Game Topz (gamtopz@gmail.com)

As 2018 comes to a close, we can once again look back and marvel at a wild year of mobile gaming. We say this every year but it really is mind blowing how many great games come out on mobile ever year. It’s a shame that so many people can’t look past the many bad games that also get released, as once again this year we compiled a list of what we thought were the best 100 mobile games of 2018 and the variety of titles included on that list has a little something for everyone, even the most staunch anti-mobile gamer. The incredible thing is that that list starts out being three or four times the size, and it’s actually tough to trim it down to “just" 100 games. My wish for 2019 would be that more people realize that mobile gaming doesn’t have to be a replacement to any other gaming platform, and is simply just another avenue for enjoying great gaming experiences. Having tons of fun games to play on my iPhone hasn’t prevented me from also enjoying the heck out of my Switch and Xbox...

2018 was one heck of a year for me, both personally and professionally. Most of my time outside of TouchArcade has gone to wrangling a new dog that we rescued this year which has been an interesting experience to say the least. I’ve always been more of a cat person, and dogs I’ve had in my life we always got as puppies, so you I’ve never needed to unravel the mysteries of behavioral patterns and problems that likely came from growing up in what we can only assume was an abusive household. It’s been surprising how rewarding earning a scared dog’s trust is turning out to be. Also, in the photo, Bruno is on the left, and our slightly older dog, Steve, is on the right. They’re both smooth haired red dachshunds that are related to each other. Steve is Bruno’s uncle, which is pretty neat. I officially had a mid-life crisis, buying a 2018 Miata when Mazda was practically giving them away ahead of the 2019 mid-model refresh. It’s weird driving a car that actually is fun to drive, versus my po...

Looking back at how iOS gaming has evolved since December 2017 where we suddenly had a plethora of console and PC ports has been interesting. I didn’t think 2018 would top 2017 but mobile now has two of the biggest games in the world and one of them is more polished on mobile than it is on PC and consoles. 2018 has also been an interesting year for the Switch and for indie developers who make games for multiple platforms. Instead of doing a top 10 list of games for 2018, here are 10 things I liked about 2018. If you want just a list of the best iOS games, read our huge list of the best games in 2018 here. Donut County , $4.99 Donut County releasing on iOS alongside the PS4 version was great because it looked like a game that would work best on touch. Having bought it everywhere (I do this with a few games) and playing it, this is best on iPad. Annapurna Interactive might be my favourite publisher of 2018 alongside Capcom and Donut County is an excellent and relaxing experience...

With 2019 almost upon us, let’s look back at what some of our top stories of the year were. When we posted this back in 2017 , Pokemon Go (Free) was still going strong, and it seemed like we couldn’t post a story about Brawl Stars (Free) that didn’t generate loads of traffic. You’d think 2018 would be all about Fortnite (Free) , but in actuality it would seem that PUBG Mobile (Free) consistently had way more people reading about it. (Although that isn’t really reflected here as a few Fortnite stories did exceedingly well versus PUBG stories doing consistently great.) Interpreting site statistics is always weird though, as that could just mean people read about Fortnite stuff other places, and not that it’s necessarily actually less popular than PUBG . Another theory is that the Fortnite playerbase is younger, and as such, they’re more apt to consume the sort of stories we’d post about as YouTube videos instead of written articles. It’s all really hard to say, and one of the ...

Hello, gentle readers, and welcome to the final SwitchArcade of 2018. Fittingly, I’ve decided to dedicate this edition to looking at the best games of the year. As is often the case with this kind of thing, it was incredibly hard to cut the list down to a manageable ten games, and I’ve no doubt that many of you will be wondering where your favorite games are. The answer is probably that they were excruciatingly cut at the last minute. Feel free to comment with your list, and as always, the more details about why you liked those games, the better. Let’s remember old acquaintances! 10. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom A fan-fueled homage to a classic Japanese series created by Western developers. A failed Kickstarter. A last-minute ray of hope via a partnership with a publisher taking its first real steps outside of mobile publishing. Nearly a half-decade of development. To say that it was easy to bet against Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom would be an understatement. Somehow, s...

Originally launched on iOS and Android nearly 4 years ago , WWE Immortals (Free) from WWE and NetherRealm Studios was an interesting take on WWE. It basically was Injustice: Gods Among Us (Free) with WWE Superstars and it had quite the fanbase over the years. Earlier this Month, the official Twitter account had some bad news for the game. 2017 and 2018 have been fantastic years for mobile gaming but both years saw quite a few games close or get pulled from storefronts for a variety of reasons. WWE Immortals was probably the most interesting WWE game on mobile even though it didn’t play out like a traditional wrestling game. Hopefully Warner Brothers and WWE take what they learned from this to reboot it or do something better with the concept as there definitely is a fanbase that is sad about the closure of the game. If you still have it installed, you have until February 28th, 2019 to spend any in game currency you have and play the game. After that date, the online cloud sav...

As announced a few days ago, Dragalia Lost (Free) has begun the New Year celebrations with a new Summon Showcase, a new Raid Event, and Party Packs. Barring the new events that are the focus of today’s update in game alongside the Party Packs, the New Year Upgrade Events have begun. Read about them here . As with almost every update, the Dragalia Lost comic strip has also been updated. Today’s update brings Dragalia Life #50 which you can read in the comic strip in game. The Eastern Emissaries Summon Showcase is now live with an increased appearance for the event specific wyrmprints, dragons, and adventures. Two of them are pictured above. The New Year’s Tidings: Fortune from Afar Raid Event is also now live. You can team up with up to 3 other players (16 adventurers in total) to take on the light element raid boss. The event ends around January 10th depending on your timezone. The New Year’s Party Packs are available with better deals than the normal packs. Dragalia Lost is ...

This week’s TouchArcade show is the conclusion of our Game of the Year discussion. We go through our top ten for the year, and eventually decide on Oddmar ($1.99) as our Game of the Year, and both Suzy Cube ($3.99) and Grimvalor ($2.99) as runner-ups. 2018 has been one heck of an amazing year for iOS gaming, and we can’t wait to see what 2019 has in store. Don’t forget to shoot us emails with any questions, feedback, or anything else relevant or irrelevant to podcast@toucharcade.com . We read ’em all, and love decoding messages written entirely in emoji. As always, you can listen to us with the links below… And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and/or drop us a review in iTunes. Much appreciated! As a companion to this audio podcast, we also do a video version of the same show that is exclusive to Patreon which allows you to see us playing the games we’re talking about. Backers can view the most recent video episodes of the TouchArcade show by clicking here . Be su...

Wow . 2018 is almost behind us, and we’ve already listed our our 100 favorite games of the year (which is quite a task, given the amount of great games that had to get cut to get us down to 100), which leaves us two things left to do to fully pack 2018 in and move on to 2019: Reveal our Game of the Year picks, and publish our personal favorites. The personal favorites will go up on Monday (New Year’s Eve), and strap in for our GOTY picks. Before we get to that though, I’d just like to take a minute to shout out to everyone who supports us on Patreon and have shopped through our Amazon links this year. When Apple killed the App Store affiliate program earlier this year, that left those two things as the only things still keeping us afloat. If you’re not a Patreon person and/or don’t shop through our Amazon links, we’d really appreciate it if you’d check the above links out, particularly if you feel like you’ve gotten any value out of TouchArcade’s continued existence this year! ...