Reel Games on iPad
A bigger screen changes what you play
Reel Games is one app across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision. On iPad it needs iPadOS 18.6 or later. What changes is which games you reach for. A chessboard that fills a phone edge to edge has room to breathe on an iPad, so you can read the whole position and tap the square you actually meant.
Board and grid games gain the most
Chess and Checkers are the clearest case. On a phone you see the position, but your thumb sits on part of the board, and lining up on the square you want takes a second look. On an iPad the board opens up, and the squares are wide enough to aim at without thinking about it. You can scan a file, check a diagonal, and put the piece down where you were looking.
Sudoku and Minesweeper work the same way for a different reason. Both are solved by comparing distant parts of the grid: a nine in one box rules out a column three boxes over, and a 2 next to a cleared square tells you about a corner you have not touched yet. Seeing all of it at once, without moving your eyes past your own hand, is most of the work.
An iPad invites a longer sitting
A phone gets played standing in line. An iPad gets played sitting down, and that pushes you toward the games that need more than ninety seconds. A Sudoku you finish rather than abandon halfway. A game of Chess played out to the endgame instead of a fast opening and a resignation. The swipe feed still works the same way here: flick up for the next game, flick back down to return to the one you left.
A sitting that long is usually a few games rather than one. Finish a Sudoku, look at a Chess position until it stops making sense, drop into Minesweeper, then come back to the position with fresh eyes. Switching costs nothing, since each game opens with no loading screen. The tablet is usually propped up or flat on the table for all of this, which means both hands are free and neither of them is parked over the board you are trying to read.
One listing covers the iPad and the iPhone
There is no separate iPad edition to hunt for. Reel Games is a single 50.7 MB download from Axiosware LLC, and the listing that installs on an iPad running iPadOS 18.6 or later is the same one that installs on the iPhone in your pocket. The games are identical on both. What differs is how much of a board you can see at once, and therefore which ones you open.
The library is 47 games and it grows: new games are added regularly. You start with 12 free games and no credit card. Reel Games Pro opens the complete library and every game added later, at $3.99 a month or $9.99 a year, with a three-day trial and cancellation whenever you want.
To scale
The same board, on both screens
One game screen from the app, drawn at the ratio of a 6.1 inch phone to an 11 inch tablet. The rules do not change. The amount of board you can take in at a glance does.
Roughly three times the area for the same grid. On Sudoku that is the difference between reading a column and squinting at one.
On a phone you play around your thumb. On an iPad you play the whole board.
On a tablet
Four worth opening on the bigger screen
Chess
StrategyA bigger board means you read the whole position at a glance and place a piece on the square you meant.
How to playSudoku
PuzzleThe 9x9 grid gets real space, so scanning a column against a box no longer means squinting at nine tiny cells.
How to playMinesweeper
StrategyBigger cells mean fewer fat-finger detonations, and you can see the whole field while you work out which square is safe.
How to playCheckers
StrategyCheckers rewards seeing the jump chain two moves ahead, which is easier when the board is not the size of a coaster.
How to play
The same app runs on four Apple platforms
One purchase, one library. iPad needs iPadOS 18.6 or later, iPhone needs iOS 18.6 or later, and it also runs on a Mac with macOS 15.6 or later, Apple M1 chip or later and on Apple Vision with visionOS 2.6 or later. There is no Android version.
Questions
iPad questions
- Does Reel Games work on iPad?
- Yes. It runs on iPad with iPadOS 18.6 or later, from the same App Store listing as iPhone. That listing also installs on a Mac with an M1 chip or later, and on Apple Vision.
- Which games are best on the bigger screen?
- Board and grid games. Chess, Checkers, Sudoku and Minesweeper all involve comparing one part of the board against another, and an iPad shows the whole thing at a size where you can place a piece precisely. Arcade games play fine, they just gain less.
- How many games do you get for free?
- Twelve games are free with no credit card. Reel Games Pro unlocks the complete library and all future games for $3.99 a month or $9.99 a year, and it includes a three-day free trial you can cancel anytime. The specific twelve are not listed publicly.
Put the whole board on screen
Free to download, and the games that benefit most from the extra room are the ones people keep coming back to.
12 games free to start · 50.7 MB download · no ads