Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket wins Game of the Year at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2025

• The Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2025 took place at Gamescom in Germany.
• Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket won Game of the Year, ahead of honourable mentions Avatar Legends: Realms Collide, Disney Solitaire, Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance and Zenless Zone Zero.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket has claimed victory at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2025, winning Game of the Year.

Leveraging 90s nostalgia and the power of playground rumours, the mobile card game has stormed from milestone to milestone since its release last October and marked the third wave of PokéMania, even outpacing Pokémon Go to the $1 billion mark, according to AppMagic estimates.

PocketGamer.biz awarded the standout stars of the industry with fresh accolades at Gamescom last night, celebrating mobile game makers everywhere.

Tailor-made to reward all the creators, makers, movers and shakers that make mobile games happen, we spent the night cheering on finalists and unveiling winners across 24 categories.

We have already explored the successes of Best Developer winner Supercell and Best Publisher winner Scopely, and now we’re looking at the very best game, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket.

The very best

The Pokémon Company, Creatures Inc. and DeNA unveiled Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket in February 2024, and the title flew largely under the radar until its October release. But once it hit globally, enthusiasm spread immediately and the milestones began to stack up.

From 10 million downloads in three days to 100 million in four months, TCG Pocket has changed the game for DeNA’s retention rates and done wonders for the dev’s profits, with its games segment sales up by an astounding 8,126.8% in Q3.

Since Pokémon Pocket doesn’t have ads, that revenue has come entirely from player spending - which surpassed $1 billion between Google Play and the App Store in a little over 200 days. The mega milestone was reached at an unprecedented pace for a mobile Pokémon game, beating Go by 78 days according to estimates.

As new sets of cards continue to debut monthly, fans are still pouring cash into this hottest new Pokémon product, which still has two months to go before its first anniversary.

Honourable mentions

Of course, there are so many mobile developers deserving of their own spotlight from this past year, so we’ve also compiled a list of finalists worth celebrating.

Honourable mentions go to Avatar Legends: Realms Collide, Disney Solitaire, Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance and Zenless Zone Zero. Other finalists include:

• Balatro
• Candy Crush Solitaire
• Capybara Go!
• DC: Dark Legion
• Dredge
• Kingshot
• Leaving Home
• Mo.co
• Monument Valley 3
• PBJ - The Musical
• Royal Kingdom
• Crunchyroll: Shogun Showdown
• Suzerain
• The Electric State: Kid Cosmo
• Thronefall