What are the best PC games you can play on mobile? Well, if you had asked that question a decade ago, there wouldn’t have been many for us to recommend. Today, however, mobile phones are able to provide gaming libraries that stand proud alongside their PC and console siblings, and many of the best PC games have made their way onto our portable phones over the years.
Of course, your opinion of what constitutes the best PC games on mobile will be skewed by your individual tastes as a gamer, and with this in mind, we’ve tried to choose eight games that reflect a number of different genres and developers. We hope that at least one of the entries on this list will bring a smile to your face.
There’s also one game that is conspicuous by its absence: Minecraft. Don’t get us wrong, we love mining, avoiding Creepers, building Nether portals, and making cool Minecraft builds, but everyone and their wolf knows that Minecraft is on practically every platform, so we thought we’d shine the spotlight onto some other iconic games that deserve your attention.
The best PC games that you can play on mobile are:
Hero Wars
Hero Wars is a game that many gamers will already be familiar with due to its relentless marketing campaigns – most of us have seen the adverts with a hero in a dilemma, and you have to open doors in the right order so he can get gold while avoiding enemies or lava (or some combination), but actually, that puzzle game is actually only a small mini-game in Hero Wars, and the game itself is something much more.
The main premise is that you’re building up a team of heroes so that you can take them through a series of dungeons. The more you play, the more you unlock, and the more opportunity you have to enhance your team and unlock new heroes. They all fight in their own unique ways, so it’s important to be strategic and pick out just the right team. The cycle goes on and on; as your team gets bigger and stronger, you’ll find yourself getting more and more addicted.
Elvenar
If you are someone who enjoys city-building games, strategy, and fantasy, then you’re going to love Elvenar. When you start playing Elvenar, you’re asked to decide between humans and elves – choosing elves will see you building a civilization that maintains strong connections with nature, whereas choosing humans will… Well, you know how humans build their civilizations.
You start with a small settlement but slowly expand further and further until you have a sprawling fantasy kingdom. Of course, as you grow, you’ll eventually clash with other communities, which leads to battles and wars. It’s a game you can easily lose yourself in for hours and hours, so it’s especially cool that it’s free to play.
Forge of Empires
Don’t worry; this whole listing isn’t going to be filled with strategy games, but we couldn’t resist talking about Forge of Empires too. Created by InnoGames (just like Elvenar), this free-to-play game is strongly rooted in history and sees you building a small settlement back in the Stone Age, then growing and expanding it throughout the many ages of real-world history.
Your technology and architecture change and evolve as you pass through the many different eras. Forge of Empires kicks off in the Stone Age, followed by the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Early Middle Ages, and so on. The game even takes you into the distant future so you can find out whether hoverboards and flying cars ever took off. Watching your own civilization grow across such a massive expanse of time is a special experience quite unlike any other.
Play Forge of Empires for free.
Magic: The Gathering Arena
Magic: The Gathering is one of the most popular and beloved trading card games of all time. With Magic: The Gathering Arena, this iconic game has been able to establish itself within the PC and mobile gaming spheres as well.
Essentially, this is a digital, free-to-play version of the card game. You can play against computer players, or you can even play against human beings, all the while building up your own virtual collection of MTG cards. If you’ve always wanted to get into MTG, this could well be the best way for you to do it.
Play Magic: The Gathering Arena for free.
Goddess of Victory: Nikke
Those who play anime games with on-rail shooter mechanics will likely find a lot to like in Goddess of Victory: Nikke. As the commander of humanity’s last hope against an invading horde of mindless machines, you and your troops, otherwise known as Nikkes, must defend the remaining strongholds by completing missions. You’re heavily rewarded for your efforts, which you can then use to unlock new Nikkes or upgrade your existing squad.
As well as being a free PC game, Goddess of Victory: Nikke has all progress made through PC and mobile clients sync up with each other nicely. The advantage to this is that, on PC, the game gives you a much larger playing field, meaning you can see enemies and their weak spots much sooner with the PC client. However, the game is entirely playable on mobile devices, so you can still get the full experience on the go.
Play Goddess of Victory: Nikke for free.
The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup
For this next entry, we wanted to take a look at an indie classic that deserves a bit more love. The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup sees you helping a strange little clockwork dog through buildings and locations torn apart by a war. It’s a game that absolutely oozes charm, and is more than a little bit creepy too.
The game was developed by Gory Detail, an indie studio established by Chris Seavor, the lead creative force behind the cult N64 classic, Conker’s Bad Fur Day. If you’ve ever played that game and wanted something that captures that same, very distinctive feeling (particularly of its later levels) then you should definitely get Rusty Pup on your PC or iPhone.
Runescape
This iconic game needs no introduction, but for those who are not in the know, Runescape is one of the trailblazers of the MMORPG genre. Released back in 2001, Runescape laid the groundwork for many of the classics that followed, and, to this very day, it remains one of the best of its kind.
One of the appeals of Runescape is that you aren’t forced onto a specific story path, you’re dropped into the world and left to make your own way. With a sprawling world to explore, filled with countless quests for you to tackle, it’s easy to see how Runescape has been able to stay relevant for over twenty years now. It’s compatibility with both mobile and PC also means that you can keep the same file going across your different devices without a hitch.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Of course we weren’t going to get through this list without including any FPS games, although technically PUBG lets you play it in third-person too. For those who have never played PUBG, the easiest point of comparison is Fortnite, in that both games see a huge group of up to 100 people coming together for a massive shootout on a perpetually shrinking map.
What sets it apart from Fortnite though, is that there’s an overall grittier feel to it. While Fortnite sees giant bananas walking around with Spider-Man, PUBG opts for a realistic art style, and a more tactical type of gameplay. If you’ve always wanted to get into battle royale games, this could be a good place to start, whether on phone or PC.
The Sims Mobile
The Sims has been among the most popular PC games since the original was released back in 2000, and The Sims Mobile is the latest iteration of this popular life-sim. Really, mobile phones make perfect sense as a platform for the series, as it makes it easy to check in with your Sims on your lunch break, during your commute, or whenever else you get a free moment and don’t want to start up your gaming PC.
This iteration of The Sims is actually free-to-play, which means that your Sim has a limited amount of energy for you to use each day, stopping it from turning into a time sink-hole and instead making it a pleasant daily de-stresser. Of course, you can always pay to get more time out of it. Either way, The Sims Mobile lets you create your Sim, design your home, fall in love, get a job, host parties, and do everything else that fans love about the series.
Among Us
You could say that this list would be a little sus without Among Us on it. If you’ve not yet played Among Us, it sees you and a group of other players on a gloomy spaceship with the knowledge that one of you is a murderer. You need to figure out who the killer is and then vote them off the ship – if you are the murderer, then you need to cover your tracks, because you don’t want to be ejected into space.
As you can imagine, it’s a game that is especially fun when played with a group of friends, but even if you’re playing against strangers on the internet, it’s still very easy to become enthralled with the game.
And those are our eight choices for the best PC games that you can also play on mobile. Have you played any of them before? Will you be playing any of them based on our recommendation? We hope we’ve been able to bring a new game to your attention.
Find the best gaming phone here. Check out our guides on the best free Steam games and the best online games for more game recommendations.