A mobile game is a video game played on a phone or tablet, installed from an app store or opened in the browser. Mobile is the biggest games market by revenue. For brands, the key choice is the route: their own app, a game inside an existing app, or the mobile web.
How it works
Wikipedia defines a mobile game as a video game played on a mobile device. There are three ways in. An app comes from the App Store or Google Play: find the listing, download, open, often register. A web game opens in the phone's browser from a link, an ad or a QR code, with nothing to install. A game inside an app the player already uses, such as a restaurant chain's ordering app, sits behind a banner or a tab.
Play is built for the thumb: tap, swipe and drag, sometimes tilting the phone, pointing the camera for AR or walking with GPS. Apps can call players back with push notifications, but on Android 13 and later a new app's notifications stay off until the player allows them (Android Developers).
Where brands use it
Phones are where the money in games is: Newzoo put mobile revenue at $113.3bn in 2025, more than half of the global market, PocketGamer.biz reports. Our app shelf holds 141 games, 103 of them from the 2010s, when brands chased the charts with apps of their own (see our history of advergames). Food and drink leads, then entertainment and automotive. The strongest cases tie play to a transaction: in Domino's Pizza Hero, iPad players built a pizza and could order it for real, and almost 800 players went on to work at a local Domino's, says UNIT9. The newer pattern is a game inside a loyalty app where members already order, such as KFC's Rewards Arcade.
When it fits
Build a standalone app when the game is deep enough to come back to for weeks, and there is money for media, updates and store upkeep. The fixed fees are small: Apple's Developer Program costs $99 a year, Google Play a one-time $25. Review adds lead time: Apple typically reviews 90% of submissions in under 48 hours, and every update goes through review again.
If the brand already has an app with active members, put the game there, as fast food chains do. Players skip the install, and the prize lands in their account. Apple's guideline 4.7 allows apps to offer HTML5 mini games, with the app owner responsible for them.
For cold traffic from packs, posters and social posts, a browser game opens at once.
When not to use it
Skip a standalone app for a short campaign; a browser game needs only a link. An app for one evening must be installed beforehand: Ally's Super Bowl LII game, The Big Save, logged 69,000 downloads and about 24,000 active players per ad break (American Banker). Expect players to drift: in GameAnalytics' 2025 benchmarks, built on 2024 data from 11,600 gaming apps, three in four kept fewer than 3% of players to day 28 (GameDev Reports). Don't wrap a web page as an app; Apple's guideline 4.2 asks for more than "a repackaged website". Plan the end: none of the three games below can be played today. To reach people inside games they already play, buy a playable ad; for under-13s, read up on COPPA first.
Examples from the library
Twist, Lick, Dunk — Oreo (2012)
Agency: Carnival Labs, PikPok · Platform: App (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch at launch)
Made for Oreo's 100th year, the game sends cookies flying at the player one after another, and each is cleared with swipes: twist the halves apart, lick off the cream, dunk the cookie in a glass of milk, with bonus points for landing all three cleanly. Rare and limited-edition flavours fill an in-game guidebook, coins buy boosts and new settings, and a Facebook leaderboard and push alerts bring players back.
Result: About 7 million downloads, 5.1 billion virtual cookies dunked and an average of around 40 minutes in the app, Mobile Marketer reported. In 2016 Reuters wrote that the game had earned Mondelēz twice what it invested, through in-app purchases and ads.
Skyman — Legal & General (2013)
Agency: Playerthree · Platform: App (iOS and Android)
The player is a stuntman with a 20-day airshow season ahead. One tap launches him into the sky, and every jump pays out. Between jumps, a shop splits the money: better gear and power-ups fly further, while protection such as a stunt double or life cover costs a daily fee and holds the player back. Legal & General wanted younger people to think about life insurance, so understanding cover is how you win. There are no in-app purchases.
Result: Skyman became the No. 1 iPad app in the UK within a week of its 10 March 2013 release, with no paid advertising, and passed 1 million plays across all platforms, according to Playerthree.
Macca's Run — McDonald's (2020)
Agency: TMS, with Goodboy Digital (production) · Platform: App (inside the mymacca's app, Australia)
From 5 February to 4 March 2020, the McDonald's app in Australia opened onto a hub of mini-games. Three free ones, one play a day, won a food offer every time. A purchase through the app opened the fourth, Macca's Run: a 24-level run through a McDonald's world, where letters spelling M-A-C-C-A-S earned entries into a weekly draw for Visa gift cards. Goodboy says it built the games in HTML5 to run inside the app.
Result: More than 100,000 people played Macca's Run and completed over 6 million levels, 14% of users played it to the end, and the promotion put the app at the top of the Food & Drink category in Australia's iOS App Store, according to Goodboy Digital. The lead agency, TMS, reports a 17-minute average session, 73% of users returning and 38% redeeming at least one food prize.
FAQ
What is the oldest mobile game?
Wikipedia names a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 in 1994 as the earliest phone game. Nokia launched Snake in 1997, and it came pre-installed on Nokia phones for years. Nokia later turned it into marketing: Snakes Outbreak (2005), a free 3D remake that N-Gage owners downloaded and could pass to friends over Bluetooth, promoted its gaming handset.
Is a mobile game the same as a mobile app?
No. An app is one way to ship a mobile game. Many run in the phone's browser as web games, and others live inside someone else's app, such as a Snapchat game or a mini-game in a retailer's loyalty app. For a brand the difference is practical: an app needs an install and store review, a browser game needs only a link.
What are the most popular mobile games?
Charts change every week, so we don't rank them. For a brand, the useful question is which big games take partners. Monopoly GO!, which Scopely says has passed 300 million downloads, built a Monster Mash season (23 September to 25 November 2026) around KPop Demon Hunters and Ghostbusters, after Star Wars and Simpsons crossovers, mobilegamer.biz reports. See in-game events.