Is Painty Mob the best game on Apple Arcade?

Hello. Last night I almost leapt out of bed and ran into the street wearing just my pyjamas, grabbing anyone I could find and loudly yelling, "Apple Arcade! It's this new thing on iOS! First month's free! The only game you need is Painty Mob!" I had been playing Painty Mob for about five minutes by that point. Now I'm several hours deep. The only difference is this: now I would yell even louder.

What is Painty Mob? God that is hard to say really. Years from now there will be college courses designed to answer that question. People will write dissertations and check out inter-library-loan books on Painty Mob and write, "Agree!" in the margins next to the really clever lines. Anyway, take a phone screen, held landscape. Imagine a line dividing it down the middle. The left half? That's for moving your thumb to run around. The right half? That's for sending out bursts of paint.

So what is Painty Mob? It's a game with a mob and you paint them. The more of the mob you paint the higher your score. But the mob chases you and tries to kill you. And there are bombs and other problems. It's all over so quickly. "It's All Over so Quickly: Mortality and meaning in Painty Mob." That one gets a first.

Read more