Mobile gaming is infamous for being full of crappy games with tons of microtransactions, but the platform is actually also home to many incredible games that, of course, are perfect for playing when you are on the go. These range from the mini-games often seen on phones to heavier games that draw inspiration from (or sometimes are even direct ports of) PC and consoles titles. There are games that make you want to sit down and play for a long while. So here is a list of the best mobile games released in 2018. Note that the list is arranged in random order, and games in higher places aren’t necessarily better.

Florence

You can finish Florence in less than an hour, but its story will no doubt stay with you for a long time. This is a very simple game, yet all the more beautiful because of it. It tells the story of an ordinary young girl, with a normal relationship with the all ups and downs that you’d expect. However, instead of tons of dramatic dialogue and complicated mechanics, Florence convey the message through its gorgeous art and music.

In fact, one of the most potent elements of the game is also the simplest: The characters have no voice, and they communicate through speech bubbles. However, these bubbles are broken into various pieces, and you must arrange them together in order to progress through the conversation. At first, the puzzles are very complicated with multiple parts, but as the relationship of the protagonist develops, they start getting simpler and simpler. While the story of Florence is just about one particular couple, the overwhelming emotion it contains is universal, and will hit you hard when this brief yet beautiful tale comes to an end.

Donut County

Even though Donut County is also available on PC and PS4, it is at its best on mobile. This light-hearted puzzle game is most suited for playing a little bit at a time. The idea is straightforward: There is a hole on the ground, and you move it around a surface until every object in the setting falls into it. The hole expands in size as it swallows things, allowing bigger things to drop in.

There are multiple settings as well. You might be tasked with cleaning up trash on a beach, and end up devouring the lifeguard tower. Or you can even consume a whole mountain, if you manage to figure out how to break it into smaller pieces, that is. The art style cartoony, and the main character is a raccoon that is delightful and lovable even though he has terrible judgment. The game also features some of the best "internet text" we have ever seen in games. You will be smiling a lot throughout the game thanks to plenty of numerous amusing quips.

Reigns: Game of Thrones

Reigns: Game of Thrones makes excellent use of the world of HBO’s massive TV show Game of Thrones, and it is also a fun choice-based adventure in its own right. Just like Reigns and Reigns: Her Majesty, its two predecessors, you will be playing as a ruler - this time of the fictional world of Westeros. Your subordinates will present you with various issues, and you will choose which course of action to take by swiping to the left or right.

The gameplay is, once again, nothing too complicated. However, the decisions you make will have a lot of weight behind them and will affect the fate of the entire realm and everything inside it, yourself included. If a risky decision plays out poorly, you can and probably will die. Furthermore, the game as no saving mechanics, so there’s no going back at any point.

Reigns: Game of Thrones has very clever writing that manages to portray the distinct personalities of the characters from the TV show but not rely on it too much.  Additionally, the game still maintains a laidback atmosphere despite the grim nature of the source material. You can also make choices that deviate from the TV series to find out what would happen. With creative writing and solid gameplay formula, this game is sure to interest you even if you are not a fan of Game of Thrones.

Pocket City

City-building games can be quite difficult to play on mobile since these games often have a lot of menus and inputs that the small screen of most phones cannot accommodate. Pocket City not only manages to avoid this trap, but also delivers all the features that players would want in a city-builder. In this game, you will be handling everything, from power and water, housing and job demands to crime and natural disasters. As you develop your city, new buildings and features will gradually become available. The best thing is, there are no microtransactions to worry about. Thus, Pocket City is the perfect game to play while you are on the bus, but be careful, as it could be hard to stop once you've arrived at your destination.

Part Time UFO

Japanese game developer HAL Laboratory is best known for titles such as Kirby and Smash Bros., and in 2018 it released a great mobile game: Part Time UFO. As the name suggests, you play as an adorable UFO. This is an interesting wordplay, since “UFO” could either refer to an alien object and a claw machine arcade game, and this little guy fits into both categories.

The gameplay is also heavily inspired by crane games, both in term of its simple ideas and the trickiness involved in learning to grab hold of its physics. The little UFO will fly through the air and drop down a claw to grab various objects and deliver them to another location to accomplish several missions. These missions include tasks such as picking up shipments and put them on a truck, or grabbing fish to bring to a fisherman.

Sounds easy, right? Well, if you’ve ever played an actual claw machine game, you will know that it is a lot harder than it seems. The claw keeps swinging from side to side, which makes it really difficult to accurately grab and drop the objects, especially in missions where you have to stack them on top of each other, and you are also time-limited. Part Time UFO still possesses the kind of charm you'd expect from a HAL Laboratory game: It is easy to pick up, freakishly hard to put down.