Five Bookish iPhone Games You Should Be Playing Right Now

I play a lot of iPhone games. Sometimes, too many.

I’m frequently kept up at night, filled with turmoil and wrestling with what game I should delete to make room on my iPhone for important things and… OMG. There’s a new Final Fantasy game out?! It takes up 1.2GB of space? WHAT DO I DO?!

[Deletes entire album full of photos and treasured, precious memories]

Whew. Okay.

As someone who adores books and video games equally, I love it when I’m able to find a combination of both of those things. Whether it’s with a book that uses video games as a key plot point (Ready Player One), or a game that happens to incorporate the literary (Device 6).

Here are a few iOS games inspired by books, that you should probably start playing now.

The Great Gatsby: Classic Adventures ($4.99): Here’s a solid game for you, old sport! A hidden object game, set in the world of Fitzgerald’s classic novel. Beautiful art and puzzles make for a fun, quick play through.

And if you like the game, the developer also makes a number of other titles like this, using books by James Patterson and Agatha Christie.

Stride & Prejudice ($0.99): This one scores bonus points for having such an amazing title. It’s a runner game, that lets you read the text of Pride & Prejudice as you move along. And with reader mode on, you can pick up where you left off in the game.

Basically, you get Pride & Prejudice for less than a dollar, and a fun, pixelated game on top of it. Best deal ever.

The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire (Free): I remember when this free runner game came out. It brought together a handful of legendary indie game developers, including the folks who made the incredibly addicting Canabalt. 

The concept is simple. You’re Katniss, and you are running. You can shoot your bow and arrow at bad guys as you try to make your way across the levels, and if you’re good, you can beat it in about 30 minutes. And hey, it’s free!

Writer Rumble (Free): Pick some six legendary authors of classic literature, like Edgar Allan Poe and Jane Austen, and battle against on another in epic word battles.

Vonneguts & Glory (Free): So this is an incredibly short game that was whipped up in five days, but you can’t deny how charming it is. A game based on a passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

It plays a lot like an old school, 8-bit dungeon crawler, but again, it’s short. More of an art piece than an actual game. You can read more about what inspired the game over on the developer’s website.