Best new mobile games on iOS and Android - June 2025 round-up
Getting things for free is great. The trouble is that, as the old adage says, there's no such thing as a free lunch, a concept mobile gamers will be more than familiar with. Games that are free to download tend to extract their pounds of flesh through ads, microtransactions, or an unholy union of the two.
That doesn't mean all mobile publishers are equally tawdry in their pursuit of revenue. Where Game Of Thrones: Kingsroad and Chainsaw Juice King beat you around the head with tediously relentless sales pitches, long awaited prequel Puzzle & Dragons 0 shows there are more player-friendly routes to monetisation.
Then again you could just pay upfront and enjoy the delightful Follow The Meaning or Rusty Lake's genuine freebie, The Mr Rabbit Magic Show.
iOS & Android, free – remove ads £9.99, unlimited stamina £9.99 (GungHo Online Entertainment)
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
Puzzle & Dragons featured a compelling blend of match-three puzzling and combat, your match-ups and the resulting combos triggering damage to colourful assailants.
Puzzle & Dragons 0 retains most of the original's look, feel, and mechanics but removes its gacha elements. Now you add new monsters to your team using the crystals you win by completing dungeons.
It's just as monumentally complex though, the interlocking sets of skills and team buffs taking a great deal of time and instruction to even start getting the hang of. You'll also need to watch a fair number of ads to stay competitive, although none are forced on you.
It's not easy reviewing games designed to be played for literal years, because they tend to change qualitatively as you master skills and inch your way up their mountains of content, but in this case the intricacy, level of polish, and only two options for in-app purchases are promising signs.
Score: 7/10
iOS & Android, £2.99 (Second Maze)
With a charming art style slightly reminiscent of Machinarium, Follow the Meaning is a partially animated point 'n' click adventure with a lovely handmade feel about it.
Both its plot and limited amount of text-only dialogue are deeply surreal, centring on your investigation of a small town's problem with three-eyed mutants who mostly come out at night, and whom most people are scared of. You'll need to solve a range of simple puzzles using light deduction, a bit of trial and error, and a touch of dragging items from your inventory.
A few of its puzzles are a bit abstruse, but there are walkthroughs online if you get horribly stuck and the whole thing has such a unique atmosphere it's worth a look for that alone.
Score: 7/10
iOS & Android, free – remove ads £11.99 (SayGames)
Build a fruit juice empire in this amusingly unserious business simulator, that begins with just you, a chainsaw, and a gaggle of panicking, wide-eyed fruit doing their best to avoid being traumatically juiced.
Hire staff, upgrade your blenders, raise prices, and gradually ratchet up the orders of magnitude in your juicing operation – which diversifies into jam and, for some reason, gem mining.
Unlike many incremental games this is emphatically not idle, requiring plenty of active management of your operation, including chasing down those pesky fruits. If it weren't so riddled with advertising it would initially be quite addictive.
As it is, you're regularly forced to watch ads and strongly incentivised to sit through a lot more. The real issue is how dystopian those ads are. Often 90 seconds long and with deliberate pauses you need to click through to continue watching, they actively prevent you from just leaving them on in the background.
You can, of course, pay to remove them, but the more Juice King you play the more its gameplay feels like skill-free busy work, which is fine for a bit but eventually boring.
Score: 5/10
iOS & Android, free (Yannis Benattia)
Kumome's turn-based puzzles get you to move your hero one space in any direction on the board, then add a new piece in an attempt to block your opponent. If they can't move their hero, you win.
From those simple beginnings, Kumome layers on teleport tiles, multiple opponents, single-use power-ups, and online PvP combat.
Clearly a labour of love from a lone developer, its interface may be slightly rough around the edges but its gameplay is solidly designed, providing a varying challenge throughout its 200-level single player campaign and online multiplayer, once you're confident enough to try it.
Score: 7/10
iOS & Android, free – full game unlock £4.99 (Afterburn)
Pub Champs is a football themed puzzle game that despite its content requires neither a love of the sport nor dexterity. Instead, you'll be greeted by an escalating series of turn-based tactical challenges in which you direct a set of animal footballers to kick a ball into the back of the net.
Initially, that's a case of getting in front of the goal mouth and tapping but soon enough you'll find your path occluded by road cones, piles of leaves, muddy puddles, and more.
You'll also discover that different players interact with the ball in their own distinct ways, some kicking it straight, others curling it through the air to clear obstacles. Each also has a limited number of turns, so you'll need to combine their skills to complete puzzles.
Highly polished, Pup Champs' 170 levels also get pretty taxing, belying the cozy setting and menagerie of young animal protagonists.
Score: 7/10
iOS & Android, free (Rusty Lake)
Indie developer Rusty Lake has a wonderfully offbeat signature style that blends the sinister, dreamlike, and mundane into some of the most idiosyncratic and enjoyable games on mobile.
To celebrate the studio's tenth birthday, they've released this mysterious interactive magic show, whose 20 acts are punctuated by an interlude in the Rusty Lake offices where you need to make everyone a drink, solve some puzzles, and debug The Mr Rabbit Magic Show game ready to be published.
Its puzzles are mostly straightforward, although one demands such an extreme level of trial and error that you'll need a pen and paper – or a spare iPad – to discover its lengthy and highly specific sequence of taps.
Still, for a freebie its hour of pleasing, self-referential puzzle solving can scarcely be faulted and if you're new to Rusty Lake's delights this could well act as a gateway to their superb back catalogue.
Score: 8/10
iOS, included with Apple Arcade subscription (What the Games)
Made by the developer of the award-winning What The Car?, What the Clash? has a similar visual design, but instead of surrealist driving escapades it features a series of mini-games that you can play solo or against a fellow human.
Starting with table tennis and soon adding racing, target shooting, and others, each of its games can be modified using a growing set of special cards that unlock as you play. That means if you and an opponent choose Archery, adding the barrel and giraffe cards gives you high winds that affect the flight of each arrow, while barrel and rotate give you rocket launchers.
It means almost every game is different – often in quite surprising ways – and that you're continually unlocking new and frequently outlandish add-ons almost every time you play.
Some of the games are a lot more fun than others but its high production values, zany humour, and continual sense of progression are a winning combination.
Score: 8/10
iOS & Android, free (Netmarble)
Game Of Thrones' foray into mobile entertainment delivers excellent first impressions. A graphically intensive third person action role-player, it features the visual likeness of plenty of familiar characters, and while it doesn't boast the original cast, voice-acting is first rate.
You also don't need to be an aficionado of the books or TV show to get it, with everything conveniently explained. Starting as a knight, sell sword or assassin, you're unleashed into an open world infested with white walkers, their world's take on zombies. More Trending
Problems start to creep in with combat that's instantly superficial, and even on an iPad Pro tends to drop numerous frames when the action gets frantic. Its real issue though, is your character's Momentum Score; the total average level of every piece of gear you have equipped.
If it's too low, missions are deliberately impossible until you've met its requirement, and the enormous range of different currencies you need to progress makes it a shamelessly extended grind, which naturally you can circumvent with microtransactions.
Inventory space is limited until you pay actual money to expand it, forcing you to sell each piece of unneeded equipment individually, and that's just the start of a seemingly endless parade of different methods of fleecing you. Even if you're a massive fan of the show, this is best avoided.
Score: 3/10
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
MORE: Best of Summer Game Fest 2025 trailers – Mortal Shell 2, Game Of Thrones and more
MORE: Resident Evil Requiem trailer reveals release date and new main character
MORE: Neil Patrick Harris is Deadpool in new Marvel VR game
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scottish Sun
29 minutes ago
- Scottish Sun
Strictly's Vicky Pattison proves feud with Sam Thompson is over as she poses with star after finally unblocking him
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) STRICTLY Come Dancing's Vicky Pattison has proved that her feud with Sam Thmpson is officially over, as she posed with the star after unblocking him on social media. Vicky's years-long feud with fellow reality TV alum Sam Thompson is no secret. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 Strictly Come Dancing's Vicky has proved that her feud with Sam Thmpson is officially over Credit: vickypattison/Instagram 4 Vicky posted photos with various people she's grateful for Credit: Instagram 4 It all kicked off in 2017 when Geordie Shore legend Vicky criticised Sam's sister Credit: TikTok/@stayingrelevant_podcast They've been regulars on the reality TV circuit for more than a decade and delivered hours of entertainment off and on screen. But they've also clashed a number of times in the past. It all kicked off in 2017 when Geordie Shore legend Vicky criticised Sam's sister, Louise Thompson, over her working out on holiday. Made In Chelsea star Sam then hit back in a video of his own, saying only he was allowed to mock his sister. The war of words quickly escalated and Vicky responded by blocking Sam on social media – a block that would last for five years. But clearly putting that feud behind them, the pair now looked in great spirits as they posed for a photo together. Vicky took to social media to share a carousel of images with people she's 'grateful' for. The reality star penned to her millions of followers: 'There's been a lot to smile about recently... but mostly, it's the people in my life I feel grateful for you 🥹🩷 'Tag the people you're grateful for in my comments... and let them know what they mean to you.' Strictly Come Dancing 2025 lineup IN FULL - including Game of Thrones star & famous YouTuber Vicky looked in great spirits as she posed with Strictly's Luba in the first photo, during a glam night out. Then, in another shot, she could be seen standing with Sam, as he put his arm around her and gazed in her direction. The telly stars looked delighted to be in each other's company. Things got frosty between the pals in the past when Sam appeared on Celebrity Big Brother. Viewers saw him get upset after he was warned in the Diary Room for flicking fellow housemate Jemma Lucy's nipple. Vicky, appearing on Big Brother's Bit on the Side, pulled no punches. Speaking about the incident to Rylan, she slammed his behaviour and said: 'I think there are two ways to look at this. "One, he got upset because he knew it was a joke, Jemma knew it was a joke and he didn't mean any offence by it. "Secondly, because he's an entitled little rat who is used to always getting what he wants.' The 'rat' remark ensured the feud had well and truly taken root. Despite having a mutual friend in Towie's Pete Wicks – who is Vicky's best mate and later became one of Sam's closest pals – the two reality stars stayed firmly out of each other's way. Vicky only lifted the block on Sam in 2022 after they unexpectedly bumped into each other at a Harry Potter premiere. But while both became close friends with Pete, they were rarely in the same room at the same time.
Metro
an hour ago
- Metro
Resident Evil Requiem hands-on preview - the scariest Resi ever
GameCentral plays 30 minutes of Resident Evil 9, aka Requiem, and comes away not only impressed but gleefully terrified. Despite having invented the term survival horror the majority of Resident Evil games are not all that scary. Most are tense, at least in part, but it's only really Resident Evil 1 (especially the GameCube remake) and Resident Evil 7 that are consistently frightening, and even then they tail off into straight action territory by the end. There are definitely scary moments in Resident Evil 2 and other games but it's perhaps one of the secrets of the franchise's success that you don't have to have nerves of steel to complete them, which could explain why most other horror games usually only sell a fraction of the average Resident Evil game. Apart from one sequence (you'll know it if you've played it), 2021's Resident Evil Village was arguably the least scary entry ever. But along with 2023's Resident Evil 4 remake, which is also in contention for being the least frightening, it was the best-selling in the whole series. So it's very interesting to discover that Requiem is absolutely terrifying. To what degree Requiem is intended to be a soft reboot continues to be unclear. The plan to create a first person trilogy starring Ethan Winters certainly seems to have been cut short, but the first thing you discover with the Requiem demo is that a first person view is still the default way of playing it. While you can switch to third person whenever you want, that requires going into the menu, rather than having a button dedicated to it. The assumption by fans has been that Capcom realised the third person view in the remakes was proving popular – and that a first person view meant people weren't getting attached to the character of Ethan – but that revelation likely only came several years into the development of Requiem. Either way, as soon as you start playing it's very obvious why Requiem is keeping the first person view as the default. At the moment (I'm writing this before Gamescom, so there might be a new trailer during Open Night Live) the story set-up for Requiem is still unclear and despite rumours of Leon and other fan favourites being playable the only one that's been confirmed so far is new character Grace Ashcroft, FBI agent and daughter of obscure Resident Evil Outbreak character Alyssa Ashcroft. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. While at first that seemed like just a random deep cut, Alyssa was also briefly mentioned in Resident Evil 7, in her role as a newspaper reporter, which implies that there has been no major U-turn in terms of Capcom's plans. The inital trailer portrayed Grace as an inexperienced agent, not used to fieldwork, while the demo begins with a scene from that initial reveal, where Grace is hung upside down on a gurney, with a needle in her arm that's extracting her blood. She escapes and finds herself in what is presumably the mysterious Wrenwood Hotel from the trailer. Despite a cut scene showing a doctor attending to Grace there's no one around when she escapes and yet there's a curious detail where the room's light switch works, as does a table lamp, which immediately seems ominous. Exploring the hallway outside, the whole hotel is in darkness, with only a little light seeping through the windows and some evil looking red emergency lights. The graphics are superb, a clear step up from Village and Resident Evil 4, and together with some excellent sound design makes the whole situation immediately terrifying. I wander into a room filled with what seems to be medical supplies but the back of it is pitch black and so I have to retreat and explore the main corridor, which has more locked doors, including an old school Resident Evil one that requires a cherub key . There's a single, overhead light in this area and after retrieving a cigarette lighter I go back to the darkened room to explore, where I find the doctor's very dead body. This is a great jump scare moment and creeping around in the dark, with only a flame to light your way is hugely atmospheric. The doctor's body falls to the floor and suddenly a huge hand grabs it, and a hideous monster lifts it up and bites its head off. Grace has no weapons of any kind, so I run in a blind panic but get confused over the layout and find myself in a dead end from which there is no escape. Trying again is even scarier because I know what's going to happen, but after this time successfully escaping it becomes clear that the monster does not like bright light and immediately retreats from it, breaking into the ceiling above and invoking memories of Alien Isolation. For reasons I was not quite clear on, all the lights in the starting room are now out, so I creep about nervously, ominous sounds all around, and once again try to explore the medical room. This is all the scarier because I don't know what I'm supposed be doing there and while there's a green herb to pick up the moveable trolley doesn't seem to do anything obvious, except allow access to a cupboard… with nothing in it. It makes a lot of noise moving it though, so I retreat and explore further down the hallway, finding a gate blocking the way to a brightly lit foyer. A fuse box nearby is missing a fuse and while I find a replacement I also need a screwdriver. The only option seems to be to go back to the medical room, where I discover that pushing the trolley a bit more allows me to use it to climb up to a cabinet and retrieve a screwdriver. It also involves knocking a TV monitor onto the floor with a loud smash, which doesn't seem to have any immediate consequences but ratchets the tension up further. Inevitably, the monster reappears, right by the only surviving light, and my only option is to lead it into the starting room and run around the central table and out behind it. It's not particularly slow and Grace is not particularly fast, so this is especially harrowing, but I jam the fuse in the fuse box and leap through the gate… only for the monster to grab Grace's leg and drag her back into the dark, to an unknown fate. All of this is fantastically creepy, and I end the demo genuinely frightened. Which is exactly what you want from a horror game. A horror game where you're not horrified is like a comedy where you're not laughing: a failure and usually a pretty miserable waste of time. In terms of gameplay there's nothing complicated going on – and I'm not even sure this is an actual segment from the game, or something created specifically as a demo – but it's surprisingly reminiscent of the first few hours of Resident Evil 7, while also seeming to take fairly obvious influence from Alien Isolation. More Trending There was nothing overtly cheesy or comedic in the game, although you could say the design of the creature is a bit over-the-top, and hard to take seriously in isolation, but it certainly doesn't seem that way when it's chasing you down a dark corridor. Interestingly, it appears to be female, so one obvious guess would be that it's Grace's mother and/or the doctors were intending to turn Grace into a similar creature. Why you'd do an experiment like that in a hotel I have no idea, but I can't wait to find out, because the demo impressed me like no other preview in a long time. Especially as there's still so much that we don't know about the game, since even if the rumours about other characters aren't true the trailer clearly shows a bombed out Racoon City and that was not part of this demo. It's an agreeably long time since there's been a bad Resident Evil game, but Requiem is already off to a fantastic start and could well end up as one of the series' very best. The demo ends with a promise from Capcom that it is merely the 'overture to our darkest symphony' and they don't seem to be lying. Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: TBAPublisher: CapcomDeveloper: CapcomRelease Date: 27th February 2026 Age Rating: 18 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Onimusha: Way Of The Sword hands-on preview – return of the demon samurai MORE: BioShock 4 in trouble as studio lays off staff amid leadership shake-up MORE: Best of Gamescom 2025 trailers – Resident Evil Requiem to Lego Batman
Metro
an hour ago
- Metro
Onimusha: Way Of The Sword hands-on preview – return of the demon samurai
Capcom brings back Resident Evil sister series Onimusha, as GameCentral enjoys a playable demo featuring undead monsters and some very fine sword-fighting. The ongoing success of Capcom's Resident Evil remakes has already inspired other publishers to revive their own classic survival horror titles, such as Dead Space and Silent Hill 2, but this is the first time Capcom has looked to its own back catalogue for more inspiration. Back in the late PS1/early PlayStation 2 era, Capcom reused the Resident Evil formula for a number of similar games, starting with fan favourite Dino Crisis. Even Devil May Cry – whose continued absence from Capcom's modern line-up seems stranger by the minute – evolved out of an early prototype for Resident Evil 4, but if you don't count that then it's Onimusha which was the most successful of Resident Evil's sister series. Particularly popular in Japan, there were four mainline entries and multiple spin-offs, ranging from tactics games to a pachislot title licensed by Sega. Much like Capcom's Viewtiful Joe (remember that?) it suffered from oversaturation and never really made it into the PlayStation 3 generation, with the only entry being a Japanese-only strategy spin-off. But, after a couple of recent remasters, it's back, with a visual style borrowed from the Resident Evil remakes and some very satisfying sword-fighting. If you're not familiar with Onimusha it's an easy game to explain. The originals featured very similar exploration and puzzle-based gameplay to PS1 era Resident Evil games, but with more emphasis on action – since you don't have to worry about your sword running out of ammo. Set during the Sengoku period of medieval Japan, with Oda Nobunaga portrayed as a literal demon from Hell, the majority of enemies are zombie samurai and related monsters ( onimusha means oni warrior, but while oni is often translated as demon it's a bit more complicated than that). Like Capcom's reveal of Resident Evil Requiem, little is known about the plot of the game but from the brief context we were given it doesn't seem to be a reboot, but a straight sequel. You play as Musashi Miyamoto, who was introduced in fighting game Onimusha Blade Warriors and is apparently the main character of the Netflix Onimusha series, which we haven't seen. Like Nobunaga he's also based on a real historical figure, who is revered as the greatest swordsman in Japanese history. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The demo, at least, is set in Kyoto and as usual for the series, Musashi has somehow ended up with an oni gauntlet on his hand, which allows him to collect the colour-coded souls of oni (used variously to regain health, upgrade abilities, and the like) and talk to a disembodied female voice. That voice is of someone with a Japanese accent, but Musashi and the other human characters all have English accents, which breaks the immersion somewhat. Although, unlike the original Onimusha games, there is a Japanese language option for the voiceovers. The demo is very simple and almost entirely linear. We'd guess it's from very early on in the game, as you're given plenty of time to take on the various oni samurai, with the game offering a variant of light and heavy attacks, where the former are one-handed and the latter two-handed. Combat in the originals was never very complex but Way Of The Sword is a little more involved and comes across very much like a beginner's version of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. We don't mean that in any kind of derogatory sense though. No one wants every game to be as hard as FromSoftware titles and here you can still get caught out if you're not paying attention, with both you and your enemies having a stamina gauge, as you try to break each other's stance in order to do serious damage. This is most easily done by parrying an incoming attack at just the right moment, which has a generous window of opportunity. It is very satisfying though, as your sword glows red hot at the impact, amid a shower of sparks. Blocks are not instant though, as you need time to get your sword moving in the right direction, so in some instances it's best to evade – which is not a FromSoftware style roll but a more subtle dodge of the shoulders, that still has a bonus for perfect timing. The fighting is excellent, with oni samurai splitting down the middle as you deliver a finishing blow and the ability to ping back arrows at whoever's firing them, like a lightsaber parrying blaster bolts. There's also an oni power gauge to keep an eye on, which allows you to wield two swords at once (something the real Musashi was famous for) and, it's implied, gain access to other abilities. None of the standard enemies in the demo really required that sort of help, although we did like that the monsters were already starting to get very weird, with a strong influence from the mythology of yōkai, including a weird flying face creature and a sort of armadillo style monster. There were a couple of dream vision style cut scenes, but we didn't really gather what was going on, other than oni were bullying and/or slaughtering the peasantry, at one point forcing an aged father to throw his pleading son down a crevasse. Although in general the action was very easy the demo ends with a duel with Ganryū Kojirō, who is also based on a famous swordsman of the period. The game treats him as an old rival, but as far as we're aware he's never been in the series before – perhaps he was in the Netflix show though. Either way, you seem to have a frenemy style relationship with him, with Ganryū complaining about the curse of immortality. More Trending This battle is where things get more serious, with the parrying, dodging, and stamina all becoming vitally important, since simply spamming him with light attacks will get you nowhere. We still found it relatively easy to parry and counter-attack though, which again was super-satisfying to get right and looks great on-screen. We'd go as far as to say it's one of the most enjoyable sword fights we've had in any recent video game. How the rest of the game will turn out we'll just have to wait and see (although we do have an interview scheduled with the developers at Gamescom). As with the original Onimusha games, the foundations of the gameplay and graphics have already been laid down by Resident Evil and with the engaging melee combat and fantastical samurai setting added on top, Onimusha is easily one of our most anticipated games of 2026. Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: TBAPublisher: CapcomDeveloper: CapcomRelease Date: 2026 Age Rating: TBA Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Resident Evil Requiem hands-on preview – the scariest Resi ever MORE: BioShock 4 in trouble as studio lays off staff amid leadership shake-up MORE: Best of Gamescom 2025 trailers – Resident Evil Requiem to Lego Batman
