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It’s absolutely wild to think that the gaming platform the most number of people own is the one that fits in their back pocket. And yet, it’s even wilder to consider how far the games we play on these palm-sized devices have come.
Though we have it on good word that Candy Crush Saga is still going strong, each year developers prove that there’s more to mobile gaming than match-3 games and solitaire (though you can bet we still have both on our phones–the classics are classics for a reason). Phones and tablets are now capable of incredible feats, with Dead by Daylight, Need For Speed, Injustice, Fortnite, Genshin Impact, Alien: Isolation, and countless other graphically intensive games proving it through their presence and popularity on App stores.
2023 brought with it a new collection of games to add to the ever-growing list of great mobile titles. And while nearly all of the games on this list are available to play elsewhere, these are titles that we felt were either best experienced on mobile, or were ported over with mind-blowing finesse. From Pocket Card Jockey: Rid On! to Honkai: Star Rail, these are the best mobile games of 2023.
Ready to set your phone down and play something new on PC or console? Be sure to check out our coverage on the best games of 2023 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. You can also read up on our top games of 2023 overall, as well as our game of the year: Baldur’s Gate 3.
Pocket Card Jockey was an overlooked little gem of a 3DS game, and a successful non-Pokemon game from developer Game Freak. Its revival this year on mobile devices finally gave it the staying power it always deserved. It immediately became a mainstay on our phones and it won’t be leaving anytime soon.
Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On takes the gonzo premise of the original. You’re a particularly unskilled jockey who immediately dies in your very first race, only to be miraculously revived and given the power to tie your race performance to the one thing you actually are good at: playing solitaire. Thus the genre mash-up is born, as you play quick hands of card matching to boost your horse’s performance, win races, and slowly gain reputation and access to better horses that can be ridden and then put out to stud. It’s a fiendishly compelling loop that compels you to play one more race, and it feels right at home on mobile devices, like this was always where it was destined to go. Like a beloved horse with a broken leg, it’s hard to put down. — Steve Watts
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While Resident Evil Village isn’t the first AAA game to come to mobile, it is among the first to not simply be a port that has been tweaked to run on a phone; this is the same build that Capcom developed for macOS, just on iPhone. What playing the game on iPhone lacks in scale and fidelity compared to the console experience on a TV, it makes up for with portability and convenience, all without the need for a stable internet connection to stream it.
As long as you are playing with a controller or controller grip, Village can at times be just as compelling on mobile as it is on console, and while you currently need an iPhone 15 Pro to play it on a phone, the game can also run on any M1 or higher iPad as well, which are a couple of years old at this point, with even better performance than with the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip. As mobile chip technology progresses, and less expensive devices gain the ability to run full-blown AAA titles, it will have a colossal impact on the gaming industry as we know it, and Resident Evil Village will be recognized as the game that started it all. — Tom Caswell
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In the grand scheme of things, there’s a surprising lack of Animal Crossing clones out there, and even fewer good ones. Some games emulate aspects of Nintendo’s beloved social/wholesome chore-sim, but precious few manage to capture the same charm. This is, in large part, because the cast of characters that Nintendo has created for the series is unmatched, there are precious few collections of iconic fictional animal friends people want to spend hours with. But, that’s exactly what Sanrio has, and it’s one of the main draws of Hello Kitty: Island Adventure.
Hello Kitty and friends being thrown together in a little game where players get to hang out and go on adventures sounds like a winning formula and, in execution, it totally is. You only have to look at the name of who is writing this testimonial for proof of how effective a mixture it is. Relating to Badtz Maru’s general vibe and enjoying the Aggretsuko series on Netflix can be enough to spark curiosity, and Hello Kitty: Island Adventure will happily pour fuel on to develop a raging fire of Sanrio love built upon chatting with memorable characters, doing simple but charming tasks, socially engineering friendships (in a non-problematic way), and even delving into the odd dungeon crawling session. While Island Adventure may not become a cornerstone of your daily life like Animal Crossing often does, it has enough feel-good moments and cute interactions to cement itself as one of the memorable mobile game experiences of the year. — Tamoor Hussain
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The team behind Genshin Impact thought it’d be a good idea to tap our pockets for more pulls on a wave of new favorite anime boys and girls, and you know what, they were right. All jokes aside about the gacha elements that seep its way into games like these, Honkai: Star Rail is a legitimate contender to be among the best RPGs of the year. While it’s available on PC, PS4, and PS5, the game looks and runs wonderfully on mobile. And the novelty of having a full-fledged RPG experience on mobile with solid controls and few compromises made it even easier to enjoy.
Honkai: Star Rail contains some captivating stories for many of its characters, and traveling across the galaxy to see different worlds and understand where they come from propel you beyond just farming for resources to get more gacha pulls. Stories of uprising, class struggle, and political power dynamics make this a more fascinating game than Genshin Impact, and the space opera-esque sci-fi setting serves as a strong foundation for these narrative elements.
The turn-based combat system is quite impressive as well. With each character sporting a specific element, similar to Genshin Impact, party composition for certain enemies creates some satisfying and challenging battles. Every character has unique properties in their special abilities and give variety to an extensive roster you’ll quickly be building up, and their attack animations are a visual treat that add flair to the grind.
It’s a free-to-play gacha game and that comes with caveats about how we spend money in games designed like this. Underneath that, however, is an RPG that stands on its own merits and one that’s just as great on mobile as it is on more powerful systems.
In a GameSpot’s feature on Honkai: Star Rail, Ethan Anderson wrote: “Honkai: Star Rail is a game that, at least at this point, respects your time. It channels some of the best parts of Genshin Impact while cutting out a lot of what could be considered barriers to entry for newcomers or those with time constraints.” — Michael Higham
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Puzzmo is like a nice cup of coffee on a cold Sunday morning. Puzzmo is like being wrapped up in a comfy blanket. Puzzmo is bliss.
Puzzmo is not a single game, but instead more of a game collection/platform that brings together former creations of puzzle game maestro Zach Gage (such as SpellTower and Really Bad Chess) with entirely new puzzle games and slight twists on classics like crosswords. It’s also not strictly a mobile app; instead, it’s played through your browser, which works out nicely for easily accessing it in multiple places, but it’s particularly well-suited to playing on mobile. On iPhone, try adding it to your Home screen–it’s hard to distinguish from a native app.
Wherever it’s played, Puzzmo is a wonderful collection of puzzle games and brainteasers, but by wrapping it all with social elements, leaderboards, streak-tracking, and ample hint systems, it lends these both a sense of community and a complete lack of pressure. You can play each of these at your own pace, shooting for high scores and fast completion times, or slowly agonizing over your every move. Each included game could merit being its own, standalone thing (and as noted above, several of them have existed previously in that fashion), but in combining it all and structuring it all in the Wordle-style, one-of-each-game-per-day manner, Puzzmo lends itself a wonderful sense of timeliness, daily excitement, and a nonstop string of “a-ha!” moments. — Chris Pereira
