I don’t care much about mobile gaming, and when I play something to kill time on it, it’s often Minesweeper, Sudoku, Dominoes… back when I first got an smartphone (2019) I tried out several games, mindnumbing idlers, big-IP gacha-crap, they all look pretty much the same and looking at the store today I can’t find anything that looks remotely interesting… I mean, I just saw this one Tomb of the Mask but then at the reviews you see people saying this game used to be good but now it has aggressive monetization on everything.
I remember having some good time with Autochess, an Elder Scrolls card game and some Warhammer 40k games, another fun game I played for a bit was Magic Rampage, and I also really liked Stranger Things: The Game (I just saw it was renamed to Stranger Things 1984), but it has been some years since I last played so I don’t know if they became an Ad hell as well.
Back then, I bought two games: Solitairica - which I recently reinstalled and it’s still great. And Rebel Inc. - which I also recently reinstalled but they released several packs of premium content so everywhere you tap they are trying to sell you something… and since I last played they also added a new difficulty setting that is looking very p2w and it’s quite sad. Night of the Full Moon is another game I liked a lot, I tried to buy the full game back then but I was getting an error in the store and gave up, I might buy it now.
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Underhand Is a card game that I really liked, you have like a cult and you have to awake an old god. I liked the humor and the story and the cards.
Stranger Things: 1984 As others mentioned, it is a really solid old-school adventure “RPG”, kinda vibe of A Link to the Past. Really felt like a SNES game. But as others mentioned it changed name and it seems that now you need a Netflix account to play it, before it had not restriction.
This is just a honorable mention because it is not available anymore on the play store, but The Witch’s Isle was really nice, one of this point and click adventures, nice graphics and all. Not sure why it is not available, and it was free years ago, But it is on steam at least if you are curious.
I wish I had other games to recommend, but I also struggled to find good games and specially ones that are in portrait which I think would be better for casual gaming on the go.
I’m trying Underhand right now and boy I’m bad at it! I’ll just have to keep trying!
I also was really bad, at some point the strategy clicked for me. Sometimes it is not that obvious. Like, I don’t remember exactly, but not going over the number of cards on hand at the end of the turn was a must, so aways plan to have some space. Also because each turn the “enemy” cards reshuffle but are the same you can play ahead to pay stuff that you will need to pay on the next turn.
I put it down for a moment, I was annoyed at myself for not understanding how to summon anything but jungle second thing, haha! I’ll have to try more later!
Shattered Pixel Dungeon for some great (truly) roguelike dungeon crawling.
+1 for Unciv, although I haven’t played much yet. I really should…
Also, Balatro
Sorry if these are all super basic
Haven’t played Unciv, but the other two are ones I went long runs of addiction to. I would add Slay the Spire, Knights of Pen and Paper and Merge Maestro to that list.
Great suggestions but pen and paper directed ä switched to a disgusting microtransactional monetisation scheme and os unplayable now.
Last time I played KOPNP2, I saw that you could pay for some stuff, but I never paid for anything. There was a lot of grinding, so maybe they purposefully slowed progress to make paying more tempting. I guess I didn’t finish the game, but I did get pretty far. That is very disappointing of them, though.
Good open source (F-Droid):
Endless Sky
Unciv
Pixel DungeonGood Play Store:
Knights of Pen and Paper
Swords and Sandals
Sky: Children of the LightTheres also a new mobile Kingdom Hearts game in development thats multiplayer and action combat, honestly looks sweet.
Surprised I don’t see Mindustry here. It’s a Factorio-like automation building and tower defence game. Open source, available on a bunch lf platforms including android.
Right now I’m playing Umamusume (I’ve been playing since the summer), which is a Japanese anime girl horse racing game. It’s a gacha game, but they are pretty generous with the stuff they give out, there really isn’t a need to go beyond free to play mode.
I played a lot of Sky Force and Sky Force Reloaded. Pretty sure you have to pay to remove ads. Another single payment doubles the “stars” you earn which cuts back on the grind for upgrades. There aren’t a ton of stages so a lot of the replay value comes from trying to beat stages on higher difficulty. If you’re into v-scrollers it’s a visually beautiful game with fun bosses and solid gameplay.
I sunk some time into Retro Bowl for a while too. Fun little football (Gridiron/American football) game with retro inspired graphics.
Truth be told that’s about the extent of Android games I found enjoyable. Since getting a Steam Deck and TrimUI brick, I bounce between Factorio, OpenTTD (has an Android port but I haven’t tried it), Rimworld and emulating plethora of nostalgic console games.
Edit: forgot about Mindustry and just saw it mentioned above. I’ll definitely add that to my recommendations. I prefer on PC or Steam Deck but it plays well enough on Android.
OpenTTD is fine on a tablet — though controls aren’t specially adapted, they just emulate a mouse. On a phone screen the controls are too small and everything is crowded.
Another thing I noticed, several games that I’m sure I have played are not listed on the apps I had (bunch of idlers and TCG) so this makes me worry about software preservation, since stuff just vanishes… is there a way to backup those games? At least the ones I bought I’d like to backup myself - and no, I don’t care the least about the legality of it.
FOSS (no ads, available on FDroid):
Puzzle games:
- Simon Tatham’s Puzzle Collection
- Gurgle (Offline, infinite Wordle Dupe)
Strategy games:
- Mindustry,
- Tanks of Freedom
- Unciv (It’s Civilisation V, but free)
Mindless games:
- Ricochlime
Emulator:
- RetroArch (just need the ROMs)
Free (no ads): Seedship (by John Ayliff)
Paid (no ads): Beyond the Chiron Gate (also by John Ayliff)
Nice seeing seedship here
If you love seed ship, you have to try beyond the Chiron gate. It’s genuinely the culmination of what seed ship started. Its amazing.
I tried it butit didn’t have the same hook for me. Maybe the complexity wasn’t my thing.
Fair enough! For me, it scratched the itch of “procedural exoplanet biogeochemistry” that I always had, but could never scratch.
Simon Tatham, the PuTTY programmer.
Simon Tatham’s games
Simon Tatham! I’ve been trying to remember that name for a long time, I remember his Minesweeper for having no 50/50
There’s a small strategy game called ‘Antiyoy’, with simplistic mechanics, which works for short-ish games: you can do a stint while waiting in queue or such. Iirc ‘Antiyoy Classic’ is entirely offline, while the regular one has an online mode. Both have no ads and near zero permissions, unless something changed since I last played.
You can try ‘Diplicity’ for an online strategy a-la ‘Risk’ where you bargain and do alliances with other players, until one of you wins the whole thing. There’s no randomness. It’s an implementation of the board game ‘Diplomacy’.
‘Hocus’ is a nice spatial puzzle with impossible geometry. Iirc it requires payment for additional levels, but has no ads.
The app ‘Fabularium’ runs text adventures, i.e. games where you type your actions and read the description of what happens. There are a myriad of such adventure games, many with novel mechanics. You’ll need to download the games themselves separately, mainly from IFDb.org. ‘Fabularium’ isn’t the only app that runs text adventures, but I like it and it supports more formats than some other apps do.
I’ve recently tried Peglin and enjoyed it a lot. Sounds like something you might like (a mix between the Peggle formula and deck builder)
I love Bloons TD 6. I think it’s fully worth the asking price given they still consistently release updates and content
I’ve played all the previous Bloons TD on Kongregate when that site was fire, however seeing it so promoted on Play Store makes me afraid of aggressive monetization, as everything on Play Store seems to be just an ad simulator.
Actually, the devs seem to respect the players. I’ve only once spent more money than the initial purchase and it was to add a rogue like campaign feature. There are micro transactions, but it is actually feasible to just play and earn everything. I have all of the heroes unlocked and most of the skill tree.
Edit: to add, I have the game via steam as well and the cloud saves go between both. Only needed to buy the rogue like mechanic once but base game each time as the rogue like is attached to the cloud account on their servers.
This list is a bit old so many games aren’t supported on the latest android versions, but there are no micro transactions for any game on it. https://nobsgames.stavros.io/android/
2048 is chill and addictive
I recall 2048+ being a great time killer when I had to wait for anything else.
In threads like this I will always recommend Swordigo. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.touchfoo.swordigo
It’s an old side scrolling platform game. The gameplay is very nicely balanced so you won’t have to grind anything. There’s a few difficult jumps and tactics for bosses, but the difficulty increases gradually so you have a good chance of knowing what to do when you get to it, instead of being frustrated.
It takes a few days to 100% it. I think I’ve done it 3-4 times by now.
