Mobile gaming used to be a bit of a joke, a crude scattering of rudimentary time wasters played on glorified pocket calculators. Then the iPhone came along and shook the whole business up for the better - as these best iPhone games prove.

Nowadays some mobile games rival their console and PC cousins for sophistication and depth.

Of course, there’s also an awful lot of rubbish on the App Store. The rise to prominence of free to play mechanics hasn’t necessarily been good for the industry. But the following titles remain shining beacons of what the iPhone can achieve as a gaming platform.

Here are our picks...

if you want more choice, head to our 10 best iPhone games list.

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5. Threes!

Threes! is a true App Store legend, having ushered in a whole new sub-genre of mobile puzzlers - not to mention a fair few inferior clones. The idea is to swipe on a 4x4 grid to squish together adjacent identical numbers, then do the same with the doubled up results.

Repeat until the numbers grow too monstrous (quite literally, given the art style) to match. Then start the whole thing all over again. Few iPhone games have aged as gracefully as Threes!

4. Donut County

Some six years in the making, Donut County is one of the most lovingly crafted, weirdly uplifting, and just plain lovely iPhone games around. It’s all about hoovering up everyday objects using a roving hole, which in turn expands to allow you to swallow up even bigger objects. And people. And houses.

Each level is a virtual playlet of unexpected chain reactions and delightful Easter eggs. Stitching all of it together is a charmingly written story all about mischievous racoons and wanton gentrification. Like we said, it’s weird.

3. Super Mario Run

Super Mario Run hasn’t been the most successful of Nintendo’s mobile games to date. Thanks to a divisive premium pricing system, it famously fell short of the company’s expectations. But we’d argue that Nintendo’s first mobile game remains its best.

The Japanese console giant has somehow managed to distil the pure essence of Mario into a bite-sized mobile format. While there are plenty of one-finger auto-running platformers out there, none play with as much depth or tactile joy as Nintendo’s effort.

2. Clash Royale

It’s difficult to overstate the impact Clash Royale made when it landed on the App Store in 2016. Here was a game that took the core ingredients of the popular MOBA genre (essentially small-scale online real time strategy scraps) and made it accessible to a more casual mobile crowd.

It does this by adding card battler and tower defence elements, which make it way more intuitive to send out your units to run the lanes and topple your opponent’s castle.

1. Monument Valley 2

Monument Valley 2 is one of those rare video games that has managed to achieve true breakout success. It’s the kind of title even non-gamers will play, and which ends up being referenced on TV shows and in newspapers.

Part of this success is because of the game’s stunningly unique isometric art style, any screenshot of which would make for a beautiful wallpaper. But it’s also down to Monument Valley 2’s ingenious, twisting, Escher-inspired puzzles and its emotionally rich storyline.

HEAD TO SHORTLIST.COM FOR EVEN MORE ESSENTIAL IPHONE GAMES TO DOWNLOAD