5 Impressive Mobile Games You May Have Missed Last Month

Riptide GP Renegade

Riptide GP Renegade is a title in the spirit of games like Wave Racer or Hydro Thunder. The newest entry in the Riptide series is a racing game where players dash across some crazy racetracks on a kind of futuristic hydro Jet Ski.

There’s a solo career mode that has players taking the role of one character who’s been framed and kicked out of the illicit Riptide GP league, and must escape from the police and reclaim their title. Despite the number of racing games out there, Riptide GP Renegade sports some spirit, with each racer showcasing a different personality, making their own unique gestures and reacting differently to events.

The game is also available on PlayStation 4 and Steam, but the mobile version runs just as smoothly as its counterparts and still boasts an eight-player online mode. Riptide GP Renegade is available on both iOS and Android for $2.99.

Road Not Taken

Road Not Taken is a vibrant roguelike and puzzle game meant to emulate life’s many surprises. Players take the role of a Ranger exploring a mysterious forest after its been hit by a winter storm. As they travel, they’ll come across randomized encounters like wild animals, lost children, impassable barriers and more.

The way players interact with these things can change their own story, and the story of the villagers they hope to befriend. Road Not Taken has been previously available on PC via Steam and the PlayStation 4, but its simple gameplay and vibrant art style make it a great fit for mobile phones. It’s available on iOS for $4.99.

Mobius Final Fantasy

Mobius Final Fantasy is Square Enix’s bid to bring a console-quality RPG to mobile. It may not be at quite that level, but Mobius is still easily one of the best mobile games the Final Fantasy series has gotten and one of the best looking games on mobile. There’s more of a fleshed out story this time around, focusing on a protagonist that has woken with no memory on the mysterious world of Palamecia. Inhabitants of the world claim that his name is that of the prophesied hero that will save the world.

Mobius is free-to-play with microtransactions, but the mechanics are very reasonable and players can make it quite far in the game without making any purchases. You have a world map that you travel across for different scenarios, with each location indicating a battle. The battle system is fast and flashy, with players selecting certain cards to use in battle that will correlate to different elemental abilities. Using these different elements to weaken and stagger enemies will open them up to massive damage, and is the key to victory. More story maps and other scenarios will continuously be released for the game for free over time, giving it a kind of lasting appeal as well.

Reigns

This interesting title published by Devolver Digital has players taking the role of a benevolent (or malevolent) medieval monarch.Reigns is a sim-style choose your own adventure game where you have to fulfill a seemingly endless stream of requests from your advisors, peasants, allies and enemies all while maintaining balance in your kingdom between different factions.

It’s simplistic in both its visual design and gameplay, but the mechanics work exceedingly well for the game. Basically, each story you play contains a stack of story cards, each of which have a request. You can swipe left to answer no, or right to answer yes. Sometimes there will be multiple answers to a question, in which case you can slightly pull the card in either direction to see more answers. It’s incredibly fun to struggle to keep your monarch alive, but if they die, a new king will take over, and the adventure begins anew. Reigns is available on both iOS and Android for $2.99.

Deus Ex Go

Square Enix’s popular series of Go games found its way to the black and gold future of Deus Ex last month, and it’s just as puzzling and fun as ever. The Deus Ex version has an original story featuring Adam Jensen, with players tapping on their screen to move him across different puzzle maps.

You can pick up certain augmentations, like invisibility, on maps by stepping on nodes and then activating them at the right moment. Additionally, there are computer terminals on some maps that Jensen can hack to perform various tasks, like deactivating turrets or activating floor tiles. All of these elements combine to make an addictive puzzle game that has some real head-scratching levels coupled with Deus Ex’s trademark cyberpunk visual design. The game is available on both iOS and Android for $4.99.