Apple Announces Best iOS Apps and Games of 2017
Apple on Thursday published its annual Best of 2017 lists for the App Store, highlighting popular trends on the marketplace and apps handpicked by its editorial staff. The editors also highlighted a slew of runners-up and ultra-popular games in its lists. Press the right arrow to view the winners.
5 Runners-up & App Trends
For its Trends of the Year list, which includes popular trends in app development and app consumption on the App Store, the editors picked mindfulness apps such as Joyable, AR apps like IKEA Place, multiplayer games like Art of War: Red Tides, and creative storytelling apps like Hooked and Serial Boxed Publishing.
Top free iPhone apps included popular apps like Bitmoji, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger, while popular games include 8 Ball Pool, Super Mario Run and Word Cookies. When it came to free iPad apps, YouTube, Netflix and Chrome topped the charts, with ROBLOX, Rolling Sky and Bowmasters heading up the top free iPad games category.
4 iPad Game of the Year
Since its debut, Apple’s iPad has become an unlikely yet amazing platform for tablet gaming — especially with the iPad Pro’s performance and stunning display. Apple’s App Store editors chose to highlight that with puzzle game The Witness.
In The Witness, players wake up alone on a strange island with no memory of who they are or how they got there. To figure that out, players must navigate the beautifully rendered landscape and solve increasingly difficult puzzles. Described as a game “full of ideas,” The Witness features dozens of locales to explore and over 500 puzzles. It costs $9.99 in the App Store.
3 iPad App of the Year
Apple’s iPad lineup, as especially the iPad Pro, has already established itself as an excellent tool of choice for creatives, artists and other professionals. Apple’s App Store editors obviously kept this in mind when they chose Affinity Photo as their iPad App of the Year.
Affinity Photo is a powerful and intuitive, professional-grade photo editor for iPad. The app supports RAW photos and Photoshop layered files, and can easily import or export projects to iCloud or Dropbox. With a wide range of powerful tools, layers, masks, filters and effects, Affinity Photo is an excellent choice for artists, photographers and creatives with newer model iPads. It currently costs $9.99.
2 iPhone Game of the Year
From Candy Crush to Pokemon Go, mobile gaming has seen a historic rise to prominence in the last few years (surpassing legacy gaming in 2016). And among all of the games available in the App Store, Apple chose Splitter Critters as its top pick.
In Splitter Critters, players use finger swipes to “split” the in-game world apart. They then must rearrange the world to help a crew of space critters back to their spacecraft. Combining innovative mechanics with wonderfully designed and immersive levels and challenging puzzles, Splitter Critters is a highly rated pick in the App Store. It’s currently available for $2.99.
1 iPhone App of the Year
Echoing the rise of meditation and mindfulness as a mainstream wellness trend, Apple’s App Store editors chose popular meditation app Calm as the iPhone App of the Year in the U.S., UK, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland.
Calm features a plethora of guided and unguided meditations of various lengths based on a variety of programs, such as “calm” or “focus.” In addition, the app has unique features such as calming “Sleep Stories” and a breath-pacing “Breathe” function. It’s free to download, with some programs and features free-to-use, but the majority of the programs must be bought individually or as part of a monthly subscription.