There are only so many hours in the day that you can avoid doing work, taking care of yourself, or pretending to be productive as you click, tap or swipe your way through the latest and greatest in the world of video games. Whether you’re into action-adventure, endless runners, or puzzlers, there are quite a few great mobile games that are more than capable of captivating you for the rest of your natural life. We decided to put together a list of simple, fun, replayable, and incredibly addictive games you should have installed on your iPhone or Android of choice right now.
Alto’s Adventure/Alto’s Odyssey
In a few years, when even the best mobile games require VR, you’ll still find us taking breaks from the last Call of Duty or FarCry titles to reminisce about the good ole days with the award-winning Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey “snowboarding” games. In a combination of the SkiFree game that infuriated us as kids and art direction worthy of a place in the Museum of Modern Art, each one of the Alto’s games—we seriously can’t pick a favorite between the two—is easy to pick up, fun to play, gorgeous to explore and damn near impossible to put down. It’s a truly immersive experience that allows you to explore canyons, deserts and mountains in a way that most other apps could only hope to deliver. iOS (and sequel) | Android
Canabalt
Before Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride and Super Mario Run, there was Canabalt, an old school endless runner released almost a decade ago that would ultimately popularize the genre as a whole. The premise of the game is simple enough: the city is collapsing and you, an unknown dude in a suit, need to run and jump your way to safety from building to building while dodging office furniture, bombs dropped from the sky and precipitous falls to your death. Rendered in perfect retro grayscale, Canabalt is an award-winning, multi-platform game that oozes old school cool while simultaneously living up to its reputation as the godfather of endless runners. iOS | Android
Plague Inc.
Everyone has a few different apps taking up space on their phone that they just refuse to delete because they might not play them often, but they will be playing them a decade from now—Plague Inc. is one of ours. We installed this game on our phones years ago, and despite the fact that we only play it every few months, we can’t be bothered to delete it because every single time we launch it, we’re captivated for at least a few more weeks. The game takes the familiar “widespread pathogen ending the human race as we know it” formula from your favorite pop culture shows and movies but flips it on its head by putting you in charge of making sure the deadly plague leaves the world in ruins. In other words, you get to be the bad guy and bring the entirety of humanity to its knees in a strategy simulation that’s as terrifying as it is fun to play. iOS | Android
Hearthstone
Even if you’ve tried your damnedest to avoid everything games related for the past two decades, you’ve no doubt heard of World of Warcraft and Magic: The Gathering. Hearthstone is a free-to-play, turn-based, collectible card game, much like Magic, that was developed by iconic game studio Blizzard and features many recognizable characters and settings from WoW, which is why the game was originally called Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. You build decks of thirty cards using a personal collection of cards that you can expand with packs, adventures and rewards. The simple, constantly evolving (they release new sets a few times a year) and beautiful game is easy to learn but takes a significant time and money investment if you want to get to the level of eSports pro. If you’re interested in playing, now is one of the best times to get in because they just released a new set. iOS | Android
Threes!
For the past few years, there have been quite a few different puzzle games based on moving numbered squares around a small grid in an effort to combine them to either remove all tiles from the board or reach a maximum number. Skip the clones, the knock-offs and the money grabs in favor of the original tiled number-smoosher, the game Threes! from Sirvo. Like a few other options on this list, Threes! is one of those games that’s easy to learn and impossible to master (it took more than three years for someone to actually beat it) because of its gameplay—all you have to do is move tiles together to add them up (1+2=3, 3+3=6, etc.) on a quest to combine two 6,144 tiles to form the 12,288 tile you’ll see in an explosion of light during the game-ending animation. iOS | Android
Ballz
One of our Best Apps of 2017, Ballz hit the tops of the charts despite having to beat out an almost endless collection of popular, addictive games filled with familiar faces. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise seeing as how it was developed by Ketchapp, a publisher/studio responsible for quite a few different hits that’s now part of Ubisoft. More importantly than its pedigree or the team that built it, Ballz is a stupidly simple Breakout-style game that adds an additional level of difficulty to the “break blocks with balls” format by requiring you to hit blocks multiple times with a varying number of balls before the blocks reach the bottom. It’s familiar. It’s simple. It’s incredibly infuriating. It will absolutely occupy you for at least a few meetings or morning constitutionals. iOS | Android
Dots & Co: A Puzzle Adventure
https://www.dots.co/
For more than five years, the team at Dots—aka PlayDots—has been releasing puzzle games based around one simple concept: connecting dots. The games Dots and Two Dots were both great, but our favorite, Dots & Co: A Puzzle Adventure expanded on the tried and true in a way that will make it a must-install for anyone interested in puzzlers. As they tell it, you get to “explore beautiful landscapes and embark on a visual journey by solving puzzles with magical companions that help you along the way.” What’s that really mean to you? Instead of just connecting dots, you’ll solve puzzles with over fifteen different visual mechanics while activating special powers and getting help from special characters like pirates and penguins as you explore different worlds created by the team. iOS | Android
Alone
At its core, Alone is a frenetic, arcade space exploration game that plays kind of like that absurd Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Dam Water Level if it were built by the people responsible for Asteroids. You play as a lone ship trying to survive an incredible journey filled with giant obstacles and impossible paths after having been lost for fourteen years in some sort of presumably horrifying accident. While the incredible soundtrack thumps in the background you’ll navigate caves, rip through rocky debris, dodge rocks and evaluate your endurance through ultra fast and intense gameplay that’s built to test your mettle with split second, twitch sensitive analog control across hours of action filled gameplay and multiple difficulty levels. In short, Alone is a spaceship-style procedural runner that will be entertaining you for countless hours to come. iOS | Android
