Best new mobile games on iOS and Android – January 2026 round-up

Red Dead Redemption, Cult Of The Lamb, and Planet Of Lana all come to mobile this month, along with an amazing free-to-play bargain.

January can feel pretty bleak. Christmas is over, the weather’s horrible, and it’s time to go back to work. Fortunately, this month’s mobile games should provide a fleeting distraction, with a coincidentally large number of console ports filling up the schedules.

This includes recent PlayStation 5 and PC hit Where Winds Meet, a Wuxia-flavoured free-to-play action role-player that works perfectly well on a touchscreen.

There are still some smartphone-only titles, though, such as the enjoyable Under Guild: Offence and the astonishingly generous Game Nest – Offline Games, in what is a very positive start to the year for mobile gaming.

Planet Of Lana

iOS & Android, £7.99 (Playdigious)

Robots invade a planet’s rural idyll, leaving you to fight back by solving traversal puzzles in this lovely looking 2D side-scroller, that’s at least as much about running through lush greenery and blue skies as it is about brain work.

To start with you won’t need much of that, since its puzzles take a long while to get taxing. They do eventually get more interesting, although also fairly repetitive, relying on a small number of frequently reused mechanics.

Planet Of Lana works every bit as well on a touchscreen as it did on console, although the version tested suffers a game breaking bug that stalls progress about 70% of the way through the story. It’s an enjoyable, if shallow and derivative, ramble but worth waiting for a patch before finding out for yourself.

Score: 6/10

Red Dead Redemption

iOS & Android, £39.99 or free for Netflix subscribers (Rockstar Games)

Rockstar’s stately paced epic makes its way to mobile, telling the tale of John Marston, an outlaw turned reluctant lawman, after the government kidnaps his wife and son, holding them hostage to force him to hunt down former members of his gang,

It’s brilliantly scripted and acted, and a great port, even if the complexity of its controls on a small screen makes it all too easy to put an accidental bullet into harmless bystanders – which makes a controller all but essential.

It’s tricky to know whether to drop £40 on a mobile game, which may or may not be supported in two years’ time, but Rockstar has a far more consistent record than most, not to mention Netflix subscribers can play this entirely free of charge.

Score: 8/10

Cult Of The Lamb

iOS, included with Apple Arcade subscription (Devolver Digital)

Part base builder, part dungeon looting roguelite, Cult Of The Lamb is also brutally hilarious, its small yet deeply evil ovine anti-hero building a blood-soaked death cult of disposable followers.

Originally released on PC and consoles, the iOS version plays and controls in exactly the same way but has the benefit of coming with all the game’s updates and post-launch content. That does make a positive difference but despite the humour the game is still a fundamentally shallow and repetitive affair.

It’s certainly a welcome addition to Apple’s Arcade line-up, though, and just the sort of game where you imagine the sequel will be the one to take full advantage of the premise’s potential.

Score: 6/10

Maneater

iOS & Android, £8.49 (HandyGames)

Maneater’s attitude towards marine biology resembles that of the venerable and enjoyably schlocky Piranha movie franchise. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, revelling in the buckets of gore created by wild animals devouring human prey.

Not that you’ll just be eating people in Maneater. Your mutant great white chows down on anything from giant turtles to the boats of the hunters sent to finish it off, cheerfully leaping out of the water to nosh cheeky snipers straight from the deck.

There are collectibles, and you have an amusing nemesis in the chief shark hunter but, just like the console original, combat is basic, touch controls are unreliable, and despite lasting well over a dozen hours, it doesn’t evolve beyond swimming to places and biting things and people to death.

Score: 3/10

Game Nest – Offline Games

iOS & Android, free (Rohit Madani)

There’s far too little altruism in the world currently, which makes a find like Game Nest all the sweeter. Created by someone tired of the inescapable advertising in even the simplest free-to-play title, it’s a compendium of classic games (many of which are two-player) and useful apps, in a package that’s completely free of both advertising and in-app purchases.

Snake, Noughts and Crosses, Solitaire, Connect Four, Sudoku, Minesweeper and others, are joined by a clutch of educational titles and useful tools like coin toss, die rolls, and a Pomodoro focus timer.

It runs perfectly, has a clean interface and delivers precisely what it sets out to, without ever once trying to shake you down for cash. Inspiring stuff.

Score: 8/10

Where Winds Meet

iOS & Android, free (Netease)

With its dynamic weather, dramatic scenery and huge landmass, the sweeping ambition of Where Winds Meet blends single-player exploration with MMO-style guild raids, and rarely looks less than jaw dropping.

Battles are graceful and use a range of weapons, each of which brings its own attack and defensive techniques, and there are plenty of options for PvP action to keep you on your toes.

Unfortunately, it’s also got more than a few bugs, a sprawling system of menus to navigate, weird AI chatbot characters, and so many competing ideas that none of them feels fully fleshed out.

Score: 6/10

Under Guild: Offence

iOS & Android, free (LiberalDust)

Take out waves of mobs using a hero you control, and legions of autonomous support mercenaries that you unlock as you level up, along with more attack and defensive power for your hero.

Enemies are increasingly varied, as are support troops, your choices affecting the viability of your defence in each level, with bosses in particular taking a lot of pummelling and dodging to get past.

Graphically cute, it borrows a few ideas from Archero and its ilk, but makes its own sense of them, offering a compelling and steadily evolving challenge.

Score: 7/10

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