5 new mobile games to try this week – October 3rd, 2024

You wash up on a seemingly deserted island as the lone survivor of a shipwreck. Do you set up camp, raid what remains of your rapidly sinking ship for supplies, or frolic into the lush forest of temptingly plump plums?

Choice of Life: Wild Islands is a Choose Your Own Adventure-esque narrative game where every decision leads to a different outcome. The replayability here is truly off the charts in case you meet an untimely demise – and there are many, many ways to die. Thankfully, you can redo your choices from various checkpoints and aim to uncover what the entire island has to offer – that is, if temple traps, pirates, and overly friendly apes don’t get to you first.

With games like Lunar getting a PlayStation 5 remaster and Sword of Convallaria emulating JRPGs of old, it’s clear that the appeal of pixel-art games is still very much alive to this day. Blossom Tales II harkens back to the good ol’ days with its retro-inspired visuals, tricky dungeon puzzles, and charming little towns, where you’ll fight to save the world from the nefarious Minotaur King as the spunky little adventurer Lily.

There are giant owls, rotating laser beams, and all manner of dungeon oddities to take on – all free to play on the Crunchyroll Game Vault for the price of admission.

This overnight success and semi-cult classic has arrived on iOS and Android and on Apple Arcade, offering hours of deck-building fun and undoubtedly ruining any chance of productivity for on-the-go gamers.

The solitaire-slash-poker roguelite invites you to forget everything you think you might know about poker then chucks ridiculous modifiers at you – and while it all might seem odd at first glance, the compelling gameplay will soon have you embracing it in all its wonderfully weird glory. Besides, Jimbo says it’s cool – and what Jimbo says, goes.

While other match-3 games will have you combining similar colours across a tiled board to score, Merge Match March lets you combine items to level up your units instead – a handy trick to have up your sleeve when you’re defending your kingdom from magical monsters.

As you progress through the levels, you can also customise your heroes with different skills and craft higher-ranking ones. The tongue-twister of a title offers simple merge mechanics and adds an idle RPG element into the mix, so all you have to do is match weapons and units then watch the battle unfold automatically on your screen.

Adding to the rich depository of titles under the Ragnarok banner, Ragnarok: Monster World tasks you with flexing your strategic skills this time around in a real-time 1v1 PvP game. Collect fan-fave monsters from the popular franchise called Ragmons and buff up your deck, then deploy your cards across a real-time battlefield to win.

Your character classes will also have a hand in that victory, with each iconic RO class offering different skills you can use in combat. To top it all off, the main theme from Prontera makes a comeback here too – the perfect way to bring on all the nostalgia.