Out of nowhere, Take-Two’s mobile game company Zynga has released a new Borderlands game for mobile devices. It’s out right now on iOS, despite no official announcement from 2K, Gearbox, or Take-Two.
Borderlands Mobile, as it’s called, is a free version of Borderlands featuring the franchise’s signature cel-shaded graphics, array of weapons, and the humorous (or insufferable, depending on who you ask) character Claptrap.
Zynga says the game has been “fully optimized for mobile,” and sports multiple modes, including Campaign Missions, Tower of Terror, and Circle of Slaughter. The missions were designed for people with short attention spans, a cheeky screenshot on the game’s store page says.
Borderlands Mobile promises four classes: The Summoner, Exo-Tank, Outrider, and Assassin. However, only The Summoner is available now; the rest are listed as “coming soon.” There is a “customize” page, too, and it’s also not available right now. This makes sense given Borderlands Mobile is available through a soft launch, which is pretty common for mobile games.
Players can recruit companions to sent out on missions to accumulate money/XP/gear for you passively, and that system is tied to a real-world timer, giving players a reason to keep coming back to the game. There are also going to be events, the first of which is Circle of Slaughter, which awards players with legendary chest keys to use in the in-game store.
As a free game, Borderlands Mobile will likely make money through microtransactions, but exactly how this will work, and the extent of the in-game transaction opportunities, is unclear for now in the game’s soft-launch status.
We’ve played a bit of Borderlands Mobile, and the gameplay loop is pretty typical Borderlands stuff, but condensed into shorter missions, as mentioned. There is a social element, too, as Borderlands Mobile has an in-game friends list–it’s not working yet, however, and we don’t know if multiplayer will be supported.
The game supports touch controls for moving and aiming, and whatever gun you have equipped auto-fires when you target an enemy. This is pretty standard stuff for mobile games.
The launch of Borderlands Mobile comes after 2025’s Borderlands 4 failed to meet expectations. Developer Gearbox has paused development on the Switch 2 version.
Borderlands Mobile is not the first Borderlands game for mobile, as it follows 2012’s Borderlands Legends, which was discontinued in 2016.