There has never been a better time to play games on your mobile phone. When the App Store kicked into gear for Apple and was met by the Google Play store there were some quite good little games to entertain us but now the range, depth, and quality of games designed for mobile phones is utterly breath-taking. It’s like having a small games console in your pocket with some of the graphics matching up to those from older consoles.
You can spend hours completing missions, solving puzzles and winning games. You can use things like Wild Jack Mobile Casino and play your favorite casino games on the go, anytime and any place, without being tied to your desktop. You can manage football teams on football manager and burn rubber on the racing track on games like Real Racing. The depth in mobile games is just wonderful now.
But it’s a simple and easy to play game that has really caught my attention, Mini Metro. The game has a 4.8 rating on the Google Play store and after playing the game for a while I can absolutely see why. Despite coming out in 2016 on Android it is still my favourite mobile game.
Its simplicity is one of its bestselling points, it is super quick to load and very easy to learn but as with the best games, very hard to master. The premise is easy to understand, you are managing the underground network in a city. The more you play, the more real world cities you can unlock but you begin with London.
As with any metro you build lines and connect stops. You begin with three but as time passes more stops spring up and with that more people who need a place to go. You only have a set number of lines, tunnels and carriages you can use and have to keep people moving in order to reach the end of the week and get more resources.
It is a genuine thrill to see people passing along your metro and to have everything in neat working order. It is a proper puzzle game but it feels like you are building and growing something alongside solving it. The fact the cities replicate real world ones adds an element of realism and extra excitement to the game with cities like London, Stockholm, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Osaka present along with many other world leading transport hubs.
The game was developed by Dinopoloclub and can be played on your phone as well as on desktop if you want to try it out on a really large screen. This is the first game the company has developed but hopefully not there last as it is really wonderful. There is something quite fun about building a metro while you do your commute, when checking the tube map in real life you start to consider how you might improve it.
It was well received at the Independent game awards in 2016 winning an award for ‘Excellence in audio’ and was nominated for best debut game at the 12th British Academy Games Awards. Still, for me, it hasn’t received the incredible reception it deserves, it will remain one of the most used apps in my phone and the one I turn to when I want to pass some time.
