Hit the endless high seas in Run-A-Whale! [Best New Games for Android]

What are the latest games worth checking out in the Google Play Store?

Update September 15, 2017: Dive into an endless sea of fun with Run-A-Whale, then relive the classic fun of Snake like you've never seen it before in Snaky Snake!

Run-A-Whale

Run-A-Whale is an endless runner that does a good job of separating itself from the other games in the popular mobile genre. You play as an unlikely partnership between a shipwrecked sea captain and a friendly whale, as you dive and jump over obstacles collecting coins, completing goals, and of course seeing how far you can get on each run. You're able to spend coins on new hats for your pirate or to unlock new whale friends to play as.

But what really sets this game apart from others is the inclusion of boss battles. As you complete goals and level up, you'll eventually unlock boss battles which you don't typically see in endless runner style games. There are five boss battles to be unlocked.

Featuring beautiful graphics and smooth physics-based gameplay, Run-A-Whale is a great game for kids and adults alike. It's a paid app, only 99 cents, but that means that you'll never have to deal with ads or annoying in-app purchases.

Download: Run-A-Whale ($0.99)

Snaky Snake

Snake games have been a mainstay on mobile phones since the days of the Nokia 6110 back in 1998 — that's nearly 20 years of gaming legacy! Since then, we've seen the popular game revamped in countless ways, with the best recent example being slither.io.

Snaky Snake just might eclipse slither.io as my favorite modern take on the classic snake game. In many ways, it brings the game back to the roots of controlling a snake as it slithers around eating apples (never knew snakes were so into apples), but here your snake is the only living thing on a tiny planet.

Whereas classic snake games give you a square arena with obstacles to maneuver around, Snaky Snake brings the game into 3D. This is a great twist as you really need to use your spatial reasoning skills to remember how long your snake is and how you snaked around as you're rarely if ever going to see the entire length of your snake on screen.

The graphics and gameplay are smooth even at the highest render settings, but if you've got an older phone, you also have the option to turn the render quality down so it never feels sluggish. There are in-app purchases available for unlocking new snake skins (which also change up the world itself), but you've also got the option of unlocking them via eggs and the in-app currency you collect on each run.

Snaky Snake is a free game and a worthwhile throwback for fans of the classic Snake formula.

Download: Snaky Snake (Free)