Suzy Cube is a simple 3D platformer, but it's definitely one of the best for mobile.

This game is a series of circuitous f2p grind systems, but somehow still ends up feeling super fun.

This endless pool game has a really bizarre structure that makes it hard to enjoy.

The only thing wrong with Silverfish DX is that there’s already better and more varied versions of the same game out there. Specifically, Geometry Wars—a game that precedes Silverfish by nearly a decade—provides a similar experience in a more robust package. Silverfish DX just strips too many things out of a traditional twin-stick shooter and doesn’t add enough new stuff back to it to make itself stand out.

Dragon Ball Legends may be true to the series to a certain extent, but that doesn’t make it a good game.

Feist is beautiful to look at and interesting to play, but casual gamers might find it too challenging.

G30 is a stark and beautiful puzzler if you're willing to give it the time it needs.

Sir Questionnaire’s lightweight roguelike action would be more enjoyable if not for a few bugs.

This idle game has a few more things in it than others, but none of it really changes the experience.

Pocket Run Pool is most certainly the best pool game I've played on a phone. It has simple, intuitive controls, and a setup that lets you play offline anywhere and always have a satisfying challenge. What's more is that it has creative modes that keep the experience interesting and drive you to keep playing it over the long-term to improve your skills. It's hard to imagine what else this package could have to make it more compelling. Do yourself a favor and give it a download.

Scalak’s simple fun is fine, but it makes you wonder if there should be something more to it.

Animal Super Squad is a goofy vehicle platformer that is a little too awkward to control.

Disney Heroes is a bad cash-in game that fails to demonstrate the creativity or charm of Disney movies.

This game takes the core ideas behind Minesweeper to make a pretty satisfying puzzle experience.

Homo Machina is a charming and creative adventure game in almost every way, and it’s full of little surprises. The only one of these surprises that isn’t so great is that it all ends too soon. Still though, if you’re looking for something short, sweet, and fun, Homo Machina is hard to pass up.

Aside from a neat idea and some nice visuals, BOMBARIKA is a complete mess. Both technically and creatively, the game feels half-baked. All the while, the game is trying to hit you up to give it more money. On pretty much all fronts, there’s not much to enjoy about BOMBARIKA.

Odium to the Core is a cool rhythm game with a few niggles here and there. Its difficulty can be a bit all over the place at times and if you're not very fond of the music style, it's likely this won't be for you. However, if you enjoy the challenge, the Badland-like visuals, and the music, you'll definitely enjoy it.

The thing to know about Super Hydorah is that it’s a game that checks the boxes in all of the right places. It’s a side-scrolling shooter with a retro feel, but just enough of its own clever ideas to make it stand out. It may not have a difficulty curve that makes sense, and its story may be very weak, but those things don’t register as problems while you’re playing it. Instead, you focus in on the tight controls, classic presentation, and inventive level design that makes this simple shooter formula work.

here honestly aren’t enough good things I can say about Tiny Bubbles. It takes the familiar and well-worn concept of matching colors and reinvigorates the idea with a gameplay formula that truly feels innovative rather than gimmicky. Tiny Bubbles, simply put, is a must-play game. Go get it.

.io games are a bit played out, but Axe.io has just enough variety to stand out.

Top to bottom, Dungeon Hunter Champions is a mess. It has tons of ideas going on, and some of them actually have some potential to make for a great experience, but Gameloft seems to use them exclusively to exploit players' loot lust in an effort to squeeze money out of them. What little there is to appreciate here is better found elsewhere, so don’t even bother checking this game out, even though it looks nice.

With over 100 levels available it's worth every penny and while its experience isn't the deepest, it's an enjoyable ride to take nonetheless.

Admittedly, there’s something extremely compelling about engaging with a list of objectives in a game to get rewards, but all too often these progression mechanics are used to obscure or distract players from deeper, core design problems. This is precisely what Original Journey does, and it just doesn’t work.

Time travel through your social media feed in this creative and thoughtful interactive fiction game.

Beast Brawlers maps Clash Royale’s progression system onto a less interesting, less polished experience.

Brew Town is a fun and weirdly addictive experience, but after a while its repetitive processes become more tiresome and less exciting.

AZ Rockets is a mildly interesting premise for a game, but there’s not enough going on in it to feel like you should pay for it, much less play it for any significant period of time. There are just much more interesting games out there, a lot of which are also free and don’t ask you to pay to play them offline.

Never Stop Sneakin’ is a pretty great game, provided you aren’t looking for tactical stealth game with a deep set of systems or lore. The game includes suggestions of these things, but these only operate as a means of making fun of Metal Gear Solid and nothing more. That said, what is in Never Stop Sneakin’ is fun and feels great, I just wish there were a little more variety to make it feel a little less grindy.

As a platformer, Oddmar is among the best ones available on the App Store. It takes tropes from the genre and rearranges them into tight little packages that feel great to run through. It may not be the most original game out there, and its story may leave a little to be desired, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying this phenomenal platformer.

Project Highrise is a phenomenal building management game that's a phenomenal fit on mobile.

Vandals may take a lot from the GO games' formula, but there's enough here to show it stands on its own two feet.

Trick Shot 2 is an easy-to-play and simple puzzler which sticks to what it knows. It may not be particularly advanced, but it's still good fun for what it is.

Candleman is nothing short of a wonderful, charming experience with a couple of small hiccups that trip it up.

This text-based adventure is a satirical take on the gig economy, but it also bites off a little more than it can chew.

Umiro is a gorgeous puzzler that, while offering up an interesting experience, ultimately falls a bit flat after a while.

This first release of Pillars only begins the story of the novel across its seven initial chapters, but if subsequent entries in the series are anything like this one, you have a lot to look forward to. The simple adventure style really works for a game with such a compelling and unique narrative, to the point that I‘m chomping at the bit to play the next games already.

Hyperforma presents a lot of neat ideas that all quickly get subverted by its powerup system. For a game that seems otherwise immaculately detailed and thought out, this powerup system is such a glaring flaw in the experience that Hyperforma is pretty hard to recommend.

A wonderfully designed shooter that puts the rest of its genre to shame.

Whether you’re dead-set or on the fence about picking it up, it only takes a stable WiFi connection and the tap of a button, so you may as well give it a go. Don’t blame me if you get addicted, though.

A superbly put together shadow-based puzzler.

A wonderfully macabre puzzler with gory bits and cracking strategic elements.

Armello isn't the easiest board game to get to grips with but with a rich lore and deep strategic elements to enjoy, it's worth putting the time in.

This text-based adventure has an intriguing story, but everything else about it holds it back.

There are moments where Evoland 2’s game-referencing antics feel really cool, but these moments are few and far between. Otherwise, it presents a poorly paced adventure that—though narratively interesting—isn’t exactly fun to play. For the most part, Evoland 2 is a passing curiosity that mostly just reminds you of all the other, better games you could be playing instead of it.

Simply put, Alto’s Odyssey is the best runner on the App Store. That’s not to say it’s good for a runner, mind you, it’s an amazing game by any metric. It’s got a ton of variety, it’s beautiful, and it’s satisfying, whether you’re playing it for two minutes or two hours.

This parody of a dating sim suffers from some unlikable characters and repetitive gameplay.

Florence takes a pretty familiar plot line and adds more life to it through clever gameplay mechanics and a bright aesthetic. It’s not the most involved game out there, but the relatively small amount of stuff Florence does have to offer is dang near close to perfectly executed.

Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition is an amazing new model for mobile ports that should get applied to more (and better) games.

Dig Dog is a relatively simple game that follows simple rules, but it manages to mix its gameplay elements together to make for a dynamic and challenging platformer. It definitely isn’t doing anything you haven’t seen before, but everything it does do, it does with incredible finesse.

Dandara’s take on the Metroidvania formula is admirable, but unfortunately not well realized.

PAKO 2's style carries it a long way, particularly when you first start playing it. As you get further into the experience though, the more you feel like there should be some amount of additional depth. The stuff that is in PAKO 2 currently is good and–more importantly–very cool. It would just be a more satisfying game if there were more to it.

This dungeon-crawler draws inspiration from Reigns. It’s an odd choice, but it really works.

Thumper is very much not my kind of game. If it’s yours, fine, but I still wouldn’t necessarily recommend it on mobile. There are some control and technical issues that hold it back, even if you like what this game is trying to do.

The Room: Old Sins is an incredible game. It creates an amazing sense of place, peppers it with uniquely detailed objects and puzzles, and paces it all out in a way that makes playing it a pure delight. There may be some times where it isn’t so easy to understand how you are supposed to move forward, but these moments are so few and far between that they’re easy to look past.

JYDGE is a fine dual stick shooter that can challenge you for hours. The only real problem is that its challenges grow repetitive extremely quickly. There is something satisfying about upgrading your character to your liking to take on these repeated objectives, but it’s just not as interesting as other concepts that have been used in 10tons other (and better) dual stick shooters.

World of Warships Blitz is a game that is sure to entertain anyone who like World of Tanks Blitz, but is maybe wanting a little change in combat dynamics and scenery. It presents the same solid formula as Tanks, but with just enough changes so that it works for ships and the unique ways they fight, and it does so relatively well. Nothing about it is so wildly different that it will win over new fans though.

The moment to moment action of Hero Academy 2 can be pretty enjoyable, but that’s mostly because of the aspects that the game borrows from Hearthstone. Outside of those common elements though, Hero Academy 2 can feel like a bit of a slog, and one only worth sticking with if you want to sink a ton of time (or money) into it.

Let Them Come is a pretty cool gallery shooter, but it’s still just a gallery shooter.

If you have the patience for Antihero, it can be a really rewarding experience. It’s a digital board game that provides a bunch of depth, and it also happens to look and feel pretty polished. The only real problem though is that game times can get really long, even when the results feel all but decided. This can make the game feel ill-suited for mobile, even though it is otherwise looks and feels immaculately made for it.

GNOG takes a simple emerging genre and smartly gives the additional depth it deserves.

Arena of Valor is a fantastic MOBA that feels right at home on mobile. It’s packed with variety and gives you a ton of ways to see everything it has to offer, even if you don’t spend a cent on it. If you want to play the game competitively, its monetization scheme might force you to shell out to keep up an edge against the competition, but otherwise the game is remarkably generous, well-tuned, and a heck of a good time.

If you’re looking for Bridge Constructor Portal to be more like Portal than it is a Bridge Constructor game, you are in for disappointment. That said, if you want a great bridge builder that creates mind-bending puzzles thanks to things from the Portal series (namely portals), then there’s plenty of reason to pick up Bridge Constructor Portal.

This adventure game is a little janky on mobile, but still plenty enjoyable.

Inside is a richly detailed game that rewards players constantly, but in subtle ways. As such, it maybe doesn’t lend itself to mobile all too well, but can still pack a heck of a punch if you play it in the right conditions.

Gorogoa is a fantastic puzzle game. Its mechanics are simple, but they get used in immensely creative ways and intertwine seamlessly with some gorgeous artwork and intriguing storytelling. If you’re looking for your next new favorite puzzle adventure on mobile, this is it.

Neverending Nightmares sets up a great atmosphere, and then ruins it by featuring boogeymen you have to get past using poor controls. When you aren’t doing that, the game throws some jump scares at you, but a lot of the time is still spent shuffling around hallways randomly. This sucks a lot of tension around the game, and makes for something that’s more frustrating than it is scary.

Portal Knights gives players an open sandbox full of possibilities, and then layers on a series of quests that challenge you to use all its tools to overcome their challenges. This is a killer combination and makes Portal Knights super satisfying to play, despite the fact that it doesn’t always feel as sleek or elegant as you might want.

Game Dev Tycoon is a must-play management game for anyone who follows the games closely. It does a phenomenal job of rendering the industry accurately, while also building a satisfying game around it. Even if you don’t follow games that much, there’s plenty to like about Game Dev Tycoon. It’s simply a fantastic game.

This runner does a good job of channeling the crazy charm of Katamari Damacy, but it’s also overloaded with ads and other annoyances.

GRID Autosport is a really, really ridiculously good looking racer, but is otherwise a pretty straightforward experience.

Her Majesty adds a lot of neat layers to the Reigns formula, but its core is still very much the same. As a result, I’m not sure how much Her Majesty might attract new players to the series. That said, Her Majesty has a lot of offer if you’re simply looking for a more fleshed out version of Reigns.

7 Wonders is a fantastic tabletop game, and it’s amazing how well its mechanics and strategy hold up in a digital format. There are some problems when it comes to surfacing all of the information you need to play in a way that is legible, and there’s a missing feature or two, but those things are only small blemishes on an exquisite game.

Slight issues with the continue system aside, Hoppenhelm is a great arcade game. Hopping, chopping, and blocking all feel great, there’s a fair sense of challenge, and there are unlocks to keep you working toward something on every run. There’s very little not to like here, so hop on over to the App Store and give it a download.

Games are often loud and overwhelming in their attempts to provide an escape, but Far from Noise is essentially the exact opposite. It pares things down and quiets them to a point that you can’t help but feel like you’re also stuck in a car and having the same thoughts as the main character. In a traditional sense, this might not make for a particularly empowering game experience, but that’s fine. We have enough of those already.

I Am The Hero is not your typical brawler, but it has typical brawler problems. On top of this, the game suffers from periodic slowdowns and crashes, which are completely infuriating. Unless all of its technical issues get worked out, I would avoid I Am The Hero, and—even when it does run a little better—its visual flair would be the only thing to write home about.

There's not a whole lot about Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp that is surprising. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill, freemium crafting game, but it just so happens to be made by Nintendo, which means it has pretty amazing production values. You'd probably be pretty hard-pressed to find a more pleasant-looking game like this on the App Store, but it shouldn't be too hard to find something a bit more interesting.

In this mobile version of Puzzle Fighter a lot of the base action feels the same, but it's hard to tell if you ever deserve your wins or losses. Did you win that match because you outplayed your opponent, or did you simply have better cards than them? The free-to-play model obscures the answer to this question so much that Puzzle Fighter never really feels satisfying, at least not in the way it used to. Instead, the main draw is the appeal of unlocking things, rather than developing your puzzle-matching skills.

The only real problem with Abi is its length. The game is completely beautiful, it’s got a lot of character, and its puzzles—while lite—are pretty neat. Hopefully the addition of more chapters to the game will make it a more compelling package in the future. For now though, Abi is a burst of fun that is gone before you know it.

RPGolf is comprised of two mediocre sets of mechanics that feel hastily stuck together. The RPG mechanics here are dead simple and the golfing offers no challenge. If there was something here to make these two game types intersect in interesting ways, RPGolf could skate by on being a novel experience. Regrettably, this is not the case, making for a game that just feels pretty bland and disjointed.

Flipflop Solitaire is a fantastic version of Solitaire. It switches up the rules in subtle ways that force you to think differently about the classic game. That said, the game’s changes to the basic formula might be a little too nuanced. Flipflop Solitaire doesn’t feel quite as revolutionary as previous Zach Gage releases, but it's a great game if you're looking for a new Solitaire experience.

Infinite Jets tries to take the magic of Infinite Tanks to the skies, but fails to reach new heights.

Starman is a fun enough puzzle game, but what really makes it stands out is its fantastic visual design. The black and white aesthetic, combined with richly detailed and interesting environments, makes for a game that you want to stare at all day. Although it isn’t a super long experience, and some of its puzzles can be troublesome, Starman is worth taking a look at.

South Park: Phone Destroyer is an ok Clash Royale clone, but does precious little with its license and feels overburdened with free-to-play hooks.

Cally’s Caves 4 is mostly just more Cally’s Caves, which is both a good and bad thing. The amount of upgrading and unlocking you can do here is a cut above previous entries in the series, but the combat still leaves something to be desired. Although there is a ton to do in Cally’s Caves, its lack of challenge might reduce your motivation to pursue all of it.

Million Onion Hotel can be a pretty overwhelming experience, but that’s part of what makes it so great. Its gameplay is relatively simple, but it layers on all sorts of crazy visuals and twists on its base mechanics that force you to learn from your mistakes and refine your strategy every time you play. There are some ways in which Million Onion Hotel gets a little too hectic and hard to follow, but I’d much rather that be the case than the alternative. Million Onion Hotel is a totally uncompromising experience, and I certainly respect it for that, even if it can be a little distracting at times.

Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition is a deeply satisfying game that takes all of the best elements from some of the greatest strategy games out there and combines them in unexpected and fantastic ways. It may not always be the easiest game to navigate, but the payoff is 100% worth it. The amount of depth and replayability here all but guarantees it’s a game you’ll want to keep on your phone or tablet for a long, long time.

Subdivision Infinity looks great in screenshots, but its presentation of space is very one-dimensional. The game revolves completely around repetitive missions to upgrade ships, which leaves a lot to be desired. For the same price (or less) than Subdivision Infinity, you can get a much better space game experience on mobile.

Subsurface Circular is a game that does so much with so little. It’s got an extremely stripped down set of mechanics, characters, and environments, yet it uses them tell a surprisingly deep and nuanced story in a pretty short amount of time. It’s hard to ask for more than that, and if you did, it might tarnishSubsurface Circularwhat is an extremely efficient and polished experience.

SIMULACRA is a creepy and thrilling game that may make you feel uncomfortable, but that’s kind of the point.

Time Recoil gets high marks purely because of how inventive its levels are and how well the game controls. The time-slowing mechanics here aren’t necessarily revolutionary, and the game’s story is pretty bland, but the way Time Recoil builds around these conceits while controlling like a dream makes it a fantastic follow up to Neon Chrome, and an amazing dual-stick shooter in its own right.

From top to bottom, Warhammer Quest 2 is a disappointing game. Its combat feels old, its systems unremarkable, its visuals stilted, and its performance unstable. On top of this, the whole game plays extremely slowly, which just adds to the suffering of playing through it. Don’t bother with it.

Guns Royale has most of the things you'd find in a game like Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, but the ways in which it departs from the formula make it less fun. By being so loot-focused and action oriented, Guns Royale ends up feeling like a slot machine with shooter mechanics rather than a satisfying Battlegrounds-like.

Into the Dead 2 isn't a particularly innovative runner, but it looks and feels good, at least up to a point. The free-to-play systems in the game eventually force you to engage with parts of it that feel like they're only there to make you spend currency you either earned or bought. It's at this point that Into the Dead 2 changes from a decently mindless runner into an insidious one.

Wheels of Aurelia is a game that leans heavily on its style and setting to create a compelling experience. Its mechanics aren’t complicated, and its story mostly exists to paint a picture of Italy circa 1978, but the end result is a game that can still draw you into a world that is rarely—if ever—explored in games, and that's something worth celebrating.

Dragon Hills 2 is mostly a good–if simple–experience. The feeling of burrowing underground and emerging to chomp tons of zombies is smooth and completely satisfying. That said, there are times when the action can be halted by bizarre environmental interactions, and the depiction of the main character is just unecessarily uncomfortable.

Dragon Project's core, Monster Hunter-style action makes it easy to satisfy your loot lust while you're waiting for the bus. It's still a grind, and it definitely doesn't explain its overabundance of systems and modes well, but it lets you fight epic boss fights with others no matter where you are, which is pretty great if you ask me.

Flame Versus Blaze may seem pretty slick on the surface, but it's got a whole mess of problems. It feels very pay-to-win and its action is hard to follow and control. Considering these issues, and the fact that there are much better (and fairer) free-to-play MOBAs out there, there's really not much reason to play Flame Versus Blaze.

Stranger Things is one of the most surprising tie-in games out there. It's a clever homage to the show's setting and the kinds of games from that era, it's fun to play, and it's completely free. It may not do much to capture the same tone of the show and some of its gameplay might feel dated, but that's ok. Stranger Things: The Game is a fun experience that treats its audience with some respect, which is a thing few other tie-in games can claim.