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5 Fun iPhone Games — No Ads or In-App Purchases
Jul 26, 2023
Article on Cult of Mac: https://www.cultofmac.com/821898/fun-iphone-games/ Zookeeper DX: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zookeeper-dx/id433596395 What the Golf?: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/what-the-golf/id1415190483 Asphalt 8 Airborne: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/asphalt-8-airborne/id1563005359 Sleep Patrol Alpha: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sleep-patrol-alpha/id1547088529 Space Crab 2: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/space-crab-2/id1479929285 Space Crab 2 shirts: https://thefoxandpossum.com/products/space-crab-2-t-shirt Arial Attack: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/arial-attack/id891354768 More Apple news: http://www.cultofmac.com Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:25 Zookeeper DX 1:40 What the Golf? 2:28 Asphalt 8 Airborne 3:51 Sleep Patrol Alpha & Space Crab 2 4:55 Arial Attack 5:42 Warren Buffett’s Paper Wizard
View Video Transcript
0:00
Got any games on your phone
0:07
Games are a huge part of the iPhone, but so many games on the App Store are designed simply as
0:12
vessels for sucking out your money through an app purchases, and it can be hard to find the good
0:16
ones. Well, today I have five games for the iPhone that won't spam, scam, or screw you out of your
0:22
money. They're just good-hearted games. Number one, Zookeeper DX. This is a simple lineup three in a
0:29
sort of arcade game. You swap two tiles to get three and then they disappear from the field
0:34
This is a well-trodden genre with other games like Bejeweled, Kirby's Avalanche, Dr. Mario
0:40
but this is, in my opinion, the cream of the crop. The graphics, the music, the sound design is all
0:45
just wonderful. It's so natural on the iPhone, you would never think that it's a much older game
0:50
I have a few pro tips. I always look for matches on the bottom part of the board and then I work
0:54
my way up so that I don't run out of moves. You can keep swiping on the tiles while other parts
1:00
of the board are still shifting around. And there's a special tile. If you tap on it, it'll
1:05
instantly clear all of one kind of animal from the board. Supposedly, if you line up three special
1:11
tiles in a row, you instantly get a million points. I've never had this happen, even though I've been
1:18
specifically trying to set up the situation for months now. I'll madly post about it on social
1:24
media if I can never get it to work. And my high score to beat in Tokaton mode is 562,000
1:30
This game also works if you have an Apple Silicon Mac. You can play with a mouse or trackpad
1:34
If you hate yourself there no in purchases there no ads it just 99 cents Number two What the Golf What the Golf is a golfing simulator for people who hate golf It very quickly devolves into total nonsense where you golfing with furniture and cars
1:53
Every level is sort of themed a little differently. Every level can have completely different game
1:58
mechanics. Some of the levels are designed as parodies of other games like Portal or Superhot
2:04
every new part of the game is guaranteed to surprise you or make you laugh. And even if you're
2:10
not super into video games, it does a really good job of guiding you through the unique mechanics of
2:14
each part. My pro tip is to make liberal use of the slow motion as you hold your finger down on
2:20
the screen. What the Golf is available with a subscription to Apple Arcade. It's available on
2:24
all your Apple devices, but it's best on iPhone and iPad. Number three is a racing game, Asphalt 8
2:30
airborne. It features a bunch of real cars and locations, but the physics behind a lot of the
2:37
flips and tricks and crashes and nitro are complete nonsense, so it doesn't take itself super seriously
2:45
Now you can play it on a Mac, that's how I like to play it, but the controls are simple enough that
2:49
you can easily play it on an iPhone. You tilt to steer, you automatically accelerate so you don't
2:54
have to hold your thumb down the whole time, you use your thumb to start drifting, but it's an
2:59
incredibly fun and rewarding game. I like to play it as visual stimulation while I'm listening to
3:04
podcasts or music. Here are my pro tips, which are actually just basic features of the game that I
3:09
didn't realize until way too late. You get three out of five stars for completing a race in first
3:14
place. You get the additional two for completing the race-specific challenges that appear very
3:19
briefly on screen before you start a race You can do a horizontal flip if you drifting as you go off a ramp and knocking down other cars isn just really cool it also gives you a nitro boost My actual pro tip is to save up and buy the Donkervoort D8
3:35
and the Ferrari F40 as soon as you can. They're the best balance of speed and power and affordability
3:41
to get you through the early levels. Asphalt 8 Airborne is available on Apple Arcade. That's the
3:45
version I recommend since it doesn't have any in-app purchases, but there is a free version
3:49
available on the App Store as well. Number four, Sleep Patrol Alpha and SpaceCrab 2. These are
3:55
clearly the passion project of like one or two people thrown together in a couple of weeks. I
4:02
love them because they look and play like Flash web games from 2006. So they're not like objectively
4:11
good. So Sleep Patrol Alpha is a game where you play as a sheep inside a dream
4:18
running through this platformer level and you have to collect a whole herd of
4:22
sheep as you jump over fences and you're all counted. If you get enough sheep and
4:28
enough counts something weird happens. I'm not gonna spoil it. Space Crab 2 is a
4:34
game where you play as a tiny little crab scuttling left and right. You have to
4:38
avoid asteroids and satellites, and pick up coins so that you can buy more crabs, and you can play on
4:45
more different planets. I don't know what happened to Space Crab 1. Both of these games are completely
4:50
free on the App Store, and you can order real-life merch. Number five, Aerial Attack. This is a game
4:58
for really old-school Mac guys who are still mad at Microsoft for refusing to license Helvetica
5:04
and instead littering the world with their cheap imitation knockoff Ariel In Ariel Attack words fall from the screen and you have to tap to destroy Ariel and leave Helvetica If you not intimately familiar with the differences every time you
5:19
start a new game, it'll show you a new little clue. My pro tip is to take a screenshot of both samples
5:25
at the end of the tutorial. Go to your photos library and then you can swipe between them using
5:31
the little thumbnail picker at the bottom so there's no swipe animation. You can see the two
5:35
directly. Unsurprisingly, Aerial Attack is also completely free on the App Store
5:42
But there's one more thing. Now, Apple doesn't publish a lot of games themselves
5:47
They made one in 1984 for the original Macintosh called Through the Looking Glass
5:51
and they made one to celebrate the launch of the App Store in 2008 called Texas Hold'em
5:56
But in 2019, they published a game specifically for Warren Buffett called Warren Buffett's
6:04
Paper Wizard. It's kind of like Angry Birds where you pull in release to throw newspapers and deliver
6:10
them in Omaha, Nebraska and Cupertino, California. It's a really short game and none of that matters
6:17
because it's just incredibly bizarre that if you're a rich enough investor in Apple
6:22
Tim Cook will commission a small team of interns to make a game about you. Now Warren Buffett's
6:28
Paper Wizard is sadly no longer listed on the App Store, but if you have the purchase on your Apple
6:33
ID from when it was available, you can download it again for the time being. Again, you're not
6:37
missing much. It's literally impossible to beat Warren Buffett's high score. It's just really
6:43
weird that this happened. And on that note, you can find an article version of this in the video
6:47
description. I'm dGryphon Jones with Cult of Mac
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