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The best Android games 2021
By Craig Grannell 4 days ago
The very best Android games played and listed
The best strategy games for Android
Our favorite Android real-time strategy and turn-based games, board games, card games and map-making games.
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Civilization VI
(Image credit: Aspyr Media, Inc.)
Civilization VI
(Free + IAP)
Civilization VI isn’t some cut-down version of the famous PC turn-based strategy game. It is the famous PC turn-based strategy game, squeezed onto your Android device. This means effectively limitless empire building, from humble beginnings, through brutal battles, and eventually to a space race to the stars.
If you’ve not played Civ before, this is a deep game. It’s reasonably accessible, but designed to eat into hours of your day as you figure out how to keep your citizens happy, research technologies, and give your enemies a thorough kicking. There’s also the thorny issue of it being extremely demanding in a hardware sense.
However, if you’ve got a compatible device, the nimble fingers to deal with the complex interface, and the brainpower to conquer the world, you won’t find a better strategy title on mobile.
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Note: Civ VI is a turn-limited free download. Unlock the main game for $19.99/£19.99/AU$33.99. Other campaigns are available as separate in-app purchases.
Kingdom Two Crowns
(Image credit: Raw Fury)
Kingdom Two Crowns
($9.99/£9.49/AU$16.99)
Kingdom Two Crowns is an Android game that pits your monarch and their subjects against the nasty Greed. Things start with you finding a campground and bribing the locals to do your bidding by lobbing them a few coins. Before long, they’re hunting nearby wildlife for food, and erecting fencing to keep out undesirables.
At nightfall, the demonic Greed rock up, stealing tools from leveled-up peasants (meaning you need to dig deep into your purse to retrain them), and – if you’re not careful – your crown. Losing your fancy headpiece means game over, and giving your heir a chance to beat the Greed.
This one’s very much about the long game, but it’s also an approachable slice of mobile strategy that rewards exploration, experimentation, and a certain amount of risk. That it looks gorgeous throughout and works wonderfully on a phone makes it unmissable.
Maze Machina
(Image credit: Arnold Rauers)
Maze Machina
(free + $1.99/£1.99/AU$3.59 IAP)
Maze Machina is an Android game that squeezes complex turn-based strategy into a shoebox-like four-by-four grid, packed with surprises. The premise is that the evil Automatron is testing tiny robot creations in a constantly evolving battlefield. You’re a mouse, desperately trying to survive.
The aim in each round is to grab a key and get to the exit, but every tile on the board imbues whatever’s standing on it with a special power. This might be a bomb to lob, a weapon with which to get all stabby, or the means to encase a foe in a block of ice.
Further complicating matters, every object on the board moves when you swipe. This transforms Maze Machina into a brain-smashing chess-like affair where every decision must be carefully weighed up before proceeding. It’s clever and compelling, and does an awful lot in a tiny space.
Bad North: Jotunn Edition
(Image credit: Raw Fury)
Bad North: Jotunn Edition
($4.99/£4.59/AU$7.49)
Bad North: Jotunn Edition is a real-time strategy game in a shoebox. Rather than sprawling battles found in the likes of Total War, scraps in Bad North are confined to tiny islands your squads defend from invading Vikings.
As you win battles, with the hordes always just one step behind, you gradually acquire new skills. Squads can become archers or pikemen, the former being useful for ranged attacks, and the latter for keeping enemies at bay during the time it takes infantry to arrive.
Although originally for PC, Bad North comes alive on a touchscreen, as you direct your armies by taps, and spin an island with a finger. The bite-sized battles are great for scratching the RTS itch when you’re on the go – although completing the entire campaign is something that will require plenty of grit and experience.
Tropico
(Image credit: Feral Interactive)
Tropico
($11.99/£11.99/AU$17.99)
Tropico puts the classic PC dictator simulator right in your pocket – which, given world events, might be a bit too on the nose these days. Still, if you fancy controlling a Caribbean Island with an iron fist (or, more often, quite a bit of bribery and populism), this is the Android game to go for.
It has quite an open nature, meaning you gradually learn the ropes, and how to get the most from your adoring public. Scant resources must be used carefully – you need to make money, but also keep the population happy and healthy. If they get a bit angry, you must deal with that, too.
Note that the Android system requirements are high, and so you need a powerful device to play. If you’ve got the kit, though, this is a solid mobile take on a classic desktop title.
Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion
(Image credit: Feral Interactive)
Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion
($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)
Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion is – like the similarly impressive Rome: Total War – akin to time travel. A classic real-time strategy title, it originally arrived on PC in 2005. Well over a decade later, you can give those barbarians a kicking on Android as you seek to shore up a declining Roman Empire.
Make no mistake, this is a complex game with an awful lot going on. In-game advisors can assist, but before everyone gets a bit stabby, you’ll find yourself immersed in diplomacy, figuring out how to win the world to your favor without bloodshed.
The combat is the prize, though, with you co-ordinating hundreds of troops across colossal battlefields. Daunting? Sure. But if you want full-fat PC-style strategy in your mitts, this is your game.
Kingdom Rush: Vengeance
Kingdom Rush: Vengeance
($4.99/£4.69/AU$7.99)
Kingdom Rush: Vengeance is a tower defense game with a twist. Rather than fending off evil attackers, you are the evil attacker – a wizard out for revenge on those who’ve previously thwarted his cunning plans.
This involves plonking down towers, unleashing special attacks, and directing a gigantic hero in order to wipe out waves of enemies. The logical oddness in you using tower defense to attack foes isn’t addressed; presumably, you advance off-camera once you’re done pummeling the enemy.
Still, this is all good stuff. The animation is superb, with dinky characters darting about. There’s plenty of variety and scope for shaking up tactics. Sadly, there’s also a slice of actual evil in the game hiding some tower and hero types behind IAP, but Vengeance nonetheless ends up a best-in-class title.
Twinfold
Twinfold
($3.99/£3.79/AU$5.99)
Twinfold takes the basic tile-merging mechanic of mobile puzzling classic Threes!, adds a massive dollop of dungeon crawling, and then drops the result into a procedurally generated maze. This mixture shouldn’t work, but it’s fantastic.
As you move, so do golden idols and enemies. Munch idols and they replenish your energy, but merge them and they grow in value – all the better for your XP when they’re finally eaten. But removing both in either case causes the entire maze to be redrawn.
With regularly spawning monsters and the very landscape being upended on a regular basis, Twinfold certainly keeps you on your toes. And although it can grate when the randomness leaves you in a terrible position, the potential for devising strategies – not least when you roll in regularly supplied power-ups – and longevity is immense.
Concrete Jungle
Concrete Jungle
($4.99/£4.79/AU$6.49)
A massive upgrade over the developer’s own superb but broadly overlooked MegaCity, Concrete Jungle is a mash-up of puzzler, city management and deck builder.
The basics involve the strategic placement of buildings on a grid, with you aiming to rack up enough points to hit a row’s target. At that point, the row vanishes, and more building space scrolls into view.
Much of the strategy lies in clever use of cards, which affect nearby squares – a factory reduces the value of nearby land, for example, but an observatory boosts the local area. You quickly learn plonking down units without much thought messes up your future prospects.
Instead, you must plan in a chess-like manner – even more so when facing off against the computer opponent in brutally difficult head-to-head modes. But while Concrete Jungle is tough, it’s also fair – the more hours you put in, the better your chances. And it’s worth giving this modern classic plenty of your time.
Mini Metro
Mini Metro
($4.99/£4.29/AU$7.49)
There’s a disarmingly hypnotic and almost meditative quality to the early stages of Mini Metro. You sit before a blank underground map of a major metropolis, and drag out lines between stations that periodically appear.
Little trains then cart passengers about, automatically routing them to their stop, their very movements building a pleasing plinky plonky generative soundtrack.
As your underground grows, though, so does the tension. You’re forced to choose between upgrades, balance where trains run, and make swift adjustments to your lines. Should a station become overcrowded, your entire network is closed. (So...not very like the real world, then.)
Do well enough and you unlock new cities, with unique challenges. But even failure isn’t frustrating, and nor is the game’s repetitive nature a problem, given that Mini Metro is such a joy to play.
Hitman GO
Hitman GO
($4.99/£3.99/AU$6.99)
The original and best of the GO games, Hitman GO should never have worked. It reimagines the console stealth shooter as a dinky clockwork boardgame. Agent 47 scoots about, aiming to literally knock enemies off the board, and then reach and bump off his primary target.
Visually, it’s stunning – oddly adorable, but boasting the kind of clarity that’s essential for a game where a single wrong move could spell disaster. And the puzzles are well designed, too, with distinct objectives that often require multiple solutions to be found.
If you’re a fan of Agent 47’s exploits on consoles, you might be a bit nonplussed by Hitman GO, but despite its diorama stylings, it nonetheless manages to evoke some of the atmosphere and tension from the console titles, while also being entirely suited to mobile play.
Card Thief
Card Thief
(free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP)
If you never thought a solitaire-like card game was an ideal framework for a tense stealth title, you’re probably not alone. But somehow Card Thief cleverly mashes up cards and sneaking about.
The game takes place on a three-by-three grid of cards. For each move, you plan a route to avoid getting duffed up by guards (although pickpocketing them on the way past is fair game, obviously), loot a chest, and make for an exit.
Card Thief is not the easiest game to get into, with its lengthy tutorial and weird spin on cards. But this is a game with plenty of nuance and depth that becomes increasingly rewarding the more you play, gradually unlocking its secrets. It’s well worth the effort.
Freeways
Freeways
($3.99/£2.89/AU$4.49)
Freeways is one of those games that doesn’t look like much in stills, but proves ridiculously compelling from the moment you fire it up. In short, it’s all about designing roadways for autonomous vehicles.
It comes across a bit like a mash-up of Mini Metro and Flight Control. You link roads together, often by designing monstrous spaghetti junctions, only you’re armed with tools that make you feel like an urban planner drawing with chunky crayons while wearing boxing gloves.
The game’s crude nature is part of its charm. It’s more about speed and immediacy than precision, a feeling cemented when you realize there’s no undo. When your road system gets jammed, your only option is to start from scratch and try something new.
In truth, the inability to remove even tiny errors can irk, not least when roads don’t connect as you’d expect. Otherwise, Freeways is a blast.
Reigns: Game of Thrones
Reigns: Game of Thrones
($3.99/£3.79/AU$5.99)
Reigns: Game of Thrones follows Reigns and Reigns: Her Majesty in marrying kingdom management with swipe-based interaction borrowed from Tinder. Only this time, there’s a massively popular TV show fused to its core.
You plonk your behind on the Iron Throne, as one of several major characters from the TV series, and set about imposing your will on the Seven Kingdoms. As you swipe left and right to make decisions, your fortunes with the people, army, church and bank fluctuate. Fill or deplete any one meter, and your reign will come to an abrupt – and likely bloody – end.
Given the basic interface, Reigns: Game of Thrones has surprising depth. It also has great writing, loads of content to find, and plenty of puzzles to solve, making it ideal mobile gaming fodder.
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