iPhone Duo games: what's coming, and what the fold does for play

Apple’s pitch for gaming on iPhone Duo is simple: a 7.6-inch display, an A20 Pro chip whose graphics are “up to 40 percent faster,” and ProMotion at up to 120 frames per second. What it hasn’t given yet is a list of games made for the fold. This page has what has been shown, what an un-updated game will look like, and the games that are doing something new with the phone.

What Apple showed

The keynote’s gaming slot went to Monster Hunter Outlanders, from Tencent and Capcom, running at up to 120 frames per second. It was shown as a showcase for the A20 Pro chip, which iPhone Duo shares with iPhone 18 Pro, not for the fold. Its App Store page lists October 29.

After the event, Apple put two more games in front of press and influencers on the Duo itself, mobilegamer.biz reported: HoYoverse’s Zenless Zone Zero and Azra Games’ UnGodly, which is due on November 11. The report quoted Apple’s Greg Essig: “Games look incredible on it. Bright, fast, and big enough that every detail shows.” It didn’t say what either game changes for the fold, and neither studio has announced a Duo version. That is why both are on our compatibility tracker rather than in the games list.

The same goes for the biggest names on the App Store. Genshin Impact, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Call of Duty: Mobile, PUBG Mobile, Pokémon GO and the Supercell games have announced nothing. Each has a page that says when we last checked.

How a game that hasn’t been updated looks

Every game runs. What it does on the open display depends on the version of Apple’s tools it was last built with, as for any app. Built with last year’s tools, it plays in an iPhone-shaped window in the middle of the inner display, with black around it. Only a game rebuilt with the iOS 27.1 SDK, which Apple cleared for the App Store on October 5, reaches the edges. The compatibility guide has the three cases.

Closed, nothing changes. The cover is a 5.4-inch iPhone screen, and a game plays there the way it does on any small iPhone. For a lot of quick games, that is where they will be played anyway.

The shape problem

The open display’s proportions are close to a sheet of A4 paper, Blake Crosley worked out from Apple’s screenshot sizes: about 1.42 to 1. That is far squarer than a phone held sideways. A game drawn for a 16:9 screen has two choices: show more of the world above and below, or keep its view and leave bands.

Apple’s guidelines push hard for the first. As Crosley quotes them: “Prefer changing the aspect ratio over letterboxing or pillarboxing in games; if you can’t avoid letterboxing or pillarboxing, add artwork to the padding area.” Games are also the one place Apple accepts a fixed orientation, Adapty’s guide notes, but it still asks them to fill the display in every pose.

Games that use the fold

The more interesting games aren’t the big ones. They’re the ones that treat the Duo as a new kind of console. These are in the games list, with their developers’ posts:

• Vector Racer and RetroRapid put the road above the fold and the steering and pedals below. Held half folded, the phone becomes a handheld with a screen and a control deck.
• Backgammon with Buddies folds its wooden board at its own hinge, right where the phone folds.
• Letters and SAPPER carry a game through every fold and turn without losing your place.
• Scoundrel Solitaire lays its dungeon out three ways: for the cover, the open display and the half fold.
• Nonogame and Puzizzle give their boards more room open. Puzizzle sizes its palette to one half.
• Delta, the game emulator, reflows its library for every pose.

On the ideas wall, builders have gone further, and made the hinge itself the controller:

• The hinge as a button. DuoBird and Folding Flappy flap when you snap the phone. FoldRush jumps when you bend it a couple of degrees. A pinball demo uses it as the flipper.
• The hinge as a dial. FoldSafe is a safe you crack by holding the phone at the right angle.
• Closing as an action. In SHUT you close the phone to guard against an attack. In Corgi Crossroads you close it to drop a manhole cover into place.
• A console you can hold. DS Store turns the upright Duo into a Nintendo DS, with the game above and the second screen and buttons below.
• Two players, one phone. DEPTH CHARGE is Battleship with the upright half as the wall between fleets. In Duo Arcade closing and opening the phone passes the turn.

Most of these exist only in Apple’s simulator, where a slider stands in for the hinge. Whether a real hinge reads fast enough for a flipper or a flap is the first thing worth checking on October 23. The hinge guide has what the system gives developers.

If you make games

The simulator checklist covers the poses to test. Two things matter more for games than for apps: render at the display’s real proportions instead of letterboxing, and keep touch controls clear of the crease when the phone is half folded. When your game is ready, send it to us, and we will add it to the games list.