Mobile games usually get a bad rep as they’re usually asset flips and/or MTX-ridden and/or ad-filled, etc., and I’m sure this is actually the case for most games on the app/play store. But are there any ones that are actually good, maybe just something to pass the time with?
Shattered Pixel Dungeon.
Infinitely replayable procedurally generated roguelike that is hard but fun to master, and a blast to play. It’s been on my phone for five years now and I still go back to it.
Totally offline, totally ad free, and still receiving active updates from the single developer.
It’s also got a pretty robust community.
By the way, it’s completely open source (GPL-3.0)
Oh yeah! And a lot of spins because of that, if you use android or computer.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is quite a timekiller on the phone
Uhhhh BALATRO!!!
10€ for card game?! Are you real??
Belatro won all sorts of awards, including GDC game of the year. $10 for an award winning game is nothing. Probably the most addicting game I’d played in years, and I’m not even into that type of game.
It’s highly regarded for a reason. If you’re on iPhone you can get a one month trial for Apple Arcade and play it for free, but it’s worth 10€ imo. It’s a good game in it’s own right, but it’s also one of very few mobile games that are not monetised beyond the initial purchase, well suited to touch controls and short play sessions and are actually fun.
I’m sorry but I just don’t see the fun in what basically looks like glorified video poker. I could see the appeal if there were other people to play against, but if it’s just single player I might as well just go to the casino and play the slots instead. It looks that boring to me.
I wish there was a free time limited demo I could play cause I’d love to be proven wrong…
It’s not poker. It’s a deckbuilding game based on poker hands.
Pirate it if you want. You will probably want to pay for it after a few hours.
I tried pirating, but I couldn’t find an APK that isn’t sketchy as fuck, and I don’t want the PC version because this is the kind of game I’d rather play on mobile to kill time at work.
Not €10 10 $
I’m just giving you shit but yes, how have you not heard about this game yet, watch some Youtubers play it and see why it’s so fucking great holy shit do you like ads in your face every three minutes and micro transactions and no free updates, you do you hon I pay for quality. The soundtrack the visual design the fucking game itself, there’s so much good going on in this game. I support it 1,000,000%.
I payed for most of my games but 10€ is to much for a game like this. Im from Europe so my prices are in € not $. Often for 1€ higher than $ prices. Like its not enough that 10€ is more than 10$ alredy…
You can find copies online with some mild searching.
Tap for spoiler
Mobilism is one such website where one can procure such items for Android
To try things out before buying of course.
If they are using iPhone, their chances of being able to find a pirated copy and getting it to work are practically zero without deep technical knowledge
I have iphone
What did you decide? Watching videos of people playing (for the first time) would give you an idea of value for yourself.
There is no way i would pay that amount, am not even into card games… And also salery in my country is like 10 times less than in US so dont even judge me…
Slay the spire, balatro, Ascension, melvor, plague inc, terraforming Mars, unciv, shapez…
Vampire survivor is good too
Balatro and peglin
+1 for Balatro. I didn’t think it’d be as much of a time sink as it has become for me though.
didn’t realize peglin is on mobile! cool!
It’s the only version I’ve played and it’s a great time sink.
Let’s fucking gooooo balatro
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
WorldBox
Mindustry
Unciv
Upvote for Shattered Pixel Dungeon! I unlocked the last two classes while on a plane.
Such a great game. I’ve actually run into the developer on Lemmy before.
He is pretty active in the PD com. Posts about about updates, answers questions. Its really cool
Balatro, all the other rougelites, monster train, slay the spire, etc.
Balatro is great but eats my battery for some reason
You can try lowering or outright disabling some of the special graphical effects like the simulated CRT scanlines.
Stardew valley.
It’s a fabulous chill game, but I didn’t find the mobile version as satisfying.
The Battle of Polytopia is a fantastic turn based strategy that I’ve spent way too much time playing.
Beholder is also great on mobile. Similar authoritarian setting to Paper’s Please, lot’s of decisions, consequences and replayability.
I Love Hue is a super relaxing colour puzzle game.
I mean… not sure if it counts as mobile but the entire history of console gaming up to few years ago works on emulators, so that’s a VAST choice. Sure you might dislike 99.99% but if there is even 0.01% you enjoy, that’s hundreds of games if not more!
Check https://search.f-droid.org/?q=emulator and consider a BT controller.
Not all of them are enjoyable when played on a small touchscreen, so the question is still relevant: which ones actually work well for the form factor?
Fair enough, hence why I mentioned the BT controller but OK so might want something more compact, say if you are walking around or in the subway for 1 stop.
That’s not my situation so naively I’d suggest stuff like https://hexgl.bkcore.com/ or (and sadly I can’t put my hand on it right now) those who rely on accelerometer, this way you don’t even tap on your screen.
That being said I think there are also now Web based emulators that do have controller overlay. This way you use your entire screen real estate but also use the device it as a controller. There is no haptic feedback but works relatively well, I used that for WebXR on mobile.
Edit: it wasn’t any of these but still gives the idea https://forums.libretro.com/t/rgpad-a-universal-gamepad-overlay/41134 https://github.com/ShawnHymel/phaser-plugin-virtual-gamepad/
can’t forget about NetherSX2. It’s a little bit of a pain to set up but it gives you all the PS2 options.
Out of curiosity why is it not on F-droid?
I don’t mind installing myself the
.apkviaadbbut the more I learned about how positively strict the process to publish to it is (via https://github.com/Mentra-Community/MentraOS/issues/1168 ) then I also take absence from F-droid as potentially warning side a project isn’t truly open or rely on proprietary parts or anti-pattern.Good question, I think it might have something to do with it being useless until you download a region iso or something. I can’t really speak to it though.
A while ago, I came across a curated list of no-BS games for Android and iOS.
BS consists of ads or barriers to progress that can’t be removed with a one-time payment. It has user ratings, and the highly-rated games are nearly certain to be good examples of their category.
The Room by fireproof games. Probably one of the first actual proper mobile games. Its spawned clones no IAP, no crap. Just fun, hard af puzzles.
Hoplite. Fun little iso turn based roguelike. Vampire Survivors. Reverse bullet-hell roguelike. Has spawned so, so, so many clones… GTA:Chinatown Wars Have not played this is a very very long time, but i’m sure it still holds up (if its available). Old school (2d birds eye view) gta style.
These are games that work well without a controller, The Room actually would play worse with one. If at all.
Then of course theres emulators and roms and stuff.
I think the opposite of a bullet hell is a bullet heaven, and vampire survivors counts.
Look for old games, that were released a long time ago before the “predation” was so required.
Osmos and World of Goo come to mind. Monument Valley 1 was a more popular, recent one in that vein.
Other than that, the FOSS and emulation recommendations here are great.
A dream of mine is to make good mobile games, no ads, just a single low purchase. Realistically it just wouldn’t be economically viable at all unless there is a free version with ads. But also realistically most mobile gamers aren’t using a controller and touchscreens suck.
People on iphone dont have a problem with paying a couple of bucks for a good game so you could make a lot of money if game is realy good…
Yeah but I would have to bootstrap myself on Android first to get an ios devkit :(
Although I have also considered cornering the Mac gaming market for basically the same reasons
Slay the Spire: it’s the same game as on PC or any other medium. Fantastic game. Obviously costs the same as other places (about $10), but well worth it!
Pokemon TCG Pocket. I started early with this, so I have had no problem with being F2P, but I’m sure that late adopters would need to pay some amount to become competitive. Still should be playable F2P, though. Anyways, it’s amazingly unintrusive when it comes to real money transactions. No interrupting ads and you basically have to search for the in-game shop to find the microtransactions.
Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic. This one might have changed since I got it ~8 years ago. It’s a pretty good mobile version of the original game. I’ve spent a lot of time with this game.
