I’ve had an Apple One Premier subscription for years. The bundle gives me access to all of Apple’s subscription services, including iCloud+, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Fitness+, Apple News+, and Apple Arcade.

I use most of the services to varying degrees, but I had never really used Apple Arcade. All that changed a couple of months ago when I innocently downloaded one Apple Arcade game. Since then, my life has been taken from me.

I Never Thought Much of Apple Arcade

When you’re paying for an expensive subscription like Apple One Premier, you want to get your money’s worth, so I really wanted to take advantage of Apple Arcade. However, whenever I took a look at what was on offer, I was underwhelmed. The vast majority of games just didn’t appeal to me.

Even now, there are games such as Solitaire, Hello Kitty Island Adventure, Crossword Jam, Words of Wonders, and Sudoku in the list of top games on Apple Arcade. I’m sure these games are fine, but I have no interest in playing them.

I’ve never been a huge fan of mobile games in general. I have expensive consoles that can run incredible games with stunning graphics, and if I want to play handheld, I have my Switch. With little free time for gaming, it’s always seemed crazy to waste it playing Solitaire on my iPhone when I could be playing something amazing on my PS5.

I’d Heard Good Things About Balatro

Everything changed when I decided to download Balatro+. Balatro is a roguelike deck-building game based on Poker, and Balatro+ is a free version of Balatro that’s included in Apple Arcade. I’d heard good things about the game from friends and seen it mentioned a lot online.

I figured I’d check out what all the fuss was about and downloaded Balatro+ to my iPhone. Little did I know that Balatro would become the gateway drug into my addiction. It turned out to be an awesome game.

The game starts out like Poker, where the value of your scoring cards is increased by a multiplier based on the strength of the hand that you play. As the game progresses, powerful Jokers give you additional abilities that enable you to reach the increasingly high targets for each blind. If you fail to reach the target, your run ends, and you start all over from the beginning.

The difficulty is perfectly judged so that the game is challenging without being completely unforgiving. Once you defeat a specific deck, you unlock further decks with slightly different starting properties, so there’s always more to achieve. I really enjoyed playing Balatro, but things didn’t get out of hand; Screen Time on my iPhone tells me that I averaged about 90 minutes a day when I was playing it most.

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Balatro Made Me Check Out Other Apple Arcade Games

Balatro was great fun, and I was able to enjoy playing it without it taking over my life. I wondered if there might be any other good games hidden away on Apple Arcade. I decided to take a look, unaware of what I was letting myself in for.

Part of the appeal of Balatro was that each blind only took a minute or two to play. This made it perfect for playing on mobile. When I had a few minutes to kill, I could whip out my iPhone, play a couple of blinds, and then get on with my day. I wondered if there were any other good deck-building games on Apple Arcade that I could try.

A quick Google led me to Slay the Spire+. Like Balatro+, this is the free Apple Arcade version of Slay the Spire. The standard version of Slay the Spire costs $9.99 in the App Store.

The game looked good and had a loyal following online, so I downloaded it. What was the worst that could happen?

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I Can’t Stop Playing Slay the Spire

Here’s the problem. I literally cannot stop playing this game. It’s not the greatest game ever made, but it’s insanely addictive and perfectly judged to make you keep coming back for one more run.

In each run, you fight your way through a procedurally-generated tower, using a deck of cards with different abilities. As you progress, you earn new cards and pick up relics that give you additional capabilities. You start off having to fight through three acts, with a powerful boss at the end of each act.

I struggled at first as I got used to how the game worked and the best strategies to use. I slowly improved my skills until I finally reached the Act 3 boss. It was a tough fight, but the boss was down to its last few health points, so I threw caution to the wind, ignored playing any defensive cards, and killed the boss, thinking that I’d finally made my first successful run.

At which point, the boss immediately came back to life, with full health, and proceeded to destroy me with a single attack. Far from discouraging me, it just made me want to start again, since I now knew what I would be facing with that boss. Before long, I’d defeated Act 3 and moved on to trying to do the same with one of the other starting characters.

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I Wish I Could Put the Genie Back in the Bottle

The trouble is that defeating the Act 3 boss with each different main character isn’t the end of the game. It’s only really the beginning. Firstly, it unlocks an Act 4 that can only be accessed by collecting three keys and then defeating an Act 3 boss.

Beyond that, however, is the Ascension system. Once you’ve defeated Act 3 with any character, you unlock the first Ascension level for that character. Defeat Act 3 on the first Ascension level, and you unlock the next one, all the way up to Ascension level 20.

Each Ascension level adds a new negative modifier that makes the game harder, and these stack; by level 20, you have 20 negative modifiers to deal with. There’s enough content to keep you going for a long time, and this is the problem.

According to the Screen Time settings on my iPhone, I put 35 hours into Slay the Spire last week, averaging 5 hours a day. I find myself playing while I eat, playing while I watch TV in the evening, and playing in the bathroom. I still have so much more to do in the game, so I don’t see this stopping anytime soon.

The other big problem is that playing 35 hours of Slay the Spire in a week has been destroying my battery life. Last week, 54% of my battery usage went to Slay the Spire, and I’ve been having to charge my phone a lot more than usual. I’ve even had to resort to using a power bank at times to ensure I can continue to get my regular fix.

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Here’s my advice. If you’ve been sleeping on Apple Arcade like I was, you might want to stay sleeping. Despite Apple Arcade having a lot of games that you may have no interest in, you might find a few that you’ll enjoy.

You then run the risk of having your every waking moment spent either playing that game or thinking about playing it. The irony that one of the Act 3 bosses in Slay the Spire is called Time Eater has not been lost on me.