The 15 Best Mobile Games in 2025: Top iPhone and Android Games

Developer LocalThunk's poker-themed deckbuilding roguelike game is guaranteed to make you lose track of time as you sink into the cycle of playing "just one more run." There's a reason why Balatro is CNET's Game of the Year 2024: It's really, really hard to put down. Balatro might not have a story, but the stakes are still high when the cards are on the table -- success is derived from the perfect mix of Joker synergies, game knowledge and a pinch of luck.

Learning how the effects of rare cards will stack a hand in your favor can feel kind of like cheating in a card game with friends. There's a sneaky thrill to securing your chips and beating a round's ante score. When you get knocked out of a run, you earn even more Jokers to augment your next playthrough, ensuring that the game never gets stale. Balatro doesn't require speed nor dexterity, but it rewards players for being creative little swindlers, making it one of the perfect games to pick up on your mobile device.

Release Date: Feb. 20, 2024

Genre: Poker-themed deckbuilder roguelike

Developer: LocalThunk

The first "bullet heaven" game, Vampire Survivors, has charmed millions of gamers with its Castlevania-inspired aesthetics and simple combat loop. You can play developer Poncle's breakout hit singlehandedly, making it a perfect on-the-go game. By picking upgrades and carefully moving your character around the screen, you can slay hordes of bats, mummies, gargoyles and any other ghast or ghoul closing in on your position.

Though it's deceptively easy on the surface, Vampire Survivors' base game features multiple maps with unique challenges, 48 playable characters with unique starting equipment and permanent upgrades and weapons that add completely new attack synergies. To master Vampire Survivors, players must engage with meta-progression systems and find attack combos that work well with their favorite characters.

With a wealth of in-game achievements to chase, it feels like there's always something to work toward while you play. Once you complete the base game, there are five DLCs to expand the Vampire Survivors experience -- including Castlevania, Contra and Among Us crossovers.

Release Date: Dec. 17, 2021

Genre: Roguelite bullet heaven

Developer: Poncle

Building on the bones of the popular browser game Crush the Castle, the Angry Birds franchise combines kinetic physics-based puzzles with a colorful cast of characters. Though the original game went missing-in-action after Rovio pulled it from app stores, fan backlash won the day: Red's First Flight is a rewrite of the first Angry Birds game utilizing the Unity engine.

Red's First Flight includes several hundred levels of increasing complexity of structures built by enemy pigs that players must destroy with flung birds. As players progress through the game, they unlock new birds with special powers, like the high-velocity yellow bird or the explosive black bird. It's up to players to earn all three stars on every level, perfecting bird usage and puncturing whatever defenses the pigs have set up to protect themselves.

Release Date: March 31, 2022

Genre: Bird-brained castle crusher puzzles

Developer: Rovio Entertainment

Charming pixel graphics and peaceful "talk and walk" gameplay sections belie the dark paranormal mystery at the center of Night School Studio's game Oxenfree, originally launched on PC and rereleased on mobile. Alex, her stepbrother Jonas and her friends arrive on Edwards Island to throw a small party but quickly find themselves out of their depth as they're sucked into time rifts and attacked by ghosts.

In this story-driven, dialogue-based game, it's up to the player to close the rifts and keep Alex's friends safe. Alex has loved and lost much in her young life, and the time rifts around the island offer her a way to change the past -- but doing so could have unexpected consequences in the present. Players must perform a careful calculus to ensure they wrap up this adventure without severing Alex's most important relationships.

Like some other games on this list, Oxenfree's mobile version is released by Netflix, meaning you'll need a subscription to the service to play it, though it is free to those signed up.

Release Date: Jan. 15, 2016

Genre: 2.5D paranormal mystery adventure, "walking sim" with puzzles

Developer: Night School Studio

Niantic's AR Pokemon catcher is more than a fantastic mobile game. It's one of the best Pokemon games of all time, delivering on the promise of letting players become real-life trainers by scattering everyone's favorite pocket monsters around their hometown. Though 2016's brand of on-the-go "pokemania" is a thing of the past, Niantic is still introducing new features and gameplay mechanics for Pokemon Go nearly a decade later.

If you're a Pokemon fan, you'll find something to enjoy in this game. You can try to complete the Pokedex, amass a menagerie of your favorite Pokemon species, create the strongest raid team or build a strategy to battle other players, all while taking care of your virtual companions. Pokemon Go understands that the franchise is fundamentally about nurturing a connection between people and Pokemon -- and it helps you foster connections in the real world too.

Release Date: July 6, 2016

Genre: Alternate reality creature collector

Developer: Niantic, Inc.

It's no surprise why Genshin Impact helped developer MiHoYo break through to a Western audience: The game combines Breath of the Wild's open-world exploration with flashy elemental combat to great effect. Players take on the role of the Traveler, a powerful being who lost their sibling in the fantasy realm of Teyvat. To find their family, the Traveler sets off on a journey across the world's seven nations, solving problems, battling monsters and putting together a party of like-minded fighters.

Genshin Impact's combat system combines real-time action with strategy, as players are encouraged to swap four party members in-and-out of battle to take advantage of seven different types of elemental abilities. Most enemies are weak to certain elements and resistant to others, but combining elemental attacks can result in powerful effects that level the playing field. Genshin Impact allows up to four players to take on the world of Teyvat together in seamless co-op play, and mobile users can matchmake alongside console and PC players.

Release Date: Sept. 28, 2020

Genre: Open world action RPG with gacha elements

Developer: MiHoYo

The social deception game known worldwide, Among Us launched in 2018 but became a cultural phenomenon after being picked up by prominent Twitch streamers during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Players take on the role of an astronaut crew stranded in space and need to complete mission-critical tasks to ensure they get home safely. That sounds easy on the surface, but the catch is that a handful of players are alien impostors tasked with eliminating the entire crew. It's up to the astronauts to complete their tasks before getting picked off or to eject the impostors from the airlock, ending the threat once and for all.

Among Us offers a great way to connect with (and backstab) other people, from close friends to complete strangers. It's a game first and foremost, but it's also a social platform designed to meet new people and spend time with old friends. None of the tasks are mechanically intensive or challenging, which means there's a low barrier to entry. Among Us also supports full crossplay with PC and console players, which means mobile players have unrestricted access to their friends' lobbies. Just don't trust them too much.

Release Date: June 15, 2018

Genre: Sci-fi social deception with Looney Tunes violence

Developer: Innersloth

Gamers familiar with Activision's first-person shooter juggernaut will find themselves right at home on TiMi Studio Group's Call of Duty Mobile. Much like the mainline series, this game features multiplayer, battle royale and zombies modes, creating a healthy mix of PvP and co-op action.

Many fan-favorite modes show up in Call of Duty Mobile, including Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, Search and Destroy and Kill Confirmed. If that sounds a little too serious, special events rotate party modes like Prop Hunt, Gun Game and Sticks and Stones into the playlists fairly often. An in-game credit system allows players to earn any weapon, scorestreak or piece of equipment for free, keeping all players on a more-or-less even playing field as they run and gun around iconic Call of Duty maps.

As far as mobile first-person shooting goes, Call of Duty Mobile offers the best breadth and depth of available experiences across its core game modes.

Release Date: Oct. 1, 2019

Genre: PvP first-person shooter with a featured battle royale mode

Developer: TiMi Studio Group

As one of the original endless runner games, Temple Run has a no-nonsense setup that places you right in the middle of the action. The player is an enterprising tomb raider who snatches up a golden idol and has to contend with ancient traps and eroded infrastructure as they hightail it away from a relentless dark spirit.

Temple Run feels like one of the arcade greats, with simple gameplay mechanics that speed up the further you make it in a run. Coins scattered throughout the ruins allow players to buy permanent upgrades and temporary abilities before they try to make another run at the idol. While the meta-progression system is a tad rudimentary compared with what can be found in more contemporary games, this is a classic for a reason.

Release Date: Aug. 4, 2011

Genre: Endless runner

Developer: Imangi Studios

Developer Motion Twin's critically acclaimed side-scrolling action roguelike is one big jailbreak, but how you choose to fight your way out is up to you. Taking on the role of an enigmatic Prisoner, players fight their way across an island of diseased monsters in order to assassinate the king. Though the Prisoner is immortal, the bodies he possesses can be destroyed -- which means a single misstep can send him scurrying back to the prison block to look for another host.

Dead Cells' combat revolves around tight mechanics, forcing players to dodge through enemies and wail on them during brief windows of vulnerability. This is a punishing game where a lack of game knowledge will end a run, but setting traps and gaining permanent upgrades between runs will help make each encounter feel more manageable. Reaching the king might feel like an exercise in futility at first, but Dead Cells is like a Souls game in that there's a moment where the action just clicks, and you'll never be able to put it down afterward.

Release Date: Aug. 7, 2018

Genre: Side-scrolling ARPG roguelike with metroidvania elements

Developer: Motion Twin, Evil Empire

Greek gods never seem to have an easy go of things in video games. That's especially true for Zagreus, the main character of Supergiant Games' roguelike action RPG Hades. As the prince of the underworld fights his way toward his mother Persephone, the Olympian pantheon aids him in the fight against his father.

There's breadth and depth to the builds players can create in Hades, choosing to wield different weapons and accept different God-like boons in each run. Once players successfully complete four separate dungeons -- Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium and the Temple of Styx -- and defeat the final boss, the game will offer new challenges.

In order to learn Zagreus' full story, players will need to defeat Hades many times, talk to the inhabitants of the underworld and master all of the game's mechanics and synergies. It's one of the best roguelike games ever released, but a caveat for the mobile version: you'll need a Netflix subscription to play, which requires logging in to your account to get access. On the flip side, it's free for those signed up to the streaming service.

Release Date: Sept. 17, 2020

Genre: Roguelike isometric action RPG focused on telling an epic narrative

Developer: Supergiant Games

Even your grandma knows about the sweetest "match three" game out there. Candy Crush Saga may have been developer King's first foray into mobile gaming, but their addictive puzzle designs have had remarkable staying power, with more than 200 million people continuing to play throughout 2024.

Players work side-by-side with Tiffi to solve problems in the Candy Kingdom, blasting boards full of colorful candy to finish each level. Swapping candies with power ups and creating lines of four or more of the same candy allows players to remove large amounts of candy at once. Candy Crush Saga is a simple puzzle game, but it has hundreds of levels with different gimmicks, objectives and board layouts.

Release Date: April 12, 2012

Genre: Match three puzzler

Developer: King

It takes a green thumb and a lot of strategy to send the undead back to the compost pile in one of developer PopCap Games' most enduring titles. As one of the most influential tower defense games of all time, Plants vs. Zombies tasks players with defending their home by planting a plethora of powerful flora and fungi to defend different garden lanes. After preptime concludes, players need to continue managing their yard as the zombies begin their siege.

There's a surprising amount of strategy present in Plants vs. Zombies. The first batch of levels teaches players how to generate sun and use the currency to manage their plants, but difficulty ramps up in later levels. Nighttime stages prevent the generation of sun, forcing players to work within budgetary constraints, and poolside levels necessitate lilypads to place plants on certain lanes. 

Plants vs. Zombies is a feature-complete tower defense with 50 challenging levels and an endless survival mode that you can take on when you've mastered the game. And once you're done with the first game, pick up the sequel Plants vs. Zombies 2 for additional plant types, map environments and more.

Release Date: May 5, 2009

Genre: Horizontal multi-lane tower defense

Developer: PopCap Games

Solving architectural puzzles is a mesmerizing task in developer Ustwo Games' Monument Valley. Players must guide Princess Ida through sacred geometry, which is composed of impossible objects and other types of optical illusions. Given each level's isometric view, the end goal is to interact with the structure until secret pathways are revealed.

Monument Valley is a beautiful game where each level is inspired by minimalist artwork. Splashes of color guide the eye toward each level's central mechanics, making the puzzle-solving process feel like a product of player intuition. The game features 10 different mind-bending levels for players to master as they help Princess Ida escape her predicament.

The puzzles continue in the sequel Monument Valley 2, and Netflix subscribers can play Monument Valley 3 which is only available to streaming service members, though they can play it for free.

Release Date: April 3, 2014

Genre: Isometric puzzler

Developer: Ustwo Games

Developer Mega Crit's Slay the Spire might be a deckbuilding roguelike, but it's not as zen as Balatro. In this game, players are tasked with fighting their way up procedurally generated floors of a tower, looting chests, beating down bosses and unlocking new collectible cards along the way. Dying sends you to the spire's base, where you'll need to begin your journey anew.

A mix of relic abilities, potions and upgradable cards to shuffle into the deck add depth to the game's combat system. With each turn, players are afforded three energy points to attack enemies and defend themselves. Slay the Spire's gameplay revolves around the mental calculus of spending those points. Do you keep some defenses up as you lash out at your foes, or do you expend all your energy on one final gambit? The most skilled strategists will find new ways to max out the combat effectiveness of each character class as they dominate the spire.

Release Date: Jan. 23, 2019

Genre: Fantasy spellsword deckbuilder roguelike

Developer: Mega Crit