Best mobile games of 2017
Looking for a fresh game to play on your mobile device? Here are our picks of the best mobile games released in two thousand seventeen (so far).
Foolish Walks
There’s something of a Katamari Damacy feel to Stupid Walks, a game in which you, a cocktail in a pineapple, need to rescue your fruit pals before they get turned into fruit smoothies. And it’s delightfully clumsy. Your one act is tapping the screen to put the next foot down, but the pineapple (other avatars can be unlocked) has a sort of rolling, lumbering, wobbly gait that makes straight lines a bit of a challenge as you traverse hazardous kitchens.
Photo by: Part Time Monkey Oy
Age of Rovals
Designed to be played in quick, 10-minute sessions, civilisation-building card game Age of Rivals is not without depth and complexity. You’re pitted against a foe, either a player or AI, and the aim is to get the most points by the end of four turns by building the best civilisation. You can also conquer cities with your army, provided it’s stronger than your foe’s army, and build decks to create strong characters. It’s a truly well executed combination of rich gameplay in a more casual format.
Price: $Three.99 | AU$Four.99 | £3.99 (Android); $1.99 | AU$Two.99 | £1.99 (iOS)
Linelight
Puzzle game Linelight is a representation of the very best mobile gaming has to suggest. It’s such a ordinary and minimalist concept — travelling along a wire, tripping switches and avoiding hazards to get to the next section — and it’s so beautifully made. Albeit there is no tutorial, the gameplay is entirely intuitive, and each level fits neatly into the screen so that you lose very little progress if you need to stop playing (or crash your avatar and reset the level). And it’s so peaceful and dreamy. You’re going to want to give this one a shot.
Price: $1.99 | AU$Two.89 | £1.79 (Android); $1.99 | AU$Two.99 | £1.99 (iOS)
PathPix Edge
I absolutely love the PathPix games. It’s basically a colouring game, where you have to draw a line packing in squares inbetween two squares of the same number, with the number of squares you pack in equal to that number. It’s indeed fairly tricky, especially when the lines get longer, because you need to leave space for other lines to be drawn. But so engrossing, and so satisfying. If you like this, consider providing the others a attempt. There’s a bunch here for Android.
Spin Junkie
Side-scroller Spin Junkie is a fabulous take on the runner. According to the premise, you are a little chunk of metal that loves spinning. You have to spin along the track, hitting rollers to proceed your spin, and evading hazards by either leaping over them or spinning the track. It’s wonderfully done, suggesting both an endless option and levels that you can play, and all packaged up in a gorgeous glowing neon package.
Egglia: Legend of the Redcap
Created by a team of former Secret of Mana developers, Egglia is as strange, and as lovely, as you might expect. It’s an RPG, drawing strongly from folk lore, in which you have to rebuild a cracked fairyland by exploring areas, collecting materials, defeating foes in turn-based battles, and finding eggs, which crack open to expose the next section of the sphere. It’s a little different from the standard RPG fare, however, also integrating crafting and timers (sans, gratefully, microtransactions) for a much more interestingly varied practice.
Price: $9.99 | AU$14.99 | £9.99 (Android); $9.99 | AU$14.99 | £9.99 (iOS)
Cat Quest
As the name suggests, Cat Quest is an open-world RPG about a adorable little kitty-cat going on quests. Not just any quests, however — your ultimate aim is to save your sister, and to do that, you’ll have to get strong by ridding the sphere of dragons and other monsters. It’s inspired by games like Skyrim and The Legend of Zelda, but plays out across an overland map, and has been streamlined down for a more casual practice. This hybridisation is a delight for mobile gaming, and there are more hiss-terical cat puns than you can jiggle a tail at.
Pigeon Wings
The birds in Pigeon Wings ain’t no walking slouches — they’re ace pilots, and only one is good enough to save the city. A high-speed side-scroller, you control your pigeon’s altitude by tilting your device forward and backward, attempting to avoid hazards like enemy fire and buildings. It draws on something of the spirit of Flappy Bird: ordinary gameplay, minimalist visuals and a difficulty curve that continually entices you to attempt again. And, of course, birds. It’s a surprise little treasure, and belongs in your folder of favourites.
Photo by: Ignacio Schiefelbein
Layton’s Mystery Journey
Layton’s Mystery Journey sees Professor Layton’s daughter Katrielle take the mantle of mystery-solver, setting up her own detective agency, with the help of an assistant and a talking dog. If you like Layton’s style of clue-collecting, mystery-solving and brain-teaser puzzles, Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy boasts more puzzles than ever, daily puzzles, minigames and an all-new story.
Price: $17.66 | AU$24.99 | £17.99 (Android); $15.99 | AU$24.99 | £15.99 (iOS)
Beholder
Beholder is worth a place of honour alongside brilliant dystopian titles such as Replica, Papers, Please and This War of Mine. As landlord over a block of apartments in a totalitarian state, you oversee the tenants — fairly literally your job is to spy on them for the government. You can choose to play by the government’s rules or covertly help the people under your care, but at superb risk. Every activity has consequences, with high stakes and numerous endings to unlock.
Price: $Four.99 | AU$6.49 | £3.89 (Android); $Four.99 | AU$7.99 | £4.99 (iOS)
Monument Valley Two
Monument Valley by maker ustwo is such a wonderful, unique practice. While the sequel could never hope to capture that again (possibly also because designer Ken Wong moved on), and doesn’t fairly replicate the magic of the very first in terms of story and feel, Monument Valley two remains an enchanting world, now with fresh characters, twisting and turning the buildings to solve puzzles and create fresh, Escher-style paths to reach the next level.
Framed Two
Framed was another fresh and beautifully-designed game when released — and Framed two truly hits the mark, even improving on its predecessor. It feels like an entirely natural continuation of the very first (even tho’ it’s a prequel), when you stir comic book-style panels around a page to "solve" the story and find the correct sequence of events to keep your spy protagonist from meeting a gooey end. If you loved the very first, grab the 2nd. It’s superb.
Price: $Four.99 | AU$7.99 | £4.99 (iOS); $1.99 | AU$6.49 | £4.Sixty-nine (Android)
Zip–Zap
This physics-based puzzler is minimalistic and heaps of joy, playing out in bite-sized levels. You manipulate objects to stay put on the screen, whether it’s a ball or a Meccano-style articulated object that you budge by tapping. It’s the ideal balance of puzzle-solving, skill to keep the objects on the screen balanced the way you need to, and brief levels ideal for casual play.
Price: $1.99 | AU$Two.39 | £1.Sixty nine (Android); $1.99 | AU$Two.99 | £1.99 (iOS)
Photo by: Philipp Stollenmayer
To the Moon
This RPG is more on the poignant side. It’s not about fighting foes, but helping an old man fulfil his dying wish by constructing false memories that send him on a tour to the moon. It’s all about solving puzzles and stitching a memory together so you can budge on to the next one. It’s fairly light on actual gameplay — story is where it counts. And it’s fairly emotionally affecting. Be sure to play it with sound.
Price: $Two.99 | AU$Trio.99 | £2.Sixty nine (Android); $Two.99 | AU$Four.49 | £2.99 (iOS)
Miles & Kilo
Wonder Boy, the classic side-scrolling arcade game, sadly doesn’t exist on mobile, but the next best thing has to be Miles & Kilo (not to be confused with Miles Kilo), the go after up to Kid Tripp. It’s a ideally balanced homage in which you play Miles, a boy who crash-lands on an island of monsters, then attempts to collect the lumps of his shattered vehicle (and fruit). Gameplay is pared down to two buttons, leap and attack, and it’s just about as ideal a game of its ilk as you’ll find.
Arkanoid vs Space Invaders
We’re not entirely sure why no one ever thought to combine Arkanoid and Space Invaders before, but the combination of Arkanoid’s ball-bouncing and brick-breaking with Space Invaders’ alien smooshing is flawless. Get it in your machine!
Price: $Trio.99 | AU$Five.99 | £3.99 (Android); $Trio.99 | AU$Five.99 | £3.99 (iOS)
Prison Architect
Prison Architect (coming as no surprise) tasks you with building a maximum security prison. It’s kind of a town-building and management sim, but with a prison instead of a town. Gameplay involves building an efficient prison, then keeping it running slickly, making sure both the inmates and the staff are glad. It’s an amazingly detailed and well executed sandbox strategy game.
Photo by: Paradox Interactive
4D Fucktoys
Marc ten Bosch is still working on 4D puzzle game Miegakure, but in the meantime he’s released 4D Fucktoys, a little interactive toybox that aims to instruct you about the fourth dimension. Basically, it’s a 4D physics engine. There aren’t indeed any rules to speak of, you just play around with objects in a box and observe how they behave. It’s baffling and fascinating in equal measures. Learn more about it here.
Yankai’s Peak
Just as Kenny Sun’s Yankai’s Triangle was a love letter to triangles, so too is Yankai’s Peak a love letter to pyramids. More structured than its predecessor, the aim is to shove pyramids around a triangular grid and place them on their corresponding colour, aided by a few different mechanics, such as pinning a corner of a pyramid. The game can be almost punishingly difficult, but it’s wonderfully satisfying.
Price: $Two.99 | AU$Three.99 | £2.79 (Android); $Two.99 | AU$Four.49 | £2.99 (iOS)
Old Man’s Journey
If you want a gentle, bittersweet stroll of game, Old Man’s Journey is just that. Downright wordless, the game goes after an old man as he receives a letter and sets out on a journey. As he reaches milestones along the way, scenes from his memory play, showcasing him falling in love and building a life. The gentle gameplay is made up of hills and roads, which you stir up and down to create fresh paths for the old man to wander through, littered with objects you can tap for lovely animations.
Price: $Four.99 | AU$6.49 | £4.59 (Android); $Four.99 | AU$7.99 | £4.99 (iOS)
Planescape: Torment
You might have seen, thanks to its latest release, a bit of hum about a game called Torment: Tides of Numenera. Its predecessor is a one thousand nine hundred ninety nine game called Planescape: Torment, an isometric RPG taking place in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s now considered a cult classic, renowned for its weird, engrossing and intricate story; strange characters; sense of humour and emotional influence. It’s incredible — you indeed ought to play it at least once.
Price: $9.99 | AU$13.99 | £9.49 (Android); $9.99 | AU$14.99 | £9.99 (iOS)
Mallow Drops
Australian developer Gritfish (John Kane) is responsible for the Sokoban-ish puzzler Mallow Drops, and it’s wonderful. You need to slide lovely little pixel birds around the stages to collect the eggs that have fallen from their nest. But there’s a (literal) twist — large stones block parts of the levels, and you can only budge them by physically turning your device to alter gravity. This combination of elements makes for a indeed interesting and engrossing practice that truly elevates it into something beyond your average sliding puzzle.
Price: $Trio.49 | AU$Four.49 | £3.39 (Android); $Two.99 | AU$Four.49 | £2.99 (iOS)
Ninja Pizza Lady
Disparity Games’ Ninja Pizza Doll is a delight. The starlet is a teenage pizza delivery dame, who zips her way over rooftops and obstacles to produce piping hot pizzas to the customers of her dad’s pizzeria, picking up collectibles along the way to unlock garments, comics and cheats. But it’s not all sleek freerunning. Obstacles slow you down and in later levels you have to circumvent jeering hellions. The gameplay is indeed well designed, and it tackles its subject matter with warmth and good humour.
Vignettes
Vignettes asks you, just for a while, to leave behind about goals a little. Not entirely, because you have hidden objects to find, but it’s not the kind of hidden objects game you’re thinking about. It’s about moving objects around until they leisurely resolve into other objects as you switch perspective — a bit like Shadowmatic, but without the shadows. As you detect more objects, they get added to pictures in frames, the titular vignettes. It can get a little frustrating at times, but it’s never not utterly charming.
Castle Battles
There’s usually a lot of depth to real-time strategy. It’s a genre that invites careful long-term planning and execution, but Castle Battles has found a way to bring that depth to TS battles for the mobile format. Each battle takes place on an island, and the gameplay has been pared back to three core elements: collect resources, deploy troops and conquer enemy territory. There are four campaigns to play through, a wonderfully quirky sense of humour and gameplay that is served in shorter levels that are ideally calibrated for pick-up-and-put-down play.
Robot Unicorn Attack Forever
While the magnificent rainbow core of Robot Unicorn Attack has been retained across the franchise since the very first game landed in 2010, each iteration has had its own spin. The third generation is Robot Unicorn Attack Forever, and it’s awesome. It’s taken the concentrate away from factional multiplayer (attempting to hammer the other team to a objective) and back to single player, where your aim is to level up your citadel, collect and level up unicorns, and accomplish challenges in exchange for currency that you can trade for more unicorns. Also attempt to not crash your unicorns as you run across the landscape, all set to Erasure’s "Always".
Onirim
Asmodee Digital is building a truly solid little stable of board and card games ported to mobile. Onirim is a single-player card game, but it’s very likely not like any other solitaire game you’ve ever played. You need to create streaks of cards to unlock door cards — unlock the total complement of doors and you win the game. However, there are nightmare cards in the deck that cost you cards, and when your deck runs dry, it’s game over, whether you have the doors or not. If you’re ready to lose a lot, and once you fully grok how it works, it’s utterly engrossing.
Sunless Sea
If you like exploration survival games with a rich story and complicated innards, Failbetter’s steampunkish Sunless Sea is an practice not to be missed. You’re the captain of a steamer ship, taking on passengers and trading jobs, attempting to work your way up from discreet beginner to Captain of the High Seas, according to the goals of your character. This involves amassing wealth, fighting horrific monsters, managing resources and team, and making decisions at story points along the route.
We recommend a guide to commence with, but once you’re comfy with the gameplay, there’s hours of in-depth entertainment ahead.
Oxenfree
On the surface, graphic escapade Oxenfree looks laden with horror cliches — a group of teenagers, an abandoned location, spooky ghosts speaking over a radio. It manages to transcend these tropes, however, with some brilliant writing — believable, relatable characters, excellent dialogue, wonderful art and sound design, and a deeply weird and compelling story.
Price: $Four.99 | AU$7.99 | £4.99 (iOS); $Four.99 | AU$6.99 | £3.89 (Android)
Photo by: Night School Studio
Pan-Pan
If you like minimalist exploration games with hearts that hammer for discovery, Pan-Pan is for you. When the main character’s balloon-ship crashes, it’s up to you to explore the surrounding landscape, solving puzzles to build a fresh ship. Nothing is explained — you need to figure everything out based on visual cues, so you might end up spending a lot of time wandering about touching things, attempting to figure out what they do. But the game is an utter zen delight — don’t leave behind to pop on some headphones for the audio landscape.
After the End: Forsaken Fate
After the End: Forsaken Fate is a lovely foray into the exploration puzzler. You control a little horned boy with a backpack solving a series of puzzles in a desert land inhabited by monsters. These involve finding switches that switch the landscape and paths, permitting you to collect gems, activate statues and progress on to the next section.
Price: $Trio.99 | AU$Four.99 | £3.89 (Android); $Trio.99 | AU$Five.99 | £3.99 (iOS)
The Escapists
When you land yourself in prison, there’s only one thing to do — plot an elaborate escape and get the heck outta there. That’s the premise behind strategy game The Escapists, but it’s not as plain as digging a slot and escaping. You need to cautiously plot your method, gather and craft the devices and supplies you need, avoid attracting suspicion, learn the routines of the guards and the other inmates, and make your break for freedom when chance is ripest.
Price: $Three.99 | AU$Five.99 | £3.99 (Android); $Three.99 | AU$6.99 | £3.99 (iOS)
Kingdom: Fresh Grounds
This is a game that puts you right at the ground level of attempting to build a kingdom. It comes under strategy-simulation-survival-roguelike, and sees you attempting to build a kingdom from scrape, then grow it and defend your crown from the hordes of monsters that wander the forest. All you have is a pony and a bag of coins in a 2D side-scrolling world. You find and hire people living nearby to defend your settlement, and use your coins to expand and build.
And success every time is not an option — you will fail, but hopefully come back stronger and wiser. It’s a game of tender balance and surprising depth.
Price: $9.99 | AU$12.99 | £9.99 (Android); $9.99 | AU$14.99 | £9.99 (iOS)
Mushroom 11
This side-scrolling platformer is unlike any other. You budge through the levels by "pruning" cells from a blob of fungus, which causes fresh cells to grow elsewhere on the blob. By permanently pruning and reshaping the fungus, you learn to control it and make fresh shapes that can be moved around to solve puzzles on the levels, collect other organisms. It’s a clever take on the platformer that requires creative thinking.
Price: $Four.99 | AU$6.49 | £4.89 (Android); $Four.99 | AU$7.99 | £4.99 (iOS)
Beglitched
At last, a game that combines hacking and witchcraft! Beglitched is a weird combination of Bejeweled, Minesweeper and all things pink and adorable. Taking over from the Glitch Witch, you have to "hack" your way through the networks on her laptop, taking out rival hackers hiding therein by a combination of match-three gameplay and Minesweeper-style hide-and-seek. The tutorial only gives you the absolute basics, so it takes some figuring out — but that’s part of the joy and boy is it worth the effort.
Euclidean Grounds
Monument Valley, Hitman Go and a Rubik’s Cube had a weird baby. Euclidean Grounds was developed by an architecture student, eyeing you solve a series of rotating, three-dimensional levels, taking advantage of the shifting geometry to eliminate foes from the side or behind. The comparisons to Monument Valley are unavoidable, and developer Miro was clearly inspired by it, but Euclidean Grounds is an entity in its own right.
Ticket to Earth
We very first clapped eyes on Ticket to Earth at PAX Australia, so it’s delightful to see it ultimately launch. It combines isometric turn-based tactical strategy a la Final Fantasy Tactics with colour-based tile matching. You need to plan your advances, attacks and retreats, taking advantage of the tile colours — yellow for physical attack power, green for magic and crimson for health. It makes for an excellent combination of elements, set against gorgeous art and a fabulous sci-fi story.
Card Thief
Tinytouchtales’ two thousand fifteen game Card Crawl combined a roguelike basement crawler with a solitaire-style card game. Now the developer has followed up with Card Thief, a game that seeks to do the same for stealth-style gameplay. As the eponymous thief, you need to learn how to make the most of shadows, take out foes, steal the treasure and make your escape. It sounds plain, but it’s a game of richness and depth that leisurely unfolds into something beautiful.
Price: Free (Android) $1.99 | AU$Two.99 | £1.99 (iOS)
The Pavilion
You’re going to spend the very first little while of Pavilion watching a little man run around, baffled as to what to do. That’s OK — it’s all part of the practice, to poke at things and figure out what you need to do to solve the puzzle of each level. As you do so, the gameplay and the story leisurely expose themselves, totally without words. And the setting is absolutely beautiful, a strange series of art nouveau-style ruins and gorgeous soundscapes.
Cosmic Express
Cosmic Express is the latest puzzler from the developer of A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and it’s just as awesome. It’s set in a space colony, where all the little aliens are waiting for a train to take them home. Problem: You can only take one at a time, and they can only be dropped off at specific knots. This requires you to lay increasingly awkward sets of train tracks to get the adorable little guys home. It’s all delightfully heartwarming and ditzy.
Price: $Four.99 | AU$7.99 | £4.49 (Android); $Four.99 | AU$7.99 | £4.99 (iOS)
Death Road to Canada
Death Road to Canada is another game that you need to play a little to have it click. It’s a randomly generated escapade game that sees you attempting to flee the zombie-infested US with a motley squad of allies, fighting your way through the hordes of the undead and making decisions about what to do that may get you all killed. It’s all very tricky to balance, however. Having a larger group means strength in numbers, but it also means more to feed — and a higher chance that group infighting could break out. It’s weird, it’s wild and it’s a different practice every time you play.
The Tying of Isaac: Rebirth
The Roping of Isaac: Rebirth won’t be for everyone. You play a naked (strongly stylised) child, crawling deeper into the Earth’s underbelly, slaying the monsters you find there (using your tears as bullets) in a grotesque bloodbath after the character’s mother attempted to kill him at the behest of God (it’s all very Old Testament). If this does sound like it’s up your alley, you’re going to find a game of which you’ll possibly never tire: a top-down, twin-stick, randomly generated, roguelike dungeon-crawler that feels like it always has something fresh to showcase you.
Polywarp
Polywarp wears its Super Hexagon influence pridefully on its sleeve, but it’s absolutely its own brute. Sure, it consists of a rapidly ever-shrinking series of concentric shapes, but the idea is to make sure your form in the centre is always the same as the next form to shrink around it, moving in time with the hammer. The colours (and unlockable palette) and music, as well as a genuine sense of progression through the game, elevate Polywarp in the field of twitch arcade mobile games.
Sky Dancer
I primarily did not care for this game. However, something told me to persevere with it, and I’m so glad I did. It’s a runner, but one that involves making giant, death defying leaps to lil’, little platforms. The control system feels sluggish at very first, but that’s certainly by design; the game’s core strength is developing the capability to fine-tune your control of the character, and as you grow more skilled, you can finish missions to unlock more characters and garments.
We’d like to see more environments to play in, but as it stands, Sky Dancer is a superbly balanced game that actually requires you to hone your skill at playing it.
Photo by: Pine Entertainment
Potion Explosion
Potion Explosion is a board game ported to mobile, and in my opinion it’s the better for it. The board game has a lot of lumps, which can be very fussy, and the digital version has — wait for it — an offline single-player mode. The idea is to match marbles to collect the ingredients to make potions, playing against an opponent in pass-and-play mode or online multiplayer, and the person who does the best potion-making wins the game. It’s a fair bit trickier than your standard match puzzler, and beautifully made.
Price: $Two.99 | AU$Trio.89 | £2.89 (Android); $Two.99 | AU$Four.49 | £2.99 (iOS)
Splitter Critters
Splitter Critters is one adorable and clever puzzler. You have to guide the little critters to their flying saucer by drawing lines to split the screen and budge the chunks so that the critters can get to different levels. It’s a elementary enough concept once you get going, but as you progress, the game keeps throwing challenging spanners into the works, such as fresh obstacles, and enemies that want to gobble up your critters.
Price: $Two.99 | AU$Three.99 | £2.49 (Android); $Two.99 | AU$Four.49 | £2.99 (iOS)
Charming Keep
Australian studio Mighty Games of Shooty Skies fame has turned its attention to the idle clicker, and Charming Keep is exactly what the name suggests (charming). The idea is to build a bunch of shops, not unlike a tycoon game (GLU’s L’il Kingdom springs to mind), where you raise funds to rescue hapless princes from the dangers of their princely adventures. It strikes just the right balance of adorable, funny and joy to play, with what feels like decent progression and without growing tiresome like some clickers do. It’s one of the most well designed titles of the genre.
Downgeon Quest
The roguelike grid-based dungeon-crawler is well-trodden ground at this point, but Downgeon Quest has managed to freshen it up. With a fairy-tale theme (and heroes from famous tales), it sees you trawling levels of a dungeon space looking to pursue down a mischievous animal. The twist is that, in order to get through, you need to craft spells, weapons and other items from materials that can be found as you delve. It spruces up the tried-and-true formula and puts a joy fresh spin on roguelike gameplay.
Price: Free (Android); $0.99 | AU$0.99 | £0.49 (iOS)
Photo by: Cyberlodge Interactive
Edo Superstar
Reminisce "Ukiyo-e heroes", the art series that reimagined movie game heroes as traditional Japanese woodblock prints? The creator of that art, Jed Henry, has now released his own movie game, Edo Superstar, after a successful two thousand thirteen Kickstarter campaign. The art is based on a traditional Japanese style, and starlets Masaru, a monkey who is fighting his way through Edo to inject the Zodiac Tournament, and be crowned the best fighter of all time (other characters are also based on the Japanese zodiac). It employs a gesture-based control system designed especially for the game, and the result is a genuinely unique and stylish game.
Price: Free (Android); $0.99 | AU$1.49 | £0.99 (iOS)
Glitchskier
Back in the days of floppy discs, games would sometimes be constructed from symbols on the screen signifying the elements of the gameplay. Glitchskier, a fresh shoot-’em-up, manages to almost flawlessly capture that retro ASCII feel with a UI that’s modelled on the old MS-DOS operating system, even down to the CRT monitor scanlines and screen flicker. The game itself seems to be fairly basic on the surface, but bosses and collectibles in the glitch-filled screens mean you’ll be coming back to see what other secrets you can find — and pursue down a fresh high score.
Price: $1.99 | AU$Two.79 | £1.Sixty nine (Android); $1.99 | AU$Two.99 | £1.99 (iOS)
Miss Fisher and the Deathly Labyrinth
"Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries", the Australian period murder mystery demonstrate, was cruelly cut down in its prime (albeit there might be a movie). Those who miss the intrepid, witty and urbane lady detective now have a reprieve, thanks to Tin Man Games, famous for its gamebook adventures. Miss Fisher and the Deathly Labyrinth is part point-and-click, part visual novel, watching you scouring various scenes for clues (and fabulous garments) to solve a series of mysteries. It’s a delightful come back to Phryne’s adventures, with the beloved core cast of characters all making appearances.
Dandy Basement: Legend of Courageous Yamada
This is a remarkably sweet and hilarious RPG about, as the app description reads, "an avuncular unmarried unemployed man who lives alone making an RPG by himself." It’s a nested narrative: Yamada is an ordinary salaryman by day; by night, he’s an intrepid game developer. Spurred by unrequited love for a damsel he’s never met (and who is half his age), Yamada develops ever more fantastical levels where he can be a hero (and where you can slay monsters, collect treasure and win the princess).
Stagehand: A Switch sides Platformer
The setting of Stagehand is one with which you ought to be intimately familiar with by now: the side-scrolling platformer. However, rather than controlling a little character leaping from platform to platform, you’re controlling the landscape itself — moving the platforms so that the autorunning character can budge sleekly, without getting left behind and squished as the screen scrolls across.
Photo by: Big Bucket Software
Heart Starlet
Heart Starlet, made by developer Jussi Simpanen for Ludum Dare #48 in 2014, is another platformer, but one that requires the control of not one, but two characters. You need to control them together to activate areas of each level (in the form of a labyrinth) so that both characters can reach their respective exit. It gets indeed tricky, but the lack of penalties makes it a truly slick, delightful practice.
Causality
Causality looks a little like Lara Croft Go, but it’s only a superficial resemblance. Yes, you have to stir your chunks around on the board to reach the exit, but there are no enemies to avoid. Instead, you need to navigate numerous astronauts around the board, avoiding crossing paths (because they can’t) and hitting buttons so that the astronauts can reach their respective exits. It ramps up when the time manipulation aspect comes into play, which brings clones onto the board. The game is a lot more elaborate than it looks on the surface, and will tie your brain in knots — in a very good way indeed.
Price: $1.99 | AU$Three.29 | £1.99 (Android); $1.99 | AU$Two.99 | £1.99 (iOS)
Hidden Folks
You thought Where’s Wally was challenging, didn’t you? The amazingly charming Hidden Folks uses a similar principle, but way more so (and with a delightful soundtrack made up entirely of vocalisations). The game is made up of hand-drawn, black-and-white scenes, in which you need to locate the people, animals and items displayed on the bottom of the screen. But the scenes aren’t static — you need to poke around, stir things aside and trigger little interactions to find some of the targets. It’s an absolute treasure of joyful discovery.
Slayaway Camp
Slayaway Camp is, at its core, a Sokoban-style puzzler, but it’s what’s packaged around that core gameplay that makes it brilliant. Unlike Quell, where you collect drops, you’re the villain in a series of slasher movies, and you need to hit (and slay!) all the teenage counselors at a summer camp. The graphics are voxel-based, which keeps the gore-fest entertainingly cartoony, and every detail has been lovingly thought about — from the "rewind" option when you fall to the scattered bones you leave in your wake. Some levels have boundaries or special features (such as fires) to help you dispatch your victims (and provide hazards that you need to avoid yourself), and you can even earn coins to unlock special kills. For such a bloodthirsty premise, it’s an utter joy.
Photo by: Blue Wizard Digital