Three fantastically popular mobile games you need to try
Greetings gamers! I hope the endless slew of summer game sales are keeping you well inside and saving your dollars from the nefarious sunblock companies. Of course, these days you don’t have to stay inside to keep those itchy hands busy this summer. This time I’m setting down the controller and stepping out of my gaming dungeon and into the sunshine of three hot mobile games you need to try right now.
Clash of Clans (CoC)—Finnish game developer Supercell has put together a nifty game that has somehow endured the finicky nature of gamers and stayed on top of the download list for about five years. CoC is a base building and defense game set in a cartoony fantasy world. You get hordes of minions with their own abilities and strengths to attack other players for glorious loot and spend that loot on equally glorious building and defense items.
A much talked about favorite among my friends, CoC has cultivated a huge fan base and sitting around 38 million active players it’s not surprising that this game has held up since the early inception of mobile gaming programs. CoC boasts a passionate gaming community with multiplayer battle clans and tons of in-app purchases and merchandise.
This game has charm and it’s easy to get into and hard to put down, so if you consider yourself to have an addictive personality, you may need a marriage counselor (or divorce lawyer) on standby before you press that download button.
Clash Royale—If town building and defense wasn’t enough for Supercell to keep faces glued to millions of cellphone screens worldwide they went and done it again with the release of Clash Royale. CR keeps the same cartoony fantasy aesthetic, drops the town building and retained the same dosage of gaming crack mixed with a card collecting mechanic.
My table top gaming friends are head-over-heels in love with Clash Royale. What you have here is a wonderful mashup of deck building with time intensive battle strategy that can become crazy frustrating during a bout with a rival gamer. To me it’s a graphical game of rock, paper, scissors with each player taking turns to attack and counter-attack each other.
The cards are used during a match as your fighting force to attack the other player and with new updates and new cards to collect or purchase CR has all the potential to last alongside its big older brother as a companion game. If you are more of a deck builder than a town planner this is a perfect drug to ease your strategy addiction and innate hoarding nature.
Candy Crush Saga—Oh yeah folks, I was just as surprised when I double checked the download rankings to see CCS bouncing around the top three or six on the IOs or Android downloads. This match three digital swipe-fest has been a gamer’s long-standing favorite since its release in 2012. This hyper colorful match-the-candies and win the points has a particularly addicting fidget factor that should appeal to those folks unsure of what to do with their hands while they are waiting for real things to actually happen.
The popularity of CCS may not be as it used to be in the United States but internationally Candy Crush Saga is still insanely popular in places like Hong Kong. CCS was my first glimpse into the future of “freemium” games and I can’t help but admire the staying power of such a wonderfully simple game even though it taxes my annoyance level every time I look at it.
Casual gamers just looking to pass the time will find a lot of time to be wasted with the colorful art design and sleep robbing instant gratification of winning points. Though you may have grown out of CCS sometime back, it’s still ranked among the top three downloads across IOs and Android downloads. Maybe a reunion with your digital sweet tooth this summer in a candy filled adventure is just what the doctor ordered.
While the list of fun mobile games are as plentiful as they are innovative the successful attempt to keep things fresh with longevity goes to these three games. In a “here-today-gone-tomorrow” industry it’s surprising to see titles lasting as long as these have in terms of popularity.
With all the millions of mutually addicted gamers out there just waiting to keep your emotions joyfully frustrated and hands strenuously engaged doing what all the cool kids are doing this summer becomes all the more enticing.
When not vaporizing zombies or leading space marines as a mousepad Mattis, Brandon Watson is making gourmet pancakes and promoting local artists.