Smartphones are the new gaming console. Where once they might have been looked down upon by gamers as the domain of casual games, like Candy Crush or Angry Birds, smartphones have become the number one gaming destination for just about any kind of gamer. Do you want to play a shooter? i-yankees.com/ Google Play has those. Do you want a puzzle game? Throw a dart and you’ll hit one. Do you want the full narrative RPG experience? You can have it. We’ve put together a list of forty of the best Android games of 2021.
Navigate this article:Best Android ShootersBest Android RPGsBest Android Puzzle GamesBest Android Card GamesBest Android SimsBest Android Rhythm GamesBest Narrative Android GamesBest Android Arcade GamesOther Great Android GamesBest Android Shooters
Shooters on phones have come a long way. Not so many years ago, the concept of using touch controls on a fast-paced first-person shooter would have been unthinkable (to say nothing of unplayable), but that’s changed a lot in recent years. You can play any of the games below with touch controls and not miss a traditional game controller.PUBG Mobile
Fortnite might be the leading battle royale on PC and consoles, but PUBG Mobile dominates the mobile battle royale aliran! PUBG Mobile takes the complete experience from the popular PC version and adapts it to the small screen. PUBG Mobile offers a control scheme that is a step above most mobile games, and it’s free to play to boot! We even have some great PUBG Mobile tips and tricks to get you started.
Not a fan of battle royales? Call of Duty Mobile is created by the same developers as PUBG Mobile but offering a different type of first-person shooter experience. You’ll get the same great controls, but instead of purely battle royale gameplay, you’ll also get classic Call of Duty modes like 5v5 and Zombies. The battle royale is, of course, still there if you want to spice it up though!
Online multiplayer is all well and good, but suppose you want a good single-player experience? Dead Effect 2 is a first-person horror game with RPG elements made in the same vein as System Shock or Dead Space. If you like scary space games, or even if you want a single-player Android shooter then you’ll want to give this one a try — as long as you don’t mind a little off-beat voice acting.
This game is a little different from your typical shooter. You’re not going up against characters who can shoot or hit back, for starters. In Hitman Sniper, you play as Agent 47, tasked with assassinating targets with a sniper rifle from a rooftop. It’s not as simple as pointing and pulling the trigger, however, and there’s a puzzle element to the hits that will be familiar to players of the mainstream Hitman series.
Role-playing games might not seem like a genre well-suited to phones, given how large and in-depth they usually are. Yet there are plenty of games in the aliran that have made the transition to mobile extremely well. Here are a few of the games we recommend you try.Genshin Impact
Taking the world by storm, Genshin Impact is an action RPG with exploration elements strikingly similar to Breath of the Wild. With a ton of jje-boutique.com content released at launch and more coming, this is a title that will provide a lot of entertainment to come. Although it is a gacha/loot box title (as in you need to pay for dice-rolls to try and obtain new characters), you can play all of the content and still get some paid characters without having to spend a dime.
If you are looking for some help, we have compiled some Genshin Impact tips for beginners, as well as tips and tricks for more advanced Genshin Impact players.Runescape Mobile
An MMO? On Android? It may seem like a strange idea, given what you may know about World of Warcraft-style MMORPGs, but Runescape Mobile pulls it off well. The game is still in Early Access, but you can give it a download for free and begin exploring the world now. Runescape Mobile is cross-platform as well, so you can easily switch between playing the PC version and logging into the app when you want the mobile experience.
As it turns out, older RPGs that were point and click port pretty well to smartphones! A number of classic WRPGs have made the jump to Google Play, but if there’s only one you’re going to buy, you’ll want to make it Baldur’s Gate II. One of the most popular of the early Bioware titles, Baldur’s Gate II is a Dungeons and Dragons-style RPG, with a lot of micromanagement and difficult challenges. You need to pay to play, but it regularly goes on sale!
While the Fire Emblem series is often as much about tactics as it is about role-playing, this mobile title takes the best elements of both and optimizes them for mobile, letting you plan your battles and optimize your team. While Heroes celebrates the series’ long history with its exhaustive list of characters imported from the main games (over 600 of them at the time of this writing), you don’t actually have to know anything about Fire Emblem in order to get into Heroes.
Best Android Puzzle Games
The best smartphone games are the ones that can be picked up and put down when life calls. Slow-paced and methodical, puzzle games are the best in that respect. Match-3s are the classic phone puzzle games, but there are lots of other options out there for those who want to try different flavors. What they all have in common is simple mechanics that will occupy you for hours of playtime.Monument Valley
A big hit on Apple devices when originally released, Monument Valley is also available at the Google Play Store! Offering a unique style, Monument Valley tasks players with manipulating and navigating the architecture around them in order to progress. The first game in the series is just $4, and if you end up liking it, you can grab the sequel for $5! The games also go on sale from time to time, so keep your ears to the ground.
Taking the Match-3 aliran to its literal conclusion, Threes! is a very simple puzzler about matching numbers into multiples of three. Like any good puzzle title, it’s easy to learn but exceedingly difficult to master. You can pick up the free version to give the game a try, and the full, ad-free version is just $1.
I Love Hue is the puzzle title I keep installed on my phone at all times because it’s just that relaxing. This puzzle title tasks you with rearranging colors in order to make a color spectrum swatch. It’s fun and colorful. The peaceful music and the inability to lose also provides a relaxed experience. I Love Hue is free to play, and the ads are restricted only for getting more prisms, so they aren’t forced upon you and interrupt your experience.
Built upon the simple premise of shadow puppets, Shadowmatic is a game in which you manipulate objects in front of a light in order to get particular shapes. Like the rest of the games on this list, it’s a simple premise that’s been refined to perfection, with the in-game lighting effects being some of the best we’ve ever seen and the touch controls are actually better suited to the game than any controller could be.
Card games are another genre that plays very well on mobile — the games can be played in a few minutes, and yet there’s enough variety in them to keep you playing for hours. The games listed below are some of the best available to Android gamers.Hearthstone
Blizzard’s collectible card game is arguably one of the best around, and it’s free to start on Google Play! You don’t need to know any World of Warcraft or Blizzard lore to get into Hearthstone (trust me, Hearthstone is the only Blizzard game I put considerable time into), and the developers keep the game fresh with new card packs and retiring old cards to prevent power creep. You can play against people online, or have fun and learn new strategies with the Solo Adventures.
Yu-Gi-Oh, in 2021? It may seem like a surprising choice, but Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links is a very strong card game on Google Play. The show was always the most visible aspect of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, but the actual card game is still going strong, and Duel Links provides a great entryway into it. While the game does have premium currency to buy booster packs in new cards, Konami regularly gives out this currency for free and is more generous than most games of the trading card aliran, so you will have plenty of cards to use to build a deck and duel with.