It’s the start of a new year and as always there are new games and old occupying our spare time, but who’s playing what? I asked some of the Android Authority team to tell me what their current favorites are, what their favorite game or games of the last six months were, and why. Now, we find out who’s living in the past and who’s on the cutting edge.
See also:
10 best new Android games of 2017
2 weeks ago
Joe Hindy
It’s really hard to nail down just one game that I’m playing “right now”. The beauty of mobile is that these games are designed to be played in short bursts so it always pays to have a few hanging around in case you’re “out of energy” in one of them.
In any case, my current games include Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Fire Emblem Heroes, Crashlands, and Final Fantasy IX. The latter two I’ve been playing for a while, but will hang around thanks to their cloud saving and long story lines.
Perhaps my favorite of these currently is Crashlands. It’s just so huge and goofy, but it still feels like a “made for mobile game”…and there are no in-app purchases to boot! Totally recommending that one. Again.
INSTALL CRASHLANDS
Scott Gordon
My favorite game right now is Ninja Spinki Challenges. I heard about it at work because it was developed by the chap who made Flappy Bird. Is it good though? I’d say it’s accomplished. Like Flappy Bird, it presents a challenge (or series of challenges, in this case) that are always within your grasp but that are also very difficult to conquer. It has that same “just one more turn” appeal in spades. It’s the only game I’ve played for more than an hour recently so it’s my favorite game by default.
INSTALL NINJA SPINKI CHALLENGES
My favorite game over the last six months is You Must Build A Boat. I’m not a big fan of touchscreen controls that feel like they belong on a game controller (taps, wipes and tilts excepted) or free-to-play games because I prefer mobile-first games and unrestricted access.
You Must Build A Boat takes advantage of the portrait screen format and it doesn’t include in-app purchases (or at least, doesn’t require them). It’s kind of a match-three puzzle game with role-playing elements where the hub world is a boat that you are populating as you play.
INSTALL YOU MUST BUILD A BOAT
Jimmy Westenberg
I’ve always been a huge fan of 8-bit style action games (Sword of Xolan is my favorite mobile game of all time), so Evil Factory is a natural fit for me. It has a stellar soundtrack, intuitive controls, an interesting storyline, and plenty of crazy-cool bosses to fight.
You play as a small, pixelated hero named Leo who’s part of a band of rebels called the International Alliance. This rebel alliance is doing the best it can to stop the evil Kraken group from taking over the world. You see, Kraken’s Evil Factory is filled with deranged boss monsters on every level. It’s your job to beat them all and, you know, save the world.
It’s a free-to-play title, but you should have no problem getting through it without spending any real money.
INSTALL EVIL FACTORY
Joshua Vergara
Want an outlier? There’s one game that found a way to merge a few of my favorite genres together: WWE Champions. I’m a wrestling fan and this game merges wrestling with a kind of Candy Crush-like gameplay that lends itself very well to mobile. WWE Champions is like Super Puzzle Fighter updated for Android: make a Candy Crush-style thing happen below, see the action happen above. It’s quite addicting.
INSTALL WWE CHAMPIONS
Lately, I’ve also been enamored with the big PC and console names that have made it to Android, primarily because of the NVIDIA Shield TV and all the Android ports. Most recently, Jade Empire – a classic Bioware PC RPG – came to Android and it has been great to relive it. (The same goes for Bully, one of Rockstar’s best games, and Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Heroes. Not to mention all of the different Final Fantasy games that litter the Google Play Store – I’ve bought many of them.)
INSTALL JADE EMPIRE
Lanh Nguyen
My current favorite game and favorite game of the last 6 months has been Clash Royale by Supercell. I’ve been playing this game since last year’s Google I/O and I haven’t been able to put it down. It may look like a super simple top-down tower defense game, but once you start playing you’ll soon realize how challenging the game can be. And maybe that’s why I’m so addicted to it.
The game takes a lot of skill, especially if you’re trying to climb the multiplayer ladder. There’s a ton of cards/characters in the game that make it a lot of fun and if you’re a former Clash of Clans player you’ll be very familiar with a good majority of them.
Despite playing it for quite some time now I’m yet to get sick of it and that’s simply due to Supercell doing a great job of constantly updating the game with new and interesting cards or events to keep things exciting.
INSTALL CLASH ROYALE
Nirave Gondhia
One game I got hooked on last year thanks to our very own Joe Hindy was Defense Zone 2, which was addictive and challenging. The latest version, Defense Zone 3, continues in the same vein, albeit it’s a little more difficult. I love this game as you have to be really good at strategy and you’ve also got to be able to react to troop movements and weaknesses on the fly. If you like strategy games, this is definitely worth playing!
INSTALL DEFENSE ZONE 3
I’m also a massive soccer fan and while I don’t get a lot of time to game, I do like soccer games. When Football Manager Mobile 2017 came out last October, I continued my tradition of playing every version for the last five years and while it had some impressive upgrades over previous years, I ended up getting bored (albeit a lot later than with previous versions).
INSTALL FOOTBALL MANAGER MOBILE 2017
Kris Carlon
As for me, I definitely fit in the “in the past” category like Jimmy. I don’t always have much time for gaming either so it takes a particularly good game to get me hooked, but once it does: I’m as loyal as Lassie. My current favorite game is Sky Force Reloaded (and its predecessor Sky Force), both of which I installed at the same time. Yet again based on a recommendation from none other than Joe Hindy.
INSTALL SKY FORCE RELOADED
I’ve always been a huge fan of top-down space shooters and Sky Force is easily the best I’ve come across on mobile. Sky Force Reloaded has the same great gameplay as the original but with spruced up graphics, and when I hit a pay-or-wait barrier on one I just switch to the other. My go-to game over the last six months was Alto’s Adventure (and for all of 2016 really) for all the reasons expounded in an interview I did with Noodlecake’s Ryan Holowaty.
INSTALL ALTO'S ADVENTURE
So those are our current and recent favorites. Whats are yours? Hit the comments and let us know!