If you're in the market for new gameplay on your Apple devices, an Apple Arcade subscription is likely a worthwhile investment. 

Apple Arcade is a gaming subscription service that, for $4.99 a month, gives Apple users access to hundreds of curated, high-quality game titles, none of which have ads or additional purchases. 

You might consider Apple Arcade the antidote to typical mobile games, many of which lean into in-game ads, in-game purchases, and rudimentary gameplay. 

Apple Arcade isn't limited just to iPhone and iPad users, either; games can also be played on Apple TV and the Mac. In addition, the subscription can be shared between up to six people via Apple's Family Sharing feature. 

Here are 15 of the best games currently available with a subscription to Apple Arcade. 

Sort of like SimCity but focused exclusively on building roads, Mini Motorways challenges you to keep traffic moving as a city expands. You'll need to accommodate increasing color-coded traffic by laying down streets, bridges, traffic lights, and highways to turn a small town into a  metropolis. Somehow soothing and nail-biting at the same time. 

If you're looking for a game that is more thoughtful than the typical arcade shooter or RPG adventure, Mutazione might be just what the doctor ordered. A charming, slow-paced 2D point-and-click adventure, it's heavy on dialog and story and light on action. You follow the adventure of a teenage girl who visits her sick grandfather, and interacts with a surreal cast of local characters to complete quests and unravel a mystery.

Sneaky Sasquatch reimagines Yogi Bear as Bigfoot, and you play the titular character as you dash around the great outdoors, hiding from humans while simultaneously stealing their food and performing simple quests. You can walk, run, hide in tents, break into homes to use the kitchen, drive golf carts to get around faster, and more. It's a fun and relaxing open-ended game that's like playing a goofy wildlife-themed version of Grand Theft Auto. 

Technically a golf title in perhaps the strictest sense, you don't have to love golf to enjoy this surreal title. What The Golf? may take place on the links and use familiar golfing mechanics to aim and power your shot, but it devolves into an acid trip universe of madness from there, with a crazy assortment of objects you need to get onto the green and an endless array of virtual gags that always one-up the craziness of the previous hole. You won't play it every day, but it's fun to pull out every once in a while when you need a break from reality. 

This is the official Oregon Trail game, a modern refresh of the famous educational title from the 1970s and onward. The Apple Arcade version has beautifully updated graphics, 15 playable adventures and a half-dozen new quests based on actual historical events. If you played the game as a kid, this version will feel familiar, but still has enough novelty to be entertaining. But the real joy should come from introducing it to your kids so they can experience history in the palm of their hands. 

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a psychedelic techno rhythm-based arcade game in which you catch hearts while riding your skateboard, motorcycle or magical deer across astral highways. It's narrated by Queen Latifah and features a Tarot-themed plot, though that's not as important as the gorgeous visuals and addictive gameplay. 

Imagine a classic fantasy-world role-playing game populated with cats — that's Cat Quest in a nutshell. There are lands to explore, treasure chests to open, dogs to do combat with, and more. The game is utterly charming, packed with traditional hack-and-slash adventure with a dollop of kitty adorableness. You can play in story or arcade mode, solo or cooperative. 

Reminiscent of Portal, Manifold Garden is an addictive puzzle game that challenges you to solve elaborate puzzles. You can move, look, move objects, pull levers, and even manipulate gravity — you can choose which surface in a room is the floor, for example, by walking to a wall and resetting gravity. The game has a distinct M.C. Escher vibe, enhanced not just by the geometry of the spaces, but also by the ever-shifting logic you need to employ to solve the ever more challenging puzzles. 

A true classic mobile game, Cut the Rope has been re-released in eye-popping 3D. Like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope is built on a simple game mechanic — in this case, cut ropes with a swipe of the screen to release candy into the mouth of a waiting hungry creature. There's a puzzle in each challenge, as you try to maximize the number of stars you hit as the candy falls. Always a good way to kill a few minutes between meetings, this game belongs on everyone's phone.

One of the most entertaining puzzle games on any platform, Assemble With Care is a charming title that is more than it at first seems. You're tasked with fixing an assortment of gadgets — phones, watches, a music box, and so on — in a colorful animated interface. But the game has lovely narration which adds an extra layer of depth to every repair you perform, and the European setting is quaint and exotic at the same time. Perhaps the game's best attribute is its simplicity. None of the puzzles are especially hard, which means it's a nice diversion when you don't want to think hard enough to play Cut the Rope or Manifold Garden.

Want to step inside an anime? Fantasian is perhaps the best of the Japanese RPGs you can play on your phone. The graphics are gorgeous, built from more than 150 real-world physical dioramas that were painstakingly photographed and enhanced to become the setting for the game. You play a hero with amnesia who slowly learns who he is as he quests with his robot cohorts and battles all manner of bad guys, but that's secondary to the hack-and-slash combat and delicious visuals. 

It's hard to exaggerate the impact that Galaga had on the early arcade game industry, and Galaga Wars+ brings the endless waves of insect-themed aliens to the smaller screen. The action is intense, the graphics are superb, and the gameplay is mindless (in a good way). And while there are a lot of similar mobile games out there, because this one is an Apple Arcade title, it doesn't demand in-page purchases to advance.

While some pinball games pride themselves on photorealistic accuracy, The Pinball Wizard goes another way. And it borrows its name from The Who for a very good reason; your pinball machine is actually a dungeon, and the game requires you to fling an actual wizard around to do battle with monsters while you also collect coins and keys. There's a lot going on here, but it's also a fun and virtually endearing, low-stress arcade game that doesn't demand a lot from you aside from timing the bumpers properly. 

A philosophical cousin to What The Golf?, Really Bad Chess starts the board with a random assortment of pieces. Rather than the traditional starting line, you might have four rooks, three queens or a handful of knights. The graphics aren't remarkable — it would be great if the top-down visuals didn't look like they came from a black and white newspaper in 1975, but this is the game for anyone with a passing interest in the game and a desire to know, "What if I had a whole front line of knights instead of pawns?" 

If you're looking for a game that's a bit more serious — with a decidedly darker theme — then Overland might be just the ticket. This turn-based rogue-like adventure puts you in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where virtually every decision you make is life or death for your character. You can twist and turn the 3D environment to see it from every angle, inspect your surroundings, and take your car westward. The game is surprisingly tense, with a horror movie sense of urgency at every turn.

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