🏆 2025 Apple Design Award Winners Highlights
Every year, Apple’s Design Awards remind us that apps and games aren’t just tools or time-killers—they’re experiences. The 2025 winners? They’ve gone beyond pixel-perfect layouts and slick animations. These creators built joy, emotion, inclusivity, and real-world impact into every tap, swipe, and scroll.
From a rogue poker-solitaire mashup you didn’t know you needed, to wildfire alerts saving lives in California, to a musical sandwich retelling of Romeo & Juliet. This year’s picks prove one thing: small ideas, done brilliantly, beat big features done blandly.
Whether you're a designer, product thinker, or someone who simply appreciates a beautifully crafted experience, there’s inspiration waiting in every category.
Delight & Fun
App Winner
🏆CapWords (HappyPlan Tech, China)
Snap a photo and instantly receive an interactive sticker plus real-world audio to help you learn vocabulary. Playful, educational, and a brilliant fusion of visual and auditory learning. app
Game Winner
🏆Balatro (LocalThunk, Canada)
A genre-bending indie game that blends solitaire, poker, and roguelike mechanics. It’s fast, unpredictable, and tactically satisfying—an instant classic for players who crave strategy with a dash of chaos. app
Runner-Ups:
- Lumy: A beautifully designed sun-tracking app for photographers, creatives, and outdoor lovers. It brings awareness of natural light into your planning, making golden hour easier to capture.
- Denim: A digital moodboard and scrapbook creator with a tactile, drag-and-drop interface that makes brainstorming sessions feel delightful and collaborative.
- Thank Goodness You’re Here!: A quirky, narrative-driven comedy game packed with absurdity and British humor, offering bite-sized fun across whimsical challenges.
- Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown: A modern, vibrant reimagining of the iconic series with fluid parkour mechanics and polished combat, showing that fun and nostalgia can go hand-in-hand.
Innovation
App Winner
🏆Play (Rabbit 3 Times, USA)
A SwiftUI prototyping tool designed for designers to build interactive flows and export production-ready code directly to Xcode. It merges visual design thinking with native development in a seamless workflow. app
Game Winner
🏆PBJ – The Musical (Philipp Stollenmayer, Germany)
A pun-filled, condiment-themed reinterpretation of Romeo & Juliet. Equal parts ridiculous and brilliant, it's a musical game that breaks every rule—and makes it work. app
Runner-Ups:
- Moises: A powerful music app that uses AI to separate vocals and instruments, ideal for musicians, learners, and remixers.
- Capybara AI Meeting Translator: Uses real-time AI to translate, transcribe, and summarize meetings across multiple languages—a must-have for global teams.
- Pawz: A mindful breathing app for kids and adults alike, using animated animal friends and calming interactions to teach emotional regulation.
- Gears & Goo: A physics puzzler that lets you experiment with mechanical contraptions and goo-based obstacles. Imaginative and interactive, pushing the boundaries of tactile gameplay.
Interaction
App Winner
🏆Taobao (Zhejiang Taobao, China)
An e-commerce experience reimagined for Vision Pro—immersive 3D product models, intuitive gesture control, and spatial browsing turn shopping into a tactile journey. app
Game Winner
🏆DREDGE (Black Salt Games, New Zealand)
An atmospheric fishing adventure layered with subtle horror elements. With intuitive drag-and-drop mechanics and seamless device transitions, it creates a uniquely eerie and interactive world. app
Runner-Ups:
- iA Writer: A minimalist writing app that focuses on clarity and flow. Exceptional markdown support and cross-platform sync enhance its ease of use.
- Mela Recipe Manager: Beautifully designed recipe organization with shopping list integration, meal planning, and intuitive tagging.
- Gears & Goo: Also nominated here for its interaction design—its modular build-and-play system blends creativity with challenge.
- Skate City New York: Expands the Skate City series with fluid touch controls and dynamic cityscapes, allowing players to express themselves through movement and rhythm.
Inclusivity
App Winner
🏆Speechify (USA)
A fully featured text-to-speech tool that accommodates diverse needs. From dyslexia to vision impairment, Speechify's wide voice library and accessibility integrations (VoiceOver, Dynamic Type) make it a leader in inclusive utility. app
Game Winner
🏆Art of Fauna (Klemens Strasser, Austria)
An empathetically designed puzzle game that includes full VoiceOver, contrast modes, haptic feedback, and accessibility-first layouts. A portion of the proceeds goes to wildlife conservation efforts, blending purpose with design. app
Runner-Ups:
- Evolve: A wellness app crafted for neurodivergent users, offering adaptable UI, routine builders, and mood tracking.
- Train Fitness: A gym companion that automatically detects reps and form using Apple Watch sensors, with dynamic text and voice cues.
- puffies.: A calming digital pet game that uses soft visuals and interactions to support mental health through play.
- Land of Livia: A story-based app that includes narrative branching for users with different needs, plus accessibility settings for screen readers and motion sensitivity.
Social Impact
App Winner
🏆Watch Duty (Sherwood Forestry Service, USA)
Built to save lives, this app delivers real-time wildfire information—perimeters, wind direction, and evacuation alerts—all powered by community-sourced data and mapping intelligence. app
Game Winner
🏆Neva (Devolver Digital, USA)
A powerful side-scrolling narrative that explores ecological loss and emotional healing through a girl and her spirit wolf companion. Visually rich, emotionally raw, and gently haunting. app
Runner-Ups:
- Ground News: A media literacy tool that shows bias ratings, multiple viewpoints, and story timelines. Empowers users to critically evaluate the news they consume.
- Opal: A digital well-being assistant that helps reduce screen time through app blocking, focus sessions, and mindful usage tracking.
- Ahoy! From Picardy: A heartfelt interactive story that teaches history and empathy through childlike narration and minimalistic design.
- Art of Fauna: Honored again here for its conservation contributions and inclusive design—it proves that good design can be ethically powerful too.
Visuals & Graphics
App Winner
🏆Feather: Draw in 3D (Sketchsoft, South Korea)
An iPad-exclusive sketching tool that turns flat drawings into dimensional art using Apple Pencil. Perfectly balanced between power and play, it's built for creatives who want to think beyond the canvas. app
App Winner
🏆Infinity Nikki (Infold Games, Singapore)
A sprawling, open-world adventure focused on fashion and fantasy. Lavishly animated characters, magical creatures, and cohesive color palettes elevate it to visual art. app
Runner-Ups:
- Vocabulary: A minimalist word-learning app with elegant UI, illustrated metaphors, and motion-driven vocabulary drills.
- CellWalk: A science exploration app where cells come to life with cinematic graphics and touch-based navigation through microscopic worlds.
- Control Ultimate Edition: A AAA console title adapted for iOS that retains stunning real-time rendering, dramatic lighting, and surreal architecture.
- Neva: Once again recognized for its visual storytelling—every scene feels like a hand-painted frame from a graphic novel.
Key Takeaways for Designers & Product Leaders
Micro-Innovations Win Big
CapWords and Play are proof that simple ideas, executed with insight and intent, are often the most impactful.
Interaction Must Feel Effortless
Whether it’s 3D shopping or fishing in a haunted archipelago, great interaction design fades into the background—letting users immerse in the experience.
Accessibility Isn’t Optional
Designing for all users—regardless of ability—should be baked in, not bolted on. It’s the difference between usable and unforgettable.
Design Can Do More Than Delight
Products like Watch Duty and Neva demonstrate that great design can also inform, warn, and even heal.
Visuals Are Not Just Decoration
Stunning, cohesive visual design—like Feather’s fluid strokes or Infinity Nikki’s animated worlds—elevates your product into an emotional journey.
Pro Tips for Designers, Developers, and PMs
- Delight is in the Details: A subtle sound, a tactile haptic, or a visual reward can transform how users remember your product.
- Think Platform-Native: Design for the unique capabilities of each platformVision Pro’s spatial space, SwiftUI’s live previews, or the pressure sensitivity of Apple Pencil.
- Build for Everyone: VoiceOver support, dynamic type, and adjustable layouts should be foundational, not afterthoughts. Accessibility is design maturity in action.
Staff Editor
