Games Now! The best iPhone and iPad games for Friday, October 9th

Any week where the best game is a drunken chess game is a pretty damn good week in our books. Here are the best games for your iPhone and iPad this week along with a classic you may have missed.

The best PAID iOS games this week

Chesh: $2.99 (iPad, iPhone)

Let’s get this covered from the off. Chesh is fantastic. You should pick it up this very minute. Chesh is chess, but chess if you’re drunk. Each match plays out like standard chess with the exception that the game pieces have a new set of rules every single match. This makes for a totally unique experience each time. It’s a game of luck, strategy, and plenty of skill. There’s single player, same device multiplayer, online multiplayer, multiple game modes, alternate boards, and more. This week’s must buy.

Hocus: 99c (iPad, iPhone)

From the developer of Rop (a brilliant knot based iOS puzzler from about 6 months ago) comes Hocus. Hocus is a perspective illusion puzzler. It’s one of those games where you see a screenshot and immediately know how it plays. Hocus plays a very, very, good game of perspective puzzling. There’s 50 levels to solve as you guide your cube from start to exit. It gets very difficult but never unfairly so. One for puzzle fans.

YAMGUN: $2.99 (iPad, iPhone)

YAMGUN is a shooter where you play the gun. Yes, the gun. Blast wave after wave of enemies protecting the walls of the citadel. Upgrade yourself into a bigger and better…. well…. gun. YAMGUN has a great Borderlands graphical style to it. It’s all great big boomy fun in a shooter way. Worth a look if you like explosions and/or yams.

The best FREE iOS games this week

Shooty Skies (iPad, iPhone)

Shooty Skies comes from the creators of Crossy Road. Shooty Skies plays, and looks, like a mash up between the aforementioned Crossy Road and an old skool vertical shooter. The gameplay is by the numbers shooter fare but it’s all brightened up considerably by the dizzying array of colourful characters you play and shoot at. Just like Crossy Road there’s plenty of reward for sticking around and collecting coins and even some hidden characters to find.

Huemory (iPad, iPhone)

Huemory is one of the those simple games that, for some reason, resides on your phone and steals minutes for months. Huemory is a colour based memory game. Coloured circles appear on the screen. Pick a colour and everything switches to gray. If you can remember the position of every circle on the screen of your chosen colour you progress. It starts simple but you’ll soon be cursing your modest brain and bashing restart for just one-more-go.

The Balloons (iPad, iPhone)

The Balloons calls itself an endless floater. The tag line works well. Gameplay involves guiding your balloon upward, through increasingly difficult stages, by tapping to blow it either left or right. The balloon behaves in a convincing manner. It drifts and falls making progress past the spikes and assorted traps tricky but rewarding. There’s a variety of stages, unlockable balloons, and themes. Worth a puff.

This week’s golden oldie that’s still fantastic

Sword of Xolan: 99c (iPad, iPhone)

I’m of the opinion that on-screen controls don’t work on a touchscreen device. Well… there is the very, very, few cases where they do. Mos Speedrun is one of these and Sword of Xolan is another. Sword of Xolan is a retro action platformer. There’s 30 stages spread over 3 unique acts to play through. The graphics and animation are splendid, the level design is excellent, everything is top tier. If Sword of Xolan was a SNES or Megadrive game we’d still be talking about it today. It’s that well crafted. An absolute steal for 99c on your iThing today.