While it’s been a slow month for console and PC gaming, that’s not the case for the mobile world, which has already seen plenty of interesting new releases.
From Boom Beach’s incredibly long-awaited update to the touchscreen ports of Subnautica: Below Zero and Ball x Pit , to mobile friendly adventure Oceanhorn 3, there are plenty of quality mobile distractions.
Scholar Adventure: Mystery Of Silence
iOS & Android, £3.99 (Devilish Games)
While point ‘n’ click adventures experienced their apogee in the 1990s, it’s still a genre that manages to generate new outings.
Mystery Of Silence is one, telling the story of a journalist investigating a mysterious island monastery.
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The intrigue starts with the discovery that most people you meet have taken a vow of silence and very definitely aren’t up for a chat.
However, by finding interactive items on screen and combining them in your inventory, you can gradually make progress.
There’s an inevitable issue converting games originally designed with a mouse in mind to touchscreen, which is that it’s hard to find exactly what elements of its pixel art scenery you can use rather than simply look at.
It’s also a pretty short game, although how long it takes will depend on how good you are at unpicking its fairly logical item-based puzzles.
iOS & Android, £8.99 (Playdigious)
Following the hugely successful port of the original Subnautica, its icebound sequel has now received the same treatment.
It transplants the marooned-on-a-water-world gameplay to somewhere distinctly colder, where wandering around on dry land swiftly freezes you to death unless you take measures to prevent it.
Underwater things are much as they were, blending exploration that relies on extensions to your equipment and mini-sub in order to see the deeper and more far-flung parts of its world, while also allowing access to more exotic crafting materials needed to continue that expansion.
With base building, monstrous sea beasts, and a slow progress from hapless crash survivor to king of the ocean depths, it has more or less the same cadence as the original Subnautica, which was also very good.
It does feel slightly like a missed opportunity that this isn’t quite the sea change (pun, I’m afraid, intended) it could have been.
Especially given how long the actual sequel is taking.
Ball x Pit plays like a more dynamic version of Breakout/Arkanoid, with enemies occupying blocks that gradually advance on you from the top of the screen, while your character fires balls at them, each of which bounces off anything it hits, whether enemy, wall or backboard.
Its twist is the extraordinary number and variety of power-ups you apply as you play each of its roguelite rounds, their stacking multipliers and perks bringing to mind Balatro’s highly alluring potential for extremes.
Although the game moves fast, you don’t have to, gradually moving your avatar and adjusting their angle of fire as you smash your way through its stages.
It lends itself well to mobile conversion and remains just as addictive as it was on PC and console.
On first encounter, Knightbound appears to offer a fully featured 90s style first person dungeon crawler, its manifold rough edges and hilariously primitive combat all being part of the charm.
As with most games that are free to download, the fun doesn’t last long before you’re being encouraged to watch ads and discover that all but the most basic character class are paywalled, which ought to be expected given that developers have to eat and pay the rent.
After the princess-rescuing training mission, there are more quests and dungeons to get your teeth into, your monster-slaying antics gradually earning you upgrades, but the one dimensional simplicity of its fighting never manages to feel satisfying, even if its pixel art scenery looks fantastic.
Oceanhorn 3: Legend Of The Shadow Sea
iOS & Android, included with Apple Arcade (FDG Entertainment)
Returning for another bout of seafaring adventures, Oceanhorn 3 is once again built with mobile in mind, its pacing, platforming, and combat all deliberately touchscreen friendly.
Like its predecessors its colourful good looks and ambient music are clearly inspired by Zelda, even if its multiple skill trees and special move-based fight mechanics are, in theory, more complex.
Roaming the seas, smashing into loot-able crates, you spot and visit islands, each of which offers its own treasures, lightly camouflaged secrets, enemies to kill, and characters to meet.
There’s a lot to see and explore, your abilities slowly extending as you travel, expanding your access Metroidvania style.
It’s a well-made game, but lacking in magic.
The anodyne character design, lacklustre script, and battles that have challenge but little excitement, conspire to make it feel oddly pedestrian.
Still, if you’re craving a decent sized role-player on your phone this certainly manages to tick all the right boxes, even if that’s all it does.
iOS & Android, free (Supercell)
Boom Beach is not a game that came out this month and was in fact released almost exactly 12 years ago.
Supercell is legendary for killing off titles that don’t meet its stringent criteria for engagement and revenue generation but somehow Boom Beach’s peculiar take on resource raiding tower defence, and its small, low-spending audience, have managed to avoid getting the chop.
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In that lengthy period Supercell’s own internal dynamics have changed.
While they still deploy small teams in search of fresh game ideas, once titles are launched and operating, they’re now turned over to far larger sets of designers and developers to continue their evolution.
That system is benefitting even the publisher’s black sheep, with Boom Beach suddenly receiving a major update after a decade in the doldrums, which adds both defence enhancing gadgets and troop leaders to join players’ raiding parties.
The fact that those benefits are administered via gacha mechanics has already infuriated many of its more vocal online fans.
Still, for most players this will be a modest breath of fresh air and, like most things in Supercell games, it’s an incredibly slow burn, its upgrades taking months or more likely years to show their true colours as you very gradually build them up.
It remains highly playable, and quite unlike Supercell’s higher profile Clash games.
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