Games Now! The best iPhone and iPad games for Friday, July 17th

Forget the summer heat. Stay inside and play on your mobile. Here are the best new games for iPhone and iPad this week.

The best FREE iOS games this week

Alphabear: Word Puzzle Game (iPad, iPhone)

From the same developer as Triple Town, Alphabear is an original word-based puzzle game. Win bears by making words from adjacent letters. Use more letters and get bigger bears. The bears you collect can be used as power-ups in future games. Bears.

Down The Mountain (iPad, iPhone)

Think Crossy Road crossed with Q*bert and you’re half way there. Make your way down an infinite mountain avoiding obstacles and enemies. You can only move downward and collected stars unlock extra characters.

Agar.io (iPad, iPhone)

A mobile version of the popular multiplayer browser game. You control a cell. Eat other players' cells and your cell becomes larger. The biggest cell wins. It sounds simple but it’s really good, odd, fun.

The best PAID iOS games this week

The Executive: €2.99 (iPad, iPhone)

The Executive is daft. It’s a martial arts action game where you, in your business suit, fight off werewolves who've infiltrated your company. The art is distinctive, the controls work well, and the enemies are varied. It’s a bloody good time.

Shifter!: $0.99 (iPad, iPhone)

Shifter is clever. It’s a Rubik’s Cube-like puzzle platformer. You rearrange each level by sliding entire chunks of the screen around to guide the little explorer to the exit. The pixel graphics and muted colours work well, and it gets enjoyably tricky.

Panzerkampf 3: $0.99 (iPad, iPhone)

Panzerkampf 3 is excellent modern take on Atari’s 1980 arcade game Battlezone. It borrows the same 3D wireframe graphics but amps things up considerably in the gameplay department. Mines, smarter tank AI, droids and more make things frantic as you progress. Get it quick. Before the lawyers do.