The best free Android games 2019

What’s better than a free game? Pretty much nothing. Except when it’s terrible and you’ve wasted time on downloading and playing it. Fortunately, there are loads of fantastic free games for Android – and we list the very best here.

Whether you’re into word games, endless runners, platformers or puzzles, there’s something here for you. 

Click through to the next pages to see each category or read on below for our pick of the week. And check back weekly for our latest pick.

Free Android game of the week: Fly THIS

Fly THIS has hints of mobile classic Flight Control, which some time ago vanished from Google Play. Like the older title, Fly THIS has you draw paths for planes to follow, so they land at airports. But instead of following Flight Control’s endless stylings, ramping up the panic until an inevitable collision, Fly THIS feels more puzzle-oriented in its execution.

You deal with fewer planes, but the maps are smaller and peppered with hazards, such as weather and mountains you probably don’t want to steer your aircraft into. You’re also charged with getting passengers from A to B – and must do so within a strict time limit.

The entire thing becomes a grin-inducing – and sometimes challenging and frustrating – juggling act. It’s different from the game that inspired it, but no less appealing.

The best free racing games for Android

Our favorite free Android 3D, retro, 2D and on-rails racers.

Disc Drivin’ 2

Disc Drivin’ 2 is the turn-based driving game which was presumably created when someone reimagined shuffleboard as Mario Kart and shoved that strange concoction online for web-based multiplayer contests.

The concept of a turn-based racer is bonkers and it shouldn’t work, but it really does. As you flick your little disc about tracks suspended in space, the tension ramps up as you home in on your opponent. You will learn to master shortcuts, zip past hazards, and also how to make best use of bonus powers afforded to your little disc.

It’s absurd to think that one of the best mobile racers on Android is about flicking a coin around a race track, but there we have it. Miss this one at your peril.

Asphalt 9: Legends

Asphalt 9: Legends, like its predecessors, is a decidedly nitro-happy, larger-than-life take on arcade racing. It has you belt along at insane speeds, regularly soaring into the air, your car spinning and pinwheeling in a manner that’d have your car insurance company angrily tear up your policy documents.

This racer also differentiates itself by streamlining controls to the point you needn’t steer. The car moves on rails, with you swiping between lanes, and timing actions like boosts and drifts. That might sound reductive, but this doesn’t detract from the racing feel, it gives you a keen sense of focus on timing, and there’s a manual option if you really want that.

Being an Asphalt game, there’s some grind, but this is offset by you being immersed in the most outlandish and eye-dazzling arcade racing on Android.

Asphalt Xtreme: Rally Racing

Asphalt Xtreme: Rally Racing takes Asphalt off-road. It ditches its collection of sports cars and larger-than-life city circuits for jeeps and trucks – and an awful lot of mud, dirt, rocks, and grime.

Another thing there’s an awful lot of is freemium mechanics. As is seemingly law for an Asphalt game, exciting racing is sadly gunked up by all manner of timers and IAP gates. But put that aside and you’ll find Xtreme an entertainingly daft addition to the series.

Blasting through deserts, canyons and jungles, with your off-roader soaring into the air in a manner that’s almost certainly not covered by insurance, never really gets old. And although the basics – loads of nitro; floaty physics; crazy tracks – might be familiar, the new environments alone make this one worth a download.

Carmageddon

Carmageddon is a blast from the past of PC gaming. It masquerades as a racer, but often feels like you’re hunting prey – albeit while encased in a suit of speeding metal.

The game’s freeform ‘arenas’ are networks of roads in a dystopian future. People and cows blithely amble about while deranged drivers smash each other to pieces. Victories come by way of completing laps, wrecking all your opponents, or mowing down every living thing in the vicinity.

In the 1990s, this was shocking to the point of Carmageddon being banned in some countries. Today, the lo-fi violence seems quaint. But the game’s tongue-in-cheek humor survives, sitting nicely alongside bouncy physics, madcap sort-of-racing, and deranged cops attempting to crush you into oblivion should you cross their path.

Asphalt 8: Airborne

Asphalt 8: Airborne is a high-octane racer that gave a cursory glance towards realism. It then decided against bothering with such a trifling issue, and decided it’d much prefer you to pelt along at insane speeds under the power of glorious nitro, which frequently sends your car soaring into the air.

Not one for the simulation crowd, then, but this racer is perfect for everyone else. The larger-than-life branched courses – hyper-real takes on real-world locations – are madcap and exciting. Rather than doing laps around a boring circuit surrounded by gravel traps, you blast through rocket launch sites, and blaze through volcanos.

There are downsides – cynical IAPs and timers abound, welding a massive comedy tailfin to this otherwise sleek racer’s stylings. But for dizzying speed, mid-air barrel rolls, and loads of laughs, this racer is tough to beat.

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle reimagines Sonic The Hedgehog as an into-the-screen lane-based auto-runner. Which probably sounds a lot like Sonic Dash – but here, you battle it out against online opposition.

With trap-laden courses and pick-ups you can regularly grab as you belt along, Speed Battle has hints of Mario Kart about it. Races are packed with tense moments as you unleash a fireball, in the hope of taking out a distant leader, or have the checkered flag in sight, but know your opponents are only fractions of a second behind.

There is some grind – chests with timers; multiple currencies; glacially slow leveling up. But Speed Battle puts a colorful, entertaining spin on auto-runners that’s fun even if you keep your wallet firmly closed.

Data Wing

Data Wing has the appearance of a minimal top-down racer, but it’s far, far more than that. That’s not to say the racing bit isn’t great - because it is. You guide your little triangular ship around neon courses, scooting across boost pads, and scraping track edges for a bit of extra speed.

But there’s something else going on here – an underlying narrative where you discover you’re, in fact, ferrying bits of data about, all under the eye of an artificially intelligent Mother. Initially, all seems well, but it soon becomes clear Mother has some electrons loose, not least when you start getting glimpses of a world beyond the silicon.

With perfect touch controls, varied racing levels, a few hours of story, and plenty of replay value, Data Wing would be a bargain for a few dollarpounds. For free, it’s absurdly generous.

One Tap Rally

This game does for racing what auto-runners do for platform games. One Tap Rally is controlled with a single finger, pressing on the screen to accelerate and releasing to brake, while your car steers automatically. The aim is to not hit the sides of the track, because that slows you down.

Win and you move up the rankings, then playing a tougher, faster opponent. In a neat touch, said opponents are recordings of real-world attempts by other players, ranked by time.

In essence, this is a digital take on slot-racing, then, without the slots. But the mix of speed and strategy, along with a decent range of tracks, makes you forget about the simplistic controls. If anything, they become a boon, shifting the focus to learning track layouts and razor-sharp timing. Top stuff.

Splash Cars

In the world of Splash Cars, it appears everyone's a miserable grump apart from you. Their world is dull and grey, but your magical vehicle brings colour to anything it goes near. The police aren't happy about this and aim to bring your hue-based shenanigans to a close, by ramming your car into oblivion. There's also the tiny snag of a petrol tank that runs dry alarmingly quickly.

Splash Cars therefore becomes a fun game of fleeing from the fuzz, zooming past buildings by a hair's breadth, grabbing petrol and coins carelessly left lying about, and trying to hit an amount-painted target before the timer runs out. Succeed and you go on to bigger and better locations, with increasingly powerful cars.

The best free strategy games for Android

Our favorite free Android RTS and turn-based games, board games and card games.

Hearthstone

Hearthstone is a head-to-head card game that immerses you in a world populated by hunters, mages, warriors, and other fantasy types. Players take it in turns to try and batter their opponent’s health down to zero, playing cards that represent minions, spells and other skills.

This genre is often baffling to the newcomer, but Hearthstone is an accessible and balanced game. Although IAPs lurk – cards can be bought with bling won in-game, but also by using actual cash – veterans have proved that you can blaze through the leaderboards without spending a penny.

However you choose to play, this is a game that rewards those in it for the long haul. Have patience and learn its mechanics, and you may eventually become a master of this fantastical world of character and chance.

The Battle of Polytopia

The Battle of Polytopia is a turn-based game akin to a stripped-back Civilization designed specifically for one-thumb mobile play. Each game has you start with a single city, the aim being to dominate a little isometric world. You either race to be the best within 30 turns, or emerge victorious when you’re the only tribe still standing.

Wisely, Polytopia focuses more on approachability than depth. The tech tree is abbreviated, stopping short of guns. The maps are small. Cities can be conquered, but you can’t found new ones with settlers.

Each of these decisions helps the game flow, but despite its compact nature, Polytopia affords plenty of opportunities to strategize. That’s especially true when venturing into online multiplayer with other people – a mode open to anyone who buys one or more extra tribes.

First Strike

First Strike is Risk with nuclear weapons. You command a nuclear power, and set about taking over the world. Mostly, this involves lobbing missiles at neighbors before invading, and researching the technology to stop your enemies turning your country into radioactive rubble.

This is a sobering game. Futuristic graphics are joined by a sombre soundtrack, and clinical casualty readouts appear when a major population center is destroyed. Fittingly, victory doesn’t come with a fanfare, but the game asking: “You win?”

The free version contains ads that somewhat disrupt the experience, but this is an otherwise, thoughtful take on land-grab strategy, with a message that we really don’t want to see a devastating first strike – or even a single nuclear missile launched in anger – in the real world.

South Park: Phone Destroyer

South Park: Phone Destroyer marries real-time strategy with the cartoon mayhem found in the popular TV show. If you’ve played Clash Royale, it’s a bit like that, only with swearing, juvenile jokes, and lots of cartoon cowboys and Native Americans stomping about shooting at each other.

If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll appreciate the entertaining single-player story with the show’s famous faces sending each other messages, and occasionally phoning you. The battles are enjoyable, too – the basics are accessible, but there’s plenty of depth for the long-term.

The usual freemium monetization mars things a touch, as does enforcing online player-versus-player match wins for progression. But for the most part, you’ll be yelling RESPECT MA AUTHORITAH! until everyone in the vicinity demands you stop.

Brave Hand

Brave Hand is a card game that starts off with a basic solitaire at its foundation, welds that to a game of ‘higher or lower’, and dispenses with the ‘lower’ bit.

Your aim is to clear the table of cards, by beating the top card in any given pile. The snag is most cards start off face down. You can use a low card as a ‘scout’ that forces two cards to flip. But beyond that, it’s chance that dictates your fortunes as you dig into successive cards in a pile, hoping one won’t beat you.

Despite being very reliant on luck, Brave Hand is compelling. It perhaps won’t dislodge the likes of Sage Solitaire from your home screen, but it should appeal to card game fiends who fancy something fresh.

Really Bad Chess

This game flips chess on its head in brilliant fashion, by messing around with the pieces rather than the board.

During your first go at Really Bad Chess, you might examine what’s in front of you and quickly come to the conclusion you have a few too many queens. Your opponent, by contrast, will have a suspicious lack of decent pieces.

This is intentional. In Really Bad Chess, the AI’s capabilities never change, but the pieces do. As you improve, the setup shifts.

Get really good and you’ll have to take on the computer with a pile of pawns while it attacks you with as many queens as it can feasibly get away with.

For free, you also get a daily puzzle and two attempts to beat it. A $2.99/£2.89 IAP unlocks local multiplayer and removes the ads.

Train Conductor World

You might moan about trains when you're - again - waiting for a late arrival during your daily commute, but play this game and you'll thank your lucky stars that you're not in Train Conductor World. Here, trains rocket along, and mostly towards head-on collisions.

It's your job to drag out temporary bridges to avoid calamity while simultaneously sending each train to its proper destination - it's exhausting.

From the off, Train Conductor World is demanding, and before long a kind of 'blink and everything will be smashed to bits' mentality pervades. For a path-finding action-puzzler - Flight Control on tracks, if you will - it's an engaging and exciting experience.

Sage Solitaire

Having been mercilessly ripped off by a pretender (who cynically thanked the original's developer for "inspiration"), Sage Solitaire finally made it to Android. It rethinks solitaire for mobile, mostly by smashing it into poker. Cards are removed using poker hands, with the added complication each hand must use cards from at least two different rows.

Clearing the deck and amassing points requires careful strategy and a little luck, not least given how rapidly the lower stacks empty. Win three times and you unlock Vegas mode, where you can try your luck making bets on your skills (and, in all likelihood, lose a boatload of virtual money). Regardless of the mode you favour, Sage Solitaire's one of those seemingly throwaway casual games that manages to take hold to the point of obsession.

Clash Royale

There's always a whiff of unease on recommending a game from a developer nestled deep in the bosom of freemium gaming, but Clash Royale largely manages to be a lot of fun however much money you lob at it. The game is more or less a mash-up of card collecting and real-time strategy. Cards are used to drop units on to a single-screen playfield, and they march about and duff up enemy units, before taking on your opponent's towers.

The battles are short and suited to quick on-the-go play, and although Clash Royale is designed for online scraps, you can also hone your strategies against training units if you're regularly getting pulverised. There are the usual timers and gates for upgrades, but the game largely does a good job of matching you against players of fairly similar skill levels, meaning it's usually a blast and only rarely a drag.

Radiant Defense

Radiant Defense is a fantastic tower defence game, given a dazzling modern look. You do all the usual tower defence stuff like building up your weapon strengths and deciding how best to stop the endless marching enemy, with some "super weapons" to unlock and hundreds upon hundreds of waves to beat. And it all looks astonishingly pretty on a big screened device.

In this age of austerity and scrimping, we've all long since sold our last set of dominoes and melted down our Monopoly counters for scrap.

The best free shooting games for Android

Our favorite free Android FPS titles, twin-stick blasters and vertically-scrolling retro shoot ’em ups.

Piffle

Piffle is a shooting game where you fling strings of balls at blocks, depleting their face numbers until they explode. The backstory is that the nefarious Doc Block is doing something suitably evil with the blocks, hence why you’re trying to eradicate them.

Okay, that’s not the deepest of stories, but it doesn’t matter when the cartoonish action is so inviting and immediate. Flinging balls around the colorful levels is lots of fun, not least because they resemble tiny meowing cats.

There’s some grind here, and you’re going to hit levels that urge you to open your wallet. In the main, though, this is a bright and breezy arcade treat, with nice surprises as you work your way to the ultimate goal of stopping the blocks – and Doc Block – for good.

PewPew

PewPew is a twin-stick blaster in the classic mold. It has no time for storylines. Instead, it dumps you in a ship, hurls countless enemies your way, tasks you with blowing them to pieces, and dresses the entire thing in gorgeous old-school neon vectors.

From the off, this is a tense, exciting game. The arena you’re within is claustrophobic and frequently packed with ships and projectiles. Surviving for any length of time requires mastery of the controls, and learning how different enemies behave.

But there’s depth here, too. Once you’ve suitably honed your shooty skills, you can take on a mode with giant space rocks, and a version of PewPew that removes your weapons entirely, presumably making the ships pilot really wish they’d added ‘bring a really big gun’ to their to-do list.

AZ Rockets

AZ Rockets is the follow-up to 99 Rockets, an insanely hard precision shooter featuring little triangular ships on rails. The aim was to blast objects as the ships moved along a pre-defined path. One miss and your game instantly ended.

AZ Rockets initially seems very similar, but this time the game’s ‘merely’ hard – a timer has replaced ‘one error means game over’. Also, your targets are now letters, which when all shot often spell out a message of encouragement.

You’ll probably need it, but this combination of the whimsical and tough-but-fair gameplay makes for a compelling concoction. And given the clockwork nature of the levels, this is a game you can potentially master – without being the kind of one-thumb gaming genius necessary for success in 99 Rockets.

Shadowgun Legends

Shadowgun Legends is a first-person shooter with tongue firmly in cheek. Set in a world where mercenaries are rock stars, and aliens are so much cannon fodder, this is a bold, brash, noisy slice of wanton arcade violence.

If you’re looking for nuance, head elsewhere. The story and characters here are wafer thin. But if you’re after action, Shadowgun Legends does the business. Missions are linear in nature, challenging you to be fast and accurate. Combat is responsive and fluid, and you soon find yourself amassing a pile of cash, upgrading kit, and adding to your fame.

Get good enough and your adoring fans will build a statue in your honor. It still won’t be enough to convince you this is a console-quality shooter, but this game feels perfect for mobile: streamlined, bite-sized, free-flowing, and fun.

Tower Fortress

Tower Fortress is a semi-randomized, hard-as-nails shoot ’em up. It takes place in a mysterious tower infested with strange creatures. And if you don’t ascend to the top, everyone is doomed, for some reason.

Getting to the top isn’t easy. Your hero dodders about, shoots his gun, and can double-jump in a Sonic-style spin attack. Which sounds fine until you realize even the most innocuous foe can trip you up, such as seemingly-benign frogs.

But then you reach the end of a section, nip into a secret area with a key, grab a power-up, and feel like a boss. Until you meet an actual boss, who’ll kick your face off. One to persevere with, then – and once your arcade thumbs are in tip-top condition, give each of the four zones a thorough blasting.

Drag'n'Boom

Drag'n'Boom shows that you should never encourage a teenage dragon. Here, the rebellious fire-breather zooms about minimal landscapes, belly-sliding down hills, soaring into the air, barbecuing soldiers, and generally being a menace.

Fortunately, you get to be the dragon, rather than the put-upon army rather wishing it had better weapons. The game recalls Angry Birds in how you ping your dragon along, but also borrows from twin-stick shooters, Sonic the Hedgehog (super-fast tunnel bits), and even The Matrix (slo-mo as you aim).

Although there’s admittedly not masses of variation across the game’s 50 levels and endless mode, it’s hard to be too critical. Drag'n'Boom looks great, and has the kind of grin-inducing breezy gameplay that’s perfect for slotting into the odd moment when you feel the need to unleash your inner dragon.

Time Locker

This vertically scrolling shooter plays with convention in a manner that messes with your head. The basics are familiar – you’re dumped within a vertically scrolling environment and must shoot ALL OF THE THINGS.

Occasionally, obliterated foes drop bonus items that boost your weaponry, providing the means to unleash major destruction while yelling YEEE-HAA – if that’s your sort of thing.

However – and this is a big ‘however’ – everything in Time Locker only moves when you do. The temptation is to blaze ahead, due to bonus points being won for covering greater distances, and because you’re being pursued by the sole thing that doesn’t freeze when you do – an all-devouring nothingness.

But careening on isn’t always a good strategy, because blundering into a single foe or projectile ends your game. Risk versus reward, then, in this fresh and great-looking blaster that dares to try something different.

AirAttack 2

Bad news! It turns out the Axis of Evil needs overthrowing immediately, on account of having access to a ridiculous number of planes and tanks, some of which are the size of small villages. Sadly, we've had some cutbacks, which means our air force is now, er, you.

Still, we're sure you're going to love your time in AirAttack 2, cooing at gorgeous scenery shortly before bombing it, surviving bullet-hell, and puffing your chest to a thumping orchestral soundtrack.

Sure, you might have to turn down the graphic effects a bit on older hardware, and it's a bit of a grind to reach later levels, but you're not going to get better freebie shooting action this side of World War III.

The best free puzzle games for Android

Our favorite free Android brain-smashers, logic tests and path-finding games.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle bucks the trend in Android horror games. Instead of traipsing about a rickety building that may as well hang ‘Enter to be horribly murdered!’ above the door and getting the odd jump scare, you instead face a sliding puzzler. Think Sokoban – but with buckets of cartoon gore.

The aim in each level is to slide horror icon Jason Voorhees into unsuspecting campers, who are then summarily dispatched. The required pathways become increasingly convoluted; hazards and move limits also act as barriers to your desire to get all stabby. 

The puzzles are well designed, and the horror neatly straddles the line between icky and ridiculous. After all, it’s hard to take things seriously when your mother’s decapitated head, levitating in the corner, is offering sagely wisdom.

Tiny Bubbles

Tiny Bubbles is a mostly meditative match game set in a world of gloopy bubbles. A premium app in its previous life on iOS, it comes across intact to Android in free form, merely dropping in the odd ‘commercial break’ if you don’t fancy splashing out on IAP.

The game itself is delightful, having you figure out how to match four bubbles of the same color, which then pop, ideally in an explosive chain reaction. Complications come by way of color mixing demands, troublesome bubbles to remove, and the machinations of a bubble-blowing fish.

If that all sounds a bit too sedate, the game ramps things up some in the arcade mode. But however you take on this puzzler, it’s bursting with fun!

Flipflop Solitaire

Flipflop Solitaire is at its core spider solitaire. The aim is to remove every card from the table. Cards can be built on the tableau in rank, and in-suit sequences can be moved between columns – but Flipflop shakes things up by messing with the rules.

First, it’s primarily designed for smartphones, and you get just five columns of cards. This is trickier than the standard spider layout, and so the game allows you to stack cards in both directions – enabling dizzying sequences like 9876787654543. You only have to stop stacking when you run out of space.

These changes might seem paltry, but they have the effect of making almost every hand technically possible to win. Throw in endless undos and this transforms Flipflop from yet another throwaway card game into a deviously clever mobile puzzler. 

A Way to Slay

A Way to Slay turns epic and extremely bloody sword fights into a kind of turn-based puzzle. You start each bout surrounded by angry foes with a penchant for getting all stabby and head-choppy. Double-tap on any enemy and your hero zips his way over, before painting the screen red with their insides.

On making a move, your opponents also get a chance to adjust their positions – and they are vital to keep track of. For if you venture too near to anyone, it’s your innards that end up decorating the sparse landscape.

The key to victory, then, rests in figuring out the combination of moves that will see you tap your way to victory, a lone survivor surrounded by a sea of corpses. Top stuff, assuming you’ve the stomach – and brains – for it.

red

red is a puzzle game that challenges you to make the screen go red– though given the intentionally obtuse nature of many of the 50 challenges, you might be the one turning crimson after a few hours pitting your wits against some of the more devious puzzles.

It starts simply. A big red button sits in the center of the screen, inviting you to press it. Do so and a chunky red line fills part of the background. Keep pressing and soon enough the entire screen is filled. Job done. Next!

Explaining any more of the game would spoil things, so you’ll just have to take our word for it that red is relentlessly inventive, frequently vexing, and something of a minimal masterpiece.

Aquavias

Aquavias is a sedate path-finding puzzle game. The aim is to deliver water to cities, which will otherwise suffer from drought. Unfortunately, a buffoon has decided the means of moving said water is by way of elevated and fragmented aqueducts.

Each section – most being a single line or quarter circle – can be individually rotated, the idea being to gradually fashion a solid path for the water to follow.

Naturally, this is where you come in. Each tap rotates a piece 90 degrees clockwise. Depending on the level, you’ll either have a limited number of moves, or a rapidly draining reservoir.

Over time, the complexity of the required pathways increases – notably when T-junctions enter the fray; but the game never becomes overbearing, and its pleasing visuals and soundtrack further add to the charm.

Calculator: The Game

Calculator: The Game is a puzzler geared towards sums, featuring a sentient, snarky calculator who’s relentlessly eager to show you its buttons.

The aim in each level is simple: use whatever buttons are provided to reach a goal number, within a limited number of steps. So if you need to get to 9 and see +3 and x3 keys, that’s pretty simple.

The thing is, this calculator likes playing you as much as you’re playing it. Before long, it’s gleefully adding buttons that enable you to knock digits off of your total, reverse them, or hurl numbers through portals.

This one’s not your standard desktop calculator, then, but all the better for it. And it’s a surprisingly entertaining game, given that you’re ultimately doing math.

Cubway

One of the more abstract games you’re likely to install on your Android device, Cubway comprises over 50 minimal scenes you traverse as a tiny red square.

The aim is simply to reach a goal, but all kinds of objects block your path and respond to your presence in varying ways. You must figure out how to get past them all, despite being restricted in terms of movement – forward or backward are your only options, although you can (and will often have to) stop, move slowly, or backtrack, depending on the hazard before you.

As you travel, a story of sorts is revealed, although the text reads like a strange self-help guide. Otherwise, Cubway is a success – it’s intuitive, the mechanics are fresh and clever, and the aesthetics are unfalteringly atmospheric.

Outfolded

One of the most sedate, forgiving puzzle games you’ll ever play, Outfolded also manages to do something interesting with minimal blocky environments and trundling shapes.

For each of the game’s scenes, the aim is to reach a goal by ‘unfolding’ one or more shapes. Each move you make, one of the shape’s faces disappears, leaving you with whatever’s left for further turns, and you can only move in a direction if you have an intact face pointing that way.

Early on, you can make all kinds of blunders and still reach the goal. But before long, the shapes become complex many-sided things reminiscent of Tetris blocks, requiring you to think carefully about the order in which their sides are unfolded and the routes you take.

Mess up and you can undo as many moves as you like. Even this isn’t galling, the rewind animation being pleasing even when you’ve already watched it several times on a particularly tough level. 

Does Not Commute

This superb arcade puzzler finds you directing traffic about a small town. A vehicle enters the screen, and you’re told where it needs to leave, steering it by way of directional arrows. Easy.

Only, this town is afflicted with strange temporal oddness that means subsequent journeys overlap previous ones. Before long, you’re making all kinds of detours to avoid collisions with cars you’d a minute ago driven to safety, which would otherwise wipe seconds off the timer as you wait for damaged vehicles to limp towards their exit.

Adding to its smarts, Does Not Commute includes a storyline with multiple characters, playing out across its varied environments. The only snag on mobile: you must complete the entire game in a single sitting. If that sounds like too much, a one-off IAP unlocks checkpoints.

Kerflux

It's rare even in mobile gaming – frequently full of innovation – to find a fresh take on puzzling, but Kerflux surprises with a simple, original concept that's perfectly executed.

A crunchy chip-tune plays and you're presented with three waveforms. The music dulls, as if you're underwater, and that's your signal to start manipulating two of the waveforms so they combine to form the third.

Achieving this goal is straightforward, and you can initially blaze through the game's levels – even if a more leisurely pace is perhaps more rewarding. Before long, though, any complacency about Kerflux's apparent ease evaporates when additional waves appear and you're juggling four of them, trying to find the perfect combination that unlocks the next challenge.

Orbit

Although you play games, few of them are about play itself, in the sense of experimenting with a set-up or situation and seeing what happens. Orbit, though, while presenting itself as a puzzle game, is more a minimalist sandbox where you immerse yourself in the delights of creating tiny solar systems.

The game is played by slingshotting celestial bodies around black holes. They then proceed to leave colored trails in their wake, while gravity does its thing. Soon, you have planets clustering together, wheeling around one or more black holes, creating minimalist modern art while they do so.

It's all rather gorgeous and mesmerizing. The only snag is ads periodically wrecking the mood, although they can be eradicated with a single IAP.

RGB Express

In RGB Express, your aim is to build up a delivery company from scratch, all by dropping off little coloured boxes at buildings of the same colour. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Only this is a puzzler that takes place on tiny islands with streets laid out in a strict grid pattern, and decidedly oddball rules regarding road use.

Presumably to keep down on tarmac wear, roads are blocked the second a vehicle drives over them. Once you're past the early levels, making all your deliveries often requires fashioning convoluted snake-like paths across the entire map, not least when bridge switches come into play. Despite its cute graphics, then, RGB Express is in reality a devious and tricky puzzle game, which will have you swearing later levels simply aren't possible, before cracking one, feeling chuffed and then staring in disbelief at what follows.

The best free arcade games for Android

Our favorite free Android arcade titles, fighting games and retro fare.

Don’t Trip!

Don’t Trip! is an endless runner with a unique vantage point, given that it’s played from above. You plant a massive foot on the ground, aiming to avoid stepping in anything gruesome or deadly, and then twist your phone around to find free space for your other foot.

There’s a great physicality about the game that comes from this oddball control method, which can only really work on a handheld touchscreen device. Also, the distinctly zoomed-in nature of the viewport quickly makes Don’t Trip! surprisingly challenging.

This is especially true when you suddenly find yourself facing rooms packed full of deranged automated vacuum cleaners armed with massive spikes, knives and swinging axes. So much for robots reducing the hassle of housework…

Super Fowlst

Super Fowlst is the follow-up to claustrophobic high-octane avoid ’em up Fowlst. In this sequel, demons from the first game have overrun the world, and they can only be stopped by a head-butting chicken.

So, yeah, this isn’t your typical arcade game. As you dart left and right, like a refugee from Flappy Bird, you must line up your arc-like paths with fire-spitting enemies, and make use of the local environment to, for example, unsportingly crush foes under massive boulders.

There’s a lot to like here, including the procedurally generated stages, plentiful secrets and unlockable characters. And although we’d say the boss battles are a bit too difficult, Super Fowlst is so good you’ll keep on clucking until those giant demons are toast.

Candies 'n Curses

Candies 'n Curses is a great warning that when all of your friends start properly freaking out about that haunted house down the road, perhaps you should listen. Molli Pop didn’t, and now she’s stuck in tiny rooms packed with spirits, ghosts, and all manner of spooky critters. Fortunately, she can zap them with her torch.

This is a speedy one-thumb affair, with you swiping to make Molli leap between platforms and change direction. Because of the claustrophobic nature of the game, you must constantly have your wits about you, to avoid life-force-depleting collisions – especially with tricky end-of-level bosses.

There are only six rooms to visit, but the game’s challenge is such that it’ll take a while before you see them all. In the meantime, you’ll get plenty of fast-paced ghostbusting fun for free.

Train Party

Train Party is a collaborative or competitive game for between two and 12 players. It features a little train happily chugging along, about to have a rather nasty surprise, given that no-one’s thought to lay some tracks.

You and your friends must therefore avert a derailing disaster, figuring out the best place to drop sections of track, dealing with stubborn local wildlife, and ensuring a rogue track bomber doesn’t scupper your plans with a bang.

When collaborating, the train automatically heads to whoever’s device has a completed section of track; but in competitive mode, it always goes around in order. The last player to not cause an accident wins, and – presumably – is then qualified for a combined job in rail transit, zookeeping, and counter-terrorism.

Bacon

Bacon is an entertaining and lightly satirical arcade game, poking fun at food hacks. They say bacon makes everything better, and so Bacon puts that to the test, by having you flick the tasty foodstuff on to nearby foods – at least at first.

You tap to drop your slice of meaty goodness into a sizzling pan. Another deft tap should be enough to flip it on to a nearby cheeseburger. Next up: pancakes. And then it all goes a bit weird.

The game will ask you to put bacon in a glass of red wine, atop the Chinese character for pleasure, and – brilliantly – on Francis Bacon. The physics and controls are pitch-perfect, and some levels are surprisingly tough – but almost always very silly indeed.

Sneak Ops

Sneak Ops is a retro-infused stealth game where every day brings a new mission. The goal is to get to the chopper by stealthily moving through an enemy compound without being spotted.

The game utilises intuitive top-down gameplay - initially, you can freely scamper about the tiles, but when deeper into your mission, it’s vital to carefully time runs past cameras – and regularly use your ability to smack guards over the head.

Getting to the chopper is tough, but if you don’t fancy starting from scratch on being captured, you can ‘buy’ restart points with floppy disks that litter the compounds – an odd quirk we suspect a real spy would give up their best attaché case for.

Fun gameplay and a fresh daily challenge keep Sneak Ops feeling fresh.

Spaceteam

Spaceteam is a superb multiplayer game that deftly showcases your ability (or lack thereof) to work as part of a (space)team. With between two and eight players connected in local multiplayer, you’re informed that your spaceship is fleeing an exploding star, and you must perform actions to stave off your transport being blown up in a manner that would be a major downer for everyone on board.

The snag is the controls were designed by a lunatic. They’re spread between everyone’s screens, and demands simply show up as text-based prompts, so you’ll be searching for the Dangling Shunter switch and Spectrobolt slider, while pleading with everyone to “please turn on the Eigenthrottle”. Captain Kirk never had it this tough.

HeliHopper

HeliHopper is a helicopter game that involves quite a lot of hopping and an awful lot of crashing. In part, this is probably because helicopters are primarily designed for zooming through the air rather than jumping around like frogs, but there you go.

The aim of HeliHopper is simple: using a basic slingshot mechanism (think Angry Birds), you must direct your helicopter to another landing pad. Depending on the particular level you’re tackling, you might be able to nudge the helicopter mid-flight, collect bling, or complete several painstakingly precise ‘flights’ in a row.

An ideal arcade blast for quick sessions, HeliHopper provides a set of defined missions and nine endless modes. Although if you never want to set foot in a helicopter after smashing hundreds of the things here, don’t blame us.

Jodeo

Jodeo features a cycloptic blob being put through the grinder by a sadist. A claw-like contraption lifts the jelly-like critter above an ‘experiment’ and lets go. Your aim: to move it left and right, squelching over every edge of geometric shapes lazily rotating on the screen – without falling off.

With standard 2D forms, Jodeo might have been entertaining, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting. Here, you’re tackling 3D objects moving in and out of a 2D plane, along with other ‘scientific’ conditions, such as someone unhelpfully hurling meteors your way, or turning off a shape’s lines so you can’t see them.

The experience is short, but it’s hard to gripe about a freebie – not least given the protagonist’s seemingly permanent expression of sheer terror.

Beat Street

Beat Street is a love letter to retro brawlers, echoing the likes of classic arcade title Double Dragon. Yet here you duff up all manner of evil gang members by way of using only a single thumb.

This is quite the achievement. Old-style scrolling beat ’em ups might not have had a modern-day gamepad littered with buttons and triggers, but they still had a joystick and two action buttons. Here, though, you drag to move, tap to punch, and use gestures to fire off special moves.

It works wonderfully. Beat Street gradually reveals new abilities and features – not least weapon pick-ups, one of which rather unsportingly has you smack opponents over the head with what’s described as an ’80s brick.

Stranger Things: The Game

Stranger Things: The Game re-imagines the Netflix TV show, set in 1984, as a 1980s videogame. How meta, you might think… but it works.

You take on the role of gruff Officer Hopper, trying to uncover a mystery at the heart of Hawkins, Indiana. As you work your way deeper into the game, you gradually find new characters, each with individual powers that are vital for further progression.

This pixelated adventure game looks the part (despite not being quite as retro as games of the period), and offers an entertaining mix of straightforward puzzling (find an object; put it somewhere specific), and gleefully punching local security forces when they get in your way.

Well, it is set in the 1980s – you’re not supposed to solve mysteries with brainpower alone.

iHUGU

iHUGU is an arcade game that reckons everyone should get along and hug – just not too often. The bulk of the title is a quick-fire arcade memory test, where you hug each character you come across precisely once. If they’ve been hugged before, flick them by – or your game’s over.

Once you’ve powered up your hug bar, iHUGU provides a brief diversion in the form of a mini-game, which can be anything from darting about and grabbing leaves, to whatever the hug equivalent of a beat ’em up is (a ‘hug fight’, apparently). The entire thing’s endearingly daft.

With eight locations, 100 characters to unlock, and a character editor to create terrifyingly freaky monsters with which to hug, there’s longevity here, too. iHUGU also proves there are still new things to say in single-finger Android gaming. We hug it.

Up The Wall

Up The Wall is suitably named given that it probably will drive you mad. It’s an autorunner with a vicious streak, but also some serious design smarts.

You start out by selecting a character from the claw machine, and that determines which world you’re dropped in. You might be a rubber duck blazing along bathroom tiles, or a skull skidding through a fiery hell.

The aim: get to the end of a hand-crafted level to add the character to your collection.

Even the so-called ‘easy’ levels are tough, and the swipe controls are sometimes a bit iffy. But the trippy visuals, head-bobbing audio, and varied isometric worlds peppered with devious traps will keep drawing you back.

Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert

In Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert, the world’s stretchiest canine finds himself trying to worm his way through a land of cake, chocolate, ice cream, and a worrying number of spikes, saw-blades, and massive bombs.

Rather than walk like a normal pooch, the furry hero of this game stretches as you swipe, until his front paws can cling on to something. His bottom then snaps back into place. It’s quite the trick – but also a hazard if one end of his body ends up in danger when the other end is worryingly distant.

There are 50 scenes in all, along with tricky bonus rooms to try and beat. And although some of the later bits of the game are perhaps a bit too testing, this one as a whole is a very tasty, satisfying arcade treat.

Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever

This one’s far from the worst game ever, but it does feature an amusingly grumpy cat. It’s actually a set of simple mini-games, reminiscent of Nintendo’s WarioWare series, only here, they feature a miffed moggie that’d sooner be somewhere – anywhere – else.

Each miniature challenge in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever can be understood in an instant  – stamping a paw on a laser pointer by tapping the screen; firing the cat upward to secure a cardboard box of dreams; pressing shaped buttons to traverse a path and reach a fish.

The variety of mini-games keeps it fresh and interesting, and the game is often smile inducing thanks to its mix of colorful art, ludicrous concepts and eternally irritated feline.

The longer you survive, the faster and more demanding everything becomes. Fail and the grumpy cat scowls, but you’re also awarded coins to acquire new games by way of stickers won from a prize machine. Naturally, every one of them features the grumpy cat.

Hammer Bomb

Take an early 1990s FPS, smash it into an auto-runner, add a dash of Pac-Man, and you'd end up with Hammer Bomb. You're dumped in dank mazes and dungeons full of hideous beasts and must stomp along, finding keys, loot, weapons and the way out.

Levels are randomised, adding a Roguelike quality to proceedings, and the entire game's underpinned by a levelling up system. This means XP being awarded for killing loads of monsters, rapidly finding the exit, or performing other tasks, such as completing quests (which, in a nod to Ms. Pac-Man, involves hunting down roaming foodstuff).

Every few levels, you face off against a massive screen-high boss, darting towards it with whatever weapon you have to hand, before fleeing like a coward. Survive long enough and you can swap coins for upgrades.

Top tip: as soon as you've 150 coins and level 3 status, grab the radar, because Hammer Bomb is much friendlier when you can spot monsters on the top-down map.

The best free match games for Android

Our favorite free Android games where you swap gems and match tiles, aiming for a high score.

Six Match

Six Match is a new take on match games. Instead of swapping gems, you switch coins by having the suitably named Mr Swap-With-Coins barge past them. The twist: a number on the cuboid hero’s head denotes how many moves he has left before he freezes to the spot – six at most before he must make the next match.

This twist makes for a very different match experience – one that’s far more strategic than swiping at the screen like a maniac. You can’t afford to waste moves – particularly when Six Match introduces new concepts to help and hinder. These include bombs, coin-shifting cages that assist and frustrate in equal measure, deadly skulls, and poker-style card hands that boost your score.

The combination of factors proves clever and engaging, and offers scope for long-term play as you work out strategies to improve your score.

Push & Pop

Push & Pop is a sliding tiles puzzler, with mechanics not a million miles away from Threes! (or low-rent knock-off 2048), but this is no mere clone. Instead, it builds on the basics of shifting tiles or blocks around a limited space by also borrowing ideas from Sokoban and Pac-Man, before stripping everything right back again.

Play occurs on a five-by-five grid, around which you slide a cuboid. On every move, a new block appears somewhere on the grid. Arrange five into a solid line by pushing them and they disappear, freeing up space, and leaving behind gems the blocky hero can collect by eating or shoving blocks through them. Further complications are added when immovable blocks appear. Your game’s over when you become stuck.

With its neon visuals and ethereal soundtrack, Push & Pop takes simple foundations and runs with them, fashioning an intriguing, engaging, and surprisingly novel title.

Laps – Fuse

Laps – Fuse is a match-three game based around numbered discs. If three or more of the same meet, they fuse into a new disc with twice the face value. The tiny snag: you’ve limited slots to hurl discs into. The other tiny snag: the discs you hurl zoom about the edge of a circle. The other other tiny snag: you’ve only 20 laps to secure your high-score – and thereby Laps bragging rights.

This isn’t a thoughtful Threes-style outing, then – more an arcade puzzler on fast-forward. You at every moment you must plan ahead, trying to set up matches and chain reactions that fling your circling disc back a little way, buying you a few seconds of extra time.

It’s a tense, clever take on what’s become a tired genre. And should you master the main mode, you can unlock ‘endless’, ‘furious’ (faster), and ‘extreme’ (fewer slots – presumably for masochists).

Wilful Kitty

Wilful Kitty is a sliding tile puzzle game on a four-by-four grid. But before you yawn and assume it’s another 2048 knock-off (which itself was a Threes! knock-off), guess again. Because this game features cats. And all the things that cats really like.

The twist here is a little kitty moves about the grid as you swipe, and objects that enter the grid are combined into consumables and toys. For example, milk and a bowl becomes a kitty drink, and a plate and some fish makes a hearty lunch.

This shift in mechanics shakes up everything you knew about this kind of game – as does you being able to charge up a ‘satisfaction bar’ that when full unleashes a ‘Hyper Kitty Dash’, clearing a chunk of the playfield in double-quick time.

It’s entertaining serving the tiny cat’s every need – and surprisingly challenging, too. Because it turns out this Wilful Kitty has bite.

Age of 2048

Age of 2048 is effectively a reskin of popular swipe-based tile puzzler 2048. Now, 2048 was really a low-rent knock-off of the far superior Threes! (which has its own free version), but it had the advantage of being open source, therefore opening itself up to all kinds of variations on the basic theme.

In the original 2048, you swipe to slide numbered tiles about a four-by-four grid. Merged pairs then double their face value. But Age of 2048 is all about buildings.

Initially, you swipe bits of rock together, until you’re fashioning tents and stone monuments. Build a ‘wonder’ – the largest building type and the equivalent of the 2048 tile in the original – and you unlock the next stage.

Ultimately, Age of 2048 is still a slightly limited game, lacking the nuance and charm of Threes!. But its concept, design, and the addition of some useful power-ups, ensures it’s worth a download, and that it manages to stand out from the crowd.

Topsoil

With its four-by-four grid and penchant for rapidly restricting the playfield, Topsoil comes across a bit like a horticultural Threes! There’s no sliding cards about, though – instead, you’re presented with a string of things to plant, and prod open spaces to plonk them down.

After three, you get a chance to harvest – and this is where things become more complicated. You get more points for harvesting many plants at once, which requires them to be on adjacent squares. But on harvesting anything, the soil beneath is turned over. Soil cycles between blue, yellow, and green, and groups of plants cannot cross different soil colors.

The net result is a clever game where you must plan ahead, and where you keep digging for strategies to last longer and discover new plants to grow and harvest.

Imago

There are a lot of Android puzzle games that involve you sliding blocks about, but Imago is one of the best, even giving Threes! a run for its money.

You drag numbered tiles around a grid, merging those of the same colour and shape. On doing so, their numbers combine, but when merged groups reach a certain size, they split into smaller tiles, each retaining the score of the larger piece. Successful games require careful forward planning, with only a few moves it can be possible to ramp up scores dramatically, into the millions or even billions!

The game's relative complexity is countered by a smart modes system that gradually introduces you to Imago's intricacies. There's also a Daily Flight mode that provides a regular influx of new challenges, for when the standard modes begin to pall. On Android, we noticed a few minor visual glitches here and there, but otherwise this is a must-download puzzle game that's among the best on the platform.

Threes! Free

In Threes! Free, you slide numbered cards around a tiny grid, merging pairs to increase their values and make room for new cards. Strategy comes from the cards all moving simultaneously, along with you needing to keep space free to make subsequent merges, forcing you to think ahead.

On launch, it was a rare example of a new and furiously compulsive puzzle-game mechanic. Within days, it was mercilessly ripped off, free clones flooding Google Play.

Now, though, you can get authentic Threes! action entirely for free, and discover why it's 2048 times better than every freebie 2048 game (personality; attention to detail; music; small elements of game design that make a big difference).

You get 12 free games to start. Add groups of three more by watching a video ad. And you can always upgrade to the paid version if you get suitably hooked.

Bejeweled

There are loads of freebie Bejeweled knock-offs on Google Play, and so if you fancy a bit of gem-swapping, you may as well download the original. For reasons beyond us, Android owners don't get the multitude of modes available on some other platforms, but there's the original match-three 'classic', the can't-lose 'zen', and the superb 'diamond mine'.

In the last of those, matches smash a hole into the ground. You're playing against the clock, and over time uncover harder rock that needs special moves to obliterate. It's a frenetic, intense experience considering this is a match-three title, although high-score chasers might cast a suspicious eye over the offer to extend the time limit by watching an advert.

The best free platform games for Android

Our favorite free Android platformers, from classic retro 2D fare to full-on console-style adventures.

Turn Undead 2: Monster Hunter

In stills, Turn Undead 2: Monster Hunter looks like an action-packed platform game. Its heavily armed, cloaked hero can be seen performing all manner of monster-killing feats with two massive guns that fire stakes the size of a small tree. Only Turn Undead 2 – as the name hints at – is in fact turn-based.

This means you get all the trappings of a classic platform game, but within the framework of a clockwork turn-based puzzler. You get time to plan every move you make, but with the ongoing realization that you might not make it to the exit if you put a foot wrong.

Arguably, it’s a little too tough at times, which can frustrate. Even so, this game’s well worth hunting down, purely because of how well the mash-up of genres works. 

Super Cat Tales 2

Super Cat Tales 2 follows in the feline footsteps of its superb predecessor. All chunky retro-style visuals and leapy gameplay, this high-octane platformer finds a ragtag gang of moggies trying to save their world from an alien invasion.

Like the original, this sequel cleverly rethinks platform game controls for the touchscreen – tapping or holding the left or right of your device’s display is all that’s required for running, leaping, wall-jumping like a furry ninja, and obliterating robot foes when you chance upon a massive yellow tank.

Smartly, this time round you can switch cats on the fly, making use of each one’s special power to blaze through tricky sections, or unearth sneaky secrets. For a fiver, we’d recommend this one; for free, it’s a total no-brainer.

It’s Full of Sparks

It’s Full of Sparks is a speed-run platformer where sentient firecrackers must find a body of water to hurl themselves into before their fuses make them explode all over the shop. The first level is a sprint to the finish line, but the game immediately makes things more complicated.

You first don some red shades, which give you a button for turning on and off chunks of red landscape. Two more colors soon join the show. As the levels increase in size, you end up with a crazed, tense dash for survival, juggling bits of landscape via delicate finger choreography that’d impress even the finest flautist.

The game can be frustrating, and larger levels need quite a bit of trial and error, but this game’s charm and innovation ensures its spark won’t die for the duration.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Classic

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 arrived on consoles in 1992 and, like its predecessor, is a super-fast side-scrolling platform game. The aim is to zoom through levels, grab gold rings, and avoid the enemies and spikes liberally sprinkled about. This sequel also adds a Super Dash Attack to help Sonic obliterate foes, and 3D special stages, which recall newer Sonic fare on mobile.

The game is rightly regarded as a classic, and the mobile version is a rare example of retro done well. Rather than giving you a bog-standard emulator, Sega has fully ‘remastered’ the game in widescreen, added enhancements and secrets, and provided touchscreen controls that are actually pretty good.

There are obnoxious ads here and there, but they’re a small price to pay to get Sonic 2 on your Android for nothing; and if they bug you, a one-off IAP removes them forever.

Cat Bird

Cat Bird is another in a long line of platform games where a cute protagonist has somehow found themselves in a kind of videogame hell, surrounded by danger and death.

The hero is an oddball combination of cat and bird - although Cat Bird is a bit rubbish at the ‘bird’ bit, only being able to glide rather than fly. Level layouts are largely built around this ability, with the furry affront to evolution often gliding past saw blades by a hair’s breadth, before snagging keys and taunting doddering enemies.

Really, it’s all very familiar territory, but the delicate pixel art is lovely, with subtle animations like Cat Bird’s twitchy ears, and tiny hopping birds in the background. Also, the level design manages to smartly make use of the hero’s flappy nature, meaning success requires the use of your brain alongside twitchy thumbs. Download it meow. (Sorry.)

Flat Pack

Flat Pack rethinks platform games by wrapping levels around 3D shapes. The aim is to dodder or fly about, grab six sides of a golden cube, and make for the exit. But each level has its own twist, forcing you to think on your feet – or rotors if you’re careening through the air, heading for some spikes.

Early on, for example, you contend with ‘flipping gravity’. This requires moving around a cubic section of level in a specific way, so you can enter from another direction. One level is two huge blocks that smash together at regular intervals, squashing slowpoke adventurers who dawdle. And it only gets more disorienting from there.

This could so easily have been a gimmicky offering, but it’s the smart level design that transforms Flat Pack into a must-have freebie.

Hoggy 2

Hoggy 2 is a platform puzzler that feels like it’s escaped from a Nintendo console. The premise involves the evil Moon Men kidnapping the children of the blobby heroes. You must find where the kids have been hidden, somewhere inside a massive maze full of jars.

Each jar houses a bite-sized challenge packed full of platforms, enemies, traps, and fruit. Eat all the fruit and you’re awarded a key. Collect enough keys to unlock new areas of the maze.

The platforming bits are frequently deviously fiendish. Early levels ease you in, but you’re soon facing tests that seem impossible until you spot something crucial – a block you’d previously not noticed, or a different order in which to approach things – whereupon you feel like a genius.

Should you best all 200 hand-crafted levels, you can make your own in a level editor, or take on those the Hoggy community’s created. That this all comes for free is astonishing. Download it now.

Drop Wizard Tower

Drop Wizard Tower is a superbly crafted love letter to classic single-screen arcade platform games like Bubble Bobble. You dart about, knocking out enemies, grabbing gems and fruit, and duffing up bosses, working your way towards a final confrontation.

However, there’s a twist in that Drop Wizard Tower fuses old-school platforming with auto-running. Your little wizard never stops moving, and can only be directed left or right. And he only shoots the instant he lands on a platform.

You’ll likely fight against this at first, cursing Drop Wizard Tower for straying from traditional left/right/jump/fire controls. But the game really works on mobile, and when it clicks you’ll be zooming about, stunning foes with your magic wand, and booting them away to create tumbling ‘avalanches’ of enemies.

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic The Hedgehog hasn’t fared as well as one-time rival Mario. Whereas Nintendo’s mascot still features in first-rate platformers, Sega’s blue hedgehog is more often mired in freemium rubbish. With Sonic The Hedgehog, though, you’re getting the original Genesis/Mega Drive classic.

In fact, you’re getting more. This is no lazy emulator, but a fully remastered game, with improved performance and widescreen 60fps visuals. Although a touch fiddly at times, care’s been taken with customizable on-screen controls, and there’s gamepad controller support, too.

Most importantly, the game itself remains compelling, with Sonic zooming about colorful landscapes filled with platforms, traps, gold rings, patrolling enemies, dizzying loops and tunnels, and the occasional boss. Retro-gaming’s often a disappointment, but Sonic stands the test of time. If only all old games were reworked for mobile with such care.

Circle Affinity

A brutal, brilliant platform game, Circle Affinity finds its protagonist in a literal take on the circles of hell – only here there are considerably more than nine.

He scoots about the edge of each disc, leaps into it, and then must jump to the outer edge of the next circle, which bobs about in the air. All the while, massive teeth-like daggers close in, and demons march back and forth, waiting for you to blunder into them.

Games are initially short, and Circle Affinity almost taunts you on death, as you try to master the inherently-disorienting nature. Over time, you'll begin to survive a little longer, whereupon you'll be rewarded with new eye-searing color schemes and additional play modes.

Leap Day

Touchscreens should be a poor fit for platform games, which typically require the kind of precision that only comes from a physical controller. This is why so many mobile titles opt for auto-running, distilling platform gaming to its core essence of timing jumps.

In Leap Day, your little yellow character is tasked with getting to the top of a tall tower. You can jump, double jump and slide down walls, but that's it. You must therefore carefully leap past cartoon foes and gigantic spikes, grabbing fruit along the way.

At various points on your climb are checkpoints, which can be bought with 20 fruit or by watching an ad. This means you don't have to start from scratch on coming a cropper. And when you do reach the summit, you can come back the next day for an entirely new level to try.

Bean Dreams

Although there are exceptions, traditional platform games rarely work on touchscreens. Fortunately, canny developers have rethought the genre, stripping it back to its very essence. In Bean Dreams, you help a jumping bean traverse all kinds of hazards, by sending the bouncing hatted seed left or right.

Each level is cleverly designed to offer optimum paths, boosting your points tally when hitting the goal having made the fewest bounces. Timing is everything, then, but there are further challenges that reward exploration. To find the pet axolotls spread across the map, or collect all the fruit, you must use different approaches, which adds plenty of replay value.

Cally's Caves 3

Poor Cally. It's like she can't go for five minutes without her parents being kidnapped. It's third time unlucky for her in Cally's Caves 3, but lucky for you, because you get an excellent old-school platformer that costs nothing at all. Cally leaps about, shooting and stabbing enemies in a gleeful manner you might consider unusual for a young girl with pigtails.

The game's brutal, too, with a checkpoint system that will have you gnashing teeth when you die a few steps before a restart point. But the weapon upgrade system is clever (keep shooting things to power up guns!), there are loads of items to discover, and unlike on iOS, the free Android version has several extra unlocked modes.

The best free sports games for Android

Our favorite free Android golf, football, tennis and extreme sports games.

Touchgrind BMX 2

Touchgrind BMX 2 is a BMX trials sports game. In other words, it’s not enough to just be fast – you also have to be a massive show-off, catapulting your bike into the air, before performing all manner of stunts. However, unlike the majority of trials games on mobile, Touchgrind eschews a side-on view for something far more tactile and ambitious.

Your bike is seen from above and behind, and you’re invited to park two of your fingers on it – one on the handlebar and one on the seat. Subtle movement allows you to steer, while flicks let you perform the aforementioned stunts.

Success and high scores rely on mastery of stunt combos and committing courses to memory, and then stringing together bike-based choreography that’d make your hair curl if you were to try it in the real world. Great stuff.

Rowdy Wrestling

Rowdy Wrestling manages what some people might consider impossible: taking a sport that’s already full of spectacle and the ridiculous, and making it even more so in every conceivable way.

Bouts involve absurdly bouncy physics and fighters whose arms whirl about their person. Buttons enable you to move left and right, jump, and attack, but this isn’t a game about precision and nuance. Instead, it’s a madcap free-for-all, where you feel like you’re, in terms of control, clinging on by your fingertips.

Fortunately, it’s a blast. Although it can irk when you lose because your wrestler’s seemingly doing his own thing, it’s hard to stay mad at a fighting game that’s this stupid. And it moves beyond single-bout gimmickry, too, with tag-team and career modes.

Score! Match

Score! Match reimagines the beautiful game (as in, soccer – or football if you’re British and the S-word sends you into apoplectic fury) as a turn-based match of wits where you draw passes and attempts at goal with a finger.

The basic premise will be familiar to anyone who’s played other Score! games,, but in this one you’re not attempting to recreate history’s greatest goals. Instead, you go head-to-head against other players online, in two-minute first-to-two-goal bouts.

There’s a lot of freemium gunk lurking: currencies; timers; loot boxes. Also, the AI’s wonky, and the commentary is laughable. But the underlying mechanics are great to the point none of that really matters – not least when you’re one-nil down and have only seconds to get the equalizer that will secure a penalty shoot-out.

Virtua Tennis Challenge

Virtua Tennis Challenge is based on the classic tennis game that years ago once graced the Dreamcast. Although it politely doffed a sun visor in the direction of realism, the game was very much a frantic, exciting arcade outing – and that’s just as true on mobile, as you scoot about the court, trying to better your opponent with a dizzying array of well-placed lobs and electrifying super shots.

Given its console origins, the game controls as well as can be expected. And that means badly if you opt for the gestural controls, which make your tennis star look like they’ve had a few gins too many before appearing on the court. But go for the on-screen D-pad and buttons, and Sega’s tennis game is a fine example of having your own little Wimbledon nestled on your smartphone.

Mad Skills BMX 2

Mad Skills BMX 2 is a one-on-one racing game. You pit your skills against various opponents, racing them on tracks packed full of ramps and bumpy sections designed to make you giddy as you zoom along.

And this is very much a fast game. When deep into a race, the scenery blazes by in a blur as you battle to beat your opponent and take the checkered flag. It’s a true arcade experience, with two-button/one-thumb controls making racing all about track mastery and careful timing.

Somehow, it often feels like a breakneck upside down Tiny Wings. And although it does eventually spray pay-to-win freemium in your face, for a good few hours this one’s wheelie good.

Battle Golf Online

Battle Golf Online is a major revamp of the original – and hugely entertaining – Battle Golf. Once again, the golf bit is stripped right back to two players whacking balls toward holes that appear from a lake. Some of these are greens with slopes to aid the ball’s progress. Others are rather more esoteric – a lighthouse with smashed-out windows; a submarine; the Loch Ness Monster with a hat.

The controls are straightforward – a tap to stop an aiming arrow and another to choose your shot’s power. And that’s just as well, because this game’s more about speed than precision – and the first to five wins.

Against the computer AI, this results in frenetic, entertaining battles, but the hole-in-one comes from online multiplayer, where you battle it out against real humans. Just watch out for people performing the so-called ‘pro’ shot, hitting and hoping before holes surface from the water.

Touchdowners

Touchdowners is, it’s fair to say, not an entirely accurate recreation of American football. Here, two three-strong teams (usually human, but sometimes skeletons or chickens), face off, their arms spinning wildly as they move. Also, the pitch appears to be a massive trampoline.

If you can wrestle your bounding trio into submission, you might get a touchdown. If the other side gets one: game over. (Unless you’re in Career mode, whereupon it’s first to three – or first to five in the final.)

It’s all totally stupid, but – much like Wrassling and Dunkers, by the same team – loads of raucous, breezy fun. Just expect to be a touch disappointed next time you watch a real match, and the Miami Dolphins aren’t soaring through the air, desperately fending off an attack from a team of actual sharks.

Super Stickman Golf 3

This third entry in the Super Stickman Golf series is perhaps feeling a bit too familiar, but the game remains the best side-on golf to be found on Android.

As ever, your little stickman is charged with smacking balls about courses comprising floating islands, laser-infested bases, and space stations. You set your direction and strength, hit the ball, and hope for the best – although this time you can also add spin.

Power-ups eventually enter the mix, providing opportunities to discover new ways to lower your scores. There are also two multiplayer modes – a deranged real-time race and a more sedate turn-based affair.

The free version of Super Stickman Golf 3 is a little limited regarding simultaneous multiplayer games and access to new courses, but a single IAP unlocks the premium game.

Pokémon GO

Although a far cry from classic Pokémon titles, there's no getting away from the sheer impact of Pokémon GO. It's resulted in swarms of smartphone users roaming the streets and countryside, searching for tiny creatures they can only see through their screens.

In all honesty, the game is simplistic: find a Pokémon, lob balls at it, amble about for a while to hatch eggs, and use your collection of critters to take over and guard virtual gyms.

But despite basic combat and the game's tendency to clobber your Android's battery, it taps into the collector mentality; and it's a rare example of successfully integrating a game into the real world, getting people physically outside and - shock - interacting with each other.

The best free word games for Android

Our favorite free Android games that are all about letters, anagrams and crosswords.

Alphabear 2

Alphabear 2 is the sequel to TechRadar favorite Alphabear – a word game that mixes up anagrams and large furry critters.

Each game takes place on a grid, and you select letters to form words. Used letters vanish and bears then fill the gaps. But if turn-based countdowns on any letters reach zero, the tiles turn to stone, scuppering gigantobear schemes.

The game shakes things up a bit with timed levels, and a fairly baffling meta-game where you collect bears to unlock a bewildering array of bonuses. There’s also a smattering of educational content lurking within, giving you an excuse when someone asks if you’re wasting all your time playing games again. 

Well worth bear-ing in mind, then, if you’ve a hankering for a fab new set of word puzzles.

Bonza Word Puzzle

Bonza Word Puzzle deconstructs the classic crossword. Rather than a clue for each word, you get one for the entire puzzle. Said challenge is essentially a completed crossword that’s been hacked to bits and sprayed across your screen like a cross between a Scrabble set and tetrominoes.

Early levels lead you in gently. When there are only a few pieces to manipulate, it’s not much trouble to complete the puzzle before you. But when you’re staring at a dozen or more tiny clusters of letters, figuring out how they all join up is an invigorating test.

Bonza does have IAP for level packs, but you get a decent selection for free. Even better: every day, you receive a new puzzle, giving the game reason to stick around on your device for the long term.

Dropwords 2

Dropwords 2 brings together Boggle and Bejeweled. You sit before a five-by-five grid of letters while a timer ticks down. When you spot a word that snakes through the board, you tap it out from start to end. Submit your word and its letters vanish; gravity then has its brief moment of glory, bringing in new letters for you to use.

Like in timed Bejeweled modes, fast matches are the key to high scores. However, keeping your timer bar full doesn’t just require rapidly submitting words, but also finding longer ones that’ll give you an extra second or two.

If that all seems a bit stressful, there are more relaxing modes too. And the app rather neatly provides a slew of other customization options, from larger boards to alternate typefaces – just as well, given the default Chalkboard that whiffs of Comic Sans.

Jumbline 2

Jumbline 2 is one for anagram fiends. Its main mode starts life as a row of scrambled letters, and a bunch of empty slots awaiting any words you find. Against the clock (which is surprisingly tense and exciting), or in a more relaxed timer-free mode, you drag to rearrange letters, and then draw a line beneath relevant ones to send a word to its slot. Get them all to try the next level.

There are two additional modes as well. Cloud Pop has you fashion words from letters found within clouds, using them before they vanish from the screen, but Star Tower is better, having you create the floors of a tower as it gradually scrolls downwards. Longer words make for taller floors, gaining you precious extra seconds to get your brain in gear and think of something suitably amazing with your next set of letters.

Letterpress

Letterpress combines the anagrams of Boggle with the territory capturing of Risk. Two players take part in a turn-based battle on a five-by-five grid of letters. Any letters used in your word turn your color – but there’s a twist: those surrounded by your tiles cannot be captured by the other player during their turn.

Strategy within Letterpress is therefore not just about finding the biggest words – and certainly not if its tiles are spread about the board. You must instead cunningly eat into your opponent’s territory while safeguarding your own. Battles become like an intense tug of war, ramping up the excitement and providing the kind of edge not usually found in word games.

Spellspire

Spellspire finds you as a crotchety wizard, trying to climb a tower. The snag is that heavily armed monsters want to stop you. This might not sound like the premise for a typical word game, but Spellspire adds a bit of magic to the anagrams mix.

On each floor, you get 10 letters to juggle and form into words that become fuel for spells. Short words only unleash a smallish magical blast, but longer words give your foes a serious kicking. Perform well on your quests and you’ll over time acquire new bling, with which to take on tougher floors.

There’s a bit of grind – you’ll need to replay levels to get enough clout to duff up even the earliest boss – but Spellspire is always fun, and you’ll smile from ear to ear once you start walloping foes with seven-letter words.

Alphabear

Alphabear has you spell out words by selecting them on a grid, but there’s a twist: use letters that are adjacent to each other and bears fill the space. As you remove letters around them, the bears continue to expand. At the same time, you’ll notice countdowns on each of the letter tiles – when they reach zero, they turn to immovable stone, potentially scuppering any gigantobear schemes you had in mind.

When your game’s done, you’ll be given a score and probably also a bear, which can act as a power-up in subsequent games. Frankly, this bit doesn’t quite click, given the bewildering array of bonuses on offer, and the rather overt nudge towards IAP to wake up tired bears. Otherwise, this one’s a furry good word game that’s well worth bear-ing in mind.

Typeshift

Typeshift rethinks anagrams, word searches and crosswords. Each puzzle comprises columns of letters you can drag up and down, the aim being to make a complete word in the central row. When you do so, the word’s letters change color. To complete the puzzle, you must color all of the letters.

Although completing puzzles at speed rewards you with higher scores on the leaderboard, such aspects to Typeshift are largely hidden. This is mostly a lean-back game to relax with, but should you hanker for an additional layer of brain-smashing, you can try cracking crossword-style puzzles where you match words to set clues.

It’s worth noting that Typeshift’s puzzles are hand-crafted, not algorithmically generated, so they do run out - and only some of them are free. Still, there’s always a daily puzzle to try your hand (or your best swiping finger) at.

Scrabble

Yes, the proper Scrabble, not some copyright-infringing clone that'll be pulled by the time you read these words. EA bought the license, tidied it up and stuck it out on Android, where it's a remarkably advert and in-app purchase free experience.

It's been beefed up with a few new modes, but stuff like the ability to sync with Facebook and play multiple matches is actually exactly what you need. A classic that's not been ruined. Hooray.

The best free endless runners for Android

Our favorite free Android games where you run, hop, drive or pinball towards a high score – or an abrupt end.

Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive

Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive is a fast-paced one-thumb arcade game, which has you direct a lone heroic Autobot to blow up a seemingly endless number of evil Decepticon bases.

True to Transformers lore, your character gets to transform from vehicle to robot and back a fair bit. He starts off as a car, barreling along in gameplay that echoes arcade classic Spy Hunter. On reaching a Decepticon base, he transforms and starts blasting, dodging laser fire and explosions. With enough points, he can take on a big boss.

Given its freemium underpinnings, there’s grind lurking within, but Bumblebee Overdrive is fun from the off, has smart level design, and offers varied boss battles that force you to quickly spot attack patterns – or Bumblebee gets very rapidly transformed into a pile of scrap.

PAKO Forever

PAKO Forever is the third entry in a car chase series gradually leaving behind all semblance of reality. If its predecessors were a bit odd at times, Forever is decidedly nutty. It dumps you in the world’s largest car park, with a seemingly unlimited number of cop cars out for the kill.

If you’re rammed just once, your game is over. Initially, that will take mere seconds. But you soon figure out how to drift and snake around obstacles to eke out some extra seconds. At that point, you can start collecting temporary bonus weapons, or chancing upon bizarre ‘events’ like UFOs and volcanic eruptions.

The game’s a touch crude, and should arguably be more forgiving; but for a quick blast of high-octane racing survival, it hits the spot.

Alto’s Odyssey

Alto’s Odyssey finds the titular board-obsessed protagonist move from the snowy slopes of Alto’s Adventure to sandy dunes. Again, he’s on an endless journey, zooming through eye-dazzling scenery, and regularly flinging himself into the air for the odd bit of show-off and score-chasing stunt work.

The game starts off very similar to its predecessor, to the point it might feel like you’re just getting new visuals. You prod the screen to leap, hold to somersault, and must regularly clear massive ravines. You still get chased, too, albeit by rabid wildlife rather than angry elders.

But soon you discover new places to explore, and novel ideas like the ability to wall ride. And if working your way through the game’s increasingly tough achievements gets too stressful, there’s a chill-out risk-free ‘Zen’ mode that’s just you, an endless desert, and some moody music.

Bendy in Nightmare Run

Bendy in Nightmare Run is an auto-runner set in a world of deranged 1920s black-and-white cartoons, seemingly from a place where such creative endeavors are designed to terrify rather than entertain.

You spend your time running out of the screen, fleeing from some kind of hideous monstrosity with massive and very sharp teeth, and whatever minions it spews your way. You must swipe between lanes to avoid getting clobbered, and occasionally pick up weapons you can lob behind you, giving your pursuer a taste of its own medicine.

This game is no pushover. The battles become increasingly tough, with careful timing and deft swiping required if you’re to have any chance of survival. But the unusual viewpoint and superb aesthetics make Bendy very much worth a download, even if the core gameplay is ultimately rather familiar.

Will Hero

Will Hero is a superb, daft, frenetic one-thumb platform game featuring a bunch of squares. Perhaps it’s easier to animate such creatures, but a lack of torsos and limbs hasn’t made Will and his enemies any less violent. Instead, they’re intent on hacking each other to pieces.

Initially, you largely spend your time prodding the screen to move forward and attempting to jump on bouncing enemy heads, like a simplified geometric Mario. But grab a chest and all bets are off. You might find a massive sword or missiles within.

Will Hero then becomes a blast – a glorious minute or two of gore and destruction, before you lose your concentration for a moment and are sliced in half by an inconveniently placed and surprisingly dangerous windmill. This one’s great – install it immediately.

Power Hover: Cruise

Power Hover: Cruise is a spin-off from futuristic hoverboarding game Power Hover. Whereas that game mostly featured heavily choreographed levels punctuated by the odd boss battle, this one’s all about endless challenges that involve the robot protagonist eventually becoming a pile of scrap metal.

The journey, though, is wonderful. Several of Power Hover: Cruise’s modes could lay claim to being among the best endless runners on Android, and you get over half a dozen here, each with its own distinct feel, hazards and challenges.

As you arc across the screen, learning to master the board’s heavy inertia, you’ll be thrilled when dodging dancing lasers inside a pyramid by a hair’s breadth, whirling around a track snaking through the sky, and avoiding projectiles hurled your way by a psychotic monster living deep in an underground tunnel – and who everyone probably should have left alone.

Glitch Dash

Glitch Dash is a premium auto-runner. It’s also really, really hard. It essentially dumps you in an abstract world of checkerboard corridors peppered with traps. You must swipe to dodge, leap and slide, avoiding walls, laser grids, and massive scythes that some nutcase has left swinging from above.

The high-octane gameplay is augmented by an intense electronic soundtrack that broadly matches the moves you must make in order to survive. And unlike the majority of entries in this genre, Glitch Dash’s levels are hand-crafted.

This means when you fail (and you will – often, and sometimes when tantalizingly close to your goal), it’s down to your lack of mastery and an inability to make your thumbs do what you want them to. But you’ll try again right away. After all, you’re not going to let a game beat you.

Hoppenhelm

Hoppenhelm has an air of the familiar with its chunky pixelated graphics and tap-to-move mechanics, but this mix of twitch gaming, one-thumb action and arcade fare turns out to be surprisingly compelling and a little bit different.

The backstory finds the titular knight lost in dungeons that are filling with lava. With each step he takes, the lava drops back a touch – but you can’t simply hammer the walk button and escape a fiery death because the dungeons are packed full of hazards and monsters.

This is where the other two buttons come in. The sword is used to kill enemies, and the shield can protect from fireballs. Because Hoppenhelm is played at speed, the result is a thrilling combination of fast reactions, timing, prioritization, and swearing at your thumbs when the knight is devoured by a goofy floating head.

Infiniroom

Infiniroom is Canabalt in a box, infused with the sadistic nature of Super Hexagon. You prod the screen to make the auto-running protagonist leap to avoid electrified boxes that appear from every surface of a room you’re trapped in. And like a certain superhero, he happily runs up any wall he reaches, then along the ceiling and back down again.

It’s dizzying and chaotic, but Infiniroom further ramps up the tension by continually chopping and changing the play field. At any moment, you may get a second’s warning before a chunk of space disappears (don’t be there when it does), or a new area opens up. And then the game starts gleefully lobbing saw blades and lasers at you.

Not a relaxing game, then, but one you’ll want to play again and again. And given how short Infiniroom games are, you can pack plenty into the shortest break.

Flipping Legend

Flipping Legend is a demanding endless runner smashed into an RPG-like upgrade system. The protagonist embarks on an orgy of destruction atop a chessboard-like pathway, and can only leap diagonally.

This initially makes your head spin, not least because the path is a wraparound one. This means if you leap off of its left-hand side, you reappear on the right – something you frequently have to make use of, to avoid the many hazards in your way.

To further complicate matters, your health bar drains at an alarming rate, and only refills when you biff enemies. Grab enough bling and you can unlock power-ups for taking out multiple foes.

With an energetic soundtrack, a bunch of alternate characters, and a very smart chunky art style, Flipping Legend shows there’s still life left in endless runners (albeit as the hero is busy killing everything in this one).

Binary Dash

Zero points for innovation in Binary Dash, which is another side-scrolling auto-runner where you tap to jump, and tap somewhere else to flip upside-down.

But many points for the combination of super-fast gameplay, superb level design, and a visual aesthetic that thumbs its nose at the modern-day penchant for mid-80s pixel art, instead hurling you back to the lurid charms of late 1970s gaming.

Yes, Binary Dash more looks like it’s been vomited out of an ancient Atari console, but it nonetheless has a quirky charm. And the game itself is great. It eases you in gently, helping you get to grips with flipping above and below the horizon, thus turning game-ending pillars into pits to leap over when you’re upside-down.

Before long, though, your thumbs will be seriously challenged by the tight choreography required to jump and flip your way to the ends of later levels.

Sky Dancer

Yet another into-the-screen endless runner, channeling Temple Run. Yawn. Only Sky Dancer has a certain something that keeps you playing – and that certain something is leaving your stomach in your throat every time you jump.

Much of this is down to the construction of Sky Dancer’s world, which comprises tiny chunks of land hanging in the air in a manner that rocks usually don’t have. As you hurl yourself off the edge of one, you must quickly maneuver to land on a platform below.

Battling gravity and inertia is exhilarating, especially when the game speeds up and you know the slightest miscalculation will result in you meeting a splattery end on the desert floor.

PinOut

Pinball infused with the DNA of an against-the-clock endless runner sounds like an odd combination – but it works. In PinOut’s neon world – featuring a gorgeous electro soundtrack – a massive table stretches far into the distance. Within: dozens of miniature tables comprising flippers, ramps, and more than a few traps.

The basic aim at every turn is to keep moving forward to the next mini-table – and quickly. Accurate ramp shots are key, and so mastering the game’s physics and the layout of its various stages is essential.

For advocates, this is a fresh take on pinball that works brilliantly in mobile form. And for newcomers, PinOut is freed from the frequently arcane rules of pinball, but loses none of its frenetic excitement.

Polywarp

Coming across like Super Hexagon got infatuated with polygons, Polywarp is a brutally difficult arcade experience that’s also maddeningly compulsive.

The basics are simple: your polygon sits at the center of the screen, and walls close in from the edges. By tapping the left or right-hand side of the screen, respectively, you reduce or increase your polygon’s edge count, to match the next shape that’s aiming to crush you.

Everything moves at speed and whirls about, like you’re playing in a washing machine packed with an endless number of lurid shapes.

Initially, Polywarp feels impossible, but you soon recognize patterns to commit to memory and master. Last 60 seconds and you’ll feel like a champ – until you realize a new, tougher mode’s waiting to humiliate your thumbs.

Cubed Rally World

More or less an auto-runner on a five-lane road, Cubed Rally World is all about belting along, steering left and right to avoid anything in your path. Survive long enough in this isometric landscape and you hit the checkered flag, where cube-oriented fame and fortune awaits.

But things get really interesting when you grab coins en-route and start buying new vehicles on the game’s home screen. Each vehicle shakes up the visuals and the manner in which you race - the dune buggy, for example, can leap majestically over sandy hills where the UFO bothers farmyard cows to add some variety into a older game format.

More importantly, for every vehicle you buy, a new track section is added to the rally, the vehicle you control automatically switching when you reach that point.

Amass a suitably large collection and there’s the potential for colossal scores – but completing the rally becomes significantly harder, which helps prolong longetivity.

Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire

Even now, years after Android proved itself as a major gaming platform, some developers seem to barely remember the touchscreen exists. If you reckon trudging through games with virtual D-pads and buttons can be a chore, Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire will be a little slice of magic.

You’re a wizard, defending a castle from interlopers attached to balloons. Cast spells by scribbling gestures to match symbols on the balloons and said flotation devices explode – much to the surprise of their owners, who then rapidly plummet towards a squishy end. Miss just one of them and your wizarding days are done.

From the off, this is a fresh, frantic survival game, especially when trying your hand at the super-fast extreme mode. Stick around for long enough and you’ll be able to utilize super spells too, turning enemies into frogs, and summoning a dragon. Which we all need to do on the odd Thursday here and there.

Disney Crossy Road

We're big fans of Crossy Road, which is both a lesson in how to update a classic arcade game (Frogger), and create a free-to-play business model that isn't hateful. (In short, throw free coins at players, don't make anything pay to win, and add loads of tempting but entirely optional characters to buy.)

With Disney Crossy Road, anything could have happened, but this is far from a cheap cash-in. Sure, it starts off very much like Crossy Road - just starring Mickey Mouse. But unlock a few characters (you'll have at least three within ten minutes) and you suddenly find yourself immersed in chunky takes on famous movies, such as Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph, and The Lion King.

Even better, these aren't mere skins on the original. Each world has unique features, from tiny graphical details that will thrill fans, through to subtle shifts in how the game is played that force you to dramatically change your approach.

Alto's Adventure

You might think there's little new in Alto's Adventure, which is essentially endless leapy game Canabalt on ice. But refined visuals best even Monument Valley, with an eye-popping day/night cycle and gorgeous weather effects; additionally, there's a delightful soundtrack, and a kind of effortless elegance that permeates throughout, propelling Alto's Adventure beyond its contemporaries.

Ostensibly, Alto's Adventure is a game about collecting escaped llamas, but mostly Alto is keen on mucking about on snowy slopes. You zoom down hills, catapult yourself into the air, and try to somersault before face-planting. Extra challenge arrives in the form of chaining stunts to increase your speed, and outrunning elders, angry you're having fun rather than sitting in a stinky llama pen.

Rust Bucket

In Rust Bucket, a cartoon helmet with a sword dodders about a vibrant dungeon, offing all manner of cute but deadly adversaries — skittering skulls, angry armoured pigs, and spooky ghosts. This is a turn-based affair, echoing classic RPGs, but its endless dungeon and savage nature transform it into a puzzle game perfect for quickfire mobile sessions. You must learn how foes move and react, plan every step and always keep in mind a single error can spell doom.

In its current incarnation, Rust Bucket cleverly balances enough depth to keep you coming back with the brevity that makes it ideal for on-the-go roguelike larks. Future plans include finite puzzle modes and expanded endless content.

from TechRadar: Phone and communications news http://www.techradar.com/news/best-free-android-games

40 best PC games 2019: the must-play titles you don’t want to miss

Now that we have the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and Intel has launched its Coffee Lake Refresh lineup that promises to hold the best processors for gaming, 2019 is the best time to dive into the best PC games. So, if you want to get in on the action of the top PC games 2019 has to offer, like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we’ll show you the best PC games of 2019.

We gathered up 40 of the best PC games you can buy today. And, believe us when we say you’ll want to get all of these PC games installed on your rig. Even if you don’t have those sick keyboard and mouse skills, you can play many of the best PC games on the controller. Even if you don’t exactly have the best gaming PC in the world, you can still play many of these titles across different platforms, like the Xbox One X, Nintendo Switch and PS4 Pro – something likely to stay true throughout 2019. 

If you’re new to PC gaming, there’s never been a better time to jump in on the action. We’d love to extend you a warm welcome. While some PC gamers are elitist gatekeepers, we here at TechRadar believe in inclusivity. So, with that in mind, let’s dive into the best PC games you can play in 2019.

Gabe Carey and Bill Thomas have also contributed to this article

Over the last decade, From Software has grown into one of our favorite developers, bar none. The minds behind Dark Souls and Bloodborne have crafted some of the most unique RPGs, and have essentially crafted their own sub-genre. And, with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, From Software is shifting focus once more, crafting one of our most anticipated PC games of 2019.

It will draw some inspiration from the classic ‘SoulsBorne’ games, but it will more resemble the studio’s earlier work – namely Tenchu. 

Sekiro will place you in feudal Japan, as the “one-armed wolf”, and you’ll have to seek out vengeance. The game will feature this unique prosthetic arm mechanic, where you can swap out several different tools and weapons to tailor your playstyle.

Oh, and because it’s a From Software game, prepare to die. A lot. 

Look, we know that this game is starting to get old, but it is aging like fine wine. Even three years after its release it’s one of the most ambitious open world games that’s ever existed – combining Skyrim’s unabashed scale with Grand Theft Auto V’s insane depth. It’s such a jam-packed games, that it’s still one of the best PC games in 2018. Huge, beautiful and an absolute time sink – in a good way – The Witcher 3: Wild hunt isn’t just the best PC game in 2018, but it may be one of the best video games of all time. 

Dragon Age: Inquisition, while not perfect, puts you in the midst of a huge, vibrant world on a much larger scale than past Dragon Age titles. Packed with hours of engrossing story and a wealth of side content, Dragon Age: Inquisition brings the series to an open world setting in a smart and compelling way. It might not be a new game, but for this excellent blend of Elder Scrolls and Baldur’s Gate, it’s still one of the best PC games available in 2018. 

Assassin’s Creed is basically a household name among the best PC games in 2018. And, starting with last year’s Origins, Ubisoft has been making huge efforts to revitalize the aging franchise. Well, we’re happy to report that they’ve succeeded. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey feels like an improvement in every sense of the word over last years entry, feeling like a completely different game than older games in Ubisoft’s flagship series. 

This time around, despite the drama about microtransactions, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey places you in the shoes of Kassandra or Alexios, in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, as you look for your lost mother and father. And, while the main story – which will have you switching alliances between the Spartans and the Athenians – will likely get lost in the mix along the way, the world that Ubisoft has created is as rich and beautiful as ever before. 

Just make sure you have one of the best graphics cards before you even try to run Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at a higher resolution. 

If you’re looking for one of the best open world games on PC, you can’t go wrong here. So, join us in exploring ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.

• Read: Hearthstone arrives on iPad, but it is better on tablet or PC?

Although it's arguably not as difficult as previous entries in the series, From Software's Dark Souls 3 takes everything you like about the Souls series and combines it with elements found in Bloodborne, the developer's more recent game for PS4.

We’re not going to lie – Dark Souls 3 isn’t easy. It still takes skill and, more importantly, patience to master its complex combat system, but it plays fair too, inviting more casual gamers to take part in its bleak, fantastical world. Plus, on the bright side, it brings remarkably better PC optimization than that of the first game. And, now that you can pick up Dark Souls: Remastered and see where this apocalyptic series got its start – there’s never been a better time to link the first flame.

Pillars of Eternity made a huge splash in the PC gaming scene when it launched a few years ago – Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire follows faithfully in its footsteps. Not only is this one of the best RPGs you can play today, but it’s also one of the best PC games 2018 has to offer. 

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire puts players in the middle of the Deadfire Archipelago in pursuit of an ancient god. Along the way you’ll find yourself immersed in a rich, dense and long story crafted by Obsidian Entertainment – arguably the masters of RPGs.

If you enjoy old school RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and long for a return to those storied days – do yourself a favor and don’t miss out on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. It’s one of the best RPGs we’ve ever played. 

Do yourself a favor, though, and check out Pillars of Eternity first – it still holds up as one of the best PC games and your story will carry over to the sequel. 

Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most anticipated console ports to ever hit the PC. You probably didn't need telling twice to head back into Los Santos's hugely detailed and interactive world, but it's 10 times more fun with the PC's richer graphics and smooth 60 frames per second gameplay. After you’ve completed its 30-hour campaign, there’s an overflow of post-game content to enjoy here. Most recently that includes The Doomsday Heist in GTA Online and even a radio station hosted by Frank Ocean.

BioShock is a first-person shooter that takes concepts from Ayn Rand's Atlast Shrugged and tosses them underseas. To be exact, BioShock takes place in an underwater city called Rapture, free from government regulation, designed for artists and entrepreneurs to thrive. Of course, not all goes well in a city where the residents have all the power and, well, stop what you're doing and play it right now if you haven't already.

You're in for one of the great games if you play BioShock, one that balances story elements with horror nigh-perfectly. There's a remastered version out there now, too, which is free of charge if you own the original.

Set 15 years after the events of the first Alien film from 1979, Alien: Isolation is the suspense-packed game that fans of the franchise have been crying out for. Playing the role of Amanda Ripley, daughter of Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley, your mission is to track down and recover the flight recorder of the Nostromo spacecraft from the first Alien film which has been located aboard the Sevastopol space station. First and foremost a stealth game, Isolation ramps up the tension by providing you with minimal weaponry. Its excellent graphics shine on high-end PCs and clever AI helps ramp up the dread, leaving you to quiver when turning every corner.

• Read: How the tech of Alien Isolation will scare you back into the 1970s

Overwatch, if nothing else, completely changed the landscape away from the norm of gray-ish cover shooters in the realm of competitive gaming. Its bright, vibrant colors are complemented by likeable characters, each decorated with their own interesting backstories which, though not present in game, make for a collection of awesome webcomics and cinematics.

Overwatch is also one of the best PC games, because of how well it runs on all kinds of different hardware. Sure, it’s a bit old now, but even in 2018, it’s the best PC game for anyone looking for some competitive action. If somehow you’ve missed out on this game, do yourself a favor – sign in to your Battle.net account and take Overwatch, and its colorful cast of characters, for a spin today.

Even if it came out almost 6 years ago, Counter-Strike Global Offensive is still a fantastic update to a timeless classic that continues to thrive thanks to its vast online communities – it’s truly one of the best PC games. Global Offensive is a well-rounded tactical shooter that builds on the simple Terrorists vs Counter-Terrorists gameplay of Counter-Strike 1.6, by updating classic maps such as Italy and Dust – while also adding new modes in Arms Race and Demolition. Simpler than Battlefield, but more complex than Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a shooter for those who like to think – if only just a little bit. 

• Read: 9 games that are far better on PC than consoles

In a lot of ways, Far Cry 5 is the ultimate Far Cry game – combining all of the elements that has made the series successful, while cutting a lot of the fat (including the towers, thank god). And while on its own it doesn't do anything entirely new, it perfects the Far Cry formula to a point where Far Cry 5 is one of the best open world First Person Shooters you can play in 2018.

After a very heavy and intense intro, you’re dumped in the middle of rural Montana and given the task of dismantling the local cult. But, that quickly fades into the background as a myriad of activities – from hunting down aliens to taking out outposts – ultimately become your focus. But it’s precisely this focus on playing your own way that makes Far Cry 5 so special. 

Monster Hunter has been one of the biggest gaming franchises you’ve never heard of for years now. However, with Monster Hunter: World, the series broke into the mainstream, and it’s also come to the PC (finally). And, well, it’s one of the best PC games you can play today. 

Monster Hunter: World places you in the shoes of a, well, monster hunter, and you’ll hunt progressively bigger and nastier monsters, strip them for parts and craft bigger and badder armor. It’s a deceptively simple gameplay loop, that ends up being one of the most enthralling and rewarding PC games you can play today. 

There’s a never-ending onslaught of content in this game, and Capcom, the developers of this monster hunting hit, are dedicated to bringing a wealth of free DLC to the game. Not to mention a new frosty expansion in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. So, if you’re looking for an addictive, engaging and most importantly, fun game to play by yourself or with all your best friends cooperatively, check out Monster Hunter: World – it really is one of the best PC games you can buy today.

A 90s classic brought back to life (unlike its main protagonist), Grim Fandango Remastered is a successful attempt at reviving one of the PC's best adventure games of all time. Combining writing that matches the funniest dark comedies with clever puzzles and a still-impressive art style, Grim Fandango was the most entertaining work of art to take place in a Mexican setting for years until Breaking Bad came along. Now with updated graphics, sound and better controls, Manna Calavera's adventure has never looked so good.

• Read: Grim Fandango is headed to the PS4 and Vita

Six years after its initial release, Skyrim is going as strong as ever thanks to a vast selection of mods and high-resolution texture packs. Even if you're only interested in playing the vanilla version of the RPG, it offers more than 100 hours of gameplay.

Throw in three action packs DLC expansion packs (Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn), and it lasts even longer. That Skyrim has been compared to graphically superior but similar RPG blockbuster The Witcher 3 is testament to its enduring popularity. Step into Skyrim and you too can be an adventurer - just try not to take an arrow in the knee.

And, if you’re looking for a more, well, special version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda has you covered – it can’t seem to stop releasing and re-releasing Skyrim for every platform. You can even play it in VR.

• Read: 9 games that are far better on PC than consoles

If you’re anything like us, and you secretly pine for the days of ultra-fast arena shooters, you’re going to absolutely love Quake Champions. 

Unlike many 90’s series, Quake Champions completely retains that classic Quake style. You’re dumped into a relatively small map with a ton of verticality and armed with the craziest weaponry you could imagine. And, there’s no battle royale or any other trendy game modes here – it’s deathmatch all the way, baby.

Much in the same way that Id Software mastered the reboot of Doom and brought it to a modern audience, Quake Champions is a nostalgic shooter that still manages to feel fresh in 2018. The kicker? If you act fast, you can score it for free on Steam ahead of its full release.

• Read: Is the MMORPG on the verge of extinction?

The phrase "build it, and they will come" literally rings true when it comes to Minecraft, the survival-based sandbox RPG that has now been purchased more than 100 million times since its conception in 2009. In it, you can create your own worlds using resources you find in the wild or explore worlds created by other players online. 

In Minecraft, you can either limit yourself to the numerous tools and blocks provided by the developer, Mojang, or you can install mods to truly capitalize on your investment. What’s more, come 2018, you’ll be able to take part in the Super Duper Graphics Pack, an optional piece of DLC that adds more realistic lighting effects and textures to an already fantastic product.

The Orange Box may be showing its age, but it remains a must-play collection of games - particularly for FPS fans. Half-Life 2, technically still the most recent game in Valve's franchise (excluding its Episode 1 and 2 add-ons), remains a modern masterpiece and is famed for being the first game to intelligently apply physics to its puzzles and combat set-pieces.

The collection's other titles aren't too shabby either: Portal takes gravity-based puzzles to the extreme by equipping the player with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (also known as the Portal Gun), which places two portals for objects to pass through, while Team Fortress 2 continues to go from strength-to-strength thanks to the introduction of custom gear and well-balanced team combat.

• Read: 9 games that are far better on PC than consoles

Sometimes a game that’s been out for 10 years becomes temporarily free on Origin and you just have to play it. Dead Space is one of those games. A survival horror game by definition, this acclaimed piece of science fiction stars a fittingly named Isaac Clarke, whose name itself is a combination of the famous sci-fi authors Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Told from an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective, Dead Space is a rescue mission story, wherein you (as Isaac) are tasked with investigating a mining ship mysteriously full of alien virus-infected dead bodies. All the while, you’ll have to stay on top of upgrading your futuristic ‘RIG’ suit too.   

Id Software's Doom was a phenomena for PC gamers in the 90s. The crudely rendered first-person shooter series was as controversial as it was beloved, largely thanks to its cutting-edge depictions of gore and violence that only a computer could deliver. Parents be damned, the franchise has made a comeback in 2016 with a fresh restart, appropriately titled Doom. Although the multiplayer might not appeal to shooter fans regardless of age, the single player campaign will pit you against demons in Hell for a lengthy experience that's as bloody as it is satisfying.

If Forza Horizon 3 is the racing game for newcomers to racing games, Asetto Corsa is the game for the grizzled experts. Its obtuse handling and insane difficulty straight from the get go makes it a toss up for one of the most realistic racing simulators of all time. And, even if you can get it on consoles, unlike Project Cars, this is a game that was developed for PC first. Everything about this game, from its demanding career mode to its deep seated driving mechanics – which basically require a racing wheel accessory – make it a joy for die-hard petrolheads, even if its difficulty curve is often just backbreaking. 

• Read: Why realistic PC racer Project Cars is the torque of the town

Modelled after the 1984 game Elite, Elite: Dangerous is one of the most ambitious space sims around. Featuring an in-game galaxy based on the real Milky Way (how's 400 billion stars for depth?), the ultimate goal is to advance your rankings to Elite status by levelling up combat, trading and exploration.

Starting out with a rickety ship and 1,000 credits in your space suit's back pocket, you'll need to turn to piracy, trading, exploring, mining or bounty hunting to rise through the intergalactic ranks. Doing so takes time and requires serious graft, but the experience provides a level of satisfaction that few other titles can match. And then there's the Oculus Rift...

Among the best PC games, there’s this tendency to romanticize the apocalypse. Whether it’s zombies, like in Dead Rising or a nuclear wasteland like in Fallout 4, the apocalypse is oddly a place you want to visit. But, with Metro Exodus, that’s not the case. 

Metro Exodus takes a more dark and gritty approach to the apocalypse. The air is poison, the wildlife is all mutated, and the survivors are all at each other's throats. And, while past Metro titles have explored this darker post-apocalypse from underground, through the titular ‘Metro’, Metro Exodus takes things to the Surface.

You’ll set out on an Exodus across the nuclear wasteland in order to find a home, but along the way you’ll experience the horror and supernatural weirdness that the Metro series has become known for. 

And, as a bonus, it’s one of the most beautiful PC games on the market today, provided you have the graphical horsepower to back it up. 

Described as "achingly beautiful" by Unity Engine boss John Riccitiello, Ori and the Blind Forest borrows its game mechanics from old-school 2D games such as Metroid and Castlevania while adding a modern twist. If any word can describe Ori's atmospheric world, it's alive. You'll have to think fast and use new abilities gained along the way to bash, stop and manoeuvre your way through its gorgeous locations, and with no automatic saving system or easy difficulty level, it's no walk in the park. As satisfying to master as it is to look at, Ori and the Blind Forest will re-open your eyes to what 2D games still have to offer.

• Unity CEO argues games are at, wants Jurassic Park in VR

There aren’t many franchises that are as iconic as Resident Evil. Since the first game launched way back in 1996, it has served as a watermark of where Survival Horror is – even in its worst days (looking at you, Resident Evil 6). So, when Capcom finally announced the Resident Evil 2 remake, we instantly started paying attention. And, we have to say – it paid off. 

Resident Evil 2 isn’t just a remake of the best horror game ever made, but it might actually take the mantle altogether. Gone are the ancient tank controls that divided fans, giving way to the same over-the shoulder perspective introduced in Resident Evil 4. But, this time around, through the use of Resident Evil 7’s RE Engine, Capcom has transformed the ancient horror game into a title that’s terrifying by today’s post-Amnesia standards.

And, thanks to just how much you can customize how the game performs and looks, Resident Evil 2 will serve as a benchmark for the best PC games throughout 2019 – even if it doesn’t use as much VRAM as the settings menu says it does.

Beyond Final Fantasy, there isn’t another Japanese RPG (JRPG) franchise that carries as much weight as Dragon Quest. For decades, these have been the penultimate JRPGs for many – even inspiring modern classics like Pokemon. And, for the first time in 14 years, Dragon Quest has made its way to home consoles and, more importantly, to PC for the first time ever. 

Dragon Quest XI is a beautiful, colorful JRPG that’ll put you in the shoes of a young prince that’s set out to – save the world, obviously. You’ll get about 80-100 hours out of the game, and every moment will be memorable and magical. It even features art from Akira Toriyama, best known for his work on Dragon Ball – it’s easy to see why it’s one of the best PC games of 2018.  

Already familiar to millions before they've played a played a second of it, Rocket League turns the age old game of football (or soccer, depending) on its head. Played with rocket-propelled cars in futuristic low-gravity environments, the aim is simple: knock the ball into the opposing team's goal. Doing so is harder said than done because there could be up to three cars on the opposing team trying to steal the ball off you - or ram you into submission - at any one time. Gorgeous to look, simple to learn but difficult to master, Rocket League is the surprise smash hit of 2015 - and a wonderfully addictive one at that.

Read: 8 real-life footballers in Rocket League: which one are you?

When Insurgency first launched way back in 2014, it was a breath of fresh air – a shooter that completely opposed the arcade-like approach of games like Call of Duty. And, Insurgency: Sandstorm takes this formula and goes all-in. 

Insurgency: Sandstorm is a brutally difficult and visceral online shooter, meant to give Counter Strike: Global Offensive a run for its money. This is a game where you won’t get respawns, you won’t be able to absorb bullets, you will die easily – it’s awesome. If you’re looking for a game that rewards patience and tactics, Insurgency: Sandstorm is one of the best PC games for you. 

Metal Gear Solid V, the last Metal Game which will be helmed by Hideo Kojima after his forceful ejection from Konami, is a hugely ambitious title. Its massive open world setting allows you to tackle missions using stealth, but you’re still able to go in guns blazing if you prefer – though you won’t get as good a score.

Taking place nine years after the events of Ground Zeroes, The Phantom Pain’s story unravels through its main missions and more than 100 Side Ops tasks. The action is interspersed with beautiful cutscenes, and while you sometimes have to decode annoying pseudo-military babble to figure out what’s happening, TPP’s fast pacing and beautiful Afghanistan and African settings make sure the game never feels like a chore.

You can ask basically any veteran PC gamer, and they’ll tell you that Battlefield games have always been among the best PC games. And, with Battlefield V, the trend continues – it’s one of the best PC games 2018 has to offer, period. 

The core mechanics remain the same, drive, fly, or run to capture points on a map and defend them against the enemy team. However, this year’s offering refines the Operations mode from 2016’s Battlefield 1, and transforms it into, well, Grand Operations. This epic game mode takes place across up to 4 maps, and is meant to portray crucial battles of World War II. It’s an absolute blast, just make sure you have an hour to spare. 

Battlefield V is also one of the best PC games when it comes to visuals. Never before has war looks so terrifyingly real in a virtual space. The environments are more realistic than ever before, and if you’re rocking an Nvidia Turing card, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, you can turn on ray tracing and experience out-of-this-world reflections. We’re not exaggerating when we say it’s the best PC game in 2018 for FPS fans.

The 2016 revival of Hitman was a revelation, a rebirth of a classic series that showed what Hitman could be. So, we went into Hitman 2 with high expectations – expectations that paid off. Hitman 2 puts players in even bigger environments, with more complicated missions that will test your creativity in deadly ways. 

What’s especially notable here though, is the new game modes on offer. You’ll have access to a new Sniper Assassin mode, and most importantly, a co-op game mode – a first for the Hitman series.

If you’re looking for an engaging stealth experience, you really can’t go wrong with Hitman 2 – it’s one of the best PC games of 2018, easy.

Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide was one of the best PC games for anyone who loves playing the best PC games with friends. And, we’re delighted to say that Warhammer: Vermintide 2 takes the deep co-operative gameplay of the original and improves on it in every conceivable way.

Although it technically allows you to form complex strategies with your teammates, the action often turns into chaos, where the only way you can survive is mindlessly bashing at enemies until you, and your teammates (preferably), are the only things left standing. And, because Vermintide 2 adds a wide range of Orc enemies on top of the familiar Skaven enemies, you’ll never run out of things to hack to pieces.

It's official: Fallout 4 has lived up to the hype. Despite feeling a little bit like Fallout 3 but with nicer graphics at times, its tighter shooting, in-depth crafting system and well-thought out story make it a wholly more enticing affair.

As the Sole Survivor (the first fully-voiced protagonist in the Fallout series) in Boston's post-apocalypse wasteland, you'll take on Feral Ghouls, Raiders, Syths and Bloodbugs and more with high-powered weaponry that includes the Fat Man mini nuke cannon and the fusion cell-powered Laser Musket.

• Fallout 4: the good, the bad and the ugly of the Boston Wastelands

If the Call of Duty series is the poison that dumbed down the FPS genre with its run-and-gun gameplay, then Rainbow Six: Siege is the antidote. Working as a team to out-wit the enemy, Siege plays out like a thinking man (or woman's) Counter-Strike that doesn't simply encourage cooperation if you want to win - it requires it.

When you're not peering down your gun's iron sights, you'll be laying traps, scouting ahead using drones, strategising with your teammates and building walls that could keep a herd of demented bulls at bay. While Siege's heavy reliance on tactical team-based gameplay can prove its biggest weakness if you're hoisted into a server with a particularly uncooperative bunch, when it does click, it provides a level of satisfaction rarely found in online multiplayer games.

After the rebooted Tomb Raider and its sublime sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, the seminal series has won its place among the best PC games with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Instead of simply porting over a console version and calling it good, Crystal Dynamics has created a technical masterpiece with Lara Croft’s latest adventure. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider finds Lara heading down to South America to thwart a Mayan apocalypse. While the scenery isn’t as diverse as in previous titles, it’s still just as arrestingly beautiful throughout. And, with Nvidia’s RTX technology coming later this year, it’s going to be a great way to put the best graphics cards to the test while having some fun at the same time. 

Imagine a survival-based shooter where every match starts with your avatar being ejected from a cargo plane alongside 99 other players with no weapons or items. That’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or at least the solo, free for all mode. After spending the early minutes of the game digging for resources, you’ll soon be forced to reckon with your own mortality as the body count ticker at the top of the screen descends into desolation.

Abbreviated PUBG, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is based on another “last man standing” game released back in 2013: PlayerUnknown’s Battle Royale. It doesn’t require a copy of Arma III or H1Z1 to run, but you’ll need to keep your wits about you. There’s no respawning in PUBG, so it’s less about the precision of your aim as it is about your ability to scavenge quickly for weapons, first aid kits and clothing. 

Picking up immediately after the events of Wolfenstein: The New Order, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus will inevitably be heralded as a classic. For some, it’s the punishing old-school gunplay that’s to thank for this. Even on the default difficulty, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus will have you fretting for your life. 

Yet, for others, story reigns supreme. And, if The New Colossus serves as an interactive showcase for anything, it’s story, the most interesting parts of which are told through flashbacks. We won’t go as far as to spoil the plot, but what we will say is that B.J. Blazkowicz’s motives become a lot clearer in this iteration of Wolfenstein, not that he needs to justify killing Nazis.

From the developer behind Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, Catherine takes unique puzzle gameplay and shoves it in the middle of a complex story of romance and inner struggle. You’ll take over the role of Vincent, and you’ll have to decide whether to take your relationship with your girlfriend, Katherine, to the next level. A decision that’s complicated after Catherine – with a C – comes into your life.

The ensuing drama takes place in a series of cutscenes each day, and when you go to bed at night, you’ll have to deal with nightmares – in the form of puzzle gameplay. It’s an extraordinarily unique game, and now that it’s finally made its way to PC, there’s no reason to not check it out. Even after 7 years, it’s still one of the most unique and best PC games 2019 has to offer.

X-Com 2 is one addictive game, and we still can't put it down. Following up from 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which reimagined the 1994 cult classic UFO: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2 has delivered everything we wanted in a sequel. Bigger, deeper, faster and even easier on the eyes, the turn-based tactics game takes place 20 years after its predecessor.

It pits you in control of the Avenger, a converted alien ship that serves as your mobile base of operations used to devise strategy and execute fight plans against otherworldly enemies. With a greater focus of stealth, more intelligent alien AI and deeper customization options, XCOM 2 is bound to end up one of our games of the year.

Anyone familiar with World of Warcraft knows that it's among the most successful and influential massively multiplayer online role-playing games (or MMORPGs) of all-time. Comprising nearly 14 years of content, with over thousands of hours just waiting to be invested, there are few better games to spend your money on than World of Warcraft.

In the new expansion, Battle For Azeroth, players explore two new continents – Kul Tiras for Alliance players and Zandalar for the Horde – though there’s something much more sinister hiding beneath the surface. Blizzard has kept the leveling system from Legion, too, meaning you can tackle the new zones in whatever order you want. This will of course come with the all-new raids and dungeons we’ve grown accustomed to over the years and a storyline that will see the two playable factions at each other’s throats in a major way. 

You’ll get hours upon hours of content to play through here, as is custom with World of Warcraft throughout its 14-year history. And, you can count on updates throughout the expansion, like the recently released Tides of Vengeance that add even more stuff to do.

From PlatinumGames and Square Enix, Nier: Automata is a sequel to the 2010 cult classic Nier, which itself is a spin-off of the Drakengard series. Technically an action role-playing game, Nier: Automata’s most gripping quality is that it never truly adheres to one particular genre. At times, it’s a 2.5D platformer and, at others, it’s a twin-stick shooter. It’s unpredictable and a breath of fresh air when compared to other PC games out on the market.

The story centers around a femme android by the name of 2B who is aided by a survey android called 9S, or Nines. With many questions being asked along the way, both of these characters are tasked with extricating Earth from alien machines that have engulfed the planet. Just be conscious of how you play because not only does Nier: Automata feature different endings, but with each new path comes vastly different gameplay. 

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