11 iOS games that have moved us close to tears

Those who love games can't help but evangelize about them.

When you're a gamer it's so easy to see the colossal potential for narrative, learning, and creativity inherent in every title.

So it's kind of a shame we waste a lot of it on ultra-violent shooters and games about farting.

Sometimes you need a list of games that dig a bit deeper into the emotional potential of the medium. Even if only to prove the point that we like stuff other than guns and flatulence.

Here they are, collected for your convenience.

Prune
by Joel McDonald - buy on iOS

Prune made our reviewer cry.

It might not make you cry, but it's worth playing just to see another lovely art-puzzle game unfold on your screen.

And if the slow revelation of its initially ambiguous setting isn't enough to at least move you, well. Then this list probably isn't for you.

This War of Mine
by 11 bit studios - buy on iOS

As gamers we have all burned a thousand cities without a second thought. This War of Mine is a game about what happened to the civilians left behind in the war-torn shells of their homes.

There are obvious paralells with all the civil wars ravaging the world as you're reading this. And all the pictures and interviews on the news won't bring home the true horror of those conflicts in the direct way that this game can.

Papers, Please
by Lucas Pope - buy on iOS

The press likes to paint migration in black and white. Papers, Please reveals how many colours there are between, including a few you probably never realised were there.

As the border guard in a corrupt state, it's up to you who gets in and who is turned away. As the queues become longer and the people more desparate it becomes tougher and tougher to stick by the rules.

But fail to do so and it's your own family who suffer, deprived of income by your inability to harden your heart. The needs of the few, or the needs of the many? The answer is up to you.

Limbo
by Playdead - buy on iOS

Rest assured, this isn't a game about a jolly form of Carribean dancing. It's a bleak puzzle-platformer about a boy stranded on the edge of hell, looking for his missing sister.

It's often as grim as it sounds. But grim games are ten a penny. What earns Limbo its spot on this list is it's peculiar mode of puzzle solving. To progress you have to watch your tiny charge die horribly, time and time again, until you work out how to survive the traps and perils of the journey.

What starts out as ghoulish amusement flowers, with some nudging from the plot, into a meditation on death and spirituality.

Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor
by Tiger Style - buy on iPhone, buy on iPad

At first glance this is just another minimalist mobile action-puzzle game. Albeit a clever and well-executed one.

As you progress through the levels, however, a mystery begins to unfold. It concerns the former occupants of this house, now filled with dust and spiders. Who were they? What happened to them? Why did they leave the manor to rot and ruin?

The game gives plenty of clues, but no answers. It's up to you to fill in the blanks with imagination. One thing's for sure, though: it's a bittersweet story at best.

The Walking Dead: Season One
by Telltale Games - buy on iOS

It would have been easy to make yet another zombie game about chainsawing through loads of the undead. Even given the strong ethical and human tone of the TV series, people would have lapped that up.

Instead what Telltale gave us was another story about how survival is all about making, and coping with, tough moral choices.

It might look like just a spruced-up point and click adventure game, but the decisions you make will stay with you for years to come.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War
by Ubisoft - buy on iOS

Turns out that point and click adventures are a fantastic format for telling emotive stories. Beyond a mere zombie apocalypse to one of the closest things seen in history: the First World War.

This is tough territory to tackle. Free from the heroic Nazi-vanquishing overtones of the second world war, we have come to see this as epitomising the horror of conflict at its worst.

Yet Valiant Hearts manages to treat its subject matter with a suitable blend of thoughtfulness and reverence. Even while telling a story about a dog.

Thomas Was Alone
by Bossa Studios - buy on iOS

You might well ask where the emotional resonance is in a puzzle game about brightly coloured rectangles. The answer is that these aren't any old brightly coloured rectangles. These are brightly coloured rectangles with personality.

It's also noteworthy that they represent AI routines that have gained a degree of self-awareness.

As they journey together through the system that spawned them they tell a tale with a lot to tell us. About friendship, and sacrifice and what it means to be human.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery
by Capy Games - buy on iOS

Sword & Sworcery was an early App Store smash. Its blend of pixel art, puzzling and real-time action was a fantastic showcase of what mobile games could be.

Yet even after all that has become commonplace, this game still stands out thanks to its emotional edge. In spite of the name, this is no brainless pulp fantasy.

Instead the narrative leads us to many dark and interesting places concerning our place in the world, and the sacrifices we make to stay in it.

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright Trilogy HD
by Capcom Mobile - buy on iOS

You might wonder what a cartoon graphic game about lawyers is doing on a list like this. Stop a moment and consider how powerful a good courtroom drama is on the TV and you'll understand.

Ace Attorney takes it a step further by putting you in the thick of the debate. These people, these complicated human beings full of light and shade together are yours to prosecute or defend.

Which of them deserves justice and which will get it is partly in your hands.

Mountain
by David OReilly - buy on iOS

Geological simulation might not seem like the richest seam of emotional material to mine. Yet Mountain can be by turns profoundly uplifting and profoundly sad.

Developed by digital artist David OReilly, this lacks much in the way of any actual game. Yet it's worth spending time with just to see how it makes you feel.

It's possible it'll make you feel cheated out of the minuscule asking price. Then again, it's also possible it'll hypnotise you into considering the human relationship with nature, and the boundaries of what gaming can actually achieve.