The best Netflix games for 2024

Arranger is unique, even among Netflix’s disparate collection of games. You play as Jemma, who lives in a world that’s essentially a giant interconnected grid. While most of the world’s inhabitants can move around as they please, Jemma is essentially fixed in place; moving her will move everything in front of and behind her like a giant slide puzzle.

As you progress through the world, you’ll use Jemma’s ability to solve puzzles and (hopefully) save the day. The gameplay is something like a Sokoban game — that classic puzzle format where you move boxes around a warehouse — but with everything interconnected, the rules and patterns are different. Your natural instinct might be to walk in a straight line towards an object, but that won’t work: the object will move with you, so you need to move out of the row/column and find a different way to get towards it.

Discovery and application is everything in Arranger. There’s nothing particularly exciting about moving in a circle to methodically drag a dagger down a corridor, but it’s genuinely enthralling to figure out that’s the key to advancing to the next area, and apply that to future puzzles as if it’s second nature. There’s not a ton of replayability, but it’s definitely worth setting aside the six hours or so it takes to play through to completion. — Aaron Souppouris, Executive Editor

Before Your Eyes is a short, narrative-focused game bolstered by an ingenious central mechanic. You play through the memories of a recently deceased artist, but you jump from vignette to vignette by literally blinking, with your eyes tracked by your device’s front camera. At some point in each memory, a metronome icon appears; if you blink from then on, the memory will end, regardless of whether you’ve fully relived it, no matter how precious it may be. Eventually, you may find yourself straining to keep your eyes open, suffering against nature in a doomed attempt to hang onto the good times.

It’s all a bit on-the-nose, and honestly, the core conceit is probably better than the game itself. A big twist midway through borders on cloying, and there are bits of player choice that feel shoehorned in. Still, the way Before Your Eyes shifts control away from your hands, the way it makes us acknowledge the involuntary, is powerful. It speaks to our inevitable fate through an inevitable act, and it could only work as a video game. Just note that you may want to have some tissues handy at the end. — Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter

Over the last couple of years, Netflix has done a stellar job of securing the exclusive rights to mobile versions of major hits. Among those is Hades, one of the very best indies of the last several years. Some folks will argue that it’s one of the best games of all time.

Fans may be pleased to hear it runs tremendously well on mobile devices. Developer Supergiant spent a year optimizing Hades for iPhones and iPads (this one is not yet available on Android, sorry). Even on my aging iPhone 12, it runs smoothly thanks to support for 60 fps gameplay.

Hades is a sublime dungeon-crawler. Its pick-up-and-play nature and relatively short runs make it a great fit for the mobile format. Hades has customizable controls that you can resize and reposition, and the buttons change depending on the actions you can carry out (such as petting the three-headed hound of hell Cerberus). However, it’s easier to play with a physical controller like the Backbone One, since you’ll have a full view of all the action. — Kris Holt, Contributing Reporter

Poinpy flips the script of creator Ojiro Fumoto’s previous game, Downwell. Instead of plunging into the depths of a well, in Poinpy, your aim is to go up. You have a limited number of jumps in which to collect the right fruit to make a smoothie for a hungry beast that’s chasing you. You can bounce off of jars and enemies to gain more height. When you land, your jumps reset but you’ll feed the beast whatever fruit you have collected. It’s all about optimizing angles and jumps while making smart use of persistent power-ups.

This game is essentially flawless. Poinpy nails absolutely everything it sets out to do and it perfectly fits the vertical mobile format. The cute art style, engaging music and (if you can make it all the way to the end) affecting story make for an unforgettable cocktail. — K.H.

Kentucky Route Zero is a game vaguely about a road trip through the heart of Americana — not America, but the very idea of the United States. It’s more of an interactive art installment than a familiar adventure or exploration game, with slender characters traveling through a shadowy world of magical realism. It’s mysterious and slightly dangerous, and it rewards gentle curiosity with heartfelt human stories. It’s odd. Mostly, though, it’s beautiful.

Kentucky Route Zero was once a game trapped in purgatory. Created by members of an art collective, it rolled out over the course of nine years, revealed in 2011 and its final installment landing in 2020. The original release cadence was fitting for the game itself — disjointed yet perfectly seamless — but players today have the unique pleasure of being able to devour it all at once, closing the loop in one fell swoop. The thing is, Kentucky Route Zero is the kind of game that never really ends. It lives on in little snippets of music, monochromatic vignettes, haunting dialogue and a feeling of bittersweet nostalgia that never truly dissipates once you’ve hit play. — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter

Netflix generated some buzz when it secured the exclusive mobile rights to the latest remasters of three Grand Theft Auto games: GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas. By early 2024, the trifecta marked Netflix’s “most successful launch to date” in terms of game installs and engagement. The company said that some people subscribed just to play the games on their phones and tablets.

GTA: San Andreas is the best of the bunch, though I highly recommend using a physical controller instead of the touchscreen for this one. Along with having an engaging story, San Andreas adds some new wrinkles to the GTA formula by introducing RPG mechanics. You can pump iron to increase CJ’s muscle mass (and boost the efficacy of his melee attacks), go on dates and change up his clothes, hair style and tattoos.

The game looks pretty darn good on an iPhone — there are quite a few graphics settings you can adjust. The classic tunes on the radio stations sound great too. Overall, this is a solid port of an all-time classic. — K.H.

Developers have had a lot of fun in recent years mashing the roguelite genre with other types of games. Enter the indie darling Moonlighter, which is basically two games in one. It’s a top-down, twin-stick shooter roguelike in the vein of The Binding of Isaac or Tiny Rogues, and it’s also a shop management sim, if you’ve ever wanted to roleplay as a dealer of fine antiquities.

On paper it shouldn’t work, but it does. Both of these mechanics feel fantastic and feed into one another, similar to how the diving/restaurant aspects integrate in Dave the Diver. The game’s polished to a Nintendo-like sheen, with fluid controls for the nighttime battle segments and easy-to-understand rules for daytime retail pursuits. — Lawrence Bonk, Contributing Reporter

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge originally launched on consoles and PCs two-ish years ago, but it’s also been available to Netflix subscribers on mobile. And while I believe the best way to play it is with a controller, ideally on your couch with a few buddies, it’s still a delightful game to play on-the-go. It’s a complete port, with all the levels, character options and play modes you’d expect if you’re already familiar with the game. And the colorful, cartoonish retro-but-modern graphics are a perfect fit for a smaller screen. It even has extensive online play options, making it easy to get a crew of Turtles together to go after Shredder.

My only real reservation about Shredder’s Revenge as a mobile game is the on-screen controls. It’s a familiar issue — they work fine in a pinch, but doing more advanced moves or playing on higher difficulty levels often means you’ll need precision you just can’t get with virtual buttons. And some levels, like the ones where you’re on a skateboard and fighting lots of airborne enemies, require more precision than you can get just tapping a screen. Playing on a tablet certainly gives you more room, but a button-mashing game like this is better when you have actual buttons. My recommendation is you don’t worry about using a lot of lives and don’t go score-chasing and just enjoy whopping on Shredder’s goons. — Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor

While most strategy games ask you to defeat an enemy or construct a grand empire, Terra Nil does the exact opposite. Instead, your goal is to restore the land to its natural beauty, healing the ecosystem and providing a habitat for plants and animals to thrive. And while the game started out on PC, thanks to Netflix, Terra Nil has made a wonderful transition to mobile.

It offers a more relaxed and soothing style of gameplay while still providing a surprising amount of depth as you try to undo the damage of civilization. And while sometimes I wish the game was a bit more explicit about what you need to do to proceed, just sitting around and watching the birds and the bees merrily buzz around is its own reward. — Sam Rutherford, Senior Reporter

I don’t need to explain why trivia quizzes are fun — and Netflix’s Triviaverse is a pretty standard trivia game with a straightforward interface and simple controls. After you select single- or dual-player mode, questions float up with two or four options. You can hit the up, down, left or right buttons on your remote control to select your answer, and streaks of correct responses gain bonus points. See? Pretty easy. In single player mode, you’ll answer questions for three rounds, each more difficult than the last. Your score is totaled and then compared to preset levels to determine a rank — you’re basically beating yourself to get a personal best over time.

Two-player mode is the way I prefer Triviaverse. Each person gets to answer two timed rounds of questions, handing off the remote control between sets. The mechanics are incredibly simple, and honestly it’s not as exciting or fun as Overcooked or any of the Jackbox games I like to bust out at parties. But it’s the fact that Netflix is so universally available that makes Triviaverse a personal go-to. If I want a quick distraction or challenge, whether I’m by myself or with my partner, then it’s easy to find and almost always on anyone’s TV. That, to me, is the biggest appeal of Netflix games, and why they have a solid future. — Cherlynn Low, Deputy Editor