Every year, Apple posts a “best of” list to the App Store, showcasing its choices for the best-in-show in each major App Store category. This year, the company has awarded Sky: Children of Light the title of this year’s best iPhone game, and Hyper Light Drifter their award for best game on the iPad.
Sky: Children of Light is the newest title by thatgamecompany, the developers of Flower and Journey. Visually, it retains the idiosyncratic look of the company’s previous release, and includes a more fleshed-out version of the abstract multiplayer seen in Journey. These have then been adapted to a mobile game about flying through open environments together with other players’ avatars. It currently sits at 80% from 16 reviews on Metacrtitic, which, while not astronomically high, is significant for a cerebral indie game built on an original IP for mobile devices.
Even if Sky: Children of Light doesn’t ring a bell, Hyper Light Drifter very well may sound familiar. That’s because it was released back in 2016 for the PC, and was only just ported to Apple devices in July of this year. It received its fair share of acclaim back when it was first released, so all the iOS port had to do was not ruin an already-great game. Fortunately, it did just that. The mobile version of Hyper Light Drifter is sitting at a 84% on Metacritic, which is four percentage points behind the PC release, but aggregated from a smaller number of critics.
Understandably, not included in competition with these two games are the titles available through Apple’s own proprietary gaming service, since that would be a conflict of interest. Apple has separately declared the best title among those available through Apple Arcade to be Sayonara Wild Hearts, which pretty much became the consensus pick for best Apple Arcade game as soon as the service became available earlier this year.
Other awards include Mac game of the year, GRIS, and Apple TV game of the year, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap. The full list is on the App Store.
Source: Pocket Gamer
