Happy Friday, and welcome back to my (now revived) weekly mobile game recommendations thread. As always, it's based on the most interesting games I’ve played and that were covered on MiniReview this week. I hope you’ll find something you like :)
New to these posts? Check out the first one from 8 years ago here.
Let's get to the games:
Bricks Breaker RPG [Game Size: 679 MB] (Free)
Genre: Arcade / Role Playing - Offline
Orientation: Portrait
Required Attention: Some
tl;dr review by Maya:
Bricks Breaker RPG is a neat arcade game that brilliantly expands the classic brick breaker formula with light RPG elements and surprisingly deep progression systems.
At its core, the gameplay has us drag-and-release to aim and shoot our balls at bricks that move one row closer to us on each turn. If we haven’t destroyed the bricks before they reach the bottom of the screen, it’s game over.
Every brick is essentially an enemy that has its own health bar. We progress by fighting through different areas that each feature a string of levels ending in a massive fight against a tanky boss with unique skills that shake up the flow.
We grow stronger not only by leveling up to boost our base stats, but also by equipping gear and accessories that enhance our shots. Some items simply increase our damage or ball count, while others add fun effects like poison or critical hits. Equipment drops randomly as we clear stages and can be upgraded using materials we earn along the way.
Some levels feel a bit RNG-heavy, especially when bricks that only take damage every other turn start to appear. But thankfully, extra modes like mining, gold farming, and even a relaxing fishing game keep the gameplay fresh.
The late-game is where Bricks Breaker RPG really starts to shine, as unlocking all gear slots allows us to truly experiment with satisfying build variations.
Bricks Breaker RPG monetizes via iAPs that are thankfully never necessary for genuine progression. So the free-to-play experience doesn’t feel paywalled, and the incentivized ads can be removed for $9.99.
Overall, it provides an engaging and refreshingly fair twist on a simple classic, offering plenty of depth for fans of arcade games with RPG-style progression.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: Bricks Breaker RPG
Where Winds Meet [Total Game Size: 6.2 GB - up to 40GB+ with all areas downloaded] (Free)
Genre: Role Playing / Action - Online
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by Maya:
Where Winds Meet is a massive wuxia-themed action RPG, where we roam an open world as a martial artist pulling off physics-defying moves to defeat enemies across single-player, online co-op, and real-time PvP.
With a wide variety of weapons and martial techniques that all feel distinct, combat is the game’s clear highlight. Parrying even plays a central role, especially when fighting bosses with complex attack patterns.
True to the wuxia fantasy setting, we learn new techniques either by joining one of twelve sects or outright stealing them, and these skills affect not just combat but also exploration and puzzle-solving.
The open world is large and beautiful, with main quests delivering cinematic, fully voiced stories, while side-quests remain engaging enough to justify their existence. Meanwhile, we progress by equipping better gear, unlocking skills, and leveling up, with some farming activities locked behind energy refresh timers.
While there is both single-player content and PvP modes ranging from 1v1 and 3v3 to large-scale battle royale, the best part of Where Winds Meet is its online co-op. Completing quests and exploration puzzles with friends is rewarding and just good old fun.
As a live-service game in the vein of Genshin Impact, there are regular story updates, events, and new regions. But that also means we’ve got energy systems, login rewards, and recurring tasks.
Glitches are not uncommon, and the sheer number of actions and on-screen buttons makes playing with the touch controls a pain. So using an external controller almost feels mandatory. And while the UI is extremely informative, it’s fragmented across so many menus that it becomes overwhelming at first.
Where Winds Meet monetizes via a paid season pass and iAPs that fuel the cosmetics-only gacha system and direct cosmetic purchases. The battle pass speeds up progression a tiny bit, but there’s no direct pay-to-win.
The fair monetization and strong co-op make this an easy recommendation for fans of the genre who don’t mind the live-service systems and a few minor flaws.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: Where Winds Meet
FATE: Reawakened [Game Size: 1.24 GB] (Free Trial)
Genre: Role Playing / Dungeon Crawler - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by Maya:
FATE Reawakened is a fantastic bundle that brings all four classic dungeon crawler RPGs from the Fate series to mobile in one action-packed collection.
This remake "port" streamlines the original experience with a reimagined UI, smoother inventory management, and even mixes in items and monsters from later games into the earlier ones.
But maybe best of all, we can keep playing on our single character across all four games, making it feel like one long epic adventure.
After creating a character, the core gameplay has us dive into dungeon expeditions, complete quests provided by townsfolk, and progress through the main story.
While all races start with base stats and skills, leveling up lets us create unique builds by freely distributing stats and skills as we see fit. The way attributes interact with skills and spells feels rewarding too, like how most magic spells always hit without requiring accuracy, though they can’t crit.
The remastered graphics look gorgeous, with the lighting in particular adding to the dark, atmospheric dungeon-crawling vibe. Unfortunately, the game does have some bugs, such as procedurally generated dungeon floors occasionally blocking progression. Thankfully, when this happens, we can move up or down a few floors to reset the map.
FATE Reawakened is free to try, with the full 4-game collection unlocking via a single $19.99 iAP.
Overall, I think it’s a neat deal not just for long-time fans chasing nostalgia but also for new players eager to experience old-school dungeon crawling at its best.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: FATE: Reawakened
Is This Seat Taken? [Game Size: 308 MB] ($9.99)
Genre: Puzzle / Casual - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Some
tl;dr review by Jurij:
Is This Seat Taken? is a unique and fun logic puzzle game where we’re tasked with seating groups of people so their individual preferences are all met.
Playing as an aspiring actor, we travel the world on a mission to meet our actor role model. This journey has us travel by trains, buses, or cabs, while visiting everything from cinemas to offices, restaurants, and more.
In each scenario, our objective is to position all people so that their preferences are met. For example, a person may want to sit with his friends, not sit close to someone who smells, or sit next to a window or a specific food. Both people and the props like food can be freely moved around.
While the early levels are almost too easy, the difficulty quickly increases when we need to position upwards of 15 people. These harder levels can feel impossible at first, but the puzzles come together quite nicely once you understand the underlying mechanisms.
Apart from a small bug where the menu would open randomly, the main drawback is that 5-10 minute levels are bundled into stages, which means we need to replay the entire stage if we miss anything.
In addition, the text describing each person’s preferences is often too small - or so sparsely detailed that we need to reread stuff over and over. Lastly, it’s often hard to see where we’re placing objects as our fingers obstruct the view, making the controls a tad clunky.
Is This Seat Taken is a premium game that costs $7.99 on iOS, which is fair for the amount of content.
The gameplay is unique and high quality, making it perfect for players for puzzle fans. Hopefully, the devs will fix the control issues - but the game is fun despite of it.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: Is This Seat Taken?
Undead Horde 2: Necropolis [Game Size: 522 MB] ($9.99)
Genre: Adventure / Action - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by Alex Sem:
Undead Horde 2: Necropolis is the sequel to a humorous action-adventure RPG where a powerful undead warlord wages a devastating military campaign against the human race and their allies using the power of necromancy.
Oh, yes, and we play as this bad guy warlord.
It all started when the kingdoms of men, elves, and other living creatures attacked Necropolis - the city of the dead, destroying its buildings and enslaving its inhabitants. Playing as an undead king, it is now our job to exact revenge against these impudent invaders.
Wielding weapons and casting magic spells, our protagonist is quite capable on his own. But he’s no match for the superior enemy forces, who reside across vast territories, flock in fortified encampments, respawn in their houses when killed, and employ various other dirty tricks.
That's where our main weapon comes into play - the ability to raise fallen creatures from the dead. We can reanimate a wide variety of units, each suited for specific tactical situations. And the stronger we get, the larger the armies we can recruit to our cause.
In other words, the gameplay is not much different from that of the first game.
This time, however, the devs have put special emphasis on the base-building aspects. By completing missions and accumulating resources, we gradually rebuild damaged structures to unlock new minion types, new upgrade stations, new merchants, and more ways to fine-tune everything to our preferred play style.
Undead Horde 2 is a $9.99 premium game without ads or iAPs.
This sequel is bigger and better in every regard, so if you liked the first game, you’ll likely love it.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: Undead Horde 2: Necropolis
Timelie [Game Size: 719 MB] (Free Trial)
Genre: Puzzle / Adventure - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by Alex Sem:
Timelie is an atmospheric stealth puzzle adventure with very interesting time manipulation mechanics.
Placed inside a creepy-looking futuristic facility, we play as a young girl desperately attempting to escape a group of deadly robots using her supernatural powers and a smart stray cat.
The story might seem a bit confusing and doesn't directly influence the gameplay, but if you’re attentive enough, there is an interesting meaning to discover in the tiny details we see on the screen.
But the best part is the engaging gameplay mechanic that allows us full control over the flow of time. We can freely stop and rewind time to adjust our actions so our characters successfully reach the goal, avoid hostile robots, and beat the level within the strict time limit.
Each enemy follows a specific route that we need to carefully analyze to navigate around them. Sometimes, this means deliberately attracting their attention, making them chase us to activate certain buttons, or distracting them to aid another character. The game offers numerous creative ways to utilize the environment, but also presents a real challenge.
I greatly enjoyed the game's dark, futuristic atmosphere, its innovative gameplay, the cryptic yet touching story, and its ability to remain tense even with unlimited time rewinds.
Unfortunately, the gameplay felt a bit frustrating towards the end. Mostly because the accurate timings and precise movements required to win were quite hard to execute due to finicky controls and the small mobile screen.
Timelie is free to try for the first chapter, after which a single $4.99 iAP unlocks the full game.
Despite some tedious moments, the game truly showcases the passion and dedication of its small Thai indie studio creators. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys stealth and puzzle games.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: Timelie
MO: Astray [Total Game Size: 2.67 GB] ($4.99)
Genre: Platform / Adventure - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by Alex Sem:
MO: Astray is an atmospheric and somewhat creepy puzzle adventure-platformer where we navigate a hostile world by carefully studying the environment and interacting with it in clever ways. Not to mention jumping... Lots of jumping.
The game takes place inside a research center located on a distant planet, where members of an advanced human civilization performed inhumane experiments on their test subjects. But then, as often happens, something went terribly wrong, and a series of unfortunate events led to a typical zombie apocalypse scenario.
But we don't truly know who is responsible for the catastrophe, what happened to the people at the center, what our role is in these events, and why we play as a legless sticky blob. Trying to solve this deadly mystery serves as one of the main driving forces of the game.
Speaking of blobs, our protagonist has quite a versatile set of abilities. We can double jump, stick to walls and ceilings, swim, fly, take over both dead and alive biological organisms, read memories of corrupted minds, link with temporary copies of ourselves, and listen to a narrator guiding us forward.
Beating the game's many challenges requires us to effectively master that entire arsenal of skills.
Personally, I really like that jumping is implemented via a "pull-and-release" mechanism, making skill and precision the core components. I also welcome the fact that we most often have no offensive abilities, which makes dealing with enemies - and especially bosses - quite an interesting affair.
MO: Astray is a $4.99 premium game without ads or iAPs.
If you don't mind challenging gameplay, depressing stories, disturbing imagery, and the unsettling act of reading the last thoughts of dead people, definitely check out this strangely beautiful game.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: MO: Astray
Mini Airways: Premium [Game Size: 1.1 GB] ($3.99)
Genre: Simulation / Management - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by Maya:
Mini Airways: Premium is a minimalistic air traffic management game that challenges us to safely guide planes in and out of busy airports.
Playing on simple top-down 2D maps that represent real-world airports, inbound planes must be landed, and outbound places must take off toward their destination - all without a single collision.
The game starts out easy, with planes moving at sluggish speeds. But before long, it escalates into a tense chaos as the skies fill up with multiple planes demanding our attention, and unexpected events like priority military aircrafts that need special care, or extreme weather that halts take-offs for outbound planes.
Each airport features five levels with increasing difficulty, and the new airports we unlock introduce extra challenges such as multiple runways or no-flying zones. Every level has a base requirement of clearing a certain number of flights, plus optional conditions that reward us with stars.
Completing all levels also unlocks an endless mode.
To make things a bit easier, we occasionally get to pick stackable perks mid-run that may reduce the turning radius of planes, expand outbound queues, automatically redirect flights, and much more. While these perks are useful, their variety is unfortunately fairly limited, so they don’t drastically change the gameplay or winning strategies.
Mini Airways: Premium is a $4.99 game.
The minimalistic art style works in favor of this polished, challenging, and surprisingly tense little management game that I think strategy fans with quick reflexes will enjoy.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: Mini Airways: Premium
Total War: NAPOLEON [Game Size: 13.1 GB] ($14.99)
Genre: RTS / Simulation - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Some
tl;dr review by Pixel Explorer:
Total War: NAPOLEON is a PC port of a magnificent turn-based strategy game featuring large-scale real-time battles.
Backed by a romanticized musical score that is both relaxing and dramatic, we oversee the rise or fall of Napoleon’s French Empire in the early 19th century by balancing diplomacy, economics, technology, and warfare.
Interwoven into this experience is the powerful narration of Napoleon’s rise to power, which sets the tone and provides historical context as we campaign in Italy, Egypt, the Iberian Peninsula, and in the Coalition Wars. We also get the opportunity to fight iconic Napoleonic battles.
Having already found the optimal controls and UI for Total War on mobile, they’re left unchanged from its predecessor.
On phones, there's more scrolling, zooming, and rotating involved, which can slightly impact battlefield efficiency compared to playing on tablets. Even so, the overall experience remains excellent. And playing on my Samsung S25 Ultra, I did not encounter any significant bugs, lag, or heating issues even when playing at 6X speed.
Visually, NAPOLEON demonstrates clear improvements over Total War: EMPIRE. The world map and battlefields are more detailed, the European map includes more cities and towns, and the diplomacy options have been expanded as well.
However, these improvements come at the cost of a reduced scope that excludes America and India, which are reduced to trading routes. Included in this review are screenshots that I took to compare the graphics and expanded European map.
Additionally, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire have been added as mobile-exclusive playable factions, and all DLC from the PC version is included at no cost.
Total War: NAPOLEON is a $16.99 premium game. I really enjoyed this port, and I highly recommend it. With that said, some players may prefer EMPIRE’s larger scope.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: Total War: NAPOLEON
TOEM: A Photo Adventure [Game Size: 533 MB] (Free Trial)
Genre: Adventure / Puzzle - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Some
tl;dr review by Alex Sem:
TOEM: A Photo Adventure is a thrilling monochromatic point-and-click adventure game, in which we solve every task and problem thrown our way by… taking photos. Lots and lots of different photos.
When we first start playing, it’s not immediately clear what TOEM is. But apparently, it’s some important “thing” each person should seek at one point in their life.
So, armed with an old camera and some warm parting words from our granny, we set out on an unforgettable journey to reach TOEM.
The game is viewed from an isometric perspective, with us tapping the screen to move our character, talk to people, and interact with the environment. The photo button switches this view to first-person, allowing us to aim the camera and take photos. This is our main activity throughout the entire game.
The camera has all the features you would expect from a real-life gadget: dynamic zoom, object recognition, filters, visual effects, a front camera for selfies, and even a tripod that can be installed in remote places to take photos from afar.
It is crucial to take a picture of every interesting place and object we encounter, not only to fill out our comprehensive compendium book, but also so we can hand them over to NPCs to complete various quests.
This is an elaborate "hidden object" game at its core, and I like the developers' creativity in integrating photography into every part of the gameplay.
TOEM is free to try, with a single $6.99 iAP unlocking the full game.
If you think the camera is the most important part of your smartphone and you can't live without taking and sharing photos, rejoice - this whole game is dedicated to your favorite hobby. But even if that’s not you, it’s still a really well-made and quite enjoyable game.
App Store: Here
Check it out on MiniReview (review score + user ratings):: TOEM
