The other night I attended an Apple event where they celebrated the games and apps of the year as chosen by their editorial teams. The apps I didn’t have many opinions on. If you’re curious, the winners were the digital notebook Flow by Moleskin on iPad, the Adobe InDesign alternative Affinity Publisher on Mac, and the tourism photo app The Explorers on iPhone.
But naturally it was the games I most cared about. Apple’s people have good taste. The games they picked were all very beautiful and worth playing. The only thing I noticed was that in most cases I had already played them months or years ago. Apple TV game of the year Wonder Boy: The Dragon Trap was an early Switch that wasn’t Zelda that still caught our eye. Mac game of the year Gris was a breakout indie hit… in 2018. You should totally play the stylish (and heartbreaking) Hyper Light Drifter, but its intense difficulty has only been slightly lowered since 2016 and it isn’t necessarily the best fit for iPad. The Apple Arcade game of the year, playable pop album Sayonara Wild Hearts, isn’t fully exclusive to that mobile subscription service. And even the “biggest trend” award went to mobile downgrades of console blockbusters from Nintendo and Bethesda.
Don’t get me wrong. Mobile ports are fine, great even! I love them on Nintendo Switch. But when it comes to the game of the year, I was hoping Apple would have more titles to call their own. Fortunately, there was one exception. Sky: Children of Light is the iPhone game of the year and it’s currently only available on iOS. It’s also awesome.
Sky: Children of Light is the next game from ThatGameCompany, the indie darling developer who stirred our digital emotions with Flow, Flower, and Journey back on the PlayStation 3. In the seven years since then, they’ve worked on this game. But according to co-founder Jenova Chen, they faced setbacks trying to work ethically within the free-to-play business model, the only viable iOS gaming model until Apple Arcade.
It’s a depressing economic origin, but luckily the game itself is practically engineered in a lab to lift your spirits. Combining elements of the team’s prior work, Sky: Children of Light is a family friendly casual MMO about holding hands and soaring through skies in open, non-linear, theme park-esque levels. It’s equal parts adorable and thrilling. And like in Journey, players communicate non-verbally through various emotes, allowing for connections that span continents and language barriers. The minimal microtransactions are just for building on these relationships.
Sky: Children of Light is eventually coming to other platforms. But right now it is an iPhone game through and through, the iPhone game of the year. For more on iPhone games read our big list of tiny Apple Arcade game reviews, and here’s why Apple Arcade is better than its sibling subscription service Apple TV+.
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