GLOBAL – The school holidays are well underway in many countries and that means that it’s quite likely you’ll either: (a) be heading off for a couple of weeks away from technology; or (b) be spending rather more time than is normal with people between the ages of 4 and 21. Either way, the solution is clear. You need more games for your mobile phone. We’ve trawled the last few weeks of entries from the My Daily App blog to find some good choices for keeping both yourself and the youngsters in your life entertained.

First up, even though it’s only just been posted about by our colleagues on the My Daily App blog, we’d recommend World of Rabbit (free). This is not one for fans of Beatrix Potter books, though. This game is characterised by two things, a twisted-but-pretty art style and the need for lots of tapping. If you don’t tap at the right time, you will die – a lot. If you like running games and mild puzzles, it will keep you entertained for a while, though.

We’ve also been messing with Bjong, available for Symbian^3 and S60 v5 devices and priced at £1.50. If you’ve played Nintendo Wii games, it will give you a headstart here. It will also help if you have a very large playing field or empty beach nearby. You see, the idea is that you move your in-game character by err.. running about. DO NOT play this game next to a busy road, please!

I think the video will probably explain it better than I’m able to with words. It’s like breakout but with snails and footballs… and running.

No Nokia smartphone is truly complete without a decent selection of match-three games. The latest in the subgenre to catch our eye is Azkend. It’s hung together under the pretext of being about some sort of search for lost artefacts. And for some reason, you have to move items on a board to create matches in order to make progress in your journey. It looks pretty and is as absorbing as any of these types of games.

Azkend is available for Symbian^3 smartphones and costs £3.00.

One more selection, and this is a personal favourite, being a sucker for RPGs but not too much of a fan of tapping frantically on my phone screen. That’s Eternal Legacy HD. There’s a few RPG-style games available for Nokia smartphones, but I’ve found that a lot of them require some deft fingerwork and 100% of your attention: not so good if you’re also watching TV or watching out for your bus-stop on the way to work. Eternal Legends takes the JRPG style of turn-based combat popularised by the likes of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. Take a look at the video to see how this pans out.

This isn’t a game for fans of open-world games, though, to be sure. The exploration is largely about finding the next cut-scene and big fight. But these look great and are lots of fun to play through. It’s also worth noting the considerable amount of voice-work in the game, still a real rarity on account of the space and bandwidth constraints attached to mobile games. Eternal Legacy HD is a whopping 300MB download for Symbian^3 smartphones and costs £3.00.

So, that’s what’s in my games folder right now. Now what are you playing?

image credit: Mark Strozier