Best new mobile games on iOS and Android – May 2025 round-up
Delta Force – a surprisingly good mobile shooter (Level Infinite) This month’s batch of new mobile games includes a new Katamari Damacy sequel, a potential Balatro rival, and a sequel that’s been a decade in the making. It’s hard to think of a time in the last decade when paying attention to the news has been this depressing, which makes the month’s crop of mobile games a welcome and necessary route to maintaining mental wellbeing. You can safely ignore Kingshot, which we include more as a warning, but the turn-based charms of TownsFolk, Crashlands 2’s colourful exploratory role-playing, and the surprisingly well engineered online shooter Delta Force are all well worth deploying as tactical distractions from the increasingly unpalatable farce of real life. Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE iOS, included with Apple Arcade subscription (Apple) The King of All Cosmos is being ignored in favour of YouTube streamers, so he and the Prince do the only thing they know how: roll katamari to make them bigger. This time though, it’s in a mock livestream format that comes complete with made-up, misspelled audience messages scrolling up the side of the screen. As in all its past peculiar but satisfying instalments, that means trundling your sticky katamari around arenas filled with objects, which automatically adhere to it as you roll over them. You start with small objects and end up with extremely large ones, as the diameter of your bundle of bric-a-brac snowballs. Katamari’s gameplay hasn’t really changed since its 2004 PlayStation 2 inception, and apart from the faux influencer window dressing and slightly wonky touch controls, for better or worse this is essentially the same game it always has been. Score: 7/10 TownsFolk iOS & Android, free – £5.99 full game unlock (Short Circuit Studios) Built on a traditional hex grid, TownsFolk is a pixel art construction and resource management game in the mould of Polytopia, that distinguishes itself by being single-player only. Explore, generate resources, and build, while also researching new technologies that allow your village to expand slowly into an empire, as you colonise and transform the landscape around you – which gets steadily weirder as the distance from your HQ increases. Along with rock for mining, beasts for slaying or food, and bodies of water, you’ll also find strange artefacts and mythical monsters, which you’ll need to decide how to handle as they emerge from the fog of war. As well as servicing your expansion you need to set resources aside to pay regular tributes to the king, which come with their own rewards and risk of failure if you’re unable to meet his demands. Playable in either landscape or portrait, TownsFolk has a captivating rhythm to its turn-based exploration and decision-making. Score: 8/10 Rogue Words iOS, free (Brian Lipkowitz) Rogue Words is similar to fellow Balatro-meets-Scrabble game Letterlike. It gets you to assemble words, scoring points for individual letters and multipliers on the board, but unlike Letterlike it’s completely free and has no ads or in-app purchases. Played in a series of rounds, each of which features an increasingly high score to beat, you’ll need to select and purchase a variety of power-ups, whose effects stack to turbo charge scores in subsequent rounds. Clever, testing and engaging, it’s not quite the equal of Balatro, but has a great interface and given its (lack of) price should be an instant download for anyone who enjoys a little word play. Score: 7/10 Crashlands 2 iOS, £9.99 (Butterscotch Shenanigans) Arriving almost a decade after the original, Crashlands 2 is also an open world crafting and survival game set on a colourful alien planet, and like the first game it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Gameplay revolves around smashing everything in sight to harvest crafting materials and initially avoiding – later killing – the various lethal aliens you meet, while befriending and doing favours for the more amiable ones. It’s been enhanced on practically every level from the original, and while its text-only conversations tend to go on a bit tool long, and the jaunty tune it plays when you die quickly becomes mildly enraging, it’s a compelling game whose crafting recipes and research build into a significant array of construction options. You’ll also upgrade your spacesuit, making you faster, stronger and harder to kill; its role-playing elements prove as addictive as ever and it features cross-platform saves for those who also own it on Steam. Score: 8/10 Delta Force iOS & Android, free (Level Infinite) Ported from PC, Delta Force is a large scale multiplayer first person shooter reminiscent of Call Of Duty: Warzone, but bug free – a claim you definitely couldn’t make for Warzone’s mobile incarnation. With just two game modes at launch, you’ll be playing either King of the Hill or Warfare, the latter pitting two teams of 24 against each other, on
This month’s batch of new mobile games includes a new Katamari Damacy sequel, a potential Balatro rival, and a sequel that’s been a decade in the making.
It’s hard to think of a time in the last decade when paying attention to the news has been this depressing, which makes the month’s crop of mobile games a welcome and necessary route to maintaining mental wellbeing.
You can safely ignore Kingshot, which we include more as a warning, but the turn-based charms of TownsFolk, Crashlands 2’s colourful exploratory role-playing, and the surprisingly well engineered online shooter Delta Force are all well worth deploying as tactical distractions from the increasingly unpalatable farce of real life.
Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVEiOS, included with Apple Arcade subscription (Apple)
The King of All Cosmos is being ignored in favour of YouTube streamers, so he and the Prince do the only thing they know how: roll katamari to make them bigger. This time though, it’s in a mock livestream format that comes complete with made-up, misspelled audience messages scrolling up the side of the screen.
As in all its past peculiar but satisfying instalments, that means trundling your sticky katamari around arenas filled with objects, which automatically adhere to it as you roll over them. You start with small objects and end up with extremely large ones, as the diameter of your bundle of bric-a-brac snowballs.
Katamari’s gameplay hasn’t really changed since its 2004 PlayStation 2 inception, and apart from the faux influencer window dressing and slightly wonky touch controls, for better or worse this is essentially the same game it always has been.
Score: 7/10
TownsFolkiOS & Android, free – £5.99 full game unlock (Short Circuit Studios)
Built on a traditional hex grid, TownsFolk is a pixel art construction and resource management game in the mould of Polytopia, that distinguishes itself by being single-player only.
Explore, generate resources, and build, while also researching new technologies that allow your village to expand slowly into an empire, as you colonise and transform the landscape around you – which gets steadily weirder as the distance from your HQ increases.
Along with rock for mining, beasts for slaying or food, and bodies of water, you’ll also find strange artefacts and mythical monsters, which you’ll need to decide how to handle as they emerge from the fog of war.
As well as servicing your expansion you need to set resources aside to pay regular tributes to the king, which come with their own rewards and risk of failure if you’re unable to meet his demands. Playable in either landscape or portrait, TownsFolk has a captivating rhythm to its turn-based exploration and decision-making.
Score: 8/10
Rogue WordsiOS, free (Brian Lipkowitz)
Rogue Words is similar to fellow Balatro-meets-Scrabble game Letterlike. It gets you to assemble words, scoring points for individual letters and multipliers on the board, but unlike Letterlike it’s completely free and has no ads or in-app purchases.
Played in a series of rounds, each of which features an increasingly high score to beat, you’ll need to select and purchase a variety of power-ups, whose effects stack to turbo charge scores in subsequent rounds.
Clever, testing and engaging, it’s not quite the equal of Balatro, but has a great interface and given its (lack of) price should be an instant download for anyone who enjoys a little word play.
Score: 7/10
Crashlands 2iOS, £9.99 (Butterscotch Shenanigans)
Arriving almost a decade after the original, Crashlands 2 is also an open world crafting and survival game set on a colourful alien planet, and like the first game it doesn’t take itself at all seriously.
Gameplay revolves around smashing everything in sight to harvest crafting materials and initially avoiding – later killing – the various lethal aliens you meet, while befriending and doing favours for the more amiable ones.
It’s been enhanced on practically every level from the original, and while its text-only conversations tend to go on a bit tool long, and the jaunty tune it plays when you die quickly becomes mildly enraging, it’s a compelling game whose crafting recipes and research build into a significant array of construction options.
You’ll also upgrade your spacesuit, making you faster, stronger and harder to kill; its role-playing elements prove as addictive as ever and it features cross-platform saves for those who also own it on Steam.
Score: 8/10
Delta ForceiOS & Android, free (Level Infinite)
Ported from PC, Delta Force is a large scale multiplayer first person shooter reminiscent of Call Of Duty: Warzone, but bug free – a claim you definitely couldn’t make for Warzone’s mobile incarnation.
With just two game modes at launch, you’ll be playing either King of the Hill or Warfare, the latter pitting two teams of 24 against each other, one attempting to capture a series of objectives, the other defending.
As usual, soldiers have different core skills and equipment, their speed-up exoskeletons, frag grenades, healing guns, and reconnaissance arrows deployable along with far more kit that you’ll unlock by earning experience or paying actual money.
With rounds usually lasting 20-30 minutes it’s quite a heavy time commitment for a mobile game, but we found lobbies well populated and matchmaking swift.
Strangely it doesn’t support Bluetooth controllers, but since everyone is equally hampered by having to use onscreen controls, games at least feel fair. The destructible scenery and different map sizes keep you on your toes, even if gameplay can lack depth, with matches heavily dependent on the quality of teammates and enemies.
Score: 7/10
Kingshot – not one of this month’s best (Century Games) KingshotiOS & Android, free (Century Games)
In Kingshot you construct, upgrade and defend your own cartoon medieval town, making sure your people have barracks to train troops, enough to eat, and a place to heal citizens when they’re injured in battle. Then it’s off to join an alliance and help conquer nearby lands packed with rival clans.
To do that you’ll need to generate and steal resources, summon heroes via gacha loot crates, and wait an increasing amount of time for each upgrade to install itself so that you can move onto the next one. No skill, no tactics, just auto-battling and waiting.
Players who’ve been around the free-to-play block will immediately recognise Kingshot as a reskin of Whiteout Survival, which itself is identical in gameplay terms to Top War: Survival, Age Of Empires, and a host of other games cynically designed to exploit unwary players financially. Do yourself a favour and give it a wide berth.
Score: 2/10
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