Well, that's another year just about in the books. This was a strange year all around, and it wasn't until we all started to deliberate on the end-of-year stuff that I truly realized how many awesome, fun, and unique games hit iOS in 2017. Sure, there were some amazing ports, and I think those have commanded a lot of attention as the year has come to a close. But there were also a lot of cool mobile originals, many of which came from developers new to the scene. I had a hard time carving this list down to just ten games, with the last couple of cuts taking an awful lot of deliberation. As usual, I'm not going to rank these in any order beyond the alphabetical. All of them are equally worthy of consideration.

Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
Card Thief, $2.99 I think a lot of people who loved Card Crawl didn't get into Card Thief quite as much. It's not surprising because it has a very different sort of appeal to it. It's not as immediately accessible as that game was, but in exchange it's a much deeper game mechanically. I love the way it manages to pull off stealth in a card game, and it's really great about daring the player to push themselves past their comfort zone. And of course there are all the little touches that make this developer's games come to life. You'll have to stick with it a bit to get the full effect, but it's well worth the investment in the end.

Subscribe to the TouchArc...