Asphalt Legends, Honkai: Star Rail & JoJo Golden Spirit
Five games joined the catalogue this week, and this time the big names are online games: a space RPG that won Apple’s iPhone Game of the Year, the long-running Gameloft racer and the first JoJo game released outside Japan. Behind them come a mushroom strategy game with an award shelf of its own and a zombie roguelike. All five are free to start and slow you down in their own way, whether that’s grinding through battles, running out of boost or dying at wave twenty. These builds cut some of that out. No subscriptions, no waiting. Download any of them as an IPA and install on your iPhone in one tap, no PC and no developer account of your own.
Honkai: Star Rail
HoYoverse, the studio behind Genshin Impact, launched Honkai: Star Rail on 26 April 2023 on iPhone, Android and PC, and the launch-day downloads passed 20 million. By the end of the year Apple had named it iPhone Game of the Year. You ride the Astral Express from world to world: a space station full of sealed Curios, a planet locked in endless winter, a city stuck inside a dream. Fights are turn-based, but they reward planning. You build a four-person team around enemy weaknesses, break their toughness bars, then chain follow-up attacks and damage over time. The story is fully voiced in four languages, and new characters arrive through gacha banners with every patch. Version 4.6, the one in this build, brings Pearl and a new Astropolis chapter.
The time sink is the daily routine: the same domains and bosses, cleared again and again for upgrade materials.
What’s unlocked: two switches. Game speed control makes fights and animations play faster, and Blind Enemies stops enemies from noticing you. The changelog is clear that this is a cheat on a live online game and could get your account banned, so use it at your own risk and preferably not on the account you’ve spent years building.
Asphalt Legends
Gameloft released this racer in 2018 as Asphalt 9: Legends. In July 2024 it relaunched as Asphalt Legends Unite, came to PlayStation, Xbox and Switch with cross-platform races, and moved everyone’s Asphalt 9 progress across. Today the App Store lists it simply as Asphalt Legends. It’s arcade racing as the series has always done it. There are more than 250 licensed cars from Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini and Bugatti, tracks loosely based on real cities, and nitro, drifts and jumps off ramps all through a lap. You can steer manually or let TouchDrive handle the line while you pick the route and the moment to boost. Online races take up to eight drivers, and the latest seasons added the Bugatti Tourbillon, the Ferrari F80 and a TEKKEN 8 event.
What’s unlocked: unlimited nitro, so the boost never runs dry, and roads with no traffic and no other cars to crash into. The changelog says nothing about online play, but it’s an online game with real opponents, so the same caution as with any modified client applies.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Spirit
Golden Spirit is the officially licensed JoJo mobile game. Hoolai Game develops it, Wanda Cinemas Games and KLabGames are behind it too, and it launched worldwide outside Japan on 13 August 2026, the first JoJo mobile game to get an official release outside Japan. It covers the first six parts, from Phantom Blood to Stone Ocean, with more than 50 playable characters and their Stands at launch. It’s a squad strategy RPG. Each character has their own attack range, some matchups are built in (Ripple users hit vampires and zombies harder), and firing three ultimates from different styles sets off Rush, a short window where the whole team deals extra damage. Weather on the battlefield changes fights too: a blizzard slows attacks, and fog shortens ranged units’ reach. Yugo Kanno, who scored Stardust Crusaders, wrote the music. On top of the story stages there are World Boss fights and ranked PvP.
What’s unlocked: a damage multiplier and a defense multiplier, so your team hits harder and takes less in return.
Mushroom Wars 2
Zillion Whales released Mushroom Wars 2 on iPhone in October 2016, and it later came to Steam, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox. These days the App Store lists Azur Games as the publisher. It’s a real-time strategy game stripped down to the essentials. Mushroom villages produce troops, you swipe to send them at neutral or enemy buildings, and whoever holds more of the map at the right moment wins. Upgrading a village into a tower or a forge changes what it does, and heroes add abilities that can turn a lost fight around. The campaign runs past 200 missions, and PvP takes up to four players. It won Best Mobile Game at GTP Indie Cup 2017 and Best Multiplayer Game at Casual Connect the same year.
What’s unlocked: the whole campaign map from the start, extra troop controls in campaign battles, and weaker opponents. Bots can be switched off or stripped of their skills, and skill cooldowns are cut in the campaign and in bot matches. The changelog lists these for the campaign and bots only, not for PvP.
Box Head: Zombies Must Die!
The name will remind some people of Boxhead, Sean Cooper’s old Flash zombie shooter, but this is a different game from a different studio. Panthera Company released it at the end of 2023, and the App Store now lists it as Box Head: Roguelike, rated 4.8 from about 1,500 ratings. You fight in 3D as one survivor against waves of zombies that keep getting bigger. No two runs play out the same, the arsenal runs from flamethrowers to katanas and laser rifles, and the armour and gear you upgrade between runs decide how long you last. The shop carries the usual extras: VIP cards, chip packs and weapon bundles from $1.99 to $19.99. The current version also has a Halloween event running.
What’s unlocked: a hack menu with one-hit kills, higher movement speed, god mode and unlimited currencies.
How to install
All five install from builds.io the way a normal App Store download does: tap GET, install, play. No PC, and no developer account of your own to keep alive. The first time you add a device, Apple runs a one-time “processing” step. Most devices are ready within a day, and some take up to three while Apple works through the queue. It happens once, and every install after it is instant.
Last week’s new arrivals were a lost cat, a sandboarding classic and a card-driven kingdom builder: Little Kitty, Big City, Alto’s Odyssey and 9 Kings. For the rest of the games we carry and what each build changes, see the hacked games list for iPhone.