A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Foxconn Technology Group and better known as Foxconn, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer with its headquarters in Tucheng, New Taipei City, Taiwan. In 2010, it was the world's largest provider of electronics manufacturing services and the third-largest technology company by revenue. While headquartered in Taiwan, the company is the largest private employer in Mainland China and one of the largest employers worldwide. Terry Gou is the company founder and former chairman.
Pocket God is a game developed by Bolt Creative, in which the player manipulates an island and its inhabitants. It was released for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch on January 9, 2009, and released for Verizon Wireless on September 1, 2010, Android on December 1, 2010, and Windows Phone on December 4, 2010. The Facebook version was released December 23, 2010.
Apple Inc. is a multinational American technology company which sells consumer electronics that have been claimed by critics to combine stolen and/or purchased designs that it claims are its own original creations. Criticism of Apple includes allegations of unethical business practices such as anti-competitive behavior, rash litigation, dubious tax tactics, the use of sweatshop labor, misleading warranties and insufficient data security, and concerns about environmental destruction. Additionally, it has been criticized for its alleged collaboration with U.S. surveillance program PRISM.
Where's My Water? is a puzzle video game developed by American studio Creature Feep and published by Disney Mobile, a subsidiary of Disney Interactive Studios. Released for desktop web browsers and devices using iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 operating systems, the game requires players to route a supply of water to an alligator. Where's My Water? has been praised for its gameplay and its graphical style, with special recognition of its lead character, Swampy, the first original Disney character for a mobile game, voiced by actor, Justin T. Bowler. The game has inspired multiple spin-offs including: Where's My Perry?, Where's My Mickey?, Where's My Water? featuring XYY and Where's My Valentine?. This game was also released on Microsoft Windows in 2011. More mobile versions continued to be released through 2013.
Angry Birds is a 2009 casual puzzle video game developed by Rovio Entertainment. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first released for iOS and Maemo devices starting in December 2009. Since that time, over 12 million copies of the game have been purchased from the iOS App Store, which prompted the developer to design versions for other touchscreen-based smartphones, most notably Android, Symbian, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry 10 devices. The series has since expanded to include titles for dedicated video game consoles and PCs. A sequel, Angry Birds 2, was released in July 2015 for iOS and Android. Around April 2019, the game was removed from the App Store.
Fruit Ninja is a video game developed by Halfbrick. It was released April 21, 2010 for iPod Touch and iPhone devices, July 12, 2010 for the iPad, September 17, 2010 for Android OS devices. It was released for Windows Phone, on December 22, 2010. Also, in March 2011, versions for Samsung's Bada and Nokia's Symbian began to be distributed on their respective application channels. Just prior to E3 2011 Fruit Ninja Kinect, which utilizes the Kinect peripheral, was released for the Xbox 360 on August 10, 2011. Fruit Ninja was also released for Windows 8, on June 7, 2012. Versions with alternative names exist, such as Fruit Ninja HD on the iPad, Fruit Ninja THD for Nvidia Tegra 2–based Android devices, Fruit Ninja VR for HTC Vive and PlayStation 4, and an arcade version called Fruit Ninja FX. In the game, the player must slice fruit that is thrown into the air by swiping the device's touch screen with their finger(s) or in the case of the Xbox 360 version, the player's arms and hands. It features multiple gameplay modes, leaderboards and multiplayer.
Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a real-time strategy tower defense video game by 11 bit studios. The game was initially announced in late 2010, and released on April 8, 2011 for Windows and Mac OS X.
The Amazon Appstore for Android is an app store for the Android operating system operated by Amazon.com. It is the package app store for Amazon's Fire OS operating system, used on all of Amazon Fire tablets, including the Fire HD products. The Amazon Appstore provides official apps for the Fire OS tablets, instead of the Google Play app store used on other Android devices.
Google Play, also branded as the Google Play Store and formerly Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating system and its derivatives as well as Chrome OS, allowing users to browse and download applications developed with the Android software development kit (SDK) and published through Google. Google Play also serves as a digital media store, offering music, books, movies, and television programs. Content that has been purchased on Google Play Movies & TV and Google Play Books can be accessed on a web browser, and through the Android and iOS apps.
Dungeon Village is a simulation video game developed and published by Kairosoft for the Android and iOS operating systems. It was released on March 2, 2012 for Android and iOS. The player is placed in control of a role-playing video game's town, and tasks the player with expanding the town and attracting heroes to live in it. It received mostly positive reviews from critics.
Plague Inc. is a real-time strategy simulation video game, developed and published by UK-based independent games studio Ndemic Creations. The player creates and evolves a pathogen in an effort to annihilate the human population with a deadly pandemic. The game uses an epidemic model with a complex and realistic set of variables to simulate the spread and severity of the plague. It was released on 26 May 2012 for iOS and Microsoft Windows, 4 October 2012 for Android and 2015 for Windows Phone.
Star Command, is a video game developed initially for iOS, then later Android, and eventually PCs. The game is a space exploration and combat simulation game, with players acting as captain of a starship who is tasked with exploring the galaxy and defending his crew from hostile aliens.
Censorship by Apple refers to Apple Inc.'s removal, omission, or disruption of the spread of content or information from its services or subsidiaries, such as the iTunes Store and the App Store (iOS), in order to comply with Apple's company policies, legal demands, or various government censorship laws.
Ridiculous Fishing is a mobile fishing video game where players use motion and touch controls to catch fish and subsequently shoot them out of the sky for cash. The game is known for its developers' battle against a cloned version of their game released by another company. The game was developed and published by Vlambeer—Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman—and released for iOS on March 13, 2013, and later that year for Android.
Flappy Bird is a mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen, under his game development company .Gears. The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them. Nguyen created the game over the period of several days, using a bird protagonist that he had designed for a cancelled game in 2012.
Crossy Road is an arcade video game released on 20 November 2014. It was developed and published by Hipster Whale, with the name and concept of the game playing on the age old joke "Why did the chicken cross the road?" The game has been described as "endless Frogger."
Godville is a mobile and desktop browser zero-player role-playing video game developed by Mikhail Platov and Dmitry Kosinov. It was released as a Russian website in 2007 and as a mobile game in English on July 18, 2010. In the game, the player controls a character known as the god, who interacts with a character called the hero. The hero progresses in the video game without interaction with the player's god character. Reception to the game was positive, with the focus on its gameplay.
Minecraft Earth was an augmented reality sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios and published by Xbox Game Studios. A spin-off of the video game Minecraft, it was first announced in May 2019, and was available on Android and iOS. The game was free-to-play, and was first released in early access on 17 October 2019. The game received its final update in January 2021 and officially shut down on 30 June 2021.
The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of handsets had matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, however mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.
