This is such a random question, but I’m feeling heckin’ nebby: what is your favorite game on your phone or tablet? What game do you turn to when you’re waiting in line, or looking to relax a bit?
Amanda: I have a few that I play regularly: Gardenscapes (G:Play | iOS), a match 3 game where you earn stars to renovate a garden, and Fairway Solitaire (G:Play | iOS), which is an addicting card game that has daily challenges.
From time to time, I’ll grab a romance phone game like The Arcana (G:Play | iOS) or Mystic Messenger (G:Play | iOS) , but I go through pockets with those.
I usually play in bed at night.
Sarah: What do you like about Gardenscapes or Fairway?
Amanda: The first I’ve been playing for years now and the “customizable” options on how you want to decorate your garden is really what keeps me playing. I like having choices!
Fairway is a bit more mindless but because I’m a perfectionist, I insist on getting 3 stars on every level and that’s a nice challenge.
Sarah: So it’s like a challenge and a bit of brain candy at the same time? I get that.
Amanda: And with Mystic Messenger, most of the game is played through “texts” and you choose responses. My first “romance” was with an actor named Zen:
Amanda: The game takes place through text messages, emails, and calls with various characters. The way you answer a text from the choices they give you can either increase or decrease your standing with said character.
In this particular scenario, Zen has been cast in a new role and the script was written by a romance author. There’s a ton of replay-ability given the huge cast of characters you can romance.
Sarah: What about you, Carrie?
Carrie: I do have a tarot deck on my phone – it’s Shadowscapes tarot which is gorgeous, and the app is very good (G:Play | iOS).
Sarah: So it’s like dealing a digital tarot deck? That’s so cool!
Carrie: Yes, there are a lot of deck possibilities too!
Sarah: That’s very cool.
As for me, I have two games on my phone that I play daily.
The first, and I must issue a warning that I might nerd out most heavily here, is Dragons: Rise of Berk (G:Play | iOS) which is connected to the DreamWorks How to Train Your Dragon franchise.
I’ve been playing Rise of Berk since the second movie came out in 2014. You have your own Island of Berk, and there are character quests, different challenges at different levels, and rare dragons to find and bring back to the island to hatch. The graphics are also really beautiful:
As a storytelling vehicle, it’s kind of fascinating. The movies, of which there are three, have one specific canon that doesn’t really acknowledge much of what happened in the eight seasons of the television shows (Dragons: Riders of Berk, Dragons: Defenders of Berk, and Dragons: Race to the Edge). But all of the lore from the television series and the movies is included in the games, with characters, dragons, and story quests overlapping a good bit, too. It’s like an entire third canon.
The game also hasn’t reconciled with the story of the third movie, The Hidden World, which released this year. I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it (but I’m like a quivering gelatin mold of unexpressed discussion about this movie so unless you want a massive nerd-sposion, do not engage. I’ve definitely passed ‘My family is tired of hearing about it’ stages). I’m curious to see how the game story navigates the movie story, or if it does so at all.
I like Rise of Berk because it’s got a myriad of different puzzles and quests, and I find it very soothing to play. I do think there are too many currencies, though.
The other game I recently added with MUCH trepidation is Stardew Valley (G:Play | iOS). Chronophage alert! I knew this was going to devour my time, and I happily installed it anyway. I have an Android phone, so I had to wait longer for that version, but when it released, I jumped on it.
There are two features about the phone version that I love. I can zoom out to see an entire area and see if there’s anything I want to forage (Forage Skills FTW!). And, my favorite: when I approach an item that I can do something with, the game automatically switches to the correct tool. Walk up to some wood, tap it: axe. Turn around and tap a boulder: pickaxe. I like this very much!
I do have to be careful, though, because one day in Stardew Valley turns into a whole season and poof! I’ve lost a few hours of my day happily farming blueberries. With Rise of Berk, I can dip in and out and usually play before bed, gathering resources and leveling up different dragons. With Stardew Valley, I give myself a set amount of time to go play, but I really enjoy both games.
I recently read a line of a Mary Oliver poem, “Wild Geese:”
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Well, apparently the soft animal of my body loves dragons and virtual 8-bit farming, so we’re all pretty happy over here.
What about you? What games on your phone and tablet do you love most? Why do you like them?
I love all Flipline Studios’ food service games. They started out as internet flash games and haven’t all been ported over to phones/tablets yet, but my favorites are Papa’s Pancakeria and Papa’s Hot Doggeria. The basic setup is always that your character gets into some desperate situation and needs work, and Papa swoops in to have them run one of his restaurants so he can skip town, lol. It’s cooking/time management/some memory and organization stuff/minigames/etc. So much fun!
I’ve never been able to get into mobile games, but I’m addicted to the mini crosswords in the NYT crossword app. I’m not able to solve the larger crosswords without assistance and do enjoy them. But I play the minis when I’m bored or need to sleep. It’s a quick and easy way to exercise my mind while feeling intelligent (they’re not that hard, thank goodness!).
The subscription does cost money but it’s worth every penny to me. I love the crossword app and the archives are endless.
@Alex: you were not kidding about the Ms. Fisher vibe – this game is very pretty!
To everyone who recommended Jane’s Journey, thank you. I’ve really missed a good hidden object game and its beautiful and really soothing.
Screaming internally: I didn’t know Stardew Valley was out on mobile. Awesome. I loved it on PC.
I play quite a bit of Township, which is a Farmville-like game by the same company as Gardenscapes. It’s slow but possible to progress without money, which I like. In any given play session, you eventually run out of stuff to do and have to wait for plants to grow or something, but the game doesn’t limit you with energy/lives. (which is why I quit Gardenscapes and several other match-3s)
I looooove a picross-type game in general; I have played through Hungry Cat Picross on my phone and have several apps from FlipPix on my Kindle. Prime zoning-out mode.
Finally, this is an acquired taste, but the collected works of a developer called Kairosoft. They make, like… cartoony human ant farm sim games. They are not always well-translated or well-explained, but they have a couple of formulas that they tweak and remake into different games. They are oddly charming. Of their building-type games I’d probably recommend Hot Springs Story, and for the management-type games, Game Dev Story.
I’ve lost months of time in Stardew Valley, but I play on the Switch. Otherwise, I’d never get a life!
My favorites on my phone, though, are Monument Valley (guide your character through architecture mazes) and Framed (rearrange comic book frames to help your character avoid the po-po). We also play Wordscapes a lot – it is a good word exercise for the little – we just put the phone in the middle of the table at restaurants to solve the puzzles while we wait for our food. Or use it to pass the time when there is a wait.
I also kind of love Neko Atsume, a cat collecting game. Hilariously mindless!
THE ROOM (three stories so far) is the game I play on my tablet. It’s tricky, complicated and has a really creepy vibe. I have no idea what the game is about, but it’s so interesting to follow all the clues and find everything.
Thanks, y’all. You have created an I Love Hue monster. I am already at the Disciple level… It’s been like 26 hours.
@Ellie OMG! I also got sucked in to Design Home and am ashamed to admit that I spent real money on furniture that I will never have and only got to use in the game 5 freaking times before it expired! That was one where I really needed to put the phone down and back away slowly. Like many others I also played Gardenscapes. Actually it was my New Year’s resolution this year to STOP playing Gardenscapes so much because it was starting to invade my dreams and I felt like that might be a bit weird. I might go back to it but I need to make healthier choices. I’m looking forward to checking out some of these other recommendations though!
I’m with Laura Brown on Toonblast. It seems goofy, but it’s easy to pick up and put down and I come back to tit to list of my puzzle games. Only made a couple small in-app purchases in all my 1600+ levels.
Cover Fashion. This game is my addiction, and I spend uh…. more money on it than I should. But I have a strict allowance, and anything over that must be earned by writing and exercise. (I used to play gardenscapes and I LOVE the game, but I realized that my gaming allowance was only helping me me proceed through the game faster. At least with covet the money goes towards a permanent closet you can access again and again.)
Anyway covet is by the same people who make design home, and it’s a similar voting system I think, plus if you play the game in modern models setting, you have a wide range of body shapes and skin tone. And you can enjoy the game w/o paying, Especially if you skip the more expensive challenges.
Cons: the game is heavily dependent on borrowing from Facebook friends if you need more expensive items. If you’re interested in trying it I recommend making a separate Facebook gaming profile and hooking it up to any iPhone games you already have, before you download Covet. That way you can swap clothes with other Facebook profiles, but not use your actual one.
I really love bitlife – a life simulator, and furistas (sp?), which is a game where you run a cat cafe. It reminds me a bit of Neko Atsume. They’re both fun games and I haven’t spent any money on them and still enjoy them very much. I tend to get really into games and then drop them lol so we’ll see how long I play these ones!
I love Stardew Valley but only play it on my PC as it’s SO addictive!
Tsuki Adventure, which is kind of a cross between a collecting game and a quest game, and focuses on an adorable overworked bunny who quits his stressful job to lead a quieter life in the country. It has very lovely imagery (seriously, I will often screenshot moments), and is both delightful and relaxing.
My favorite mobile game is Hay Day.
When I was little, I loved to play Richard Scarry’s Puzzletown. My friend and I would build the farm, the town hall, the hospital and spread out over the living room floor. And then we could spend hours making the characters grow crops, bake goods that they would sell, etc.
Hay Day reminds me of that. Plus the graphics are pretty cute. You can have a full experience without spending any money.
Love Nikki is the best!
I also have to recommend “regency love” on iPhone. It’s a role playing game where you are a regency lady looking for marriage. At every step of the way you get to choose your path. And there’s really great regency era trivia and history and art interwoven throughout the stories. It hasn’t been updated in a while but maybe a boost in downloads would push the developers!