There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of games available in the App Store. I’ve played tons of them over the years. Some of those games eventually ended up getting deleted, or moved to the last few pages of my games folder, where they remain for long car or plane rides.
However, there are a few games that have remained on my iPhone or iPad’s Home screen for literally years now. Even long after their launch, I still launch these games regularly, play them, and thoroughly enjoy them.
Hundreds of new games come out every week in the App Store. A select few are the next must-play title that everyone will be talking about for the foreseeable future. Most of them are perfectly decent but may not receive the attention they deserve. And then you have the third group: games so odd, bizarre, and head-scratching that you’re not sure what to make of or do with them.
They aren’t necessarily bad; they’re just confusing and weird. And worst of all, people may never know that they exist. But that’s why we’re here.
Here are some of the strangest games to drop into the App Store this week, and they’re all weirdo versions of other titles. What you do with this information is between you and your iPhone.
Nightmare: Malaria is the story of a little girl with malaria. In her dreams, she is thrust into a horrible nightmare world where she is trying to save her teddy bears from a horrible world infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes and vats of bubbling disease. Your goal is to guide her through the world and hide in screened tents to ward off the infected bugs.
You can download the game for free, but between each level you’ll see a prompt for a microtransaction. This won’t unlock features in the game, and you don’t need to contribute money to win, but the $3 purchase is actually a donation toward providing mosquito nets to people at risk for contracting malaria. You can donate as often as you want, and the whole game is designed to educate players on the dangers of the disease. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Against Malaria Foundation work tirelessly to help eradicate malaria, but your small contribution can provide preventative measures to people who can’t help themselves.
Limbo is one of the best games on Mac. A haunting, monochrome adventure in which you guide the glowing-eyed silhouette of a nameless boy on the “edge of hell” looking for his sister, it’s a classic of game design… and now it’s available on iOS. You can grab it now on the App Store.
Limbo is an atmospheric platform puzzle game which has sold over three million copies across several gaming platforms, including PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Steam, and the Mac App Store.
Developer Playdead announced recently that Limbo will now also be available on the iOS platform for iPad 2 and up, as well as the latest generation iPod touch and iPhone 4S and 5.
It’s been a long time coming, but the award-winning, multi-platform platformer Limbo just hit the Mac App Store for $9.99. The story of a boy searching the afterworld to find his sister, Limbo’s an atmospheric puzzler from Playdead studios, most well known for its challenging gameplay and atmospheric aesthetic, Limbo’s one of the best indie games to have been released on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in recent memory, so it’s delifghtful to finally see it available for Macs. I know what I’m playing this afternoon.
