SIDETRACKED: Mobile Age! Part 1: The Good Games

The days where mobile games meant packed-in classics such as Snake or Space Impact for the Nokia platform are long gone. It's now something huge. It's something that costs money and gains bucketloads of cash! According to a compiled report by Venture Beat, it's gigantic at 34 Billion US Dollars and taking up 85% of the app market share. But what made it so successful? What games made noises and what makes impact till this very day?

Mobile games.

It's trendy, it's free-to-play, it's portable, and it's taking all nations by storm!

The days where mobile games meant packed-in classics such as Snake or Space Impact for the Nokia platform are long gone. It's now something huge. It's something that costs money and gains bucketloads of cash! According to a compiled report by Venture Beat, it's gigantic at 34 Billion US Dollars and taking up 85% of the app market share.

But what made it so successful? What games made noises and what makes impact till this very day?

I'd like to take this moment to discuss with you what games are fit to play on the mobile; what went so right. I'd like to discuss with you, dear reader, the types of games that MADE and MAKE BANK.

Trading Card Games and Variants

Remember the times you played with your Pokemon cards back in High School? Fun times wasn't it?

Do you remember using a keyboard for that? I don't think so. You use your hands and fingers. That's the reason Hearthstone and Clash Royale launched wonderfully into the Android and iOS systems, and continue to be mobile gaming powerhouses today. The mechanics of the games, paired with the touchscreen function of smartphones today make it a match made in heaven. Notable exception here is Magic The Gathering Duels, which for some reason, while the tabletop game has proven its greatness over the years, have the hardest of times having its experienc translated to the mobile platform.

Turn-Based RPGs

Phone games with their lack of physical buttons to mash A and strafe left and right are the bane of action oriented games. These are never a nuisance for games that allow you to take your time in pressing functions and to strategize. This makes Turn-Based RPGs convenient to play on smartphones. Square-Enix capitalized on this idea way back with Chaos Rings, met with moderate success. Current frontrunners are Summoners War with an immense 50 million total downloads across all platforms, and Squeenix's own Brave Frontier. We'll keep you updated in other articles should a breakthrough turn-based RPG comes around.

Match-3 Puzzles and other Puzzle games

People who play smartphone games are considered the casual audience. These are the people on the go, and can't be bothered to play something for more than an hour. Puzzle games like Rovio's Angry Birds, King's Candy Crush and Nintendo's own cutesy puzzler Pokemon Shuffle Mobile, are pretty hefty on the impact on the industry. Everyone's played it, and most of them still do!

Tower Defenses

It's a genre that evolved from its PC roots with DotA mod MAFA TD and Ninja Kiwi's Bloons TD. It's simple yet action-packed way of playing it makes it perfect for those who seek quick gratification. Tower Defense is a set of games where you have to defend your base from waves of monsters by placing a bunch of towers that shoot them down. If you haven't tried one, I'll recommend Bloons TD Battles, and partly, Magic Rush: Heroes.

Portrait-oriented games

These are games where you hold your phone upright. For me, that alone is a convenience, and it allows developers to create a mobile-only experience, and allow for creativity to thrive. These games consist of Thumb Drift, a mobile game where you only use your single thumb, to drift and weave thru the course and avoid imminent blocky death. Clash Royale also makes great use of this perspective.

Apps that are barely games

Pokemon GO.

Yes, it's that game that boosted Nintendo's profitability and skyrocketed its Stock Value.

To those poorly-informed even to this time, Pokemon Go is a smartphone game based on Game Freak and Nintendo's smash hit franchise for the longest time running. This time, it's developed by Niantic, Google's offshoot company and developer of GPS game Ingress. It allows you to track down Pokemon from your neighborhood real-time via GPS, and uses Augmented Reality technology to show a 3D version of Pikachu (As if it's really in front of you!). Next thing you do is to catch it with a Pokeball. You can expand your collection this way.

And that's it. Pretty much it.

It's barely anything, but the combination of things you can do that only a smartphone can, allows it to be a greatly unique mobile-only experience that'll mark its way into the digital history books.

Another game of note is the Walking Dead novel series developed by famed storytelling developer Telltale Games. It's akin to visual novels wherein you choose via multiple choice questions and affect the game's outcome based on what you do. This game truly shines on its storytelling, but there's barely any gameplay in that too.

Goes to show that you don't need to be very button heavy to create great experiences.

Now, bear in mind that these may just scratch the surface of Mobile games done right.

Mobile games truly have gone an overwhelming transformation from Bejewled clones, to full-blown worldwide social experiences that transcends on it's value towards social media platforms. Whether mobile gaming is a bubble that is destined to pop within the next 5 years or achieve a steady growth just like consoles did is yet to be seen, but when we know that there are games out there that exceeds expectations just by design alone, we have now truly proven that Mobile Games, if done right, can compete with its console brothers in terms of fun factor and overall, being a pastime that all games at it's core really should be!

Let us know what's crawling in your head right after you read this article. Thank you very much for reading. We appreciate all readers, fans or haters. Follow us to get up-to-date with more content and raffle notices!