The mobile game industry has boomed over the last decade, moving beyond simple handhelds like the Gameboy to invading our phones. These games are cheap, depending on currency. Free games of course come at the cost of advertising and less noble monetizing. But they are small, targeted, and at times uniquely little experiences helping one ignore the guy eating sauerkraut on the bus as one commutes from work to home and vice versa.
They keep us sane, relatively. One can pick them up and put them down at any point. Bite-sized gaming. Here’s a round up of the best of the best, with one instance of the absolute worst.
25. King
King is a company helmed by the closest thing to a soulless, blood-sucking incubus our world has seen recently. Highly litigious, this company makes a living stealing the work of real developers and then somehow suing the individual they stole it from for theft. CandySwipe was a game produced by an independent developer which was then copied by King two years later. With the success of Candy Crush, King then sued the independent developer for copyright infringement somehow occurring two years in the past. This is almost certainly not the complete story. But I could only take so much.
You can’t make this up. But King’s lawyers can and did. They deserve a place in this list as predatory and wholly unsavory characters. Everything they’ve made has already been made by someone more deserving of your commerce. Everyone is just ripping off Bejeweled, anyway.
King’s Official Site, Ruining Crash Bandicoot
24. Square-Enix
The gigantic role-playing game-makerSquare-Enix has, over the last several years, been cashing in on our desire to re-explore familiar games. Several Final Fantasy titles have been ported over to mobile, with some quality of life improvements, like saving anywhere, to help you ignore the world around you. The classics are the classics for a reason. They’re old! No surprises here, just old friends you still love since they are fictional and don’t post stupid opinions on social media.
Final Fantasy Mobile
23. Zepto Lab
Zepto Lab pumped out Cut the Rope from Russia some years back and the game is still great. Supposedly it has been downloaded some several hundred million times, which doesn’t tell anyone anything other than their marketers deserve a raise. But the game itself is good, too! Here’s hoping the developers got a raise, having produced several versions of this little gem by now. They’ve also produced a few educational apps starring our favorite little Om Nom.
Cut the Rope
22. Rovio
Rovio is the house that built Angry Birds, which so far as I am aware, is probably the only mobile game which has a movie made about it. Ignoring that completely, the game itself is a fun little exercise in porcicide at the hands of angry avian destroyers. A fun little physics thing, no one should die without having at least played Angry Birds for an hour.
Angry Birds
21. OMGPop
OMGPop no longer exists, having been devoured and absorbed by Zynga for sustenance like an eight-year old with a juice box. But while they existed, they took Pictionary and made it remote. It is simple and a half-decent little thing to do when your crazy uncle is in town for Thanksgiving. Spoiler warning, however. Most pictures strangers draw are penises. Because everything having to do with people is completely stupid and the internet doesn’t change that at all.
Draw Something
20. Epic Games
Epic built Fortnite, which once again, I don’t quite understand. That said, my understanding doesn’t appear to be necessary for its success. The game is available on mobile as well as consoles and PC and whatever else one might wish to use to build pillow forts or whatever it is that goes on in Fortnite. I assume players get together and talk about how terrible it is to lie to each other in between roasting hot dogs on a bonfire.
Fortnite
19. Mojang
Mojang produced Minecraft, which even my parents have heard of. While they suspect perhaps kids use it solely to commune with the dark forces long slumbering deep in the earth, they have heard of it. To be fair, I used it to commune with friends quite a bit, so they may be onto something. Microsoft owns Minecraft these days, but they didn’t produce it. They just keep it going. How else are kids going to make dark pacts with the underworld, otherwise?
Minecraft
18. Ndemic Creations
Ndemic Creations produced Plague, Inc, a fun little end of the world simulator where one does their best to move COVID-19 around the world. For about a month of my life, everyone around me was playing this thing, laughing about how hilariously awful a worldwide pandemic would be. Now, they play Minecraft hiding under the sheets in their bedroom with the lights off, terrified someone is at the door delivering their steaks without a mask.
Plague, Inc
Ndemic Creations Official Site
17. Nintendo
That’s right, Nintendo. The Switch is a mobile console, and it counts! Not much more need be said here, other than I haven’t played the latest Zelda. But I am seriously considering stealing it from a friend in order to do so. Mobile means easy to misplace! By 99% of accounts, the latest Zelda is excellent.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild
16. Ubisoft
Known mostly for Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft also happens to own the rights to Prince of Persia, and they’ve released the old school classic on mobile to annoy all of us once again. Prince of Persia, by the way, was once lost by the original developer; by “lost” I mean the source code for the game had vanished. He had no idea where it was, until one day years later, his mother found a shoebox full of old floppy disks in a dusty closet. Bingo! Now we can scream in frustration at our phones after missing a perfectly simple jump and/or getting crushed to death. Bus rides just got a lot angrier.
Prince of Persia Classic
15. Snowman Studios
Snowman Studios took a risk and pumped out a mobile skateboarding game which, contrary to all expectations, was a ton of fun. Visually unique, it reminds one of Paperboy from back in the day, or perhaps Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater after a bit too much ketamine and needs to chill things out for a bit while they ride it out. An excellent little time waster.
Skate City
14. Capcom
Another gigantic company branching out into mobile a bit, Capcom has pumped out several of their classic games for mobile of late. It isn’t creative, but it is lucrative, and some of these games are still fun thirty years later; like 1942. Interestingly, Capcom’s homepage looks terrible. But I promise they are professionals. Maybe they threw a design intern a bone, or something. I always advise interns to be whipped and simply observe, rather than try to contribute, but I don’t work at Capcom.
1942 Mobile
13. SNK
SNK, like so many other companies, has discovered the free money generated by releasing classic games on mobile. Blazing Star is available on mobile and it is wonderful. Between this, remembering when to take my pills, and enjoying Matlock, my time is pretty much all sewn up and accounted for. I will occasionally take a break to wave my cane in the air at kids riding bicycles too swiftly down the street, however. If I don’t, who will?
Blazing Star Mobile
12. Konami
Yet another developer cashing in on nostalgia, Konami has made a ton of their classics like Castlevania available on mobile. If you love cheesy dialogue and whips, these are the games for you. Also, Madame Muffy’s Pain Palace was recently cleared to open amid the COVID-19 pandemic; one can play Castlevania while waiting in line to get in. Konami Code not included. Bring a mask. You know the one.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night Mobile
11. 2K
X-Com is a great turn-based strategy game akin to old school titles like Shining Force and Final Fantasy Tactics, but with the additional benefit of lasers and aliens. There are console versions available and they are legitimately infuriatingly difficult, what with the whole permanent death thing that goes on. But you can also suffer at the hands of an evil, malicious random number generator on mobile now, too! Progress is wonderful.
X-Com: Enemy Within
10. Taito Corporation
Space Invaders! Space! Invaders! That is all! Space! And invaders from it!
Space Invaders
Taito Corporation Official Site
9. Niantic Labs
One may have heard of Pokémon Go on the local news or perhaps they were trampled under foot by a mob of individuals, heads down over their phones, as they hunted for a “boss” to do away with. This game was immensely popular for a solid month or two and I regularly witnessed these Pokemobs (trademark pending) waddling out into traffic in their attempt to catch them all. Niantic makes a killing selling geolocation data mined from their users I’m told. But at the same time, you gotta catch them all, so what are you going to do.
Pokémon Go
8. Rockstar Games
Rockstar Games specializes in gigantic, open world games full of satire and entirely inappropriate humor which comments on the absurdity of modern society. They’ve joked about how a new installment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise would be extremely difficult to make, but I’m fairly sure they’re just engaged in some tricky-hobbit-like pre-marketing. While we wait and reality itself becomes more and more satirical in the meantime, we have GTA: San Andreas on mobile to scratch the itches a topical cream can’t take care of.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
7. Aspyr Media, Inc
Bioware originally produced Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic back when they were producing good games and weren’t looking quite so haggard. It remains brilliant and has a mobile port now, thanks to a company called Aspyr Media, who lucked out scoring that contract and statement of work. They’ve handled a couple other hot properties, as well, with more or less respect. Check them out.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
6. PopCap
Years back, PopCap produced Plants Vs Zombies. While the benefit of hindsight shows us quite clearly the zombie and the plant are natural enemies, it wasn’t perfectly clear prior to this game’s arrival. Once we had it in our hands, and the sequel, and the countless spin-offs, it was the most obvious thing in the world. Charming art and animations propel this ridiculous tower defense game to greatness. Forward, plant soldiers.
Plants Vs Zombies
5. Halfbrick Studios
Halfbrick Studios produced Fruit Ninja, which for a year was just about all anyone was playing. It was ported everywhere, from iPhone to Xbox Kinect. Personally, I played it on Kinect for the most part, as I found myself working as a Release Manager for Xbox 360 and needed to justify using a Kinect. The delicious carnage, the joy of waving one’s hand and eviscerating pears with a negligent abandon, is difficult to overstate. Just give it a go. I’m confident a copy exists for Oculus users.
Fruit Ninja
Halfbrick Studios Official Site
4. People fun, Inc
PeopleFun, Inc has made dozens of games, but none of them have seized my wife’s attention like Wordscapes. Without exaggeration, she has spent over one thousand hours just word hunting in the damned thing. Whenever I test a joke on her, odds are good, she wasn’t listening to me at all. I threw out an entire essay I was writing before I realized she just wasn’t listening, versus it not being funny. We live, we learn, I learn my place in the pecking order of interest.
Wordscapes
3. GameClub
GameClub has released a ton of games, as is normal for a mobile game developer which has existed for longer than five minutes. But I have it on the highest authority, which is of course my wife, their Spider games are most excellent. The object of the game, as one assumes the object of a spider would be, is to spin webs and entrap unwitting flies and other sources of nourishment. Sounds simple enough but it is immensely satisfying to play.
Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon
2. Amanita Design
Amanita hails from the Czech Republic, where they specialize in producing haunting, charming little platformer type games. They have a sort of consistent art style which one assumes Tim Burton would find delightful. At any given time, my wife is playing one of these games. She has likely logged around five hundred hours, just running around, loving the visuals.
Samorost 3
1. ThatGameCompany
ThatGameCompany made waves with their console releases first, with classics like Journey and Flower. But they’ve branched into mobile games with their latest release, Sky. Art in their games is always top notch and Sky is no exception. It even won some sort of iPhone Game of the Year award. It is quite similar to Journey, possibly one of the best little games ever produced, also by ThatGameCompany.
Sky: Children of the Light
Whew! That was quite the ride through Mobile Gametopia. There are more, to be sure, as the mobile games industry mostly relies on quantity to see through its survival. Probabilistically, at least a handful should be excellent. But these are easily the best offers available I’ve come across. The price for mobile games has always been right, so if you don’t like some of these, you’re only out a bit of time rather than dollars.
And we’re all looking for the best way to waste time, aren’t we?
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