snag is that Impossible Road is fast, and the track bucks and turns like the unholy marriage of a furious unbroken stallion and a vicious roller-coaster.

Once the physics click, however, you’ll figure out the risks you can take, how best to corner, and what to do when hurled into the air by a surprise bump in the road.

The game also rewards ‘cheats’. Leave the track, hurtle through space for a bit, and rejoin – you’ll get a score for your airborne antics, and no penalty for any gates missed. Don’t spend too long aloft though - a few seconds is enough for your ball to be absorbed into the surrounding nothingness.

Super Hexagon ($2.99/£2.39/AU$3.79)

Super Hexagon is an endless survival game that mercilessly laughs at your incompetence. It begins with a tiny spaceship at the center of the screen, and walls rapidly closing in. All you need to do is move left and right to nip through the gaps.

Unfortunately for you, the walls keep shifting and changing, the screen pulses to the chiptune soundtrack, and the entire experience whirls and jolts like you’re inside a particularly violent washing machine. It seems impossible, but you soon start to recognize patterns in the walls.

String together some deft moves, survive a minute by the skin of your teeth, and you briefly feel like a boss as new arenas are unlocked. And although complacency is wiped from your face the instant you venture near them, Super Hexagon has an intoxicating, compelling nature to offset its mile-long sadistic streak.

Ridiculous Fishing ($2.49/£2.49/AU$3.69)

Ridiculous Fishing is appropriately named, in that it’s – vaguely – about fishing, and it’s certainly ridiculous.

The game begins with you bobbing about in your open-topped boat, casting a line into the inky depths. You then tilt your phone to guide your hook, scooping up fish, and avoiding hazards. When you reel everything in, it’s hurled into the air, whereupon – for some reason – you blast it with a shotgun.

It’s all very silly, and there’s a smart compulsion loop: over time, you buy longer lines, and higher-powered weaponry, and can therefore snag more fish. And the more you shoot, the more cash you make. Clearly, in this world there’s a big market for seafood that has been airborne and almost atomized. As we said: ridiculous!

The best platform games for Android

Our favorite Android platform games, including side-scrolling 2D efforts, exploration games and console-style adventures.

Ordia ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Ordia is a platform game, featuring an underwater critter trying to escape from a hostile world. It plays out vertically, having you fire the blob Angry-Birds-style between hooks and surfaces on which it can cling.

Although primarily a game about precision – not least if you want to grab every collectable on your way up – Ordia feels like a game that just wants you to play. Although later levels are admittedly tricky, the game throughout is peppered with restart points. And although each level offers challenges for more dedicated players, you needn’t complete them in order to progress.

The pace constantly shifts and changes. Some areas are like endearingly silly bouts of pinball; elsewhere, you’ll ping like mad, trying to escape from a vicious predator. Throughout, you’ll revel in one of the most perfectly realized platformers on mobile.

Linn: Path of Orchards ($2.99/£2.79/AU$4.69)

Linn: Path of Orchards messes with the conventions of platform games, in that the platforms refuse to stay still. And the doesn’t mean the odd levitating platform – here, levels are akin to strange clockwork devices, all too keen to hurl you into oblivion.

The ‘clockwork’ bit is very important – each level has a distinct pattern. Figure that out, and you should be able to grab all the bling and reach the exit in a tiny number of moves. The end result therefore ends up somewhere between turn-based puzzler and single-screen plaformer, integrating the best aspects of each, and fusing it with gorgeous visuals.

Not sure? Check out the free version first, although be mindful that it’s infested with ads, which rather detract from the game’s otherwise ethereal nature.

Oddmar (free + $4.99/£3.69/AU$6.49)

Oddmar is a mobile platform game good enough to rub shoulders with console-originated equivalents. It features the titular Oddmar, a buffoonish Viking shunned by his fellows, but when they disappear and he snarfs some magic mushrooms (really), he becomes a hero, out to save his kin.

The basics are as you’d expect – run, jump, grab bling, and try not to get killed  –  but Oddmar is far from predictable. The visuals are dazzling to the point it often looks like an interactive cartoon; the pacing is frequently shaken up as you battle giant bosses and tackle auto-scrolling maze-like levels; and although traditional controls are available, the gestural defaults are pitch-perfect.

In short, Oddmar sets a new standard for platform games on mobile; and on Android, you even get to play the first few levels for free.

see/saw ($2.99/£2.59/AU$4.29)

see/saw hints at the troubles ahead for its protagonists in a note from the professor running a series of tests: “Die to succeed.”

The subjects probably shouldn’t have signed up for these trials, frankly, given that they’re sealed in rooms packed with massive spikes and saw blades, and tasked with collecting coins. Black humor abounds when you realize some can only be reached by killing the subject and cunningly hurling their corpse in the appropriate direction.

The controls are superb – two thumbs are all you need – and the game feels perfect as well. So whether you’ll crack all 150 levels is mostly down to your dexterity, and whether your inner vicious streak will figure out how to chop and impale your character in a manner that will – posthumously – allow them to achieve their goal.

Spitkiss ($1.99/£1.99/AU$3.69)

Spitkiss is a mashup of arcade shooty larks and platforming action, where you aim to get the bodily fluids of one Spitkiss to another. That might sound a bit grim, but this is actually a sweet-natured game played primarily in cartoonish silhouette.

Even so, your emission, once it’s hurled through the air and gone splat on a platform, starts to gloop downwards. You can then make it leap again, and – several hops later – splatter on your intended love.

Especially on larger screens, Spitkiss works really nicely. The visuals are vibrant, and the basics are easy to grasp. But as you get deeper into the game’s 80 levels, the twists and turns required to win get tougher to pull off – even when you hold down the screen for much-needed Matrix-style slo-mo.

Limbo ($4.99/£3.88/AU$6.85)

The term 'masterpiece' is perhaps bandied about too often in gaming circles, but Limbo undoubtedly deserves such high praise. It features a boy picking his way through a creepy monochrome world, looking for his sister. At its core, Limbo is a fairly simple platform game with a smattering of puzzles, but its stark visuals, eerie ambience, and superb level design transforms it into something else entirely.

You'll get a chill the first time a chittering figure sneaks off in the distance, and your heart will pump when being chased by a giant arachnid, intent on spearing your tiny frame with one of its colossal spiked legs. That death is never the end — each scene can be played unlimited times until you progress — only adds to Limbo's disturbing nature.

Leo's Fortune ($4.99/£4.89/AU$7.49)

The bar's set so low in modern mobile gaming that the word 'premium' has become almost meaningless. But Leo's Fortune bucks the trend, and truly deserves the term. It's a somewhat old-school side-on platform game, featuring a gruff furball hunting down the thief who stole his gold (and then, as is always the way, dropped coins at precise, regular intervals along a lengthy, perilous pathway).

The game is visually stunning, from the protagonist's animation through to the lush, varied backdrops. The game also frequently shakes things up, varying its pace from Sonic-style loops to precise pixel-perfect leaps.

It at times perhaps pushes you a bit too far — late on, we found some sections a bit too finicky and demanding. But you can have as many cracks at a section as you please, and if you master the entire thing, there's a hardcore speedrun mode that challenges you to complete the entire journey without dying.

Traps n' Gemstones ($4.99/£3.99/AU$4.99)

Harking back to classic side-on platformers, Traps n' Gemstones dumps an Indiana Jones wannabe into a massive pyramid, filled with mummies, spiders and traps; from here he must figure out how to steal all the bling, uncover all the secrets, and then finally escape.

Beyond having you leap about, grab diamonds, and keep indigenous explorer-killing critters at bay, Traps n' Gemstones is keen to have you explore. Work your way deeper into the pyramid and you’ll find objects that when placed somewhere specific open up new pathways.

But although this one’s happy to hurl you back to gaming’s halcyon days, it’s a mite kinder to newcomers than the games that inspired it.

Get killed and you can carry on from where you left off. More of a hardcore player? Death wipes your score, so to doff your fedora in a truly smug manner, you’ll have to complete the entire thing without falling to the game’s difficult challenges.

iCycle ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Hero of the hour Dennis finds himself unicycling naked in this gorgeous platform game best described as flat-out nuts. In iCycle, you dodder left or right, leap over obstacles, and break your fall with a handy umbrella, all the while attempting to grab ice as surreal landscapes collapse and morph around you.

The mission feels like a journey into what might happen if Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam were let loose on game design. One minute, you’re entering a top-hatted gent’s ear to find and kiss a ‘reverse mermaid’ on a levitating bike; the next you’re in a terrifying silhouette funfair that might have burst forth from a fevered mind during a particularly unpleasant nightmare.

Some of the levels are tough, and there’s a bit of grinding to unlock new outfits. But if you want something a bit more creative on your Android, you can’t do much better than iCycle.

Mushroom 11 ($4.99/£4.89/AU$6.49)

Mushroom 11 finds you exploring the decaying ruins of a devastated world. And you do so as a blob of green goo. Movement comes by way of you ‘erasing’ chunks of this creature with a circular ‘brush’. Over time, you learn how this can urge the blob to move in certain ways, or how you can split it in two, so half can flick a switch, while the other half moves onward.

This probably sounds a bit weird – and it is. But Mushroom 11 is perfectly suited to the touchscreen. The tactile way you interact with the protagonist feels just right, and although your surroundings are desolate, they’re also oddly beautiful, augmented by a superb ethereal soundtrack.

There are moments of frustration – the odd difficulty wall. But with regular restart points, and countless ingenious obstacles and puzzles, Mushroom 11 is a strange creature you should immediately squeeze into whatever space exists on your Android device.

The best puzzle games for Android

Our favorite Android logic tests, path-finding games, match puzzlers and brain-teasers.

Path to Mnemosyne ($4.99/£4.69/AU$8.49)

Path to Mnemosyne finds a little girl staring at a seemingly endless pathway. This peculiar road is often surrounded by nightmarish tunnels seemingly comprising human body parts. It’s not pleasant. A voice-over asks her to not be afraid of what are just memories, and urges you to explore and recover further memories to remember.

Frankly, we’re not sure you’d want to remember when confronted by terrifying bits of skeleton, eyes, and massive teeth in a tunnel from hell, but it makes for a good game. Mostly, we’re in puzzling territory, with the protagonist having to figure out how to open the next door. 

Often, these puzzles are a bit familiar (lots of prodding switches), and the voice-over is a bit weak; but the atmosphere, gorgeous visuals, and some more imaginative challenges make up for any shortcomings.

Path of Giants ($3.99/£3.49/AU$5.99)

Path of Giants is a path-finding puzzler with a decidedly minimalist vibe. This Android game features a trio of explorers, finding their way through icy caverns with sheer sides and terrifying drops. For some reason, the explorers also brought with them precisely no equipment, bar some really warm coats.

To get to higher levels, one explorer must clamber on top of another. Along with cunning use of landscape-moving switches and other contraptions, this technique enables them to make their way to the flying, colored goal squares that whisk them away to the next challenge.

Seasoned puzzlers probably won’t be tested too much, but the experience is nonetheless engaging and rewarding, combining elements of Android favorites Monument Valley and Lara Croft GO into a tasty frozen treat.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes ($9.99/£9.99/AU$12.99)

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes pits you against a bomb designed by someone who’s watched one too many Hollywood movies featuring an over-the-top evil genius. The case is packed with modules, with anything from traditional wires to cut through to full games of Simon. Naturally, there’s also a massive LED countdown timer, because bomb-makers in games and on TV just love those.

The ‘making sure nobody explodes’ bit of this Android game requires help from one or more friends armed with the instructions (PDF or print-out) for defusing the contraption. If you’re playing properly, you can’t see the manual, and they can’t see the screen. This leads to a Spaceteam-style cacophony as you try to explain the cryptic switches and buttons before you, and they attempt to relay how to disable everything. Top stuff – and even more so when you head into VR using Daydream. 

Bring You Home ($3.49/£3.19/AU$5.49)

Bring You Home is a puzzler with an entire series of classic cartoons at its core. It features accident-prone blue alien Polo and his pet. Said pet is swiftly kidnapped by mysterious hooded types who leap through a portal, so our hero sets off in hot pursuit, trips out of a window, and falls to the ground in deadly fashion.

Fortunately, the world can be endlessly rewound, and events shifted and changed by dragging and rearranging sliding panels that depict different objects. In the first scene, swapping out barrels for a trailer of hay saves Polo’s life and pride – but things get far more complicated later on.

There’s trial and error here, and logic sometimes takes a holiday. But given the superb animation, even failure is fun – to the point you’ll want Polo to mess up several times before you hit upon a solution.

Suzy Cube ($3.99/£3.49/AU$5.49)

Suzy Cube is a platform game, but instead of offering the classic Mario side-on viewpoint enjoyed by everything from leapy one-thumb effort Canabalt to lush console-style classic Oddmar, Suzy Cube has you mostly bounding about in 3D.

It’s not dissimilar to Super Mario 3D Land, with the viewpoint switching as you explore chunky islands, watch from behind as you slide down snowy mountains on your bottom, flip between ‘2.5D’ passages in labyrinthine pyramids, or navigate floating platforms from above. 

The controls are solid, and the variety of play styles works well, regularly shaking things up; yet there’s plenty of familiar territory to hook in dedicated platform fans. You’re still looking for an exit, grabbing coins, and jumping on enemy heads – only, as is rare on Android, in 3D.

Photographs - Puzzle Stories ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Photographs - Puzzle Stories is a puzzle game about consequences far beyond making the right move in a logic test. Here, a series of five narratives provides the framework for dozens of small puzzles – and while the game punches your brain, it gradually breaks your heart.

This is unusual stuff for a puzzler, but it provides Photographs with added gravitas, and elevates it beyond being yet another ‘mere’ puzzler, despite the familiar nature of its mechanics (aiming/sliding/matching/finding).

It all feels pretty special – more than the sum of its parts. That said, by the time you’ve worked through the first two stories, reached the third, and read “we greeted the settlers with open arms,” you don’t need to have a handle on history to know the ending is going to be tragic.

Snakebird Primer ($7.99/£5.99/AU$10.99)

Snakebird Primer features a bunch of snake-like birds, keen to reach a portal. The tiny snag is they live on tiny floating islands peppered with fruit and spikes. Hit a spike and your bird explodes. Wolf down some fruit and it grows – just like in dusty mobile classic Snake – which, depending on the level you’re playing, may help or hinder.

Old hands might recognize this game as the follow-up to the superb Snakebird (free + $4.71/£3.69/AU$6.44) – although, in reality, it’s more like a less brain-smashing version of that game, designed for mere mortals. This one’s puzzles are simpler, and far less likely to leave you a sobbing wreck in the corner. 

Great for kids and casual gamers, then. That said, even though puzzle veterans might blaze through Primer, they’ll still have a blast doing so.

Where Shadows Slumber ($4.99/£4.59/AU$7.49)

Where Shadows Slumber pulls no punches – and that’s literally the case for the protagonist, who early on finds himself horribly assaulted by nasty bipedal animal creatures who want his lamp. It’s a surprising event – not least given that you might initially assume this will be a sedate puzzler along the lines of Monument Valley.

Between the cutscenes, Where Shadows Slumber dials down the unease and engages your brain. You must figure out pathways to exits, often forging them by casting shadows that refashion the very landscape. It’s a clever conceit, and one that never really grows old. Nor does the game’s visual clout, sense of pacing, and ability to surprise with its mix of beauty and darkness. 

Gorogoa ($4.99/£3.79/AU$6.49)

Gorogoa is a puzzler designed to break your mind. It takes the form of a beautifully illustrated animated picture book, with individual panels telling some sort of story – and yet they don’t appear to be obviously related at a glance.

You must find links between everything to literally move the protagonist through the narrative. Early on, this might just require rearranging some panels, but as you head deeper into the game, you end up laying panels over others, or zooming into and out of scenes.

To say it’s perplexing is putting it mildly. Gorogoa is also frequently deeply weird. Most importantly, though, it’s a marvel: a wonderfully realized, tactile, unique game that makes you feel absurdly smart when you crack its challenges.

Chuchel ($4.99/£4.49/AU$6.99)

Chuchel is an exploratory puzzler that when played comes across like you’re watching a series of a distinctly weird cartoon. The titular protagonist, a ball of fluff, wants nothing more than to get a cherry – but it’s cruelly snatched away the second he gets near. Each single-screen challenge therefore tasks you with finding the convoluted route to Chuchel’s goal.

Packed with the heart, humor, and animated smarts evident in previous Amanita Design games, Chuchel is a joy to watch as you tap hot-spots, make decisions, and watch events play out.

Some canned animations are lengthy, and logic isn’t always prized, which means it can sometimes get tedious to trudge through a section until you nail the precise sequence to finish it. Still, this is more than offset by a game that frequently surprises and delights.

Threes! ($5.99/£5.49/AU$8.49)

The sort of silly maths game you might've played in your head before mobile phones emerged to absorb all our thought processes, Threes! really does take less than 30 seconds to learn.

You bash numbers about until they form multiples of three and disappear. That's it. There are stacks of free clones available, but if you won't spare the price of one massive bar of chocolate to pay for a lovely little game like this that'll amuse you for week, you're part of the problem and deserve to rot in a freemium hell where it costs 50p to do a wee.

A Good Snowman ($4.99/£3.99/AU$6.99)

It turns out what makes a good snowman is three very precisely rolled balls of snow stacked on top of each other. And that's the core of this adorable puzzle game, which has more than a few hints of Towers of Hanoi and Sokoban about it as your little monster goes about building icy friends to hug.

What sets A Good Snowman apart from its many puzzle-game contemporaries on Android is a truly premium nature. You feel that the developer went to great efforts to polish every aspect of the production, from the wonderful animation to puzzles that grow in complexity and deviousness, without you really noticing — until you get stuck on a particularly ferocious one several hours in.

Shadowmatic (free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$3.99 IAP)

That game where you cast a shadow on the wall and attempt to make a vaguely recognizable rabbit? That’s Shadowmatic, only instead of your hands, you manipulate all kinds of levitating detritus, spinning and twisting things until you abruptly – and magically – fashion a silhouette resembling anything from a seahorse to an old-school telephone.

The game looks gorgeous, with stunning lighting effects and objects that look genuinely real as they dangle in the air. Mostly though, this is a game about tactility and contemplation – it begs to be explored, and to make use of your digits in a way virtual D-pads could never hope to compete with.

Hidden Folks ($3.49/£2.99/AU$6.49)

Hidden Folks is a hidden object game with a soul. It’s reminiscent of those mass-produced posters where you scour a massive, cluttered scene, trying to find the one person with a silly hat. The difference is that everything here has been made with love and care, from the hand-drawn interactive illustrations to the amusing oral sound effects.

The basics are admittedly much as you’d expect: scour the screen to find specific objects or characters, and move on when complete.

We realize that might not sound like much, but there’s a charm and humor to Hidden Folks that sets it apart from any of its contemporaries. On a larger Android phone or a tablet, this is a particularly relaxing, absorbing game to lose yourself in for a few hours.

Dissembler ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Dissembler is a match-three game with a difference. Instead of presenting you with a wall of gems that’s replenished when you make matches, Dissembler levels are akin to modern art – abstract creations comprising colored tiles.

You still swap two elements to try and match three (or more), but here matches vanish. The idea is to end up with a blank canvas. At first, this is easy, but Dissembler soon serves up challenges where you end up isolating tiles unless you’re very careful.

This shifts the game more heavily into strategic puzzling territory – and it’s all the better for it. You’ll feel like the smartest person around on figuring out the precise sequence of moves to clear the later levels. And even when you’ve finished them all, there’s a daily puzzle and endless mode to keep you occupied.

The best shooting games for Android

Our favorite Android FPS titles, twin-stick shooters, scrolling retro shoot ’em ups and artillery games.

Backfire ($2.99/£2.79/AU$4.59)

Backfire is an old-school arena shooter with a difference. In fact, it has lots of differences, but the main one is pretty big: your little ship fires from its behind. Surrounded by terrifying neon foes, you’re robbed of a twin-stick shooter’s ability to spray bullets everywhere, or even being able to blast laser death in the direction that you’re facing.

At first, you fight the game, your muscle memory slamming up against years of traditional shooty larks. Soon, though, it begins to click. You dart around, making use of a slo-mo effect as you approach enemies that emit hideous guttural growls. You scoop up souls to later upgrade your ship. And then you’re horribly killed by a massive, ferocious boss.

Backfire is far from easy, but persevere and you’ll have many happy hours with this backwards but brilliant shooter.

Hyper Sentinel ($2.49/£1.99/AU$3.49)

Hyper Sentinel finds you zooming back and forth across a giant dreadnought, blowing up its gun turrets, and weaving between the various ships it sends in your general direction with murderous intent.

This is a zippy game – and a vibrant one – which feels and looks rather old-school in nature. That’s perhaps no surprise, as its roots go all the way back to Uridium, a 1986(!) hit on the Commodore 64 home computer.

Fortunately, Hyper Sentinel isn’t as punishing as that old game – although that doesn’t mean you have things easy. There are 60 medals to win across its dozen stages, and hard-as-nails bosses to beat. Depth? Nuance? Well, there’s not much of those things, but who needs them when you’re immersed in a dazzling, pumping bout of pure arcade blasting?

Downwell ($2.99/£2.69/$4.19)

A young boy hurls himself down a massive well, with only his ‘gunboots’ for protection. There are so many questions there (not least: what parent would buy their kid boots that are also guns?), but it sets the scene for a superb arcade shooter with surprising smarts and depth.

At first in Downwell, you’ll probably be tempted to blast everything, but ammo soon runs out. On discovering you reload on landing, you’ll then start to jump about a lot. But further exploration of the game’s mechanics reaps all kinds of rewards, leading to you bounding on monsters, venturing into tunnels to find bonus bling, and getting huge scores once you crack the secrets behind combos.

The game might look like it’s arrived on your Android device from a ZX Spectrum, but this is a thoroughly modern and hugely engaging blaster.

Death Road to Canada ($9.99/£8.99/AU$14.99)

Death Road to Canada is a zombie movie smashed into a classic retro game. Little pixelated heroes dodder about a dystopian world, bashing zombies with whatever comes to hand, looting houses, and trying to not get eaten.

The road trip is staccato in nature. The game constantly tries to derail your rhythm and momentum. In Choose Your Own Adventure-style text bits, the wrong decision may find you savaged by a moose. Elsewhere, intense ‘siege’ challenges dump you in a confined space with zombie hordes, often armed only with a stick. Handy.

These abrupt elements can grate – as can the slightly slippy controls that aren’t always quite tight enough; but otherwise this is an ambitious mash-up of RPG and arcade gaming, with generous dollops of black humor – and BRAIINNZZZ.

ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun ($2.99/£3.19/AU$4.29)

ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun finds a nutcase blasting his way through corridors of extremely angry, heavily armed aliens, while he himself is only armed with a really big gun. That might sound fine, until you realize the gun is also his means of staying aloft.

This means to go higher, he must blast downward, temporarily becoming vulnerable to incoming fire. If he shoots forward, he starts to plummet towards the hard, deadly ground. ATOMIK therefore becomes a manic, high-octane balancing act of finger gymnastics, with the potential to get killed very frequently.

On every death, the game rewinds the level so you can try again, and wallow in your failure to complete challenges that are a mere 20 seconds long without dying dozens of times first. But when you crack one, you really do feel like a boss.

Super Crossfighter ($0.99/89p/AU$1.49)

Super Crossfighter is essentially a neon Space Invaders played at breakneck pace. Your little craft sits at the foot of the screen, darting left and right, blasting the aliens above. But the foes you face aren’t doddering critters from 1970s gaming – they come armed to the teeth, hurling all manner of instant laser death and bullet hell your way.

Fortunately, you’re not wanting for firepower either. Your speedy craft can leap from the bottom to the top of the screen, scooping up gems that can subsequently be used to upgrade the ship in an in-game shop. There’s no IAP, note, for extra cash – this intense blaster is all about the skill you have in your thumbs, and your ability to survive wave after wave of neon-infused shooty action.

Jydge ($9.99/£8.49/AU$14.99)

Jydge riffs off of Robocop and Judge Dredd, having you control the titular cybernetic law enforcer, eradicating crime in the megacity of Edenbyrg.

The game’s no-nonsense approach is typified by the ‘Gavel’ in this case being a massive gun. Jydge’s approach to dealing with bad guys mostly involves stomping about, shooting enemies, pilfering bling, and rescuing unfortunate hostages caught in the crossfire.

Initially, something about the game’s visuals and approach may make you play as if entering a neon-soaked outing that’s escaped from stealth shooter master and X-Com creator Julian Gollop’s brain, but really Jydge mostly plays out like a frantic twin-stick shooter. Tactics only really enter the equation when you realize you can nip back to earlier missions and tackle them again with new kit or approaches, in order to meet tricky challenges. Either way, it’s ballsy fun.

Implosion - Never Lose Hope (free + $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Implosion finds Earth having been given a beating by nasty aliens, leaving humans on the brink of extinction. As this is a videogame, humans have pinned all their hopes on you and your natty battlesuit.

Fortunately, said suit can dish out serious damage. As you stomp about Implosion’s gleaming environments, you blast, slash, and dash your way through hordes of identikit alien drones. Occasional boss battles then shake things up in terms of pacing and challenge. Between levels, you customize your suit, to unlock new combos.

The game’s creators call Implosion a AAA console-style title, and it looks superb and feels the part. Even the complex controls (for a touchscreen game) work well. A sticking point for some might be the price, but you can play six missions for nothing. If you then balk at a one-off IAP for a premium title, don’t subsequently wonder why we can’t have nice things.

The best sports games for Android

Our favorite Android soccer, tennis, golf and management games.

Football Manager 2020 Touch ($19.99/£14.99/AU$30.99)

Football Manager 2020 Touch is the game that says ‘Oh, really?’ when you see your soccer team get obliterated and shout loudly that you could do better. It’s almost ludicrously deep and intricate, giving you control of pretty much every aspect of running a club. You build the team, outline and develop your club’s vision, nurture new talent, and watch through your hands as your team inexplicably forgets how to defend in the 89th minute.

If that all sounds a bit too much, the game does let you offload some of this to an assistant. Alternatively, you can choose from a range of challenges. Want to know how you’d fare if dumped into the middle of a fraught relegation battle, or faced with a team of injured players? It’s all here, in the most comprehensive, richest management title on mobile.

Touchgrind Skate 2 (free + IAP)

You might narrow your eyes at so-called 'realism' in mobile sports titles, given that this usually means 'a game that looks a bit like when you watch telly'. But Touchgrind Skate 2 somehow manages to evoke the feel of skateboarding, your fingers becoming tiny legs that urge the board about the screen.

There's a lot going on in Touchgrind Skate 2, and the control system is responsive and intricate, enabling you to perform all manner of tricks. It's not the most immediate of titles - you really need to not only run through the tutorial but fully master and memorize each step before moving on.

Get to grips with your miniature skateboard and you'll find one of the most fluid and rewarding experiences on mobile. Note that for free you get one park to scoot about in, but others are available via IAP.

Table Tennis Touch ($3.49/£2.99/AU$4.79)

Table Tennis Touch brings the glory of ping pong to your Android device. You can partake in mini-games for training, or a full career mode, where you aim to smack a tiny white ball past the usual eerily floating bats of your opponents.

Visually, the game’s a treat with its gorgeously rendered locations. Most importantly, it feels great, recreating the high-octane nature of the sport, even if you do perhaps eventually get to the point where many matches are won by smashing super-fast shots diagonally across the table.

Even so, when you do get that winning point, at the end of a game where the lead’s shifted back and forth between you and an opponent, the game’s never less than invigorating.

Desert Golfing ($1.99/£1.39/AU$2.29)

Desert Golfing is an almost brutally minimalist take on golf. You start out in a side-on landscape, featuring a ball and a hole. You drag to aim, let go to smack the ball, and hope your aim is true. One or more shots later, the hole becomes the next tee, and a new challenge is presented.

That is basically the entire game. You get a score, although when you’re 50 holes in, it’s hard to know whether the number is meaningful. But the actual playing takes golf to a strangely relaxing and zen place. If you want realism or action, this one’s perhaps not for you; but if you fancy something golf-like to chill out with, Desert Golfing is great.

Kevin Toms Football * Manager ($3.49/£2.99/AU$4.89)

Kevin Toms Football * Manager is what happens when the man who created the original Football Manager game (the one released in 1982 for computers with 16k of RAM) brings the same pick-up-and-play ethos to Android. It’s crude. It’s simplistic. It’s also – as it turns out – an awful lot of fun.

Ultimately, the game mostly involves basic team selection/management, a smattering of tactics, and tense match highlights. It might seem prehistoric to anyone who cut their teeth on modern football management games, but it’s a delight for anyone hankering after immediacy from a management game, rather than something with so much depth it threatens to take over their life.

The best strategy games for Android

Our favorite Android real-time strategy and turn-based games, board games, card games and map-making games.

Maze Machina (free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$3.59 IAP)

Maze Machina is an Android game that squeezes complex turn-based strategy into a shoebox-like four-by-four grid, packed with surprises. The premise is that the evil Automatron is testing tiny robot creations in a constantly evolving battlefield. You’re a mouse, desperately trying to survive.

The aim in each round is to grab a key and get to the exit, but every tile on the board imbues whatever’s standing on it with a special power. This might be a bomb to lob, a weapon with which to get all stabby, or the means to encase a foe in a block of ice.

Further complicating matters, every object on the board moves when you swipe. This transforms Maze Machina into a brain-smashing chess-like affair where every decision must be carefully weighed up before proceeding. It’s clever and compelling, and does an awful lot in a tiny space.

Bad North: Jotunn Edition ($4.99/£4.59/AU$7.49)

Bad North: Jotunn Edition is a real-time strategy game in a shoebox. Rather than sprawling battles found in the likes of Total War, scraps in Bad North are confined to tiny islands your squads defend from invading Vikings.

As you win battles, with the hordes always just one step behind, you gradually acquire new skills. Squads can become archers or pikemen, the former being useful for ranged attacks, and the latter for keeping enemies at bay during the time it takes infantry to arrive.

Although originally for PC, Bad North comes alive on a touchscreen, as you direct your armies by taps, and spin an island with a finger. The bite-sized battles are great for scratching the RTS itch when you’re on the go – although completing the entire campaign is something that will require plenty of grit and experience.

Tropico ($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)

Tropico puts the classic PC dictator simulator right in your pocket – which, given world events, might be a bit too on the nose these days. Still, if you fancy controlling a Caribbean Island with an iron fist (or, more often, quite a bit of bribery and populism), this is the Android game to go for.

It has quite an open nature, meaning you gradually learn the ropes, and how to get the most from your adoring public. Scant resources must be used carefully – you need to make money, but also keep the population happy and healthy. If they get a bit angry, you must deal with that, too.

Note that the Android system requirements are high, and so you need a powerful device to play. If you’ve got the kit, though, this is a solid mobile take on a classic desktop title.

Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion is – like the similarly impressive Rome: Total War – akin to time travel. A classic real-time strategy title, it originally arrived on PC in 2005. Well over a decade later, you can give those barbarians a kicking on Android as you seek to shore up a declining Roman Empire.

Make no mistake, this is a complex game with an awful lot going on. In-game advisors can assist, but before everyone gets a bit stabby, you’ll find yourself immersed in diplomacy, figuring out how to win the world to your favor without bloodshed. 

The combat is the prize, though, with you co-ordinating hundreds of troops across colossal battlefields. Daunting? Sure. But if you want full-fat PC-style strategy in your mitts, this is your game.

Kingdom Rush: Vengeance ($4.99/£4.69/AU$7.99)

Kingdom Rush: Vengeance is a tower defense game with a twist. Rather than fending off evil attackers, you are the evil attacker – a wizard out for revenge on those who’ve previously thwarted his cunning plans.

This involves plonking down towers, unleashing special attacks, and directing a gigantic hero in order to wipe out waves of enemies. The logical oddness in you using tower defense to attack foes isn’t addressed; presumably, you advance off-camera once you’re done pummeling the enemy.

Still, this is all good stuff. The animation is superb, with dinky characters darting about. There’s plenty of variety and scope for shaking up tactics. Sadly, there’s also a slice of actual evil in the game hiding some tower and hero types behind IAP, but Vengeance nonetheless ends up a best-in-class title.

Twinfold ($3.99/£3.79/AU$5.99)

Twinfold takes the basic tile-merging mechanic of mobile puzzling classic Threes!, adds a massive dollop of dungeon crawling, and then drops the result into a procedurally generated maze. This mixture shouldn’t work, but it’s fantastic.

As you move, so do golden idols and enemies. Munch idols and they replenish your energy, but merge them and they grow in value – all the better for your XP when they’re finally eaten. But removing both in either case causes the entire maze to be redrawn.

With regularly spawning monsters and the very landscape being upended on a regular basis, Twinfold certainly keeps you on your toes. And although it can grate when the randomness leaves you in a terrible position, the potential for devising strategies – not least when you roll in regularly supplied power-ups – and longevity is immense.  

Concrete Jungle ($4.99/£4.79/AU$6.49)

A massive upgrade over the developer’s own superb but broadly overlooked MegaCity, Concrete Jungle is a mash-up of puzzler, city management and deck builder.

The basics involve the strategic placement of buildings on a grid, with you aiming to rack up enough points to hit a row’s target. At that point, the row vanishes, and more building space scrolls into view.

Much of the strategy lies in clever use of cards, which affect nearby squares – a factory reduces the value of nearby land, for example, but an observatory boosts the local area. You quickly learn plonking down units without much thought messes up your future prospects.

Instead, you must plan in a chess-like manner – even more so when facing off against the computer opponent in brutally difficult head-to-head modes. But while Concrete Jungle is tough, it’s also fair – the more hours you put in, the better your chances. And it’s worth giving this modern classic plenty of your time.

Mini Metro ($4.99/£4.29/AU$7.49)

There’s a disarmingly hypnotic and almost meditative quality to the early stages of Mini Metro. You sit before a blank underground map of a major metropolis, and drag out lines between stations that periodically appear.

Little trains then cart passengers about, automatically routing them to their stop, their very movements building a pleasing plinky plonky generative soundtrack.

As your underground grows, though, so does the tension. You’re forced to choose between upgrades, balance where trains run, and make swift adjustments to your lines. Should a station become overcrowded, your entire network is closed. (So...not very like the real world, then.)

Do well enough and you unlock new cities, with unique challenges. But even failure isn’t frustrating, and nor is the game’s repetitive nature a problem, given that Mini Metro is such a joy to play.

Hitman GO ($4.99/£3.99/AU$6.99)

The original and best of the GO games, Hitman GO should never have worked. It reimagines the console stealth shooter as a dinky clockwork boardgame. Agent 47 scoots about, aiming to literally knock enemies off the board, and then reach and bump off his primary target.

Visually, it’s stunning – oddly adorable, but boasting the kind of clarity that’s essential for a game where a single wrong move could spell disaster. And the puzzles are well designed, too, with distinct objectives that often require multiple solutions to be found.

If you’re a fan of Agent 47’s exploits on consoles, you might be a bit nonplussed by Hitman GO, but despite its diorama stylings, it nonetheless manages to evoke some of the atmosphere and tension from the console titles, while also being entirely suited to mobile play.

Card Thief (free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP)

If you never thought a solitaire-like card game was an ideal framework for a tense stealth title, you’re probably not alone. But somehow Card Thief cleverly mashes up cards and sneaking about.

The game takes place on a three-by-three grid of cards. For each move, you plan a route to avoid getting duffed up by guards (although pickpocketing them on the way past is fair game, obviously), loot a chest, and make for an exit.

Card Thief is not the easiest game to get into, with its lengthy tutorial and weird spin on cards. But this is a game with plenty of nuance and depth that becomes increasingly rewarding the more you play, gradually unlocking its secrets. It’s well worth the effort.

Freeways ($3.99/£2.89/AU$4.49)

Freeways is one of those games that doesn’t look like much in stills, but proves ridiculously compelling from the moment you fire it up. In short, it’s all about designing roadways for autonomous vehicles.

It comes across a bit like a mash-up of Mini Metro and Flight Control. You link roads together, often by designing monstrous spaghetti junctions, only you’re armed with tools that make you feel like an urban planner drawing with chunky crayons while wearing boxing gloves.

The game’s crude nature is part of its charm. It’s more about speed and immediacy than precision, a feeling cemented when you realize there’s no undo. When your road system gets jammed, your only option is to start from scratch and try something new.

In truth, the inability to remove even tiny errors can irk, not least when roads don’t connect as you’d expect. Otherwise, Freeways is a blast.

Reigns: Game of Thrones ($3.99/£3.79/AU$5.99)

Reigns: Game of Thrones follows Reigns and Reigns: Her Majesty in marrying kingdom management with swipe-based interaction borrowed from Tinder. Only this time, there’s a massively popular TV show fused to its core.

You plonk your behind on the Iron Throne, as one of several major characters from the TV series, and set about imposing your will on the Seven Kingdoms. As you swipe left and right to make decisions, your fortunes with the people, army, church and bank fluctuate. Fill or deplete any one meter, and your reign will come to an abrupt – and likely bloody – end.

Given the basic interface, Reigns: Game of Thrones has surprising depth. It also has great writing, loads of content to find, and plenty of puzzles to solve, making it ideal mobile gaming fodder.

The best word games for Android

Our favorite Android games that involve anagrams, crosswords and doing clever things with letters.

Typoman Mobile (free + $1.99/£1.89/AU$3.19)

Typoman Mobile starts off with you directing a trundling O in a barren world of silhouettes and shadows. Soon, the disc-like hero gains legs (an H), and arms (Ls), and so can scoot about like a real boy. Of course, this being a videogame, he’s at that point mercilessly pursued and torn to bits by terrifying creatures formed from the letters to DOOM.

If you’re thinking this doesn’t sound like a typical word game, you’re right. Typoman Mobile is a world away from Scrabble, echoing classic Limbo in terms of its stark visuals and puzzle-platforming.

Nonetheless, it remains deeply ensconced in word-game territory through you using letters to complete puzzles that let you progress, some directly manipulating the very environment. It’s certainly a lot more interesting – and ambitious – than yet another set of crosswords.

Word Forward ($2.99/£2.69/AU$4.59)

Word Forward is a word game that plays out on a five-by-five grid – but this is a much more strategic offering than the bulk of its contemporaries.

The aim is to remove every letter from the board. This can be achieved by dragging out snaking pathways to remove entire words, but you also have special tiles to help: swap tokens, a jumbler, and a bomb that obliterates a single awkward tile.

Chess-like thinking is therefore required, and the fact that you’re working with predefined rather than random boards means Word Forward’s puzzles reward repeat attempts. Figure out the path to finishing a grid without using special tiles, and you’ll win a coveted gold star. It’s top stuff if you want a thinky solo word game that offers something new.

Sidewords ($2.99/£2.89/AU$4.39)

Sidewords is a rare word game that isn’t ripping off Scrabble or crosswords. Instead, you get blank grids with words along two edges. You must use at least one letter from each edge to make new words of three or more letters. Each selected letter blasts a line across the grid; where lines meet become solid areas filled with your word. The aim is to fill the grid.

On smaller levels, this is simple, but larger grids can be challenging – especially when you realize a massive word (that on discovery made you feel like a genius) leaves spaces that are impossible to fill. Fortunately, Sidewords encourages experimentation, and so you can remove/replace words at will.

It’s clever and a bit different; and if you tire of the main game, you can fire up mini-game Quads, which marries word-building and Threes!-style sliding tiles. Two for the price of one, then – and both games alone are worth the outlay.

Dropwords 2 ($0.99/69p/AU$1.25)

Dropwords 2 mixes up well-based match games like Bejeweled and word games like Boggle. You’re faced with a grid of letters and must drag out words that snake across the board. When submitting a word, its letters disappear, and new tiles fall into the well to fill the gaps.

As ever in this kind of game, speed is of the essence. But also, you can gain extra seconds by submitting longer words – something that becomes increasingly important as you get deeper into the game.

Smartly, much of the game can be customized, including the board’s theme; and if you want to just chill, rather than be hassled by a relentless game-ending countdown, there are untimed modes too.

Blackbar ($1.99/£1.22/AU$2.23)

Blackbar is fundamentally a game about guessing words. Yet it’s also a chilling commentary on the dangers of a dystopian surveillance society.

The game begins with you receiving letters from a friend who’s started work at the Department of Communication. Anything from them considered controversial or negative is censored – a ‘blackbar’ – which you must correctly guess to continue.

Over the course of a number of communications, the story escalates in a frightening manner, and you find yourself feeling like you’re beating the system (man), despite ultimately just tapping in words to best a basic logic test.

If nothing else, this showcases the power of great storytelling; and filling in Blackbar’s blanks feels a lot more fulfilling than chucking more hours at a run-of-the-mill Scrabble clone.

Letterpress (free or $4.99/£4.59/AU$6.99)

Letterpress merges Boggle-like finding words within a pile of letters with Risk-like land grabs. You and an opponent (an online human or computer players of varying skill levels) take turns to tap out words on the five-by-five grid. Letters you use turn your color – and those you surround cannot be flipped by the other player during their next turn.

Winning therefore isn’t just about big words – not least if its letters are scattered about. Instead, you must carefully protect your territory and gradually eat into your opponent’s land. Battles can become tense and thrilling – not usually concepts associated with a word game. But then Letterpress is no ordinary word game – it’s much better than that.

Supertype ($1.99/£1.69/AU$2.79)

Supertype is a word game more concerned with the shape of letters than the words they might create. Each hand-designed level finds you staring at a setup of lines, dots, and empty spaces in which to type. Tap out some letters, press the tick mark, and everything starts to move.

The aim is to get the letters you type to the dots. In some cases, the solution may be fairly obvious – for example, placing a lowercase l on each ‘step’ towards an out of reach dot at the top of a staircase, then having a p at the start tip over to set everything in motion. More often, you’ll be scratching your head, experimenting, trying new approaches, and then grinning ear to ear on cracking a solution.

Typeshift (free + IAP)

Typeshift rethinks word searches and crosswords. You get a tactile interface of jumbled letters within draggable columns. Your aim is to change the color of every tile – and tiles only change when they’re part of a word you make in the central row.

The game occasionally heads further into traditional crossword territory, adding clues to the mix, which you must match to the words you find. Either way, it’s a brain-smashing touch-optimized word-game experience.

There are joyful animated and audio touches throughout, too, and everything feels hand-crafted, rather than you being sent endless algorithmically generated puzzles. Naturally, such polish costs money – beyond the free download, you pay for packs of puzzles. But they’re worth every penny.

Perhaps you've just bought an iPad, or just been given one for the first time. Or maybe you're thinking that your Apple tablet is old and boring and there's nothing fun left that it can do.

Well, friend, you're entirely wrong. Fortunately, the App Store offers loads of gaming greats for you, even if you've forked out your last bit of cash to buy the iPad itself.

Our lists cover the best free iPad puzzle games, racers, platform games, and more, split into categories (one on each page) for your perusing pleasure.

Plus, check back every two weeks for our latest favorite free iPad app, which you'll find below.

Free iPad game of the week: SpellTower+

SpellTower+ reimagines the original SpellTower and removes its price tag, instantly propelling it to the top of the best free iPad word game heap.

The basics echo the original 2011 hit. You’re presented with a jumble of letter tiles, and aim to find words within the chaos. On dragging out your (possibly snake-like) construction, the word’s tiles disappear, gravity plays its part, and you can continue. Depending on the mode, you may have a finite number of tiles to work with, or battle an ever-growing heap.

For free, you can’t access all the game’s modes, but there’s plenty here for even the most demanding word puzzle fanatic. And if you feel the urge to try everything SpellTower+ offers (or just remove the ads), that will only set you back a one-off $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99.

Best free iPad arcade games

Our favorite iPad arcade games, including brawlers and fighting games, auto-runners, party games, pinball, and retro classics.

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

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

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

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 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! 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 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 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 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

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. 

• Keep your iPad secure with one of these best free VPN apps

Our favorite free iPad games where you sprint, jump, drive, hoverboard, dig, or pinball to victory – or your doom.

Saily Seas

Saily Seas is a one-thumb endless game for iPad where you battle all manner of seriously aggressive sea life, and the kind of waves that would even make champion surfers retire to the beach.

There’s a day/night cycle that recalls the Alto’s games, and mountainous terrain that brings to mind Tiny Wings. But Saily Seas feels very much its own beast, with intuitive tap/hold/swipe controls that provide nuance as you soar above sharks and dive for fish.

Checkpoints exist, too – unusual for this sort of game. Although you can choose to start from scratch, you’re instead invited to continue on discovering landmarks. The aim is to continue striving to get as far as possible into the virtual sea, and this friendly progression system makes heading into Saily Seas’ depths far more likely.

Magic Bridge!

Magic Bridge! finds the heroes from moggie-infused iPad platformer Super Cat Tales 2 in markedly different surroundings. Instead of a side-scrolling Mario-style effort, this game takes place on a rickety bridge. You prod left and right arrows to tip it, causing the cat to slide or run, aiming to avoid the enemies and spikes raining down the screen.

It’s simple stuff, which initially seems to have the ferocity of a Flappy Bird. But once you stop wrenching the bridge to its extremes, you realize the game has nuance. You can subtly shift your kitty, and grab the odd power-up to blaze through levels, knocking foes aside like Superman. If Superman was a cat. Good stuff, then, not least for squeezing into odd moments when you lack the time for a Super Cat Tales 2 session.

Race the Sun Challenge Edition

Race the Sun Challenge Edition isn’t so much about racing the sun. That would not only be ludicrous, but also impossible. Instead, you’re actually racing the sunset – although Race the Sunset sounds more noodly than cool, and so here we are.

Anyway, you’re in a ship, blazing along, trying to zip through minimalist cities without smashing into a wall. Because your craft is solar powered, it needs to stay out of the shadows, and also grab power-ups that reverse the sun’s direction for a few moments, thereby giving you a few precious extra seconds of daylight.

This one looks gorgeous on the iPad’s large display. And there’s plenty of longevity here, too, from gradually powering up your craft over time, to partaking in each day’s new and unique challenge.

Pigeon Wings Strike

Pigeon Wings Strike is an endless flyer. It’s set in a world that – for whatever reason – has decided the best way to defeat evil bad guys with deadly drones and massive flying fortresses is to kit out birds and other tiny critters with biplanes that shoot massive lasers.

Prior to your inevitable meeting with a brick wall or a bullet, you zip about the place, zig-zagging through tunnels and buildings, before getting all shooty, in order to down some adversaries.

The game’s vertical tilt controls are a tad more unwieldy on iPad than iPhone, although the weight of the device adds some tactile solidity to proceedings as you escape death by the skin of your beak. In all, this is a fast, fluid, high-octane arcade game of the very best kind.

Dream-Walker

Dream-Walker is a timing-based auto-runner. Your character walks along a pathway, with perilous drops either side. Whenever they’re at a corner, you prod the screen to ensure they don’t fall to their doom. Over time, things speed up, making prolonged success tricky.

So far, so familiar. But where Dream-Walker vastly betters its contemporaries is with visuals and atmosphere. As you progress, the game tries to distract you, abruptly opening new pathways, spinning blocks around, and sometimes going a bit Monument Valley with Escher-like constructions.

On iPad, the lush visuals really get a chance to shine, and the game’s ambience is further augmented by excellent audio. So although you might have had your fill of the genre, this one should not be missed, because it plays, well, like a dream.

Power Hover: Cruise

Power Hover: Cruise is an endless arcade treat loosely based on the boss levels from the superb Power Hover. Your little robot gets to tackle four distinct environments on his hovering board, weaving between hazards. The aim is to last as long as possible before being smashed into scrap metal when you inevitably mess up and fly head-on into an obstacle at insane speed.

The game is visually stunning on the iPad’s large display, whether descending into Dive’s hazardous underwater tunnel, or zooming along Air’s tubular road that winds snake-like through the clouds.

But controls make or break this kind of game, and Power Hover: Cruise is blessed with a simple left/right system with plenty of inertia. Initially, it feels unresponsive, but before long you’ll be scything through levels like nobody’s business, in one of the most beguiling endless games on iPad.

Dashy Crashy

With Dashy Crashy, the iPad shows bigger (as in, the screen) really can be better. The basics involve swiping to avoid traffic while hurtling along a road. New vehicles are periodically won, each of which has a special skill (such as the UFO abducting traffic, and the taxi picking up fares); and there are also random events to respond to, such as huge dinosaurs barreling along.

On iPad, the gorgeous visuals are more dazzling than on the smaller iPhone, and in landscape or portrait, it’s easier to see what’s in front of you, potentially leading to higher scores.

Also, the game’s multi-touch aware, so you can multi-finger-swipe to change several lanes at once – fiddly on an iPhone but a cinch on a tablet, making for an addictive, just-one-more-go experience.

Mars: Mars

There’s a delightful and elegant simplicity at the heart of Mars: Mars. The game echoes iPad classic Desert Golfing, in providing a seemingly endless course to explore. But rather than smacking a ball, you’re blasting a little astronaut between landing pads.

The controls also hark back to another game – the ancient Lunar Lander. After blast-off, you tap the sides of the screen to emit little jets of air, attempting to nudge your astronaut in the right direction and break their fall before a collision breaks them.

Smartly, you can have endless tries without penalty, but the game also tots up streaks without death. Repeat play is further rewarded by unlocking characters (also available via IAP), many of which dramatically alter the environment you’re immersed in.

PinOut!

The BAFTA-winning INKS rethought pinball for mobile, breaking it down into bite-sized simple tables that were more like puzzles. Precision shots – and few of them – were the key to victory. PinOut! thinks similarly, while simultaneously transforming the genre into an against-the-clock endless runner.

The idea is to always move forwards, shooting the ball up ramps that send it to the next miniature table. Along the way, you grab dots to replenish the relentlessly ticking down timer, find and use power-ups, and play the odd mini-game, in a game that recalls basic but compelling fare once found on the LED displays of real-life tables.

PinOut! is gorgeous – all neon-infused tables and silky smooth synth-pop soundtrack. And while the seemingly simplified physics might nag pinball aficionados, it makes for an accessible and playable game for everyone else.

Disney Crossy Road

Tie-ins between indie game companies and major movie houses often end badly, but Disney Crossy Road bucks the trend. It starts off like the original Crossy Road — an endless take on Frogger. Only here, Mickey Mouse picks his way across motorways, train lines and rivers, trying to avoid death by drowning or being splattered across a windscreen.

But unlock new characters (you'll have several for free within a few games) and you open up further Disney worlds, each with unique visuals and challenges.

In Toy Story, Woody and Buzz dodge tumbling building blocks, whereas the inhabitants of Haunted Mansion are tasked with keeping the lights on and avoiding a decidedly violent suit of armour.

Elsewhere, Inside Out has you dart about collecting memories, which are sucked up for bonus points. And on the iPad, the gorgeous chunky visuals of these worlds really get a chance to shine.

Looty Dungeon

At first glance, Looty Dungeon comes across like a Crossy Road wannabe. But you soon realise it's actually a very smartly designed endless dungeon crawler that just happens to pilfer Crossy Road's control method, chunky visual style, and sense of urgency.

You begin as a tiny stabby knight, scooting through algorithmically generated isometric rooms. You must avoid spikes and chopping axes, outrun a collapsing floor, and dispatch monsters. The action is fast-paced, lots of fun, and challenges your dexterity and ability to think on the move.

As is seemingly law in today's mobile gaming landscape, Looty Dungeon also nags at the collector in you, offering characters to unlock. But these aren't just decorative in nature — they have unique weapons, which alter how you play. For example, an archer has better range than the knight, but no defensive shield when up against an angry witch or ravenous zombie.

Our favorite free iPad gem-swap, tile-match, and rhythm action games.

I Love Hue Too

I Love Hue Too is a shape-match free iPad game based around colors. Every level begins with a canvas of connected tiles, painted with a single gradient. On beginning a level, many of these tiles disappear, and then reappear in different locations. Your job is to swap tiles and recreate the original layout, thereby wrenching harmony from chromatic chaos.

You can approach I Love Hue Too in various ways. You might remember the original layout, and try to match it that way, or perhaps you’ll slowly piece things together by recognizing small differences between colors.

Either way, there are no timers to stress you out – the only targets are based around moves, comparing how many you make against the minimum and the worldwide average. On iPad, with its large display, the game proves to be a relaxing, tactile, engaging experience.

The Ninja in the Dark

The Ninja in the Dark finds evil forces amassing, and threatening to take over the world. Fortunately, they’re a bit dim, meaning in each of the game’s several hundred stages, you get a free swipe at them. The tiny snag: while you do so, the lights go out.

Quite why this happens, we’ve no idea. Perhaps the titular ninja is a show-off and just wants to boast about not even having to see his targets to hack them in half. Still, this makes your life harder, having to memorize everything on the screen before unleashing your finger of doom, swiping across where you believe baddies to be lurking.

Do well and you accrue points, unlock characters, and get to yell ‘HI-YAAAA!’ a lot. Hit a bomb and, well, your ninja’s days will have permanent darkness.

AuroraBound

AuroraBound is a puzzle game that’s all about matching patterns. Each level provides you with a tiled board, onto which you place colorful pieces. The aim is to ensure that all the lines and colors join up.

This isn’t the kind of puzzler designed to smash your brains out – for the most part, it’s a rather relaxing experience. But as the boards increase in size, with patterns on each tile that are only very slightly different, you may eventually find your ego and complacency handed back to you.

Even so, AuroraBound never becomes frustrating. There are no time limits, and you can experiment by shifting pieces around at will. Neatly, the level select screen is a tiny puzzle to complete as you go, too.

Little Alchemy 2

Little Alchemy 2 is an exploratory logic game. You start off with a small number of items, which can be dragged to the central canvas. Items are then merged to create new ones.

At least that’s the theory. If you just set about randomly shoving items together, nothing happens. Instead, you must utilize rational thinking – or a little whimsy. For example, combine a couple of puddles and you’ll get a pond. Obvious, really. But also you can create a blender from a blade and ‘motion’, and a rocket from ‘metal’ and ‘atmosphere’.

In all, there are over 600 items to discover, and although Little Alchemy 2 can irk if you hit a brick wall, you can always pay for hints via IAP if you get stuck. Alternatively, tough it out and feel like a genius when you hit upon a suitably clever combination.

Estiman

This one’s all about counting really quickly. That admittedly doesn’t sound like much – but stick with it, because Estiman is actually a lot of fun.

It begins by displaying a bunch of neon shapes. The aim is to prod a shape that belongs to the most numerous group, and work your way to the smallest. Do this rapidly and you build a combo that can seriously ramp up your score. Now and again shapes also house credits, which can be used to buy new themes.

On iPad, the game looks great, and although some themes (such as gloopy bubbles) make the game easier, that at least gives you a choice if the minimal original theme proves too tricky.

And despite Estiman’s overt simplicity, its odd contrasting mix of relaxation (chill-out audio; zero-stress timer) and urgency (if you want those combos) proves compelling.

Groove Coaster 2 Original Style

Like a simulation of having a massive migraine while on a stomach-churning roller-coaster, Groove Coaster 2 Original Style is a rhythm action game intent on blasting your optics out while simultaneously making your head spin.

It flings you through dizzying, blazing-fast tracks, asking you to tap or hold the screen to the beat of thumping techno and catchy J-Pop.

The game looks superb – all retro-futuristic vector graphics and explosions of color that are like being stuck inside a mirror ball while 1980s video games whirl around your head.

Mostly you'll stick around for the exhilarating tap-happy rhythm action, which marries immediacy with plenty of challenge, clever choreography tripping up the complacent on higher difficulty levels.

It never becomes a slog though – tracks are shortish and ideal for quick play; and for free, you can unlock plenty of them, but loads more are available via in-app purchase.

Imago

With its numbered sliding squares and soaring scores, there's more than a hint of Threes! about Imago. In truth, Threes! remains the better game, on the basis that it's more focussed, but Imago has plenty going for it. The idea is to merge pieces of the same size and colour, which when they get too big explode into smaller pieces that can be reused.

The clever bit is each of these smaller pieces retains the score of the larger block. This means that with smart thinking, you can amass colossal scores that head into the billions. The game also includes daily challenges with different success criteria, to keep you on your toes.

Planet Quest

Having played Planet Quest, we imagine whoever was on naming duties didn't speak to the programmer. If they had, the game would be called Awesome Madcap Beam-Up One-Thumb Rhythm Action Insanity — or possibly something a bit shorter. Anyway, you're in a spaceship, prodding the screen to repeat beats you've just heard.

Doing so beams up dancers on the planet's surface; get your timing a bit wrong and you merely beam-up their outfits; miss by a lot and you lose a life. To say this one's offbeat would be a terrible pun, but entirely accurate; it'd also be true to say this is the most fun rhythm action game on iPad — and it doesn't cost a penny. 

Threes! Freeplay

The best puzzle game on mobile, Threes! has you slide cards about a grid, merging pairs to create ever higher numbers. The catch is all cards slide as one, unless they cannot move; additionally, each turn leads to a new card in a random empty slot on the edge you swiped away from. It's all about careful management of a tiny space.

On launch, Threes! was mercilessly cloned, with dozens of alternatives flooding iTunes, but 2048 and its ilk lack the charm and fine details that made Threes! so great in the first place. And now there's Threes! Freeplay, where you watch ads to top up a 'free goes' bin, there's no excuse for going with inferior pretenders.

Triple Town

Triple Town is a match game where you merge cartoonish plant life and buildings. But don’t be fooled by the cute facade – this is a brilliantly designed brain-smashingly tough puzzler where you must think many moves ahead to succeed.

In this game, trios of things combine to make other things – for example, three bushes become a tree, and three trees become a hut. Such merges then give you space on the tiny board to evolve your town – especially when one particularly cunning move chains several merges together.

All the while, roaming bears and ninjas complicate matters, blocking squares on the board. At times surreal, Triple Town is also challenging and addictive. Note that free moves are on a replenishing timer, but if you can’t wait for another go, there’s an unlimited moves IAP.

Our favorite free iPad platform games, from classic side-on 2D games to ambitious console-style adventures.

Cat Bird!

Cat Bird! might be exaggerating its capabilities somewhat. That’s because in this platform game of pint-sized levels, packed full of islands, traps, and massive spiked rocks determined to pummel you into kitty paste, this moggie can’t really fly. Instead, hold the jump button once the cat’s airborne and it can glide for a bit.

That might not sound especially thrilling, but it makes for some tense moments, not least when you find yourself in empty space, above a pit of spikes, and have to instantly decide whether to complete a big leap or run back to safety.

With its bold visuals, gentle difficulty curve, and endearingly daft bosses, this game’s a delight over its 40-level length. It might not be drowning in innovation, but it’s nearing purr-fection in every other way.

OCO

OCO strips back platform gaming and combines it with minimal modern art. Each single-screen level is based around a circular design. Your polygonal protagonist automatically moves, and you prod the screen to leap, aiming to scoop up collectables before making your way to the goal.

The trick is in figuring out how to get to your targets, which often requires rebounding off of walls, and making use of jump mats and other objects. As you play, OCO provides a treat for your eyes, your pathways simultaneously building a dazzling visual spectacle and procedurally generated soundtrack. And when you’ve beaten all 135 levels, you can make your own in an editor.

With console-like platform games on iPad, you might reason there’s no space for one-thumb contenders. OCO suggests otherwise.

Spicy Piggy

Spicy Piggy is a hardcore auto-running platformer, featuring the porcine winner of a chilli-eating contest desperate to down something cool and refreshing.

Between pig and drink are screens full of hazards, including deadly saw blades, roaming zombies and massive pits. As the screen scrolls, you must tap buttons that make you jump, slide, and belch burps fiery enough to obliterate enemies or even entire walls.

This game is bruising. You’ll need to commit an entire level to memory, and then get your timing just so, in order to get to the end. And although restart points exist, each requires you watch an ad to unlock (unless you plump for an IAP).

Still, if you’ve got what it takes, mastery here feels deeply rewarding each time you successfully get the rotund hero to the juice bar.

Yeah Bunny 2

Yeah Bunny 2 is a one-finger platformer. Instead of you getting directional controls and a jump button, you can only tap the screen to make the titular bunny jump into the air – or away from a wall it’s precariously clinging to.

Your aim is to roam levels, leaping on enemies, grabbing bling and finding trapped chicks. Because of the inability to turn – unless you bounce off of a wall – getting somewhere specific can be quite complicated.

Sometimes backtracking gets old, but for the most part Yeah Bunny 2 is a fast-paced, colorful treat. Its chunky visuals really click on the iPad, which also affords you a larger viewing area. And there’s plenty of variety in what you face, from pinball-like bumpers that ping you around to a ferocious screen-high pig king in hot pursuit.

Super Cat Tales 2

Super Cat Tales 2 is a platform game that requires just two of your thumbs. Tap and hold the left or right of your iPad’s display, and you can make your on-screen heroes – cats with unique super powers – walk, dash, leap, and wall-jump like kitty ninjas.

Naturally, there’s a point to all this activity: the cats are trying to save their world from an alien invasion. They must therefore scoot about, avoid enemies, find hidden secrets, and grab the bling that’s oddly left lying about in this kind of game. Also, for some reason, they can sporadically jump into huge yellow tanks to dish out serious destruction.

With a smartly written script, superb level design, and vibrant retro-infused visuals, Super Cat Tales 2 is one of the best platformers on iPad. That it’s free makes it a steal.

Soosiz

Soosiz is a fun platforming adventure which features a blobby protagonist, who in traditional platformer fashion runs left and right, leaps into the air, grabs gold coins, and jumps on enemies to dispatch them.

The twist? The world of Soosiz is based around tiny circular islands hanging in space, each of which has its own gravitational pull, adding an exciting new twist to a tried and tested format.

As you sprint from left to right, the screen spins and whirls, disorienting you as you figure out a route to the exit – and how not to leap from a floating island into oblivion. After a recent refresh, the game represents a great spin on an age-old concept.

It’s Full of Sparks

It’s Full of Sparks is a platform game in a world where firecrackers are cruelly aware they’re about to explode – and are desperate to find water to extinguish their sparks.

Each side-on level is an urgent sprint to the finish line. The first is literally just that, but – inevitably – you’re soon dealing with platforms and hazards, many being triggered by a trio of colored buttons that enter the equation.

This thumb choreography adds another level to It’s Full of Sparks. It’s not enough just to be fast and know your way to the exit – you’re also frantically tapping buttons on and off, all too aware that your firework is about to go out in a blaze of glory.

It’s frustrating when that happen moments before watery bliss, but short, smartly designed levels keep you running, jumping and splashing, even when you’re occasionally gnashing.

Runventure

Runventure is a streamlined platform game that finds your little hero darting through trap-laden jungles, temples and castles. However, rather than use a traditional D-pad or have you auto-run and tap to jump, Runventure tries something new.

At the foot of the screen is the run-jumping bar. Drag across it and the hero runs, and the game previews the jump you’ll make on lifting your finger. With deft timing, you’ll leap on enemy heads, rope-swing across deadly ravines, and totally not die by falling into a spike-filled pit like an idiot.

That’s the theory. Initially, you’ll fail often as you get to grips with what seems like a needlessly awkward control system. But stick around, discover the nuance in the leapy action, and Runventure proves compelling. If nothing else, grab if if you’re tired of the same old thing.

Cally’s Caves 4

Cally’s Caves 4 is a free game that appears so generous that you wonder what the catch is. The Metroid-style run-and-gun shenanigans find you leaping about, shooting anyone in your path. However, the hero is a girl with pigtails and a surprising arsenal of deadly weapons, neatly subverting convention.

The plot’s a tad more mundane - something about finding a cure for a curse. But the game retains its oddball credentials with a gaggle of strange enemies - everything from footballers to cleaver-lobbing chefs.

The jumping, blasting, and exploring is compelling stuff, which is just as well, because this is a big game, with hundreds of sprawling levels, 11 bosses, and stints where you temporarily control a psychotic ninja bear. No, that last bit isn’t a typo; and, yes, those bits are particularly great.

Hoggy 2

Hoggy 2 is a platform puzzler, with a firm emphasis on the puzzling. It features some cartoon slime molds, who’ve got on the wrong side of the villainous Moon Men. These rogues have taken the heroes’ kids, and so parents Hoggy and Hogatha vow to get them back.

The Moon Men’s fortress is a huge maze peppered with jars. Within each jar is a room filled with platforms, enemies, hazards, and fruit. Eat all the fruit and you get a key. Get enough keys and you can venture further into the maze.

The snag is that getting at the fruit can be tricky. Hoggy 2’s levels are cunningly designed, often requiring you perform actions in a specific order and manner, making use of power-ups that transform the protagonists into trundling granite squares or screaming infernos.

Add in lush console-style visuals and a level editor, and you’ve got one of the biggest bargains on mobile.

Our favorite free iPad logic tests, path-finding challenges, bridge builders, and turn-based puzzlers.

Tile Snap

Tile Snap is a match game. But unlike in Bejeweled, matched elements are never replaced. Each level is therefore a puzzle, to be completed in a strict order, working your brain rather than only your swiping digit.

Said levels are constructed from tiles that pleasingly flip when dragged. This will be familiar to players of Dissembler (by the same creator) – although that app’s austere minimalism has in Tile Snap seemingly been replaced by vibrant digital takes on 1970s wallpaper.

What’s most surprising about Tile Snap, though, is its generosity. This is a premium experience, with beautifully responsive, tactile controls, and cleverly designed, hand-crafted levels. Yet there are no ads, and IAPs only exist for optional hints. So grab it now – and if you like it, buy one of the creator’s other games as a thank-you.

Dream Detective

Dream Detective is all about hidden objects. You’re presented with an animated illustration and a set of items to find, and must scroll about the screen and tap objects accordingly. This often plays out against the clock, and errant presses are punished, so you can’t just poke the screen with merry abandon.

Underpinning Dream Detective is quite a lot of complexity in terms of its interface and IAP. But do your best to ignore all that and you’ll find an entertaining, interesting example of this kind of game. The scenes are varied, with early examples including riffs on famous movies, and comic book pages.

The game might lack the elegance and chill-out vibe of the likes of Hidden Folks, but as a free alternative with time-based incentives, it’s a decent download – especially when you play on the iPad’s large display.

Kubrix

Kubrix sits part way between puzzler, meditative experience, and plain weird. First, the puzzling: this involves linking the center of the puzzle to square nodes, often (although not always) situated towards its edges. To achieve your goal, you rotate patterned sections of the puzzle, aiming to create unbroken pathways.

The meditative side comes from is free iPad game’s zero-stress nature. It’s the sort of thing you can play in a state of zoned-out bliss, working your way to a solution by fiddling around with what’s in front of you.

What really sells the game is its strange presentation. The center of the puzzle creepily beats like a heart, and other sound effects include mechanical scrapes and gruesome squelches. You work through each level feeling like you’re manipulating a techno-organic construct – some kind of living being, even if Kubrix is of course never anything other than abstract.

Total Party Kill

Total Party Kill upends any gaming conventions you’d expect when a heroic party enters a dungeon. Usually, each member would help the others survive. But here, the knight, mage, and ranger use their powers to ‘sacrifice’ team-mates, and use their corpses as stepping stones to tricky-to-reach exits.

Early on, it’s simple enough to figure out what to do. But as you reach the later dungeons, figuring out the precise order in which to dispatch your colleagues – and precisely how to do so – can be a serious challenge.

The black humor is appealing, as your ranger leaps on a cross-eyed mage pinned to the wall, before doing a little dance on reaching the exit. But the mechanic also freshens up what could otherwise have just been yet another entry in the single-screen puzzler sub-genre.

Sky: Children of the Light

Sky: Children of the Light is a multiplayer online adventure. Created by the brains behind console classic Journey, Sky is a visually dazzling game, which often finds your winged protagonist gliding above lush landscapes and skidding down hillsides.

Your aim is to spread hope through a kingdom by returning fallen stars to the skies. This means plenty of exploration to find objects that unlock further progress. Most puzzles barring your way are quite simple, but they often require the help of friends – temporary or permanent – you can make in-game.

From the eye-popping visuals to the smartly conceived social interactions, Sky is a must-install. There are odd moments of frustration, but these are easily forgotten when you’re reveling in the experience, lost to one of the most beautiful game worlds imaginable.

XOB

XOB is a precision platform game that’s heavy on the path-finding and puzzling – and even heavier on the psychedelics. The gameplay primarily involves tilting a play area comprising square blocks. The aim is to nurse a trundling square to an exit, grabbing pick-ups along the way.

Fall over an edge and the entire level flips accordingly. Similarly, you can leap to a ceiling to turn everything upside down. As you progress, routes become increasingly labyrinthine.

All this plays out alongside a gorgeous old-school CRT aesthetic, which feels perfectly at home on the TV-like display of an iPad. As a freebie, the game’s also got the kind of business model we wish others would steal – you’ll only ever see 24 ads, and if you want, you can watch them all at once. Top stuff.

Ilu

Ilu is a puzzler that wants you to illuminate the darkness with a combination of lights and logic.

A light can be placed anywhere on the board, at which point beams head vertically and horizontally until they reach a wall. What complicates matters is, in a ruleset vaguely reminiscent of Minesweeper, the board has nodes that indicate how many lights must be placed next to that point.

Put too many lights by a node, or shine two lights into each other, and a yellow energy bar starts turning red. Too much red and all your lights fizzle out. Your best bet, then, is to think your way methodically towards the single unique solution for each board, in what’s an engaging and, yes, illuminating slice of iPad puzzling.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle is a sliding puzzler with lashings of gore. That’s not a combination you hear too often, but Killer Puzzle is unique. Set broadly in the world of Friday the 13th, it features horror icon Jason Voorhees on a mission to chop up anyone in his immediate vicinity.

That might sound horrific, but Killer Puzzle is more South Park than splatter flick. The chunky visuals present everyone as colorful but gormless cartoon characters, and the more bloody (and ridiculous) cut scenes can be skipped entirely.

Really, it’s the puzzling bits that will make you stick around. Across the game’s many levels, your brains are given a beating as you figure out labyrinthine routes to get to your final targets. (Still, that’s a nicer ‘brain beating’ than the targets end up getting…)

A Way To Slay – Bloody Fight

A Way To Slay – Bloody Fight is a series of epic sword fights reimagined as turn-based strategy. You start each bout surrounded by weapon-wielding foes eager to take your head off. Double-tap one and you almost instantly appear before them, for a swift bit of ultra-violence. But then enemies get their turn. End up too near one of them and it’s curtains for you.

Assuming you can deal with liberal amounts of videogame blood being sprayed about, A Way To Slay is an excellent puzzler. Parked halfway between action and strategy, it feels fresh; and it’s enhanced further by the clever way you can adjust the zoom and panning of what you see before you, as if directing a very stabby movie.

King Rabbit

There's not a lot of originality in King Rabbit, but it's one of those simple and endearing puzzle games that sucks you in and refuses to let go until you've worked your way through the entire thing.

The premise is hackneyed — bunnies have been kidnapped, and a sole hero must save them. And the gameplay is familiar too, where you leap about a grid-like landscape, manipulating objects, avoiding hazards, finding keys, unlocking doors, and reaching a goal.

But the execution is such that King Rabbit is immediately engaging, while new ideas keep coming as you work through the dozens of puzzles. Pleasingly, the game also increases the challenge so subtly that you barely notice — until you realise you've been figuring out a royal bunny's next moves into the wee small hours.

Does Not Commute

Time travel weirdness meets the morning rush hour in Does Not Commute. You get a short story about a character, and guide their car to the right road. Easy! Only the next character's car must be dealt with while avoiding the previous one. And the next. Before long, you're a dozen cars in and weaving about like a lunatic, desperately trying to avoid a pile-up.

For free, you get the entire game, but with the snag that you must always start from scratch, rather than being able to use checkpoints that appear after each zone. (You can unlock these for a one-off payment of $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49.) 

Our favorite free iPad on-rails, 3D and 2D racers, and trials games.

Gravity Rider Zero

Gravity Rider Zero is a bike trials racer, set in a future where Tron appears to have collided with mankind’s desire to launch people from hills while they sit astride a two-wheeled vehicle. Everything is stripped back, and so steering around the futuristic courses is automatic; however, getting past obstacles does require very careful use of throttle and balance controls. 

Although races are ultimately about getting to the checkered flag first (avoiding the many spikes and lasers racing in the future apparently mandates), Gravity Rider Zero is primarily about finesse. You must learn the nuances of each course, in order to succeed. Sometimes, this is fiddly – and occasionally maddening. But nail a tricky bit, enabling you to progress to the next, tougher outing, and you’ll find this one a two-wheeled delight.

Pico Rally

Pico Rally is a high-octane racer controlled with a single thumb. In short, hold down on the screen, and you get a burst of speed; raise your digit and you slow down a bit. Steering is taken care of, and so victory is about learning the twists and turns in each circuit, and not losing speed by smashing into barriers and other cars, or grinding across the dirt.

In essence it’s more or less slot racing, in terms of the basic nature of the controls, and the behavior of the cars. But the way Pico Rally keeps shaking things up with its varied track design, races, and pursuits, ensures it blazes through the checkered flag as one of the iPad’s premier racers, despite being a million miles away from traditional fare.

Data Wing

Data Wing is a speedy but elegant neon-clad top-down racer. It’s also an intriguing narrative based around an irrational artificial intelligence’s attempts to escape its lot.

The racing bit is superb as you pilot your tiny craft, scraping track edges for boosts of speed during time trials. New challenges are slowly unlocked, such as races, and levels that flip everything on it side, pitting you against gravity and forcing you to use boost pads to reach a high-up exit.

A simple two-thumb control system ensures the game works brilliantly on every size of iPad, and as game and story alike unfold there are plenty of surprises in store. But perhaps the biggest is that a production this polished is entirely free. Get it!

Asphalt 9: Legends

Asphalt 9: Legends is a brash arcade racer with such a scant regard for physics and reality it almost makes its bonkers predecessor look like a simulation.

You blaze along hyper-real road circuits, having pimped-up sports cars do things no manufacturer’s warranty had ever considered. 360-degree turns off of massive ramps to pinwheel through the air! Nitro-boosting through skyscraper windows! Playing chicken with massive trains! We’re not in conventional racing territory here…

Like all Asphalt games, this one scrapes a key along its pristine bodywork in the form of IAP and grind; also, some players may be irked by a default control scheme that has you swipe and tap to time actions rather than actually steer. But despite its shortcomings, Asphalt 9: Legends remains a glorious and compelling oddball arcade racer.

MMX Hill Dash 2

MMX Hill Dash 2 is a one-on-one monster truck racer, with tracks akin to roller coasters, full of unlikely peaks and crazy dips. Helpfully, then, the physics is so bouncy vehicles often feel like they’ll bound off of the screen, never to be seen again.

At first, this makes for an off-putting experience. It can feel like you’re fighting the physics with the two-button control system that deals both with braking and also rotation when a vehicle’s airborne. But grab vehicle upgrades and properly plan how to tackle a track, and you start making progress.

The game then becomes strangely absorbing – almost puzzle-like as you gradually figure out the choreography and upgrades required to crack a track. It is, however, best for players with a slightly masochistic streak, since you’re often hitting the same track time and again, until you get the kit and brainwave to defeat it.

Carmageddon

Carmageddon is in theory a racing game, but is really more a demolition derby set in a grim dystopia where armored cars smash each other to bits and drivers gleefully mow down ambling pedestrians and cows.

It’s a game of questionable taste and a brains-free approach. You may not be surprised to hear it ended up banned in several countries when originally released on PC back in 1997. These days, though, its low-res over-the-top feel seems more cartoonish than gory – and the freeform driving is a lot of fun.

The maps are huge, the physics is bouncy, and your opponents are an odd mix of braindead and psychotic. There’s no nuance, but loads of laughs to be had – assuming you’re not the type to get offended when a game congratulates you for power-sliding a startled cow into a wall.

Vertigo Racing

Vertigo Racing is a sort-of rally game. We say sort-of, because although you’re pelting along a twisty-turny track, it happens to be at the top of a wall so high its base is lost in the clouds below.

Also, you’re barreling along in old-school muscle cars, to a classic guitar rock soundtrack, and you can’t steer.

Instead, the game does the steering for you, leaving you merely able to prod the accelerator or slam on the brakes, to stop your car plunging into the abyss. This transforms the game into a decidedly oddball take on slot racing, reimagined as a roller-coaster. Or possibly the other way around.

Either way, it’s fun, even if handling and camera issues make progress in later tracks tough. Still, the upgrade path is smart (with a generous dishing out of virtual coins to upgrade your cars and buy new tracks), making for hours of grin-inducing arcade action.

Reckless Getaway 2

If you’ve ever played the last level of PC classic Driver, with its psychotic police vehicles, you’ll have an inkling what you’re in for in Reckless Getaway 2. You pick a car and barrel about a little wraparound city, driving around like a maniac, until your inevitable arrest.

Well, we say ‘arrest’, but these police are crazed. SWAT vans will hurl themselves at your vehicle, oblivious to the carnage around them. Eventually, airstrikes will be called in, at which point you might question if the law’s applying a bit too much zeal towards grand theft auto these days.

Over time, the game’s repetitive nature palls a bit, and the physics is a bit floaty; but otherwise it’s a great fun freebie for virtual joyriders armed with an iPad.

Asphalt Xtreme

Instead of blazing through larger-than-life takes on real-world cities, Asphalt Xtreme takes you off-road, zooming through dunes, drifting across muddy flats, and generally treating the great outdoors in a manner that will win you no favors with the local authorities.

As per other entries in the series, this is ballsy arcade racing, with bouncy physics, simple controls, an obsession with boosting, and tracks designed to make you regularly smash your car to bits.

It’s also, sadly, absolutely riddled with freemium cruft: timers; currencies; nags – the lot. But if you can look past that and dip in and out occasionally to allow the game to ‘recharge’, there’s a lot to like in this racer that’s decided roads and rules are so last season.

Our favorite free iPad scrolling blasters, FPS games, precision shooters, twin-stick blasters, and vertically scrolling shoot ’em ups.

Banana Kong Blast

Banana Kong Blast somewhat brazenly riffs off of the bits in Donkey Kong Country where you use barrels to blast an outsized ape through the air. But what it perhaps lacks in originality, Banana Kong Blast makes up for in polish and fun.

On the iPad, the cartoonish visuals look great as you tap the screen to send your ape soaring (and, if you mistime things, plummeting), aiming to grab as many bananas as possible along the way. It’s not all about the barrels, though – some sections find you sliding down icy hills, barreling (oho!) along in a minecart, and even riding a friendly boar.

The canned nature of the game might eventually pall, but the 3D visuals and varied scenes make for as much single-digit monkeying around fun as you can conceivably pack into an iPad.

HELI 100

HELI 100 is an arena shooter that is thin on story but big on blasting. For some reason, you’re high above a city, attempting to obliterate flying alien armies, but the battlefield is restricted to a ring of airspace within an impassable barrier.

At first, the game’s quite sedate. You weave left and right, your guns automatically aiming and blasting the opposition to bits. But around the tenth of 100 levels, the pace ramps up. Suddenly, the arena walls start rapidly closing in, and enemies spew more bullets than is entirely necessary.

Fortunately, you can fight back with powerful weapon pick-ups – even if on larger iPads they are slightly awkward to reach unless you’ve got banana thumbs. Still, what’s a little discomfort when you’re saving the world?

Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs

Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs moves the long-running Angry Birds saga into the third dimension. Rather than a side-on view as you catapult deranged birds at ramshackle buildings barely shielding kleptomaniac swine, you get a first-person viewpoint.

Given the iPad’s AR smarts, setting up the game on a table or floor is almost instantaneous. From then on, you get a new perspective (many, in fact) on your bird-flinging antics; you can explore levels from every angle, looking to set up shots that will hit sneakily hidden boxes of TNT for maximum destruction.

The few dozen levels may be completed in short order, but that doesn’t really matter. There’s plenty of fun to be had in this freebie that for the first time in years manages to add freshness to the Angry Birds formula.

Piffle

Piffle is another entry in an expanding sub-genre of shooters. You blast a string of ricocheting bullets at bricks, until the numbers on said bricks run down, causing them to explode. 

As you gather more ammunition and powers, things become entertainingly chaotic, your screen becoming a sea of ammo and explosions. Here, said ammo appears to be limbless, bouncy cats, which face off against encroaching walls of smiling blocks. Because levels are finite, you can approach each one in strategic fashion. 

There is some grind, with later levels being very tough to complete without power-ups. Still, there’s a premium sheen here reminiscent of Holedown – only instead of cool minimalism, you get vibrant colorful visuals, no price-tag, and a pile of furry critters to stave off a ‘cat-astrophic’ game over. 

Fortnite

Fortnite parachutes 100 players on to an island, with the simple task of being the last person standing. Okay, so it’s not that simple, given that everyone wants to kill you.

The road to survival initially involves realizing that your pickaxe isn’t going to cut it, and therefore locating weapons with which to dish out wanton violence. Over time, the area in which players can survive shrinks, at which point you might consider building a defensive fortress.

The mix of building, scavenging, exploration and action mixes perfectly to create unique scenarios within every game, and the game is kept fresh with regular content updates.

Fortnite’s origins on platforms with physical gamepads are somewhat betrayed by complex virtual controls, however this is a much more minor issue on iPad given that there’s more than enough space for your fingers not to cover the action.

Shadowgun Legends

Shadowgun Legends gives you a big, dumb, brash first-person shooter for your iPad. It looks superb, whether you’re mooching about the neon-bathed central hub world, or merrily blasting hordes of evil aliens.

From a gameplay perspective, it’s no Call of Duty or Doom, but that’s fine for touchscreen play. After all, when you don’t have a gamepad in your hands, you’ll be glad you only need two thumbs to control movement and gaze, your guns discharging automatically when a foe’s in your sights.

But just because Shadowgun Legends is streamlined for mobile, don’t mistake it for being simple. There’s tons to do, a slew of power-ups to get you kitted out for tougher later missions, and an entertaining emphasis on ‘fame’ over character and story that if nothing else seems like savvy commentary on a great deal of modern media.

Drag’n’Boom

Drag’n’Boom is a breezy, fast-paced arcade game that marries Angry Birds, Tiny Birds, Sonic the Hedgehog, twin-stick shooters, dragons and The Matrix. No, really.

Each level finds your baby dragon zooming about hilly landscapes packed with castles and tunnels, roasting guards and grabbing coins. Movement and unleashing fiery breath alike happen by way of ‘drag and fling’ directional arrows, and everything slows down while you aim, Matrix-style.

This all makes for an interesting combination, enabling deliriously fast zooming about and violence across the tiny worlds, but precision when you need it. Over its 40 levels, Drag’n’Boom could perhaps do with more variety – there are scant few enemy types to defeat. But it’s an exhilarating thrill-ride while it lasts.

Evil Factory

You know a game’s not taking itself too seriously when it begins with the hero trudging through a blizzard, only to be faced by a giant heavily armed walrus guarding the fortress of a megalomaniacal genius.

But Evil Factory is just warming up, and subsequently revels in flinging all manner of mutated madness your way in its hard-nosed top-down arcade battles.

For each, you dart about using a virtual joystick, while two large on-screen buttons activate weapons. Unfortunately, your bosses are colossal idiots, and have armed you with the likes of dynamite and Molotov cocktails. Bouts often therefore involve dodging bullets to fling wares at a giant foe, before running away like a coward.

It’s silly, relentless arcade fun – or at least it would be relentless if the ‘fuel’ based freemium model didn’t butt up against one-hit-death and tough later levels. Still, if the stop-start nature of playing becomes irksome, fuel limitations can be removed with a $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP.

Darkside Lite

With Darkside Lite, you rather generously get the entire arcade mode from superb blaster Darkside. What this means is a slew of fast-paced and eye-dazzling shooty action, where you blast everything around you to pieces, while trying very hard to stay in one piece yourself.

The twin-stick shenanigans echo the likes of Geometry Wars (or, if you’re really old, Robotron) in terms of controls, but the setup is more Asteroids, obliterating space rocks – and also the spaceships that periodically zoom in to do you damage.

The entire thing’s wrapped around planetoids floating in the void, making for a dizzying, thrilling ride as you attempt to locate the last bit of flying rock before some alien attacker swoops in and rips away the last of your shields.

Phoenix II

In a marked departure from the impressive Phoenix HD and its procedurally generated bullet hell,Phoenix II shoves you through set-piece vertically scrolling shoot 'em up grinders. Every 24 hours, a new challenge appears, tasking you with surviving a number of waves comprising massive metal space invaders belching hundreds of deadly bullets your way.

A single hit to your craft's core (a small spot at its center) brings destruction, forcing you to memorize attack and bullet patterns and make use of shields and deflectors if you've any hope of survival. You do sometimes slam into a brick wall, convinced a later wave is impossible to beat.

To lessen the frustration, there's always the knowledge you'll get another crack at smashing new invaders the following day. Regardless, this is a compelling, dazzling and engaging shooter for iPad.

Smash Hit

We imagine the creators of Smash Hit really hate glass. Look at it, sitting there with its stupid, smug transparency, letting people see what's on the other side of it. Bah! Smash it all! Preferably with ball-bearings while flying along corridors! And that's Smash Hit — fly along, flinging ball-bearings, don't hit any glass face-on, and survive for as long as possible.

There are 50 rooms in all, but cheapskates start from scratch each time; pay $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 for the premium unlock and you get checkpoints, stats, iCloud sync, and alternative game modes.

Our favorite free iPad soccer, golf, tennis, basketball and other sports games.

Super Over!

Super Over! starts with cricket, hits most of the rules for six, and transforms what’s left into a high-octane arcade-oriented take on a sport that, in the real world, has matches that can literally last for days.

Here, you chase a total from a limited number of balls. A cricket bat zooms back and forth, and tapping the screen stops it on a number or the dreaded W. In the former case, a chunk is lopped off of your total; in the latter, you’re out and instantly lose the match.

The breakneck pace extends brilliantly  to a same-device two-player mode. There, you and a friend battle it out, one bowling while the other bats. You might argue this game’s just not cricket – but it’s all the better for it.

Grow in the Hole

Grow in the Hole is a side-on minimalist golf game reminiscent of iOS classic Desert Golfing. As in that title, you drag to set each shot’s direction and power. The twist: for every shot that doesn’t make the hole, your ball grows.

Helpfully, the game keeps track of how many goes you have until your ball’s too big to putt – at which point, game over. Successfully putt, and the ball shrinks a little so you can continue your oddball golfing quest.

Grow in the Hole is visually crude, but gets things right in the gameplay stakes. The controls are precise, and there’s a decent selection of options, whether you fancy a quick nine-hole blast, or to pit your digits against a surprisingly intense (when you’re down to those last shots) endless mode.

Golf Blitz

Golf Blitz is a side-on crazy golf game, with you racing to the hole against online competition. A spiritual sequel to the highly lauded Super Stickman Golf titles, the courses here are far from standard fare, often comprising levitating islands, or trap-laden caverns linked by narrow tunnels.

The game isn’t designed to reward speed alone. After each shot, there’s a countdown timer, and so you must think ahead and figure out the optimum path to the hole. Power-ups can help – and unsportingly blast rival balls away by way of a grenade or rocket-powered super ball.

There are quibbles: the slight randomness of shots that can rob you of wins; constant nudges towards IAP. But the game’s otherwise a blast, and repeat play gets you upgrades – without anyone taking a swing for your wallet.

Nano Golf: Hole In One

Nano Golf: Hole In One is a follow-up to Nitrome’s own Nano Golf: Puzzle Putting, but whereas the earlier title was a fairly conventional mini-golf from above, Hole In One – as its name suggests – is all about sinking the ball first time, every time.

The controls are straightforward: drag backward to set direction and shot strength, and then let go. Courses are peppered with awkward routes and traps, plus  coins you can grab to unlock balls with special abilities later.

Clearly, this isn’t exactly PGA Tour for iOS, but then it’s not supposed to be. It’s a speedy, compelling high-score chaser with a sporting bent – one with plenty of drive, and entirely bereft of bogeys.

Rowdy Wrestling

Rowdy Wrestling is a sports game on fast forward – one that’s performed a pile-driver on nuance and lobbed it out of the ring. It features chunky retro cartoonish fighters, whose arms whirl as they speed about. The buttons you stab afford you a degree of control, but initially bouts are like attempting to control chaos – akin to trying to steer an avalanche.

Over time, you figure out a modicum of tactics – combinations of moves that more often leave you victorious and your opponents unceremoniously hurled from the screen. Get particularly good and you can buy new wrestlers with currency earned in-game, and then have a crack at the career mode.

As ridiculous as real-world wrestling is, a career in that sport isn’t a patch on the madness at the heart of this game.

Virtua Tennis Challenge

Virtua Tennis Challenge is an iPad reimagining of a classic Dreamcast tennis game. Although Sega claims it’s the most realistic game of its type on mobile, Virtual Tennis Challenge is in reality very much an arcade outing, with you darting about, attempting to defeat your opponent by way of lobs, top spins, and dramatic ‘super shots’.

The gestural controls leave a lot to be desired, resulting in tennis as if your player had downed a few too many drinks in the bar prior to their match.

But plump for the on-screen virtual D-pad and buttons (or use an external MFi gamepad) and you’ll find an entertaining take on repeatedly smacking a ball over a net, while the virtual crowd presumably gorges itself on virtual strawberries.

Flappy Golf 2

The original Flappy Golf was a surprise hit, given that it was essentially a joke – a satire on Flappy Bird. While Flappy Golf 2 is a more polished and considered effort, it’s essentially more of the same, giving you courses from the most recent Super Stickman Golf, and adding wings to the balls.

Instead of smacking the ball with a stick, then, you flap it skywards, using left and right buttons to head in the right direction. If you’re a Super Stickman Golf 3 aficionado, Flappy Golf 2 forces you to try very different approaches to minimize flaps and get the scores needed to unlock further courses.

For newcomers, it’s an immediate, fun and silly take on golf, not least when you delve into the manic race mode. The permanent ad during play also makes this a far better bet on iPad than iPhone, where the ad can obscure the course. (Disappointingly, there’s no IAP to eradicate advertising.)

Super Stickman Golf 3

Much like previous entries in the series, Super Stickman Golf 3 finds a tiny golfer dumped in fantastical surroundings. So rather than thwacking a ball about carefully tended fairways and greens, there are castles full of teleporters and a moon base bereft of gravity. The Ryder Cup, this is not.

New to the series is a spin mechanic, for flipping impossible shots off of ceilings and nudging fluffed efforts holewards on the greens. You also get turn-by-turn battles against Game Centre chums and a frenetic multiplayer race mode.

The spendthrift release is limited, though, restricting how many two-player battles you have on the go, locking away downloadable courses beyond the 20 initially built-in, and peppering the game with ads. Even so, you get a lot for nothing, should you be after new side-on golfing larks but not want to pay for the privilege.

WGT: World Tour Golf

If you like the idea of golf, but not traipsing around greens in the drizzle, WGT: World Tour Golf is the closest you'll get to the real thing on your iPad. Courses have been meticulously rebuilt in virtual form, based on thousands of photographs, and WGT's control scheme is accessible yet also quite punishing.

There's no mucking about spinning balls in mid-air to alter your shot here - mess up and you'll know about it, with a score card massively over par. But this is a game that rewards mastery and perseverance, and you feel like a boss once you crack how to land near-perfect shots.

WGT is, mind, a touch ad-heavy at times, but this is countered by there being loads to do, including head-to-head online multiplayer and a range of tournaments to try your hand at.

PKTBALL

This smashy endless arcade sports title has more than a hint of air hockey about it, but PKTBALL is also infused with the breakneck madness associated with Laser Dog's brutal iOS games.

It takes place on a tiny cartoon tennis court, with you swiping across the ball to send it back to your opponent. But this game is *really* fast, meaning that although you'll clock how to play PKTBALL almost immediately, mastering it takes time.

In solo mode, the computer AI offers plenty of challenge, but it's in multiplayer matches that PKTBALL serves an ace. Two to four people duke it out, swiping like lunatics (and hopefully not hurling the iPad away in a huff, like a modern-day McEnroe, when things go bad).

As ever, there are new characters to unlock, each of which boasts its own court and background music. Our current favourite: a little Game Boy, whose court has a certain famous blocky puzzle game playing in the background.

Our favorite free iPad RTS and turn-based strategy games, board games, and card games.

Void Tyrant

Void Tyrant is a card battler that mashes up role-playing, deck-building, and a stripped-back take on blackjack.

Missions involve a string of battles on various planets. You’ll face off against terrifying skull beasts in the desert and deranged robots on a spaceship. In all cases, you’re aiming to beat their totals in each round, and not go bust. Whoever loses gets a bloody nose – or worse.

If that was the entire game, it would be fun but throwaway – and a mite too random. So Void Tyrant wisely adds a slew of bonus cards you can strategically play to boost your chances, further damage your enemy, or protect yourself from harm.

With bold visuals, a smartly designed upgrade cycle, and an optional reasonably priced premium tier, this is an excellent free iPad game that’s far deeper than it initially appears.

Chessplode

Chessplode is a free iPad game that up-ends the rules of chess by adding explosions. Capture a piece and any others in its row or column are obliterated – including your own. The exception is when a king is in said row/column, in which case you get a standard chess capture.

To lead you gently into this oddball take, you get beginner setups designed to let you win easily. Beyond that, you’ll find yourself immersed in levels that look simple from the outset but that are anything but once some pieces have been taken, eradicating most of what’s on the board.

When you’re done with the game’s built-in levels, you can make your own in an editor – although it’s only possible to share them once you confirm they can be beaten. You can also pit your skills against online opponents, while mulling that standard chess will never feel quite the same again.

Pocket Cowboys

Pocket Cowboys is an online slice of multiplayer strategy that smartly marries immediacy and depth. It features gunslingers fighting it out on battlefields comprising hexagonal grids. Turns are taken simultaneously, with each player choosing between moving, shooting, or reloading. 

The result is a bit like rock/paper/scissors, but with a tactical injection: sometimes you can second-guess what an opponent is going to do, and line up your shot accordingly. Further strategy and curveballs come from your upgradable gang (each gunslinger having their own unique abilities), and environmental hazards like dust storms and horses.

On iPad, the game works really well. The visuals look superb, and when making a move there’s much less chance of you prodding the wrong spot on the larger display.

Hexonia

Hexonia is a turn-based strategy game that comes across like a simplified, fast-paced take on Civilization. You start out surrounded by mist, and with a single city. You must carefully balance resources, research new technologies, conquer villages and stomp about the place, obliterating enemies.

This isn’t the most nuanced take on this particular genre. Even for a mobile game, your enemies are rather on the violent side, prone to stabbing first and not bothering to ask questions later. This means games can be a rush to more powerful weapons, not least each tribe’s distinctive, unique super unit.

Still, if you’re not fussed about being quickly pushed into combat, there’s a lot to like here. Hexonia looks and sounds superb, and scratches the turn-based strategy itch with aplomb.

King Crusher

King Crusher is a bite-sized, semi-randomized turn-based strategy game played in fast-forward. You and your merry band head out on adventures, most of which are scraps that take place on tiny grids. You swipe your team about, to get them in the best position to dish out some damage, but also to avoid getting shot, blasted, squashed or eaten.

Clearly, this is a game that was designed for iPhone, quickly flicking characters about in idle moments, but it works surprisingly well on the bigger screen of the iPad. The pixel art shines, and the extra space results in fewer erroneous swipes. 

Also, despite the stripped-back nature of the game, there’s enough depth and longevity to keep you engrossed for lengthier sessions as you set out to obliterate your enemies in the name of the king.

Look, Your Loot!

Look, Your Loot! is a free-roaming RPG reworked as a sliding puzzler. It’s an odd combination, but it works brilliantly, mixing Threes!-style tile-shifting, scraps with monsters, and accumulating bling and skills.

You play as a mouse in a dungeon, surrounded by murdery foes. Flick and you move to an adjacent tile. The tiles behind follow, and something new appears at the other end of the grid. Attack an enemy and you win if your energy level’s high enough. Otherwise: bye bye, mouse.

The game feels more premium than freebie, and as you get better at planning your routes, you’ll survive to see dangers that force new approaches. One boss, Jack (as in O’ Lantern), unhelpfully turns nearby tiles into death-dealing pumpkins. In short, then, top stuff for RPG fans of all stripes.

The Battle of Polytopia

The Battle of Polytopia is akin to turn-based strategy classic Civilization in fast-forward. You aim to rule over a tiny isometric world by exploring, discovering new technologies, and duffing up anyone who gets in your way.

The game is heavily optimized for mobile play. Technology stops evolving before anyone gets guns, you can only expand your empire via conquest rather than founding new cities, and there’s a 30-move limit that stops you dawdling. (For more bloodthirsty players, there’s a Domination mode, too, where you win by being the last tribe standing.)

You get the entire core game for free, but buy extra tribes and everything expands. You gain access to new maps, but also an online multiplayer mode, where you quickly discover whether you’re a powerful despot or one of history’s also-rans. However you play, Polytopia is one of the very best free games on mobile.

Flipflop Solitaire

Flipflop Solitaire is another of designer Zach Gage’s attempts at subverting a classic game. This time, spider solitaire caught his eye, and has been revolutionized by way of a couple of tweaks.

Like the original table-based card game, Flipflop Solitaire still has you arrange columns of cards in descending order. But now you can send cards to foundation piles, and also stack them in either order. (So a 4 or a 6 can be placed below a 5.)

These may seem like small changes, but they prove transformative. Every hand is possible to complete, if you can find the right combination of moves. This turns Flipflop Solitaire into a fascinating and surprisingly fresh puzzler, with you utilizing endless undos to untangle your web of cards.

Conduct THIS!

With a name that sounds like something an angry railway employee would yell before slapping you, Conduct THIS! actually starts out as a fairly sedate railway management game. Little trains amble along, picking up passengers you have to direct to stations that match their color.

The controls are extremely simple: tap a train and it halts until you tap it again; and switches can be triggered to send a train the most optimum way at a junction.

However, the layouts you face very quickly become anything but simple, with multiple trains to control and vehicles to avoid – both of which sometimes unhelpfully disappear into tunnels.

This is a smart, colorful mix of arcade smarts and puzzling – even if it does have the capacity to drive you loco(motive).

Westy West

With its chunky graphics and silly demeanor, Westy West isn’t an entirely accurate recreation of the Wild West – but it is a lot of fun.

You hop about tiny towns, deserts, and mines, shooting bad guys and being rewarded for being the kind of sheriff who doesn’t also shoot innocents.

Although the controls mirror Crossy Road (albeit with a tap to shoot rather than leap forward), progression is more akin to Looty Dungeon, with you having to complete each miniature room (as in, shoot all the bad guys) before moving on.

The net result is a game that’s ultimately an entertaining arcade title, but that somehow also feels like you’re exploring a tiny universe – and one with character. It’s amusing when you’re facing a duel, and a pianist is rather conspicuously outside, furiously playing an ominous score.

Spaceteam

One of the most innovative multiplayer titles we've ever played, Spaceteam has you and a bunch of friends in a room, each staring at a rickety and oddball spaceship control panel on your device's display.

Instructions appear, which need a fast response if your ship is to avoid being swallowed up by an exploding star. But what you see might not relate to your screen and controls.

Spaceteam therefore rapidly descends into a cacophony of barked demands and frantic searches across control panels (which helpfully start falling to bits), in a last-ditch attempt to 'set the Copernicus Crane to 6' or 'activate the Twinmill' and avoid fiery death. 

Our favorite free iPad games all about crosswords, anagrams, and playing with letters.

Typochondria

Typochondria is a word game, which features some very creative writing – creative in the sense of pages being peppered with misspellings. Your task is to spot them – against the clock.

With large text on an iPad’s sizable screen, you’d think this would be easy. It’s not. When the timer is ticking down at speed, it’s all too easy to prod a word in a panic, losing one of your three lives. At this point, you may gain a glimmer of empathy for put-upon editors.

The game offers alternate modes, too – one has you state how many errors are on a page; the other is a zero-risk no-timer mode for typo fetishists. Against the clock is where it really clicks, though, with what turns out to be a surprisingly exhilarating challenge.

Alphabear 2

Alphabear 2 has you tap out words on Scrabble-like tiles set into a grid-like board featuring bears. As tiles are used, bears grow to fill the gaps, often becoming comically tall or thin. Simultaneously, tiles have turn countdowns on them; those that reach zero become immovable stones, scuppering any gigant-o-bear schemes you had in mind.

This is very similar to the original Alphabear, only this time there’s smarter visuals, a story involving a time machine (everything’s gone wrong, but you can apparently fix history by spelling words), and a smattering of educational content through a built-in dictionary and modes based around morphemes.

An underlying meta-game with collectable bonus bears remains baffling and endearing in equal measure, but otherwise this one’s a furry good word game that’s definitely worth bear-ing in mind.

Wordgraphy

Wordgraphy is essentially a set of crossword puzzles. The tiny snag is that the letters are all in the wrong places, and although they can be moved, they can only swap with certain letters elsewhere in the puzzle.

You’d think this restriction would make things easier, but it really doesn’t. You’ll sit there faced with a set-up that resembles an H on its side. The central column will have a completed word, but you’ll stare in baffled fashion at all the other letters, flipping them about to make various flavors of gibberish.

But when things click, you’ll feel like a genius – at least until the point you’re then confronted by a new and even tougher puzzle.

Bonza Word Puzzle

Bonza Word Puzzle rethinks classic crossword puzzles, mostly by taking a completed one, hacking it to bits, and then tasking you with putting the thing back together again.

The result is something like a marriage of tetrominos, jigsaws and Scrabble, and it’s initially rather pleasant as you drag a few pieces about your iPad’s display, and feel slightly smug as everything comes together in seconds.

Naturally, Bonza’s sting in the tail then emerges: puzzles with loads of pieces, sprayed about the screen in a manner that’ll make your eyes boggle. At that point, it becomes a stern test, even if a clue helpfully hints at the kinds of words you should be making.

Spellspire

Spellspire features a grumpy wizard trying to make his way up a tower. Given that this is a videogame, all manner of deadly foes stand in his way. To clear a path, the pointy-hatted hero must blast enemies with his wand – a wand powered by letters.

Yep – this one’s actually an anagrams game, despite the role-playing-lite shenanigans. You get ten letters per floor and use them to spell words that are transformed into magical blasts. The longer your word, the more powerful the magic. 

There’s some grind if you want to make it to the top – bosses are initially very tough to beat. But every play adds to your coffers, giving you a fighting chance of reaching the top of the tower, where we can only hope the wizard finds a really big dictionary.

Letterpress

Letterpress is what happens when you mash Boggle into Risk with a fork. You get a small grid of letters, and tap out a word. Doing so turns its tiles your color. Your opponent then attempts to do the same, in a kind of lexicographer’s take on a tug ’o war.

The twist is that letters you surround are temporarily locked, meaning your opponent can’t flip them on their next go. Careful strategizing is therefore at least as important as showing off your long-word skills.

With a basic rule-set and minimal visuals, it’s interesting how gripping Letterpress proves to be. But when you’re deep into a match, you and an opponent figuring out how to grab those last few unclaimed letters, it’s like no other game of its kind.

Scrabble

Scrabble [non-US App Store link] should need no introduction. The much-imitated crossword game pits you against one or more opponents, as you lay down letter tiles on a board, attempting to make use of special score-boosting spots wherever possible.

This digital take on the classic boardgame enables you to brush up your skills against a computer player, play friends on your local network, or take on all-comers online. On iPad is the best way to play, providing you with a full-size board and stats, without any need to scroll.

If there’s any downside, the app does belt you with ads quite often, and you’ll probably at some point get irritated by the computer opponent’s penchant for deeply obscure words. Nonetheless, Scrabble on iPad betters its many clones.

Apps are the cornerstone of the iPhone – what really set it apart from Android. The best iPhone apps are typically best in class.

However, finding the greatest apps among the millions available isn’t easy, and so we’ve done the hard work for you. 

Our lists compile the very best the iPhone has to offer, whether using your iPhone for photos, video, drawing, music, office tasks, reading, maps, weather forecasts or keeping kids entertained.

This round-up compiles our favourites, from top-quality creative tools and video editors to the finest productivity kit and social networking clients.

In addition to our ongoing list of the absolute best, every two weeks we're adding our picks for the latest and greatest new or updated apps, so check back often.

Even if you don't have an iPhone right now, it's worth reading up on what's available if you're considering investing in the iPhone 11 Pro or even one of the older models (if you need more info, check out our list of the best iPhones) - but note that some of these titles will only work with models from iPhone 5S and later.

Read on below for our free app pick of the last two weeks then click through to the following pages for the best iPhone apps across a range of categories.

• Need an upgrade? Consult our guide to the best iPhone deals

iPhone app of the week: Moleskine Journey

• $4.99/£3.99/AU$6.49 per month

Moleskine Journey is a swish scheduling app from the people who make those nice notepads favored by designer types. But rather than being yet another calendar, Journey is designed to bring wellness to your life.

The app is split into four sections. Planner is an events ticker that can draw in Calendar events – and with a view we wish Apple would steal. To this you can add images, titles, links, and tasks. The last of those are also collected in the bespoke Tasks tab, and the Projects tab enables you to organize more complex groups of elements by topic.

My Day is where the wellness bits happen. This outlines your day’s schedule, and enables you to add goals, record your food, define habits, and journal with words and photos. Try doing all that with a paper notebook!

Best iPhone photo editing and camera apps

These are our favorite iPhone apps for editing snaps, capturing photos and video and applying the filters that actually make things look good.

Apollo

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99

Apollo enables you to apply new light sources to Portrait Mode photos. This kind of photo records depth information, and can be shot on any relatively recent iPhone (iPhone 7 Plus/8 Plus/any ‘X’ iPhone). In Apple’s Photos app, you can add studio-style lighting, but Apollo takes things further.

The interface is usable, and offers scope for creativity. It’s simple to add multiple lights, and then for each one define distance, color, brightness, spread, and mask effects for simulating effects such as shadows being cast from light coming through a window blind.

Apollo perhaps isn’t an iPhone app if you want an instant fix. It demands you delve into the details, and fine-tune your settings. Also, it doesn’t always create a realistic result. But when it works, this is a little slice of magic, enabling you to apply complex lighting to a photo after the fact.

TouchRetouch

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

TouchRetouch can rid photos of unwanted elements. Such tools are commonplace – even in free apps like Snapseed – but TouchRetouch being dedicated to the task affords it focus; more importantly, the tools you get are really good.

Blemishes on faces can be removed with a tap. Larger objects can be painted out, whereupon the app fills in the gaps. Alternatively, you can clone from one part of the image to another. There’s also a line remover, which smartly makes short work of power lines and the like that otherwise carve their way across your pic.

Obviously, automation of this kind has some shortcomings – TouchRetouch can’t match desktop apps where you partake in painstaking, time-consuming, pro-level retouching. But for the average iPhone owner wanting to remove annoying things from pics, it’s well worth the small outlay.

Darkroom

• Free + various IAP

Darkroom is yet another photo editor for iPhone, but just a few minutes in, you’ll likely decide it should be forever welded to your home screen.

The app is efficient, usable and sleek. Immediately, it invites you to delve into your on-device images. There’s no mucking around. Cropping tools and adjustments sliders bring out the best from what you shoot. Splash out on some IAP and you gain access to pro-oriented curves and color tools.

Edits are non-destructive, and you can save your work directly to your Camera Roll (in a manner that can later be reversed), or export copies. The process feels effortless 

throughout, but pause for a moment and you realize how powerful Darkroom is. Only to be avoided, then, if you for some reason don’t want your photos to look better!

Camera+

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Camera+ is a combined camera and editor. Despite the wealth of available options, the interface is initially quite minimal, with a modes strip across the top of the screen, a zoom slider, and the shutter. But tap the + button and you reveal further modes, including a timer, a stabilizer and smile detection.

Similarly, tap the viewfinder area and Camera+ enters a ‘pro’ mode, with manual controls, and scene options for shooting under specific lighting conditions. The interface is finicky compared to Obscura 2, but Camera+ is undoubtedly powerful.

Post-shooting, you can edit with adjustment tools, filters, and frames in the Lightbox. This all comes across as impressively friendly and straightforward, and although the range of tools doesn’t compare to Snapseed’s, it’s enough to keep you within the one app for the most part.

Oilist

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Oilist is a generational art app. You feed it something from Photos, choose a style, and it gets to work, continually repainting your image. It’s like someone’s trapped a tiny van Gogh in your iPhone.

In fact, it’s like a slew of artists are stuck in your device, because Oilist has a massive range of styles to choose from, taking in everything from classic oil painters through to modern art. Although the app can be left alone in a dock, you can capture stills for posterity, or fiddle with settings (including brush strokes, mood, ‘chaos’ and gravity) to redirect the virtual artist.

Whether you interact or just sit back and watch, Oilist is mesmerizing – kind of like a painterly lava lamp, only what you see is based on one of your own cherished photographs.

Snapseed

• Free

Snapseed is a free photo editor with a feature set that rivals the very best premium apps. It’s geared towards users of any level, from those who fancy applying quick filters to anyone who wants to dig deep into adjustments and powerful editing tools.

The range of options is dazzling, and the interface is smartly conceived. You can crop, make adjustments, and edit curves, all with a few swipes and taps. Often, vertical drags select parameters, and horizontal drags define an effect’s strength – tactile and intuitive. Even better, edits are non-destructive, and can be removed or changed at any point by accessing them in the edits stack.

As a final sign off, the app enables you to save any combination of adjustments as a custom preset, which you can then apply to any image in the future with a single tap. Superb stuff.

Obscura 2

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Obscura 2 is the best manual camera app for iPhone. It achieves this not with a slew of features, but by providing an interaction model that’s so brilliantly conceived that you simply won’t want to use another iPhone camera.

Echoing manual cameras of old, everything is based around a contextual wheel that sits above the shutter. Initially, you use it to select a tool. When setting focus or exposure, the wheel enables you to make fine adjustments with your thumb. You get a real feel of precision control, with optional haptic feedback confirming your choices.

The app makes the odd concession to modern photography trends with a range of filters, but mostly Obscura 2 wants you to think a little more about what you’re snapping, all while breathing in its minimal yet approachable and deeply pleasing design.

Filmborn

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Filmborn is an app for camera obsessives – for those who revel in the joys of film, but come away unimpressed with apps that present an over-saturated, overblown take on old-school photography.

The interface is icon-heavy, but gives you fast access to tools that will improve your photography. There’s manual focusing, a range of grid overlays, and a blown highlights preview that outlines problematic areas of a potential snap.

The film filters will appeal to fans of real-world stock, subtly transforming images in a manner that’s pleasingly realistic. Filmborn even educates you regarding when’s best to use each one. The app also includes basic editing functionality, although a key tool – curves – frustratingly sits behind IAP.

Despite that niggle, Filmborn is well worth checking out if you fancy fusing photography’s past with its present.

Retrospecs

• Free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Retrospecs is a camera app that wants you to see the world as if it was being rendered by ancient computing and gaming hardware. Load a photo – or take one using the app – and you can select from a wide range of systems, such as the Game Boy, Commodore 64, and original Mac.

But this isn’t just a single-tap filter app for aficionados of pixel art. You can adjust dither, image corruption, and virtual CRT distortion. You get animation effects and video support. And should you get fed up with the included emulated systems, you can even make your own.

So whether you believe all your photos should look like an eight-bit video game or want to add a crazy glitch sequence to your next YouTube video, Retrospecs fits the bill perfectly.

Halide

• $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99

Halide wants you to focus on deliberate, thoughtful photography. Its creator has remarked that many camera apps now have interfaces like airplane cockpits, and Halide was stripped back accordingly.

That’s not to say Halide is bereft of features, but those it has are all about taking better photos. You can adjust focus and exposure manually, and use ‘focus peaking’ to highlight areas of sharp contrast within the frame, and the grid overlay’s central rectangle turns yellow when your phone is held straight.

If you have a modern iPhone, Halide offers a groundbreaking depth mode with ‘depth peaking’ and a depth map preview. You can also view portrait photos in augmented reality.

The net result of all this is a premium camera app that feels like a professional tool – money well spent if your idea of photography isn’t based around filters and stickers.

Mextures

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Modern iPhones have some seriously impressive camera hardware, and are capable of taking clean, vibrant shots. So it’s perhaps no surprise that iPhone users are often hell-bent on slathering said images in filters and messing them up.

Mextures is a decidedly extreme example, providing a theoretically unlimited number of layers to play with, each of which can have some kind of effect applied. These include grit, grain, light leaks, gradients, and more.

Because each layer can be fine-tuned in terms of opacity and blend mode, you can get anything from subtle film textures to seriously eye-popping grunge effects.

Hit upon something particularly amazing and you can share your ‘formulas’ with other people. Or if you’re in need of a quick fix, you can grab something that’s already online to overhaul your snaps.

Hipstamatic

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

There are two sides to Hipstamatic. In its ‘native’ form, the app apes old-school point-and-click cameras. You get a tiny viewport inside a virtual plastic camera body, and can swap out lenses, film, and flashes, along with messing about with multiple exposures and manual shutters. It’s pleasingly tactile and twangs your nostalgia gland, but feels a bit cramped.

If you’d rather use your entire iPhone display to show what you’re snapping, you can switch to a ‘pro’ camera mode. That’s closer in nature to Apple’s own Camera, but with Hipstamatic’s huge range of rather lovely filters bolted on – a great mash-up of old and new.

And if you’re wedded to Apple’s camera, Hipstamatic’s still worth a download, given that you can load a photo, slather it in filters, add loads of effects and bask in your creative genius. 

SoSoCamera

• $0.99/99p/AU$1.49

Apple offers a burst mode when you hold down the shutter in its camera app, but this is for very rapidly taking many shots in quick succession, in order to select the best one.

By contrast, SoSoCamera is about documenting a lengthier slice of time, taking a series of photos over several seconds and then stitching them together in a grid.

The grid's size maxes out at 48 items and can be fashioned however you like. It's then just a question of selecting a filter, prodding the camera button, and letting SoSoCamera perform its magic.

The resulting images, while low-res in nature, nicely capture the feel of time passing, in many cases better than video; although do experiment first with the filters, because some are a bit too eye-searing.

The best animation apps and video editors for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for editing and creating videos, GIFs, Live Photos and cinemagraphs.

Filmic Pro

• $14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99

Filmic Pro is a video camera for people who want something more advanced than Apple’s Camera. You get thumbable dial controls for manually controlling focus and exposure. Tools offer live feedback on clipping, and enable you to adjust white balance and frame rates. 

For full-on professionals, a one-off cinematographer kit IAP unlocks LOG gamma curves, so your iPhone can ape pro-grade camera kit that costs a small fortune. Assuming your phone has sufficient power, you can ramp up frame rates to 240fps, shoot in 4K, and go all Hollywood with varied aspect ratios. Amazingly, this all comes packed into a usable, sleek interface.

That might sound like overkill – and it probably is if you only shoot the occasional cat video. But if your ambitions are a tad higher, Filmic Pro is the best video camera for iPhone – even if you only dip into a handful of its features.

VideoGrade

• $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99

VideoGrade is a color editor for videos. Its toolset gives you something akin to the color grading effects you find in modern TV shows and movies, along with the means to repair problematic footage.

Although primarily aimed at professionals, VideoGrade is easy to use – essentially selecting tools and dragging sliders. Adjustments are non-destructive, and green indicators denote tools you’ve already used, so you can go back and make changes.

There are a couple of issues. Effects are applied to a still frame, which is awkward to change. Also, full previews require rendering. But there’s an original/edit split view, favorite setups can be saved, and VideoGrade’s entire feature set can be accessed from within Photos. Given that this all happens on a phone, it’s hugely impressive. Just go easy on the ‘teal and orange’, eh?

8mm Vintage Camera

• US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

8mm Vintage Camera is an app dedicated to shooting authentic retro films. In other words, it transforms your otherwise pristine iPhone videos into something that could have been shot anywhere from the 1970s back to the 1920s.

This is more than a basic filters app, though. When shooting live, you get to see the effect, can swap out lenses to add spotlights, color fringing and other effects, and can even add jitter to imitate frame shakes.

Polishing off a superb app are features for working with existing video (which you ‘record’ into 8mm, in a manner similar to Apple’s Clips), and stitching together multiple shots, complete with titles and music. You get a couple of themes included in the purchase price, and several more are available via IAP.

nception

• US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

nception is a photo/video reality-bender of the opinion that everything looks interesting when you start mucking about with mirrors. It provides over 20 symmetric reflection presets, some carving the screen in half, and others being a mite more complicated.

You can shoot live stills or footage, and import existing content. When working with either, there are color filters to overlay; and with video, it’s possible to adjust the frame rate and speed. So if you want some slo-mo (rather than just standard speed) weirdness, that’s just a couple of taps away.

Naturally, nception isn’t the kind of filter app that you’ll wheel out for every occasion, but it’s great for experimenting with, and getting some weirdness into photos, especially when exploring cities and wanting to capture a unique take on local architecture.

Stop Motion Studio Pro

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$8.99

Stop Motion Studio Pro is designed for people patient enough to craft stop-motion masterpieces. It’s a friendly app, but flexible too. You can shoot in-app to add new frames, add existing images from your iPhone, or import video, which is converted to a string of stills.

The editor is powerful: you can copy and paste frames; a Painter mode offers text, shapes and backgrounds; you can create custom titles; and it’s possible to import audio. Playback of audio is intelligent, continuing until completion (rather than just the end of the frame), allowing multiple effects to be overlaid.

The app overreaches with talk of rotoscoping – drawing over frames in the stype of A Scanner Darkly – but for everything else, this is ideal fodder for taking your first steps towards becoming the next Aardman or Ray Harryhausen.

Cinegraph

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Cinegraph is about using existing videos (or Live Photos) to create images that move. Areas selected by the user animate in an endless loop while the rest of the image remains static – a beguiling effect.

The selection of tools is small, but focused on the task at hand: basic adjustment options for your image, brush/overlay settings for outlining the part(s) of your image that will move, and the means to fine-tune the video output, for example to crossfade the end of the loop.

There’s no automated stabilization, which is a pity – you’re effectively restricted to videos or stills shot using a tripod with no wobble whatsoever. But with the right starting point, Cinegraph is capable of fashioning little slices of magic. And unlike much of the competition, there’s no messing about with subscriptions or IAP for ongoing use or removing watermarks.

ImgPlay

• Free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP

A playground for GIFs, ImgPlay aims to bring life to whatever you capture with your iPhone – or to fine-tune the motion within those things that already move.

You start off by loading pretty much anything from your Camera Roll: photos, videos, Burst mode images, Live Photos, or GIFs. With stills, you can select a number of them to stitch together, essentially making ImgPlay a kind of low-end stop-motion tool.

But it’s with Live Photos and Burst shots that ImgPlay really becomes interesting. You can take the video or sequence of images your iPhone shoots, trim the result (including removing individual frames), add a filter and text, and then export the lot as a GIF or video.

For free, the app’s full-featured, but buy the small IAP and you get more filters, no ads, and no watermark on export.

The best art and design apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for painting, drawing, sketching, design and animation.

Imaengine Vector

• Free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99

Imaengine Vector is a camera app/photo editor. Take a shot – a selfie, your lunch, or an amazing landscape – or load an image, and it’s turned into a vector drawing. That in itself perhaps isn’t anything special, but what else the app does very much is.

First and foremost, some of the predefined filters are spectacular. Even the dullest of pics when fed through this app can end up looking like art. The settings can be tweaked, too, including detail levels, colors, and line thickness. If that’s not enough, tap the Editor button and you end up in a full-fledged vector graphics editor.

The interface is a bit messy on iPhone, and the editing section might baffle. But even for the filters, it’s worth the outlay, and for illustrators happy to tweak the app’s output, it’s a bargain.

Linea Go

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Linea Go is designed to make sketching on iPhone effortless. It does this by way of a friendly, stripped-back interface – although one that doesn’t lack for features.

The base of your image can be a paper texture or a grid. Atop that you get five layers, offering great scope for complex compositions – or to isolate one component while drawing another.

When sketching, there’s a pencil and a few pens, a flood fill that can also be used for creating arbitrary blocked-in areas, and Zip Shapes. That last feature recognizes rough shapes you draw, and tidies them if you keep your finger pressed down. They can then be rotated, moved, and scaled.

Although the end results look a bit digital, Linea Go is elegant and efficient, and iCloud cross-device sync makes it a smart choice for iOS-based sketching.

Comic Life 3

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$8.99

Comic Life 3 is for creating comics from photos and other images on your iPhone. Although it works best on the bigger screen of an iPad, it’s surprisingly usable on an iPhone, not least due to the sheer speed at which you can put together a great page (or, if you’re feeling ambitious, a full multi-page book).

Much of this is down to the app’s varied templates, which get you up and running in no time. You can quickly import pictures into frames, add speech bubbles and sound effects, and then export the lot to a variety of different formats.

Oddly, the one thing the app does badly is comic-style filters – you’re better off using Prisma for that. But for making custom comics from doodles or photos of amazing days out, Comic Life 3 can’t be beaten.

Procreate Pocket

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Procreate Pocket is a great bet if you fancy dabbling in digital finger-painting. Whether you’re a novice scribbler or a jobbing artist, this app’s sleek interface wants to get out of your way and let you paint.

The toolbar that runs along the top of the display provides fast access to brushes. At the left of the screen are two sliders, for adjusting brush size and opacity. If you find them distracting, a four-finger tap puts you in full-screen mode, leaving you alone with your miniature masterpiece.

It all feels fluid and sleek, but there’s depth here too. A fantastic brush editor (including custom grain sources) unleashes all kinds of creativity, and the layers system provides scope for more advanced compositions. And when you get really good, you can share time-lapse recordings created automatically by Procreate Pocket, and await glory when a TV network comes calling.

Graphic

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

On the iPad, Graphic resembles a touchscreen take on desktop vector powerhouse Adobe Illustrator. You might think you’d need to be mad to try and squeeze that into an iPhone, but Indeeo has succeeded in fine style.

The app, equally happy in portrait and landscape, is initially set up for vector-based sketching, with you scribbling freehand lines that can subsequently be tweaked and edited. Smartly, the app always lets you know what’s going on under your finger, because Graphic shows that area elsewhere on the screen while you draw.

Delve deeper and you’ll find a shape library, Bézier curves, a layers system and everything else you need to craft illustrations and logos on your iPhone. It can be a touch fiddly at times, but the powerful zoom and general friendliness, of what’s a hugely powerful mobile app, help immeasurably.

Pixelmator

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Photoshop is so ingrained in people's minds when it comes to image editing that it's become a verb. Oddly, though, Adobe's largely abandoned high-end mobile apps, choosing instead to create simpler 'accessories' for the iPhone and iPad, augmenting rather than aping its desktop products. Valiantly filling the void is Pixelmator, a feature-rich and truly astonishing mobile Photoshop.

It's packed full of tools and adjustment options, and works well whether you're into digital painting or creating multi-layered photographic masterpieces. On iPhone, Pixelmator's naturally a bit cramped compared to using the app on iPad, but at the price it remains an insanely great bargain.

The best entertainment apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for having fun with your iPhone, whether stargazing, reading, watching TV or checking out Twitter.

Television Time

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99

Television Time gives you a fighting chance of tracking all the great shows you’d like to see – regardless of where or when they happen to be airing. 

You kick things off by outlining the shows you watch. If you’re already part-way through a series, you can indicate the most recent episode you’ve seen. The Shows tab then lets you know when traditional broadcasts are airing, while To Watch helpfully indicates when you’ve still got 37 episodes of Supernatural to wade through. 

There are of course free apps that do this kind of thing, but not with Television Time’s level of polish, smart design, and handy features (including show calendars for the US, and iCloud sync for all). If you enjoy watching TV but not wasting your time, this app’s a superb investment.

EōN by Jean-Michel Jarre

• $8.99/£8.99/AU$13.99

EōN by Jean-Michel Jarre more or less inserts the French synth wizard into your iPhone and commands him to play forever. But unlike, say, putting Oxygène on repeat, no two EōN sessions are quite alike.

This isn’t a meditative and ambient river of audio such as you get from Brian Eno’s Reflection, though. EōN clearly has distinct tracks (of sorts), some of which can be quite invigorating and head-bobbing fare, but each play is like a new remix – sounds and riffs will be familiar, but always presented in a slightly different manner.

With offline play, EōN is a must-have for the Jarre fan, but also anyone with an interest in generative electronic audio. It functions well for relaxation, screening distractions, or giving your eyes something to do by way of eye-popping synchronized visuals that dance across the screen during each session.

Infuse Pro 6

• $24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99

Infuse Pro 6 is a premium video player. Rather than having you transfer files to your iPhone (although that is an option), it streams from pretty much anywhere, including local PCs, network drives and cloud storage. It can connect with Plex, too, but doesn’t require a server to be running for general use.

From a usability and interface standpoint, the app’s a winner. Assuming your files are sensibly named, Infuse will helpfully organize them and download cover art. When watching, you can grab subtitles with a tap. Halfway through a movie after a commute? Infuse will sync progress to your Apple TV, so you can see the conclusion.

This isn’t a cheap app, and if your demands are simpler, perhaps start with the free version, but if you want the best video player for iPhone, Infuse Pro 6 is it. 

Reeder 4

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Reeder 4 is a sleek RSS reader. Through RSS, you can subscribe to your favorite websites, safe in the knowledge you’ll never miss an article. Reeder then lets you browse headlines by individual feed, or a combined one that displays all articles in chronological order.

When reading an article, you get plenty of options. There are light and dark modes, and you can adjust the typography and contrast – the latter being a good thing, given that the default setting isn’t terribly readable. 

Further handy features are a button that loads entire articles for feeds that initially just supply synopses, and Bionic Reading. The latter aims to encourage in-depth rather than skim-reading, through guiding the eyes via artificial fixation points. Surprisingly, it works. And overall, it adds to what – in its fourth incarnation – remains the best RSS reader on iPhone.

David Bowie is…

• $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99

David Bowie is… reimagines a famous touring exhibition about a music industry icon as an augmented reality experience. You work your way through Bowie’s life story, exploring videos, costumes, handwritten lyrics, and other objects, which sit before you in a pseudo-3D desk-bound view.

Although less directly immersive than Shepard Fairey – Damaged, it’s arguably more accessible, simply due to Bowie’s infusion into popular culture. And although there are limitations on the smaller screen – the slight awkwardness of a letterbox view; costumes looking a bit like videogame character clothing – this is a fascinating glimpse into one of pop music’s most famous and influential artists.

Given the content lurking within, and its price tag being far less than a ticket to the original exhibition, it’s a must-buy for fans and the merely curious alike. 

Bloom: 10 Worlds

• $7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99

Bloom: 10 Worlds is the follow-up to 2008’s Bloom, in which you tapped the screen to play notes while dots of color emanated from your fingers like ripples in a pond. A decade later, 10 Worlds takes that app’s premise and expands out what was effectively a single into a full album.

You get 10 distinct playgrounds to experiment with. Their sounds are varied, as are their visual effects. Some slash lines horizontally and vertically across the screen, while others soak the canvas in watercolor curtains.

Whether you want to interact or just let 10 Worlds play itself (which it starts doing when left alone for a short while), this is an enchanting ambient audio experience that breathes new life into what was already an iOS classic. 

Tweetbot 5

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Tweetbot 5 is a premium Twitter client, and in an era when Twitter seems to be doing its level best to grind third-party clients into dust, it might seem an odd recommendation. However, hampered though it may be in some areas, Tweetbot remains highly recommended for people who want to free themselves from Twitter noise.

This is especially apparent when exploring timelines: everything’s in blissful reverse-chronological order; the Mentions tab isn’t cluttered with like and retweet notifications; and you can swap out a toolbar tab for fast access to user-defined lists.

In other words, despite not having access to all of Twitter’s toys, Tweetbot continues to offer the best iPhone Twitter experience for heavy users of the service – and anyone who prefers order over chaos. 

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged is essentially an art exhibit crammed into your iPhone – and in a rather more literal sense than you might expect. If the name Shepard Fairey doesn’t ring a bell, you’ll likely recognize his most famous work – the iconic ‘Hope’ image of Barack Obama. In Damaged, he tackles the current political climate in a similarly arresting manner.

As a viewer, the AR bit of the app’s name is important. This is no slideshow with written notes. Instead, the entire warehouse-sized show has been transformed into a virtual space you can explore with swipes and taps, or even by walking around yourself.

All the while, you can optionally take in Fairey’s narration, giving you extra context behind the work in what’s easily the best virtual art exhibit on the iPhone.

The best health, diet and exercise apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for keeping fit, workouts, reducing stress and relaxing.

Streaks Workout

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Streaks Workout is an exercise app that marries immediacy and depth. To quickly kick off a workout, tap a time. The app will formulate a routine on your behalf, barking orders as exercises switch. Options range from the relatively easy six-minute ‘Quick’ to the frankly masochistic 30-minute ‘Extreme’.

When you have the time and inclination to plan, there are plenty of additional options. You can toggle specific exercises on and off, or add your own, stating how long a rep takes, and whether it should be timed or counted. Want an entire custom routine? That’s possible, too.

Continue to use Streaks Workout, and the app will log your history and streaks. You can set weekly goals, and the app links to Apple Health. It will even track workouts across devices should you start on an iPad or Apple TV. So now there’s no escape from getting fitter.

Cosm

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Cosm is designed to calm and focus your mind, through ambient audio composition – and journaling.

The music bit resembles Brian Eno’s Bloom app, with you tapping the screen to simultaneously play notes and have shapes appear from beneath your digits. Your taps coalesce into a semi-random repeating loop.

But Cosm differentiates itself from Bloom in key ways. There are multiple instruments to select (albeit from an awkward picker), and the option to define tuning. Also, there’s the writing bit.

This suggests you align soundscapes with how you felt when making them. But the text fields are blank, and so it’s down to you to decide how to use them – while Cosm gets on helping to make your mind a calmer place.

Paprika Recipe Manager

• US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Paprika wants your main companion in the kitchen to be your iPhone. With the app, you can store clippings from foodie websites. Recipes are intelligently saved offline, and can be edited. You can even add photos of your successes, thereby giving you something to aim for next time!

The app also supports everything else about mealtimes. You can create grocery lists, track what’s in your cupboards and when ingredients expire, plan meals that are synced with Calendar, and create reusable menus.

The app’s not the most vibrant in its class, and lacks the handy step-by-step imagery and videos found in the likes of Kitchen Stories and Tasty, but for getting on with the business of planning and making meals, on an ongoing basis it deserves the app equivalent of a Michelin star.

Streaks

• US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Streaks is a to-do manager all about helping you form good habits – and ridding yourself of bad ones. You begin by selecting a task and defining how often you want to do it. Tasks are subsequently checked off, and you can track your progress by way of the app’s various graphs and statistics.

Where Streaks succeeds is in the flexibility of the tasks you can add, and the razor-sharp focus on getting habits infused into your routine. The bold interface is ideally suited to six tasks, forcing you to prioritize. You can set reminders, and mark items as done using the Today widget or an Apple Watch.

Task types are varied. There are those that integrate with Health, negative tasks (like smoking) to avoid completing, and timed tasks for things like meditation sessions. In all, it’s an excellent app for coaxing out a better you.

White Noise+

• Free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP

White Noise+ is an ambient noise machine, which aims to drown out distractions by filling your ears with something pleasant instead.

Rather than just offering you sounds to play, or sliders to adjust volume levels, it takes the form of a mini mixing desk akin to the smart drums grid in GarageBand. You drag sounds into the 16 available slots, with those towards the top playing at a louder volume, and those towards the right offering more complexity. It’s intuitive, effective and looks really great as well.

Neatly, should you happen upon a particularly pleasing combination, it can be saved for later playback, and the app itself includes a few examples to get you going. There’s also an alarm built-in, for using the app for meditation sessions – or to help you not oversleep when having a quick afternoon nap.

Zombies, Run!

• Free + IAP

Zombies, Run! is a fitness app that urges you on not just with stats and data, but with the threat you’re about to be torn limb from limb by the undead.

Fortunately, it doesn’t just randomly blare BRAINZZZZ into your ears – it’s a full-fledged adventure experience, co-created with an award-winning novelist. So as you huff and puff, you gain insight into a dystopian future, head out on supply runs, and try not to become lunch for a zombie horde.

For free, you get a few missions, one of which unlocks every week, and interval training workouts. But the subscription packs in hundreds of missions – enough to keep you going for many months. If you’re a fan of horror or just fancy an exercise app that isn’t all about numbers and music, it’s an excellent buy.

MyFitnessPal

• Free

MyFitnessPal aims to get you fitter by helping you track what you eat. Given that such tracking often involves logging meals, the app speeds things along by way of a barcode scanner, a colossal food database and a recipe importer. If you tend to eat the same meals often, you can save favorites.

All the while, your calories are tracked, and you can check how you’re doing against any goals you’ve set. The ability to connect exercise apps also means MyFitnessPal can become a kind of hub for your general wellbeing.

As ever, there’s a pro version. This seriously ramps up data, analysis and support, with the likes of nutrient insights, tips articles and fine-grained goals. In either incarnation, MyFitnessPal works well to help you more easily understand how food intake affects you.

Runkeeper

• Free

Runkeeper is a training aid and run tracker, which has been around for more than a decade. Since its debut, it’s evolved from mapping out your runs by utilizing your iPhone’s GPS to become a kind of digital personal trainer.

If all you’re looking for is a way to track exercise, Runkeeper remains a winning app. Whether you’re running, walking or cycling, Runkeeper provides real-time data in massive glanceable numbers, and plenty of data to delve into when you’re done.

Runkeeper Go takes things further than logging and stats. For $9.99/£7.99/AU$14.99 per month, you gain access to premium training plans, and custom workouts designed to fit your schedule and ability. The price is obviously a jump up from the free app, but it’s cheaper than a human trainer, and effective when you want more than the basics.

The best kids apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps, learning tools, musical toys and games for toddlers and children.

Sago Mini Airport

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Sago Mini Airport is an exploratory app for small children, to familiarize them with the goings-on at airports. Or at least very cartoonish airports, filled with bright animal characters, and the odd grinning robot.

As with other Sago fare, this is a well-designed experience. Interactions feel solid and well-considered, and there’s plenty to do, such as getting your tickets, going through security, and zipping the plane along the runway toward the heavens. There’s also the kind of massive ball pit in the airport that you’ll wish existed for yourself, let alone for your kids.

The app’s safe for children to play without too much supervision. There are no purchases, and no third-party ads – just loads of going-on-holiday-themed fun!

Thinkrolls Space

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Thinkrolls Space finds a cast of oddball rotund critters trundling around 200 mazes set across seven unique planets. With its tactile interface and amusing characters, it has the appearance of a stylish cartoon – but one children can interact with, and that makes them think.

Essentially, the player tries to get the Thinkroll to an exit, swiping to make it roll, and manipulating other critters on screen as necessary. Cheese monsters tuck into moon cheese, clearing blocked tunnels. Goo monsters, robots and others also have their parts to play, as do vanishing bridges, plasma fields and teleporters.

With two distinct level sets, 24 Thinkrolls to collect, and no ads/IAP whatsoever, this one’s a good bet for keeping a kid with an iPod Touch happy – without filling their head with junk.

Sago Mini Village

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Sago Mini Village is a building blocks game for small children. It takes place in a vibrant, fantastical realm apparently entirely populated by grinning gnomes. Shops and houses are constructed by drag-and-drop, like a cross between prefab housing and Duplo. As your village grows, more gnomes will move in, and then start milling about the place, visiting new friends.

In the hands of a kid, Sago Mini Village becomes a thing of wonder. It’s reportedly inspired by Minecraft, but clearly knows how to engage and cater for very young children. The interface is elegant and usable,there are no ads, it’s possible to play offline, and all of the surprises within the game are of a delightful kind. And as an added bonus, after a major building session, there’s nothing to tidy away!

Women Who Changed the World

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Women Who Changed the World is an animated picture book for children, exploring the achievements of influential and iconic women, including Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, and Marie Curie.

The stories are approachable, providing useful facts, but not deluging children with too much content. The illustrations are bright and adorable, and many scenes in each story have interactive elements, such as being able to drag Earhart’s plane around.

There are a few niggles, most notably that it isn’t always obvious what should be done to move the story on. However, this low-cost, advertising-free introduction to such important subject matter is a must-download app for any kids (small or large) who’d like a grounding in the achievements of some of history’s most brilliant and brave women.

Zen Studio

• Free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP

Zen Studio‘s developer describes it as a meditation app for kids, but really it’s an engaging and entertaining combination of coloring and musical toy. It’s ideal for anyone who needs to relax for a while – regardless of age.

The app’s canvases are triangles that you color in with a tap and emit a note whenever you do so. Drag out a line or tap a few triangles in quick succession and you’re treated to a little melody. It’s all very ‘zen’.

You get the bulk of the app for free, but pay the one-off IAP and it opens up in useful ways: white paint for ‘deleting’ colored triangles; a range of template-based tutorials; and unlimited save slots. You might feel ‘zen’ about not splashing out, but this is an app that’s well worth paying a few bucks for.

Foldify

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Foldify is a rarity – an app that’s not entirely devoted to the digital realm. Instead, it invites you to create little characters on your iPhone, which you can then print on to card or paper, and construct by way of deft folding and a dab of glue.

The interface is first-rate. You kick things off with a template – anything from basic cubes to little blocky people, cars and arcade machines. You then scribble all over that with a pen tool, slap on stickers, and import your own images. All the while, you can admire your handiwork as a little 3D model that’s updated in real-time and can be spun with a flick.

There’s also a social aspect for sharing your creations and downloading other people’s works – including amusingly cuboid takes on Steve Jobs and the original Mac.

Bandimal

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Bandimal is probably the world’s cutest music-making app. And although it was designed for children, we’ll wager anyone with a soul will be grinning from ear to ear shortly after starting to play.

It involves loading animals into one of three available slots, and tapping out notes on a dotted grid. When the playhead moves over the dots, a sound plays, and the animal bops along accordingly – such as a whale blowing colored water while emitting suitably deep bass noises.

It’s relentlessly jolly, sounds superb, and automatically stores every song you make. And as if to cement how perfect the app is, load one of your songs and the animals count in before it starts playing.

Toca Life: Office

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Toca Life: Office is an app designed for children, ostensibly giving them insight into what their parents do all day at work. Only this office is probably a lot more exciting than the one you get to spend many hours in every week.

Here, tiny fingers can dot 35 distinct characters about the place, and role-play in an office, bank, rooftop, courthouse, and apartment. There’s a virtual daycare, a swanky glass elevator, and a bank vault with an alarm.

You can draw on a whiteboard, print from the computers, discover a helicopter, and even make superheroes. Chances are you’ll want to try this out yourself when your kid’s done, too, if only to imagine how exciting your own office life could be.

DNA Play

• $2.99/£2.99/$4.49

DNA Play is an educational app for children that serves as an introduction to the basic science behind DNA. At least in theory. Really, most tiny people will be more excited about the prospect of fashioning all kinds of bizarre, colorful creatures by way of dragging and tapping.

The app begins with you completing simple ‘gene’ puzzles, which see you dramatically adjusting a monster’s characteristics, and this can be done by simply hammering away at a body part to switch it for something new - ideal for less dextrous younglings. Each monster can then be saved and its photo shared.

Occasionally, objects show up, giving you the chance to propel your monster along on a skateboard, feed it a pile of fruit, or have it totally freak out when faced by a spider significantly less terrifying than the monster. But best of all, if you get caught playing with the app yourself, you can argue you’re in the midst of an important scientific breakthrough. Probably.

Endless Alphabet

• $8.99/£8.99/AU$13.99

If you’ve got yourself a resident tiny human, your house probably has a few of those wooden puzzles where letter shapes are shoved into their respective slots. Endless Alphabet isn’t quite, well, endless, but contains dozens of such puzzles, which work brilliantly on the touchscreen.

On your child selecting a word, monsters sprint along the bottom of the screen, scattering its letters. They then need to be dragged back into place, coming to life as they’re moved. When a word’s complete, monsters act out what it means in a charming animated cut scene.

There are some minor grumbles here and there – the app’s resolutely US-English in nature, and the sounds letters make when dragged might confuse, since they’re not full letters nor the phonics often used in education. Otherwise, this is a first-rate, charming, enjoyable educational app for youngsters getting to grips with words.

Metamorphabet

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

If you've seen tiny humans around iOS devices, you'll have noticed that even those that can't speak beyond bababababa and dadadadada nonetheless merrily swipe and poke at screens.

Metamorphabet capitalises on this ingrained infatuation with shiny touchscreens, and cunningly attempts to teach the alphabet via the medium of surreal interactive animations.

It starts off with A, which when poked grows antlers, transforms into an arch and goes for an amble. Although a few words are a stretch too far (wafting clouds representing a daydream, for example), this is a charming, imaginative and beautifully designed app.

The best music and audio apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for making music, listening to podcasts and being a DJ.

AudioKit Hey Metronome

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

AudioKit Hey Metronome deals with the thorny problem of resetting your metronome when jamming away on an instrument. That might not sound like a major concern; but when you’re in the zone, you don’t want to be putting down your guitar or violin, messing about with a time-keeper, and then kicking things off again.

With AudioKit Hey Metronome, you get something seemingly imbued with a bit of Siri, in that you can use your voice to have the app adjust the tempo, time signature, and appearance that the metronome uses. All of this works offline.

There are multiple sound-sets, too, if you don’t fancy playing along to bleeps. In fact, Hey Metronome provides a range of canned drum sounds and beats for having a crack at some popular hits; and you can craft your own playlists as well, to ready yourself for that upcoming gig.

AudioKit L7 – Live Looper

• $19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99

AudioKit L7 – Live Looper brings pro-grade live looping functionality  to iPhone in a way that’s easy for anyone to use. Inspired by the Roland Boss RC-505 Loop Station, the app lets you use your device’s mic to gradually build a composition from loops of audio you record live.

The app is designed primarily for use with your voice. Even if you can’t hold a tune, you can beatbox a rhythm, and when you do want to try your hand at bass or melody, autotune and other effects are on hand to help.

For other instruments, the app is less immediate and a touch fiddly, but nonetheless usable when working on layered ideas for guitars. We suspect the cost may be off-putting for the merely curious, but if you’ve ever wanted your iPhone to be a portable looper, this is the app you’ve been waiting for.

Cs Music Player

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$3.99

Cs Music Player transports you back to a halcyon age before Apple’s own Music app became weighed down with the cruft of the Apple Music service. So rather than giving you tabs for Library, For You, Browse, and Radio, you get a set of customizable options that provide fast access to artists, songs, albums, and playlists.

Tracks you’ve synced with your iPhone are listed, along with your Apple Music library if you choose to sync that with your Apple ID. Other benefits over Apple’s app include faster sorting, and a more efficient way to get tracks/albums to a playlist, or your play queue.

Given the low price tag, along with the app’s smart design and usable, focused nature, Cs is an excellent install if you want to get at your music – without Apple Music getting in the way.

NanoStudio 2

• $19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99

NanoStudio 2 is the follow-up to indie darling NanoStudio, a critically acclaimed iPhone app that let musicians crank out ear-fizzing electronic tunes on an iPhone before GarageBand for iOS was a twinkle in Apple’s eye. However, whereas NanoStudio felt like a silo (albeit an impressive one), NanoStudio 2 is more like a hub. 

The app comes with two hugely impressive instruments. Obsidian is a synth with loads of filters and parameters, enabling a wide range of sounds. 300 presets are built in. Slate is a performance pad, designed for samples and drums. But you can also load Audio Units to further expand your audio soundscape. 

All these noises are twinned with a full suite of arrangement, sequencing and export functionality. On iPhone, the smaller screen perhaps limits the scope for live play and speedy working, but NanoStudio 2 nevertheless remains a first-rate option for making a chart topper on the go.

Miximum

• Free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Miximum brings to your iPhone a playlist power-user feature from iTunes. Rather than laboriously dragging and dropping tracks from Apple Music, or relying on Apple’s curated lists, you can define collections based on your own criteria – dynamic playlists that update as you adjust their rules.

For example, you could create a playlist based on tracks you’ve flagged as ‘loved’, but that haven’t been played over the past month. Or you could get up to date with your listening by having a playlist based on recently added tracks you’ve not yet heard, and that have been downloaded to your phone for offline use.

Despite the inherent power in this app, Miximum is extremely easy to use. This iPhone app is therefore beneficial to Apple Music users who want more control over their playlists, in a manner that recognizes collections often change over time.

Songbirds

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Songbirds is a set of three artistic vignettes that are part meditative aid, part musical instrument. Each of them finds you crafting melodies by directing digital birds across vibrant, minimal scenes.

The best of them is called The Sky. It has you draw pathways akin to constellations, each ‘star’ playing a note when a bird moves over it. With support for up to four simultaneous melodies, you can craft surprisingly intricate sounds, and if you make something you love, tap record to output a video.

The other two options are The Lake, where you control the timing of birds diving into water, and The Flock, in which you use square ‘moons’ to record compositions played out on abstract keyboards. Neither quite matches the intoxicating joy of The Sky, but together, this collection is calming, engaging, and beautiful.

Fugue Machine

• $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99

Fugue Machine is a tool for making music based on compositional techniques used by Bach. That perhaps sounds dry, but stick with us, because Fugue Machine makes it astonishingly easy to create beautiful audio.

You tap out notes on a piano roll, much like in GarageBand. The twist is that in this app, there’s only ever a single loop, but with up to four playheads moving over it. Each playhead is controlled independently, and this means you can play your loop at different speeds and pitches simultaneously, and in different directions.

The interplay of several variations of a melody quickly becomes hypnotic. For beginners, it’s a great way to start making music. For professionals, it’s also a must – not least given that Fugue Machine ships with comprehensive MIDI, AUv3, Ableton Link, IAA, and Audiobus support.

djay

• Free + $4.99/£4.49/AU$7.49 monthly

djay is a hugely powerful DJ app for iOS. Formerly released in various flavors, it’s now universal and a free download. On install, you get a basic two-deck system with crossfader, looping, and some effects. Go pro, though, and a world of high-end DJ power opens up.

At that point, you can run up to four decks, and dabble in video mixing. You get over 1GB of samples, loops, and visuals to trigger. There’s a ton of integration with a range of hardware solutions. Automix is available too, for when you can’t be bothered doing the DJ work yourself.

On iPhone, it’s naturally a bit fiddly compared to the iPad’s relative acres – but it’s also a very portable way to always have the app on you for experimenting with – and useful for hooking up to physical controllers.

SquareSynth 2

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

SquareSynth 2 seems to have two reasons to exist. The first is to make you grin on selecting a preset, tapping a key, and having some retro audio blaze forth from your iPhone. The built-in sounds are reminiscent of noise you’d once have heard blasting from a Commodore 64 or NES; this in itself is all rather good fun.

But for musicians, this is a full-fledged synth. You can delve into each sound and muck about with its parameters – the results of which can be ear-thumpingly terrific. AudioUnit support also means this isn’t an isolated box – the entire thing can essentially be squirted into GarageBand. Only the slightly awkward interface on iPhone when editing lets it down a touch – but the great sounds more than make up for that.

Samplebot

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Samplebot is a colorful grid of buttons that you use to capture sounds. Press a pad, make a noise, and it’s then played by tapping the pad again. Fun stuff – but it turns out Samplebot has more layers than an onion.

Recorded sounds can be trimmed, and arranged in a sequencer. Pre-defined drum patterns are included, but you can also tap out your own. Beyond that, you can import audio from cloud services, Music, Files, or the clipboard, and manage sounds in-app. Tracks can be exported, and Samplebot can even be synced to other music apps.

In short, then, Samplebot is ideal for anyone wanting to make some noise, whether you fancy recording and playing back pots and pans being whacked, or creating entire songs.

GarageBand

• Free

GarageBand is a music creation app and recording studio. Ambitiously, it aims to suit newcomers and pro musicians alike – and it succeeds.

For newcomers, there are smart instruments that automate chords and riffs, and a grid pad for triggering samples and loops. Gain in confidence and you can plug in a guitar and use GarageBand’s excellent range of amps, experiment with the timeline, and create drum patterns in the Beat Sequencer.

For pros, though, this app connects to other apps via Inter-App Audio and Audiobus, can ‘import’ entire third-party apps as Audio Units, and enables you to record, arrange and mix up to 32 tracks.

The app’s a stunning achievement, and we suspect many long-time musicians can’t believe such a thing exists on a phone.

Brian Eno: Reflection

• $30.99/£29.99/AU$47.99

In a sense, featuring Brian Eno : Reflection in this round-up is a bit weird. Unlike other collaborations between musician Eno and software designer/musician Peter Chilvers, Reflection is broadly devoid of interaction. Instead, it effectively just plays Eno’s ambient Reflection album, but with some clever twists.

Unlike the standard album, which is the same every time you listen, the audio here has phrases and patterns within that continually interact in different ways, and subtly change as the day progresses, creating an endlessly changing version of the music. Likewise, the painterly visual on the screen slowly morphs before your eyes.

It’s pricey, but ultimately gives you endless Eno and is an intoxicating experience for anyone that likes their ambient fare. The man himself describes the app like sitting by a river: it’s the same river, but always changing. By contrast, the standard Reflections album initially sounds similar, but it’s a recording frozen in time, never changing.

Korg Gadget

• $39.99/£38.99/AU$62.99

Let's immediately get one thing out of the way: Korg Gadget isn't cheap. It's not the sort of app you're going to download for some larks, use for a few minutes, and then casually toss aside. However, if you've any interest in making music — whether as a relative newcomer or jobbing musician — it is quite simply the best app available for iPhone.

Purely as a tool for live performance, Korg's app is first-rate. You get a bunch of miniature synths, referred to as 'gadgets'; they're geared towards electronic music, but still have plenty of range.

There are drum machines, a gorgeous bell synth, some ear-smashing bass instruments, and plenty of other options, whether you want to be the Human League for a bit or go all clubby.

Each synth comes with a slew of presets, but you can fiddle with dials and levers to make your own, which can be saved for later use.

When it comes to writing music, you can record live, tapping out notes on a tiny on-screen keyboard or by using a connected piece of hardware. Alternatively, there's a piano roll for tapping out notes on a grid as you do in GarageBand, creating loops to then combine into a song in the mixing-desk view.

Korg Gadget is one of the most flexible and intuitive music-making apps we've seen on any platform, and the deepest on iOS. It was superb on the iPad, but that it actually works — and is very usable — on iPhone is nothing short of astonishing.

The best office and writing apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for file management, video memos, writing, email, spreadsheets, notes, presentations and calculations.

Remote Control for Mac – Pro

• $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99

Remote Control for Mac – Pro enables you to control your Mac using your phone so you don’t have to bother with the Mac itself, and although there’s a lot going on in this app, it somehow gives you an interface that’s immediate and coherent.

Using taps, you can flick between media keys, direct input, app launching, triggering menu items, and special commands like restart and sleep. Naturally, some of these work better than others. During testing, responses to media buttons and app launching were instantaneous, but direct input with a Mac display on an iPhone is understandably fiddly.

Still, if you’ve a headless Mac you need to command – or just one elsewhere in your home you can’t be bothered actually walking over to – this app is first-rate stuff.

Vignette

• Free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 IAP

Vignette is the solution when you have a Contacts app full of blanks rather than faces, but can’t be bothered to put in the work to fix this. Since other iPhone apps – including Messages and Mail – use these thumbnails, having them around can be a handy way to spot who’s chatting with you.

That said, for Vignette to work, you need to give it a hand. It essentially rifles through each contact in turn, finding relevant images from their social media accounts. You can then choose to update a contact’s thumbnail, or leave things as they are.

Neatly, Vignette does all the grunt work for free, so you can see whether or not it will work for you. Should you want to save thumbnails, only then will you need to pay the one-off IAP.

Cardhop

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Cardhop is designed to effectively replace Contacts on your iPhone. It uses the same iCloud information (so you can switch back to Apple’s app at any point), but presents it in a far more usable manner.

Individual contact cards are more clearly laid out. Tapping on a phone number or email doesn’t trigger a call or open Mail – instead, you get options regarding what you want to do with that data. The notes field usefully remains anchored to the foot of the screen, so it’s always available.

Back in the main view, there’s a dynamic search field that uses natural language, so you can input phrases to get at information, or to add new contacts. In all, this is an essential app for anyone who regularly dips into Contacts, but wants something better.

1Password

• $3.99/£3.49/AU$5.99 per month

1Password, like iCloud Keychain, is used to store website logins and payment information. But this app then goes further, being able to house details for servers, app license details, notes and identities.

The other big advantage is 1Password being a standalone app. Launch it and use Face ID or Touch ID and you’ll quickly be browsing your logins and data, which can be further refined through the use of favorites and tags. A first-rate password creator is bundled, too, for when you need a new or replacement website password.

The core app is free to try for 30 days, after which point a subscription is required. However, this unlocks the app across a range of supported platforms, including macOS, Android and Windows – something iCloud Keychain cannot compete with.

Noted

• Free or $0.99/79p/AU$1.49 per month

Noted is a rich-text notepad and voice memos app combined. This isn’t a new concept on the iPhone – other apps do much the same. But Noted differentiates itself by enabling you to mark important moments within the recording.

This is achieved using #TimeTags. As you type up notes while recording, tapping a button places a tag inline. When you subsequently tap a tag, your recording instantly starts playing from the relevant moment. This means you can take basic notes during a meeting or lecture, and then flesh everything out later, without having to constantly scrub through a recording to find the relevant parts.

You’ll need a subscription to make the most of the app – not least to record more than a handful of notes – but for many people, #TimeTags alone will be worth the outlay.

PCalc

• $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99

PCalc is a traditional calculator – like the super-powered equivalent of something you might find sitting on a desk. If you want something more conventional than the calculator meets sort-of spreadsheet Soulver, PCalc is simply the best there is on iPhone.

For a start, the app’s almost absurdly feature-packed. There’s multiline and RPN, a paper tape, and multiple undo. Need conversions and constants? Done. Engineering and scientific notation? Sure. You can even edit the individual buttons, if you for some reason want the 6 key to be massive.

The app has a slightly odd sense of humor, too. Head into the Help section in its Settings and fire up the ARKit About PCalc screen, and lob anti-gravity bananas about the place. This is a calculator with leaderboards and achievements, and – we say again – anti-gravity bananas. Buy it.

Just Press Record

• $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Just Press Record is a highly usable audio recorder and transcription tool. It’s also an excellent example of how to take an app that’s extremely simple and add new features without drowning it in complexity.

To start, you still tap a big, red button, and then record whatever you want to say. Saved recordings head to iCloud, meaning they can be accessed on any device. On your iPhone, they’re found in the Recents and Browse tabs, the latter listing them by date.

There’s also a Search tool – which might seem redundant until you realize every recording is automatically transcribed. Naturally, this doesn’t always nail context – during testing, it mixed up ‘synced’ and ‘sinked’ – and you have to manually say punctuation (such as ‘comma’).

Still, this means that you can share text rather than just audio files, and that every utterance you make can potentially be found by keyword, instead of you scrabbling through a huge list of recordings. It’s really smart stuff.

Pennies

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Pennies is all about managing your money. But whereas finance trackers have a tendency to be dry and complicated, Pennies goes for a much friendlier approach. Using the app’s colorful, straightforward interface, you can quickly and easily define new budgets around any kind of topic, and add or remove money from them.

Much of the app’s effectiveness lies in the way it encourages you to categorize your spending. Want to cut down on coffee? Create a ‘coffee’ category and get a monthly and daily budget, along with a visible reminder of when you can next spend.

Your entire history always remains available in an ongoing scrolling list, and because Pennies syncs across devices, your figures are readily available on iPad and Apple Watch too. In short, it’s the budget tracker for the rest of us.

Untitled

• $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99

Untitled rethinks screenwriting. Rather than you having to remember how to format your next Hollywood blockbuster, Untitled prioritizes you getting ideas down, through providing a helping hand regarding how your script should look.

This works by way of simple-to-remember shorthand, such as placing dialogue underneath a character’s name, or ‘>’ before a transition. The app’s also intelligent enough to reformat scene headers (intro/location/time) from plain English into the correct style.

On iPad, Untitled is a friendly screenwriting tool, but its relaxed, note-taking approach really feels at home on iPhone. It’s not a tool you’d likely use to fine-tune a fully polished screenplay, but it’s excellent for starting one – wherever and whenever inspiration strikes.

Carbo

• $7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99

You can of course use a wide range of apps for storing real-world scribbles – photograph a journal page and you can fling it at the likes of Evernote, say. But Carbo tries something more ambitious. Your sketches and notes are cleaned up, and converted to vectors, while preserving your original stroke.

What this means is that images within Carbo retain the character of your penmanship, but are also editable in a manner standard photographs are not – you can select and move specific elements that Carbo intelligently groups, adjust line thicknesses throughout the entire image, add annotations and tags, and export the result to various formats.

It's a friendly, intuitive app to work with, and efficient, too – a typical Carbo note requires only a tenth of the storage as the same image saved as a standard JPEG photo.

Scrivener

• $19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99

On the desktop, Scrivener is popular with writers crafting long-form text. On iPad, the app is - amazingly - barely altered from the PC and Mac release; but Scrivener on iPhone is a slightly different prospect.

That's not to say this isn't a feature-rich and highly capable product. You still get a solid rich-text editing environment and a 'binder' to house and arrange documents and research, before compiling a manuscript for export.

What you lose on the smaller screen is those features that require more space: a two-up research/writing view; the corkboard for virtual index cards.

But Scrivener is still worth buying - although you're unlikely to write an entire screenplay or novel on an iPhone, you can use the app to take notes, make edits, and peruse your existing work, wherever you happen to be.

Soulver

• $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Traditional calculator apps are fine, but even if they come with digital tape, you don't get figures in context. By contrast, a spreadsheet is overkill for most adding-up tasks. Soulver is a neatly conceived half-way house — like scribbling sums on the back of an envelope, but a magic envelope that tots everything up.

You get two columns. On the left, you type everything out, integrating words as you see fit. On the right, totals are smartly extracted. So if you type 'Hotel: 3 nights at $125', Soulver will automatically display $375 in the totals column.

Line totals can be integrated into subsequent sums, ensuring your entire multi-line calculation remains dynamic — handy should you later need to make adjustments to any part.

Given the relative complexity of what Soulver's doing, it all feels surprisingly intuitive from the get-go. There are multiple keyboards (including advanced functions and currency conversion), you can save calculations and sync them via iCloud or Dropbox, and it's even possible to output HTML formatted emails of your work.

The best productivity apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for being productive with launchers, focus timers and to-do lists.

Fantastical

• Free or $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 per month

Fantastical rethinks calendaring for iPhone. It does this not through upending interface conventions, but by saving you time – this iPhone app’s major features mostly have you use your calendar less, so you can get on with your life.

For example, events can be created using natural language, with your event building as you type. When events have multiple invitees, you can suggest several different time slots and let Fantastical sort out scheduling based on responses. And then there’s the superb events ticker, a new thumbable menu for quickly accessing views, integrated weather forecasts, and a slew of handy calendar sets (such as for sports and TV shows).

The app works with existing iCloud data (and/or Exchange/Google), meaning you can use it alongside Calendar if you wish – although after a few days of Fantastical, it’s unlikely you’ll bother with Apple’s app again.

1Blocker

• Free or $14.99/£14.99/AU$24.49 per year

1Blocker enhances your browsing experience on iPhone by blocking ads, trackers, pop-ups, cookie notices, comments, and more. Especially when on a cellular connection, this can greatly speed things up in Safari – and cut down on data usage.

The app works out of the box, and you needn’t delve into any settings. But if you feel the need to tinker, there are many options. You can opt to disable specific tools entirely, or tweak them on a per-site basis (for example, if a site you like offers well-behaved ads).

Originally a paid app, 1Blocker now starts free, letting you turn on one tool. For more than that, you must pay monthly or annually – or splash out on a one-off premium IAP of $38.99/£37.99/AU$60.99. Either way, paying gives you monthly cloud rule updates and unlocks the app on Mac too.

Magpie

• Free + $2.99/£2.49/AU$4.49 per month

Magpie reimagines notes and reminders for the visually inclined. The experience focuses on photographs rather than being words-first. Create new lists and items, and you’re invited to take snaps or load existing ones. When browsing lists, your eyes are dazzled by the imagery rather than bogged down in text.

That said, Magpie doesn’t eschew words entirely. You can add brief notes to any list item, and for the likes of gift lists, it’s possible to add prices, links, and even locations. Once you’ve built up a bit of a collection, Magpie shines especially bright on iPhone, as you browse your items.

For a few bucks a month, there’s plenty of value here if you want a creative spin on note-taking and lists – and one that’s far more sleek and arresting than the closest equivalent Apple provides itself.

Bin Day Alert

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Bin Day Alert does what you’d expect from its name – alerts you when it’s bin day. But although this is every inch a focused app, it also has the flexibility to cater for any refuse system, wherever you happen to live (and however complex the collection cycles are).

So rather than limiting you to a basic schedule, Bin Day Alert invites you to define each type of trash you deal with, give it a color and an icon, and outline when collections occur. For example, if your recycling is picked up every three weeks on a Wednesday, the app has you covered.

Beyond that, you set alerts. Handily, you’re not limited to one – so if you casually dismiss one the evening before, you can get a further reminder on the day itself to put a bin out.

NordVPN

• Various subscriptions

NordVPN is a VPN app for iPhone. It encrypts your internet traffic, making it effectively impossible for anyone else to decipher. The company doesn’t keep logs of activity, and because you can use servers in any country, the app lets you circumvent many geographic blockers.

That might all sound a bit nefarious, but there are many reasons why a VPN can be handy, including enhancing safety when using public Wi-Fi, and getting at media subscriptions when on holiday.

What sets NordVPN apart from much of the competition is a combination of reliability, performance, and usability. Setting things up is a cinch, and although speeds are slower than on vanilla Wi-Fi, you won’t feel the hit. 

Once you’ve downloaded the app, do, though, subscribe via the NordVPN website, because the regular offers are significantly cheaper than signing up in-app. 

MindNode 6

• Free + $14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99

MindNode 6 is a desktop-grade mind-mapping tool for iPhone. 

Creating complex diagrams perhaps isn’t best suited to a small handheld device, but MindNode speeds things along with Quick Entry. With this feature, you create a bullet-point list, tap a button, and the app instantly transforms your thoughts into a mind map.

After that, the sky’s the limit. You can snap nodes and branches into position or go free-form, and add labels, stickers, and images for more context. If everything gets a bit complicated, you can hide connections, and/or focus on one part of your map. 

Full iCloud support lets you start on your iPhone and pick up elsewhere; but from any device, you can export to a range of formats. Top stuff, then, when you need to get ideas out of your head, and explore them in a logical, visual, useful manner.

Yoink

• US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Yoink can be thought of as a super-charged version of the clipboard. It’s used to stash all kinds of things for later – text snippets, URLs, images, and even documents and emails. Items added to Yoink can be renamed, formed into groups called ‘stacks’, and previewed.

Files integration means you can get at everything you’ve stored in the app without actually going into Yoink itself. Siri Shortcuts support also means you can stash your clipboard’s contents without first activating the app.

Cross-device capabilities round out a great app – iCloud sync allows you to get at Yoink content saved on any of your devices. And so although this is probably not an app you’ll use every day, it’s a massive time-saver when you need to collate files from disparate sources on mobile.

BFT - Bear Focus Timer

• $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49

BFT - Bear Focus Timer is yet another app designed to make you use your iPhone less and concentrate more, but if you need a sense of focus and are easily distracted by your iPhone, it’s one of the best of its kind.

First, it features a friendly bear, and who doesn’t like bears? Secondly, the app’s Pomodoro-style timers are adjustable, so you can fine-tune lengths for work, short breaks, session counts, and long breaks (recommended after several work/short break sessions).

The app’s interface is the real star though, inviting you to turn your device upside-down to get the timer going. Pick up your phone and the timer stops, while the previously friendly bear scowls. It’s amusing and chastising in equal measure, making you smile, flip your phone back, and listen to the app’s helpful hubbub-drowning noise loops.

Things 3

• $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99

Things 3 is a task manager that wants to help you get more done. The interface is sleek and the workflow is smart, helping you collect thoughts and plan your time efficiently.

The app’s core is to-dos, but it allows you to add context, such as the time, date or location that you plan to carry the task out. Things 3 then populates a Today view with the day’s tasks (cleverly grouping things you do at home under a This Evening heading), and puts later tasks in an Upcoming list.

The finer points of the app’s design and interactions make it a joy to use. Animations are subtle, but colors are bold. Clever details are dotted about, like the ability to position a new entry by dragging the to-do button to a list.

Things 3 isn’t cheap – especially if you also buy it on iPad and Mac – but the potential time savings make it good value.

Focus Keeper

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Focus and burnout are two commonplace issues for people in work. Too often, you can become distracted from tasks; but also there’s the risk of working long hours without a break, leading to fatigue. Focus Keeper aims to deal with both.

The timer is loosely based around the Pomodoro Technique (a time management method), and recommends splitting your time between 25-minute work sprints and five-minute breaks. After four sessions, you take a longer break of about half an hour.

The app is clutter-free, and easy to use. The timer combines a minimal iOS-like design aesthetic with hints of a real-world timer’s dial. You can delve into statistics, adjust work/break lengths, and choose alternate alarm and ‘ticking’ noises. Most importantly, however  much this is all about psychology, it does work. Need convincing? Try the free version first.

The best travel and weather apps for iPhone

Our favorite iPhone apps for planning a holiday, currency conversion, weather forecasts and mapping.

Weather Line

• Free + various IAPs

Weather Line is a weather app that displays forecasts as wiggly lines. Said lines denote the temperatures for the current day or week ahead; at regular intervals along the lines, symbols show the predicted conditions at the relevant points in time.

Stick with the free version, and that’s pretty much what you get for up to ten locations, each of which can also display average monthly conditions – useful when planning a trip away from home. Pay the monthly subscription, though, and you unlock a wealth of features.

A ‘super forecast’ combines information from major providers. You get a radar, a Today widget, imminent rainfall warnings, and themes. Ads and the locations limit are banished, too. Whichever flavor you go for, Weather Line’s a solid download, even if you just check out its lines every now and again before scurrying back to another weather app.

Dark Sky Weather

• US$3.99/£3.99

Dark Sky Weather started out primarily as a rainfall tracker, with luminous clouds billowing over a dark background map. Now, the app is much more conventional – but arguably massively more useful.

The main forecast page shows current conditions and a local map. Usefully, little arrows denote the direction a storm’s heading, so you can always spot that at a glance, rather than having to check the full animated rainfall view. Below that you get rainfall predictions for the hour, the daily forecast, and a weekly outlook. It’s all very sleek, efficient and usable.

The app’s accuracy may vary by location, but during testing in various countries we’ve found its rainfall predictions to be spot-on. It’s also a nicely flexible app regarding warnings – several notifications are built in, and you can add your own based on a range of weather conditions.

V for Wikipedia

• $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99

V for Wikipedia is a Wikipedia reader. That in itself might sound like an odd recommendation for a premium app, but bear with us.

Although V can be used to search Wikipedia in the normal way, it starts off in its Nearby tab, flagging articles of interest in your vicinity. This looks great, tabs snaking their way from map locations to large thumbnails. It’s practical, too, for finding out more about the local area, without resorting to review-oriented web services.

This sense of polish extends to the article views. Typography and layout are first class, and a slide-in contents list is only a tap away. So while you might narrow your eyes at the prospect of paying for a Wikipedia reader, Viki will have said eyes busily and regularly reading the world’s most dynamic encyclopedia.

WeatherPro

• $0.99/79p/AU$0.99

WeatherPro is a weather app designed for people who favor information density over aesthetics. That’s not to say WeatherPro looks bad – its white-on-blue stylings are perfectly nice. But where it excels is in providing fast access to a wealth of weather data.

For any selected location, a single screen shows the current conditions, a local radar, upcoming predictions and then a forecast for the coming week. The latter packs temperatures, sun hours, precipitation forecasts and wind speeds into a tiny space.

In pretty much all cases, tapping on something lets you delve into even more information, and additional taps provide layered mapping and radar services. Accessing some layers requires an IAP subscription, but just the bare-bones WeatherPro is a great buy if you want at-a-glance forecasts packed with detail.

Citymapper

• Free

Citymapper is a navigation aid for finding your way around big cities. It doesn’t cover the entire globe, but is instead focused on a handful of major destinations, such as New York, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Paris and Sydney. Locations are periodically added by way of user votes.

If you live in or visit a supported city, Citymapper is superb for helping you find your way around more efficiently. The app quickly finds where you are and offers options – in real-time – of how to reach your intended target.

And small details really help it stand out, such as you being able to track the location of a bus you’re waiting for, alerts that blare when your stop’s coming up, and even recommendations of the best carriage to get on – and the fastest station exit to use.

Google Maps

• Free

Google Maps is the best mapping app on iPhone.

It’s extremely good at locating places you want to visit, be that a distant town or a point of interest like a restaurant or store. When it comes to turn-by-turn driving directions, the voiceovers lack the nuance of Apple’s Maps, but the actual directions tend to be more helpful when it comes to dealing with incidents like congestion.

Google Maps is great for planning and non-car use, too. There are reviews and recommendations for places to go, public transport routing, and Street View – a navigable 3D street-level map for scoping out landmarks that proves handy when traveling somewhere or visiting a new place.

Importantly, you can also download chunks of map for offline use, turning Google Maps into a turn-by-turn navigator even when you lack a data connection.

CARROT Weather

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

CARROT Weather rethinks weather apps, mostly in being helmed by an angry AI that seemingly won the ‘most likely to kill people in their sleep’ award over HAL. Sure, you get the usual rainfall warnings, hourly forecasts, and weekly outlooks, but they’re all delivered with a layer of snark.

Venture into the excellent Today view widget and CARROT will ‘LOL’ if it’s going to rain. If it’s sunny, she’ll hope you get tan lines, call you a meatbag, and suggest you make the most of the nice weather – “or else”.

It’s uniquely entertaining in its App Store category, but also usable, colorful, and configurable. The maps are extremely variable by country, and some layers require IAP – as do a number of useful settings. But otherwise this is one of the best – and certainly the most fun – weather apps for iPhone.

Elk

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

We’ve lost count of how many currency converters exist on the App Store, but it’s vanishingly rare to see anyone try something properly different.

Elk bucks the trend, with a unique interface and approach that might not appeal to traders, but feels very much like currency conversion for the rest of us.

On firing up the app, you select your two currencies and it offers a list of current rate conversions. For USD to EUR, for example, you get a list of the rates for one through ten dollars. Swiping from the right increases these values by ten. To access rates between two values, tap an entry.

Smartly, you can also input a fixed rate, for example to track your spending on a holiday when you’ve already got your cash. Most of the features are behind a paywall, but a 14-day trial lets you try them for free.

Poison Maps

• $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

This one’s all about ‘points of interest’, hence the name – Poison Maps (‘POIs on maps’). Essentially, it’s a wealth of information from OpenStreetMap shoved into an app and twinned with an interface that makes it a cinch to drill down into categories.

So, mooching about London and fancy a bite to eat? Tap on the food and drink icon. Something quick? Tap Fast Food. Pizza? Sounds good.

Each tap filters the POIs and navigation buttons displayed, and arrows point at nearby locations when you’re zoomed in. Everything’s extremely responsive, and the maps and icons are clear and easy to read. Other nice bits include a full-screen mode, a search function, and public transport overlays.

The only snag is Poison Maps is a gargantuan install – well over 1GB. If that’s a bit rich, smaller regional alternatives by the same developer exist, each being a free download with a small IAP to unlock all categories.

Living Earth

• $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

From a functionality standpoint, Living Earth is a combination clock/weather app. You define a bunch of cities to track, and switch between them to see current time, weather conditions, and when the sun's going to make an appearance and vanish for the day.

Tapping the forecast quickly loads an outlook for the entire week; prod the clock and you'll get the weather and time in each of your defined locations.

What sets Living Earth apart, though, is the globe at the screen's centre. This provides a live view of the planet's weather - clouds, by default, which can be swapped for temperature, wind and humidity.

We like the clouds most, along with the way the virtual planet can be slowly spun with the slightest swipe. It'll then lazily rotate between zones in daylight and those lit up after night has fallen.

It's been ten years since Android was first announced and in that time we've seen hundreds of thousands of games hit the Google Play Store, but obviously not all of them are high quality, and with so many available it can be tricky to make sure you're putting your cash in the right place.

Some titles are expensive and nothing more than just poor ports of a console game. Others are only a meagre amount but are genuinely more entertaining and enthralling than anything found on a console a few years ago.

When deciding what Android game is best for you, well... you've got a few choices to consider.

Firstly, remember that you won't have just one game on the go at any one time. You might have a title that's great for playing on the sofa or commute, and one when queuing at the bank.

Some work better with headphones, others don't - and we thoroughly recommend playing through a few regularly to find the games that work the best for you. Nothing better than finding something you just can't wait to play again and again! 

• Want to improve your Android phone in other ways? Check out the best Android apps in 2018

Unlike the iPhone, the amount of dedicated gaming controllers for Android phones is a bit more bland, as there aren't as many for specific phone models... and the games that support them can be varied too.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't have a good look at what's out there, and many controllers aren't overly expensive.

Back to the games: have a think about the variety of titles to check out, whether you want something that taxes you, is a quick-fire frenzy or an RPG that you can play locally with friends.

That's why we're here - telling you the games that you need to play because we've tried them out ourselves. We head through the new and bubbling lists of titles each week, have a look at what's good and let you know.

We try to keep this list as fresh as possible, so if your favorite falls off the chart then it's not a bad game... there's just more out there to try.

So get ready to get clicking through our gallery... we guarantee you'll have found something to play before you know it.

New: Spitkiss ($1.99/£1.99/AU$3.69)

Spitkiss is a mashup of arcade shooty larks and platforming action, where you aim to get the bodily fluids of one Spitkiss to another. That might sound a bit grim, but this is actually a sweet-natured game played primarily in cartoonish silhouette.

Even so, your emission, once it’s hurled through the air and gone splat on a platform, starts to gloop downwards. You can then make it leap again, and – several hops later – splatter on your intended love.

Especially on larger screens, Spitkiss works really nicely. The visuals are vibrant, and the basics are easy to grasp. But as you get deeper into the game’s 80 levels, the twists and turns required to win get tougher to pull off – even when you hold down the screen for much-needed Matrix-style slo-mo.

Persephone is a puzzle game set in tiny isometric worlds, packed with clockwork hazards, such as spikes and poison darts. Your aim in each is to reach the exit. Often, that involves triggering switches and pushing objects around. Persephone, though, has a rather unconventional take on how these things are achieved.

If you get killed, your corpse remains on the screen and you are reincarnated at the most recently accessed restart point. You can have up to three corpses available at any one time, unceremoniously using them to cross spiked pits, or shoving them into switches so to avoid being shot by a nearby projectile. It’s an amusingly dark comic twist, and one that makes Persephone stand out among a slew of ostensibly similar puzzlers.

Boson X is an endless runner that features scientists sprinting at insane speeds inside particle accelerators in order to generate the high-speed collisions required to discover strange new particles. And if you’re thinking that’s probably not entirely scientifically accurate, that’s true; fortunately, Boson X gets away with this by virtue of being breezy and intoxicating fun. 

It comes across like Canabalt in 3D, mixed with Super Hexagon, as you leap between platforms, rotating the collider to ensure you don’t plunge into the void or smack into a wall. From the off, this isn’t exactly easy, but later colliders are truly bonkers – abstract and terrifying contraptions that shift and morph before your very eyes. Brilliant stuff.

Super Crossfighter is essentially a neon Space Invaders played at breakneck pace. Your little craft sits at the foot of the screen, darting left and right, blasting the aliens above. But the foes you face aren’t doddering critters from 1970s gaming – they come armed to the teeth, hurling all manner of instant laser death and bullet hell your way.

Fortunately, you’re not wanting for firepower either. Your speedy craft can leap from the bottom to the top of the screen, scooping up gems that can subsequently be used to upgrade the ship in an in-game shop. There’s no IAP, note, for extra cash – this intense blaster is all about the skill you have in your thumbs, and your ability to survive wave after wave of neon-infused shooty action.

ELOH is a puzzle game that wants you to experiment. It’s based around a strict grid that features masks, loudspeakers that emit colored blobs, and goals. The idea is to get the blobs to the goals, ensuring they’re the right color by bouncing them off of relevant masks along the way.

That might sound chaotic, but ELOH has a clockwork setup. Everything bounces at precise right angles, and shots are fired to the rhythm of a background soundtrack. But your approach to solving challenges can be like sculpting: set the blobs on their way and you can move puzzle pieces live, just to see what happens.

ELOH is therefore a pressure-free but engaging title – there’s no clock, and there are no ads. It’s just you, over 80 puzzles, and some cracking visuals and audio.

Reigns: Game of Thrones follows Reigns and Reigns: Her Majesty in marrying kingdom management with swipe-based interaction borrowed from Tinder. Only this time, there’s a massively popular TV show fused to its core.

You plonk your behind on the Iron Throne, as one of several major characters from the TV series, and set about imposing your will on the Seven Kingdoms. As you swipe left and right to make decisions, your fortunes with the people, army, church and bank fluctuate. Fill or deplete any one meter, and your reign will come to an abrupt – and likely bloody – end.

Given the basic interface, Reigns: Game of Thrones has surprising depth. It also has great writing, loads of content to find, and plenty of puzzles to solve, making it ideal mobile gaming fodder.

Layton: Curious Village in HD (US/RoW) is a slice of gaming history. Originally released for the Nintendo DS, Curious Village was the first Layton game; it sold over 17 million copies, and launched what’s since become a beloved series.

Lesser developers would have done a straight port to mobile and be done with it, but Level-5 acknowledges technology has moved on – and the clue is in the title. All of the game’s visuals have been spruced up for modern displays, and augmented with new animations.

Of course, the puzzles remain the real draw – and even some of the early ones are proper brain-thumpers. Add to this an engaging story (despite the iffy voice work) and Curious Village is a superb update, one that you should take time with and savor.

Jydge riffs off of Robocop and Judge Dredd, having you control the titular cybernetic law enforcer, eradicating crime in the megacity of Edenbyrg.

The game’s no-nonsense approach is typified by the ‘Gavel’ in this case being a massive gun. Jydge’s approach to dealing with bad guys mostly involves stomping about, shooting enemies, pilfering bling, and rescuing unfortunate hostages caught in the crossfire.

Initially, something about the game’s visuals and approach may make you play as if entering a neon-soaked outing that’s escaped from stealth shooter master and X-Com creator Julian Gollop’s brain, but really Jydge mostly plays out like a frantic twin-stick shooter. Tactics only really enter the equation when you realize you can nip back to earlier missions and tackle them again with new kit or approaches, in order to meet tricky challenges. Either way, it’s ballsy fun.

Pumped BMX 3 might initially give you the wrong impression. Colorful visuals and basic controls have it initially come across as a casual take on a BMX trials outing. But pretty rapidly, it bucks any complacency from the saddle and leaves it a shattered mess on the floor.

Whereas Pumped BMX 2 (also recommended) went for a more relaxed take on hurling a BMX into the air with merry abandon, this sequel is all about mastery. Try to wing it and you’ll be crushed, but properly learn course layouts and timings, and you’ll gradually work your way through each level.

That’s rewarding enough, but with confidence you can start peppering your runs with stunts to boost your scores, with routines that would make even seasoned BMX pros break out in hearty applause.

Implosion finds Earth having been given a beating by nasty aliens, leaving humans on the brink of extinction. As this is a video game, humans have pinned all their hopes on you and your natty battlesuit.

Fortunately, said suit can dish out serious damage. As you stomp about Implosion’s gleaming environments, you blast, slash, and dash your way through hordes of identikit alien drones. Occasional boss battles then shake things up in terms of pacing and challenge. Between levels, you customize your suit, to unlock new combos.

The game’s creators call Implosion a AAA console-style title, and it looks superb and feels the part. Even the complex controls (for a touchscreen game) work well. A sticking point for some might be the price, but you can play six missions for nothing. If you then balk at a one-off IAP for a premium title, don’t subsequently wonder why we can’t have nice things.

In The Dog House is a sweet-natured puzzler featuring a ravenous pooch and a bizarre house with moving rooms, floors, and corridors. Unfortunately for the dog, its dinner’s on the other side of said house, and you need to figure out how to get over there.

The mechanics of the game are a classic sliding puzzler, with a few twists. The house’s components can be slid and sometimes rotated, but you also need to use a bone to urge the dog toward the goal. The snag is any room the pooch is planted in cannot be moved.

In The Dog House rapidly becomes quite the brain-smasher, and it’s irritating that there’s no level-skip option when you’re stuck. Still, perseverance reaps rewards, because after the more arduous tests you’ll feel like a champ when you reach that bowl.

Holedown is an arcade shooter that has you blast strings of balls at numbered blocks. When blocks are hit enough times, they blow up, allowing you to dig deeper. Some blocks hold up others, and should be prioritized – as should grabbing gems that allow you to upgrade your kit (more balls; new levels; a bigger gem bag) when you run out of shots and return to the surface.

The mechanics are nothing new on Android – there are loads of similar ball bouncers. What is new is the sense of personality, polish and fun Holedown brings to this style of game. This is a premium title and a labor of love. There’s still repetition at its core, but Holedown feels hypnotic and encouraging, rather than giving you the feeling that it’s digging into your wallet – in contrast to its freebie contemporaries.

Osmos HD is a rare arcade game about patience and subtlety. Each unique level has you guide a ‘mote’, which moves by expelling tiny pieces of itself. Initially, it moves within microscopic goop, eating smaller motes, to expand and reign supreme.

At first, other motes don’t fight back, but the game soon immerses you in petri dish warfare, as motes tear whatever amounts to each-other's faces off. Then there’s the odd curveball, as challenges find you dealing with gravity as planet-like motes orbit deadly floating 'stars'.

It’s a beautiful, captivating game, with perfect touchscreen controls. And if you can convince a friend to join in, you can battle it out over Wi-Fi across six distinct arenas.

Kevin Toms Football * Manager is what happens when the man who created the original Football Manager game (the one released in 1982 for computers with 16k of RAM) brings the same pick-up-and-play ethos to Android. It’s crude. It’s simplistic. It’s also – as it turns out – an awful lot of fun.

Ultimately, the game mostly involves basic team selection/management, a smattering of tactics, and tense match highlights. It might seem prehistoric to anyone who cut their teeth on modern football management games, but it’s a delight for anyone hankering after immediacy from a management game, rather than something with so much depth it threatens to take over their life.

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is a racing management game without the boring bits. Rather than sitting you in front of a glorified spreadsheet, the game is a well-balanced mix of accessibility and depth, enabling you to delve into the nitty gritty of teams, sponsors, mechanics, and even livery.

When you’re all set, you get to watch surprisingly tense and exciting top-down racing. (This being surprising because you’re largely watching numbered discs zoom around circuits.) One-off races give you a feel for things, but the real meat is starting from the bottom of the pile in the career mode, with the ultimate aim of becoming a winner.

It’s all streamlined, slick, and mobile-friendly, and a big leap on from the relatively simplistic original Motorsport Manager Mobile.

Supertype is a word game more concerned with the shape of letters than the words they might create. Each hand-designed level finds you staring at a setup of lines, dots, and empty spaces in which to type. Tap out some letters, press the tick mark, and everything starts to move.

The aim is to get the letters you type to the dots. In some cases, the solution may be fairly obvious – for example, placing a lowercase l on each ‘step’ towards an out of reach dot at the top of a staircase, then having a p at the start tip over to set everything in motion. More often, you’ll be scratching your head, experimenting, trying new approaches, and then grinning ear to ear on cracking a solution.

Typeshift rethinks word searches and crosswords. You get a tactile interface of jumbled letters within draggable columns. Your aim is to change the color of every tile – and tiles only change when they’re part of a word you make in the central row.

The game occasionally heads further into traditional crossword territory, adding clues to the mix, which you must match to the words you find. Either way, it’s a brain-smashing touch-optimized word-game experience.

There are joyful animated and audio touches throughout, too, and everything feels hand-crafted, rather than you being sent endless algorithmically generated puzzles. Naturally, such polish costs money – beyond the free download, you pay for packs of puzzles. But they’re worth every penny.

AR Smash Tanks comes across like a one-on-one Angry Birds, only you’re pinging tanks about rather than furious avians, and the entire thing plays out in augmented reality.

You take on a friend or AI opponent, on a battlefield that can be squeezed on to a table or conceivably resized to fill a big chunk of a lawn. Your mission is to smash your opposite number’s three tanks using your own, or by cunningly toppling buildings and making use of power-ups.

Although AR Smash Tanks could have worked without AR, it’s far better with it. You can consider shots from every angle, like you’re playing a decidedly surreal game of pool. The lack of online play is a pity, but for local multiplayer this one’s – as Brits say in praise – smashing!

Lichtspeer is a trippy take on tower defense – like a single-lane Plants vs Zombies, only you’re fending off deranged futuristic Nordic and Germanic foes, are armed with an endless supply of glowing javelins (the titular Lichtspeer), and act under the watchful eye of an angry, demanding heavy metal god.

So, yes, this one has a veneer of weird, but the underlying mechanics are straightforward enough: aim your spear Angry Birds-style, lob and repeat. Get in some headshots, and the game rewards you. Miss too often and the god’s wrath briefly freezes you, making you temporarily vulnerable.

The main downsides to the game are repetition and brevity. However, gradually acquired special moves shake things up (and are a godsend on packed levels), and when you’re in the neon Lichtspeer zone, it has a focused, hypnotic quality – along with a pleasing dash of madness.

Dissembler is a match-three game with a difference. Instead of presenting you with a wall of gems that’s replenished when you make matches, Dissembler levels are akin to modern art – abstract creations comprising colored tiles.

You still swap two elements to try and match three (or more), but here matches vanish. The idea is to end up with a blank canvas. At first, this is easy, but Dissembler soon serves up challenges where you end up isolating tiles unless you’re very careful.

This shifts the game more heavily into strategic puzzling territory – and it’s all the better for it. You’ll feel like the smartest person around on figuring out the precise sequence of moves to clear the later levels. And even when you’ve finished them all, there’s a daily puzzle and endless mode to keep you occupied.

The Room: Old Sins finds you investigating the disappearance of an engineer and his wife. The trail leads you to a spooky attic. On getting the lights working, you see a strange dollhouse, which then sucks you inside.

You discover the toy is in fact a full reconstruction of a mansion, with a side order of Lovecraftian horror. Unraveling the mystery at the heart of the game and its impossible world then happens by way of devious, complex, tactile logic puzzles.

Old Sins looks and sounds great, and moving around is swift – there’s none of the dull trudging you find in the likes of Myst. Of course, if you’ve played The Room, The Room Two, and The Room Three, you’ll know all this already. If you haven’t, grab Old Sins immediately – and its predecessors, too. They’re some of the finest games on Android.

SiNKR is a puzzle game based around pucks, hooks and holes (or, if you like, hooks, lines, and sinkers). It dispenses with timers, scores, text and IAP – it’s just your brain against its challenges.

The game’s abstract visuals are striking, and the way it plays feels fresh. Pucks are dotted about, and you must drag them to holes by using hooks that are retracted by you pressing hexagonal buttons.

The clever bit is how SiNKR works with such basic elements to create puzzles that have you staring at the screen, baffled as to the correct order in which to retract the hooks, and when to flip them over.

It gets more complicated later on, with new ideas and obstacles, but you’ll nonetheless likely be done within a few hours. Still, this kind of premium ad-free experience is to be encouraged on Android, and SiNKR is easily worth the tiny outlay.

.projekt is a relaxing and brilliantly designed minimal puzzler that twists your brain by forcing you to think in two and three dimensions simultaneously. At the center of the screen is a five-by-five grid, which you tap to build blocky structures from cubes. The aim is to have the shadows they project match patterns on two visible walls.

At first, this is simple stuff, but .projekt subtly ramps up the challenge as you move through its levels. You’re forced to spin the canvas multiple times, and often to destroy your structure and rebuild as an approach turns out to be a dead end.

Never does .projekt become a frustrating experience, however. You’re not on the clock, there are no move limits, and there are no IAP lurking. It’s just about you and the blocks, and imagining how an object looks from two points of view.

Super Hexagon is an endless survival game that mercilessly laughs at your incompetence. It begins with a tiny spaceship at the center of the screen, and walls rapidly closing in. All you need to do is move left and right to nip through the gaps.

Unfortunately for you, the walls keep shifting and changing, the screen pulses to the chiptune soundtrack, and the entire experience whirls and jolts like you’re inside a particularly violent washing machine. It seems impossible, but you soon start to recognize patterns in the walls.

String together some deft moves, survive a minute by the skin of your teeth, and you briefly feel like a boss as new arenas are unlocked. And although complacency is wiped from your face the instant you venture near them, Super Hexagon has an intoxicating, compelling nature to offset its mile-long sadistic streak.

Florence is an interactive experience at the fringes of gaming – a short-form illustrated storybook peppered with game-like elements. These are designed to help you empathize with the protagonist – the titular Florence – and move the story onward.

There’s little challenge here, more an invitation to delve into the life of a young woman as she moves from the drudgery of the everyday to the dizzying thrills of experiencing her first love. Your input is slight and sporadic, but cleverly conceived, whether you’re mindlessly tapping figures in a spreadsheet or arranging puzzle pieces in speech balloons, the pieces decreasing in number as the conversation becomes easier.

The story is short, and there’s perhaps little replay value, but Florence should please anyone looking for a heartwarming way to spend an hour with their Android device that’s a bit different from typical gaming fare.

ATOMIK: RunGunJumpGun finds a nutcase blasting his way through corridors of extremely angry, heavily armed aliens, while he himself is only armed with a really big gun. That might sound fine, until you realize the gun is also his means of staying aloft.

This means to go higher, he must blast downward, temporarily becoming vulnerable to incoming fire. If he shoots forward, he starts to plummet towards the hard, deadly ground. ATOMIK therefore becomes a manic, high-octane balancing act of finger gymnastics, with the potential to get killed very frequently.

On every death, the game rewinds the level so you can try again, and wallow in your failure to complete challenges that are a mere 20 seconds long without dying dozens of times first. But when you crack one, you really do feel like a boss.

Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery is an adventure game that’s about discovery and exploration. It’s a relentlessly beautiful experience, with rich retro-infused artwork and a lush soundtrack. The game encourages you to breathe everything in, take your time, and work at your own pace.

Unlike most adventures, which tend to be obsessed with inventories, Sworcery is mostly concerned with puzzles that are confined to one screen. Solutions are frequently abstract, involving manipulating your environment or even time itself. You may free woodland spirits with musical prowess, or discover a solution requires playing at set points during the lunar calendar.

It might come across as a bit worthy at times, and there are some missteps, such as the awkward, ungainly combat, but Sworcery is evocative and expressive, and full of pay-offs that tend towards the magical, unless you happen to be dead inside.

Part Time UFO is a physics-based stacking game featuring a cute UFO that has crash-landed on Earth and now has to eke out a living. That’s right – in this era, aliens aren’t sent to Area 51, and instead scour job ads to earn some cash.

Fortunately, this little UFO is made of stern stuff and has a massive claw to pick things up. This proves handy for part time jobs, doing everything from stacking deliveries on a truck, to assisting a circus elephant’s grand finale – balancing on a tightrope, with five animals precariously plonked on a pole.

Since Part Time UFO embraces the frustration of claw machines, it can infuriate – not least when you topple a structure as the clock ticks down. Mostly, though, this is a charming and very silly game that’s loads of fun.

Meteorfall is a ‘roguelike’ role-playing adventure masquerading as a card game. You choose a hero, and then set out on a semi-randomized journey, which largely involves hacking your way through a horde of monsters. Only instead of swiping a trusty sword, or moving about a turn-based grid, your actions, attacks and strategy all revolve around cards.

With each card you’re dealt, you choose, Tinder-style, to swipe left or right. Each direction has its own outcome, which may involve smacking your foe in the face, or replenishing energy. Over time, you build up your deck, gradually increasing your strength and skills – until the moment you overstretch and are horribly killed.

Given the simple interface, there’s loads of depth here. And with every game being unique, Meteorfall is an Android title that should keep you playing for months.

Warlock’s Tower is a turn-based puzzler that finds you on a quest to convince the titular warlock – about to destroy the world – that actually everyone quite likes him and would really appreciate it if he calmed down a bit.

As you enter each tiny single-screen dungeon, you make for the exit, knowing that every step you take depletes your life force. Regeneration gems are dotted about, which means your route is typically along serpentine lines.

If that was it, Warlock’s Tower would still come recommended, but it doesn’t rest on its laurels. Work your way through the levels and there’s more than a moves limit to contend with, as the game introduces moving walkways, character-switching, and slowly advancing zombies, eager to tear your face off.

Sonic Runners Adventure tries to pull the same trick as Super Mario Run, distilling the essence of a much-loved traditional console platform game into a one-thumb auto-runner. The difference with Sonic is that he blazes along at breakneck pace, resulting in a colorful effort that has more in common with Canabalt than the precision leapy nature of Nintendo’s game.

That’s not to say there’s no case for care and accuracy though. Sonic Runners Adventure features carefully designed multi-level landscapes, each with its own rhythm.

Crack the choreography and you’ll grab the rings, bonk the monsters on the head and give the evil Dr Eggman a serious kicking. If not, you can at least take solace that this game’s mobile-friendly levels aren’t terribly expansive, and so are geared towards immediately having another go.

60 Seconds! Atomic Adventure is an initially jovial take on the apocalypse. The first – short – part of the game gives you one minute to dash around your house, picking up supplies and family members, and lobbing them into a shelter.

The second part has you making decisions regarding dishing out supplies and searching for more in the hope of surviving long enough to be rescued – assuming anyone’s left to do so.

The arcade section could do with dialing down the nuttiness in the controls. It’s too easy to end up randomly smacking into walls, nudging a chaotic feel into outright frustration. Still, take time to master the weird physics and you’ll do okay.

The strategy section has more legs for repeat play (and you can skip the arcade part if you’d rather go straight there). It offers many unexpected events, and a bleak, darkly comic edge that contrasts nicely with the bumbling arcade section that comes before it.

Vignettes sits at the extreme ‘arty’ edge of gaming, at times feeling more like an interactive toy. But there is a game lurking within – it’s just a decidedly abstract one.

You’re initially invited to interact with the game’s name. Spin it through a flat edge and this object suddenly becomes a chest, within which is a telephone that – when appropriately manipulated – becomes several other items in quick succession.

The ultimate aim is discovery – to figure out how to access each of the objects within the game. There are also plentiful secrets to discover, such as a moon landing featuring tiny cartoon astronauts, and a suitcase into which you can hurl an endless succession of socks.

It’s all very odd, but a compelling and stress-free experience that feels suitably different from anything else on the platform.

Hidden Folks is a hidden object game with a soul. It’s reminiscent of those mass-produced posters where you scour a massive, cluttered scene, trying to find the one person with a silly hat. The difference is that everything here has been made with love and care, from the hand-drawn interactive illustrations to the amusing oral sound effects.

The basics are admittedly much as you’d expect: scour the screen to find specific objects or characters, and move on when complete.

We realize that might not sound like much, but there’s a charm and humor to Hidden Folks that sets it apart from any of its contemporaries. On a larger Android phone or a tablet, this is a particularly relaxing, absorbing game to lose yourself in for a few hours.

Reigns: Her Majesty is the follow-up to the well-received Reigns, which was more or less a mash-up of kingdom management and Tinder. Again, the sequel has you perform regal duties, swiping left and right to make decisions, responding to demands from your subjects.

Throughout, you must balance the church, army, people and treasury. Should any one become too powerful or angry, your reign is over. At that point, you’re then reincarnated for another go.

Like its predecessor, this is a clever game with recurring themes, along with plots and achievements that weave their way through the ages. But the writing’s tighter this time, there’s an inventory to work with, and you’re playing the Queen – and she has a much harder time of it than a man.

Zenge is a sliding puzzle game whose early levels almost insult your intelligence, merely asking you to slide a few shapes into place. Don’t be fooled, though – Zenge is devious in a way that should make even the most jaded puzzle game fan grin.

At first, it’s just the cut of the shapes that thwarts efforts to shove them into place, but every now and again, new mechanics enter the mix, such as pieces that stick to each other, or buttons that flip shapes over.

All this plays out within a no-stress environment. There are no timers, move limits, shops, points or stars - it’s just you and the puzzles. Zenge’s purity alone would make it interesting, but the quality of the puzzles makes it a must-have.

Framed 2 follows in the footsteps of Framed – a puzzle game based around rearranging panels of an animated comic book.

The story features a mysterious ship, smuggling, and quite a lot of sneaky spies. As you play a scene, something inevitably goes horribly wrong for the protagonist and you must swap frames around to make things play out differently. Like the original, this is all wonderfully tactile, but the puzzles are better this time around, with more emphasis on reusing panels.

It’s even fun when it goes wrong. You don’t often get to be entertained when failing in a puzzle game, but here you’ll want to fail each level if you succeed first time, just to see what amusing japes Framed 2’s cast would have got into otherwise.

Bury Me, My Love is another game in the Lifeline mold – a branching narrative akin to a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which plays out in real time.

What’s different is this game’s narrative draws from the real-life stories of Syrian refugees. You play Majd, whose wife Nour is trying to reach Europe. She contacts you via a messaging app, and you respond with advice – which may have a very big impact.

This kind of adventure can be tense, leaking into your real life as you await responses, but Bury Me, My Love takes this to the extreme – for example, when it’s been 24 hours since you heard from Nour, who was heading to a heavily armed border.

This kind of topical subject matter won’t be for everyone, but if you want a game that will make you think a bit, it comes recommended.

Monument Valley 2 is the follow-up to landscape-bending puzzler Monument Valley. As in its predecessor, you fashion impossible pathways by manipulating Escher-like constructions in order to reach goals.

This is a gorgeous game. The minimalist architecture is dotted with optical illusions. Imagination abounds throughout, and the color palette dazzles, half making you wish you could print every level out as a massive poster to stick on the wall.

The actual puzzles are slight and the game itself has been criticized for being short, but thoughts of brevity evaporate when you’re confronted by one of Monument Valley 2’s many spectacular, beautiful moments, such as a side-on level that resembles modern art and a section where trees explode from pots when bathed in sunlight. In short, this is a mobile experience to savor.

Thimbleweed Park is an adventure that sends you back to the halcyon days of 1987. Mainly because that’s when it’s set, in the titular Thimbleweed Park, and there’s been a murder. But also, this game recalls classic PC point-and-clicker Maniac Mansion, in everything from visual style to interface.

That doesn’t mean this is a crusty old relic. Industry veterans Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick have written a winning script (which gets increasingly weird as you play), and come up with dozens of cunning, tricky puzzles to keep your brain fizzing throughout the game’s 15-to-20-hour length.

Now and again, it perhaps gets a bit too obtuse. But mostly, this is a game that knows it’s a game - and that also wants you to know it’s a take-no-prisoners puzzle title. One that features plumbers who are also paranormal investigators, dressed as pigeons. (We did say it was weird.)

Death Road to Canada is a zombie movie smashed into a classic retro game. Little pixelated heroes dodder about a dystopian world, bashing zombies with whatever comes to hand, looting houses, and trying to not get eaten.

The road trip is staccato in nature. The game constantly tries to derail your rhythm and momentum. In Choose Your Own Adventure-style text bits, the wrong decision may find you savaged by a moose. Elsewhere, intense ‘siege’ challenges dump you in a confined space with zombie hordes, often armed only with a stick. Handy.

These abrupt elements can grate – as can the slightly slippy controls that aren’t always quite tight enough; but otherwise this is an ambitious mash-up of RPG and arcade gaming, with generous dollops of black humor – and BRAIINNZZZ.

Love You To Bits is a visually dazzling and relentlessly inventive point-and-click puzzler. It features Kosmo, a space explorer searching for the scattered pieces of his robot girlfriend, bar the lifeless head that’s still in his clutches. Which is a bit icky.

Don’t think about that too much, though, because this game is gorgeous. Through its many varied scenes, it plays fast and loose with pop culture references, challenging you to beat a 2D Monument Valley, sending up Star Wars, and at one point dumping you on a planet of apes.

Now and again, you’ll need to make a leap of logic to complete a task, and puzzles mostly involve picking things up and using them in the right place – hardly the height of innovation. But this game’s so endearing and smartly designed you’d have to be lifeless yourself to fail to love it at least a little.

Run-A-Whale is a sweet-natured endless runner. Well, endless swimmer, given that its protagonist is a friendly whale giving a lift/thrill ride to a shipwrecked pirate.

There’s no tapping to leap here, though; in Run-A-Whale, you hold the screen to make the whale dive. When you let go and he breaks the surface, he soars (very) briefly into the air, before returning to the water with a splash.

As ever, the aim in Run-A-Whale is survival – and that in itself isn’t simple. The game’s one failing is it sometimes makes it really tough to avoid hazards, which can include whale-stopping walls someone’s carelessly built beneath the waves.

Mostly, though, this one’s a gorgeous romp through beautiful landscapes, grabbing coins, occasionally being fired into the sky by a cannon, and regularly fending off giant crabs and octopodes.

Sidewords is a rare word game that isn’t ripping off Scrabble or crosswords. Instead, you get blank grids with words along two edges. You must use at least one letter from each edge to make new words of three or more letters. Each selected letter blasts a line across the grid; where lines meet become solid areas filled with your word. The aim is to fill the grid.

On smaller levels, this is simple, but larger grids can be challenging – especially when you realize a massive word (that on discovery made you feel like a genius) leaves spaces that are impossible to fill. Fortunately, Sidewords encourages experimentation, and so you can remove/replace words at will.

It’s clever and a bit different; and if you tire of the main game, you can fire up mini-game Quads, which marries word-building and Threes!-style sliding tiles. Two for the price of one, then – and both games alone are worth the outlay.

Freeways is one of those games that doesn’t look like much in stills, but proves ridiculously compelling from the moment you fire it up. In short, it’s all about designing roadways for autonomous vehicles.

It comes across a bit like a mash-up of Mini Metro and Flight Control. You link roads together, often by designing monstrous spaghetti junctions, only you’re armed with tools that make you feel like an urban planner drawing with chunky crayons while wearing boxing gloves.

The game’s crude nature is part of its charm. It’s more about speed and immediacy than precision, a feeling cemented when you realize there’s no undo. When your road system gets jammed, your only option is to start from scratch and try something new.

In truth, the inability to remove even tiny errors can irk, not least when roads don’t connect as you’d expect. Otherwise, Freeways is a blast.

Card Crawl mixes solitaire and dungeon crawling, and does an awful lot with a four-by-two grid of cards.

In each round, an armor-clad ogre deals four cards, which may include monsters, weaponry, potions, and spells. Beneath sits your adventurer’s card, two spots for items to hold, and one to stash a card for later.

To progress to the next draw, you must use three of the cards dealt to you. For example, you might grab a sword, use that to kill a demonic crow, and then quaff a potion.

Getting through the entire deck requires strategy more than luck. For example, down health potions when you don’t need to, and you may not survive later when weaponless and battling multiple enemies.

Generously, the basic game is free; but we recommend buying the one-off IAP to unlock the full set of cards and game modes.

Miracle Merchant has you mix potions for thirsty adventurers, fashioned from stacks of colored cards. Each customer asks for a specific ingredient, and mentions another they like. Across 13 rounds, you must manage your deck to ensure everyone goes away happy. Fail once and your game ends.

Decisions must be made carefully, because once cards are placed, they can’t be moved. Combinations prove vital for success: pairs of cards boost your score, as does matching cards to the colored icons found on those already in play. There are also ‘evil’ cards with negative values to overcome.

The game doesn’t feel as refined as the developer’s own Card Thief, but we enjoyed its elegance. There’s no messing about with special powers and leveling up – it’s just you, cards, and a set of rules. There’s perhaps a touch too much reliance on card counting and luck, but Miracle Merchant’s nonetheless a simple, engaging, unique stab on solitaire.

Linelight is a gorgeous, minimal puzzler that pits you against the rhythmic denizens of a network of lines levitating above a colored haze. Your aim is simply to progress, inching your way along the network, triggering gates and switches, and collecting golden gems.

Early puzzles are content to let you get to grips with the virtual stick (one of the best on Android). Soon, you’re faced with adversaries that kill with a single touch. But these foes aren’t merely to be avoided – they must also be manipulated into position to trigger switches that open pathways that enable you to continue.

Now and again, new mechanics keep things fresh, as do abrupt changes in pace, such as a memorable several-screens-long pursuit/dance with an enemy towards the end of the game’s first section. In all, Linelight’s an enchanting, vibrant, superbly designed experience – an essential purchase for your Android device.

Fowlst is a playable, immediate old-school arcade game featuring an owl who’s trapped in hell “for some reason”. As you tap the left or right of the screen, he briefly flaps in that direction before gravity does its thing. Your aim: survival – easier said than done in endless rooms of angry demons.

Fortunately, you can fight back. Smacking into a demon destroys it. (Note: this really doesn’t work with massive whirling buzz-saws.) Some demons spit out loot when they expire, enabling you to power-up your owl in its subsequent lives.

And it turns out you’ll be grateful for rockets that shoot out of your behind when tackling giant (and oddly goofy) caterpillar-like bosses and the huge flame-spewing demons determined to make your time in hell, well, hell.

No Stick Shooter is a single-screen shoot ’em up that marries the best of old-school retro blasters with modern touchscreen controls.

As its name suggests, there are no virtual D-pads to contend with. Instead, as the aliens menacingly descend towards your planet, you tap their general location to fling something destructive their way.

The key to victory doesn’t involve tapping the screen like a lunatic, though. Your weapons need time to recharge, and specific armaments work well against certain foes. In a sense, it all plays out like a strategy-laced precision shooter on fast-forward, with you clocking incoming hostiles, quickly switching to the best weapon, and tapping or swiping to blow them away.

There are just 30 levels in all, but only the very best arcade veterans are likely to blaze through them at any speed – and even then, getting all the achievements is a tough ask.

Super Samurai Rampage is a manic swipe-based high-score chaser, featuring a samurai who has - for some reason - been provoked into a relentless rampage.

Said rampage is dependent on you swiping. Swipe left and you lunge in that direction, slicing your sword through the air. Swipe up and you majestically leap, whereupon you can repeatedly swipe every which way, fashioning a flurry of airborne destruction akin to the most outlandish of martial arts movies.

Along with dishing out death, you must ensure you don’t come a cropper yourself. And attack is your only form of defense, because when you’re moving, you’re also deflecting incoming projectiles. You’re also likely racking up quite the body count, which accumulates in bloody retro-pixel form at the foot of the screen.

It’s of course entirely absurd, and without much nuance; but Super Samurai Rampage is an arcade thrill that’s entertaining, and where repeat play is rewarded with gradual mastery – or at least lasting a few seconds longer before your inevitable demise.

Yankai’s Peak is a puzzle game that combines box-pusher Sokoban, pyramids, and the evil mind of a sadistic games creator, intent on making you weep.

The basics are simple: each level plays out atop a triangular grid. Your blue pyramid must nudge colored pyramids onto matching triangular spaces. Movement and nudges come by way of flipping your pyramid in one of three directions, or ‘pinning’ one of its corners and having it spin, taking along anything it touches for the ride.

The manner in which pyramids interact is far more complex than the square boxes found in Sokoban, and that’s what transforms Yankai’s Peak into a truly testing challenge. Even early levels can stump, until you hit upon the precise combination of moves required to achieve your goal.

Deep into the game, it may take days to crack a particularly tough challenge, although you’re at least aided by unlimited undos, and a level map that gives you access to several puzzles at once.

First Strike is an oddball combination of territory-snagging board game Risk, and classic defense arcade title Missile Command. You pick a nuclear power and set about building missiles, researching technologies, annexing adjacent states, and – when it comes to it – blowing the living daylights out of your enemies.

The high-tech interface balances speed and accessibility, although games tend to be surprisingly lengthy – and initially sedate, as you gradually increase your arsenal, and shore up your defenses.

Eventually, all hell breaks lose, including terrifying first strikes, where enemies lob their entire cache of missiles at an unlucky target. If that’s you and your defenses aren’t strong enough, prepare more for ‘the end’ than ‘game over’ as the screen shakes amid all the destruction.

It’s thoughtful and clever (and often chilling), but First Strike never forgets it’s a game – and a really good one for real-time strategy fans.

The first two Riptide games had you zoom along undulating watery circuits surrounded by gleaming metal towers. Riptide GP: Renegade offers another slice of splashy futuristic racing, but this time finds you immersed in the seedy underbelly of the sport.

As with the previous games, you’re still piloting a hydrofoil, and racing involves not only going very, very fast, but also being a massive show-off at every available opportunity.

If you hit a ramp or wave that hurls you into the air, you’d best fling your ride about or do a handstand, in order to get turbo-boost on landing. Sensible racers get nothing.

The career mode finds you earning cash, upgrading your ride, and probably ignoring the slightly tiresome story bits. The racing, though, is superb – an exhilarating mix of old-school arcade thrills and modern mobile touchscreen smarts.

Samorost 3 is a love letter to classic point-and-click adventure games. You explore your surroundings, unearth objects, and then figure out where best to use them. Straightforward stuff, then (at least in theory – many puzzles are decidedly cryptic), but what sets Samorost 3 apart is that it’s unrelentingly gorgeous, and full of heart.

The storyline is bonkers, involving a mad monk who used a massive mechanical hydra to smash up a load of planetoids. You, as an ambitious space-obsessed gnome, must figure out how to set things right.

The game is packed with gorgeous details that delight, from the twitch of an insect’s antennae to a scene where the protagonist successfully encourages nearby creatures to sing, and starts fist-punching the air while dancing with glee. Just two magical moments among many in one of the finest examples of adventuring on Android.

Mushroom 11 finds you exploring the decaying ruins of a devastated world. And you do so as a blob of green goo. Movement comes by way of you ‘erasing’ chunks of this creature with a circular ‘brush’. Over time, you learn how this can urge the blob to move in certain ways, or how you can split it in two, so half can flick a switch, while the other half moves onward.

This probably sounds a bit weird – and it is. But Mushroom 11 is perfectly suited to the touchscreen. The tactile way you interact with the protagonist feels just right, and although your surroundings are desolate, they’re also oddly beautiful, augmented by a superb ethereal soundtrack.

There are moments of frustration – the odd difficulty wall. But with regular restart points, and countless ingenious obstacles and puzzles, Mushroom 11 is a strange creature you should immediately squeeze into whatever space exists on your Android device.

In the late 1970s, Space Invaders invited you to blast rows of invaders. In the mid-1980s, Arkanoid revamped Breakout, having you use a bat-like spaceship to belt a ball at space bricks. Now, Arkanoid vs Space Invaders mashes the two titles together – and, surprisingly, it works very nicely.

Instead of a ball, you’re deflecting the invaders’ bullets back at them, to remove bricks and the invaders themselves. Now and again, Arkanoid is recalled more directly in a special attack that has you belt a ball around the place after firing it into action using a massive space bow.

Increasingly, though, the game is laced with strategy, since your real enemy is time. A couple of dozen levels in, you must carefully utilize powerful invaders’ blasts and onscreen bonuses to emerge victorious – not easy when neon is flying everywhere and the clock’s ticking down.

In platform adventure The Big Journey, fat cat Mr. Whiskers is on a mission. The chef behind his favorite dumplings has disappeared, and so the brave feline sets out to find him. The journey finds the chubby kitty rolling and leaping across – and through – all kinds of vibrant landscapes, packed with hills, tunnels, and enemies.

The game comes across a lot like PSP classic LocoRoco, in you tilting the screen to move, the protagonist’s rotundness increasing over time, and several of the landscape interactions (oddball elevators; smashing through fragile barriers).

But The Big Journey very much has its own character, not least in the knowing humor peppered throughout what might otherwise have been a saccharine child-like storyline about a gluttonous cartoon cat.

As it is, The Big Journey isn’t terribly challenging, but it is enjoyable, whether you drink the visuals in and just dodder to the end, or simultaneously try to find every collectible and beat the speed-run time limits.

Initial moments in point-and-click adventure Milkmaid of the Milky Way are so sedate the game’s in danger of falling over. You play as Ruth, a young woman living on a remote farm in a 1920s Norwegian fjord. She makes dairy products, sold to a town several hours away. Then, without warning, a massive gold spaceship descends, stealing her cows.

Fortunately, Ruth decides she’s having none of that, leaps aboard the spaceship, and finds herself embroiled in a tale of intergalactic struggles. To say much more would spoil things, but we can say that this old-school adventure is a very pleasant way to spend a few hours.

The puzzles are logical yet satisfying; the visuals are gorgeous; and the game amusingly provides all of its narrative in rhyme, which is pleasingly quaint and nicely different.

Hero of the hour Dennis finds himself unicycling naked in this gorgeous platform game best described as flat-out nuts. In iCycle, you dodder left or right, leap over obstacles, and break your fall with a handy umbrella, all the while attempting to grab ice as surreal landscapes collapse and morph around you.

The mission feels like a journey into what might happen if Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam were let loose on game design. One minute, you’re entering a top-hatted gent’s ear to find and kiss a ‘reverse mermaid’ on a levitating bike; the next you’re in a terrifying silhouette funfair that might have burst forth from a fevered mind during a particularly unpleasant nightmare.

Some of the levels are tough, and there’s a bit of grinding to unlock new outfits. But if you want something a bit more creative on your Android, you can’t do much better than iCycle.

Anyone who thought Nintendo would convert a standard handheld take on Mario to Android was always on a hiding to nothing. But that’s probably just as well – Nintendo’s classic platformers are reliant on tight controls, rather than you fumbling about on a slippy glass surface.

Super Mario Run tries a different tack, infusing plenty of ‘Marioness’ into an auto-runner, where you guide the mustachioed plumber by tapping the screen to have him perform actions.

You might consider this reductive; also, Super Mario Run is a touch short, and the ‘kingdom builder’ sub-game alongside the main act falls flat. Still, really smart level design wins the day, and completists will have fun replaying the world tour mode time and again to collect the many hard-to-reach coins.

If you never thought a solitaire-like card game was an ideal framework for a tense stealth title, you’re probably not alone. But somehow Card Thief cleverly mashes up cards and sneaking about.

The game takes place on a three-by-three grid of cards. For each move, you plan a route to avoid getting duffed up by guards (although pickpocketing them on the way past is fair game, obviously), loot a chest, and make for an exit.

Card Thief is not the easiest game to get into, with its lengthy tutorial and weird spin on cards. But this is a game with plenty of nuance and depth that becomes increasingly rewarding the more you play, gradually unlocking its secrets. It’s well worth the effort.

A young boy hurls himself down a massive well, with only his ‘gunboots’ for protection. There are so many questions there (not least: what parent would buy their kid boots that are also guns?), but it sets the scene for a superb arcade shooter with surprising smarts and depth.

At first in Downwell, you’ll probably be tempted to blast everything, but ammo soon runs out. On discovering you reload on landing, you’ll then start to jump about a lot. But further exploration of the game’s mechanics reaps all kinds of rewards, leading to you bounding on monsters, venturing into tunnels to find bonus bling, and getting huge scores once you crack the secrets behind combos.

The game might look like it’s arrived on your Android device from a ZX Spectrum, but this is a thoroughly modern and hugely engaging blaster.

That game where you cast a shadow on the wall and attempt to make a vaguely recognizable rabbit? That’s Shadowmatic, only instead of your hands, you manipulate all kinds of levitating detritus, spinning and twisting things until you abruptly – and magically – fashion a silhouette resembling anything from a seahorse to an old-school telephone.

The game looks gorgeous, with stunning lighting effects and objects that look genuinely real as they dangle in the air. Mostly though, this is a game about tactility and contemplation – it begs to be explored, and to make use of your digits in a way virtual D-pads could never hope to compete with.

You might have played enough automatic runners to last several lifetimes, but Chameleon Run nonetheless deserves to be on your Android device. And although the basics might initially seem overly familiar (tap to jump and ensure your sprinting chap doesn’t fall down a hole), there’s in fact a lot going on here.

Each level has been meticulously designed, which elevates Chameleon Run beyond its algorithmically generated contemporaries. Like the best platform games, you must commit every platform and gap to memory to succeed. But also, color-switching and ‘head jumps’ open up new possibilities for route-finding – and failure.

In the former case, you must ensure you’re the right color before landing on colored platforms. With the latter, you can smash your head into a platform above to give you one more chance to leap forward and not tumble into the void.

There’s a distinct sense of minimalism at the heart of Edge, along with a knowing nod to a few arcade classics of old. Bereft of a story, the game simply tasks you with guiding a trundling cube to the end of each blocky level. Along the way, you grab tiny glowing cubes. On reaching the goal, you get graded on your abilities.

This admittedly doesn’t sound like much on paper, but Edge is a superb arcade game. The isometric visuals are sharp, and the head-bobbing soundtrack urges you onwards. The level design is the real star, though, with surprisingly imaginative objectives and hazards hewn from the isometric landscape.

And even when you’ve picked your way to the very end, there’s still those grades to improve by shaving the odd second off of your times.

Still not sure? Try out the 12-level demo. Eager for more? Grab Edge Extended, which is every bit as good as the original.

Harking back to classic side-on platformers, Traps n' Gemstones dumps an Indiana Jones wannabe into a massive pyramid, filled with mummies, spiders and traps; from here he must figure out how to steal all the bling, uncover all the secrets, and then finally escape.

Beyond having you leap about, grab diamonds, and keep indigenous explorer-killing critters at bay, Traps n' Gemstones is keen to have you explore. Work your way deeper into the pyramid and you’ll find objects that when placed somewhere specific open up new pathways.

But although this one’s happy to hurl you back to gaming’s halcyon days, it’s a mite kinder to newcomers than the games that inspired it.

Get killed and you can carry on from where you left off. More of a hardcore player? Death wipes your score, so to doff your fedora in a truly smug manner, you’ll have to complete the entire thing without falling to the game’s difficult challenges.

There’s more than a hint of Zelda about Oceanhorn, but that’s not a bad thing when it means embarking on one of the finest arcade adventures on mobile.

You awake to find a letter from your father, who it turns out has gone from your life. You’re merely left with his notebook and a necklace. Thanks, Dad!

Being that this is a videogame, you reason it’s time to get questy, exploring the islands of the Uncharted Seas, chatting with folks, stabbing hostile wildlife, uncovering secrets and mysteries, and trying very hard to not get killed.

You get a chapter for free, to test how the game works on your device (its visual clout means fairly powerful Android devices are recommended); a single IAP unlocks the rest. The entire quest takes a dozen hours or so – which will likely be some of the best gaming you’ll experience on Android.

Some people argue programming is perhaps the best ‘game’ of all – and a brilliant puzzle. Those might be people you’d sooner avoid at parties, but Human Resource Machine suggests they could have a point. In this compelling and unique puzzle game, you control the actions of a worker drone by way of programming-like sequences.

The premise is to complete tasks by converting items in your inbox to whatever’s required in the outbox – for example, only sending zeroes. Like much programming, success often relies on logic, with you fashioning loops, and using actions such as ‘jump’, ‘if’ statements, and ‘copy’. These are arranged via drag and drop on a board at the right-hand side of the screen.

That might all sound impenetrable, but Human Resource Machine is in fact elegant, friendly, and approachable, not least due to developer Tomorrow Corporation’s penchant for infusing games with personality and heart.

Coming across like a sandbox-oriented chill-out ‘zen’ take on seminal classic Boulder Dash, Captain Cowboy has your little space-faring hero exploring a massive handcrafted world peppered with walls, hero-squashing boulders, and plenty of bling.

Much like Boulder Dash, Captain Cowboy is mostly about not being crushed by massive rocks – you dig paths through dirt, aiming to strategically use boulders to take out threats rather than your own head. But everything here is played out without stress (due to endless continues) and sometimes in slow motion (when floating through zero-gravity sections of space).

The result feels very different from the title that inspired it, but it’s no less compelling. Tension is replaced by exploration, and single-screen arcade thrills are sacrificed for a longer game. As you dig deeper into Captain Cowboy’s world, there are plenty of things awaiting discovery, and even tackling the next screen of dirt and stones always proves enjoyable. 

In the fantasy world of Solitairica, battles are fought to the death by way of cards. The foes barring the way to your quest’s goal set up walls of cards before them, which you smash through by matching those one higher or lower than the one you hold.

Then there are spells you cast by way of collected energies. Meanwhile, the creatures strike back with their own unique attacks, from strange worm-like beings nibbling your head, to grumpy forest dwellers making your cards grow beards.

In short, then, a modicum of fantasy role-playing wrapped around an entertaining and approachable card game. And on Android, you have the advantage of the game being free – a one-off IAP only figures if you want to avoid watching adverts, and have access to alternate decks to try your luck as a different character.

Anyone expecting the kind of free-roaming racing from the console versions of this title are going to be miffed, but Need for Speed: Most Wanted is nonetheless one of the finest games of its kind on Android. Yes, the tracks are linear, with only the odd shortcut, but the actual racing bit is superb.

You belt along the seedy streets of a drab, gray city, trying to win events that will boost your ego and reputation alike. Wins swell your coffers, enabling you to buy new vehicles for entering special events.

The game looks gorgeous on Android and has a high-octane soundtrack to urge you onwards. But mostly, this one’s about the controls – a slick combination of responsive tilt and effortless drifting that makes everything feel closer to OutRun 2 than typically sub-optimal mobile racing fare.

The original and best of the GO games, Hitman GO should never have worked. It reimagines the console stealth shooter as a dinky clockwork boardgame. Agent 47 scoots about, aiming to literally knock enemies off the board, and then reach and bump off his primary target.

Visually, it’s stunning – oddly adorable, but boasting the kind of clarity that’s essential for a game where a single wrong move could spell disaster. And the puzzles are well designed, too, with distinct objectives that often require multiple solutions to be found.

If you’re a fan of Agent 47’s exploits on consoles, you might be a bit nonplussed by Hitman GO, but despite its diorama stylings, it nonetheless manages to evoke some of the atmosphere and tension from the console titles, while also being entirely suited to mobile play.

You have to feel for the little beastie in Badland 2. Having somehow survived all manner of horrors last time round, the winged critter is now hurled into an even deadlier circle of hell. As before, the aim is to reach an exit, avoiding traps such as massive saw-blades, bubbling magma, and flamethrowers belching toasty death in all directions.

Your means of survival is mostly to flap a bit. This time, though, rather than prod the screen to flap rightwards, you can flap left or right, which comes in handy for navigating deranged levels that now scroll in all directions.

There's perhaps a lack of freshness in this sequel, despite such new tricks and a smattering of unfamiliar traps, but Badland 2 remains a visually stunning and relentlessly cruel arcade experience among the very best on Android. (Do, though, buy the IAP – the atmosphere and momentum is obliterated when ads appear.) 

One of the most exhilarating games on mobile, Impossible Road finds a featureless white ball barreling along a ribbon-like track that twists and turns into the distance. The aim is survival – and the more gates you pass through, the higher your score.

The snag is that Impossible Road is fast, and the track bucks and turns like the unholy marriage of a furious unbroken stallion and a vicious roller-coaster.

Once the physics click, however, you’ll figure out the risks you can take, how best to corner, and what to do when hurled into the air by a surprise bump in the road.

The game also rewards ‘cheats’. Leave the track, hurtle through space for a bit, and rejoin – you’ll get a score for your airborne antics, and no penalty for any gates missed. Don’t spend too long aloft though - a few seconds is enough for your ball to be absorbed into the surrounding nothingness.
 

There’s a disarmingly hypnotic and almost meditative quality to the early stages of Mini Metro. You sit before a blank underground map of a major metropolis, and drag out lines between stations that periodically appear.

Little trains then cart passengers about, automatically routing them to their stop, their very movements building a pleasing plinky plonky generative soundtrack.

As your underground grows, though, so does the tension. You’re forced to choose between upgrades, balance where trains run, and make swift adjustments to your lines. Should a station become overcrowded, your entire network is closed. (So...not very like the real world, then.)

Do well enough and you unlock new cities, with unique challenges. But even failure isn’t frustrating, and nor is the game’s repetitive nature a problem, given that Mini Metro is such a joy to play.

A massive upgrade over the developer’s own superb but broadly overlooked MegaCity, Concrete Jungle is a mash-up of puzzler, city management and deck builder.

The basics involve the strategic placement of buildings on a grid, with you aiming to rack up enough points to hit a row’s target. At that point, the row vanishes, and more building space scrolls into view.

Much of the strategy lies in clever use of cards, which affect nearby squares – a factory reduces the value of nearby land, for example, but an observatory boosts the local area. You quickly learn plonking down units without much thought messes up your future prospects.

Instead, you must plan in a chess-like manner – even more so when facing off against the computer opponent in brutally difficult head-to-head modes. But while Concrete Jungle is tough, it’s also fair – the more hours you put in, the better your chances. And it’s worth giving this modern classic plenty of your time.

There are varied mobile takes on limbless wonder Rayman's platform gaming exploits. The 1995 original exists on Android in largely faithful form, but feels ill-suited to touchscreens; and Rayman Adventures dabbles in freemium to the point it leaves a bad taste.

But Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman Fiesta Run get things right.

They rethink console-oriented platformers as auto-runners – which might sound reductive. However, this is more about distillation and focus than outright simplification.

Tight level design and an emphasis on timing regarding when to jump, rebound and attack forces you to learn layouts and the perfect moment to trigger actions, in order to get the in-game bling you need to progress.

Both titles are sublime, but Fiesta Run is marginally the better of the two - a clever take on platforming that fizzes with energy, looks fantastic, and feels like it was made for Android rather than a 20-year-old console.

In Her Story, you find yourself facing a creaky computer terminal with software designed by a sadist. It soon becomes clear the so-called L.O.G.I.C. database houses police interviews of a woman charged with murder.

But the tape's been hacked to bits and is accessible only by keywords; 'helpfully', the system only displays five search results at once.

Naturally, these contrivances exist to force you to play detective, eking out clues from video snippets to work out what to search for next, slowly piecing together the mystery in your brain.

A unique and captivating experience, Her Story will keep even the most remotely curious Android gamer gripped until the enigma is solved.

You probably need to be a bit of a masochist to get the most out of Snakebird, which is one of the most brain-smashingly devious puzzlers we've ever set eyes on. It doesn't really look or sound the part, frankly - all vibrant colors and strange cartoon 'snakebirds' that make odd noises.

But the claustrophobic floating islands the birds must crawl through, supporting each other (often literally) in their quest for fruit, are designed very precisely to make you think you've got a way forward, only to thwart you time and time again.

The result is a surprisingly arduous game, but one that's hugely rewarding when you crack a particularly tough level, at which point you'll (probably rightly) consider yourself some kind of gaming genius.

One of the most gorgeous games around, FOTONICA at its core echoes one-thumb leapy game Canabalt. The difference is FOTONICA has you move through a surreal and delicate Rez-like 3D vector landscape, holding the screen to gain speed, and only soaring into the air when you lift a finger.

Smartly, FOTONICA offers eight very different and finite challenges, enabling you to learn their various multi-level pathways and seek out bonuses to ramp up your high scores. Get to grips with this dreamlike runner and you can then pit your wits (and thumbs) against three slowly mutating endless zones.

You might narrow your eyes at so-called 'realism' in mobile sports titles, given that this usually means 'a game that looks a bit like when you watch telly'. But Touchgrind Skate 2 somehow manages to evoke the feel of skateboarding, your fingers becoming tiny legs that urge the board about the screen.

There's a lot going on in Touchgrind Skate 2, and the control system is responsive and intricate, enabling you to perform all manner of tricks. It's not the most immediate of titles - you really need to not only run through the tutorial but fully master and memorize each step before moving on.

Get to grips with your miniature skateboard and you'll find one of the most fluid and rewarding experiences on mobile. Note that for free you get one park to scoot about in, but others are available via IAP.

The bar's set so low in modern mobile gaming that the word 'premium' has become almost meaningless. But Leo's Fortune bucks the trend, and truly deserves the term. It's a somewhat old-school side-on platform game, featuring a gruff furball hunting down the thief who stole his gold (and then, as is always the way, dropped coins at precise, regular intervals along a lengthy, perilous pathway).

The game is visually stunning, from the protagonist's animation through to the lush, varied backdrops. The game also frequently shakes things up, varying its pace from Sonic-style loops to precise pixel-perfect leaps.

It at times perhaps pushes you a bit too far — late on, we found some sections a bit too finicky and demanding. But you can have as many cracks at a section as you please, and if you master the entire thing, there's a hardcore speedrun mode that challenges you to complete the entire journey without dying.

At its core, Forget-Me-Not is Pac-Man mixed with Rogue. You scoot about algorithmically generated single-screen mazes, gobbling down flowers, grabbing a key, and then making a break for the exit.

But what makes Forget-Me-Not essential is how alive its tiny dungeons feel. Your enemies don't just gun for you, but are also out to obliterate each other and, frequently, the walls of the dungeon, reshaping it as you play.

There are tons of superb details to find buried within the game's many modes, and cheapskates can even get on board with the free version, although that locks much of its content away until you've munched enough flowers.

If there was any justice, Forget-Me-Not would have a permanent place at the top of the Google Play charts. It is one of the finest arcade experiences around, not just on Android, but on any platform - old or new.

If you're fed up with racing games paying more attention to whether the tarmac looks photorealistic rather than how much fun it should be to zoom along at insane speeds, check out Horizon Chase. This tribute to old-school arcade titles is all about the sheer joy of racing, rather than boring realism.

The visuals are vibrant, the soundtrack is jolly and cheesy, and the racing finds you constantly battling your way to the front of an aggressive pack.

If you fondly recall Lotus Turbo Esprit Challenge and Top Gear, don't miss this one. (Note that Horizon Chase gives you five tracks for free. To unlock the rest, there's a single £2.29/US$2.99 IAP.)

There's a great sense of freedom from the second you immerse yourself in the strange and futuristic world of Power Hover. The robot protagonist has been charged with pursuing a thief who's stolen batteries that power the city.

The droid therefore grabs a hoverboard and scythes across gorgeous minimal landscapes, such as deserts filled with colossal marching automatons, glittering blue oceans, and a dead grey human city.

In lesser hands, Power Hover could have been utterly forgettable. After all, you're basically tapping left and right to change the direction of a hoverboard, in order to collect batteries and avoid obstacles. But the production values here are stunning.

Power Hover is a visual treat, boasts a fantastic soundtrack, and gives mere hints of a story, enabling your imagination to run wild. Best of all, the floaty controls are perfect; you might fight them at first, but once they click, Power Hover becomes a hugely rewarding experience.

(On Android, Power Hover is a free download; to play beyond the first eight levels requires a single £2.29/$2.99 IAP.)

It turns out what makes a good snowman is three very precisely rolled balls of snow stacked on top of each other. And that's the core of this adorable puzzle game, which has more than a few hints of Towers of Hanoi and Sokoban about it as your little monster goes about building icy friends to hug.

What sets A Good Snowman apart from its many puzzle-game contemporaries on Android is a truly premium nature. You feel that the developer went to great efforts to polish every aspect of the production, from the wonderful animation to puzzles that grow in complexity and deviousness, without you really noticing — until you get stuck on a particularly ferocious one several hours in.

This one's all about the bling - and also the not being crushed to death by falling rocks and dirt. Doug Dug riffs off of Mr Driller, Boulder Dash and Dig Dug, the dwarf protagonist digging deep under the earth on an endless quest for shimmering gems. Cave-ins aren't the only threat, though - the bowels of the earth happen to be home to a surprising array of deadly monsters.

Some can be squashed and smacked with Doug's spade (goodbye, creepy spider!), but others are made of sterner stuff (TROLL! RUN AWAY!). Endlessly replayable and full of character, Doug Dug's also surprisingly relaxing - until the dwarf ends up under 150 tonnes of rubble.

This is one of those 'rub your stomach, pat your head' titles that has you play two games at once. At the top of the screen, it's an endless runner, with your little bloke battling all manner of monsters, and pilfering loot. The rest of the display houses what's essentially a Bejeweled-style gem-swapper. The key is in matching items so that the running bit goes well - like five swords when you want to get all stabby.

Also, there's the building a boat bit. Once a run ends, you return to your watery home, which gradually acquires new rooms and residents. Some merely power up your next sprint, but others help you amass powerful weaponry. Resolutely indie and hugely compelling, You Must Build a Boat will keep you busily swiping for hours.

The term 'masterpiece' is perhaps bandied about too often in gaming circles, but Limbo undoubtedly deserves such high praise. It features a boy picking his way through a creepy monochrome world, looking for his sister. At its core, Limbo is a fairly simple platform game with a smattering of puzzles, but its stark visuals, eerie ambience, and superb level design transforms it into something else entirely.

You'll get a chill the first time a chittering figure sneaks off in the distance, and your heart will pump when being chased by a giant arachnid, intent on spearing your tiny frame with one of its colossal spiked legs. That death is never the end — each scene can be played unlimited times until you progress — only adds to Limbo's disturbing nature.

People who today play mobile classic Canabalt and consider it lacking due to its simplicity don't understand what the game is trying to do. Canabalt is all about speed — the thrill of being barely in control, and of affording the player only the simplest controls for survival. ALONE… takes that basic premise and straps a rocket booster to it.

Instead of leaping between buildings, you're flying through deadly caverns, a single digit nudging your tiny craft up and down. Occasional moments of generosity — warnings about incoming projectiles; your ship surviving minor collisions and slowly regenerating — are offset by the relentlessly demanding pressure of simply staying alive and not slamming into a wall. It's an intoxicating combination, and one that, unlike most games in this genre, matches Canabalt in being genuinely exciting to play.

It's not often you see a game about the "joy of cultivation", and Prune is unlike anything you've ever played before. Apparently evolving from an experimental tree-generation script, the game has you swipe to shape and grow a plant towards sunlight by tactically cutting off specific branches.

That sounds easy, but the trees, shrubs and weeds in Prune don't hang around. When they're growing at speed and you find yourself faced with poisonous red orbs to avoid, or structures that damage fragile branches, you'll be swiping in a frantic race towards sunlight.

And all it takes is one dodgy swipe from a sausage finger to see your carefully managed plant very suddenly find itself being sliced in two.

Of all the attempts to play with the conventions of novels and story-led gaming on mobile, 80 Days is the most fun. It takes place in an 1872 with a decidedly steampunk twist, but where Phileas Fogg remains the same old braggart. As his trusty valet, you must help Fogg make good on a wager to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. This involves managing/trading belongings and carefully selecting routes.

Mostly, though, interaction comes by way of a pacey, frequently exciting branched narrative, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book on fast-forward.

A late-2015 content update added 150,000 words, two new plots and 30 cities to an adventure that already boasted plenty of replay value — not least when you've experienced the joys of underwater trains and colossal mechanical elephants in India, and wonder what other marvels await discovery in this world of wonders.

Lara Croft games have landed on Android to rather variable results. The original Tomb Raider just doesn't work on touchscreens, and although Lara Croft: Relic Run is enjoyable enough, it's essentially a reskinned Temple Run.

Lara Croft GO is far more ambitious and seriously impressive. It rethinks Tomb Raider in much the same way Hitman GO reimagined the Hitman series.

Croft's adventures become turn-based puzzles, set in a world half-way between board game and gorgeous isometric minimalism. It shouldn't really work, but somehow Lara Croft GO feels like a Tomb Raider game, not least because of the wonderful sense of atmosphere, regular moments of tension, and superb level design.

If you've played Laser Dog's previous efforts, PUK and ALONE…, you'll know what you're in for with HoPiKo. This game takes no prisoners. If it did take them, it'd repeatedly punch them in the face before casually discarding them. HoPiKo, then, is not a game to be messed with. Instead, it feels more like a fight. In each of the dozens of hand-crafted tiny levels, you leap from platform to platform via deft drags and taps, attempting to avoid death.

Only, death is everywhere and very easy to meet. The five-stage level sets are designed to be completed in mere seconds, but also to break your brain and trouble your fingers. It's just on the right side of hellishly frustrating, meaning you'll stop short of flinging your device at the wall, emerging from your temporary red rage foolishly determined that you can in fact beat the game on your next go.

Quite possibly one of the best uses of the mobile phone accelerometer tech there's ever been, this, with motion control sending your fishing line down to the depths of the sea while you avoid fish. Then, on the way up, it's how you catch them. That's when it goes ridiculous, as the fisherman chucks them up in the air - and you shoot them to bank the money. Silly, but a must play.

The sort of silly maths game you might've played in your head before mobile phones emerged to absorb all our thought processes, Threes! really does take less than 30 seconds to learn.

You bash numbers about until they form multiples of three and disappear. That's it. There are stacks of free clones available, but if you won't spare the price of one massive bar of chocolate to pay for a lovely little game like this that'll amuse you for week, you're part of the problem and deserve to rot in a freemium hell where it costs 50p to do a wee.

The build 'em up phenomenon works brilliantly well on Android, thanks to the creator of the desktop original taking the time to do it justice.

It's a slimmed down interface you see here with on-screen buttons, but the basics are all in and the Survival and Creative modes are ready for play -- as is multiplayer mode over Wi-Fi.

Since Pac-Man graced arcades in the early 1980s, titles featuring the rotund dot-muncher have typically been split between careful iterations on the original, and mostly duff attempts to shoe-horn the character into other genres. CE DX is ostensibly the former, although the changes made from the original radically transform the game, making it easily the best Pac-Man to date.

Here, the maze is split in two. Eat all the dots from one half and a special object appears on the other; eat that and the original half's dots are refilled in a new configuration.

All the while, dozing ghosts you brush past join a spectral conga that follows your every move. The result is an intoxicating speedrun take on a seminal arcade classic, combined with the even more ancient Snake; somehow, this combination ends up being fresh, exciting and essential.

Telltale has made a name for itself with story-driven episodic games and The Wolf Among Us is one of its best. Essentially a hard boiled fairy tale, you control the big bad wolf as he hunts a murderer through the mean streets of Fabletown.

Don't let the fairy tale setting fool you, this is a violent, mature game and it's one where your decisions have consequences, impacting not only what the other characters think of you but also who lives and who dies. Episode One is free but the remaining four will set you back a steep £9.59 / $14.99 / around AU$18. Trust us though, you'll want to see how this story ends.