I love portable gaming. This love affair started with the SEGA Game Gear, which is the approximate size and weight of a cinder block, runs on 6 AA batteries, and is the video game equivalent of Zack Morris’s cell phone. The Game Gear is what turned me on to games you can play while under the covers / in a closet when your family is having a family reunion. This was very important to my socially anxious social life growing up.
So what are the options now that we’re out of the technologically oversized ’80s? The Nintendo 3DS and DS – while I am a huge fan – are still a little unwieldy, large and conspicuous. This is part of what makes iPhone gaming so great – there’s still an element of stealth. Are you answering a pressing email from work? Or are you flinging frustrated birds at wooden shanties built by amorphous, egg-stealing, ball-shaped pigs? Are you texting your landlord about the water leak? Or are you dodging explosives while slicing up exotic fruit? Sometimes you just want to look like you’re doing something important to avoid enduring the uncomfortable conversation about sexual harassment your aunt is initiating at your grandma’s 80th birthday party.
Mobile gaming is probably the most portable of all the gaming options right now, particularly because your phone goes everywhere you go. While Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja are tried and true options for passing the time, there’s a great array of witty, interestingly odd games by smaller developers that range anywhere from “bro”-style, fist-bumping gothic Bram Stoker games to culinary undead mash-ups where you wheel a giant angry-looking pizza over an array of skeletons. Here are some you should check out:
1. Whale Trail
RAINBOWS EVERYWHERE via appsafari.com
Would you believe it if I said that this game is about an airborne whale named Willow who collects rainbow stars and multicolored bubbles called Blubbles in a place called Rainbow Land? Believe it. This shit is real. In the beautifully designed game by ustwo, you use one-touch controls to fly Willow through a landscape of angry clouds while collecting rainbow-colored bubbles and stars — the more bubbles you catch, the longer you remain airborne, and the higher your score. The game ranks pretty high on the hipness scale, not just because of the beautiful design and intuitive controls, but because Whale Trail comes with a theme song by Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. Bonus: in the Whale Trail music video, Rhys wears a yellow raincoat and rides through the clouds on a motorized old people scooter. Beauty.
2. Pizza vs. Skeletons
Why yes, that is a giant pizza bagel wearing an eyepatch skiing down an icy slope. via examiner.com
Have you ever wanted to be a gigantic, angry pizza capable of crushing every robot, skull, and skeleton in your path? No? Okay. Granted, it’s not an obvious dream like “make out with Ellen Page,” but once you start rolling your massive, customizable, doughy body over all things living and undead you might realize what you’ve been missing out on. The game by Riverman Media utilizes sensitive touch and tap controls to wheel your gigantic pizza avatar through graveyards, space, and the ocean. While the game can be effectively summed up by its simple title, the levels never lack in variety — each has an entirely different objective, from rolling down a rollercoaster-like ramp to tromping through a graveyard. You can also adorn your pizza with a variety of unlock-able customizations like lovely mustaches, cowboy hats and various gourmet toppings and doughs. While it may not compare to making out with Ellen Page, it’s pretty damn great anyway.
3. Helsing’s Fire
Love that 'stache. via gizmodo.com
In this “Dracula”-themed game by Clickgamer you fist-bump, vaporize vampires and drink celebratory tea while listening to soothing moog and organ synth music reminiscent of the soundtrack of Napoleon Dynamite. Are you still with me? Yeah, while mixing gothic literary allusions with fist-bumping and fascinatingly retro music seems a little odd, it fits together in Helsing’s Fire. You wander about increasingly puzzling rat-, vampire- and werewolf-infested rooms in a gigantic mansion sending various monsters back-from-whence-they-came with the aid of your torch and colored tonics. My favorite part about this game is the bold cut-out, mustachioed illustrations of Helsing and his buddy Rifton doing celebratory handshakes at the end of every level.
4. Radiant
Pew pew! via itunes.apple.com
Remember Space Invaders? This is just like that except for the tongue-in-cheek B-movie dialogue (and sometimes smack-talk) that happens between you (the alien-blasting space pilot) and the evil alien invaders. What sets this game by Hexage apart are the beautifully rendered neon retro-esque visuals and the atmospheric, electronic music. You blast through blocky, pixely alien hoards that look like they came straight out of your Atari, except that the aliens have suddenly moved into a nightclub and swallowed glowsticks, pulsating and shimmering fluorescently in the outer space sky. The storyline reads like it came out of a not-so-great alien movie (complete with time-traveling action!) but the writers of Radiant‘s dialogue seem to be aware of it and play with the tropes lightheartedly. The main pull is the simple controls and sleek visuals, which create an addictive, nostalgic, alien-shooting experience.
What kinds of mobile games have you been playing? Any great / odd / quirky games to add to the list?
Since I don’t yet have an iPhone I have been obsessing over Angry Birds on Facebook!!!!
I see a common theme between the framing of this article and the recent autostraddle sex-in-public-bathrooms debate. Both authors seem to think that if other people are making you uncomfortable, then you should be rude to everyone around you. I disagree.
I’ll definitely be checking all of these out. Thanks!
The fact that this article talks about SEGA made my day.
Fact: one of the main reasons I caved and bought an Android phone was so that I could play Angry Birds.
Will definitely be checking these out!
Awesome recommendations, Whitney! Game Gear was the start of my video game nerdery too! Got it for my 8th birthday and was definitely coolest kid on the block that year (or felt like it). Ecco the Dolphin, anyone?
OMG ECCO THE DOLPHIN. I still don’t really understand what that game’s about re: storyline. I remember just swimming around, not understanding how to make progress in the game. So I just headbutted all of the sharks.
I know! The game was sooo hard — I definitely never made it past the third level. I later read that the storyline was actually really dark and involved time travel and aliens! I just liked pretending to be a Flipper.
The memories I have of me and my brother fighting over who’s turn it was on my dad’s Game Gear, sonic was definitely my favourite!
It’s not a mobile game, but Radiant looks like a game I was playing with some friends called Geometry Wars. It’s basically all the 80s games mashed into one and covered with a bizarre soundtrack and neon visuals and it plays similarly to how I conceive an acid trip.
Oh Geometry Wars! I’ve heard a lot about it — those neon visuals are stunningly ravelike. I did a quick Google (don’t we all?) and found that GW comes in iPhone app form, too! http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geometry-wars-touch/id364175436?mt=8
geometry wars is the best thing ever! probably the one game i will never tire of.
I just got an iPhone like a week ago, so I get very excited whenever a new game is suggested to me. Thanks!
i have an adroid situation, so the only things i can get from this jealousy-inducing list is whale trail and radiant. BUT i’ve been playing speed anatomy and it’s a super good conversation starter and it makes you a genius. for example, do you know where your sigmoid colon is? or your manubrium? YOU WILL.
LANEIA, I WANT TO KNOW WHERE MY MANUBRIUM IS.
It exists on iPhone too!
My brother had a Lynx in the early 90s, which I loved to steal from him so I could play the games.
Lately I’ve been playing Baams Away, World of Goo, Cut the Rope, and Oregon Settler
– Machinarium
– (Sword and) Sworcery
– Osmos
– Ghost Trick
– Aquaria
– Crimson! Steam Pirates, although I wish I could buy a level
– Civ Revolutions
– Anything by Tiger Style Games comes highly recommended
– So does Spooky Squid Studios, but they’re mostly not portable
These are probably best enjoyed on a plane, not at your grandmother’s.
Machinarium and World of Goo are pure fun. I have an Android and I like to test various apps, but not so much games so far, only the Gameboy Color & Advance emulator, and like inception, it’s like having a handheld game device within a handheld game device!
I love Tiny Wings for iPhone, the bird is so damn adorable! And Where’s my Water by disney is a fun puzzler. Oh, and also Monsters ate My Condo.
I love Monsters Ate My Condo! The crazy, over-the-top anime-esque psychedlic visuals are the best (that sentence had a lot of adjectives in it).
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Circadia for iphone is pretty cool. Tones like tibetan buddhist bells and colors like glow in the dark sea creatures.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/circadia/id489615659?mt=8
Also draw something is the new words with friends.
Also draw something is the new words with friend-just not as smart.
It’s so much fun. I wouldn’t say not as smart. Words with friends tells you if your letters spell a word or not….
HAS ANYONE PLAYED WORD PARTY?!?!
It’s actually just taboo, but it’s great when you’re waiting in line outside a bar.
Android user.
Blast Monkeys is SO addictive and intriguing to people who aren’t playing.
Basically shoot a monkey out of a cannon, feed him his ‘nanners and try to get him into a rainbow wheel.
Have you ever played the iphone, android game “Joy Desk”?
It could be added to you list.