Square Enix cutting two of its games in half would carry a roundup by itself. Here it's the undercard: the survival game about the last fox on Earth went from $10.99 to $1.99, and everything else in the batch sits between $1.99 and $3.99.
A ghost story shot on location
PARANORMASIGHT
A horror mystery in late-Showa Tokyo, where a local ghost story turns a cast of strangers against one another with curses.
$8.99 $18.99
The Honjo Seven Mysteries is a well-known local ghost story, per the listing, and the plot hangs on it: an office worker, a detective, a high-school student, and a grieving mother each chase the same rite of resurrection, then start cursing one another. The backgrounds are 360-degree panoramas shot on a 360 camera with help from Sumida ward's tourism division, so the streets are the actual streets. Start here if you want a story rather than a system.
Tower defense from the villain's side
Dungeon Maker : Dark Lord
You're the villain. Lay traps and hire monsters to stop the heroes marching on your dungeon, one fate card at a time.
$1.99 $3.99
Each day you pick a fate card: heroes attack, or an event fires, and the dungeon you've built has to hold either way. Nine Dark Lords, over 300 monsters and heroes, and 100-plus traps: the builds get strange. It first shipped in 2018 and still gets updates, which is the first thing I check before paying for a strategy game. The listing signs off with a line I like:
May your dungeon endure the bravest heroes there are!
A fox, her cubs, and a ruined world
Endling
The last fox on Earth moves her cubs by night through a world people have already wrecked. The deepest cut of the eight.
$1.99 $10.99
Endling is a survival adventure told in 3D side-scrolling scenes. By night you hunt, scavenge, and sneak the litter toward a safer lair; by day you rest and plan the next move, and the listing warns that the decisions get emotionally taxing. The cubs have their own personalities and fears, and you teach them skills so they're less exposed. It's my pick of the batch, and the developer frames the whole thing as one question.
Will a mother fox manage to keep its little cubs alive?
One mechanic and no words
Old Man's Journey
A wordless puzzle adventure where you reshape the hills to build an old man a path, with an Apple Design Award to its name.
$1.99 $4.99
The whole game is one mechanic, reshaping the hills so the old man can keep walking, and the story is told entirely through pictures. Hand-drawn scenes, a SCNTFC score, and puzzles the developer calls pressure-free make it the calm one in this batch. It's compact by the developer's own description, the kind of game you finish rather than abandon, and the cut brings it level with the cheapest games here.
The Super NES remake
Actraiser Renaissance
A remake of the Super NES god game that alternates 2D action stages with settlement building, now with tower-defense sieges.
$9.99 $19.99
You play the Lord of Light and an angel: clear a 2D action stage with magic and a new dodge, then guide the settlement that grows behind it with lightning and earthquakes, and defend it from raids in real-time siege battles that are new to the remake. The original composer rearranged every track and added 15 new ones, and you can flip between old and new music while playing. It supports controllers, which matters most for the action half, and even after the cut it's the priciest game in the batch. The listing even tells you when to stop playing and just listen.
Tired from protecting and raising your villagers? Then just sit back, relax, and enjoy the tunes.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, turn by turn
ThreeKingdoms The Last Warlord
Turn-based strategy built on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where weather and terrain swing every battle.
$3.99 $12.99
You play one warlord, not the whole map: you run your capital directly and hand the other cities to prefects, which keeps the turn count sane. The roster runs past 1,300 officers with up to 30 attributes each, battles factor in weather, terrain, and even the height of the battlefield, and the portraits are drawn in the style of Chinese picture-story books. Two warnings from the listing: it wants iOS 16 or later, and it pulls about 1.9 GB of extra data on first launch.
The demolition derby
Wreckfest
A demolition-derby racer where armor plates keep you in the fight but add weight, and the derby arenas are won by wrecking.
$2.99 $9.99
Wreckfest is the physics-first racer of the set. Reinforced bumpers, roll cages, and side protectors keep you in a derby longer, but every plate adds weight that changes how the car handles, so a tank and a rocket are different builds. Banger races run through intersections and oncoming traffic, challenge modes put you in crop harvesters, lawn mowers, school buses, and three-wheelers, and local multiplayer is in. iPhoners who'd rather crash than win are the audience.
One-tap baseball, the odd one out
Doodle Baseball Game
One-tap arcade baseball in a doodle art style, built for quick matches and high-score runs, and it plays offline.
$2.99 $4.99
Pitch, swing, chase home runs and a high score; that's the loop, and a match is over in minutes. It's the shallowest discount of the eight and the odd one out among the story games here, so skip it unless quick sports games are already your thing. It also wants iOS 16.6 or later, the highest floor in this batch by the store's own minimum.
All eight prices were verified in the US App Store at publish time; any of them can snap back without notice.
