The best Apple Arcade games you should play right now

This deliciously dark point-and-click adventure game is beautifully made with an incredibly quirky art style and moody music. You have to explore a map, meeting odd characters as you go, and work out how to get the things you need to progress. The local innkeeper wants a cooked fish in exchange for a bottle of booze, for example, but things get an awful lot stranger than that. The animations, sound effects, and voice acting make the testing process — as you try out different objects on different characters — genuinely fun and sometimes hilarious. The controls are simple taps, and objects and characters that join you are denoted by cards and stacked in your inventory at the bottom of the screen; it’s a clever, simple design that works perfectly on an iPhone or iPad. The makers, Amanita Design, were the creative force behind Machinarium and Samorost. Because there are so many possible interactions and 45 achievements to collect, Pilgrims also offers good replay value.

Playing through this M.C. Escher-inspired geometric puzzle world requires you to let go of your preconceptions about shapes and how they fit together. You can shift gravity by tapping near a wall, and each perspective is assigned a different color. There are switches and things to pick up or activate, but working out how to get from point A to point B can be surprisingly tricky. It’s a little unsettling and bewildering at times, because your perspective keeps shifting, opening up new possibilities, but it’s also gentle and devoid of any real threat, so you can experiment and explore at your own pace. Developer William Chyr spent seven years developing this game and it is visually stunning, with engrossing puzzles that demand patience. This is not an experience to rush through, it’s best to take your time, look all around and properly survey your surroundings before picking your path.

If you’re looking for some multiplayer fun, then you’ll find eight fast and frenetic mini-games on offer here that support up to four players. You can choose to create a party and invite friends, or join up with strangers online, to compete for mini-game mastery. The games are all very different, but they’re easy to play on an iPhone with touchscreen controls. There’s a game of pass the dynamite, you can try and sink each other with well-placed cannonballs on the high seas, and you can blast into space to try and rescue an astronaut. Many are based on familiar, popular games with simple mechanics, what they have in common is that they make for comical competition. Super Mega Mini Party is at its most fun when you’re playing together with friends in the same room. It’s family-friendly with a cute, cartoon art style and silly sound effects. Developer, Red Games, has promised to add more mini-games and characters soon.