It’s disturbing, tense, and loads of fun. It’s such a masterfully inventive game in every sense, from the puzzles to the story (as ambiguous as it is), to the atmosphere and countless ways you can die. Playdead’s INSIDE had to be the most surprising experience for me this year. So don’t forget to look at those pages! I’m also linking each title to my reviews where available. To keep this list manageable, I’m posting my top fifteen on the first page and splitting the remaining thirty into two more pages. This year, I struggled to get it down to forty-five. For some perspective, last year was a strong year as well, but I got my entire list down to about twenty-five games. Between those and some truly fantastic iOS originals, this year produced so many exceptional games that I’ve been agonizing over my Game of the Year list, trying to whittle it down a bit. For whatever reason, iOS 11 brought along with it a slew of popular PC and console ports, with even more coming in 2018.

But looking back at the year, it might have been a waste of time anyway.

Although I got a lot of great responses from developers, I think I bit off more than I could chew, as I simply never had the time to put everything together and write an article. I actually went so far as to interview some of the developers who already ported their games to iOS, to see if they can share any wisdom or advice for others who think the App Store just isn’t worth the effort. Earlier in the year, I was a bit frustrated that so many PC devs weren’t taking iOS seriously, perhaps assuming there’s no longer any money in the market outside of free-to-play games that make you pay for extra lives or time.

But they still served as good diversions as sane society crumbled around me. Oddly enough, some of my favorite games were dark and apocalyptic themselves. 2017 is on its way out and what a year it’s been! The world’s kind of falling apart, but luckily this has probably been the best year for premium iOS gaming ever, so I was distracted during most of the apocalypse.

Best games of 2017 list comparisons