Fortnite

Fortnite arrived on mobile phones a year after launching on consoles and PC, bringing with it the same recipe that made it a phenomenon – a hundred players on one map, a shrinking safe zone, and the ability to build practically anything out of hastily gathered wood, brick, and metal. Epic Games translated building onto the touchscreen using simplified buttons for quickly putting up a wall, ramp, or floor, and added an edit mode for modifying already-built structures, which made the game accessible even to people who could never manage the building combos on keyboard and mouse, though professional players still preferred a controller connected via Bluetooth. Progress, skins, and the seasonal battle pass are also shared across all platforms, so a player can start on their phone and continue on console without losing anything.

The mobile version has a more turbulent history than most of the competition, though. In 2020 Apple pulled it from the App Store over a dispute about payments outside the Apple ecosystem, and the game was missing from iPhones entirely for a long time before it returned, at least in Europe, thanks to a change in the rules for alternative stores. On Android it likewise disappeared from Google Play and worked only through Epic Games' own app. This uncertainty around availability makes Fortnite on mobile a special case – the game itself doesn't fundamentally differ from the console version, but whether you can actually install it on your phone right now depends on your region and the current state of the dispute between Epic Games and the app store operators.

Why play: For battle royale fans who want the same experience as on console, but need to reckon with installation on both iPhone and Android being more complicated than for an ordinary game because of the payment disputes.