8 great Apple Arcade games for your iPhone or iPad

theverge.com:

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

Apple Arcade remains one of the best deals in gaming — even after getting a price bump. Since launch, the service has steadily grown with a mix of original mobile releases and App Store classics, none of which are burdened with the ads or in-app purchases that so often plague smartphone games. 2023 was a particularly strong year for new additions, with everything from daily word games for the Wordle-obsessed to cozy adventures to relax with. If you just picked up a new Apple device, or are using the subscription service for the very first time, here are some great places to start.

Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger have partnered on a number of great mobile puzzle games — including Good Sudoku and SpellTower, both of which are also available on Apple Arcade — but Knotwords might be my favorite. It combines the structure of a classic crossword puzzle with the guessing inherent in Wordle. You’re presented with a grid that looks like a crossword, but instead of clues, you’re given letters that can only be placed in certain squares. From there, you have to work out the words that fill up the puzzle. Knotwords has a huge number of puzzles, including daily ones that are a perfect companion to your morning coffee.

There was really nothing like Downwell when it first debuted in 2015, and all these years later not much has changed as the game hits Apple Arcade. It’s sort of a platformer, but one that asks you to move down instead of forward. You play as an unlucky pixel art character who is perpetually falling down a well full of platforms and enemies, aided