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Produced alongside our friends at PocketGamer.fun – THE place to discover your next favourite mobile games – here’s our pick of the best fresh-this-week titles.
While the deals and the stats of the gaming world are important, nothing would happen without the research, funding and, of course, development that goes into making a great game. PocketGamer.fun brings you the latest games, lets you see them in action and download right from the page.
So here are the most exciting new mobile games right now, the developers and publishers behind them, and why, exactly, they’ve made the cut.
Athena Crisis
There will never be enough grid-based strategy games. Someone had to say it.
As the strategy genre continues to rise, Athena Crisis offers a tactical adventure that feels part Fire Emblem, part Advance Wars, and part XCOM, with a retro art style thrown in for good measure.
The single-player campaign delivers seven grid-based environments with an army of over 40 types of infantry units, aerial combatants and seafaring forces available, combining into one big dose of destruction.
As a premium title, all this turn-based strategy action is gated behind a one-off payment, but cross the barrier and a full game awaits. Null Games is even unlocking both PC and mobile versions for the price of one fee, allowing eager strategists to play as much as they want, wherever they want.
Beyond the many missions to complete solo, there’s also endless warfare to be had online in casual and ranked battles, with up to seven players competing at a time.
Oh, and there’s a bear with a rocket launcher. Need we say more?
Archero 2
The sequel to Habby’s hybridcasual phenomenon, Archero has stealth-dropped on app stores with faster battle action, more dungeons to explore, and even a brand-new hero. In Archero 2, it’s not only the Demon King who causes trouble – he’s got a new minion, too: the original Archero’s protagonist.
It’s been over five years since the original game released on mobile, reinventing the wheel in many ways and even coining the term hybridcasual.
Much has changed since, in the real world and in the Archero universe, so the new hero will need to conquer bow-based combat and master every skill to endure this roguelike gauntlet, especially with the new countdown survival mode.
Habby has soft launched Archero 2 with 50 main chapters, 1,250 floors in Sky Tower and a whole bunch of character builds already available.
Balatro
After taking the world by storm earlier this year on PC and console, roguelike card game Balatro has finally crossed platforms to mobile, granting players the power of illegal decks in the palms of their hands.
Solo developer LocalThunk has redesigned the hit game with touchscreens in mind and expanded accessibility to this high-stakes, battle-based poker experience in the process. The dev’s also thrown the poker rulebook out the window, who needs stifling limitations when you can instead hit an outrageously high score with card combos and Joker wildcards?
Balatro is currently Google Play’s top paid card game and Apple’s App Store’s number one strategy game, proving its gameplay loop to be just as addictive on mobile as it is anywhere else. Perhaps even more so.
Merge Match March
Turning match-3 gameplay into a pixelated battle between man and monster, Zoo Corporation’s Merge Match March divides phone screens in two between a puzzle board and an action scene.
Players interact with the puzzle side, reorganising pixel sprites into lines of three in standard match-3 fashion to influence the battle on the action side; when coins, weapons or fighters merge, they appear in the battle scene to change the course of war, growing an army’s size, levelling up its units, activating special skills and more.
Merging with RPG mechanics, characters sent to the battle scene come in a range of classes, have unique stats – strength, intelligence, dexterity and beyond – and bring their own skills and weapons to the table, able to be enhanced and carried forward from battle to battle.
Legend of Kingdoms
Set during the tumultuous era of the Three Kingdoms in China, the aptly named Legend of Kingdoms combines an 1,800-year-old historical backdrop with 21st-century idle RPG mechanics.
A bountiful world busy with rivalry and conflict, ancient ambition and growing allegiances await, but only on Android for now – where Longcheer is testing its new open beta.
Players don the role of a rising leader in 200s China, tasked with recruiting the strongest warriors around, conquering enemy warlords and building an unstoppable kingdom. It’s a dangerous world, and players are welcome to go it alone if they dare; those more cautious conquerors may instead prefer to work together with other players.
Once more, RPG elements come into play with warriors having their own strengths, weaknesses, and synergies on the battlefield, and they can be enhanced via training, enhancing skills, and more.
Quite the busy week for RPGs!
PocketGamer.fun – Your Guide to Instant Entertainment
PocketGamer.fun is a collaboration between the Pocket Gamer team and domain name specialist Radix, who is behind the .fun domain designed specifically for the games industry. We’ve created a whole new site that’s designed for people who just want to play the best games right away, whatever their favourite genre or mood.
Combining curated lists of the top games in different genres, plus recommendations of PG’s favourite titles and short videos to browse, PocketGamer.fun, like the domain itself, is all about getting to entertainment instantly.
The .fun domain is the new home for games and game developers focused on offering a unique benefit to both players and game makers in the industry. As a new domain it’s your chance to give your brand a new distinctive URL and get straight to the serious fun! And domains are incredible value right now. At just $0.99 to register that’s less than the average IAP!
