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Top 5 mobile games of 2019: Jon's picks of the year

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Top 5 mobile games of 2019: Jon's picks of the year

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After a year like 2018, who thought things could get any worse? You have to hand it to 2019 for exceeding our expectations in this regard, at least.

Still, the mobile games were pretty good. Thank your chosen deity for small mercies, eh?

The biggest mobile gaming news in 2019 was Apple Arcade, without a doubt. Finally, a major company took steps to tackle the 'race to the bottom' that has blighted the industry in recent years.

I'm not saying that there were any high-minded gaming-purist principles on display from Apple. It never got games in the Steve Jobs years, and I'm not convinced that it really gets games now. It essentially fell into the games business by accident, with the unexpected success of the games category of the App Store.

But it had the good sense to understand that something big was happening, and also to spot that some bad trends had crept in to spoil things. Then it did something that Jobs himself would have approved of - it hired lots of smart people who DID get gaming to build something better.

And Apple Arcade IS better than what we had before, even if there's a lingering suspicion that it's merely a return to the pre-freemium status quo with a new subscription payment model.

Regardless, the platform and the games within are generally really good. There are two Apple Arcade games in the following list, and several more were vying for the remaining spots.

It's not all Apple Arcade, though. Most of the games on my list came from outside Apple's service. There is still plenty of good stuff happening in the regular system, and one of the games can even be played for free - although it has a welcome one-off premium payment option. I'd like to see more of that in 2020 too.

Here are the mobile games I've been playing most in 2019, in no particular order.

Click Here To View The List »

Grindstone

Developer: Capybara Games
Available on: iOS + Switch + Apple Arcade
Genre: Puzzle
Find out more about Grindstone
Grindstone

I say that I've listed these games 'in no particular order', but Grindstone was without doubt my favourite mobile game of 2019. Its match-three battler gameplay was just so satisfyingly tactile, so fresh, and so easy on the eye, that I found myself obsessed for a good couple of weeks.

Placing your barbarian hero on the board and having him slice a bloody path across the game board, leaving wobbly chunks of flesh-jelly behind, was a stroke of subtle genius. I can hear the building cacophony of a 20-hit chain right now.

Grindstone showed us precisely what Apple Arcade could offer - familiar mobile games executed with uncommon polish, precision and generosity.

Void Tyrant

Publisher: Game Insight
Available on: iOS + Android
Genre: Action
Find out more about Void Tyrant
Void Tyrant

I love a good card battler, but there's no accounting for which one takes my fancy. I love Card Crawl, for example, but never had much care for follow-up Card Thief.

Void Tyrant well and truly won me over in 2019. It introduces card battling mechanics to a first person roguelike dungeon crawler, with surprise battles and random shopkeepers.

At the heart of it is a battle system that applies the principles of Black Jack/21. Go 'bust' and you'll whiff your attack. It's so simple, but of course there's a fine layer of strategy laying underneath.

Painty Mob

Available on: iOS + Apple Arcade
Genre: Arcade
Find out more about Painty Mob
Painty Mob

Here's my second Apple Arcade pick, and it's one that I feel got slightly overlooked in the initial rush.

PaintyMob is a simple, chaotic, colourful arena brawler that sees your character scampering around densely packed environments, coating innocent bystanders with paint bombs. The sting in the tail is that the more people you coat, the larger the angry mob chasing you down.

It seems simple and daft, especially with the game's colourful Katamari-like art style. But there's real strategy to timing your paint bomb detonations, and the environments are packed full of delightful little details.

Bad North

Publisher: Raw Fury Games
Available on: iOS + Android + Switch
Genre: Strategy
Find out more about Bad North
Bad North

I'm no strategy fan, but the right strategy game can really hook me in. Bad North has the perfect blend of intuitiveness, polish, and strategic depth to do just that.

There's something of the best tower defence games - Kingdom Rush or Fieldrunners, for example - to the way you have to set up your Norse island tribe defences against waves of invaders.

But there's also some real time strategy (RTS) to the ensuing chaos, as you reshuffle your units to fill a break in the line or liberate a besieged house. It's marvellous stuff.

Football Manager 2020

Developer: Sports Interactive
Publisher: Sega
Available on: iOS + Android
Genre: Simulation, Sports
Find out more about Football Manager 2020 Mobile
Football Manager 2020 Mobile

Football Manager isn't a guilty pleasure. I don't believe in the concept. But I am fully aware how dull the game must seem to a large proportion of people, not to mention the cynical nature of the annual update model.

So how does Football Manager 2020 find its way onto my list? It's quite simple really: I've put more hours into it than any other game on this list. No other 2019 game - on any platform - was capable of swallowing a whole afternoon in one gulp.

Football Manager 2020 doesn't really offer anything new. It's all nips and tucks and aesthetic buffs. But it continues to be the most compelling simulation out there - for certain types of people, anyway.

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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.