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.
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.
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)
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)
Ahhhh Tomb of the mask … fond memories playin that on my iPhone 4s back in the day
N E ways , (Balatro|Baba is you) pretty gꝏd mobile games
Balatro : be prepared to stay up till dead of night . WILL (WASTE YOUR TIME|DRAIN BATTERY ON LOWER END DEVICES) so ⚠️ BE CAREFUL ⚠️ Otherwise , solid “just pick up and play” game
Baba is you : gets pretty challenging early on but heard gꝏd things about
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
I enjoy ppsspp myself. The psp had a good collection of games that work very well as mobile games. All the Dj max games, half minute hero, cladun, disgaea, Patchwork heroes, and my personal favorite title for a game series
Holy invasion of privacy badman, what did I do to deserve this?
Most every game I can think of when it comes to games, most people have already suggested. Though I haven’t seen Feudal Tactics ( available on fdroid ) mentioned. The game isn’t all that complex, but it can be time consuming on larger maps.
I also just looked something up and Maze Mice from TrampolineTales ( the Luck Be A Landlord dev/team(?) ) is available on the play store, if you don’t mind paid apps. Cannot say what the price is in other currencies, but $4.99USD is the price I saw.
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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)
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.
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.sgtpuzzles
Thats my most common, first recommendation for such questions. UP!
Ahhhh Tomb of the mask … fond memories playin that on my iPhone 4s back in the day
N E ways , (Balatro|Baba is you) pretty gꝏd mobile games
I replayed Grand Theft Auto Vice City on my phone a few months ago, that was a good time but it was better when I was using a Bluetooth controller
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
Yeah and I’ve never been able to beat PuTTY
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.
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 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.
FOSS (no ads, available on FDroid):
Puzzle games:
Strategy games:
Mindless games:
Emulator:
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.
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.
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.
2048 is chill and addictive
I recall 2048+ being a great time killer when I had to wait for anything else.
I enjoy ppsspp myself. The psp had a good collection of games that work very well as mobile games. All the Dj max games, half minute hero, cladun, disgaea, Patchwork heroes, and my personal favorite title for a game series
Holy invasion of privacy badman, what did I do to deserve this?
Most every game I can think of when it comes to games, most people have already suggested. Though I haven’t seen Feudal Tactics ( available on fdroid ) mentioned. The game isn’t all that complex, but it can be time consuming on larger maps.
I also just looked something up and Maze Mice from TrampolineTales ( the Luck Be A Landlord dev/team(?) ) is available on the play store, if you don’t mind paid apps. Cannot say what the price is in other currencies, but $4.99USD is the price I saw.