For the past year and a half, GameClub has been bringing some of the all-time best mobile games back from the dead and adding them to their gaming subscription service. You see, in this strange digital age we live in, all sorts of things can happen to our beloved little mobile games that prevent them from being in our lives anymore. Oftentimes Apple’s new software or hardware creates problems for a game, and if that game is no longer making money then it’s hard for a developer to justify expending time and effort to fix it. With the extremely low pricing of mobile games in the first place, even if a game isn’t broken in some way it can still be hard to justify spending time to keep it updated for modern devices. Thus plenty of extremely fantastic mobile titles over the past 12+ years have either been removed from the App Store altogether or just left there to rot and die with no updating or maintenance.
What GameClub has been devoting these past couple of years to is reaching out to the developers of these lost classics and then putting their engineers to work on getting them up and running on modern hardware. They’ve successfully brought back more than 100 iOS games and just this past July they opened up their service to Android as well, in many cases offering games that were appearing on Android for the very first time ever. You pay for GameClub via subscription, either $5 monthly or $50 yearly, and get access to their full library of 100+ titles across both iOS and Android and with Family Sharing for up to 12(!) family members. The games in GameClub are all available offline with no IAP or ads of any kind, and you can cancel or restart your subscription at anytime meaning you’re never locked into anything. It really is a fantastic service and so far it’s been a really big hit with mobile gamers everywhere.
Which means that now GameClub can focus on the second phase of their plans. Bringing back old classics was always just part of their vision, and eventually they knew they wanted to expand to do things like publish completely original games, add brand new content to existing games, or bring games to mobile from other platforms. Well those latter two things are what GameClub has announced as their Phase 2 today. The biggest news is that they will be bringing 3 PC titles to mobile. Their own Twitter account does a pretty good job at explaining what each game is all about, as well as providing trailers so you can see them in action.
The first is Ancestors Legacy, a gritty medieval realtime strategy game set in Medieval Europe with four playable nations. Using the Unreal Engine, Ancestors Legacy features an amazing cinematic camera to get up close and personal in massive RTS battles- https://t.co/cafdDFi5UT
— GameClub (@GameClub) September 4, 2020
Next is Tokyo 42, a stylish isometric open-world shooter. (With cats!) Featuring fast-paced action, skillful shooting, and sneaky stealth, Vice described it as, “looks like Monument Valley and plays like Grand Theft Auto set in the world of Blade Runner.” https://t.co/oqEQR8Y2dA
— GameClub (@GameClub) September 4, 2020
We’re also bringing over Chooks & Sosig: Walk the Plank, a delightfully meta and absurdly charming point and click adventure game loaded with beautifully drawn art and a hilarious story with several different endings to discover: https://t.co/gz8rm7yysC
— GameClub (@GameClub) September 4, 2020
All three of these games are full-blown “real” games that have very good user ratings on Steam and good scores on Metacritic. They’re all the types of games that would be awesome fits for porting to mobile if the mobile ecosystem wasn’t such a dumpster fire. The return on investment for porting a successful PC or console game to mobile often isn’t worth putting the effort in, which is why these games have remained on other platforms. With GameClub proving that a subscription service that offers a deluge of quality content and no BS is a winning formula on mobile, they’ve been able to convince these developers to give mobile a chance. It also doesn’t hurt that GameClub’s engineering team are actual wizards and do the bulk of the heavy lifting in bringing a console or PC game to mobile. Without GameClub stepping in and making it happen, these games wouldn’t ever grace our mobile touchscreens.
The other part of today’s announcement has to do with bringing some brand new content to an existing game in GameClub’s library. This is an intriguing idea because in many cases these are a second chance at life for games that have long ago finished adding any new content in. Suddenly having brand new levels to play or things to do in a game you loved from YEARS ago is a really cool thing to ponder. And today it’s becoming a reality as the military tactics game Breach & Clear, which originally launched way back in 2013, is now getting a set of new maps that never made it into the game previously.
HEY BREACH & CLEAR FANS! Want to play the last maps I made for the game that were actually really awesome and I was proud of them and really upset they never were released?? Then you’re in luck! @GameClub is doing a lot of awesome stuff, and definitely worth the subscription. https://t.co/aB3JMEaE2e
— Chris Cooper (@MightyCooper) September 4, 2020
On both accounts–bringing games from other platforms to mobile for the first time and adding new content to existing GameClub games–this is just the beginning. Just as they’ve continuously added long lost mobile games to their catalog at an astounding pace, expect even more announcements about PC and console games making it to GameClub soon, as well as new content coming for the games already on the service. That’s on top of even more classics being added on a weekly basis. It’s very exciting thinking about the future of where GameClub is going.
If you have not tried out GameClub before I strongly urge you to do their one month free trial. They offer an affiliate program too, so if you download the GameClub app using this link or by using the banner on our righhand sidebar, it actually contributes to keeping TouchArcade going. And while that’s a nice side benefit and all, I recommend GameClub to absolutely everyone anyway just because it is honestly one of the best deals in gaming given its breadth of quality AND quantity of games. If you’re the type who wants to simply enjoy great mobile games without having to be subjected to some of mobile gaming’s ugliest areas, GameClub is an oasis.
Source: https://toucharcade.com/2020/09/04/gameclub-pc-games-to-mobile/