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Pocket Gamer's best games of the year 2017 - Jon's top 5

Our experts deliver their personal 2017 gaming recommendations

Pocket Gamer's best games of the year 2017 - Jon's top 5
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'Tis the season for looking back at the preceding 12 months in a deceptively warm, slightly sozzled glow. What a year, eh? (Hic.)

I'm not having any of it. Frankly, 2017 can do one. I would have have said that 2018 can't come soon enough, but that would be to assume that next year is going to be any better.

Still, it was pretty good for mobile games. Every cloud has a silver lining, eh? Even post-apocalyptic clouds. Probably from the sun glinting off the nuclear material.

Merry New Yearmas, everyone!

Guns of Boom

I don't know that Guns of Boom is my favourite mobile game of the year, but it has consumed more of my time than any of the other games on this list by far.

It's just such a solidly satisfying, tactile game to play - something I can't say about any other mobile FPS - and there's always a shiny reward just around the corner.

As an exclusively multiplayer experience, it gets the balance between intuitiveness and competitiveness just about perfect.

Linelight

You may not have encountered Linelight before, but it's a really great puzzler with the feeling of a futuristic Tron-like adventure.

Your character is little more than a tiny sliver of pixels, which you must guide along a mere line of a twisting path to the level exit. Along the way there are junctions to negotiate, enemies to avoid, doors to unlock and lots of inventive twists.

To top it all off, Linelight looks like the most stylish electrical diagram you've ever seen.

Yankai's Peak

It's another beautifully stylish puzzler! There seems to be a bit of a theme developing here, doesn't there?

Yankai's Peak is arguably the freshest of the lot in terms of its mechanics, with an unusual movement system at its core. You must pin and rotate a bunch of coloured triangles to shuffle them into their parking bays.

It's also really difficult, but somehow not in a way that makes you want to throw your phone at the wall.

Monument Valley 2

Monument Valley 2 was the only mobile game to win a 10 out of 10 award from PG in 2017 (this was written before the Gorogoa review). And do you know what? It was fully deserved.

This puzzler sequel packs an awful lot into its slender running time, including ingenious spatial puzzles, stunning vistas, and a truly heart-rending story.

It really is very lovely indeed. You've played it, right?

Super Mario Run

Super Mario Run initially launched on iOS in 2016, but it arrived way too late to justifiably name it as one of my favourite games of last year.

Fortunately, it didn't hit Android until early 2017. And as someone who uses a lot of different phones as part of my job, I've played a lot of Nintendo's first proper mobile game on a bunch of Android devices.

It's arguably even more impressive seeing such an attractive game running fluidly on a range of hardware, from £120 budget phones to £500 flagships. It's also just a great autorunner, with layers of depth hidden within its one-tap control system.

Read more: our former editor Glen Fox delivers his verdict on the year's top games here...
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.