Ranked: 5 Mobile Games That Aged Well, Plus New Ones

Search for the greatest mobile games of all time and you get dozens of lists, and roughly half the entries are no longer on the stores. A list you cannot install from is not much use. So this one runs on two rules: it had to win a major award, and it has to still be downloadable today.

That made the list shorter and the reasoning firmer. One of the five launched in 2016 and was the world's top grossing mobile game last week. Which one comes further down. After the five, there are five more that genuinely shipped between late August and early September.

One thing up front. The fourth new release is our own game. Slipping your own game into a recommendation list on your own site without saying so is how you lose trust in the other nine picks too. So it is labelled where it sits, and it gets the same honest downside as everything else.

The five that lasted

1. Monument Valley — the optical illusion that won a BAFTA

Winner of the Mobile and Handheld category at the 2015 British Academy Games Awards. You rotate impossible architecture until staircases meet at angles they should not, and ten years on very few mobile games look this good.

• Who it fits: Anyone looking for a game with no ads and no gacha.
• Worth knowing: It is paid, and it is not long. You buy it once and that is the whole transaction.

2. Among Us — the game that defined a moment

Winner of Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2020. You run maintenance tasks on a spaceship while working out who among you is lying, and half the fun happens outside the game in the conversation around it.

• Who it fits: Anyone with three or four friends to play with. Solo, you get half the game.
• Worth knowing: Free on mobile, with ads.

3. Pokémon GO — a 2016 game that was number one again last week

This is the one held back earlier. It won the Mobile and Handheld category at The Game Awards 2016, and in the first week of September 2026 it was the world's top grossing mobile game, as reported by PocketGamer.biz using AppMagic figures. A decade-old game beating current releases back to the top is not a common event.

• Who it fits: People who do not mind walking. This game barely opens from a sofa.
• Worth knowing: Free, with paid event tickets, and it drinks battery.

4. Clash of Clans — a 2012 game that won an award in 2024

Google Play's Best Multi-Device Game of 2024. A strategy game from 2012 collecting a Google award twelve years later says most of what needs saying about its lifespan.

• Who it fits: Players who like building a little every day and coming back.
• Worth knowing: Build timers are long. That is the genre's grammar, but it can feel slow at the start.

5. Balatro — recent, and already covered in awards

Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2024, then an Apple Design Award in 2025. It is a deckbuilding roguelike where joker cards deliberately break poker scoring, and you do not need to know poker to get it within a few runs.

• Who it fits: Anyone who wants short runs that differ every time.
• Worth knowing: It is paid. And one more run works on you dangerously well.

So what actually launched recently?

Everything below shipped between late August and early September 2026. I only took games that appeared in Pocket Gamer's weekly new-releases roundups.

1. Fantasy Life i

Level-5. Released August 27 on iOS and Android as a paid purchase. A life-sim RPG whose console versions reviewed well, so expect actual length.

2. Reigns: Beyond

Devolver Digital. Released August 20. The swipe-left-or-right kingdom series goes to space. Good for a few minutes one-handed.

3. Dawnfolk

Released August 20. A near-monochrome strategy game about keeping a settlement running. Not flashy, but it makes you think.

4. KickCat — the one on this list we made

The entry flagged at the top. It launched as v1.0.0 in August 2026. A cat in a red helmet kicks a ball at monsters, and across all 300 stages every enemy is a dog.

• First ten minutes: Nothing to control. The cat kicks on its own and your only decision is one of three skill cards each stage. There are 27 skills, so runs build differently.
• Three days in: Gold and Churu accumulate per minute while you are away and stop at 12 hours, so morning and evening is enough.
• What is missing: No iOS build yet, and reaching late Hard difficulty without spending is a long road. If you want the buy-once-and-done shape of Fantasy Life above, this is not that.
• Free-to-play feel: Free on Google Play with in-app purchases and ads. There are 24 balls and a gacha, but a 100-pull pity caps the luck. Exact numbers are published on the item database.

5. Say the Same Thing

Released September 3. Two players each say a word and keep narrowing until they land on the same one. Ten seconds to explain.

Worth adding: in our own daily US chart snapshots, MiniMuses was outside the top 15 on September 7 and sat at number five on September 9. A game you have not heard of climbing that fast in two days usually means something is happening.

So what should you install

• If you want to pay once and be done: Monument Valley or Balatro. No ads, no gacha.
• If even opening it feels like work: KickCat. The point is collecting what piled up while you were gone.
• If you want something to play with other people: Among Us or Say the Same Thing. Both are half a game alone.

Cat games compared against each other are in an earlier post, and the top of the US chart got its own post yesterday. Leave an idle game running tonight and by morning there are 12 hours sitting in the vault.

FAQ

How do you decide what counts as an all-time great mobile game?

This post used two rules. First, it had to win a major award such as a BAFTA, a Game Award, a Google Play Best of, or an Apple Design Award. Second, it has to still be downloadable now. Judging on awards alone leaves you recommending games that were delisted years ago.

Are older mobile games still worth playing?

Yes. Pokémon GO, released in 2016, was the world's top grossing mobile game in the first week of September 2026, and Clash of Clans, released in 2012, was named Google Play's Best Multi-Device Game in 2024. Old is not the same as dated.

Do idle games keep earning while the app is closed?

They accumulate, but usually with a ceiling. KickCat adds gold and Churu per minute while closed and stops at 12 hours. Time beyond that adds nothing, so collecting roughly twice a day loses nothing. The progression systems are laid out in the game guide.