75 Mobile Games You Should Be Playing Right Now
Delete Words With Friends. Leave behind Flappy Bird. And for goodness’ sake, get rid of Candy Crush. These are the mobile games you want on your phone.
It’s effortless to get into a rut of mobile game-playing, attempting over and over again to raise your score in Crossy Road or conquer the world in Clash of Clans. But there’s a entire world of good games out there waiting for your to attempt, some of them decidedly under the radar. It’s time to explosion up your smartphone or tablet and get ready for some better gaming.
Xenoraid
You may think you’ve played shoot em’ up games like Xenoraid before, piloting a spacecraft through oncoming swings of enemies. But Xenoraid offers a delightful and game-changing twist on the genre. You control not one, but four separate spacecraft—which you switch inbetween.
As the game progresses you upgrade and evolve each craft to your liking. So you might find yourself interchanging inbetween a clunky monster brimming with missiles, a quicker craft adept at dodging, a ship built for pumping out shotgun shells, and one that takes forever to overheat. Or, you know, just four clunky monsters. Heck, it’s up to you.
Be warned, when one of your spacecraft loses all its health, it’s gone for good. And it’s devastating. You will be missed, Ensign Hubble.
To The Moon
This will likely be the least mechanically complicated but most narratively rich game you’ll ever download on your phone. Because To The Moon is a point and click story (not fairly a game with only a few puzzles sprinkled along the way) spoiling the plot here would be remiss. So we’ll just tell you how it starts. You are in the future, employed by a company that has the technology to rewrite a person’s memories. You arrive at the deathbed of an old man, ready to travel into his mind, kicking off at his most latest memories, reliving and reworking them, then moving further backward into a mercurial past.
Steredenn
A unspoiled and beautiful side-scrolling shoot em’ up from begin to finish with enough punch and story to make the entire practice feels like an epic space opera. You navigate your starship through a labyrinth of randomly-generated barriers, enemies, and oncoming ordnance, upgrading your ship as you go and fighting from boss battle to boss battle.
Steredenn has just one peculiarity that makes it shine above others in the genre. The very few, randomly dropped weapons each boss releases are often. weird. Like a literal boomerang of blue energy, or a short-range flamethrower—and they’re the only weapons you get. So much of Steredenn revolves around mastering what you’re randomly given and not what you want.
Still, this is the best unspoiled shoot em’ up we’ve ever played.
SPACEPLAN
The year is 2017, and evil game developers across the world have developed life-draining software that transfigures a person’s time and physical energy into absolute nothingness. The software are called clicker games—and they’re super addicting.
SPACEPLAN is certainly my dearest so far, a weird mix of idle and active incremental game that leisurely unfolds a story. For those fresh to the genre, a clicker/incremental game is where you perform something inane over and over again, like clicking on a screen, to build up currency. You use that currency to make your clicks more productive.
In SPACEPLAN you are growing potatoes, the currency, and unraveling why the Earth has been demolished. The game won’t take you more than a few days to hammer, and it gets weird rather quickly. Eventually you’re building potato-based towers and Spud-nik satellites, and inventing potato time travel.
Slayaway Camp
Peel away layer after layer of disconnected themes, and Slayaway Camp would be a ridiculously good sliding block puzzle. After a lot of careful thinking, you repeatedly swipe your character across a board, bouncing off walls and obstacles to navigate to various waypoints. But it’s the excessively weird theming that sets Slayaway Camp apart: it’s a 1980s, cinematic, blocky, horror game.
Gravely. Each puzzle’s waypoints are guiltless block characters (à la Minecraft) which you aim to cruelly murder. Your characters are ’80s horror film villains/monsters, and the game’s levels are chapters of a VHS gauze, which you have to cinematically rewind. Gravely strange, but undoubtedly worth your time.
Planescape: Torment
Eighteen years youthfull, Planescape: Torment was not a commercial success when it popped out in 1999, but it has since become a cult classic—and for good reason. Like a late-night pen and paper role playing session, it’s unabashedly dorky and unforgettably joy from embark to finish. You are The Nameless One, an immortal being who inhabits the Dungeons & Dragons’ unearthly planes of existence. Your quest: to learn who you are, and why you can not die.
Sure, the game is light on combat, but it’s basically a D&D campaign with throwback 2nd Edition rules. Who doesn’t need more D&D in their life?
Old Man’s Journey
This platform escapade game is as visually arresting as they come. From one scene to the next, the idyllic, hand-painted backgrounds vary from gorgeous to breathtaking as you walk your way through sun-drenched hills to quaint countryside towns. Because beyond the visuals and leisurely unraveling narrative, there’s little ‘game’ in Old Man’s Journey.
Sure, there’s a few light puzzle elements, almost all of which involve finding ways to manipulate the background to create a walkable path for your elderly protagonist. But with no tutorial or game text Old Man’s Journey feels more like a picture book than a mobile game. Oddly, that’s the main reason we love it. Bury even a moment of time into this relieving game, and you will be whisked away into the story.
Death Road to Canada
Like Oregon Trail meets Shaun of the Dead—yet somehow better than both— Death Road to Canada is undoubtedly the greatest zombie survival game there is. You’re embarking on a journey from post-apocalyptic Florida to the save-haven of the cold north, and as each day passes this 16-bit sprite RPG throws everything at you. You’re permanently running low on medical supplies, ammunition, food, and fuel, which you find by cracking into shops (with names like Y’all Mart) and fending off zombies.
Adding more refugees to your journey helps immensely, but each fresh addition quickens the rhythm at which you run low on supplies. You’ll run into trials on the road, like breakdowns and traps, which you solve according to each of your character’s abilities. You’ll be sieged by zombies, where you’ll lose ammunition, break your melee weapons, and lose beloved characters. Your original character will most likely die. But the doom and gloom is counterbalanced by hilarious dialogue, offbeat characters, and one ludicrous shop name after the next.
Platform: iOS (Coming soon to Android)
Best Mobile Games – Fresh Mobile Apps two thousand seventeen
75 Mobile Games You Should Be Playing Right Now
Delete Words With Friends. Leave behind Flappy Bird. And for goodness’ sake, get rid of Candy Crush. These are the mobile games you want on your phone.
It’s effortless to get into a rut of mobile game-playing, attempting over and over again to raise your score in Crossy Road or conquer the world in Clash of Clans. But there’s a entire world of good games out there waiting for your to attempt, some of them decidedly under the radar. It’s time to stream up your smartphone or tablet and get ready for some better gaming.
Xenoraid
You may think you’ve played shoot em’ up games like Xenoraid before, piloting a spacecraft through oncoming flaps of enemies. But Xenoraid offers a delightful and game-changing twist on the genre. You control not one, but four separate spacecraft—which you switch inbetween.
As the game progresses you upgrade and evolve each craft to your liking. So you might find yourself interchanging inbetween a clunky monster brimming with missiles, a quicker craft adept at dodging, a ship built for ejaculating shotgun shells, and one that takes forever to overheat. Or, you know, just four clunky monsters. Heck, it’s up to you.
Be warned, when one of your spacecraft loses all its health, it’s gone for good. And it’s devastating. You will be missed, Ensign Hubble.
To The Moon
This will likely be the least mechanically complicated but most narratively rich game you’ll ever download on your phone. Because To The Moon is a point and click story (not fairly a game with only a few puzzles sprinkled along the way) spoiling the plot here would be remiss. So we’ll just tell you how it starts. You are in the future, employed by a company that has the technology to rewrite a person’s memories. You arrive at the deathbed of an old man, ready to travel into his mind, kicking off at his most latest memories, reliving and reworking them, then moving further backward into a mercurial past.
Steredenn
A unspoiled and beautiful side-scrolling shoot em’ up from begin to finish with enough punch and story to make the entire practice feels like an epic space opera. You navigate your starship through a labyrinth of randomly-generated barriers, enemies, and oncoming ordnance, upgrading your ship as you go and fighting from boss battle to boss battle.
Steredenn has just one peculiarity that makes it shine above others in the genre. The very few, randomly dropped weapons each boss releases are often. weird. Like a literal boomerang of blue energy, or a short-range flamethrower—and they’re the only weapons you get. So much of Steredenn revolves around mastering what you’re randomly given and not what you want.
Still, this is the best unspoiled shoot em’ up we’ve ever played.
SPACEPLAN
The year is 2017, and evil game developers across the world have developed life-draining software that transfigures a person’s time and physical energy into absolute nothingness. The software are called clicker games—and they’re super addicting.
SPACEPLAN is undoubtedly my dearest so far, a weird mix of idle and active incremental game that leisurely unfolds a story. For those fresh to the genre, a clicker/incremental game is where you perform something inane over and over again, like clicking on a screen, to build up currency. You use that currency to make your clicks more productive.
In SPACEPLAN you are growing potatoes, the currency, and unraveling why the Earth has been demolished. The game won’t take you more than a few days to hit, and it gets weird rather quickly. Eventually you’re building potato-based towers and Spud-nik satellites, and inventing potato time travel.
Slayaway Camp
Peel away layer after layer of disconnected themes, and Slayaway Camp would be a ridiculously good sliding block puzzle. After a lot of careful thinking, you repeatedly swipe your character across a board, bouncing off walls and obstacles to navigate to various waypoints. But it’s the excessively weird theming that sets Slayaway Camp apart: it’s a 1980s, cinematic, blocky, horror game.
Gravely. Each puzzle’s waypoints are guiltless block characters (à la Minecraft) which you aim to fiercely murder. Your characters are ’80s horror film villains/monsters, and the game’s levels are chapters of a VHS gauze, which you have to cinematically rewind. Gravely strange, but certainly worth your time.
Planescape: Torment
Eighteen years youthful, Planescape: Torment was not a commercial success when it popped out in 1999, but it has since become a cult classic—and for good reason. Like a late-night pen and paper role playing session, it’s unabashedly dorky and unforgettably joy from embark to finish. You are The Nameless One, an immortal being who inhabits the Dungeons & Dragons’ unearthly planes of existence. Your quest: to learn who you are, and why you can not die.
Sure, the game is light on combat, but it’s basically a D&D campaign with throwback 2nd Edition rules. Who doesn’t need more D&D in their life?
Old Man’s Journey
This platform venture game is as visually arresting as they come. From one scene to the next, the idyllic, hand-painted backgrounds vary from gorgeous to breathtaking as you walk your way through sun-drenched hills to quaint countryside towns. Because beyond the visuals and leisurely unraveling narrative, there’s little ‘game’ in Old Man’s Journey.
Sure, there’s a few light puzzle elements, almost all of which involve finding ways to manipulate the background to create a walkable path for your elderly protagonist. But with no tutorial or game text Old Man’s Journey feels more like a picture book than a mobile game. Oddly, that’s the main reason we love it. Bury even a moment of time into this loosening game, and you will be whisked away into the story.
Death Road to Canada
Like Oregon Trail meets Shaun of the Dead—yet somehow better than both— Death Road to Canada is undoubtedly the greatest zombie survival game there is. You’re embarking on a journey from post-apocalyptic Florida to the save-haven of the cold north, and as each day passes this 16-bit sprite RPG throws everything at you. You’re permanently running low on medical supplies, ammunition, food, and fuel, which you find by violating into shops (with names like Y’all Mart) and fending off zombies.
Adding more refugees to your journey helps immensely, but each fresh addition quickens the tempo at which you run low on supplies. You’ll run into trials on the road, like breakdowns and traps, which you solve according to each of your character’s abilities. You’ll be sieged by zombies, where you’ll lose ammunition, break your melee weapons, and lose beloved characters. Your original character will most likely die. But the doom and gloom is counterbalanced by hilarious dialogue, offbeat characters, and one ludicrous shop name after the next.
Platform: iOS (Coming soon to Android)