It’s almost Christmas, which means a lot of things, including lots of things going on sale. I’m keeping track of the absolute best games getting price drops this year, and there’s a whole lot of them. Some of these titles even made my game of the year list for 2019, so make sure to pick them up at a discount while you can!
2019 has been one of the weirdest years in mobile gaming yet. With Apple Arcade emerging alongside other game subscription services like GameClub and Playond, it feels a bit like the wild west again. I’m not exactly blown away with any of these services so far, but it’s nice to see folks attempt to create spaces on the App Store for quality games to thrive.
Speaking of quality games, I played quite a few of them this year. By a rough count (I try to keep a list every year), I ended up playing over 350 mobile games in 2019. I wish it was a little harder to cull that huge list down to ten favorites, but it honestly wasn’t. The ten games you see below are my favorite games from 2019 by a country mile.
Earlier this week, I wrote about some of the things I’m most excited about on the mobile front for this coming year. Now it’s time to invert that a bit, but not exactly. If this were a true flip, I’d be talking about games like they’re bad before I’ve even played them, which is obviously poor practice.
Instead, I’ll try to predict some of 2019’s worst trends as they pertain to mobile and tell you why I’m not looking forward to hearing about them, and why you shouldn’t either.
Apple Editorial continuing to be a thing
Editorial content for mobile is great and—in my (biased) opinion—pretty necessary. The App Store isn’t quite as wild as the Android market, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t imitations, clones, and straight up awful garbage coming out on the store every day. This is probably why Apple’s new editorial games content exists on the App Store now, but just because it exists doesn’t mean it’s good.
In fact, my entire experience engaging with Apple’s written content around gaming has convinced me that it’s pretty rotten. Picks of new games seem to hinge on whether they can sell more copies of it because of some sort of name recognition or impressive screenshot, and they cover up their weak/questionable picks by burying them in lists of mobile titles other mobile outlets have already scrounged up and identified as great games from before Apple Editorial was a thing. It’s almost like they have no actual integrity and are just trying to get people to buy more games. It’s almost like whoever is writing for that team has a vested interest in people buying games.
All of this was true in 2018, but I super don’t look forward to seeing it continue to grow in 2019.
All told, I think 2018 was an ok year for mobile games. There were some truly great titles, but there wasn't any sort of deluge of amazing games as there have been in the past.
2019, however, is looking to be quite a stunner for mobile. There's a lot of releases just over the horizon that I really can't wait to get my hands on. See some of my top picks of most anticipated games below:
Space Haven
Space Haven was on my most anticipated games list last year, but I knew it was a bit of a stretch. There was no promised release date for 2018, and the game looks like an ambitious combination of Dwarf Fortress and FTL. Here's to hoping this game can come out this year, and here's to hoping it's the less-combat-forward version of Star Command that I'm hoping it will be.
2018 is so last year. Here at 148Apps we're all about 2019 now, and the exciting games that we're hopefully going to end up playing over the next 12 months. But what are those games, and why are we so excited about them? Well, that's where this list comes in - the top 6 games for iPhone and iPad that we're looking forward to in 2018.
Obviously we're looking forward to way more than six games, but these are the cream of the crop - the ones that we're champing at the bit to play. That means our picks might not quite line up with yours, and if that's the case do let us know in the comments section at the bottom of the article.
And if you're looking for even more information about the very best games you can already play on your iPhone, you can click here to check out our definitive list. It's growing all the time, so make sure you check back regularly to find out what else we've added.
Hello there, and welcome to the world of tomorrow. Or, more accurately, to the world of today. It's 2019, we're back, and we thought we'd kick off the year by having a look at what we think are going to be the major changes in mobile gaming over the next 12 months. It's crystal ball-gazing time people.
You see we haven't been idle over the holidays, we've been on top of everything, pushing our brains to think about what mobile gaming might look like when 2020 rolls around. Obviously these are more than just guesses - our picks are all based on our deep understanding of the mobile gaming market. And maybe just a little bit of wishful thinking - but hey, it's the start of the year, and if you can't be wishful now, when can you be?
If you've got your own predictions for the year ahead, we'd love to hear them - so make sure you stick them in the comments sections at the bottom of the article. Oh, and click here to check out all of the other awesome lists we've been working on.