It was in the early days of the Apple App Store. Games were 59p to buy. No in-app purchases and were generally good indie titles. "Helsing's Fire" comes to mind. Miss that game!
I played the original Plants vs Zombies back in the day and thought it was pretty good. I got a new tablet recently and decided to try out the latest version - and holy fuck it is significantly worse. Rather than trying to be a good game, every possible aspect has been monetized.
So yeah, I'd say the early 2010s was a time where you could at least find some good stuff that wasn't ruined by enshitification.
Well, it is kinda true. Many old games I had on my phone that were free and didn't have ads, in the last few years have received updates to do literally nothing, but include ads. So "these days" is the case for some.
There was a dude on reddit who started doing short reviews of mobile games he liked, then ended up creating an app that focused on curated community reviews. It's not perfect but at least it's got decent filters for genres, which alone makes it a hell of a lot better than wading into the play store
This really upsets me and periodically bums me out. I used to like trawling through the top lists to see the various games that were on mobile. This is back in like 2011-2013. Typically monetization was either a free/premium version split, or an energy system. Now it's beyond 99% garbage with 99% of the last 1% being ports. The 1 of 1? Slice and Dice, that game rocks.
and then you go through the top paid games just to find... the same top paid games from the last decade. Nothing of value is being created or getting recognition
There could be a vicious cycle where game devs who want to be taken seriously don't touch mobile games, so as mobile game devs develop skills and experience, they move away from the platform.
Also a lot of the thick frameworks that many devs rely on these days require a lot of computing resources that maybe mobile devices have trouble keeping up with. I could see scenarios where a mobile game is worked on for a while but abandoned due to awful performance in early testing while a similar desktop game doesn't get killed because it's being developed on a high end system and later gets optimized to run better on weaker systems.
Though tbh, I have no idea how top phones compare with high end desktops these days and am just assuming that they are way behind, while low end desktops might be more comparable to high end phones for performance.
Good mobile game = ports from PC games and emulators
miHoYo games could be so much more if they are PC/Console games instead of mobile.
The only truly mobile game that I can think of that I can say is good is Pokemon GO, and I don't even like it but is the only game that truly uses the uniqueness of the mobile platform as a game feature.
I'm in a closed beta for WalkScape, which is a single-player RPG that uses your pedometer for all game progress. Travel to another location? Chop down trees? Craft a bronze mining pick? Stomp grapes into wine? All of them progress only as you take steps throughout the day. A great little game to check in on now and then, and I feel utilizes the mobile platform well.
I used my first computer around 2004. I was under 20, and not in the US or Europe (uhh... Morocco is literally 14km from Spain so it's close enough, right?)
I was early into mobile gaming, and it used to be AWESOME! It was a platform oozing with potential. Every game that came out on mobile was excellently crafted...until Candy Crush came out. It literally ruined the whole genre.
Doodle Jump wasn't the pinnacle of gaming, but everything about it was polished to perfection. The devs really put in the effort and finished the game, which is a rare feeling even in AAA games today.
But the potential was there, not a mtx nightmare in 80 percent of games. I would still say that great games like minedustry or better are still possible nowadays
It does, the gameplay works well on a small screen (actually better than Kotor in some ways), and I've generally found that turn-based stuff works well on touchscreens. Twitchy action stuff doesn't work so well - I found the GTA ports unplayable.
Also, I think Aspyr did a really nice job retooling the Kotor UI for smartphones, and they also did Kotor II.
Plants vs zombies was originally pretty good. I had originally bought it many years ago. Tried to play it again recently and the thing I paid for is some ad infested dumpster fire. Made me ignore all mobile games. Even the good ones can be ruined as you have no control of updates when you change phones.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is cross-platform now, so technically it's not mobile-only. And DCSS is much better than SPD, imo, as someone who has dumped unholy amounts of time into both.
Genshin is more your traditional singleplayer Gacha with MMO elements in my opinion. Also the first successful open-world Gacha so it gets some brownie points for that.
The mobile games industry was killed by ports and low-effort cash grabs. Seems like nobody makes good games that are specifically designed for mobile anymore, and almost all ports suffer from poor controls and/or just not being as good as the original versions.
Stuff like Pokémon Go and Ingress were very promising. Although I feel like Pokémon Go was too low effort and should have had very fleshed out Pokémon mechanics such as wild encounters, turn based battles, etc.
A year ago or so I would have said Clash Royale. But now... nah.
You'll find plenty of videos that explain this better than I can, but at this point the devs clearly hate the community, the game is more pay to win than ever, evolutions are completely broken and the devs barely care to balance the game anymore.
It's pretty obvious that right now they just want to squeeze as much money as possible from the game before it completely dies out.
They literally only have to pander to a small handful of whales to justify pay to win microtransactions. I'm sure the average player never spends any money on it.
Yea picked up the game a week ago, after not playing for 2 or 3 years and wow is this game unballanced. At this point it's just realy anoying. And my 2013 deck is obviously not meta anymore, but to level a new deck to a point of playability takes an obscene amount of work.
I will never not shill for physical keyboards on phones. The Droid 4's keyboard could be used with a PS1 emulator, I remember replaying FF Tactics before Square officially ported it.
That port by the way, one of the good mobile games.
There are some pretty decent portable controllers out there though (I.e. Turtle Beach Atom). Plus phone brackets for Series S/X controllers and DS4/DS5.
So there are good controller options, touchscreen controls for games designed for physical controls suck.
But carrying around physical controllers isn't very convenient.
Gotta plug one of my favorite mobile game studios: Afterburn. They only have 3 puzzle games. All are relatively short and 100%-able. Every single one is fun and full of heart. Golf Peaks, Inbento (bought by Crunchyroll), and Railbound.
you get the problem PC has (zillions of devices of different hardware/os configs) but at an even lower performance minimum. heavily limits what developers actually can do with it.
also doesnt help that more than half your userbase doesnt want to actually pay for the game.
Mobile games don't need to be technically impressive though. It's not like in PC/consoles where people want the most expensive high res 3D graphics.
I don't know if this is true for most, but for me, I just want a game that is simple visually but entertaining. The last thing I want is for a game to drain my phone's battery.
the flash game era benefited from an era where building a PC wasn't completely streamlined yet, and game distribution on desktop also wasn't streamlined (early steam was reviled and most users did not like it). Steam launched in 2003, and 2005 it went to allow 3rd parties. 2005 is also coincidentally when youtube was released, which marked the start of users moving off of well established sites like newgrounds to it over time, which flash ultimately died when mobile became more mainstream and neither google nor apple wanted to support flash. down the line.
2005 also marked the release date of the Xbox 360, which realistically was the first console where indie game development took off due to the Xbox Arcade. Also notice how paid mobile games was much more regular back during there was realistically like a few mobile phones in the market(when the iPhone 3GS was launched)
I've actually paid for a game. Had a good demo/trial and I paid for the full version. However, part of the problem is that way too many mobile games are trash. I'm not putting any money in unless I can try the game first.
PC has a similar problem. It's easy to find good games, but they're are still so many to choose from and finding one that fits what I like is still hard without a trial/demo of some sort. The 2 hour limit on Steam isn't enough time for a lot of games. Hell, I was just trying out a demo for a game right up my alley and I spent two hours just looking at all the options I had before I really even started the game. I think there's too much customization for my taste. It's cool, but that also means you can spend countless time trying to customize things to be optimal. I'll spend all my time tweaking things rather than playing.
yeah it should really be a "2 hours of playtime not counting settings fiddling and character creation if it's an RPG" or maybe just bump it up to 4h
though i'm pretty sure Steam is leading the demo renessance, the demo fest is a good show of that. And i've noticed many more games have demos nowadays, though it's mostly limited to indi games. I guess triple A with 20 franchise releases doesn't need to convince its fantabse to buy the game
Minecraft has been running fine on mobile, even as far back as like 2012 or something when it came out.
I remember playing it on an iPad 2, which is surely way more underpowered than the switch, and it ran perfectly fine. So it is possible. Guess they just didn't really try hard enough?
It doesn't quite fit into my list because it seems to be paid, but it looks wonderful, thanks. Since we're mentioning paid options, though, Zenge is nice.
It's really bizarre how phone gaming's golden age was before the smartphone era, having buttons helped a lot. Later java ME games and symbian everything were very cool, I still listen to the songs of Asphalt 4 to this day.
Don't get me wrong there are cool games too after mihoyo started getting ambitious, but they also ported their games to PC and consoles where it's better to play.
the current day phones gaming capability is massively hindered by the shit storm you have to sift through in order to play any of them. Most of which is due to shitty advertisement companies having malicious ads and intrusive practices. It's basically a hard requirement nowadays to use some sort of DNS blocker for them
Dicey Dungeons is an example of a game that I think is actually BETTER on mobile (cheaper too). Awesome game, and the touch controls really streamline it.
Back when PUBG first came out, I did not have a powerful PC yet. However, I could enjoy the mobile version of the game and, by the time I built my first PC, I had gained extensive knowledge that equated to a good head start. At its height, PUBG mobile was awesome. Moreover, when with friends, we could all just decide to play it together on our phones, to matter where we were.
I find Honkai: Star Rail even more suited to mobile (It's mostly not reaction time based) but still play Genshin also. Not as much as I did, but still too much.
Rollercoaster tycoon classic
-RCT 1+2 in one
-Touch interface + port by original rct1+2 dev
-100 or so scenarios
-No added mxt or pay to skip anything, --gameplay is exactly like PC release
-Original soundtrack
I think the fact that RCT Classic is only worth getting on mobile because there are better options on PC doesn't help make the case that RCT Classic should be a shining example of 'mobile gaming'. RCT Classic is bit above the bare minimum for an acceptable rerelease of older games.
I still remember stuff like dead space mobile, those where true, actual games that showed you the potential phones COULD have
now the gaming industry (conventions and everything else to), is now utterly dominated and muddled by the likes of candy crush and genshin impact, its actually sad
How is a giant open world with a cool campaign not impressive for a phone game? Just play it like a regular game instead of doing endgame content, the story's combat is easy to not force anyone to pull.
Some indie mobile games are great (Nameless cat, Zombie catchers (before being aquired by DECA), Simon Tatham's puzzles, foss fdroid games (Simple Solitare), Cookie clicker, etc.
Kairosoft and A# are literally the only mobile game companies I will buy EVERY FUCKDAMN thing they put out. Hell I barely have any time to mobile game anymore and I'll STILL drop that fiver when I see a new title arise.
For those that haven't played them, A#'s King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages are AMAZING! I have literally spent more time playing King of Dragon Pass on my phone than any other activity on it in the last 10 years added together.