Embracing Mobile Gaming
Playing on the go away from consoles!
I have to admit when I got my first smartphone (the iPhone 4) in 2011, I wasn’t the biggest fan of mobile gaming. I started playing Game Dev Story, Angry Birds, and few other games. However, I felt the games lacked the depth of console and PC games since you only had a screen to swipe on instead of a controller which limited what you could do. I also got Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions which was based off the PSP port of the game and was a laggy mess to play and control on a phone.
The biggest problem I had with mobile gaming was how fast it would drain the battery.
I remember getting extremely good at Game Dev Story to the point where I was making millions in the game only to have my battery at 10% or lower when I was done playing. That’s how long I played after work on some nights!
Now if only I can get that success in my real life game dev efforts!
I played a couple more mobile games in the 2010’s like Flappy Bird, Mario Run, Mario Kart, and a few others, but mobile games were never enough to get me away from the consoles. When the pandemic happened in 2020, I just stopped playing mobile games altogether.
In 2025, my youngest sister’s fiancee’ convinced me to try out Vampire Survivors on the iPhone as he would play it on his commute to work every morning. I always loved Vampire Survivors on the Nintendo Switch and PC, but never thought of playing it on my phone.
I decided to purchase it along with the DLC and realized how well it actually played on my phone and got addicted all over again. This time on an iPhone 11 Pro. Also, the fact that you can upload your Vampire Survivors saves to the cloud to play on any other console was a bonus too.
However, I still ran into the same problem with my phone rapidly losing battery power and overheating. I would end long Vampire Survivors sessions on my phone only to have my battery at 30% and overheating once again.
It was fine since I was having so much fun.
Later on, I downloaded and purchased Balatro which I also loved on the Nintendo Switch and it also runs extremely well on my phone. For some reason, I tend to have better luck on the phone version of Balatro than the Switch version. I also downloaded Magic The Gathering Arena, Hearthstone, Warcraft Rumble, and alot more.
Was I finally getting addicted once again to mobile gaming?
Microtransactions and Predatory Practices
I started to play SimCity Buildit on my phone at the start of the year in 2026, but eventually quit. I’ve always been a massive fan of the SimCity series up to SimCity 4 and I bought the SimCity 2013 reboot on day one and found it to be absolute garbage. I decided to move onto the the much better Cities Skylines series on PC when it came to city builders and also got it on the Nintendo Switch.
Since strategy games were perfect for mobile gaming on the go, I decided to give SimCity Buildit a chance and found it quite fun for a while…..
Until….
In order to build things faster and more efficiently, I needed to fork over real money to get anywhere in the game. Paying real money for anything in SimCity Buildit is completely optional, but it’ll take forever to get anything done. If you wanted to get certain materials, you would have to wait hours on end unless you spent real money to speed things up. One of the good things is that if you just decided to wait the hours needed to wait for your materials to be made, you can close the game and come back a few hours later to see all of your materials finished and you can restart production…
And wait MORE hours.
I got to the point where I upgraded my city too fast and was facing massive power, water, sewer, and waste disposal issues. The regular money I was getting in my city was coming in too slow unless I paid real money to speed it all up. My city complaints were increasing and my population was rapidly decreasing, leaving many of my buildings abandoned, forcing me to pay for repairs.
I decided to finally quit and uninstall the game because there was no way I was gonna pay real money to speed up my material production in SimCity Buildit. I would have gladly paid $20 for a premium no-ad version without crappy microtransactions just to get ahead in the game.
EA greed at it’s finest.
I decided to purchase the far superior “Pocket City 2” and been having an absolute blast with it. No microtransactions, far better material production and city progress, and you can even EXPLORE your own city in a 3rd person view!
Getting back in the mobile game!
While I do prefer console gaming the most, I am out and about alot. Especially since I have to go into the office at my day job 2 days a week. I still love reading comics and books on the go, but I also want to play more games and bringing my Nintendo Switch 2 in my pocket is unfeasible. So, my phone is the best option for a quick solution I can just take out of my pocket.
At the time of this writing in 2026, I still only have a measly iPhone 11 Pro that I got back in 2020 when it was brand new. Apple just announced this year that it will be cutting off support for the iPhone 11, so I’m more or less forced to upgrade to the iPhone 17. I don’t mind too much as I’ll have a more powerful phone with more space and processing power for games. Playing games on my iPhone 11 is a bit of a chore as games cause my phone to heat up and drain the battery more.
Certain games run alot slower on my iPhone 11 and I need a better phone to run games more smoothly. I’m lucky if I can even do a few hands in Balatro without the game slowing down and my phone heating up.
I’m excited to try out the Civilization games on mobile and I may even get a subscription to Apple Arcade to play games like The Oregon Trail and many more. I haven’t decided if I want a dedicated iPhone controller yet as it would take up more pocket space. I also plan to get a new iPad to play these games on a much larger screen.
I haven’t decided if I want to start doing mobile game dev as it’s an even more competitive market than consoles and PC. However, I do know some devs who have been relatively successful from it, so we’ll see.
I’m surprised with how much fun I’ve been having with mobile gaming from the end of 2025 and the start of 2026. I hope I will enjoy it even more once I get my new phone later this year!
