So let’s talk about it.
Apple Arcade was announced back in March at a special “State of Apple Services” keynote. This is where Tim Cook and a rotating cast of marketing and tech execs announced Apple’s new direction: as content provider in addition to product purveyor. They announced Apple News+, a magazine subscription service; Apple TV+, a TV-on-demand service like Netflix or Hulu; and Apple Arcade, a curated mobile game service that would, they promised, allow you to pick up a game on your phone, play it for a while, then switch to your ultrawide 4K television and Apple TV set without losing your place.
In the months since, we found out new information, like: iOS 13, iPad OS, tvOS and macOS Catalina would all get console controller support to play games on Apple Arcade, ensuring that you didn’t even have to pick up any new hardware to play a game – you just had to switch devices.
Some of the games announced at the March Keynote were games like Oceanborn 2, Beyond a Steel Sky, and The Pathless. As we got closer to launch, we found out that even big game devs, like Konami, Sega and Ubisoft, had jumped on board. It was hard, without seeing an actual demo of the platform or how games would play cross-device, to keep the hype machine from taking over. Well, it’s been available on beta for a week now, so how is it?
Fuckin overwhelming, y’all. I haven’t downloaded or played this many games on any device in a HOT minute. I’m excited and a little wary about the service, so I thought I’d actually talk a little bit about that before my plans to cover the platform.
First, here’s what you need to know about Apple Arcade. It’s not a new platform. It’s not a new console. It’s not even a new storefront. It’s Apple taking advantage of a couple technologies it’s been developing for years being in the right place at the right time.
Marzipan, Continuity, and the “Shared Device Experience”
It’s hard to remember at this point, but the Apple Ecosystem used to be a series of islands blocked off from each other by vast oceans. You needed connector cables to sync your devices with each other a lot of the time, otherwise you were stuck doing things like emailing your work from your phone to your computer or tablet. AirDrop was good in some situations, but not all. It wasn’t until a couple of years into the development of iCloud that we could start to see the emergence of something approaching a “shared device experience.”
The iCloud Photo Library was, to my mind, the first step in this direction. Being able to see all of your photos from your iPhone on your iPad or your computer was an incredible step forward – but we have to keep in mind here that this was just one way to sync photos across devices. Even then, there were multiple third parties that could do this, because there was a need for it. Then came iTunes Match, the precursor to Apple Music. For $25 a year you could upload your entire iTunes music library into the cloud and wirelessly download everything to your iPhone or iPod touch.
In 2015, iOS 9 came out, and solidified a couple of new features: handoff, which allowed you to open a webpage or third party app on your phone, then go to your iPad or Mac and open the same webpage there; Instant Hotspot, which allowed you to share your phone’s hotspot with your other devices without needing to put in a password every time; and SMS messages and phone calls on every device you had access to.
All you needed for these features to work was to be signed into iCloud and your Apple ID on everything, and to be connected via Bluetooth or the same Wi-Fi network.
As we’ve gone from iOS 9 to today’s iOS 13, not to mention iPad OS, tvOS, watchOS and macOS, even more new continuity features and a stronger secure infrastructure to back them make the experience of using Apple devices feel pretty seamless indeed.
At the same time as Apple was developing continuity, it was also working on a way to allow iOS app use on a Mac. At the 2018 WWDC, they announced this project, codenamed Marzipan, that had the goal of making the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store basically seamless. That evolved over the next year; the new paradigm for this project is iPad OS, a complete new fork of iOS, and Apple Arcade, which is using the work Marzipan did to bring various games in the Arcade catalogue to every device you own, including your Mac.
Marzipan evolved into Project Catalyst. At WWDC 2019, Craig Federighi announced macOS Catalina support for Catalyst down to its inclusion in Xcode 5.1 and a new menu option for iPad app developers to check a box marked “Mac” and have their app become compatible for macOS. This is how Apple Arcade is going to deliver games across all devices, including your Mac — and why Arcade isn’t launching on macOS until Catalina’s launch in October.
Is This the Future?
I don’t know enough about how Apple Arcade will actually effect the video game industry in the weeks, months or years to come to be able to say if this will have any sort of impact. However there are a couple of heartening notes.
The subscription price is incredibly low and extends to your entire family, should you choose to do so.
There are enough exclusives and Arcade-specific games on here to keep the service from being called a glorified console- or PC-to-mobile port dumping ground. Some of the games that are on the Arcade today are either launching concurrently on other platforms, or you’re going to have to wait to play them on other platforms, at least for a few weeks.
Of the games I’ve sampled from, there is a healthy mix between apps that are definitely made-for-mobile and more fleshed-out console-ready experiences. Overland, for example, or Cat Quest II, definitely do not have a “lol this is for phones” feel.
There are no microtransactions. Fucking finally, a place where that isn’t constantly happening.
So why do I feel wary? Well, because Apple wants to be everything for everyone. It wants to be the singular device, the singular content path. And what makes them so appealing is that they’re doing this in an environment that is otherwise basically a toxic swamp. It’s like this super utopian walled garden where everything that we want to come true about mobile gaming has in fact come true, and everything is perfect — but outside, the toxic swamp is still a toxic swamp. The iOS App Store has always had some good games, but they are drowned out by the weird sexual anime girl gacha games and the janky Bubble Bobble clones and fucking Homescapes. I haven’t been on the Google Play Store in a hot minute, but I would expect to find a similar situation there, with no plans for Apple Arcade to land on Android anytime soon.
This is not a solution for the problem of a bad mobile game environment. Like, it’s cool for what it is and what it can do, but it’s not here to solve all our problems and buy us all yachts.
The Games
Here’s our plan. Now that Apple Arcade is live, we’ll slowly go through and review each game on the platform. We’ll start with Sayonara Wild Hearts, a game that made me cry while fighting a giant three-headed wolf mech while on a motorcycle. We’ll go until there’s no more games to play. Here’s hoping that never happens.
Here’s what you can pick up today:
Various Daylife – Square-Enix
Shinsekai Into the Depths – Capcom
Mutazione – Die Gute Fabrik
Mini Motorways – Dinosaur Polo Club
Patterned – BorderLeap
The Pinball Wizard – Frosty Pop
Towaga: Among Shadows – Noodlecake
Oceanhorn 2 – Cornfox and Brothers Ltd.
Operator 41 – Shifty Eye
Explottens – WeRplay
Projection: First Light – Blowfish
Cardpocalypse – Versus Evil
Down in Bermuda – Yak and co
Assemble with Care – usTwo Games
Way of the Turtle – Illusion Labs
Grindstone – Capybara Games, Inc.
Dear Reader – Local No. 12
Cricket Through The Ages – Devolver Digital
Sayonara Wild Hearts – Annapurna Interactive
Dead End Job – Headup GmbH
Spelldrifter – Free Range
Punch Planet – Block Zero
Dodo Peak – Moving Places
ChuChu Rocket! Universe – SEGA
Dread Nautical – ZEN Studios
Lifeslide – Block Zero
Spidersaurs – WayForward Technologies
The Get Out Kids – Frosty Pop
EarthNight – cleaversoft
Outlanders – Pomelo Games
Don’t Bug Me! – Frosty Pop
Shantae and the Seven Sirens – WayForward Technologies
Possessions. – Noodlecake
LEGO Brawls – LEGO
BattleSky Brigade: Harpooner – BattleBrew
Stranded Sails – Shifty Eye
Overland – Finji
The Enchanted World – Noodlecake
Skate City – Snowman
Stellar Commanders – Blindflug
Tangle Tower – SFB Games
Spaceland – Tortuga Team
Sonic Racing – SEGA
Bleak Sword – Devolver Digital
Painty Mob – Devolver Digital
Over The Alps – Stave Studios
Exit the Gungeon – Devolver Digital
Fledgling Heroes – Subtle Boom
Neo Cab – Fellow Traveller
Super Impossible Road – Rogue Games
Frogger in Toy Town – Konami
Big Time Sports – Frosty Pop
Where Cards Fall – Snowman
What the Golf? – The Label
Hot Lava – Klei
Hexaflip: The Action Puzzler – Rogue Games
Sneaky Sasquatch – RAC7 Games
Murder Mystery Machine – Blazing Griffin Ltd.
Spek. – RAC7 Games
Agent Intercept – PikPok
Speed Demons – Radiangames
Rayman Mini – Ubisoft
Card of Darkness – Zach Gage
Cat Quest II – The Gentlebros.
Red Reign – Ninja Kiwi
tint. – Lykke Studios
Word Laces – Minimega
ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree – Wildboy Studios
HyperBrawl Tournament – Milky Tea Limited
King’s League II – Kurechii
Jenny LeClue – Detectivú – Mografi
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