How Can I Install Custom Games on My iPad?

You can definitely install apps in development mode! Just connect your iPad to your IDE and load your application from there. It's mainly for testing purposes. And like someone else suggested, consider web apps—they can even act like native apps if you make them progressive.

If you're leaning towards making a native app, you'll need a Mac and it sounds like you'll have to dive into Swift. For reference, Swift is somewhat similar to other high-level languages like Java in terms of syntax, but it has its unique quirks.

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions! I think I'll take a closer look at the web app option since it sounds pretty doable.

One option is to develop your games for the web, so you can just use Safari on your iPads to access them. It's a straightforward approach! If you're looking to side-load apps, though, that could be trickier and might need a developer account to make it work smoothly.