It’s been two years since Netflix announced Netflix Games, and they’ve been all-in in the mobile games arena ever since.
Since Netflix’s launch of Netflix Games in November of 2021, the entertainment giant has opened two of its own studios in California and Finland, respectively. It’s also acquired Night School Studio, Next Games, Boss Fight Entertainment, and Spry Fox to add to its mobile game development power. Having Netflix’s dollars behind these developers can mean more richness in the mobile game world.
As a testament to this, Netflix now boasts more than 80 mobile games on the Apple iOS and Google Play stores, with new titles coming each quarter.
Netflix Games titles span just about every genre imaginable, from action to horror to role-playing to cozy games, puzzle games, sports games, and more. They even expanded some Netflix fan-favorite TV shows like Stranger Things and The Queen’s Gambit into mobile games, allowing fans multiple ways to dive into the worlds of their favorite stories.
During Geeked Week 2023, Netflix announced beloved indie titles, Hades, Braid Anniversary Edition, and Death’s Door will also be coming to Netflix Games, alongside other exciting new additions in 2024.
How to Play Netflix Games: Info, Pros & Cons
Users can access Netflix’s mobile games by either locating them in the Netflix mobile app, then downloading them from the iOS or Google Play stores, or by searching them in the device’s respective app store directly.
When viewing games on the Netflix app, the titles are organized by topic or genre groupings, such as “Recently Released,” “Turn-Based Games,” “Action Games,” etc.
Users can add games to “My List” and see recommendations for other mobile games beneath a selected title. While applying the “My List” feature can be helpful to track games of interest, there are some pitfalls in other areas of the app’s utility related to mobile games.
The Netflix mobile app search bar says “Search games, shows, movies,” but searching games is difficult as there isn’t an option to filter results by medium.
For example, a search for “horror games,” “action games,” or even “mobile games” yields exclusively TV shows and movies with no option to communicate to the app that the desired return is mobile games only.
In fact, the only test searches that yielded any mobile games were made by searching the exact name of a specific game. For comparison, a search for “horror movies,” returns the horror movie genre topic group, with appropriate search results.
Another shortfall is not seeing the popularity or ratings of titles within the Netflix app. To view a game’s popularity or ratings, a user has to click the link to open the title in the device’s native app store. This is cumbersome when browsing games for potential play for those who prefer to have insight from other players before taking a deeper dive.
Adding in-app ratings and reviews or improved integration with the Apple and Google Play stores to reflect downloads and ratings would benefit Netflix mobile gamers.
Overall, watching the growth of Netflix Games is exciting as the number and diversity of titles continue to increase. As app integrations and features improve and more gamers dive into Netflix Games, the company has the potential to have a massive impact on the mobile games world.
