Scarlet Tide

Scarlet Tide is a survivors-like for iPhone. You hold a sword that swings itself; your job is where to stand. Kill things, walk over the coins they drop, and spend the levels those coins buy on one of three upgrades offered at a time. Each phase is its own field, and each ends on a boss that cannot be outrun. Beat all five and you are a Grandmaster - then keep going, through a desert, a jungle, a wasteland and more, until one of them stops you. Dying costs you the phase you are in, never the ones behind you, and you keep your upgrades either way. The game gets easier the harder you find it. Three weapons are three different games. The sword is wide and close. The gun is a line that reaches. The staff casts fire, lightning and ice in turn, each landing as an area rather than at a point - and its ring of ice slows what it catches and gathers the coins around you. Twenty-two awards. Most are for getting further; the ones worth having are for how you played - beating a boss untouched, or clearing a phase without a single sword upgrade. Controls are on the glass: a stick under your left thumb, a heavy attack under your right. Everything else happens on its own. Pausing saves the whole run, crowd included, so a game interrupted in a waiting room is still there later. Free, with nothing sold inside it and no advertising. No account, no sign-in, and nothing ever leaves your phone.