Honorable mention: Timberman – It’s a challenging quick in & out arcade game that you’ll probably want to play multiple times to beat high scores. Great retro inspired art style. 

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#8 – Run Sackboy Run!

Fun endless runner with great LittleBigPlanet style visuals and smooth gameplay. Sackboy still has the floaty jump that’s in the LittleBigPlanet console games, but after playing a couple of times I became familiar with it.

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#7 – Crossy Road

Another fun quick in & out game that’s challenging. The art style is very neat, and I like how bright & vivid the colors are. Great take on the classic Frogger game. Neat gameplay that makes you think quickly.

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#6 – Monument Valley

It’s a neat experience based artistic game. It’s kind of short, but I appreciate the work that went into this game because it looks like a lot of attention to detail was used while developing it. Excellent sound design.

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#5 – Leo’s Fortune

I’m a big fan of retro art styles, and various other minimalistic art styles, but I also really appreciate good games with highly detailed graphics. Leo’s Fortune is an exquisite mobile platformer with appealing graphics.

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#4 – Framed

Framed is a unique narrative puzzle game. I don’t play a ton of mobile games, but I have a sense there’s not much else like this game out there. I’ve never seen or played anything like it. It’s an innovative game, and I totally respect that.

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#3 – Lyne

Lyne is a great challenging puzzle game that makes me feel slightly smarter after I play it sometimes, but it’s somehow kind of relaxing too. It was officially released at the end of 2013, and I didn’t discover it until 2014, so it deserves to be on this list.

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#2 – Threes!

Threes! is awesome. It’s a challenging puzzle game with a simple gameplay mechanic that feels really natural. Great audio, charming characters, and the overall design is ace. Easy to pick up and play, and it always leaves me with a feeling that I should have spent more time with it after exiting.

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#1 – Trials Frontier

Trials Frontier is the mobile game that I played the most in 2014. I’m a big fan of Trials HD and Trials Evolution, haven’t played Fusion yet, but I was skeptical of Frontier because I wasn’t sure how it would control on a touch screen. While I prefer Trials with a controller, Trials Frontier on the iPad was still incredibly fun. The free to play aspect of it never really bothered me. When I play mobile games it’s usually only for a few minutes at a time so I didn’t mind waiting on this or that. I actually make sure to watch ads on it to support the developers, which also gives me a gem, so win win. Awesome gameplay, excellent visuals, nice sound, and the updates have been great.