We look at some of the best games out there for tablet and smartphones.
The mobile gaming world has come leaps and bounds over the last few years, and exciting new games are released every day. So how do you keep up? We're here to help! We've put together a list of some of the best mobile games out there for those looking for a deeper, more challenging gaming experience.
While most of these games will cost you to download, we promise they're worth the investment.
The Banner Saga
The Banner Saga is one of the most beautifully done strategy RPGs that we’ve seen on mobile. It’s a port of the PC version of the game and features a branching storyline, 25 playable characters, seven different classes, and plenty of ways to upgrade and enhance your characters.
Throughout the game you lead a caravan of survivors trekking through a world inspired by Norse mythology. When forced into battle the game presents you a chess-like layout, with each character assigned a certain number of moves and attacks per round. The hand-drawn characters and backgrounds are a sight to behold, making The Banner Saga one of the best-looking games on any device, and the branching choices means a second and third play-through is a must.
FTL
In FTL you are a captain of your own starship stranded in an unfamiliar part of the universe, and you need to pilot your ship through the galaxy. Detailed organisation of your ship’s interior, careful exploration and crew management become central to your survival as you travel the cosmos. While exploration can be very rewarding, as you get precious resources like fuel, the starship battles are the most engaging part of the game. The decisions you make in battle are imperative to your ship's survival, such as focusing weapons on the area's weak spot, diverting oxygen from one section of your ship to another, or in the most dire case, jumping into hyperspace to avoid total destruction.
Every play-through is different as the map and the enemies are generated anew and the game offers a huge amount of replay value. Add to this one of the best soundtracks of recent memory and you have a definite winner.
Get it on IOS
The Last Express
Originally released on PC in 1997, The Last Express has been reborn as a mobile game. Taking its cue from famous murder mystery stories, players take the role of a passenger onboard the fabled Orient Express, traveling through the French countryside on the eve of World War 1. Primarily a ‘point and click’ game, you are tasked with solving a murder through exploration and puzzle solving. There is a wealth of dialogue, and plenty of secrets to unravel throughout the game, as every passenger has his or her own story, and the rotoscoping artwork vividly brings to life in the early 1900s.
LIMBO
In LIMBO, you play as a small boy who is trapped in a dark, cold world. Searching for his sister, you must overcome your fear of spiders, heights, and pointy things that wish to harm you if you are to make it out of limbo alive. Based entirely on puzzles, some of which are very challenging, you must master simple machines and time your jumps just right to overcome the game’s obstacles. The dark and moody atmosphere mixed with the deceptively simple puzzles makes LIMBO one of the most memorable games you'll experience.
Fallout Shelter
Released as a tie-in to Fallout 4, you must build a fallout shelter, populate it with people and then manage everything so that it runs well. You’ll have appoint various people to different jobs within the vault, send dwellers out into the wastelands for supplies and fend off attacks from raiders. You can also ensure the continuation of your population through encouraging relationships between your vault dwellers, ultimately leading to an increase in the amount of people inhabiting the shelter. The game tests your survival skills and provides a report card at the end of the day to show how well you did to make survivors happy. Fallout Shelter has a surprising amount of depth and the developers have also done great work adding new content to help keep things fresh.
Please note that while some of these games may be free to download from your app store, the data to do so, and to play them is not. Download great-value data bundles to keep playing.
