To celebrate World Emoji Day, Apple has rolled out its playful new “Emoji Game” to Apple News+ subscribers. The game challenges players to cleverly fill in words using emojis, like dropping a pear emoji into the word “disappear” or “fruitful.” Daily puzzles mean there’s always something fresh, and Game Center integration lets players track their progress against friends.
Apple is slowly building up a neat little selection of daily puzzles, akin to the popular offerings from The New York Times which notable include Wordle and Spelling Bee. News+ now includes five puzzles: Crossword, Mini, Sudoku, Quartiles, and Emoji Game.
The company is clearly hoping the popularity of this type of game will help sell a few News+ subscriptions, although $13/£13 is a steep paywall if you’re only interested in the games themselves and not the magazine and newspaper content.
The game is currently English language only, and you’ll need a fairly recent software update (iOS 18.4 et al) to access it. Given that Apple News+ isn’t widely available globally – and not everyone wants a news subscription – it feels like a missed opportunity to reach a wider audience. Maybe a games-only subscription tier like NYT Games, or inclusion into Apple Arcade, could help.
For now, though, you’ll need to sign up to play. If you bounced off News+ before, maybe it’s time to take another bite of the 🍎.