5 new mobile games to try this week – July 18th, 2024

Harness the beauty and power of water in Roia, a relaxing puzzler where you need to guide the flow of a would-be river as it trickles from a mountaintop to the great big ocean below. Presented with low-poly visuals and minimalist UI, the meditative title offers simple puzzles where your main goal is to overcome obstacles to get to where you need to go.

Of course, you can’t always predict where water will flow, but you can direct its path to disrupt innocent sheep or flood the streets on mountainous paths just to be a nuisance to random commuters. You can’t control this awesome force of nature, after all.

City-builders are a dime a dozen these days, but how often can you build your own historical city set in ancient Japan from scratch? Heian City Story will have you managing everything from constructing your town square to organising moon viewings to keep your residents happy during the day.

Prettify your teahouses and temples, or keep morale high with wrestling matches and horse races in charming pixel art. When night falls, however, you’ll also have to defend your home from nasty evil spirits using adorable bunny warriors to keep the peace – all in a day’s work when you want your city to be remembered throughout history.

The Asphalt franchise is known for gorgeous vehicles and high-octane action on the tracks, but Asphalt Legends Unite takes things up a notch by adding co-op game modes you can enjoy with your online buddies anywhere in the world – and with full cross-platform functionality to boot.

While you can always race to the finish line in the classic Career mode, this time around, you can play your own version of Cops and Robbers with the new Team Pursuit content among other game modes. This comes on top of enhanced visuals and an improved game engine for a racing experience that truly looks and feels stunning on your mobile device.

Reshape the world to suit your every whim in Spirit of the Island, a relaxing new sim where you can enjoy a fresh start on life across a lush archipelago. Get to know the locals and strive to make the island a spanking new tourist destination while discovering your own past along the way.

Now, while you can do everything from farming and harvesting to fishing and animal husbandry, it can sometimes get pretty lonely at the end of the day. Thankfully, you don’t have to go through it alone with the game’s two-player co-op mode, because the road to a tropical paradise is always better when you’ve got a friend by your side.

Don’t let the psychedelic colours and the cutesy creatures fool you – Flying Ones can give your hand-eye coordination a good workout despite its seemingly simple goal. All you really have to do is catch similar colours as soon as they pop up, but when things start to speed up with every new level, you’ll have to make sure that your reflexes are up to the task if you don’t want to lose all your lives.

This casual title features global leaderboards you can climb as well as daily challenges you can take on to prove your worth, with adorable axolotl-looking creatures that’ll accompany you throughout your colour-catching journey.