Want to go on an adventure? Dive into these Apple Arcade titles!
Adventure games are a staple in the gaming world because they allow us to escape our mortal world and be transported to a different world or even different time. Classic point-and-click adventures are some of the oldest games around, and more modern adventure games often incorporate other elements into the adventure genre given gameplay a refreshing twist.
If you're looking to dive into an exciting story and get caught up in an adventure, here are the best adventure games on Apple Arcade that you should add to your collection. To enhance the experience, be sure to check out our best Apple Arcade controllers to really take your game to the next level!
Game on!
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The Oregon Trail
While many of us, myself included, remember the joy and frustration of trekking the Oregon Trail during computer lab in elementary school, now you can relive the hardships of the trail on your phone. For those unfamiliar with The Oregon Trail, this game is set in 1848, and you lead a party of four settlers in a covered wagon from Missouri to Oregon. First released in 1971 using minimal graphics, the game's core mechanics remain the same with updated graphics and an attempt at a more culturally respectful look at history, specifically that of the indigenous people who lived in that part of the country.
The Oregon Trail is a challenging game where you must balance your party's needs with the very real hardships that ended so many lives during that time. While good resource management is necessary to win, it also requires a fair bit of luck. From dysentery to snake bites, bear attacks, to bandits, you will likely have lost many, many characters, wagons, and oxen by the time you make it to Oregon. However, that's part of what makes it so rewarding when you finally do succeed and get at least one of your settlers across the trail.
Having played and beaten the original as a child more times than I can recall, I was surprised at just how difficult it was to get even part of my party to the finish line — as well as how few of my parties died of dysentery, despite the seemingly constant infections.
Wonderbox: The Adventure Maker
More than just action-adventure game, Wonderbox allows you to build and create your very own adventures. It features fun, animated characters against delightful diorama backdrops and gameplay reminiscent of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker but with a twist: you can build the levels and set up the stories.
With a plethora of tools for world building, Wonderbox challenges the player and the community to build their own adventures. You can create your own levels, as well as play through other players' levels, and unlike many other building games, your creations can incorporate narrative.
This game is a lot of fun out of the box, but as the community has already grown, it's clear there is a ton of potential here just waiting for the right creators to come along and unlock it!
World's End Club
An action-adventure game with heavy emphasis on the puzzles, World's End Club is a fun, but bizarre ride in which a group of Japanese students wake to find themselves trapped in an underwater amusement park. A jester-like mascot called Pielope informs the kids that they must compete in a deadly game if they want to make it out alive and that they're on the clock. What seems like the set up for a Danganronpa-style battle royale, however, is just the brief intro to something far more exciting an original.
Once the heroes escape the death game, they find their world infested with all manner of monsters. Refusing to accept their fate, the kids travel across the country, hoping to reach their home, all while figuring out just what happened while they were gone. Throwing yet another wrench into an already off the wall game, the kids begin developing strange powers they'll need to make it back home.
While World's End Club is not an overly challenging game, the story is what sells it. This game doesn't take itself too seriously and so you probably shouldn't either — just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Neversong
Originally pitched on Kickstarter as Once Upon a Coma, Neversong puts you in the shoes of Peet, a child who awakes from a coma only to find his overrun with nightmarish creatures and absent of all adults. You find out that all the adults have turned violent and zombie-like, and have been confined to the Blackfork Asylum, which just so happens to be the last place your girlfriend, Wren, was last seen.
Something about Neversong just grabs a hold on you and doesn't let go. It may be the unnerving and eerie artwork or maybe the haunting music, but whatever it is, it fits in perfectly with the dark themes and story. The writing in Neversong is excellent and moving, while the gameplay is continually fresh and engaging.
This game is not, however, for every adventure game fan. Neversong is dark and features unsettling body horror, as well as death, depression, and hopelessness. I won't give any spoilers, but this game has an ending that will keep you thinking for a long while after finishing.
ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree
ATONE is an interactive story full of puzzles and musical combat. You take on the rold of Estra, the daughter of mankind's last great leader, as she uncovers the mysteries and secrets of Midgard, a world built on Nordic lore. Each decision you make will shape the path of the game, as you are challenged to discern truth from lie and save your people from the mythical beasts and rot left behind when the gods abandoned humanity.
While the story is engaging and the hand drawn artwork of this game is lovely, the music is the most compelling aspect of ATONE. Combat is tied directly to the music of the game, with a system similat to Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero, and that music is engrossing. ATONE even has an arena where you can unlock and challenge 18 unique battles, all to hit the leaderboards with your top score.
I personally tend to shy away from the whole genre of rhythm games, but the music in ATONE fits so well with an unusual mix of heavy synth and period-specific instruments. It really drives this game and Estra's story.
Guildlings
The pure artistry in Guildlings is mind-blowing; the art and style of all the low-poly graphics are done really well, which makes the game really pop.
In a world of Wizards and Wi-Fi, you and your best friends are heading out on a quest, and you'll need to bring your phone with you! This fantasy coming-of-age story is one of a kind, and the episodic nature of the story makes it even harder to put down once you start playing.
The gameplay is simple and light, but the story hooks you in, and in a good point-and-click adventure game, that's the right combination. Don't pass on this game; you won't regret it!
Projection: First Light
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves gets credit as the first feature-length animated film, but Lotte Reiniger's 1926 The Adventures of Prince Achmed, brought to life with shadow puppets, beat Walt Disney to the punch by more than a decade. Projection: First Light feels like a tribute to Reiniger's enchanting film, following a shadow-puppet girl in a shadow-puppet world whose pursuit of a glowing butterfly leads her into a magical adventure.
Projection sets itself apart from other platformers with one clever conceit: You control not only the girl but a ball of light that follows her around. Any shadows the light casts on her surroundings become solid stepping stones, allowing the girl to surmount the obstacles in her path. Using the light to find clever ways to help the girl — like creating a sudden shadow-bubble beneath her that pops her into the air — proves satisfyingly creative. The solid, responsive controls don't hurt, either.
Each of Projection's various multi-part levels takes place in and is visually inspired by, one of the many different countries with their shadow-puppet traditions. And steering the girl with one stick of your gamepad, and the light with the other feels invigorating like starting a conversation between the different halves of your brain.
Beyond a Steel Sky
The long-awaited sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky, Beyond a Steel Sky is a classic adventure game that's filled with a cool story and some fantastic sarcastic humor.
A child has been abducted, and you, Robert Foster, have vowed to find him. Your search brings you to the last remaining megacity in the wasteland, often thought of as a utopia, but nothing in the city is quite how it seems. Beyond a Steel, Sky plays much like a Fallout game that doesn't focus on shooting anything up. The sci-fi post-apocalyptic world seems well fleshed out, and all the characters I have come across in my playthrough have been a delight to interact with.
While I do think that Beyond a Steel Sky is one of the best adventure games on Apple Arcade right now, it does have a few bugs that can be a tad frustrating. I haven't run into any major bugs — although far warning some of the reviews differ from my experience — there are a few kinks that the developers should probably work out.
The Bradwell Conspiracy
Welcome to a very English catastrophe. You chose the wrong near-future day to visit a new high-tech museum dedicated to Stonehenge, sponsored by the powerful Bradwell Corporation. Now a mysterious calamity has caved in the building, with you trapped inside.
Luckily, the smart glasses you're wearing connect you with a plucky Bradwell employee who's stuck in another part of the collapsing building. Together, you'll have to navigate the company's Brutalist underground HQ looking for a way to escape. Along the way, you'll both start to discover ominous hints that neither Bradwell nor its "clean water initiative" is as benign as they appear.
Take the off-kilter corporate dystopia of Portal, add a dash of BioShock's futurism-gone-to-seed, and blend well with bone-dry humor (or is that humor?), and you've got The Bradwell Conspiracy. The simple, utilitarian graphics won't drop any jaws, but the game's level design does a great job of unobtrusively telling a story. It's fun to communicate with your fellow escapee by snapping photographs of your surroundings to send to her, and her very American cheerfulness strikes a great contrast to your droll British surroundings.
There's a neat twist to the nonviolent gameplay I dare not spoil here, one that leans into the Portal comparisons hard while remaining clever and original. It can be annoyingly finicky in execution — maybe future patches will fix that, along with the occasional glitches that crop up later in the game — but like The Bradwell Conspiracy itself, it's still a fun, worthwhile idea.
Over The Alps
Over the Alps are a classic dialogue-based adventure game that has a great interactive story and stunning visuals, even if the gameplay mostly amounts to making dialogue choices.
It's 1939 in Switzerland, and you're on the run. You'll need to make hard choices that affect the outcome of the game as you make your way across Europe. The best thing? Those decisions do affect the result of the story to some degree, meaning there is a small amount of replayability, which is good because the game is kind of the short side.
Where Cards Fall
Where Cards Fall is a puzzle adventure that has you building various structures out of cards so you can traverse through the levels. The puzzles get challenging and intricate as the game progresses, which is good because the story progression is a tad lackluster.
The gameplay and the visuals make Where Cards Fall a worthwhile experience, and even though the story is slightly confusing. Just don't be surprised if you get stuck on a level or two, these puzzles don't pull any punches.
What are your favorite adventure games on Apple Arcade?
Do you have a favorite adventure game that didn't make out list? Drop us a comment below and be sure to check out the rest of our Apple Arcade coverage!
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