The Best Mobile Puzzle Games

Fireproof Games shipped this on iPad in September 2012, and it is still the best argument for a touchscreen as a physical object. Pinching and twisting a locked puzzle box, then equipping the lens that shows Null markings you cannot otherwise see, does something a mouse cannot. It had sold over 1.4 million copies on iPad by March 2013. Every escape-room app I have played since is downstream of it.

Ustwo put this on iOS on 3 April 2014, and mobile puzzle design has been chasing it ever since. You steer Princess Ida through Escher staircases by twisting the architecture itself with a fingertip, and the crow people shuffling along the walkways are the only thing that reads as an enemy. It had sold 2.4 million copies by January 2015, a month in which ustwo said 95% of Android installs and 60% of iOS installs were unpaid.

Border case, and worth saying plainly: it arrived on iOS, Windows and Switch on the same day, 14 December 2017. It never reached a PC ahead of a phone, so it stays. Jason Roberts drew the whole thing alone across nearly six years, and sliding one image of the four-panel grid over another until a doorway lines up is the entire verb. It won the Visual Design Award at IndieCade in 2012, five years before it shipped.

Sirvo spent fourteen months on a game you can explain in one sentence: ones and twos merge into a three, and matching threes double from there. It reached iOS on 6 February 2014 and took an Apple Design Award that year. The swipe is the whole interface. Losing a board still feels like your own fault rather than the game's. Clones followed within weeks of launch, and not one of them got the feel.

Where the first game handed you one box, the sequel hands you a whole room: several puzzles sitting in different corners, and you move freely between them. That is a real loss of focus and a real gain in atmosphere, and I would not trade either. Out on iOS on 12 December 2013, past 1.2 million copies by March 2014, and nominated for two BAFTAs.

Physics puzzles got their mascot in October 2010. Slice the ropes in the right order, bounce the candy off a bubble, land it on Om Nom, and collect three stars on the way down. It was purchased one million times within nine days. ZeptoLab kept the original on phones, handhelds and browsers only, so there is no Steam page for it and the link goes to Wikipedia.

Announced onstage at Apple's developer conference on 5 June 2017 and out the same day, which was a stunt the game earned. Ro and her child move as one until the story splits them, and suddenly you are solving two halves of a single impossible building at once. Shorter and softer than the first, deliberately so, and the ending lands because of it rather than in spite of it.

Drawing roads with a fingertip is the correct way to play, which is why the Apple Arcade release on 19 September 2019 beat the desktop one by nearly two years. Houses feed shops of the same color; every week you pick one upgrade, and taking a motorway over a roundabout is where a run is won or lost. Wikipedia counts 24 playable cities as of March 2026.

Turning a stealth series into a board game sounds like a licensing accident. Agent 47 moves one node per turn along interconnected lines, every guard on the board moves when he does, and the art came from architectural models and dioramas. Square Enix Montréal put it on iOS on 17 April 2014. The only Steam listing is the 2016 Definitive Edition, covering PS4, Vita and desktop but never a phone, which tells you the design never needed a touchscreen.

Same studio, same turn-based grammar, richer raw material. You and the environment alternate: move once, and the snakes and giant spiders move once. Pulling levers shifts walls and platforms into fresh paths, which turns a Tomb Raider dungeon into something you can solve standing on a bus. Out on phones 27 August 2015, on Steam 4 December 2016, and it won best mobile or handheld game at The Game Awards 2015.

Capybara Games launched this on iOS on 19 September 2019, day one of Apple Arcade; the Windows build followed in May 2021. Jorj can only hack one color of monster per chain, but smash through ten and a Grindstone spawns that lets him switch color mid-run. Three ability slots of unlockable powers wrap the puzzle in a treadmill, which is what holds it down here. Edge named it the best mobile game of 2019.

GungHo's orb-matching puzzle-RPG was the first mobile title in history to gross $1 billion, and the mechanic that earned it is dragging a single orb around the board for up to five seconds while combos cascade behind you. The dungeon waves wrapped around that drag are most of the game, which is what puts it down here. Out in 2012 for iOS, Android and Amazon Fire only, no PC build, no Steam page, so the link is Wikipedia.

Big Duck Games built the whole thing on numberlink puzzles and made them work on a small screen in June 2012. You join same-colored dots with pipes that cannot cross, and you have to fill every square, which is the rule that stops it being a doodle. Then the paid packs arrive. More than 100 million downloads by 2022, on phones and tablets only, never on Steam, hence Wikipedia.