Playing Old Llamasoft iPhone & iPad games

Back in 2017 a large number of games and apps were rendered obsolete when iOS 11 removed 32-bit compatibility: the appocalypse. At that time I was still downloading apps into iTunes as backups, and seem to have put aside some of these great Llamasoft games—Gridrunner and Minotron: 2112. What foresight!

Since then, with the help of others, I’ve tracked down the rest, and we now have all nine games of the Minotaur Project — Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin’s run of iOS games — preserved and available.

You should be able to side load them onto any jailbroken iOS device running iOS 10 or earlier, like an iPad mini (1st generation will be usable as-is; later generations may need to be downgraded), iPod touch (1st to 5th generation will be usable as-is; later generations may need to be downgraded) or similar iPhone.

I’m still hoping for an easy way to play these on modern devices, so let me know if such a thing exists!

Most games work on iPhone, iPod touch & iPad. Some game pages also include beta PC versions.

Edit, 2021-09-13: I’ve added a decrypted version of Minotron: 2112 that should be easier to install on a jailbroken device.

Edit, 2025-02-06: I can’t remember when exactly, but a kind somebody provided me with a decrypted version of Gridrunner which I’ve now uploaded to its page.

Edit, 2026-07-03: updated the blog post to reference all the games in the Minotaur Project, and added their release dates.

Further Reading

For more info on generating a decrypted IPA file: /2021/09/13/playing-old-32-bit-ios-games-in-2021/