The List

Essential

  • Bit Pilot: Your basic asteroid dodger, elevated by its retro-funky graphics, wonderfully clever interface, and ultra-precise touch controls. If you like: Asteroids
  • Bumpy Road: A clever twist on the endless genre, with agonizingly cute art and a playful physics-based movement mechanic. If you like: Canabalt
  • Edge: A sleek cube-rolling 3D platformer, with impeccable style, graceful mechanics, and serious depth. If you like: Super Mario 64
  • Eliss: Stunning retro arcade fun that exploits multi-touch like no other. If you like: Tetris

Exceptional

  • Bit.Trip Beat: Pong meets Rock Band meets a laser light show. Pushes paddle-based gaming further than ever thought possible; be sure to use touch controls. If you like: PaRappa the Rapper
  • Boost 2: A tunnel racer with an intense sensation of speed and clean, modern visuals. If you like: Wipeout
  • Canabalt: The beautiful, moody endless runner is a natural fit for iOS. A modern classic. If you like: Bruce Willis movies
  • Carcassonne: Gorgeous port of the classic gateway Eurogame that sets the bar for future board game ports. Features asynchronous play. If you like: Pipe Dream
  • Doodle Jump: Charming endless platformer, one of the first iOS classics and addictive as hell. If you like: TI-83 games
  • Drop7: Inventive number-based puzzler that will make you feel dumb, then smart, then hopelessly addicted. If you like: Sudoku
  • Dungeon Raid: A gem-matching game turbocharged by touch, with a set of RPG tropes that sink their teeth in deep. If you like: Bejeweled
  • English Country Tune: A puzzle game that explores the concept of pushing things around to an obsessive extreme, with fluid controls and a no-nonsense presentation. If you like: Marble Madness
  • Forget-Me-Not: The mechanics of Pac-man with the format of a hack-n-slash. Bizarre and addictive. If you like: Robotron
  • Fractal: A beautifully made tile-based puzzle game, with a complex core mechanic that takes patience to master and will have you seeing hexagons when you close your eyes. If you like: Go
  • Gravity Hook HD: Hook-based climbing game, with rigorous physics that makes the timing-based gameplay feel tactile. If you like: Doodle Jump
  • Halcyon: A mutli-touch take on color matching that feels more like playing a virtual guitar than a videogame. The later stages will test your limits. If you like: Minority Report
  • Hook Worlds: Four polished takes on infinite, fast-paced hook swinging that range from breezy to unforgiving. If you like: Bionic Commando
  • The Last Rocket: A retro platformer that truly embraces touch. Great level design, and superb production values. If you like: Super Mario
  • Mega Mall Story: The most intuitive of Kairosoft’s cute, capitalistic sim series. If you like: The Sims
  • Milpa: A strange but engaging agricultural puzzler with a one-of-a-kind gem-swapping mechanic. If you like: Rubik’s Cubes
  • Orbital: A polished ball-bouncing game, with turn-based one-touch gameplay that’s perfect for mobile. If you like: Bust-a-Move
  • Osmos: Absorbing, spacey physics puzzler with robust variety and clever design. If you like: World of Goo
  • Space Invaders: Infinity Gene: Traditional top-down shooter with a sweet techno-future style and smart shoot-faster-while-holding-still mechanic. If you like: Gradius
  • SpellTower: Combines Boggle’s word finding with a classic rising-blocks puzzler; the best word game on iOS to date. If you like: Crossword puzzles
  • Tilt to Live: Turns the arena-shooter genre on its head by emphasizing avoiding instead of attacking enemies, which is a joy thanks to effortless tilt controls. If you like: Geometry Wars
  • Trainyard: Ingenious track-laying puzzler that manages to be wonderfully challenging yet quite flexible in how you can approach problems. If you like: The Incredible Machine
  • UFO on Tape: Inspired and unconventional; use your device like a camcorder to capture a passing UFO. Wonderful UI. If you like: Photography
  • World of Goo: What needs to be said? One of the best physics puzzlers of all time, perfectly suited to touch. If you like: Lego

Enjoyable

  • Bloktonic: A well made matching puzzler where gems fall from four sides of the screen and stack up in the middle. If you like: Sega Swirl
  • Colorbind: A beautiful, brain-teasing spatial puzzler with gameplay centered on overlapping ribbons. If you like: Tying knots
  • Critter Crunch: Capy’s imaginative, darkly adorable take on match-three puzzlers; a prelude to their great Clash of Heroes. If you like: Meteos
  • Cross Fingers: Block-sliding puzzler that uses up to eight fingers on the screen at once. If you like: Jenga
  • Current: Like Bust-a-Move, with a cyber style twist, and objects that reproduce in unusual patterns. If you like: Marbles
  • Flick Kick Football: Stands out amongst the crowded finger-soccer crowd with clean graphics, varied game types, and deft controls. If you like: Fruit Ninja
  • geoSpark: A frantic, wholly touch-native color matching game with sharp neon graphics. If you like: Eliss
  • Groove Coaster: The best pure music game to date on iOS, with great Japanese music, beat-based gameplay that goes beyond tapping, and, since it’s from the developer of Infinity Gene, an awesome art style. If you like: Gitaroo Man? No? Fine, Rock Band.
  • The Incident: A platformer centered around dodging objects falling from the sky; worth playing just for the prodigious and awesome pixel art. If you like: The SNES
  • Infinity Blade: More than just a pretty face, Epic’s medieval slasher also boasts a complex gesture-based combat system. If you like: Game of Thrones
  • Kometen: So relaxing it’s barely a game; a gorgeous, peaceful journey through the galaxy. If you like: flOw
  • Kosmo Spin: A simple, adorable game where you run around a tiny world, grab turnips, and fight an alien, from the makers of Bumpy Road. If you like: Super Mario Bros. 2
  • LandFormer: Raise and lower the landscape to match elevations in this charming terrain puzzler. If you like: Sim City
  • Minim: A cool looking and surprisingly accessible math-based puzzler that plays a bit like an exploded Drop 7. If you like: The Count from Sesame Street
  • Monospace: A slick, perspective-shifting, cube-sliding puzzler, with a clean modernist look. If you like: Portal.
  • Moxie 2: A classic word game streamlined by smart design that feels old-fashioned in all the right ways. If you like: The Jumble
  • Newtonica: An odd-looking game that turns out to be quite simple: rotate a sphere so that falling stars land on like-colored quadrants. If you like: Trackball games
  • Poto & Cabenga: One touch controls two characters in this fast-paced, fabulous looking, brain twisting Canabalt-style runner. If you like: Adventure Time
  • Realistic Summer Sports Simulator: A witty, charming, polished, and totally hilarious retro sports game with a ridiculously fun core mechanic. If you like: NES Track & Field
  • Robo Surf: A cute and well constructed take on the tap-to-hover genre, with impressive boss fights. If you like: Balloon Fight
  • Shibuya: A unique, touch-centric puzzler centered on a single column of falling slabs. Equal parts manic and strategic. If you like: Lumines
  • Solipskier: A wildly original skiing game that works great with touch; boasts eccentric, excellent art; and requires super fast reflexes. If you like: Battle Toads
  • Steam Birds: Survival: A top-down, turn-based, WWII-era dog fighter that throws your tiny squadron against increasingly impossible odds. If you like: Baldur’s Gate
  • Tetris: Despite EA’s bullshit, its one-touch mode makes using the touchscreen feel natural and uncompromised. If you like: Tetris
  • Ticket to Ride: The classic train-based board game gets a solid iOS rendition. If you like: Settlers of Catan
  • Tiny Wings: A cute, addictive one-button game, which sadly ripped off its fantastic gravity-boosting mechanic from Nathan McCoy’s Wavespark. If you like: Excite Bike
  • Tractor Beam: An unusual take on hook-swinging, with Asteroid-style vector graphics and twitchy, tight controls. If you like: Burnout
  • Tumble Drop: A cheerful, hilariously animated entry in the remove-blocks-so-an-object-falls-safely-to-the-ground genre. If you like: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge
  • Unify: Blocks fall from both sides of the screen in a hectic, combo-heavy twist on matching puzzlers from Bit Pilot’s Zach Gage. If you like: Tetris Attack
  • Vectorball: The classic Pong-in-3D flash game Curveball gets a Tron-styled iOS version. If you like: Ping Pong