best Android games 2016

While the 'free-to-play' market has taken a bit of a beating of late due to gamers falling out of love with the use of in-app payments, the world of mobile gaming is still an exciting one.

Whether you want games that will last the length of a commute, or want to be lost in a port of GTA where you spend hours mowing down pedestrians and making money out of murder, there is a game on here for you.

This constantly updated list is a mixture of free and paid for games, and also that one in between - some in-app payments aren't really that bad. Honest! If by the end you think we have missed something special off of the list, let us know and we will see if it is worthy of inclusion further down the line.

1. Lara Croft: Relic Run (free)

Just because it doesn't don the name "Tomb Raider" doesn't mean that this adventure isn't worth plowing through. Similar to Temple Run, Lara Croft: Relic Run has Lara running endlessly through a procedurally-generated world.

Players can expect similar gameplay to other endless runners, except there are a few touches here that Tomb Raider fans will dig. Not only is Lara the best-looking endless runner character ever, she can parkour, shoot guns, run along walls and slide down the back of a tyrannosaurus rex. Need we say more?

2. Alone... (Rs 125)

People who today play mobile classic Canabalt and consider it lacking due to its simplicity don't understand what the game is trying to do. Canabalt is all about speed — the thrill of being barely in control, and of affording the player only the simplest controls for survival.ALONE... takes that basic premise and straps a rocket booster to it.

Instead of leaping between buildings, you're flying through deadly caverns, a single digit nudging your tiny craft up and down. Occasional moments of generosity — warnings about incoming projectiles; your ship surviving minor collisions and slowly regenerating — are offset by the relentlessly demanding pressure of simply staying alive and not slamming into a wall. It's an intoxicating combination, and one that, unlike most games in this genre, matches Canabalt in being genuinely exciting to play.

3. Framed (Rs 150)

From a gaming perspective, the most important aspect of touchscreen devices is that they give you new ways to play, but relatively few developers take full advantage, instead choosing to ape traditional controls. Framed is an exception, flinging you headlong into an animated comic of sorts. Your aim is to improve the fortunes of a spy, fleeing from the cops — and worse. Panels are dragged about and rotated, and new ideas regularly appear, including you having to carefully shift scenes on the page at exactly the right moment. This is a stylish and finite affair that ends before it gets old, leaving you satisfied but nonetheless hoping for more.

4. Angry Birds Space (free)

Developer Rovio has done quite a lot of aggressive whoring of the Angry Birds franchise, but this space-based fork of the simplistic physics game series is really worth a try. For one, it introduces some new play concepts, with the planet-based levels requiring different tactics, plus the puzzles generally need a bit more of a thoughtful approach than the chuck-it-and-see of the originals.

5. Badland (free)

Has a bit of an 'indie' vibe about it this one, with Badland offering a weird, dark and gloomy world, in which you fly about in control of a... blob thing. Your blob gets bigger and smaller, splits into loads of mini clones, and generally baffles you about what might lie around the next corner. We like a bit of a surprise, and this is full of them.

6. Prune (Rs 266)

It's not often you see a game about the "joy of cultivation", and Prune is unlike anything you've ever played before. Apparently evolving from an experimental tree-generation script, the game has you swipe to shape and grow a plant towards sunlight by tactically cutting off specific branches.

That sounds easy, but the trees, shrubs and weeds in Prune don't hang around. When they're growing at speed and you find yourself faced with poisonous red orbs to avoid, or structures that damage fragile branches, you'll be swiping in a frantic race towards sunlight. And all it takes is one dodgy swipe from a sausage finger to see your carefully managed plant very suddenly find itself being sliced in two.

7. Monument Valley (Rs 245)

A very, very pretty game, this. Monument Valley is based around the weird sort of impossible geometric shapes popularised by artist M. C. Escher, with its colourful maps bending and rotating in ways that appear to defy the laws of nature. You walk on walls, flip them, turn them into floors, avoid crows and marvel at how beautiful it all looks. A short game with only 10 multi-layered levels, but a joyful ride.

8. PewPew (free)