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The original Myst games were, somewhat appropriately, lost in time. First released in 1993, Myst debuted just as the point-and-click adventure game genre was dying out in favor of full 3D RPGs and shooters now enabled by more advanced personal computers with CD-ROM drives. Myst tried to bridge the gap: it used the same focus on exploration, puzzle-solving, and narrative that games from Lucasarts and Sierra had relied upon, but added stunning prerendered graphics to make its island mystery more visually compelling. Sequels, spin-offs, and re-releases continued for about ten years, until the tastes of the market shifted once again.
The latest indie game to immigrate from the huddled masses of Steam is one that makes a lot of sense for mobile. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a 3D platformer, at least broadly: you control one brother with an analog stick on one side of the screen and the other brother with a second stick on the opposite side. If you ever tried to play both sides of The Adventures of Cookie and Cream (AKA Kuri Kuri Mix) by yourself, it's sort of like that, without the division.
If you don't know what League of Legends is, then you don't spend enough time on Twitch (which is to say that you spend an entirely appropriate amount of time on Twitch). It's one of the biggest games in the ballooning "MOBA" genre, a combination of multiplayer team-based combat and top-down RPG sensibilities that's thrived on a PC-exclusive, free-to-play model. Thanks to League of Legends' highly competitive and social setup, it's become one of the spectacle events around the new boom in professional-level video game competition.
Green Arrow is a mamma's boy. Hawkeye is overrated. Katniss is a pushover. All of those archer-themed heroes should try saving the world with just one arrow - maybe then they'd approach the sheer brass-balled awesomeness of the protagonist in Titan Souls. As he wanders in a twilight world between the living and the dead, he slays gigantic monsters with a single hit from his arrow... though he does get a little help, since it's magical and he can easily retrieve it after every shot.
Have I mentioned lately that DotEmu is awesome? Because it is, and not just because it's the only Android game developer that sounds like a dating service for flightless birds. The company specializes in porting old console and PC games to Android and iOS, perfectly preserving graphics and game mechanics while adding great extras like controller support and Google Play Games integration. At the E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles, DotEmu announced that its next release will be Titan Quest.
The Doom series is perhaps one of the most iconic in gaming, so much so that it's been ported and hacked onto just about every platform and gadget imaginable. There are plenty of unofficial ways to play Doom on Android, but today owners of NVIDIA's SHIELD Android TV and SHIELD Tablet (and sadly, no one else) get a chance to own the entire series in a single package. Doom 3: BFG Edition is now available on the Play Store for $10.
Beamdog has already made admirable Android ports of the original Baldur's Gate RPG and its side-sequel Icewind Dale. Now you can get Baldur's Gate II, the continuation of the original that was first published way back in 2000 by none other than Bioware. Like the previous D&D RPGs, Baldur's Gate II costs ten dollars on the Play Store, which gets you the original game and all its expansion scenarios. The game is not restricted to tablets, though it will certainly be better played on one.
God games are particularly well-suited to mobile platforms, where the top-down interface lends itself well to touch controls, and the size of the screen - not to put too fine a point on it - helps with the deity fantasy. One of the more popular and unconventional latter entries in the genre is indie darling Godus from 22cans, published on the Play Store by DeNa. You can grab the free download now.
Imagine if the little robot guys from Batteries Not Included had their own videogame. Now imagine if that video game was produced in the current framework of indie games, which seem to favor the dark and somewhat creepy atmosphere of a Lorne Lanning title. Now you've got Unmechanical, a 2D platformer with Unreal 3D graphics that has just been published to the Google Play Store. You can pick it up for $3 with no in-app purchases.
I'm so glad the fervor surrounding the World Cup has died down, and now we can get ready for some real football. And by "real football," I mean American Football played by orcs, dwarves, elves, and other things that are probably more comfortable in a Tolkien tome. Blood Bowl is an Android port of a PC game based on a series of pen-and-paper RPGs, themselves based on the Warhammer universe. The computer game presents itself as a sports title, but its mechanics are more like a turn-based strategy RPG.
Look, this story is about 450 words long. But you don't have time for all that. Here's the skinny: if you fancy yourself a fan of strategy games, and if you've got a reasonably powerful Android machine with about 4GB of free space, aaaaand you don't mind paying ten bucks for a mobile version of a game that was fifty bucks when it debuted two years ago, then you should go buy XCOM: Enemy Unknown right now.