Apple has announced its App Store games and apps of the year for 2024, including winners across iPhone, iPad, Mac and more.
Here’s the full list:
iPhone App of the Year: Kino, from Lux Optics Inc
iPhone Game of the Year: AFK Journey, from Farlight Games
iPad App of the Year: Moises, from Moises Systems Inc
iPad Game of the Year: Squad Busters, from Supercell
Mac App of the Year: Adobe Lightroom, from Adobe Inc
Mac Game of the Year: Thank Goodness You’re Here!, from Panic, Inc
Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Balatro+, from Playstack Ltd
Apple Vision Pro App of the Year: What If…? An Immersive Story, from Disney
Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year: THRASHER: Arcade Odyssey, from Puddle, LLC
Apple Watch App of the Year: Lumy, from Raja V
Apple TV App of the Year: F1 TV, from Formula One Digital Media Limited
The most notable of the lot are, of course, the iPhone picks. Apple’s iPhones Game of the Year, AKF Journey, is a free-to-play roleplaying game from Chinese developer Lilith Games.
In the vein of Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail, it looks quite a lot like a game you might play on PC or console rather than mobile – and relies on players getting hooked on its daily gameplay loop.
Meanwhile, the Apple iPhone App of the Year is going to take up much less of your time. Kino is a camera app from the folks who made Halide, and applies colour grading to your iPhone’s video for a more distinctive appearance.
Other notable picks include iPad App of the Year Moises, which can take apart music tracks to separate vocals from instruments. It’s one of the neatest applications of machine learning or AI going.
Balatro picks up yet another gaming award too, this time for Apple Arcade’s Game of the Year. The game, which is mostly the work of one person – who goes by the name LocalThunk online – has sold more than 3.5 million copies and was also nominated for the Game of the Year award by The Game Awards.
