Archero

Archero popularized a principle that later appeared in dozens of clones: the character shoots automatically at the nearest enemy, while the player just slides a finger across the screen and dodges projectiles in small enclosed arenas, where death comes as easily from a player's own carelessness as from being outnumbered. Habby built the game on a simple progression between rooms, where after clearing each floor the player picks one of three upgrades – attack, shield, an extra bouncing arrow, poison trails, and dozens of others – gradually assembling a build capable of beating ever-stronger bosses and entire seasonal campaigns. Visually, Archero is sparse and simple, but one-finger control works perfectly naturally on a touchscreen, and this accessibility is one of the reasons the roguelike auto-shooter genre on mobile spread so quickly and became its own category of games.

The free-to-play model here is fairly aggressive, though: energy limits the number of attempts per day, progress is slowed by difficulty walls designed to entice purchases of gems for real money, and ads offering double rewards are practically everywhere between floors. Over time, seasonal battle passes, collecting and upgrading heroes through random crates, and further layers of monetization were added, so what was originally a clean and elegant gameplay loop gradually became a business built more on the player's patience – or wallet – than anything else, which many reviewers criticized.

Why play it: For anyone who wants to try the game that spawned an entire auto-shooter subgenre and inspired many followers, though be prepared for tough monetization and artificially slowed progress without paying.