We played the Netflix mobile games and they're the least bit exciting

• Netflix now lets you play games on Android and iOS.
• There are five games in total with two based on the show ‘Stranger Things’.
• We played these games, and here’s what we think about it.

Netflix now offers mobile games in addition to movies and shows. There are five mobile games that Android and iOS users can play, and yes these games are available with your Netflix subscription. In fact, two of these games are based on the popular Netflix show ‘Stranger Things’.

Netflix mobile games do sound interesting since it’s coming from arguably the most popular streaming platform globally. But how exactly do these games work, and how much fun are they other than the fact that they are offered by Netflix? We decided to play these $4 and see what exactly the buzz is all about.

How good are these games

There are five games in total - Stranger Things: 1984 (BonusXP), Stranger Things 3: The Game (BonusXP), Shooting Hoops (Frosty Pop), Card Blast (Amuzo & Rogue Games), and Teeter Up (Frosty Pop).

Stranger Things: 1984 is a role-playing game based on the Netflix original series where you’re out looking for Will Byers and his three friends as Officer Jim Hopper. It’s designed as an 8-bit game so if you grew up playing Contra or Super Mario you might like it. It’s an easy and light game to play where Hopper goes around punching literally everything for clues and gets super ecstatic on finding key cards which is very unlike his character in Stranger Things.


Stranger Things 3: The Game is where things get interesting since you can play as one of the 12 characters from Stranger Things 3, and enter The Upside Down world. You can play in three modes - story, standard and master. This one too is an adventure game starting at the Starcourt Mall and encountering familiar scenes from Stranger Things 3.


The other three games are casual games. Shooting Hoops is a fun and casual game where the goal is to get the ball inside the basket. Teeter Up requires you to manoeuvre a platform to guide a ball into a hole which may look easy but requires some calculated movements. Then there’s Card Blast, a very brightly animated card game where you have to make poker hands and go up levels.

How to find Netflix games

Finding these games isn’t difficult since they’re available on the Netflix app itself. There’s a dedicated tab for games, and Netflix also has a dedicated row for these games so it’s hard to miss them. Even though the games are available on the Netflix app, you still have to download them from the Google Play Store or the App Store. And once the games are downloaded, you can launch them from the Netflix app or separately on your phone too. You can even search for these games on the app stores and download them.


A more immersive experience would be to play these games within the Netflix app much like how movies and TV shows work. But you still do need a Netflix account to play these games, and you can choose which profile to play from. Netflix also saves your progress so you can jump back in and continue playing the game from where you left off. These games can also be played offline and on multiple devices.

Takeaway

Other than the fact that these games are offered by Netflix, the experience isn’t as exciting as we’d expected. We expected these games to have more colour and also more relevance to Netflix shows and movies which would make them stand out from other platforms. Only the Stranger Things games gave a slightly different experience since they’re based on a Netflix show. Also, people who aren’t fans of Stranger Things may not enjoy the game at all. Netflix can also explore different styles like multiplayer modes for people to interact with other players in these games. This is only the start though and Netflix has said that it’s very experimental for now so more improvements are expected in the future.

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