Best iPad games: supercharge your iPad gaming

published 27 October 2023

People often ask if Apple will ever made a games console. But in a way, it already has. You can play an incredible array of games on the iPad and Apple TV. Hook up a wireless controller and you are well on your way to video game bliss.

However, you often won't find the best stuff by simply looking at the App Store game charts, which are so often littered by free-to-play titles. These may be compulsive, addictive even, but today we're looking for the best iPad games, not just the ones that will end up sucking up the most hours of your life.

UPDATE: Our original 18-title list was nowhere near long enough to cover even a fraction of the highlights of iPad gaming, so we've added another 10. In this latest update we've covered some all-time classics a few of you may not even realise were on iPad, including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Minecraft.

Returning to this topic is also a reminder of quite how many cracking console titles you can play on iPad, from the brilliant Divinity: Original Sin 2 to stone cold classics like Star Wars: KOTOR.

The iPad is generally the best place to play these console and PC mobile conversions too. Viewing a 10-inch display up close and hooking up your console controller much closer to the original full-sized experience.

With all that in mind, this is a completely different selection of games to our Best iPhone games list. These games either play significantly better or are exclusively available on iPad.

If you don't fancy paying out each time for some games, then head to our best Apple Arcade games list to see what you can get on subscription.

Additional reporting by John McCann

Vote for the best PS4 games

Best iPad games

Ever wanted to set off on your own spacefaring adventure? To actually be Han Solo? FTL: Faster Than Light offers that opportunity, but demands you take on all of the stuff that happens ‘off camera’ into the bargain. You’ll need to manage the power requirements and upgrade paths of your ship’s various systems, recruit new staff, put out deadly fires, and make tricky decisions on whether to explore a new region or warp on ahead of the pursuing armada. FTL is one of the most grippingly nuanced games on iOS, and it’s only playable on iPad, not iPhone.

In the mysterious island setting of The Witness, creator Jonathan Blow has created one of the most beguiling environments in modern gaming. You’ll steadily explore this stunningly colourful rock in first person, tackling its many mysteries by solving countless maze-running conundrums.Those line-drawing puzzles, which are as challenging as they are creative, work better on iPad than on any other platform. It’s a fundamental mechanical point that makes this the ultimate version of one of the finest puzzle games in recent years.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 isn’t your average RPG. Its sprawling world and deep interlocking systems mean you can approach its epic fantasy quest in your own way, not simply following a breadcrumb trail of prompts. Add in a highly detailed, decidedly zoomed-out graphics engine, and you can understand why developer Larian Studios (maker of Baldur’s Gate 3) made this an iPad-only affair. Hook up a controller, prop up your iPad, and dive into one of the richest game worlds it’s possible to access through the App Store.

This brilliant turn-based strategy game sees you fending off a succession of viking incursions across a string of tiny islets. While it’s not a native mobile experience, Bad North certainly feels at home on an iPad, with a finely streamlined take on the classic RTS blueprint married to a rinse-and-repeat roguelike structure. Rally your troops, set your defences and wage war on the encroaching hordes, all via an intuitive touchscreen UI. The game’s clean, concise isometric visuals help sell the whole thing as a tablet experience too.

Roblox might be the kind of freewheeling, massively social digital Lego set that befuddles anyone over 30 years of age, but one thing’s clear – it makes so much more sense on an iPad that it does on iPhone. For the uninitiated, there’s no real purpose to Roblox, other than to let your imagination run wild and build whatever form of distraction you care to indulge in – like Minecraft, but with even less of a gamey structure. Failing all that, you can simply dive into one of the millions of worlds made by your fellow players.

The tower defence genre isn’t as popular on mobile as it once was, but the Kingdom Rush series has a truly timeless quality to it. Your task, as always, is to carefully place defensive towers along the twisting approach to your home base, with the aim of fending off waves of attacks from enemy forces.This latest edition inverts the typical fantasy tropes, so you’re now an arch villain battling against do-gooder humans and meddlesome dwarves. But the core gameplay is the same perfectly balanced Kingdom Rush experience - thank goodness.

A game that transcends generations. Minecraft has something for everyone, and can be as complex as you want it to be. Your simple goal is to survive, so you better start harvesting materials and building a shelter before nightfall - however, once you’ve got the basics out the way Minecraft opens up to a seemingly limitless level of possibility, where your imagination is the only thing holding you back. Explore, craft, create, play - there is so much to do, you’ve just got to go find it.

XCOM 2 is a hardcore PC game through and through, but it works startlingly well as an iPad game. Less so as an iPhone game, where its visually rich, turn-based battlefields feel claustrophobic and indistinct. With a 10-inch display on your side, there’s a combination of clarity and tactile joy as you pan around each squad-based encounter, looking for angles and planning your attack on the alien invaders. As the name suggests, XCOM 2 Collection gathers together all of the extended DLC content surrounding this impeccable strategy game.

A stunning third-person adventure game from the makers of Journey, Sky: Children of the Light borrows some of that prior game’s ethereal magic and seamlessly social mechanics. You’ll explore a mysterious fantasy world where many of the beings you encounter are other players. This is no twitchy competitive game though, with the onus on cooperation rather than combat. The game’s wondrous visuals really steal the show here, though, and they’re best experienced on the biggest screen possible.

Cultist Simulator really requires an iPad to do its strange concepts justice. It’s a deeply involved narrative card game that effectively lays out a complete deck of arcane cards before you, with multiple rows of occult symbols and tiny fonts calling for your attention. The devil really is in the detail here – quite literally, as it turns out – which means that the game becomes much more playable (though not necessarily any easier to grasp) on a larger canvas. If you like your games to provide moments of hard-earned revelation, this is the iPad game for you.

Darkest Dungeon is a horrible, miserable game, and we mean that in the best way possible. It’s an iPad-only dungeon crawling roguelike RPG with one of the most downbeat dispositions in all of gaming. Developer Red Hook Studios Inc. clearly wants you to suffer, whether by throwing a near-impossible series of calamitous challenges at you, sending a member of your party insane (there’s literally a sanity meter), or simply revelling in a relentlessly grim Lovecraftian narrative. For all that, you’ll struggle to put it down.

It’s not just extremely complex games and hardcore PC ports that suit the iPad better. Hidden Folks is a classic hidden object game that simply requires you to pour over its highly detailed black-and-white scenes, looking for key items and people. It’s Where’s Wally for the iPhone generation, and it’ll enthusiastically hoover up all the screen real estate you can spare. Don’t let the simple black-and-white art style fool you either – this one makes a massive visual impact.

Blizzard’s collectible card game Hearthstone was a massive hit on PC but, if anything, feels more at home on iPad. Take it in turns with your opponent - either AI or real life - to summon fantastical beasts and warriors onto the game board, damaging your opponent’s life bar while protecting your own.The number of tactical permutations brought about by the game’s rich card ecosystem, each one with its own individual quirks, is frankly scary. This is the kind of game you can lose hundreds of hours to, so it’s a good job you can play it in bed.

When it comes to building your virtual dream home, you’ll want a big screen to work on it. Plus, you get to play puppet master to over 30 sims as you build a community, create jobs and provide entertainment for those you oversee. Gameplay is a little slower than the PC version, with wait times and ads, but considering you can play for free without needing to dive into the microtraction offerings, there’s a lot to love here. Now we’ve got to get back to our sims, a couple of them could really do with a shower.

We’ve selected the latest in The Room tetralogy here, but really you should aim to play through all four games. Each entry is delightfully packed with the most intricate locked-box puzzles on the App Store.In The Room: Old Sins, as with the previous games, you’ll encounter a series of elaborate Victorian-era contraptions hiding clues to an overarching metaphysical mystery. Sliding, clicking, unlocking and deciphering your way through these elaborate 3D puzzles is one of the most rewardingly tactile experiences in gaming.