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[More_Badass]

Voting thread

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Pokémon GO; Took me by surprise and ended up spending way way too much time on this addicting piece of software.

Pokemon GO ; While I'm not a fan of the game's core gameplay when it's in your hands, the augmented reality aspect and its real world impact is something else. I don't think I've ever seen and been a part of such a profoundly visible phenomenon take place because of a game. It's awesome to behold even if I haven't touched it since those first couple weeks.

Pokemon Go ; it took the world by storm. It was a unique experience going out to the park and walking around town with all my friends while searching for Pokemon. It's a shame the game came out when it was hot as hell or I would have done it more. Like pretty much every F2P mobile game, it died pretty quickly but for the month I played it it was great fun.

Pokémon GO ; I ran 100 km during the initial two weeks of release back in July. I greeted married couples that were busy discovering Pokémon in hiking tracks on the outskirts of Edinburgh. I competed in Pokémon gyms against school kids. I associated real locations with types of Pokémons found and I learned not to play during the afternoon rush and servers crashing which had me going for jogs past midnight. Playing this game I felt I was experiencing a truly important moment in the medium like the first time I played Minecraft or Demon’s Souls or my first ever MMO. I consider Pokémon GO my first foray into AR gaming not due to it’s simple camera gimmick (that one quickly turns off) but due to it’s real world gps mapping and the social moments. A Pokémon MMO has been requested for a decade but somehow its launch took us all by surprise.

1. Super Mario Run - Mobile take on Mario made by the best creator in the business. So good.

Super Mario Run;
Short but really sweet, the one-finger controls are deliciously refined.

Super Mario Run ; A solid autorunner with a level of polish that feels about in line with Nintendo's traditional offerings. The game has mostly great level design that comes from the Mario name, but more interestingly is how the game manages to take lives (now bubbles) and the timer from the platforming series and really make those count for once. That would be due to the restructuring around its collectible colored coins, which can be a fun challenge and one that has a surprising amount of work put into it. Toad Rally mode lost me thanks to some poor design decisions, but the 24 or so main levels provide some good precision platforming and have a healthy amount of challenge and replayability.

1. Super Mario Run ; Polished, challenging, exactly the type of game I would expect from Nintendo's premium mobile initiatives to complement F2P.

1. Super Mario Run ; Loved it, as far as auto-runners go, this is probably as good as it gets. Collected all coins and now doing coin challenges with friends. For $10, this is a steal

Reigns - An incredibly unique choice-based ruler sim that feels right at home on mobile with it's swipe mechanics and minimalist aesthetic

Reigns ; I had a really good time ruining the lives of my subjects.

Reigns ; A unique take on management, like Tinder but for Kings.

Reigns ; Reigns' clever card-based design presents an ever-expanding game of kingdom management in a very mobile-friendly package

Reigns ; Mixture of kingdom management sim and rogue like with very intuitive Tinder-like swiping gameplay. The game manages to do a lot with a very simple system where you constantly have to make yes or no decisions that balance the power of the church, military, health of your workers and treasury. If either is allowed to grow too weak or too powerful your reign will meet an early end, after which you will play as the successor, which still needs to deal with consequences of some of your predecessors' decisions. At first you will try to only survive as long as possible with each new king, but eventually meta-narratives starts to take form covering specific characters, the development of your kingdom, and the curse of your line

Clash Royale - Never in a million years would I had thought a game by Supercell would grab me. Never a fan of the company's aggressive F2P models, I was genuinely surprised by how much I got sucked into this mix of CCG and castle defense multiplayer game. I'm not great at it and still haven't spent a dime but I love it

Clash Royale ; Instant match-making and small bite-sized yet deeply strategic battles makes this one of the best pure gameplay standouts of the year. While this is a F2P game I ended up pouring more money into this than a boxed game and it almost frightened me how much it hooked me (even when I had mentally prepared beforehand) so I ended up deleting it. Lots of activities to put your hands on and deeply satisfying to play.

Clash Royale - Possibly my most played game in 2016. If they told me a free to play game would make it in my GOTY list, I would have laughed. MOBA condensed. Super fair (I'm in legendary arena and never spent a dime) and more important, super fun.

Clash Royale;
quite possibly my most played game of the year, not only referring to mobile either... heck it might even earn a spot in the top10 most played games EVER! I've been gaming since I was 4yo, now 35y ago so it wouldn't be a small feat. getting in the company of Super Mario Kart, SFII, Winning Eleve/PES, Sensibile Soccer, Lemmings and whatnot! Even better is that I truly enjoyed most of my time with it, only f2p game to ever held my attention and successfully earning money from me.

Clash Royale ; (Android, iOS) Put together CCG and a condensed RTS game and you get Clash Royale. This is easily the best mobile game I've played, and even one of the best games I've played of all time. Cards represent troops, buildings or spells that can be played in battle. Despite being F2P, it's still a very fair game. Shooting for the top of the ranking ladder is there for the whales. For the rest of us, remaining at a certain threshold of the ladder is all that's important. It gives the best rewards for winning, and remaining above that threshold is completely doable even without paying a cent. Clash Royale also features challenges , tournaments and friendly battles. The great thing about these is that they all run in "Tournament Standard", which adjusts card levels to be the same and ensuring fair play. Whenever I lose, it's because I made fatal mistakes, or the enemy did an amazing outplay. The game already features over 50 cards, yet Supercell does an amazing job with balance. Clash Royale is polished to a mirror sheen. I cannot recommend this game enough

Steamworld Heist ; An astounding turn-based RPG with a lot of hearts... uh bolts

Steamworld Heist; amazing SRPG perfectly adapted to mobile

SteamWorld Heist If I didn't know it was a port, I would have never imagined. A superb turn based game perfect for touch devices. AAA polished.

Steamworld Heist ; A lighter TBS, but aiming shots trying to get the perfect ricochet makes this game a lot of fun. The game does unfortunately reward playing the same characters over and over, but at least there's no permadeath to worry about

Severed; Severed was not one only of
the best mobile game I played this year, but maybe the best overall game I played.

Severed ; An excellent port of a dark, moody Zelda-like adventure

Severed: Drinkbox visual design + Metroid Prime-esque perspective = heaven. Like a Wii-era first person combat game without the motion control frustration and with ten times more style

Severed ; Started playing it few days ago and this might be one of the best mobile games i ever played. That art style, that atmosphere, that music... everything about this game is amazing!

Severed ; Take the dungeons of Zelda, make them darker and add a cool swiping based combat mechanic. My favorite mobile game of the year as it's a great game and uses the platform to its advantage.

Lost Socks: Naughty Brothers ; On one hand this is one of the most frustrating games I've played this year, and on the other hand it's the only one that scratches that Rayman itch, in a good way. A very well designed autorunner platformer that plays much better than you expect with on-screen buttons, Lost Socks is brutal (especially if you're going for 100%) yet incredibly satisfying

Lost Socks - What can I say? Out of an unknown developer came an auto running platformer that was so well polished with gorgeous cartoon style style graphics and hard as nails gameplay. Ingeniously designed levels with multiple routes, a wide range of cool weapons and enemies that took a life of their own. This is an iOS classic

Lost Socks - Frantic and brutal old school runner/platformer/shooter with Dreamworks grade animations

Love You to Bits ; Point-and-click has never looked this good

Love You To Bits ; This sci-fi successor to Tiny Thief is just as charming and even more inventive

Lumines: Puzzle & Music ; My favorite puzzle game since Tetris, and my favorite PSP game. The series finally arrived on mobile with slick and responsive controls and fan favorite tracks

Lumines - Puzzle and Music: Addictive bog-occupying musical crack. They shouldn't have brought this to mobile - it eats away my time and I spend twice as long in bathrooms

Teeny Titans ; This was a surprise. I knew nothing of the source material, but figured I'd give the game a shot as playing a good Pokemon on my phone sounded intriguing. Who knew I'd end up collecting them all.

1. Teeny Titans - solidly built collecting RPG based on the Teen Titans GO! show. Even though I am not a fan of the show, I played this game to completion. It was really nice and addicting! They could have also easily made this a "hey kids, spend $5 to get Darkseid's figure!" but fortunately it is a one time payment game with no microtransaction nonsense

1. Sorcery 4 The Crown of Kings ; The conclusion of Inkle's adaption of the Sorcery! gamebooks. As the series have progressed, it has moved farther and farther from its inspiration and is better for it. The time travel mechanics introduced in 2 and massively expanded on in 3 have here been incorporated into the core narrative, making the game so much more than the book it adapts. Full of humour, puzzles, and secrets this is adaptive and interactive storytelling at its finest. I can't wait to see what Inkle works on next.

1: Sorcery 4!; The final chapter of the amazing Sorcery series ends on a high note. Everything is perfectly crafted. Every decision from previous games comes back, every path you took will shape your adventure. The writing is phenomenal and immerses you into a world of magic and danger.

1. Sorcery 4 ; The epic complex sprawling conclusion to Inkle's fantasy saga is everything I hoped for, and somehome continued to expand on the already grand scope of 2 and 3

Deus Ex GO ; Not as good as Lara Croft GO, but still very good. Loved the animations, music and challenging puzzles

Deus Ex GO ; As others have mentioned, this is kind of a step back from Lara Croft's GO-venture (and some of the changes they made with regards to micro-transactions raise eyebrows), but it still has the fun puzzle style established in Hitman GO, and quite a bit of live content to expand the level set.

Solitairica - Talk about a time suck. This elevated the solitaire genre to something so addictive and brilliant as an RPG. Easy to learn but takes lots of strategy to get to the end (which admittedly I haven't quite done yet)

Final Fantasy IX ; Who can deny Final Fantasy? This port was a very solid one. Here's hoping VIII finds its way to mobile next year

Final Fantasy IX ; One of the best Final Fantasy games in its best version yet. What's not to like?

Final Fantasy IX ; They really outdid themselves with this port. Not only do the character models look far better than the originals, it has a bunch of quality-of-life improvements like faster loading and the ability to turn off random battles (Useful for low-level and Excalibur II min-maxing runs). Plus, the whole interface was redesigned for mobile

 

[Matt Frost]

Im going to vote for Clash Royale, a game I didnt nominate but thats keeping my free time very busy having a ton of fun. The perfect 1vs1 mobile game

 

[Kadin]

Are the results the games listed in order? I'm a tad confused because I followed the voting thread to here and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing.

edit: okay I looked at the 2015 results and those have numbers on the game pictures which show them in order so that answers my question.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

Are the results the games listed in order? I'm a tad confused because I followed the voting thread to here and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing.

Yes they are ordered 1 to 10 (going down) with a few spots having a multi-game tie.

 

[Ninja Dom]

Yeah, Clash Royale & Super Mario Run were my two mobile games of 2016. In fact I think I spent more hours on those than any other console games last year.

 

[casiopao]

Ahhh i forget to vote.T_T

I will be able to promote Girl's Tribe,Soul Reverse Zero and Shinobi Night.T_T

 

[Dash Kappei]

A fine job, MB, thanks for putting the time to do this.

Yeah, Clash Royale & Super Mario Run were my two mobile games of 2016. In fact I think I spent more hours on those than any other console games last year.

Ditto.

Also, thanks for the quotes, MB.

 

[protonium]

.

 

[ghibli99]

Reigns and Super Mario Run were my favorites of last year! This reminds me that I should go back and put more time into them.

 

[ZeroX03]

Great choices, I've played over half of them and they're all worthy titles.

 

[Grim Patron]

Congrats to Reigns for winning mobile GOTY

 

[Ultimadrago]

Shoutouts to Reigns. Played it on PC when someone recommended it and had a good time for the following nights having hilariously short and painfully blunt rules. I'm glad to see it wasn't overlooked everywhere.

 

[Rodney McKay]

I need to get back to Reigns, but what little I played of it left such a great impression. So much more depth than I imagined based on the description of the game and the Super simple controls.

And I'm looking forward to finally getting Super Mario Run on Android this month. I would have played it on my iPad but I Jailbreak it years ago (only for a few months before switching back to stock firmware) and Nintendo makes their games so if you've ever done that you can't play them.

Love You To Bits and Final Fantasy IX are also on my To Buy list.

 

[More_Badass]

I need to get back to Reigns, but what little I played of it left such a great impression. So much more depth than I imagined based on the description of the game and the Super simple controls.

And I'm looking forward to finally getting Super Mario Run on Android this month. I would have played it on my iPad but I Jailbreak it years ago (only for a few months before switching back to stock firmware) and Nintendo makes their games so if you've ever done that you can't play them.

Love You To Bits and Final Fantasy IX are also on my To Buy list.

Good news, Reigns is getting a major expansion this month. They're also working on a Queen-focused Reigns 2

 

[daffy]

uh this is hella unorganized. you can't even tell which is iOS and which is Android

spent 10 minutes looking for severed on the play store

 

[SatoAilDarko]

It's March, release month, and there's still not specific release date for Android.

I had hoped it would be like March 5 or something.

 

[HawthorneKitty]

Ahhh i forget to vote.T_T

I will be able to promote Girl's Tribe,Soul Reverse Zero and Shinobi Night.T_T

Girls Tribe is region locked though, no?

 

[Rodney McKay]

Good news, Reigns is getting a major expansion this month. They're also working on a Queen-focused Reigns 2

Fantastic! Games getting additional content it something I love to see, especially in Mobile games that I'm addicted to.

Plants vs. Zombies 2
The Kingdom Rush games
Flappy Golf and Super Stockman Golf

Those have been some of my favorite games on mobile that have extended their life well beyond launch with great expansions.

 

[Stoze]

Thanks for thread (and the quotes) Badass. Kind of funny that my bottom 2 ended up as the top 2 overall.

I need to play Severed, I feel like I would really like that game.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Thanks for thread (and the quotes) Badass.

I need to play Severed, I feel like I would really like that game.

If you have a Vita I think it's going to be a free PS+ game this month, but I have heard that the iOS version fantastic as well.

 

[Stoze]

If you have a Vita I think it's going to be a free PS+ game this month, but I have heard that the iOS version fantastic as well.

Unfortunately not, but the iOS version is dirt cheap as expected so I'll probably get it on there sometime.

 

[Greatest Ever]

Meh, Reigns is pretty repetitive only a few rounds in.

 

[Pachimari]

Congrats to Reigns for winning mobile GOTY

Isn't Reigns at #3 though? It's a great game for sure, but Pokémon Go winning it is well deserved.

 

[toddhunter]

Well that is ... a somewhat commercial list.

Reigns looks kind of cool.

 

[Wollan]

Nice job! Pokémon GO event was pretty unprecedented.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Meh, Reigns is pretty repetitive only a few rounds in.

It gets additional depth as you go, and I haven't gotten very far in it either.

One example is that you go into a dungeon/maze and you navigate it and solve puzzles just by doing the left/right swipes. I died before getting anything good out of it.

 

[Greatest Ever]

It gets additional depth as you go, and I haven't gotten very far in it either.

One example is that you go into a dungeon/maze and you navigate it and solve puzzles just by doing the left/right swipes. I died before getting anything good out of it.

I've played it for nearly 10 hours, I'd imagine now, it was a good gimmick-y time killer, but it's another overhyped mobile game.