5 Best Smartphone Games According to Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2024

From this material, you can find out which smartphone games were awarded the title of the best according to Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2024.

A little about Mobile Games Awards

An annual award organized and presented by Pocket Gamer, a website dedicated to portable gaming, in particular mobile games and technology. The award is given in several nominations at once, such as Game of the Year, Best Narrative, Best Developer, and many others. Awards are given not only for mobile gaming, but also for the best technology, publishing, advertising, audio and video achievements.

Now let's move on to the list of the best games in different nominations.

Monopoly Go

Based on the original board game, Monopoly Go received the title of Game of the Year. It was developed by Scopely and released in April 2023 for Android and iOS. The game was created in collaboration with Hasbro, which, by the way, currently owns the rights to the original Monopoly.

In essence, this is a kind of electronic reimagining of the timeless board classic, in which the player must perform actions similar to the original, roll dice, move along the playing field, buying up real estate, accumulating wealth and try not to go bankrupt.

In more than a year, the game has received a lot of reviews, both positive and not so much. However, the numbers speak for themselves - by May 2023, the game had been downloaded more than 20 million times, and by March 2024, the game had brought in $2 billion for the developers.

Honkai: Star Rail

Winner in the Best Storytelling nomination. Star Rail is the fourth game in the Honkai series, developed by the Chinese company miHoYo (known for Genshin Impact). The game debuted in the spring of 2023 on PC, Android, iOS.

The plot starts on a space station, where two treasure hunters, Kafka and Silver Wolf, penetrate, looking for a powerful artifact Stellarion. At the same time, the player is quickly immersed in active combat, as the station is attacked by the mysterious Legion of Antimatter. Naturally, the heroes need to repel the attack. After which they get on the star express, made in the form of a steampunk locomotive, and go on a journey through different worlds. The primary goal is to find and destroy those very stellarions.

In terms of gameplay, we have a fairly familiar game for the JRPG genre, in which we actively search for a lot of different items, artifacts, regularly enter into confrontation with different enemies and complete quests. The combat system is turn-based. Heroes can use various abilities and upgrade their skills.

Star Rail is based on Eastern fantasy, with elements of steampunk and sci-fi, which is reflected in the visual design of locations, characters and objects.

SpongeBob Adventures: In a Jam!

The game won the People's Choice Award. In this nomination, the game is chosen by user voting on the Pocket Gamer portal. During the voting, SpongeBob beat many competitors, including Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, Football Manager 2024 and others.

The game was developed by Whaleapp for Android and iOS and appeared in early access in February 2023.

The plot is quite simple and typical for the entire SpongeBob universe. Plankton, once again obsessed with the idea of stealing the secret formula for Krabby Patties, caused a real disaster in Bikini Bot. Namely, he flooded the entire city with jellyfish jam. SpongeBob and his friend Patrick have to clean the city from jam and restore it to its original form. The game also features characters known from the animated series - Mr. Krabs, Squidward, snail Gary and others.

The gameplay consists of completing tasks, collecting various resources that need to be spent on further progress and various actions. Tasks are most often associated with cleaning certain places in Bikini Bottom, harvesting and planting crops, creating Krabby Patties, constructing buildings, etc.

Hero Wars: Alliance

The game won the nomination "Best AppGallery Game". This refers to the Huawei AppGallery platform, designed to distribute mobile games and applications. At the moment, Hero Wars: Alliance on the platform holds the third position among RPGs, yielding to the games Solo Leveling: Arise and Genshin Impact.

Hero Wars was developed by Nexters and, unlike previous winners, launched back in 2016. In 2023, the company divided the project into two parts - the browser-based Hero Wars: Dominion Era and Hero Wars: Alliance for Android and iOS.

What is HW? This is a character-collecting MMORPG where we collect heroes of certain classes and progress through the story, fighting enemies. The story revolves around the fantasy world of Dominion, which is trying to resist the invasion of legions of demons led by the archdemon Marax. The player will have to assemble an impressive team of Dominion warriors who will confront the villains. The heroes are divided into several categories typical for the genre: tanks, mages, healers, support fighters, and others.

The main game modes consist of the Campaign, in which the player will progress through the story, and the following modes: Arena, Tower, Expedition, and others.

In addition to battles, the player can receive various upgrades, rewards, find artifacts, and loot.

Wuthering Waves

Winner of the Best Audio and Visual Achievement nomination. Beat several competitors, such as Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis. Many players and critics have acknowledged that the graphics and visual effects are quite impressive, which is what brought the project success. The game is often compared to Genshin Impact due to the strong similarity of many gameplay elements.

Players will encounter an open world here that needs to be explored, while fighting opponents, including both simple mobs and mini-bosses. In the vast space, you can find many artifacts, chests, solve puzzles, find and complete story and side quests.

The plot of the game is post-apocalyptic and tells about a world recovering from a global catastrophe. Moreover, the anomalies that occurred gave birth to mysterious creatures Tacet Duscord, who are intelligent and can change their forms. We will play as a protagonist who has lost his memory and is trying to figure out what is happening in the world around him and remember who he really is.

The game was released not so long ago, in May 2024, and is just gaining a fan base. So far, they note the dynamic and vivid fights, the open world and a fairly large number of diverse events in it.

Honorable Mentions

In addition to the five best games in different nominations, there were projects that received the status of "Honorable Mentions". Let's look at some of them.

Star Wars: Hunters

A fresh team shooter from Zynga. It started in June 2024 and is currently available for Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS. The player chooses a customizable character from different classes (Tank, Damage, Support Fighter) and assembles a team of three players for battles in the arena.

Each character has a certain set of skills that can be upgraded. Several maps are available, including the Ewok village, an outpost on the planet Tatooine, the Death Star and others. According to the chronology, the events of the game unfold immediately after the fall of the Galactic Empire.

Hunters has been in development for quite some time, having started back in 2018. Overall, the game received very average reviews. Two months after its release, the number of downloads was over one million on both Android and iOS.

Honor of Kinds

This is a MOBA with classic gameplay for the genre, which received an honorable mention in the Best Game category of AppGallery.

Choose a character (tank, mage, support, assassin), a battle mode (one on one, three on three, five on five) and go to victory. To get it, you need to destroy the enemy base or crystal.

The game was created by TiMi Studio Group and released by Tencent Games in 2015. During its existence, HoK has been the subject of various controversies regarding its gameplay and negative impact on younger players.

Nevertheless, the number of downloads and revenue from the game grew every year, and in 2021, the project took second place in the world in terms of money earned ($ 2.8 billion). In 2018, the developers signed a contract with Lionel Messi to use his image as a rare skin for one of the game's characters.

"Another game that received honorable mentions in the same category was the world-famous PUBG Mobile, which is a mobile version of PUBG: Battlegrounds. In 2023, it was the second-highest-grossing game on AppGallery".

Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery: Beyond Hogwarts

Beyond Hogwarts is actually a major expansion to the Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery game, which was released in 2018. The original game took place before Harry Potter arrived at Hogwarts. The player needs to create a customizable character and shape his life path, making him a real wizard. To do this, you need to complete tasks, attend lectures, learn spells, make friends with other students, and much more.

The fate of the created character depends on the system of constant player choices throughout the game. The game was positioned as an RPG due to the ability to level up the character, and the visual part resembled a point-and-click system and a graphic novel. The project was heavily criticized for some inconvenient mechanics and highly intrusive microtransactions.

Beyond Hogwarts continued the story of a Hogwarts graduate who now has to settle down, find a place to live, and find a job.

Overall, the game didn't stray too far from the original in terms of mechanics and gameplay. The project received an honorable mention in the Best Narrative category for creating a relatively good atmosphere of life at Hogwarts.

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile and Squad Busters

Both games competed for the People's Choice Award. As mentioned above, SpongeBob Adventures won, and the mentioned projects received honorable mentions.

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile was released by Activision in March 2024 as a mobile version of the shooter Call of Duty: Warzone. The features and gameplay mechanics remained similar to the original game.

Squad Busters is another young game from the Finnish studio Supercell, which is better known for such projects as Clash of Clans and Brawl Stars. SB is designed in approximately the same style and is a MOBA in which the player needs to assemble a squad and destroy the enemy.

We got acquainted with the games recognized as the best in different categories according to Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2024. It is noticeable that almost all of them are online games that have a fairly large audience around the world, high download and sales figures.