Campbell has been writing about games for the majority of his adult life and made the jump into covering mobile games in 2013. He is always on Mastodon when he's not playing games.
Every day, we pick out a curated list of the best mobile discounts on the App Store and post them here. This list won't be comprehensive, but it every game on it is recommended. Feel free to check out the coverage we did on them in the links below to further vet these discounted games before you decide to buy:
Games marked with an asterisk(*) denote that the entire developer/publisher’s catalog is discounted, despite the fact that all of their games may not be listed here.
For a few years now, I have done some traditional Game of the Year honorifics where I've given props to titles via various categories and finished with the silly exercise of trying to rank the top ten games of the year in an ordered list to declare a "winner."
There's still value in this, I think, but I have nevertheless decided to do something a bit different. Mobile is a strange landscape that feels like it gets stranger every year, and it causes a lot of people to overlook the entire landscape unless some splashy PC or console phenom gets ported. I get the logic here in entirely, and I also think that it would make for a list of games where I say Balatro is a really great game not entirely useful.
So instead I am just going to highlight some mobile titles from this year that I think folks should give a fair shake, even if they haven't heard of them or generally don't play mobile games in any dedicated sense. Here they are below:
When I started playing Dungeons of Dreadrock for the first time, I had no idea the amount of tricky surprises that were awaiting me. It was the combination of clever wrinkles as well as their novelty that made it one of my top games of 2022. With a sequel, though, how do you recapture that same magic? Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 has a few new tricks up its sleeves to keep veteran players on the hook, but I'm not sure any of the innovations here will win over any new fans.
Return to Dreadrock
The App Store description for Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 accurately describes it as "episode 2" of what now seems to be a series. This game takes the exact same look, feel, setting, and story of the original Dreadrock and continues pushing it forward.
In this game, you play as a priestess of the Order of the Flame and use your unique, magical skillset to solve 100 more puzzles within a different part of Dreadrock's dungeons. This means you'll still be scooting a hero character around single-screen, grid-based hallways, but you'll be taking advantage of powers imbued in your staff and other collectibles and items to solve increasingly intricate challenges.
More story, more action, more dread
With this in mind, Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 wastes no time getting immediately complicated in the ways that made the first game such a unexpected delight. On top of that, this game leans more heavily into its story, which both help flesh out the world but also provide nice breaks between stretches of puzzling.
By starting somewhat complicated, though, Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 seems like it has to find increasingly byzantine ways to stretch its mechanics in later stages of the game to feel like it's continuing to up the ante. While some of this results some of the same highs that made the first game world feel so real and controllable, there are also times where the envelope feels like it's pushed a little too far. Whether it's the limits of the game's single-finger control scheme, levels of abstraction that disrupt the otherwise grounded feel, or some combination of the two, late-game areas can feel hard to enjoy outside of appreciating their design on a somewhat academic level.
New players beware
If you are wondering at this point whether this game is for you, I'd say that if you enjoyed the first Dungeons of Dreadrock and saw it through to the end, then there's a lot to like in 2. Otherwise, I'm not so sure. In a lot of ways, the first game feels like a prerequisite to this one, to the point that a new player will likely have a hard time following the story or understanding game concepts that are more gently introduced in the original game.
All that said, Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 is very accommodating when it comes to figuring out how to move forward in it. Every level has multiple hints players can use at their discretion, with the final hint offer typically spelling out exactly what you need to do to reach the next place you have to get to.
The bottom line
I am still enamored with the way the Dreadrock games establish a consistent logic and tight scope to each and every one of their puzzles. Even when tasked with juggling what feels like a slightly unwieldy set of concepts in this latest game, there are still those magic moments where everything clicks and you spot a wild solution right away. Perhaps Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 could have done with a little less envelope pushing, but I am glad it exists nonetheless.
It feels like every card based game is bound to hit the App Store at some point, but that doesn't always mean the mobile version will be all it should be. This has prompted us here to look back at all mobile games that have come out of the explosion of card-based roguelites that have been releasing in recent years and pick the top five games in that particular niche.
The holidays are about being with family, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play games while you’re home with them. Mobile games are the perfect things to take with you as you travel to wherever you’re going, as they’re experiences you can always have with you and bust out at a moment’s notice.
In honor of the upcoming break, I’ve put together a list of the top four games I plan on bringing with me on my travels. All of these picks have their particular use cases, but all can be played in just about any situation, even if you are going somewhere that doesn’t have a good data or wifi connection.
Out of the Loop
Out of the Loop is a great little party game for 3-9 players with a really simple concept. Everyone playing is clued into a particular keyword based on a category (e.g. animal, household item, etc.), except for one player who is left quite literally out of the loop. Then, players are prompted to ask each other specific questions and the person who doesn’t know what the word is has to hope they aren’t found out.
This game is a great pick for holiday gaming if you want to get your whole family involved. The instructions for every step of the game are clearly written out on every screen, and the concept is so simple that everyone immediately gets how to play. As a bonus, the game just released more category packs, so even if this is an old favorite, there's some good reason to bust it out again.
I play a lot of mobile games, but if you are a keep observer of my iOS gaming habits, you'll notice I spend a lot of that gaming time on my iPad. There's a lot of reasons for this, but none of them are particularly germaine to this review. I brought it up to underscore that when I say games like Lost for Swords are the reason I started looking for games to play on mobile devices to begin with, it carries an appropriate amount of added weight. This card game is quick, smart, replayable, and feels fresh despite being part of a genre that is arguably oversaturated at this point.
Decked out dungeons
Lost for Swords is a deck-building dungeon-crawler roguelike and wastes no time making itself stand out. Every dungeon consists of essentially three different decks: one for your hero, one for the enemy creatures, and one for the dungeon itself. After picking a hero and entering a certain tower, cards from each of these decks are played onto a 5x5 grid which creates each individual floor of the dungeon.
Whichever hero character you choose is also played down on the grid and you can tap to move them between empty spaces or into cards to interact with them. For your own cards, typically interaction means equipping gear or activating spells/abilities, whereas tapping on enemies initiates a fight. The entire game is turn-based but each card interaction counts as a turn, making Lost for Swords just as much about deckbuilding as it is about managing space and combat tactics.
Wild cards
On top of the novel mechanics for card-based navigation, Lost for Swords also has no qualms with creating cards, items, and dungeon setups that are off-the-wall. The game's excellent tutorial stages for each hero type do a great job of showing examples of these interactions and how they can be leveraged to their fullest. This in turn makes every run feel like it's brimming with potential to take one or more unconventional paths to victory.
As a quick example, one of my runs as a wizard put me in a situation where I could essentially deal an unending loop of fire damage to enemies, but to get to that point I had to ditch any and all armor cards entirely and be careful not to catch myself in the radius of my firestorms. I also only finalized this deck setup right around the same time I reached the end of the tower I was fighting, which is another thing worth celebrating Lost for Swords: Its sense of pacing is such that you almost always reach pinnacle deck strength right around the time you're facing off against the boss.
Feeling the dealing
This pitch-perfect pacing feels especially satisfying given how easy to play and track any given run of Lost for Swords is. In addition to having extremely mobile-friendly layouts for both portrait and landscape play, the game also has useful tools for inspecting cards and undoing accidental moves. The entire design of the game also has a pronounced, tactile quality to the point that it feels like a game you could play with physical cards. There's very little in the way of abstract or hidden mechanics, and things like equipment collections, card replacements, discards, etc. are constantly shown on screen so you can always keep tabs on the game's upkeep (and bend it to your advantage).
Lost for Swords is a free-to-download game so you can try it out before deciding to pay $ 4.99 once to unlock the whole experience. In playing for this review, I tried it on both my iPad and my phone and ended up sinking much more time into it on my smaller device. Something that would be a nice addition to the game would be some kind of iCloud syncing so your progress can continue between devices, but given the one-off nature of runs in Lost for Swords, this isn't a huge deal.
The bottom line
Just when I think there is no more to explore or uncover in the realm of card-based roguelikes, something like Lost for Swords comes along to prove me wrong. Its fresh approach to deck-building and dungeon-crawling is as friendly and manageable as it is elegantly designed and carefully balanced.
Game Center: namestolen
