Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris feels as though it was made for mobile

Three and a half hours later, we wanted more

We finished Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris on an iPhone 13 Pro, playing solo and using the touchscreen throughout. The campaign took roughly three and a half hours. It stayed smooth, never locked up and kept responding even when enemies, traps and virtual buttons crowded the display. Our verdict is two thumbs up: very good.

The raised camera helps enormously. Hazards remain visible and there is enough room to read each space on a 6.1-inch display. Text, objectives and status information are clear without holding the phone close to your face. This is not a console interface squeezed until it fits. The screen has been reorganised so the game remains readable after the touch controls appear.

The story begins with an expedition going spectacularly wrong. Lara Croft and Carter Bell find the Staff of Osiris, release Set and end up cursed. Stopping him means joining Isis and Horus, recovering the scattered pieces of Osiris and breaking into temples that should probably have stayed shut. The plot is light on its feet, full of furious gods and oversized creatures. It gets the adventure moving without turning Egyptian mythology into homework.

Touch controls should be the catch. They are not

Moving an isometric action game to a touchscreen could easily turn every fight into a battle with your own thumbs. Temple of Osiris avoids that trap. The left side moves Lara and the right side aims, while shooting, bombs, the torch, grappling hook and dodge sit together along the edge. We spent a few minutes watching the interface. Then running, rolling and firing started to feel natural.

There is a particular satisfaction to rolling past a monster, turning and emptying both pistols into a pack of skeletons. Lara moves quickly, and aiming gives you enough help without taking control away. Feral includes two layouts, lets you move every button and allows their size and opacity to be adjusted. Gamepads are supported too, but the touch controls were good enough that we never needed one.

Short puzzles with a satisfying answer

Temple of Osiris has no interest in leaving you staring at one door for half an hour. Its puzzles mix remote bombs, mirrors, torches, moving platforms, Lara's grapple and the Staff of Osiris. The rules are easy to read, then combined into rooms that make you pause before touching anything. They are rarely difficult, but they feel good to solve because the machinery around you immediately reacts.

The pace improves whenever thinking gives way to running. Traps spring, floors collapse and some creatures are better escaped than fought. These sequences are brief and tend to arrive just as another run of tombs might start feeling familiar. The game knows when to swap a lever for a chase.

Solo works and friends change the adventure

We completed the whole game alone. In solo play, Lara receives every tool she needs and puzzles are rebuilt for one person. We never felt as though another player was missing from the room. The campaign works on its own, and its length is a particularly good fit for short sessions on a phone.

Co-op supports up to four players and changes rooms and abilities to match the characters in play. The mobile release offers online cross-play between iOS and Android as well as local wireless multiplayer. We have not tested either mode, so we cannot judge their connection quality. They offer a second way through tombs that already hold together alone. Our guide to the best mobile multiplayer games has more games to share on a phone.

Very good, with a free first level to prove it

The main campaign ends quickly, although score challenges, optional tombs and every DLC pack from the original release remain. That brevity suits a phone, but it also keeps the game from earning our third thumb. A few puzzle ideas deserve another room, and combat does not evolve enough to carry a much longer adventure without repetition.

Even so, Temple of Osiris is exactly the sort of port mobile stores need: a complete game with no adverts and controls that do not feel like an afterthought. The first level is free, with the rest unlocked for $9.99. If our original iOS and Android announcement left you unsure, that trial is long enough to find out whether Lara agrees with your thumbs as readily as she did with ours.

Feral Interactive provided INSERT FUTURE with a review code before release. The publisher did not review or approve this article.