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:

Roia

Roia is a meditative game about sculpting the landscape to guide the flow of water. It's a chill time and very pretty.

Lost for Swords

I probably played this more than any other game on my phone all year, even Balatro. It's a deck-based roguelite dungeon-crawler that is very tactile and sticky. It also plays beautifully in portrait mode.

Ex Astris

If a highly polished and refined rpg that was no longer than 20 hours came out every year I would be a happy camper. Ex Astris checks all these boxes while also having an awesome and engaging combat system that keeps your 200th fight just as interesting as the first. Just... ignore the story.

Shovel Pirate

A throwback to what great mobile games used to be. Shovel Pirate is a simple and straightforward platformer, but it's colorful, charming, has a surprising amount of clever tricks up its sleeves without overstaying its welcome.

Yes, Your Grace

If you've read the rest of these picks and are looking for something more narrative, then Yes, Your Grace is the ticket. What appears initially to be a kingdom management simulator turns out to be basically an adventure game that operates using Reigns-like mechanics, which is a really neat idea that is executed on extremely well.

I know this one technically breaks the format of my initial list since it is a port of a PC/console game from 2020, but it's very possible folks missed it because it launched in March of 2020 and--though successful--didn't seem to rake in accolades or calls for a port, so I stand by including it here.