Tap to Win: The Ultimate Arcade Minigames Collection – Review

Tap to Win: The Ultimate Arcade Minigames Collection is one of those rare free-to-play games that provides all of its content up-front and ad-free, offering the option to watch one only to prolong a particularly impressive run. And with no unlockables or extra purchases to speak of, such runs are only done for bragging rights – making Tap to Win a perfect choice for any fun-loving minigame fan who wants a slick and unobtrusive iOS option.

Fans of console-and-handheld series Warioware and Rhythm Heaven will feel right at home with Tap to Win, which shares the same hectic and fast-paced “microgame” style in which many bite-sized games are completed in quick succession until the player suffers too many failures. Each game is 5-10 seconds long and offers only a brief, (often one word) description of how victory is achieved before you’re expected to perform. The games themselves are often hilarious and always offbeat, featuring activities from parking a car to picking your nose… And they ramp up in speed and difficulty the more games you complete in a session, making each run all the more feverish as your score increases.

These scores are also represented on in-game leaderboards, the sole reason to keep playing aside from the player’s personal sense of enjoyment. And while the average player may not have any desire to compete, those who do will play on – thus investing more time in the game, and possessing a greater motivation to watch ads and achieve high scores. This ensures that those who get the most out of the game will also contribute the most to its ad revenue, which is how it should be if you ask me.

While Tap to Win does an excellent job of making all of its content fun and accessible to all, the roster of actual microgames is not very large. The vibrant artwork, wacky games, and meme references make for a bold first impression, but with only 15-20 microgames total the novelty of the game can wear off quickly. However, the tight mechanics and difficulty levels that adjust based on score keep the limited pool of games eminently replayable, making Tap to Win worthy of a permanent space on your phone if you’re a fan of the microgame collection genre.