Shadowgun

Shadowgun was, in 2011, among the first mobile games to visually approach console and PC shooters - the Slovak studio Madfinger Games built the game on Unreal Engine 3 and demonstrated that a phone could handle dramatic lighting, detailed character models, and cinematic camera sequences that until then had belonged exclusively to major platforms. The story of mercenary John Shadowgun chasing a mad scientist inside a space fortress serves mainly as an excuse for a series of action shootouts, sci-fi settings, and boss fights.

The controls combine a virtual joystick for movement with a finger drag for aiming the camera, plus buttons for shooting and taking cover, which was a common solution for mobile shooters at the time of release, even though it can't quite match a classic gamepad - aiming precision remains somewhat slower than on a console. It was precisely the audiovisual side that set the game apart from the competition and convinced many players that mobile games could look like full-fledged titles.

Shadowgun became a proof of concept for Madfinger Games and paved the way for the more ambitious sequel Shadowgun Legends, with which the studio proved it could also build a larger online project on the same technical foundation. The short, linear campaign could be finished in a matter of hours, so the game functioned more as an effective showcase of the technical capabilities of phones of the time than as a title meant for long hours of play.

It is a paid game with no ads, a one-time purchase unlocks the entire single-player content with no further payments during play.

Why play: Suits players interested in the history of mobile gaming who want to see what the first wave of phone shooters aiming for console-level graphics looked like.