The Best Mobile Games of 2019: Glen’s Favourites

We recently ran our Best Mobile Games of 2019 list, which highlighted the highest reviewed mobile games on Gamezebo this year. While we stand by these as some of the year’s best offerings, they don’t necessarily reflect the views of …

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We recently ran our Best Mobile Games of 2019 list, which highlighted the highest reviewed mobile games on Gamezebo this year. While we stand by these as some of the year’s best offerings, they don’t necessarily reflect the views of our individual writers.

That’s where our individual lists come in. Well, we say lists but it will actually end up just being the one list, given that we only currently have one writer in staff and our freelancers wanted the festive season off. Bah, humbug!

Here are Glen’s favourite games of 2019.

The Best Mobile Games of 2019: Glen’s Favourites

Hyper Light Drifter

Hyper Light Drifter is an awesome action game that feels like the early Legend of Zelda games sped up. You’ll zip around a variety of gorgeously pixelated sci-fi levels absolutely butchering any enemies that are unfortunate enough to cross your path. It’s fiendishly difficult stuff, but even more than that it’s highly addictive.

Call of Duty Mobile

Speaking of addictive, Call of Duty Mobile is one of those games you just can’t put down. Tencent has done a terrific job of translating the multiplayer shooter experience to mobile, and you can feel it in every shot fired of your favourite weapons. Many of my personal favourite Modern Warfare and Black Ops maps made an appearance too, which is great.

Alien: Blackout

Alien: Blackout makes great usage of the Five Nights at Freddy’s gameplay, but expands on it by making you look after crew members on a spaceship. You’ll watch them navigate the ship on cameras, looking for the telltale signs of a Xenomorph and then directing them to safety – all while completing a series of objectives.

Total Party Kill

Total Party Kill took the three characters out of Trine and forced them to kill each other to solve a wide variety of fiendishly difficult puzzle chambers. Okay, so they’re not actually the characters out of Trine, but they’re close enough.

Bad North: Jotunn Edition

Bad North: Jotunn Edition is an awesome strategy-lite that challenges you to protect a series of tiny islands from invading soldiers. You’ll start with a single unit of mercenaries but quickly grow them into an army of hardened soldiers. Bad North is a beautiful game, with terrific effects and engaging strategy.

Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror

Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror is the latest Spiderweb Software RPG, and it’s a darned brilliant one. You play as a prince or princess of the kingdom of Haven, who’s third in line to the throne. You’ve had an easy life so far, so the queen decides to throw you into the deep end of management and has you conquering an entire kingdom by yourself. How you choose to do it is up to you, and there’s an impressive amount of content to tackle from a single indie developer.

Mario Kart Tour

No, Mario Kart Tour isn’t as good as Mario Kart 8, but it’s darned good for a mobile kart racer. Rather than focus too much on winning – though coming first is still important – Mario Kart Tour wants you to play stylishly for points. Drifting, collecting and using items, and performing stunts all gets tallied up to a final score at the end.

GWENT: The Witcher Card Game

GWENT is on mobile! Finally! Man, when this randomly arrived a few weeks ago we were as excited as you were yesterday on Christmas. It helps that the mobile version of The Witcher Card Game didn’t disappoint in the least, and is actually, for our money, the new best way to play it.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades

The Elder Scrolls: Blades was treated with unfair malice when it first arrived, likely due to the venom Bethesda was receiving following the release of Fallout 76. We also reckon some of the hate was down to it not really being a proper Elder Scrolls experience on mobile. Instead, it’s a darn good miniature dungeon crawler that encourages you to return each day to gather the resources necessary to grow your town and outfit your character. It’s even better now too, as chests no longer have a wait timer.

Dead Cells

Dead Cells should need no introduction. This metroidvania roguelite is fiendishly difficult and even more addictive. The battles are crunchy, the controls extremely fluid, and you’re always getting new stuff, which encourages you to go out and get more new stuff. Man, there’s a lot of stuff.

Rogue Legacy

Rogue Legacy helped birth the modern indie craze back in the day, and it’s really aged well. It’s an endless roguelike in which you play the ancestors of your former characters. You choose a new one each time you die from one of three, and each new character has its own unique perks. These can be positive or negative. It’s really clever and addictive stuff.

Sky: Children of the Light

Sky: Children of the Light was one of the year’s biggest surprises: a brand new game, that was exclusive to mobile, by Journey developer thatgamecompany. It’s absolutely stunning, features simple controls that work really well on the touchscreen, and has loads of worlds to explore in numerous different ways.

What I loved most about it though was how well it encouraged players to work together, and how easy it was despite not being able to actively communicate with each other. I remember an amazing moment where I stepped into a temple with maybe a dozen other players and together we solved this puzzle, raising a platform to reach a hidden room full of treasure.

It felt incredible, like we all bonded despite not speaking a word or writing a sentence to each other. It’s something thatgamecompany does best, and we’d love to see some of these mechanics make it into MMORPGs.

Head of Editorial
Glen has over a decade's worth of experience in gaming journalism, writing for Pocket Gamer, Pocket Tactics, Nintendo Life, and Gfinity. When he's not badgering everyone about the dangers of passive text, you can probably find him playing Wild Rift.