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Top 10 best iPhone and iPad games of August 2014

Sun, sea, surf, and stock trading

Top 10 best iPhone and iPad games of August 2014
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iOS

August is, traditionally, the slowest month for games. And in the world of consoles, that holds true.

The most exciting thing to play on Xbox One last month was the Netflix app.

But that's not the case for mobile. And on the App Store, August delivered some of the best games of the year. Five Gold Award winning games, and loads of other essential apps.

Get any of these games, then - all picked from our review archive, and whittled down to ten by members of the PG team - and you'll be guaranteed a good time.

80 Days
By inkle - buy on iPhone and iPad 80 Days

80 Days generates stories. On your trip you could get the wrong train, find yourself kidnapped by pirates, or be framed for murder. The game weaves a winding spaghetti-like narrative where no two players will have similar experiences.

However your textual trip around the globe ends up, you'll be fascinated by what you find. This loose take on Verne's novel features such sci-fi inventions as mechanical horses, robots, giant blimps, and walking cities.

And by giving you full control over what you say, where you go, and how many pairs of wooly trousers you pack, these weird and wonderful little stories feel like personal memoirs.

Max Gentlemen
By The Men Who Wear Many Hats - download free on iPhone and iPad Max Gentlemen

Max Gentlemen is a game about stacking top hats to make a teetering tower of headwear. And it was inspired by a spam email about genital enlargement pills.

But it's not a one-note joke. It's actually a collection of tricky and addictive arcade mini-games about growing your hat tower and keeping it away from pigeons, boomerangs, and pints of beer.

It's still utterly stupid, mind. But in the best possible way. And this loony freebie is even better with friends.

Rules!
By TheCodingMonkeys - buy on iPhone and iPad Rules

Rules! is one of the most stressful puzzle games I've played.

In each round, you're given a rule to follow - like tap green tiles, or tap tiles in descending order. But, once you've carried out that task you'll be asked to obey the commands of "rule one" or "rule three".

Trying to juggle all the rules, the order in which they were given, the tiles on the screen, and the fuse-like timer is a tense experience. But it's a fun thrill ride, when you're not tearing your hair out.

The Firm
By Sunnyside Games - buy on iPhone The Firm

Some have compared The Firm to dystopian document saga Papers, Please. And sure, this stockbroker sim does involve speed-reading documents, following rules, and shuffling slips of digital paper.

But it's really a twitchy arcade game, disguised as a bleak workplace comedy about buying or selling shares based on the direction of the profit arrow and the colour of the paper.

So don't write it off as a clone. This is something fresh, and utterly engrossing for wholly different reasons to Papers, Please.

Deep Under the Sky
By Northway Games - buy on iPhone and iPad Deep Under the Sky

Deep Under the Sky is a pretty game. It imagines the surface of Venus as a curious psychedelic coral reef, all pulsing with neon colours and inhabited by a race of creamy white jellyfish.

The actual gameplay is quite simple. There's only one button, and you use a series of different moves - which are unleashed one after the other - to spread your eggs to faraway alien sacs.

But it's more about exploring this weird, relaxing, zen-like world and basking in the glory of the developer's imaginative take on the solar system.

Appointment with F.E.A.R.
By Tin Man Games - buy on iPhone and iPad Appointment with FEAR

Up until now, Tin Man Games has made its gamebooks look like gamebooks. Complete with tattered parchment pages, chunky 3D dice, and page numbers.

But (perhaps a little rattled by the amazing Sorcery! series from Inkle), Appointment with F.E.A.R. is different. You can customise your hero, calculations are done behind the scenes, and the story is told in bold comic book panels.

So not only is this is a sharp reinvention of a well-loved gamebook, but it proves there's still innovation to be found in this decades-old genre.

Motorsport Manager
By Christian West - buy on iPhone and iPad Motorsport Manager

To me, management games involve ugly spreadsheets, a deep understanding of the sport at hand, and boredom.

Motorsport Manager bucks that stereotype. It's gorgeous: all slick flat menus and stunning tilt-shift raceways. And you don't need to know anything about F1 to succeed - you'll pick up the basics in the first ten minutes.

And most importantly, it's never boring. Especially on the track, where your decisions about when to stop, when to push, and when to gamble on a set of rapidly deteriorating tyres come with an enormous amount of tension.

The Nightmare Cooperative
By Lucky Frame - buy on iPhone and iPad Nightmare Cooperative

You'd be forgiven for rolling your eyes at seeing yet another roguelike land on iOS. Permadeath, random levels, and turn-taking enemies are about as fresh as month-old bananas at this point.

But this ruthless dungeon crawler has a trick up its sleeve. It has a fiendish puzzle-like twist at its centre that forces your entire party to move (and sup potions and unleash special attacks) simultaneously.

It's still about trying your luck and outsmarting enemies, but wrestling with this ingenious overarching mechanic keeps the whole thing feeling wonderfully fresh.

Size Does Matter
By Channel 4 - buy on iPhone and iPad

Size Does Matter

Neon-dipped trip Size Does Matter has got a simple set up. You use one thumb to move your blocky hero and the other to make it shrink or grow, so you can thread your way through the gaps in a series of walls.

Sounds easy, but it can be incredibly tough: you almost have to re-wire your brain to be able to juggle the two tasks and keep up with the ever-increasing pace of the obstacles.

But finally get it right, and make your way through an entire song without missing a beat, and you'll feel amazing. And with three lives at your disposal, it's a little more welcoming than Super Hexagon and friends.

ALONE
By Laser Dog - buy on iPhone and iPad ALONE

ALONE reminds me of Canabalt. It's a fast-paced endless runner, with a thumping electro soundtrack and a hint that something epic is going on in the background. If only you had time to look.

But instead of jumping between rooftops, it's about a lone space capsule that's hurtling through space. In alien caverns, through deadly asteroid fields, and just off the surface of a planet trapped in a ferocious storm.

ALONE is fast, utterly intense, and a joy to master. And any game that starts out on the 'Hard' difficulty setting and only gets harder is okay in my book.


Previously... July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 July 2014 - June 2014 - May 2014
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer