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.
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. (UPDATE: I just tried to play the game, and it put a big banner saying I have to upgrade and stops me from continuing my game, I went to the play store to upgrade, and the game is no longer “compatible” with my phone despite me playing for months before… So it is an even bigger problem than in game transactions)
Generally, the best options are ports of PC games. Things like Slay the Spire, Balatro, Mini Metro, Terraria, BaBa is You, or Stardew Valley. Not as cheap, but worth the price tag.
A couple of my favorite free options:
Unciv - Its an attempt at recreating Civ. It’s got a lot of issues, such as lacking a lot of the more in-depth mechanics and having terrible world-gen, but its also free.
Vampire Survivors - a fairly simple but content-rich arcade game, reminiscent of old flash games.
Super Auto Pets - an autobattler like autochess but stripped down to its fundamentals making it easy to get in to, and easy to play in short bursts
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)
Simon Tatham, the PuTTY programmer.
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.
For anyone interested: emulation works great in modern phones. Eden emulator runs Switch games and some work very well with just touchscreen controls (e.g. Into the Breach).
If you’re ok with on screen controllers or with carrying around something like an 8bit Zero 2or Micro, then you could emulate a mind-blowing number of consoles and games.
Oh man I love games that are just games. You pay a price, you get a game, you play the game.
On the turn based side we have Slay the Spire, Slice and Dice, and Lost in Fantaland. All kind deck builders but with pretty different combat. Great games with lots of depth. Also Kingdoms Two Crowns by Raw Fury is an incredibly good game. But a little more real time. I can say great things about all of them.
On the heavier note, fucking Subnautica has a mobile port now, which I hear is good. Of course you have Stardew Valley for a farming sim.
On the annoyingly spammy with pay to win features but still good games underneath, all the Ironhide games are good, especially the tower defense ones (Kingdom Rush)
I’m currently playing Balatro and it’s also a one-time purchase with a good amount of content and time played.
Holy shit! I hadn’t heard about Subnautica, that’s crazy.
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.
Slay the Spire and Balatro is kind of the sweet spot for mobile gaming imo
There used to be some more but they aren’t compatible with modern phones. Even just older smartphone games. The Airport Mania series comes to mind.
unciv - it’s a opensource interpretation of civilaization. It’s just as addictove and “one more turn” as that game
edit: geometry dash is also a classic, worth the small price
Monument Valley 1 and 2 are great puzzle games.
House of Cards got to you too, eh?
Puzzles. No ads, no monetisation, just puzzle games.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles
Also on fdroid.
https://f-droid.org/packages/name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzlesThats my most common, first recommendation for such questions. UP!
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.
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.
2048 is chill and addictive
I recall 2048+ being a great time killer when I had to wait for anything else.
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.
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!
