Real-time strategy games feel like they’d be a perfect fit for mobile, but they’re trickier to pull off that you might think. The traditional mold of base-building and micro management can work on touch screens, but needs to be carefully honed so that it doesn’t end up too overwhelming.
With KartRider Rush+ making a splash this past week, we figured it was high time we updated our list of the best mobile racing games out there. From realistic racing sims to futuristic arcade racers (and even racing management games!), check out our top picks for the absolute best games for those with a need for speed.
Final Fantasy VII is probably the most revered JRPG of all time, and its long-awaited remake has tons of folks anxiously awaiting the chance to see the reimagining of a classic. I’m sure its release will be met with equal parts fanfare and outrage, as is usually the case when a high-profile work is revisited.
I spent part of my weekend playing Valorant, the new multiplayer shooter from Riot Games. While I was waiting to get into the beta, though, I was trying to see if I could find anything else like it, particularly on mobile. Perhaps this is unsurprising to say, but: This was hard to do.
For those not familiar, Valorant is a 5v5 multiplayer shooter that’s more-or-less Counter-Strike with hero characters. It’s pretty fun, but requires a lot of focus and teamwork. Few mobile games really fall into this camp, so I decided instead to go for just good multiplayer shooters in general.
For the purposes of this list, “good” generally means the following: 1) No unbalanced free-to-play mechanics (i.e. fusing guns or characters to increase their stats), and 2) people are still playing them. Check out the picks below. Oh, and click here to check out all the great lists we’ve been making lately.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been cooped up in your house for weeks and the novelty of making video calls is starting to wear off. You need something else to do with your friends and loved ones, but it needs to be something everyone can do together and with minimal setup and no cost.
Forget trying to get everyone on board with Call of Duty Warzone or anything else so intense. Try these fun, free, and easy activities that just about anyone can pick up and enjoy.
AI Dungeon is a game where you collaboratively create a story with the help of an AI chatbot. Of course, this is something you could do completely on your own, but wouldn’t it be more fun to see what kinds of absurd (or maybe even impressive) adventures you could go on with friends?
There's no escaping the fact that everyone loves Dark Souls. If you've not heard of it, it's a super tough action RPG that punished your every mistake with swift retribution. It's the sort of game where you die a lot, and it can be pretty intimidating trying to get on board with the systems it throws at you.
But you can't play it on your iPhone. Well, there's Slashy Souls, but to be honest the less said about that the better. If you're looking to get some Souls-style action on the go though, there are plenty of options waiting for you on the App Store.
Rather than leaving you to find all of them for yourself though, we thought we'd do a list and round-up what we think are the five best games like Dark Souls for iOS. If you think we're wrong, or you've got your own suggestions to chuck into the mix, let us know in the comments at the bottom of the article.
Apple Arcade made a splash when it first launched, granting access to over 50 games as soon as it became available. Of those titles, the one that seemed to grab most people’s attention was Grindstone, a matching puzzle game from Capy Games.
In order to enjoy Grindstone though, you have to activate an Apple Arcade subscription, which—even now—doesn’t quite feel like a quality value proposition for most people. Luckily, there are some great games on the regular old App Store that share some DNA with Grindstone. I’d even go so far as to say over half the games on this list are better than Grindstone, though I know that’s probably not a statement most folks will agree with.
In a lot of ways, turn-based strategy games are an ideal fit for mobile. Their menu-heavy navigation and slow pace mesh better with touch input than just about any other control scheme.
Unsurprisingly, this means there are a lot of strategy games to choose from on mobile, but not all of them are worth your time (or money). Take, for example, War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. For all its flashy visuals and pedigree, it’s a shameless gacha game that capitalizes on your fondness for Chocobos and older, better games while locking up its strategic depth behind a dizzying amount of monetized systems.
If you’re new to this genre and wondering where to start, I can’t recommend The Battle of Polytopia highly enough. It’s free, matches are short, and it does a great job of teaching you the fundamentals of strategy games without feeling overly complicated.
It’s also one of the most convenient strategy games there is, as it plays well in portrait mode and auto-saves constantly. Once you feel ready, you can also spend as little as $ 0.99 to unlock a new tribe that will also give you the ability to play with others online.
Looking forward to Animal Crossing: New Horizons? We know the feeling. We can't wait to start delivering fish and butterflies to our cute fuzzy friends, despite the fact that at times it can feel more like a vocation than a game.
But what if you're looking for a mobile game to try and ensure you get your cuteness fix in the meantime? Well, there's Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, but we reckon we can do better than that. Which is why we've created this list of the five best games like Animal Crossing for iOS.
The surprise release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ($2.99) on iOS made lots of gamers pretty happy. After all, it’s one of the most celebrated games of all time, and has inspired countless titles that borrow heavily from its trademark mix of combat and traversal.
Before Symphony of the Night came to touch screens though, there were plenty of other games trying to bring a similar experience to folks. See below for our five favorite Castlevania-like experiences on the App Store.
Apple Arcade has been out for a little over a month, and I’m not entirely thrilled with it. It’s definitely an interesting idea, but it leaves a lot to be desired, especially in fulfilling its commitment to letting folks “play anywhere.” Still, at $4.99 a month, it seems like a very reasonable value proposition that is getting better and better as new games get added to the service.
The greatest strength of Apple Arcade is definitely the variety of games given the price. I am now more convinced of that than ever because I went ahead and built out a list of games you could add to your iOS library to mimic the offerings of the service, and it’s not exactly cheap. If you wanted to capture the breadth and depth of offerings that Apple Arcade currently offers users, it would cost you about $400 ($384 more precisely) in total.
The full list of these games is below. Each game is grouped by genre and includes a link to their review (if possible) and store page.
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.
Is it too early for Black Friday? Yes, absolutely. But does Apple agree? No, apparently not. Tons of games have already been discounted on the App Store, and we'd like to give you a definitive guide on the best deals to grab.
To be clear, we won't be posting EVERY game sale on this page. For a firehose of all deals on games regardless of quality, look elsewhere. What we're listing below is just the deals on games that you definitely should buy if you haven't already.
Another big-name franchise has come to mobile, and it’s (unsurprisingly) pretty bad. Gears POP! follows in the footsteps of Dr. Mario World and The Elder Scrolls: Blades. All are high-profile mobile releases and all actively engender ill will toward mobile gaming by being somewhat boring knock offs of predatory free-to-play games.
Hopefully, with the launch of Apple Arcade, this will be less of a problem. In the meantime though, there are some games out on mobile that might give you what you want from Gears POP! without subjecting you to its clunky gameplay or intensely haunting Funko Pop aesthetics. See below:
