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Icy Veins 
Arcade Cloud 
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Luminosity Build Your Own Apple Arcade, For $400
Apple Arcade has been out for a little over a month, and I’m not entirely thrilled with it. It’s definitely an interesting idea, but it leaves a lot to be desired, especially in fulfilling its commitment to letting folks “play anywhere.” Still, at $4.99 a month, it seems like a very reasonable value proposition that is getting better and better as new games get added to the service.
The greatest strength of Apple Arcade is definitely the variety of games given the price. I am now more convinced of that than ever because I went ahead and built out a list of games you could add to your iOS library to mimic the offerings of the service, and it’s not exactly cheap. If you wanted to capture the breadth and depth of offerings that Apple Arcade currently offers users, it would cost you about $400 ($384 more precisely) in total.
The full list of these games is below. Each game is grouped by genre and includes a link to their review (if possible) and store page. Any games marked with an asterisk(*) are free-to-play games that you can’t fully unlock with a single purchase. I vouch for them, though. They're all incredibly fair with their monetization.
19 Arcade Games
Candies n’ Curses (Free/$9.99) Beat Racer (Free)* Barbaric: The Golden Hero (Free)*Ball King (Free)*
Solar Explorer: New Dawn ($2.99)
21 Puzzle Games
Ticket to Earth ($4.99)Peter Panic (Free/$2.99)
Card Crawl ($4.99) Agent A: A puzzle in diguise ($6.99)15 Action Games
Time Recoil ($5.99)Grimvalor ($6.99)
Implosion - Never Lose Hope ($9.99)
4 Multiplayer
Subterfuge (Free/$9.99) Armajet (Free)*Shadowgun War Games (Free)*
2 Card Games
Spellsword Cards: Demontide (Free/$2.99)
7 Platformers
Oddmar ($4.99)Shadow Blade: Reload ($4.99)
1 Tower Defense
Kingdom Rush Vengeance ($2.99)7 Strategy
Xenowerk Tactics ($6.99)Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander ($6.99)
Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville ($4.99)
2 Runners
Alto’s Odyssey ($0.99)Punch Quest (Free)*
1 City Builder
TheoTown ($3.99)1 Fighting Game
Street Fighter IV CE ($4.99)5 Sports Games
Trail Boss BMX ($3.99)Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 ($1.99)
Grand Mountain Adventure (Free/$4.99)*
15 Adventure Games
Astrologaster ($4.99)Gemini - A Journey of Two Stars ($1.99)
Ryan North’s To Be Or Not to Be ($6.99)
Reigns: Game of Thrones ($3.99)
The Pillars of the Earth ($1.99)
6 RPGs
Star Traders: Frontiers ($6.99)Attack the Light - Steven Universe Light RPG ($2.99)
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain ($7.99)
2 Racing Games
Rush Rally 3 ($3.99)3 Idle/Management Games
Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! ($4.99) SPACEPLAN ($2.99)What can we glean from a list like this?
For starters, buying everything above would cost the equivalent of paying for Apple Arcade for almost 6.5 years. This also only captures what Apple Arcade looks like now and doesn’t account for the fact that the service plans to continue growing its library over time.
On the other hand, if you wanted to pursue your own Apple Arcade-like library, there are some advantages. First and foremost is the fact that you only have to pay once for these games. You can also pick and choose which ones you actually want, which—depending on how discerning you are—can result in you paying way less than $384.
Personally, I’m still more interested in paying for individual premium games than buying into a subscription service, so I hope more games like the ones above continue to hit the App Store. That said, I understand and am grateful for things like Apple Arcade in their attempt to reinvigorate a platform that has been overrun with free-to-play games.
I’m curious to know how other mobile gamers feel about this. Where do you fall? Let us know in the comments below!