Limitless choice doesn’t always equate to limitless pleasure, as anyone who’s ever spent a bus ride shuffling fruitlessly through the entirety of their record collection will understand. With well over 6,000 games already available on the App Store, it often feels like it’s getting harder to find something worth spending your cash on. This, then, is a list like few others: light on most traditional genres, and overflowing with strange new strains of gaming, from abstract assault courses to maths puzzlers and wrapping challenges.

Stare long enough into the App Store, and the quirks of Apple’s handheld devices begin to stare back at you, as you start to get a basic understanding of the challenges facing anyone designing for iPhone and iPod Touch. Control is a frequent issue: as game consoles they pose some significant problems, and the best titles are those that play to the devices’ strengths rather than fumbling to recreate old input methods. Discovery is also a real bugbear, as the (largely) meritocratic marketplace suffers a three-way collision with iTunes’ awkward interface and a signal-to-noise ratio that can effortlessly bury a brilliant title.

But the App Store is also evolving games, even as it mangles some of them. Despite the relatively familiar suite of levels and features offered by many titles, development along traditional lines rarely works – instead, the market has settled on a low pricepoint that has led to an explosion of quirky invention, and most users’ catalogues have come to resemble tasting menus rather than full courses: light, varied and full of flavour.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, as iPhone and iPod Touch continue on their unlikely quests to become the most populated gaming platforms, at the time of writing all 50 of the games featured here can be purchased, on the UK App Store at least, for well under £100.

On to the list >>