12 Best Games to Play on the iPhone

You've got yourself an iPhone and you want to play some games on it. You might not want to just plunge into the App Store—it's a jungle, full of deadly spiders, wild animals, and bad games. Here, let us help you. Below, we've listed the 12 games we feel are a great starting point for iPhone gaming.

Here’s something unexpected: Rovio created something fun out of Star Wars’ prequel trilogy. The sequel to Angry Birds Star Wars improves on that game’s design ideas, with branching levels and character packs that let you swap out to try different strategies. And there are collectible toys now, too. Thankfully, you don’t need to buy tiny plastic toys to play this sharp sequel.

Do you know Doodle Jump? Knightmare Tower is a little bit like that, what with the constant jumping and trying to get higher. You can even tilt your tablet to help yourself along, rocking right to move to the right, and left to move to the left. But this game is different and, dare we say, better. You're a knight. You're trying to ascend a tower. You are trying to fly ever higher by bouncing yourself off of enemies that are flying up from below. The better you attack, the swifter you fly. The ascent is exhilarating, but you'll probably eventually fail. No bother. You're constantly earning new and better abilities that allow you to soar ever higher. Warning: this is a tough game to stop playing.

AreaCode's numerical puzzle game may be the most perfect short-session game ever created. As falling numbers land on a 7×7 grid, you need to make them disappear by matching the number of vertical or horizontal spaces match the digit. Yes, it sounds tedious but when the rules finally click in your head, it's a lifetime addiction.

You could call Device 6 a text adventure, but that would be selling the game short. What it is, rather, is one of the strangest, most mysterious and downright elegant games made for touchscreen devices… and it just happens to involve a lot of reading. Call it multimedia-enhanced interactive fiction. As you rotate and flip your device, chasing the winding map of description and design, you'll find yourself drawn into a strange and sinister adventure complete with one of the catchiest pop tunes ever included in a game.

By boat, by land, by airship, by giant mechanized city with legs, do you have what it takes to make it… Around the World in 80 Days? That's the question at the heart of 80 Days, a fantastical re-imagining of Jules Verne's famous novel that casts you as Passepartout, manservant to the gentleman Phileas Fogg. As a valet, you are responsible for packing the bags, negotiating at markets, and planning the itinerary on your journey 'round the globe. Each trip will be different from the one before it, and thanks to the game's peppy writing and frequent surprise detours, each trip will be great deal of fun. 80 Days captures the joy and melancholy of travel with unusual wit and humanity.

Threes is basically a game about kissing. And math. You slide a bunch of little numbers around a tiled pad, trying to get two like numbers next to each other. If you can do that, they'll get friendly and combine to form a new, bigger number. Keep on moving, keep on combining, and your score will climb and climb. Threes is an immaculately designed game made all the more winning for its aesthetics. Charming, musical, and deviously addictive, it'll become your new iPhone obsession.

In Hoplite, you play a man in armor who has a blade, a spear and a very specific chess-like move-set. Each enemy has their own movement and attack rules. And each board of the game is ultimately a maze of survival, one hope, spear, stab or shove at a time. Bit by bit, you can make your guy tougher. Until you die. Then start again.

Our old favorite on iOS for this kind of game was 868-HACK, but we're now smitten with Hoplite. It's so simple, so pure, so damn hard by level 16, but also turns out to allow so many different approaches that it's hard to stop playing. Become a master at distanced spear-based attacking next time. Or upgrade your bashing ability and just push guys off the grid. Options, options, so many to tease your brain!

The closest mobile gaming comes to Criterion Games' Burnout series, Asphalt 8: Airborne is the premiere arcade racer on iOS. Simulation nuts can keep puttering around with their Real Racing 3 — this is a game about using speed as a weapon. The cars are as sexy speeding down the road as they are leaping majestically through the air into a pylon, and Gameloft keeps adding more of them every time we turn around.

You're in a cold, dark room. First, you get a fire going. Then, you head out in search of wood. After that… well, things develop. To say more would be to spoil what makes A Dark Room special, but suffice it to say: This game grows far beyond its humble origins, and the journey from here to there is an engrossing one.

You wouldn't think that a game that stitches together fishing and firearms would be a sublime mobile experience. Well, maybe you would think that... but anyway, if you think that you're right, so good for you. Everything about Ridiculous Fishing: A Tale of Redemption is both as ridiculous and as great as the title suggests. You'll be playing, fishing, and shooting for many hours to come.

Super Hexagon is a game that will kill you in seconds. A pattern of geometric shapes flow towards the center of the screen to the beat of the music, and your task is to dodge them. You won't. You'll die. If you get really good, you'll die in minutes. And you'll love every one.

Framed tells a comic-book tale of espionage, intrigue, and death-defying escapes, with a twist: You, the player, can re-arrange the frames of the story to change the outcome of a given page. That usually means figuring out the best way to set things so that the protagonist sneaks past their pursuers undetected, but it can mean a lot of other things, as well. FramedHow to Add Album Artwork to iPhone Songs on Mac Without iTunes is a great deal of fun, with style to spare.

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