Not long ago, the App Store and Google Play Store were wonderful places to be. You'd buy games and play them with no frills attached. Everybody was excited about games like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Doodle Jump, and why wouldn't they be - these were great games! Unfortunately, the stores are now largely divorced from those days. This is thanks to the rise of predatory algorithms that forced user engagement in order to make as much money as possible, and the gross negligence of Apple and Google to do anything about it.
Despite their poor reputation in today's gaming world, good mobile games have and are still being made. It's a shame that so many gems are unrecognized, both those dating before the end of the golden age and those being released afterwards. As someone who grew up with these games and spent many years replaying them, I'd love to give recommendations to anyone who is interested in mobile games and would like to know where to start.
Super Stickman Golf 2 is about as close to perfect as a golf game could be. Content-wise, there's a lot here - 52 courses across the game, each with the traditional 9 holes. The first 20 or so courses will take the time to introduce you to a new mechanic, and then add it into a great melting pot... Sticky walls, spinning platforms, lasers and magnets are just a few of this game's gimmicks. When you start reaching the harder courses with an improved knowledge and intuition for how to hit a shot just right, there are very few games that come as exciting as this.
Each course is also ripe for replayability. One of the main selling points of the game is the option to use powerups to alter the course, or give your ball an edge. With the right powerup for the right situation, most holes have a route to go way under par, and the game keeps track of your lowest scores for each course. Alternatively, the Clean Ball award is given to those who can finish a course under par without using any powerups. And getting some of these awards can get pretty challenging. A clean ball on City Land may be impressive, but can you get a clean ball on Impossible Land?
Sky Force Reloaded is one of my favorite shmups, and I have this game and Bullet Hell Monday to thank for getting me into the genre. I think it's hands-down one of the best ways to get used to these kinds of games. Controls are very simple - slide your finger across the screen to move your ship, which will automatically fire for you, and take it off the screen for a breather or to use powerups.
The way that the regular cast of aircraft and turrets all become deadlier in response to your improving capabilities is something I often think about. You transition from dodging bullets, to missiles, and finally lasers, and all along the way the bosses are getting weirder and more experimental. They're great teaching tools and there's never a point in the game that they demand too much from your slowly-improving reflexes.
In this game, you collect stars from fallen aircraft to upgrade your weapons. After a while, the first few stages will become trivial, but luckily each stage can be replayed on several difficulty options. There are Normal, Hard, and Insane modes, and every stage in Nightmare mode can provide challenge even to a fully-upgraded ship. The one detraction I have for this game is that upgrading is a bit of a grind. To lessen the amount of stages replayed and be able to enjoy this game the best, I highly recommend buying the star doubler add-on. It's a one-time, $2 purchase, the same price as several other games I'll be recommending on this page, and it eliminates most of the grinding.
If you like this game, I recommend checking out Sky Force Anniversary, too! It's a recreation of the original Sky Force back on the Playstation Vita, and a lot of what I've said about this game also applies to that one.
In Mekorama, you play as a charming little robot who has crashlanded in an unknown land. Tap a square, and the robot will try to move there. The stages themselves are interactable, as you can grab and drag metal pieces of the level around. Some metal pieces are on rails, others on motors, and some are even physics objects. With the few base building blocks of the game, there are loads of possibilities.
Not only does the story have 80 puzzles to solve, but this game also features a free stage builder, allowing you to make your own stages and share them online. The game comes with 40 stages curated from the best of the fanbase's work, and a website through which you can discover infinitely more stages by loading them onto your phone via a QR code.
A masterclass in gyro controls. The idea of Jet Car Stunts 2 is somewhat self-explanatory. You get to control a car that can fly through the air with jet engines, and take it through an obstacle course in the sky. You'll be speeding, flying, pivoting in midair and shooting through rings, and if you really want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, the levels of the full version climb to utterly crushing levels of difficulty.
What this sequel has over the original is that the main stages are divided between 5 different cars. They are:
the Buggy, an all-rounder that is fast but turns very well on the ground,
the Original, a souped-up version of the car from the first game with blistering speed, but minimal air control,
the Compact, a quirky vehicle that is a bit unwieldy with its engine but can turn on a dime at any time,
the Truck, a beast with unparalleled traction and acceleration but small fuel reserves,
and the Jet Car, which moves more like a real plane than a car in the air.
In addition, there are also Stock and Sports cars, which are built for racing and freestyle (think Tony Hawk: Pro Skater) modes, respectively. With the full version of the game, you get a level editor which, while not as expansive as Mekorama's, enables you to create your own courses and publish them to an in-game hub where the regulars will see your course and try to race you for the best times.
You may know Nitrome for their signature pixel artstyle and high-quality Flash games. I'm happy to say that they make mobile games too, and of those games, Rust Bucket is one of their very best! It's a new-and-improved version of their browser game Turnament. In Rust Bucket, you control a little red knight who takes turns moving with the enemies - when you swipe your finger in the direction you want to move, the enemies move after. Even though it's technically turn-based, there's a surprising amount of fluidity in gameplay. The computer wastes no time at all in moving every enemy on the screen, and you can hold down your finger after swiping to keep moving in any direction. The game will also automatically stop the automove process if the next move in that direction would kill you.
Like most Nitrome games, it has a linear campaign of levels, but to me the meat of the game is in its endless mode. In endless mode, you explore an endlessly-expanding, procedurally generated dungeon where almost any enemy and feature in the campaign can be encountered. You'll start with the slower enemies like slimes and pigs and work your way up to the campaign's bosses. Some of these enemies are admittedly brutal - statues are invulnerable to your attacks and usually must be destroyed with the help of a bomb that is hopefully nearby, and brains can spawn endless amounts of a chosen enemy, which can include said statues. Thankfully, the rest of the enemies help to make the endless mode a really fun experience, something I've regularly revisited to do a run or two of over the years.
If you like Rust Bucket, I also recommend other games made by Nitrome that are on the App Store! In particular, I have to recommend Slime Pizza, Flat Pack and Ultimate Briefcase.
I have this game for iOS, but when looking for the App Store link to Virexian, it was strangely nowhere to be found. So give a round of applause for the one and only Android exclusive on this list!
Virexian is a very strong top-down roguelike. From the remains of fallen enemies, your battle bot will find an arsenal of bright and colorful weapons. There are things like charged lasers, swarm missiles, and needle guns. Flame spears, buzzsaws, and energy bombs. You'll have to think carefully what to pick, as you can only carry two weapons on you, but this limitation adds quite a bit to the gameplay. While the stronger elite weapons will show themselves late in the game, it's also fun to stick with a loadout you've found early on and see how long you can last with it.
The graphics and the music are serviceable, but the sound design is crazy good. There is something visceral about it when you mow down a crowd of approaching enemies and hear their varied robotic screeches. Turrets pop like balloons and turn into health pickups. Hovertanks explode on accident, and mines explode on purpose.
Taking a break from all the sci-fi games to talk about a good fantasy game. To stop an evil dragon and his minions, a party of six heroes has been assembled:
the Knight, the perfect starter character who jumps around with his sword in hand and can take extra hits with enchanted armor,
the Wizard, a ranged attacker who unleashes tornadoes when enemies get close and can charge and cast spells as projectiles,
the Knave, a man carrying knifes on both his front and back side, only interested in making money,
the Archer, able to crash into things on the ground with his bow and shoot arrows into the air,
the Tamer, who uniquely forgoes conventional weapons in favor of riding monsters and using them to attack,
and the Ninja, a glass cannon with a few tricks up her sleeve such as dashes, teleportation and shadow clones.
After picking one of the six, you'll go out into the world and try to rack up long combos by killing enemies, pick up their loot for money and score bonuses, and then spend that money in shops to purchase new weapons. All of these heroes have simple controls, with only three buttons - left and right arrow keys to move around, and an action button to either jump or attack depending on your character. There aren't layers of complexity to it, but I think it works in the game's favor.
You're sure to see the same slew of enemies and bosses each time, but they've all been lovingly crafted and their sprites show a lot of detail for their low frame counts. Instead, playing with each hero's different weapons makes up the bulk of this game's replayability. Since weapons get more expensive in proportion to their strength, you usually have to commit to buying only a few of them in each game, but this gives you the opportunity to master them. The worst thing I have to say about this game is its balance - for some characters, such as the Wizard and the Ninja, the majority of their weapons fail to make up for their weight in gold. In the Knave's case, his weapons don't get any interesting perks until very late in the game, and instead they only increase the amount of money he makes. That being said, aside from the Ninja I find that each of the game's characters are fun for their own reasons. The Knave is great for high score runs, the Wizard and Archer have some very fun attack spam, the Knight can fly around in the air like a madman when you get a movement speed buff, and the Tamer has several options to approach any given task thanks to the wide range of tamable enemies.
Released in 2022, Chiki's Chase is here to prove that new mobile games can be great too. This is a cute game where Chiki the chicken and friends are running to reach home for the night and have a good sleep. It's a roguelike, but with only light elements - you have money to spend in shops, and reaching each shop will give you the choice of an item to take along with you. There are only 29 items in total, which may not seem like a lot, but there's an exceptional amount of balance between them. There is no item that I've found too powerful, and only one which I don't like picking up, but none are outright bad.
The shopkeepers in the game are also charming. Separate from the game's pixel art, the shop keepers have detailed portraits, and each have their own little quirks. Fiona the wolf is a barista and is normally in good spirits, but will get upset if you go to the coffee shop and proceed to not buy coffee from her. The enchantress, Gilda the peacock, offers spells but warns you to be careful around Morgan, a vampire bat who sells upgrades to your items in exchange for your health. I don't think the game would be as charming as it is without them all.
The full version of the game gives you the option to upgrade your character's item slots, thus getting to hold more items, and hats you can wear as cosmetics. However, you can beat the game without extra item slots without much difficulty. There are also a lot of nice goals set by the game that you can try to pursue. There's a mechanic in this game where, provided you fulfill their specific criteria, you can unlock items to equip at the start of your run. Some are easier than others, and the same can be said about the badges, which are standalone goals that don't unlock any items when you complete them. (Y'know, like achievements.) The badges are often silly, asking you to do things you wouldn't normally do, like save up a ton of money to buy a stack of pumpkins from the farmer shopkeeper or die by slipping on a banana peel.
While Sky Force is a slower, more old-school shoot 'em up, Bullet Hell Monday is in the bullet hell subgenre as its name suggests. This game is regularly recommended by shmup fans as one of the first shmups beginners should play to get accustomed to the genre. I'd also recommend it for that, as it has many mechanics, such as automatic slow motion and an autobomb option, which make things friendly for those who haven't played these kinds of games before. Also like Sky Force, it has an upgrade system, but I remember this one to be much more tame.
If the campaign is made to get people familiar with shmup gameplay, with its level selection and action in short bursts, then the challenge mode is a way to test all that you've learned. There are 5 challenges, each unlocked after their respective chapters are beaten, and contain a gauntlet of enemies found from that chapter as well as a souped-up version of the chapter's boss. As you go from Normal difficulty, to Hard difficulty and maybe Heaven if you're feeling spicy, the enemies will shoot more bullets and the bosses will have additional phases added to their fight.
Moon Surfing is a relaxing game where you ride the dunes of the Moon on a solar surfboard. The rules are simple: there are a few domes out in the distance, and you have 40 seconds to get to each one. Along the way, you can stop the timer by staying in the air for long enough, or increase your time remaining by passing through gates. Reach all domes and you win! Each spot on the moon, of which there are a few thousand or so, contains a randomly-generated map with its own seed. On its own, it's already a very fun experience. I love riding up the mountains and jumping off at their peaks. The game's physics engine is floaty, fitting for Moon gravity, and at times when you go off a really high jump you can look down at the surface and be filled with a sense of wonder. The Sun and Earth and never too far away.
As you get closer to the other side of the Moon, the terrain gets weirder and more difficult to traverse. At first you start with easy slopes with a lot of smooth surfaces to climb up, and later you'll see things like badlands-like formations, mountains with rough slopes that you can't climb up, some of them huge, and minefields of small rocks. However, as you go your techniques are improving too! Over time you'll learn to exploit quirks of the physics engine to get some insane height, and find out how to do new tricks on your board. Each trick can be its own momentum aid - for example, you can swipe sideways to do a kickflip, and it gives you a bunch of momentum to the side that you swipe towards.
Robot Wants Kitty was pretty popular as far as Flash games go, but did you know that it had a mobile game that was almost entirely its own thing? For those unfamiliar, the Robot Wants series is a series of mini-metroidvania games where a robot has to battle aliens and find important upgrade modules to get to their objective. Graphically and mechanically, this game emulates the original Flash game with higher-resolution graphics, but all of the levels (that's right - levels plural!) are brand new.
The Maker Mall, the game's level editor, adds quite a bit more than you'd expect. Not only are all of the features of the official levels available in it, but there are also a few enemies, blocks and objects unique to the editor and the level sharing server. See, they were added in an update many years after the game's launch. The content submitted to the server is often of low quality, but if you submit something you put effort into, there'll always be someone to appreciate it!
Radiant is a shmup that wears its old-school inspirations on its sleeves. The alien invaders only use one color in their sprites and organize into blocks, just like in Space Invaders, but appear in fancy flight formations and swoop down on the player like in Galaga. There are only two types of regular enemies, smaller ones that organize in blocks and fire a small bullet forward, and bigger ones that move independently and shoot a bullet towards the player's position. Even then, the game manages to keep things difficult across its three chapters, with asteroid fields, bosses and especially the Survival and Hardcore modes. Defeating aliens will occasionally give you pickups such as screen clearers, extra lives, and credits which can be spent at a checkpoint to buy and upgrade the six different weapons available in the game.
Would you be surprised to hear that this retro shmup is the game with the best storyline and characters on this list? Because it is! I'm not going to spoil anything, but to summarize you play as Max Blaster, who must travel across space and time to fight Supercreep, a familiar character who is waging a galactic war against humanity. The plot is decently interesting with memorable characters for a mobile game, and knows how to best divide up time between its serious and funny bits.
