Dread Nautical is a turn-based survival horror game set on a cruise ship. “Dread” and “nautical”: it’s clever.

In all fairness, the “horror” is very light and cartoony, perfectly fine for older children. The turn-based touch controls work well: outside of combat, you still move on a grid in a 3D isometric perspective, but there aren’t any actual “turns”. Those are reserved for the fighting-and-sneaking, which is simple and engaging. I like that the camera is fully controllable; you can rotate and zoom.

I haven’t gotten very far in the game, but there seems to be a bigger mystery to solve, as my character has already been through a few Groundhog Day cycles before the game begins, though she can’t remember it. There may be some time-shenanigans at play here. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. It’s an intriguing start, at least.

I’m not a massive fan of the art direction, but it’s chunky, colourful and very readable. The writing is broad and the characters are walking cliches (so far), but if you accept the tone, this is a pretty good game that stands out and offers something different. It wasn’t what I expected — in a good way.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/dread-nautical/id1457539614

It’s baseball. Like cricket, but comprehensible.

If you’re into baseball (I’m really not) this ticks the boxes, I guess. You’re either pitching or…batting. You tap the screen at the right time to pitch or swing the bat. You can pick the, uh, the type of pitch you want to…pitch, from a grid of nine…boxes? Which signify something.

Look, I’m struggling here, because: a) not American, b) not into sports in general, c) not into baseball specifically. I don’t think I’ve ever watched an entire baseball match, though I have watched all the good movies about baseball, except Field of Dreams. There are more good movies about baseball than any other ball-sport.

I don’t want to be flippant about it, because someone made this game, and put time and effort into it. It looks good. I played it for a while and didn’t hate it. There’s no running or extensive strategy elements, unless I missed all that, which is a distinct possibility. Ballistic Baseball is all about timing and hitting and throwing, and if you’re a baseball person, this might be a decent pastime. I honestly don’t know. I probably won’t return to it, but I’m also not the target audience.

So: if you’re a sports person and you like the base-balls, give this a shot. Games are hard to make, and every game deserves a fair shot.

(And at least the screenshot proves that I didn’t totally suck at this one. Perfect timing, ma!)

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/ballistic-baseball/id1453534391

Bland name aside, this is a decent turn-based tactical action game. You investigate a military facility on an icy planet somewhere in space (hence, I guess, Spaceland) and shoot mutants. Or maybe they’re aliens? Your team grows over time, as you explore the generic sci-fi locations. The story is vague, the writing is barebones, but the action is reasonably satisfying.

I’m not a big fan of turn-based games, so I can’t speak to the longevity or depth of this game, but the developers seem to play up the “old school” aspects, so don’t expect anything close to modern-day XCOM…or even classic XCOM. But the isometric art looks good, the animations and effects are solid, and the touch controls work well. At the very least, it’ll keep you occupied for an hour or two, and if turn-based games is your thing, you might keep playing.

“Spaceland”, though? I mean, really?

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/spaceland/id1450972094

Basically a prettified Flappy Bird, Fledgling Heroes is surprisingly unforgiving. You start by playing a parrot (referred to as “son” by, I assume, his parrot father) and you tap the screen to flap your bird-wings. Also, you can bounce on the ground and on chests. And on enemies, like a feathered Mario. And you collect coins, lots and lots of coins, because I guess parrots and pirates, right? What is it with all these cartoon animals and gold coins? Turtles, parrots, plumbers — they’re all after those sweet, sweet doubloons. Not that Marino’s a cartoon animal. He’s a cartoon Italian.

The parrot is soon replaced by a very cute baby penguin who swims underwater. Later, you play a toucan. The scenery changes but the music never does, or at least it feels like it never does. It’s very upbeat.

Despite all the graphics and the bouncing and the baby penguin, Fledgling Heroes is not as satisfying as Flappy Bird. I’m not sure who this game is for: it feels too hard for younger children, and too shallow for older children and adults. Maybe it gets better — I didn’t have the patience to keep going past the first handful of levels. This one feels like a product; one that quickly fades in comparison with Arcade’s better, and more personal, games.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/fledgling-heroes/id1273891738

I’ve given Painty Mob a couple of tries now and I…don’t understand what’s going on? It’s like every time I open Snapchat: there are things happening in the GUI and explosions of colour and blobby creatures are homing in on me (this is where that Snapchat analogy falls through) and I honestly don’t know what to do. If there was a tutorial, I missed it, and now I’m lost.

You play a colourful blob and there are other colourful blobs and you’re supposed to paint things? There’s virtual joystick on one side of the screen and a button on the other, and that’s it. It’s frantic and vibrant and I don’t get it.

Passing judgement on this game from that perspective is probably unfair, but that’s the nature of this experiment: I’m giving each game a chance to grab me, and if it doesn’t, I have to put it aside or I’ll never be able to review a HUNDRED PLUS games in sixteen weeks.

I’ll just say this: Painty Mob, like Snapchat, is a young man’s game. I’m no longer that man.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/painty-mob/id1066383224

I was hoping for a bit of old school Marble Madness with this one, but no such luck. For a game that’s all about the sense of control (or lack thereof, in a thrilling way), momentum, speed and physics, the controls are surprisingly poor. I tried this on three devices: phone, tablet and TV plus controller. And it never felt like I was actually rolling a marble around…which sort of defeats the point. It’s cliche to call controls “floaty”, but they are. There’s no inertia, no sense of gravity or mass. And no matter what else the game does, if it can’t nail that, it’s a lost opportunity.

Maybe I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses and Marble Madness had the same problems. But man, I loved that game. This is no Marble Madness.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/marble-it-up-mayhem/id1473839579

Assemble with Care is a quietly beautiful game from ustwo, the developers of Monument Valley; another uniquely soulful and gorgeous puzzle game. Assemble is easier and shorter than their previous title, but that doesn’t mean it’s the lesser game. It’s not about the challenge, or lack of it; it’s about the story and the emotions.

Assemble has already received plenty of positive coverage, and was one of the launch titles that got the most coverage, so all I’ll say is this: if you have Apple Arcade, you’ve probably taken it for a spin. If you haven’t, you must. It’s a relatively brief but emotionally satisfying experience, and it looks and sounds fantastic.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/assemble-with-care/id1450498694

This arcade hockey game is basically unplayable with touch controls and I found it to be an incredibly frustrating experience overall. The action is so quick that you can’t take your eyes off the ball (or, you know, puck), but that means you’ll have a hard time hitting the tiny on-screen buttons. It’s marginally better on the iPad, but not by much.

On the Apple TV, with an Xbox controller, it sort of works. But the controls are not intuitive, and it’s not easy to understand what’s going on, where the puck is, who’s doing what. The game’s too busy being EXTREME.

I will admit that I’m not really in the target demographic for this game, although I do enjoy the occasional arcade sports game: I was a huge fan of the seminal EA NHL series on Sega Genesis/MegaDrive (back when they still had the brawling). But The Rink is a poor cousin to NHL. It’s flashy and loud, which gets in the way of actually playing the game, and the touch controls are simply not functional. I also experienced choppiness on the Apple TV 4K, but that seems par for the course with Arcade games: the device is just not able to keep up with the action.

Anyway, this is a “miss” for me.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/ultimate-rivals-the-rink/id1460840148

I really like No Way Home, and I plan to keep playing it.

You float around in your spacecraft, accompanied by a personable drone, exploring, shooting, and doing missions for a variety of alien NPCs (with voices straight out of Star Wars). It’s basically a rogue-lite married with twin-stick shooter controls, although the developers brand it a survival game. Despite the 2D art (which is quite beautiful), there’s a real sense of three-dimensionality and scope to the world. Exploring its procedural spaces was thrilling, and gave me a real sense of discovery and adventure — especially when I came upon one of the giant alien artefacts.

So far, I’ve played No Way Home on the phone, the tablet and on the Apple TV. The phone’s a bit cramped, and not my favourite device for this game. While the gamepad makes flying around, shooting and grabbing things much easier on the TV, menu interactions are more fiddly; the controller design could have used some more thought and development time, and that’s a real shame. There are also some frame-rate issues on the 4K TV, a common theme with Arcade games. The touch controls are pretty good, even though I struggled a bit with the grabbing mechanic, so I think I’ll keep playing on the iPad, where the colourful art has room to breathe.

A couple of niggles: when playing on the phone, I kept accidentally skipping dialogue and story sequences (including the intro movie, which I was never able to replay…even after starting a new game). This is unfortunate, since the dialogue is funny and well-written. The voice acting is also top notch. Another issue is the overheating guns. The only way to keep track of the temperature is to watch the narrow gauge in the top left corner, which distracts from the action (and the trying-to-stay-alive bit). There should perhaps be an aural and visual warning on the ship itself when your guns are getting hot.

Minor niggles aside, this is a top-notch Arcade game, one of the best on the service. A must-download, regardless of which device you own.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/no-way-home/id1455060401

Back in the early days of the iPad, there was one game that got a lot of playtime on my tablet — mostly from my daughter, although I put in a few hours myself: Robot Unicorn Attack. There was something weirdly charming about that game, particularly the endlessly looping “Always”, by Erasure.

EarthNight reminded me a bit of Robot Unicorn Attack, even though it’s not an endless runner. I’m not sure exactly what it is. A transient runner? A 2D auto-run platformer? An occasional faller? You play a little girl (or old man!) who jumps into space and lands on dragons. You run along the top of the dragon, jumping to avoid (or bash) monsters and collecting treasure. Then you kill the dragon by absorbing (?) its essence (??), and jump back into space to find another dragon.

If there’s more to it, I never saw it.

There’s nothing wrong with EarthNight. It’s got a distinct, painterly style, 8-bitty music, and everything works well. I got bored quite quickly, but maybe, like my three-year old daughter with Robot Unicorn Attack, your child will stay glued to the screen for hours.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/earthnight/id1470618122

I enjoyed playing Spek. It’ s a perspective-based, 3D puzzle game with a very minimalistic aesthetic. A dot moves along outlines in different dimensions, and you rotate the camera to manipulate 3D space. Yeah, I know: you really have to play it to get it. And some just won’t get it. The game requires a fair bit of spatial perception. Think Escher, with only the outlines.

As with a lot of puzzlers, when the going got tough, I jumped ship. But I enjoyed the voyage until then. Spek. is a well-made game with a unique style and solid mechanics. (And yes: the full stop is in the name.)

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/spek/id1378064826

I realise I use the word “cute” a lot in these reviews, and there is an abundance of cuteness in the Apple Arcade library. (Either that, or I need to expand my vocabulary.) Rosie’s Reality is…cute? It’s got charm. A “family puzzle adventure”, Rosie gently teaches simple logic problems requiring the use of different blocks: move, rotate, jump. And — that’s it. At least in the first thirty minutes of playing. I don’t feel a great need to revisit this game, but this is the sort of game most parents would want their children to play. So if you’re a mum or dad with a preteen child, take an afternoon to play this together. It’s cu— It’s charming!

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/rosies-reality/id1471644202

I’m…not totally sure what I just played. UFO on Tape is almost dreamlike; an odd experience quite unlike anything I’ve played before. The idea is sound: you look through the lens of a camera and take pictures of UFOs and other extraterrestrial phenomena. Or, at least you try. You get paid for each successful photo. There are different scenarios: you’re in a car, onboard a plane, and…okay, that’s as far as I got.

Look, this game is hard. Or maybe just hard to play. You’re supposed to take a dozen photos of different events within a time limit, but I found it difficult to understand where to look, what to photograph, how much time I had at my disposal, and after retrying the first level around ten times, and the second level another dozen, I gave up. You get clues about what you’re supposed to shoot/film/observe, but it all feels a bit…random. The game also lacks polish, with a rudimentary front end and absolutely no tutorial.

I love the idea, however, and with a bigger budget and longer development time, this could have been something interesting. As it stands, it’s certainly different. But not, unfortunately, in a good way.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/ufo-on-tape-first-contact/id358336313

A pleasantly bucolic village management game, I found Outlanders mostly relaxing and enjoyable and, yes, pleasant. The pastel art is appealing, the audio and music are unobtrusive, and the user interface — albeit quite small — is perfectly usable on the iPhone, though better suited to tablet and desktop. I’ve only played a few missions, but the challenges seem well balanced. Variety and longevity is a different question, and I haven’t played it long enough to answer that, but if you’re not looking for a game that will consume dozens of hours of your time, and town management games are your jam, this is perfectly pleasant jam.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/outlanders/id1463407936

ChuChu was one of the first batch of Arcade games I played when the service launched, and it remains one of the best and most polished puzzle games available. The art is bright and readable, the controls and GUI are well suited to the small screen, and the music is…well, volume-adjustable.

ChuChu is a well-established franchise (I faintly remember playing the first one on Dreamcast) and it’s handled the transition to mobile well. This one’s worth your time. Whether you’ll stick with it depends on how much you love your arcade puzzlers.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/chuchu-rocket-universe/id1456378295

An auto-walk-platformer (is this a thing now?) that unfortunately has to compete with the much better Apple Arcade auto-run-platformer Rayman.

The eponymous turtle keeps walking, you can change direction and jump, across a rather derivative series of levels littered with enemies and traps. Also, you collect coins. Of course. Turtles need cash to buy turtle things, I guess?

I know I sound dismissive, and that’s probably because this is a game for five-year olds, and not jaded old men like me. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with games that target a younger demographic, although it’s possible to make games for children that can also be appreciated by adults.

Way of the Turtle, then: passable entertainment, but don’t expect anything special.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/way-of-the-turtle/id1472186054

I didn’t like this riff on Q*bert and Frogger very much. It’s cute but derivative. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen on mobile before, or haven’t played in a dozen other games. Hop from tile to tile on an isometric island to capture dodo-eggs (and, for some reason, coins) that hatch into dodo-babies that follow you around, and…avoid traps and enemies. That’s, as far as I can tell, it. But I didn’t play for long; perhaps I’m doing the game a disservice, but while it may be a distracting pastime for five-year olds, it wasn’t for me.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/dodo-peak/id1469104098

This is a fun little game, an “action puzzler” perfectly suited to mobile. (It’s even portrait-oriented, as all good iPhone games should be. It is not, however, particularly playable one-handed.)

There’s not much to it: you flip a hexagon through an obstacle course, moving diagonally forward by tapping on the left or right sides of the screen. But the simplicity is what makes it fun: it’s quick, it’s forgiving, it’s easy to just have “one more go”. It’s a perfect little mobile puzzler. It’s not flashy and it can get lost among all the other games on the service, but I recommend giving it a shot.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/hexaflip-the-action-puzzler/id1472301587

I’ve never played Enter the Gungeon, so I don’t know how this sequel (side-quel? spin-off?) compares.

I usually find it hard to play action games on a touch-screen, but Devolver has done as well as can be expected with the controls, and they are pretty good. Good enough to not get in the way, although it takes a bit of time to learn everything. And this game is hard.

I’m not the best person to review Enter the Gungeon, but we’re a staff of one, and you get what you get. 2D bullet hell, um, “dungeon climbers” are usually not my jam. People loved Enter the Gungeon, however, and I expect this is more of the same — you’ll probably know best yourself if this is your jam. And if it is, this is tasty jam.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/exit-the-gungeon/id1445379179

One of the first batch of Arcade games, and, at launch, one of the highest profile games on the service, this is also available on other platforms, including Steam.

It looks great. The minimalistic art style is well-suited to any sized device, though the UI is very small on even the biggest iPhone. (This is a common problem with many Arcade games; playing on the iPad or Apple TV helps.)

I love that Overland is a road trip across a post-apocalyptic America — that’s right in my wheelhouse. There are not enough road trip games. Especially road trip games set in the quintessential road trip country.

Overland wasn’t for me, however. I’m not good with turn-based strategy games. I do better in real-time. It’s hard for me to say if this is a good one or not. It feels a bit monotonous, although I haven’t put in the hours…and I probably won’t.

If the genre and setting appeal to you, however, you won’t go wrong downloading this and taking it for a spin. Again, Apple Arcade excels at variety and there’s something for everyone. Overland is certainly for someone…even if that someone isn’t me.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/overland/id1467651942