Flight Control, Doodle Jump, (early) Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Tap Tap Revenge, Cut the Rope, Fieldrunners. I really miss the good old days of iPhone gaming.

If you haven't seen it before, check out the "Battle of Polytopia". Basically mini-civilization with a few extra races you can buy to support the developer. http://midjiwan.com/polytopia.html

I used to love polytopia. But, once one figures out how to win, it loses playability. But, totally worth the $5 or whatever I paid.

My kids love Polytopia! I'm using it to lure them into Civilization.

Ha. My brother knows I like civ so he's using that to lure me into playing Polytopia.

Flight Control :(

I wish they update the game to make it compatible with latest iOS.

Firemint was eaten by Electronic Arts (EA) and most of their games disappeared (including Puzzle Quest, which they acquired).

Companies should consider when they can open source things like this to let greatness live on, if they won't find a way to support it directly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Control_(video_game)

Tiny Wings was a masterpiece.

Switched to Android years ago and am still sad that Tiny Wings is the pretty much the only game that is Apple exclusive.

Maybe try Dragon, Fly! It is quite similar.

Tiny Wings still exists, and even came to Apple TV a couple of years ago, with some updates for newer iOS versions.

I keep a prepaid SIM in an old iPhone 4 as an emergency backup phone so I'm not SOL if I lose my phone because I don't have a landline at home. Every now and then I check on it to make sure it's still working and always end up playing a few rounds of Flight Control when I do.

There's a game that is a lawsuit worthy knockoff on the App Store right now. No complaints.

Wow there are a lot of them. And of course they all have in-app purchases :/

Slightly related: Human Resource Machine of these guys was the best mobile game I've played so far.

The game idea is just fantastic and I think this game is a great example of how to teach stuff (here assembly) through video games.

Seconded. If you have any interest in CS and are looking for a cheap mobile game to pass the time, give this a look.

Only game where I have 100% achievements. Currently working my way through and optimising 7 billion humans.

Robert has been doing what I knew could be done with mobile gaming for many years now: http://www.nimianlegends.com

I don't know if he's picked up more people or still solo, but Brightridge is a beautiful open world with much to explore. While everyone else was making candy crush and Mario knockoffs, he was building that.

I even played the likes of Infinity Blade and it felt... underwhelming.

BrightRidge really leveraged the technology available.

I find controlling on the device you're supposed to be looking with utterly frustrating - how are the controls? I'm all for supporting android games that are games, and not skinner boxes with "Angry Birdz" written on the side.

To me the pinnacle of games on Android is Clash Royale: how it essentially shrunk the frenetic real-time action of many pc and console multi-player games into a very watcheable 1vs1 quickfire game, with an engaging meta based on card updates and new cards, and even the fads in tactics. It has micro transactions but no nagging and no ads.

Also I think the best phone games utilize a "portrait layout" than landscape, but many many game developers does seem to think that way, and are creating games with landscape orientation, that often requires awkward hand positions to play.

If there's money to be made from subverting something, someone will do it.

It was on PC and Wii quite before android and a bit before ios. The gameplay is definitely touchscreen friendly though

Turns out most people use the ‘alternative app stores’ to avoid paying for games and developers are just following the money. High quality games are appearing on iOS.

That might have been true in the past, but today the App Store is just as buried in free-to-play/pay-to-win crapware as Android is.

There's still a ton of high quality game there.

It's the same on Windows Store as well, UWP crapware.

There is quite a bit of indie developers. I personally published Rob - robot programming game. Basically a port of RoboZZle (which btw exists on Android and iOS too).