Indie hit Vampire Survivors lands on Apple Arcade with the ads stripped out

Opinion: Games that were popular in 2011 or even 2022 won't move the needle for Apple.

See full article...

 

[kyleblue]

This was one of the most addicting games Ive ever played. Should give it another play through.

 

[Aurich]

I'm an Apple One subscriber, or whatever the whole bundle is called. I have Apple Arcade through it, and use it lightly.

Right now I'm playing Slay the Spire+ on my iPad, an older game, that fits the "proven hit" idea. I can't say I mind. I never got around to it before, and it's nice to have it on a touch screen, card games are pretty perfect for the iPad.

Adding value to my device as opposed to making my device some kind of leading edge gaming platform honestly works fine for me. I know that's not the most progressive or radical take, but it's the honest truth. Giving me some proven winners sounds fine.

 

[Dr. Fancypants]

Fantasian remains the most memorable game I’ve played from Apple Arcade—the unique art style made for a fun take on JRPGs (and as an added bonus, it wasn’t just an import of a game that was already available somewhere else). I’d love to see more like that show up.

 

[AndiCui]

My experience with Arcade is that I use it as a grab bag of solid casual games.

Solitaire, Sudoku and word guess games will never be headline grabbing. But having access to non-ad-or-IAP-invested versions of them for “free” is a nice thing.

I wouldn’t pay extra for it, but it’s definitely a value add to the Apple One bundle if you need it for its other services.

Edit: @Aurich was faster to make the same point

 

[Aurich]

Also, in the "just give me more of what I've played" category I'm stoked to get a new Kingdom Rush this month. My all time favorites in both tower defense but also just iOS screen poking relaxation.

https://www.kingdomrushalliance.com/

The Apple Arcade versions are nice because they cut out the MTX.

 

[Darkness1231]

Vampire Survivors defines a new genre, Bullet Heaven where the player's avatar constantly shoots their bullets.

Weird, but it works, and Yet Another Zombie Survivors are both at the current pinnacle (IMO) of Bullet Heaven.
I just fat fingered YAZS attributes to zero. Grrr. However, I am really enjoying getting everything back.

 

[johnsonwax]

I'm not sure the author understands that Apple Arcade is a revenue stabilization program for devs that target Apple platforms. It does a bunch of different things but at least one of them is to keep those devs in operation so they can launch their next titles on Apple's hardware.

It's not about making breakout hits, because it's not going to be possible to provide revenue ahead of such a hit. There's no way Apple would have been putting up Manor Lords amounts of money for the game through Apple Arcade. Having it on Apple Arcade would have taken potential revenue from the developer, and that's not what Apple is trying to do here.

Apple is trying to build a foundation for their platforms where users can expect to do gaming with the hopes that over time more users will buy more games outside of Apple Arcade, and Apple Arcade providing the equivalent of all the shit you bought on Steam years ago which you still go back and play now and then.

 

[daveisfera]

Aren't the current leaders in the mobile gaming space pushing Skin Packs and Battle Passes that my kids want to blow their money on? This seems like a MUCH saner alternative to me so can we talk up the positives of that and try to help it grab some mind share rather than put it down?

 

[macphoenix]

Hey, I'm a long time Mac user. We're used to playing 5+ year old titles.

 

[Honeybog]

Apple Arcade has been a mess for a while. It's a shame, because when it launched, it seemed like it was a genuine attempt to reverse the awful direction iOS games had taken. One look at the top charts shows that the economics really don't support developing anything but IAP fests and ad-filled F2P games.

At first, it seemed like Apple was going to try to reverse that by funding more interesting indie games, but about 2 years ago, they just started bringing on cheap F2P games, that just had the ads/idiot IAP stripped out. Sometimes this was to hilarious effect, with games becoming literally impossible to play, since they were designed around getting players to watch ads or buy power-ups. Their catalogue also has so much repetition, with certain genres getting repeated ad nauseam.

There are still some gems, but not enough to justify the cost if you aren't subscribed to Apple One for other reasons. I couldn't imagine paying $85/year (the cost of a standalone subscription) for Apple Arcade alone.

 

[famousringo]

I'll mention to anybody who liked Vampire Survivors that you might want to check out Brotato.

I think one of the challenges for Apple Arcade is that a lot of great games they might like to add to the service are being snapped up by Netflix instead. Not interested in a Netflix sub for games, so I just hope they eventually expire from the service and are available for purchase outright, which seems to be what's happening to Arcade exclusives.

 

[Fred Duck]

What we have now is a safe subscription service that essentially curates the best of what other people have already discovered and (thankfully) strips out ads and microtransactions. That's a nice enough value proposition, especially for the price. But we're unlikely to see breakout hits on Arcade making waves among players, influencers, or the press because, for the most part, Apple is following the headlines with this service, not leading them.

As you said, "When Apple Arcade launched, its initial lineup was a fascinating mix of casual and indie titles, some of which went on to be popular on other platforms once Arcade's exclusivity ended."

This means that Apple (partially) funded development of experiences that developers then ported elsewhere so Apple Arcade was being used as little more than a source of money and beta-testing. I can see how that would lose its appeal for Apple.

 

[Paranoid Android]

I have to say, I'm quite disappointed with the way that smartphone gaming has developed in general. When I got my first iPhone 4S, I was seriously impressed by the state of the games on the App Store in 2012. You had the popular casual, cartoony arcade style games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, etc. that were genuinely fun and had a lot of charm to them. Especially during that brief window before the scourge of MTX, when you just bought them outright with a one-off $5-10 price.

But beyond that, there were lots of games that were already trying to go for full-fledged "real gaming" experiences with 3D rendered graphics. Gameloft used to have a whole series of obvious imitations of AAA titles like Call of Duty, Halo, GTA, and Need For Speed. Despite being blatant knockoffs (which was actually sort of endearing) they had fully developed single player campaigns with voice acting, cinematics, set piece missions, multiplayer modes, and graphics that rivaled my PSP.

There were some other developers that either attempted ports of console franchises like Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, and HAWX, (a long-forgotten attempt at an Ace Combat competitor) or made their own original titles. Zombie fighting games, puzzles, arty games like Monument Valley, and there was even an attempt at a Starcraft style RTS.

A lot of these didn't quite work, but they seemed like noble failures. I admired the ambition! I'd imagine that console-level games would be possible as smartphone hardware developed But off course within a couple years mobile gaming would become shorthand for sleazy, bottom-of-the-barrel trash designed to extract micro transactions from gullible children and gambling addicts.

Apple Arcade in principle seems like a great chance to have a platform to find higher quality titles that aren't borderline or outright scams. But it feels too half-hearted, too timid with a very limited range of games. Almost everything is a quirky, family-friendly cartoon indie game or proven hit like the article says. Apple still seems uncommitted, despite the big show they made over porting AAA games like RE: Village and Death Standing. I have access to Arcade through my Apple One bundle, but the only games I use on it are Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, the first iPhone games I ever played, 12 years ago. Something about that feels kinda sad, like a missed opportunity.

(didn't mean for this to turn into a mini-essay lol)

 

[dennis.kext]

All they need to do is re-release the iPod Touch as the iPad Nano and give it an M1. This would give the Switch/Steam Decks a run for their money.
More importantly, it will finally teach Apple that it never had any clue how games work.

 

[euknemarchon]

On the flip side, if a developer has a new, risky, interesting idea, why would they license it to Apple Arcade? Do we have any specific reason to believe they would make more money that way? It seems like a developer is licensing to Apple Arcade specifically because it's a low-risk payoff with residuals, the exact kind of thing you do as a secondary or tertiary port of IP.

 

[metavirus]

Shoot me, now that “making waves among influencers” is apparently a key criterion for a game’s success.
Edit: Chalk that up with “ample opportunities for monetization” as things that would make me [upset] if I made video games.

 

[hambone]

It ain't exciting to go for the long value titles, but it's definitely a market. And if you are in to frequently replaying them, the list of time-tested titles on Apple Arcade is actually pretty impressive and nicely curated.

I suspect Apple knows what they're doing. There's probably a massive market of people who just play the same-old comfortable games day in, day out, and like it that way just fine.

Just as there is now the exact opposite: there's for sure a "meme influencer hype-cycle" gaming market for players who want to crash into the bleeding-edge hype game with their favorite streamers for two weeks, and then never pick up that game again.

"Gaming" is a very diversified market these days.

 

[smacktoward]

The story of iOS as a gaming platform is so weird. In the early 2010s it seemed like it was poised to sweep aside incumbent platform vendors like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It seemed like The Next Thing. But then the iOS game market was eaten from the inside out by free-to-play microtransaction garbage, which crowded out a lot of innovation because an innovative, original game that cost 99 cents couldn’t compete with a Skinner box wrapped in some popular IP that cost nothing. Apple Arcade feels like Apple’s attempt to try to push back against all that, but it’s never been aggressive or ambitious enough to move the needle. It’s always just been kind of fine but inessential, which is not enough to redirect a mighty river.

I’ve chalked this up to gaming just never being a market that Apple as a company has ever understood or pursued. The story of gaming on the Mac is, while very long, mostly very sad. Something in Apple’s corporate personality just prevents them from taking this market seriously.

 

[ciejclusk]

I think Apple realized the target audience for Arcade are in their 30's and 40's, so they have been focusing on releasing games that will be popular in that age range. I'm in that age group, and I am much more likely to download a laid-back mobile game with no ads or crazy data collection, and Arcade fits that need perfectly. I can't stand looking at the new games in the App Store, they all seem like money grabs.

 

[redtomato]

Bah I’m not playing Apple Arcade till they’ve got Pong, Pacman, and SpaceWar!

 

[meanderbot]

Are you expecting them to completely stop adding older titles or indie titles and just add new AAA games instead? This article is dumb, they can do both things you know.

I think his point is that they should be doing both but aren't.

 

[MENTALIST]

As a source of safely de-crap-ified mobile titles, that can be shared with everyone in your Apple Family group for the price of one subscription, Apple Arcade is an invaluable resource for parents.

And there’s plenty worthwhile in there for the Adults as well as the kids.

 

[ewelch]

Isn't it up to developers to do that? Sure Apple can give incentives.

 

[schnackenpfefferhausen]

I got Apple Arcade for free with my new phone.. I’ve used it quite lightly, with the exception of Dicey Dungeons, which I’ve enjoyed immensely and played the hell out of (and picked up for cheap for my steam deck in the summer sale )

 

[schnackenpfefferhausen]

I think they really need to try adding some AAA games.. like resident evil biohazard, or assassin’s creed.. it would sell people on the value of the subscription, and the viability of “serious” mobile gaming..

 

[ghostofchristmas]

I think they really need to try adding some AAA games.. like resident evil biohazard, or assassin’s creed.. it would sell people on the value of the subscription, and the viability of “serious” mobile gaming..

Yeah, id love to play a bunch of slot machine/casino titles without all of the request to pay even more money for a billion credit sale.

 

[Readercathead]

I think Apple Arcade might be most useful for parents if it has games that the kids want. You don’t want them pestered with ads or downloading random and dangerous apps, so giving them access to pre-paid all-you-can-eat titles reduces both the begging and the viruses etc both. This is why I never let my kids watch Amazon Prime video service, every second they spent on that was sure to produce a “need” for something extra on top of the $140 dollars Amazon gets annually already.

 

[univac]

I think Netflix is doing a much better job of curating a group of premium games, at least for my tastes. Death’s Door, Dead Cells, Immortality, Pinball Masters, Into the Breach, Hades and Braid are some of the Netflix iPadOS games that I have.

 

[bburdge]

Shoot me, now that “making waves among influencers” is apparently a key criterion for a game’s success.
Edit: Chalk that up with “ample opportunities for monetization” as things that would make me [upset] if I made video games.

Would replacing "influences" with "critics" or "reviewers" make a difference?

Is a Siskel and Ebert two thumbs up somehow fundamentally better than popular streamers playing the game and sharing their thoughts with viewers?

As the number of options of popular entertainment exceeds a small amount it becomes unfeasible for most folks to engage with more than a fraction of it. Which means the ability to discover the fraction that is of most enjoyment to a person becomes difficult. From that you get people who become respected for their ability to find and publicize titles helping people with that process.

Overall I find watching a handful of streamers who I find have compatible tastes in games more useful than reading some critic's review. At least with the stream I can see the game, someone playing it live, and have a much better feel for whether it's something I would enjoy.

 

[jdw]

"Continued, ongoing engagement as the primary metric by which to judge success" rewards games that soak up player time.

And Apple Arcade brings in a lot of existing games with IAP mechanics, except without those mechanics.

But as someone noted above, those mechanics typically get removed, not replaced. Which turns them into slogs and huge time sinks. Which creates a lot of ongoing engagement. (At least until the player realizes difficulty has gone through the roof and quits in frustration.)

So Apple got exactly the behavior they incentivized. It's not a good system.

 

[darkdog]

I've actually been pleasantly surprised that they're bringing some very good non-F2P games to Apple Arcade, including some I've purchased elsewhere or meant to: Dicey Dungeons, Slay the Spire (the port of which I think is terrible, but it's not Apple's fault), Stardew Valley, Return to Monkey Island, now Vampire Survivors…

I don't disagree with the article, though. I just got around to playing Fantasian, which it turned out to be much better than I had expected, and such exclusive new games are definitely on the decline, if not an extinct species already.

 

[Mechjaz]

I have to say, I'm quite disappointed with the way that smartphone gaming has developed in general. When I got my first iPhone 4S, I was seriously impressed by the state of the games on the App Store in 2012. You had the popular casual, cartoony arcade style games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, etc. that were genuinely fun and had a lot of charm to them. Especially during that brief window before the scourge of MTX, when you just bought them outright with a one-off $5-10 price.

But beyond that, there were lots of games that were already trying to go for full-fledged "real gaming" experiences with 3D rendered graphics. Gameloft used to have a whole series of obvious imitations of AAA titles like Call of Duty, Halo, GTA, and Need For Speed. Despite being blatant knockoffs (which was actually sort of endearing) they had fully developed single player campaigns with voice acting, cinematics, set piece missions, multiplayer modes, and graphics that rivaled my PSP.

There were some other developers that either attempted ports of console franchises like Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, and HAWX, (a long-forgotten attempt at an Ace Combat competitor) or made their own original titles. Zombie fighting games, puzzles, arty games like Monument Valley, and there was even an attempt at a Starcraft style RTS.

A lot of these didn't quite work, but they seemed like noble failures. I admired the ambition! I'd imagine that console-level games would be possible as smartphone hardware developed But off course within a couple years mobile gaming would become shorthand for sleazy, bottom-of-the-barrel trash designed to extract micro transactions from gullible children and gambling addicts.

Apple Arcade in principle seems like a great chance to have a platform to find higher quality titles that aren't borderline or outright scams. But it feels too half-hearted, too timid with a very limited range of games. Almost everything is a quirky, family-friendly cartoon indie game or proven hit like the article says. Apple still seems uncommitted, despite the big show they made over porting AAA games like RE: Village and Death Standing. I have access to Arcade through my Apple One bundle, but the only games I use on it are Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, the first iPhone games I ever played, 12 years ago. Something about that feels kinda sad, like a missed opportunity.

(didn't mean for this to turn into a mini-essay lol)

There's a reason I protect my Plants vs. Zombies apk like gold.

I've bought one game in the past 3 years, Crying Suns, and I don't even have a whole hour's playtime in it. I think it wants to be on a tablet or computer.

 

[abazigal]

The idea of paying a subscription for (what is effectively) a game streaming service has always felt weird to me.

For one, I am not sure if it’s just me, but I typically find a few games that I like and then play the heck out of it. For example, I purchased slay the spire the day it came to the iOS App Store and have been plugging away with it ever since. I still fire up Grimvalor every now and then, and I recently went back to the lords of Waterdeep iOS board game.

I find I am not constantly cycling through content the same way you would put up playlists on Apple Music while doing chores or binge-watch content on Netflix. Why then am I constantly paying a monthly fee just to maintain access to a single title?

That’s why I found Apple Arcade offerings a tad lackluster, because the titles that appeal to me, I likely have already played them in the past. To be fair, Slay the Spire on Apple Arcade finally added iCloud sync (which also had the effect of erasing my 2+ years of progress). Battleheart legacy brought updated ipad support. World of Demons was a fun game that was unfortunately never finished, and was recently removed from the App Store altogether. But there was a fair bit of repetition.

Now, I would sub all over again if Apple brought Grimvalor to the Apple TV (I have it on my switch, but you can see the performance difference), at least just for that month. And that’s where Apple has dropped the ball, I feel. If you can ensure a steady stream of games for the Apple TV at least, I would consider paying, and even that seems to not be a priority for Apple of late.

I also like the idea of having a curated library of baseline games like solitaire or chess which don’t have IAPs and are not ad-supported, and which would save consumers the hassle of wading through an endless quagmire of trash in the App Store. But again, is it worth paying a constant fee, and then risk losing access to those titles the moment you stop paying? It’s like I already have the original copy of Slay the Spire, and then I switched to the arcade version because I thought playing that might help the dev in terms of usage figures, and then I stopped my sub to Apple One and am back on the original copy and I am like - aren’t I just paying double?

Nice concept on paper, but man, all those bills rack up fast.

 

[schmod]

This all feels like a consequence of Apple's app revenue model – something about it is profoundly incompatible with producing quality games. At best, it's given us some horrible F2P gacha games.

I don't see it improving unless Apple offers more favorable terms for game developers, stops promoting predatory free games over paid ones, and provides a stable and easy platform to develop around. They don't need to fully open up the platform, but the absolutely dismal state of mobile gaming (after well over a decade) suggests that something needs to change, and the economics seem like the most likely culprit.

Apple tried putting their thumb on the scale with Arcade, and honestly, it could have worked... but it's pretty clear that their hearts aren't in it.

Heck. Google did a better job of luring game developers to Stadia than Apple's done with its platforms. I'm only making this comparison because it's so damning – Stadia was a new and ultimately-failed platform sponsored by a company with zero attention-span, whereas there's literally zero chance of iOS going away anytime soon. If Apple can't make this work, that's entirely on them.

 

[metavirus]

Would replacing "influences" with "critics" or "reviewers" make a difference?

Is a Siskel and Ebert two thumbs up somehow fundamentally better than popular streamers playing the game and sharing their thoughts with viewers?

As the number of options of popular entertainment exceeds a small amount it becomes unfeasible for most folks to engage with more than a fraction of it. Which means the ability to discover the fraction that is of most enjoyment to a person becomes difficult. From that you get people who become respected for their ability to find and publicize titles helping people with that process.

Overall I find watching a handful of streamers who I find have compatible tastes in games more useful than reading some critic's review. At least with the stream I can see the game, someone playing it live, and have a much better feel for whether it's something I would enjoy.

As a matter of fact, yes, it would make a difference. I do follow a variety of, eg, chefs, reporters, critics and reviewers and such online. I refer to them as chefs, reporters, critics and reviewers. We even have “streamers” and “content creators”, which are arguably less vapid terms. “Influencer” is a catch-all term for internet layabouts who feign authenticity and plug products. I mean, just google the definition: “Influencer marketing (also known as influence marketing) is a form of social media marketinginvolving endorsements and product placement”. Perhaps a good way to look at it is: influencers are there to influence, which is inherently vacuous, whereas a reporter reports, a reviewer reviews, etc. We already had reasonable words for reporters and reviewers, but we had to make up an awful new word for dubiously “authentic” people who shill products online.
Edit: fat fingers

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

I finished the full first game and am working my way through the second, and I wanted to just throw out a recommendation for Monument Valley (and its sequel). I had zero expectations going into it but am really loving it so far. I feel like it manages to be casual without being trivial.

Oh, and it looks fan-f-cking-gorgeous on my ludicrously-expensive M4 iPad Pro 13, which takes some of the sting out of the purchase price, lol.

(Also, watching the missus play through it on the TV while she pokes and prods at the tablet is also very enjoyable in its co-op-ish way.)

 

[Roonski]

I’ve often wondered if Apple had made it easier to try demos or for developers to add a demo mode, that would have got over the hurdle of ‘not sure if it’s worth spending $10 on this game’. For me paid games are very hit and miss and the screenshots and text usually don’t explain enough.

 

[Jackattak]

Also, in the "just give me more of what I've played" category I'm stoked to get a new Kingdom Rush this month. My all time favorites in both tower defense but also just iOS screen poking relaxation.

https://www.kingdomrushalliance.com/

The Apple Arcade versions are nice because they cut out the MTX.

TIL there’s a new KR!!! Thanks Aurich!