Mobile is the world’s biggest gaming platform. A new console or gaming can PC can cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, while owning a phone is quickly becoming a necessity for people all over the world. While you might think that mobile games are all gacha RPGs and free-to-play puzzles filled with ads, more and more developers and publishers are trying to make inroads on mobile devices. Here are our top 10 games that we want to see on mobile.
10. Shadow Hearts
The Shadow Hearts franchise is one of gaming’s greatest cult hits, and for good reason. Unlike the majority of RPGs, the games are set on Earth, albeit one that’s different from the one we know. Historical figures such as Mata Hari and The Grand Duchess Anastasia live alongside vampires and kung fu fighting cats, coming across demons in real-life cities is a regular occurrence, and powerful sorcerers are attempting to summon eldritch gods left, right, and center.
The franchise never really hit it off in a big way. Although the license was renewed some time ago, there hasn’t been a new game since the PS2 era. A mobile port of the franchise – perhaps with upscaled graphics – would bring the franchise to the attention of gamers worldwide, and with enough attention could even usher in a full-fledged reboot.
9. Shadow of Memories
Another PS2 classic, Shadow of Memories (AKA Shadow of Destiny) follows Eike Kusch, a young man in a German town who’s murdered in the opening minutes. Luckily, a mysterious being, The Homunculus, rescues him, giving him the means to save himself. What follows is a time-twisting adventure as Eike travels through history, preventing his own murder over and over again.
Part of Shadow of Destiny’s charm is in its strange characters and choices. If Eike knows that standing near a tree will result in his death he won’t simply stand elsewhere, he’ll go back in time to prevent the tree from being planted. If he knows he’ll be poisoned he won’t simply avoid drinking it, he’ll go back in time, convince a man to build a library, research the poison in the present day, and go back in time again to find an antidote. This adds a strange, quirky feel to the game that makes it stand out, albeit unintentionally hilarious.
The game also benefits from a lot of replayability. This is a mystery that sees Eike explore numerous time periods, and your decisions on your journey define how the story will end. A single run can take as little as five hours, making it perfect for bite-size gameplay, or else revisiting it to try and get a different ending.
8. Zero Escape
The Zero Escape series is legendary in the world of visual novels. Each game places a group of nine people in the center of a death game where they’ll need to attempt a variety of escape rooms, making the right choices and, hopefully, making it out alive. The twist is that the mastermind of each game, Zero, has a different agenda entirely. Yes, death is inevitable, but there’s always one timeline where everyone (or, at least, everyone innocent) makes it out alive.
Over three games, the series develops to incorporate world-ending plots, psychic powers, time travel, and the ability to jump between universes.
The original game was developed for the Nintendo DS, and since then has been ported to console and PC, with significant quality of life changes. A return to handheld devices – in this case, mobile – seems like a fitting next step for one of gaming’s biggest cult hits, and it’s a series perfectly suited for mobile.
7. Clock Tower: Rewind
Clock Tower is an interesting combination of point-and-click and survival horror, and the first game in the series is getting a remaster later this year. The game follows Jennifer, one of several orphans who’s adopted by the reclusive Barrows family. Unfortunately, their new home is stalked by the Scissorman, a deformed young man determined to murder each of them.
It’s an effective throwback to eighties horror, and the whole franchise arguably succeeded in making a single enemy (or, at least, a small group of them) terrifying. Jennifer doesn’t have guns or magic powers. She’s just an ordinary girl who’s out of her depth, but doing her best to save her friends and get out alive.
Horror might struggle somewhat on mobile, but Clock Tower’s unique presentation makes it perfect for the platform. You can run, hide, and fight back using the environment, and the simple gameplay loop would work well with a touch-screen interface. With Clock Tower: Rewind bringing the first game to the current generation of consoles later this year, why not a mobile port?
6: The Room VR: A Dark Matter
This one is a bit of a sore spot for us. It’s always frustrating when you get invested in a franchise only to have the latest entry be on a completely different platform. The Room’s intricate puzzles have historically served it well on mobile, with four separate entries. The switch to VR meant that players worldwide were left out of the next game in the series.
While VR was doubtless a good choice, it does feel like a mobile entry in the franchise is warranted. After all, The Room originated on the platform, and while the switch to VR necessitated a change in the format, it’s nothing that couldn’t be adapted.
5: Beyond: Two Souls
Beyond: Two Souls is an interactive movie game that follows Jodie, a young woman with a mysterious connection to a poltergeist-like entity. Players switch control between them, using Aiden to manipulate the environment, spy on others, or even possess (or kill) their enemies.
Despite the complexity of the storyline, gameplay in Beyond: Two Souls is relatively simple. You move around the world, making decisions, interacting with objects, and completing QTEs. While porting the game to mobile would have been unthinkable years ago, phones are getting more and more powerful with each passing year. Even better, Beyond: Two Souls previously let mobile players in on the fun, allowing them to control Aiden in someone else’s game.
4. OddWorld: New ‘n’ Tasty! and Soulstorm
The OddWorld games have always been an interesting diversion in gaming. So far the franchise encompasses four games and two remakes, and tells the story of a fantastic sci-fi dystopia with a vibrant ecosystem, quirky characters, and an evil capitalistic regime always looking to make a profit.
While several of the games in the franchise have come to mobile already, neither the original Abe games (Abe’s Oddysee and Abe’s Exoddus) or their remakes (New ‘n’ Tasty! and Soulstorm) have been ported, despite ironically being the best fit. These side-scrolling platformers are notoriously tricky, with plenty of hidden areas and a focus on precise timing if you want to get the good endings.
The franchise is proof that quirky games can still thrive, but not bringing arguably the most beloved stories within the Oddworld universe to mobile is a strange choice, and one we’d love to see remedied.
3. The Professor Layton Prequel Trilogy and Crossover
Professor Layton is a charming adventure series where you play as gentleman Professor Layton – a man who enjoys a spot of tea, a good puzzle, and solving uncrackable mysteries. While the original trilogy has all been ported to mobile, and the franchise has a few mobile spin-offs, the prequel trilogy has yet to make an appearance on mobile.
It’s a real shame since the gameplay is ideal for mobile platforms (check out the existing ports for an example). The art style is charming, the characters are likable, and each of the mysteries strikes a delicate balance of being unpredictable and leaving us with plenty of clues.
Alongside the Professor Layton games, we could also see a port of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This spin-off sees the two team up to investigate a spate of witchcraft claims in a Medieval world, and with the majority of the Ace Attorney games being on mobile already, their crossover title would no doubt feel right at home.
The Professor Layton franchise is getting a full-fledged reboot in 2025, so now is the perfect time to bring the missing titles to mobile.
2. Fatal Frame
Yes, There was already a Fatal Frame game on mobile, but does it count? Real: Another Edition was released 20 years ago and was exclusive to Japan, so plenty of fans missed out on the chance to play it.
Fatal Frame’s unique selling point is the fact that your only weapon against the ghosts haunting you is a camera, so porting the franchise to mobile would be perfect. They could even incorporate an optional gyroscopic mode, letting people control their weapon by moving their phone.
Arguably mobile’s biggest problem is immersion, which is somewhere that horror thrives. Horror demands big screens and good audio, so a mobile port of even the scariest console or PC game often fails. The issue is that so few mobile horrors effectively take advantage of where mobile excels. The Fatal Frame franchise would be the perfect example of how horror can thrive on the platform, if only developers focus on what the franchise does well.
1. Pokemon
Yes, we know that there are already a few different Pokemon games on mobile, but you know what there isn’t? Any of the main series games. Despite being a fixture of handheld gaming, the only way to play the Pokemon games on the world’s most popular mobile device is by using an emulator.
Obviously, this isn’t ideal, and Nintendo is leaving a lot of money on the table. Pokemon is a brand that consistently sells well and continues to have a strong fanbase, to the point that even some of the most popular Pokemon YouTubers, such as FlygonHG and Antlerboylive, are consistently racking up hundreds of thousands of views on videos based on old games.
The thing to keep in mind is that mobile’s popularity doesn’t mean that the games are higher quality – it’s because of accessibility. With so many of the older Pokemon games available only on defunct devices, bringing them to mobile could potentially ignite a passion for the franchise in legions of new players worldwide, while giving everyone a legitimate avenue to play some of the franchise’s older games.
The issue here is infrastructure. Pokemon has always thrived in terms of interconnectivity and while the franchise has experimented with bringing mobile and console entries together, it might take some serious work to allow that in some of the older games. If they can work on this issue, then ports of some of Pokemon’s historical games could easily be a win-win for the developers.
Why not also check out our list of the top 10 PS3 and Xbox 360 games that deserve remakes or remasters?
