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7mo ago

Do you know any mobile games that don't suck?

I just want to kill some time, I like simple arcade style games that aren't using scummy corporate sales tactics to get me to play every day

175 comments

Shattered Pixel Dungeon. If you like Roguelikes.
- I hate this game so much. I played 3 times yesterday.
  
  That's OK, you can also play it if you hate Roguelikes.
- Steepest learning curve of any game I've played. So damn rewarding though.

Knights of the old Republic has been on there for a while.
Emulators.
Slay the Spire.
- I've never bothered to set up an emulator on my phone but it's a great idea, any recommendations in particular?
  
  GameBoy Advance games work really well IMO, they're designed for small screens and lengthening aspect ratios leave tons of space for virtual buttons.
  
  Basically anything really well rated should be fine!
- I don't think I've mobile gamed without emulators for like 4 or 5 gens of phones now. I was a young man back in those days...

There is a curated list of "no-bullshit" mobile games, without microtransactions and all of that horrible stuff: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/
My favorites so far:
Monument Valley 1+2
Riptide GP: Renegade
Badland
Galaxy on Fire 2 HD
- Monument Valley absolutely ROCKS
- Badland is a banger. Remember playing it as a kid plenty

Vampire survivors is one of the best time killers. Slay The Spire is also fun.
- I'd add Slice and Dice to that list

SLAY THE SPIRE!
- Yeah this is my goto time killer on the phone or tablet if I’m traveling. No need for an Internet connection so great on a plane.
- Best value for money if you like deckbuilders and rogue likes. Fantastic game. The second one is coming out next year!

shattered pixel dungeom
- This ! No ads, no in app purchase, only fun !
  
  I have played it on and off for years. Once I get into a run, i play it out, but otherwise it's easy to put down, forget about for a while. Great entertainment without the addiction

Games with roguelike metaprogression:
Vampire Survivors: Practically an idle game. All you do in this is control your hero's movement around a sea of monsters and your hero automatically attacks them. Surprisingly fun and strategically deep. Battery killer
Slay the Spire: card collecting strategy game
Bloons TD 6 (requires Netflix): Pop Bloons with monkeys. Battery killer
Into the Breach (requires Netflix): isometric strategy game from the same devs as FTL: Faster Than Light. Big emphasis on using near-perfect information to solve tactical fights like they are puzzles.
Puzzle games:
Any of the variant Sudoku apps from "Studio Goya" on the Play store. These are the official apps of the Cracking the Cryptic YouTube channel. Handcrafted puzzles tend to have a very interesting solution path that requires you to develop logic skills.
The Room. Play as Tommy Wiseau as he uncovers an Eldritch mystery by opening puzzle boxes. Very satisfying animations, neat story
Cultist Simulator. Honestly idk what to call this one but "puzzle game" kind of fits. This is a really fun game but requires a while to get a hang of. In fact the fun of the game is learning the game mechanics, since nothing is explained except through cryptic hints and riddles. The writing is incredible but you will probably lose a lot as you get the hang of it.
Other stuff:
Eternal Card Game: I'll be honest, I haven't played this in ages, but I remember it being a better MTG clone than MTG arena. The mechanics are almost the exact same feeling as MTG, but more adapted to the digital medium. Has some pay-to-win mechanics and microtransactions but honestly the pricing felt pretty fair to me and it's not super in-your-face with it.
RCT Classic: Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 mobile port. It's not as good as OpenRCT, but it's still a lot of fun.
OpenTTD: Transport tycoon deluxe mobile port.
Papers Please: Glory to Arstotzka!
Townscaper: not really a game as much as an arts and crafts kit. You get a tile-based map and wherever you click it fills in a tile. Depending on how you fill in those tiles, they look like different little buildings, gardens, etc. really cute game with no stakes.
Mindustry: minimalist Factorio clone. Controls can be challenging on mobile but it's still fun
- Great list but idk why you put "Requires Netflix." None of these require Netflix.
  
  Maybe it's not the case anymore. Bloons and Into the Breach were ported through Netflix's game publishing thing. Maybe they opened it up at some point.
- Slay The Spire alone can give you hundreds of hours, even thousands.
- Last I checked, I thought you could still purchase BTD6 without needing netfl*x through the play store. Has that changed?
  Also, glory to glorious Arstotzka.

Slice and Dice is a good rogue-like dice builder with no bullshit.
No ads. No DLC - there's a demo game and full version. And the mechanics are solid with no grindy bits.
- Absolutly love this game, great replayability.
  I have just discovered Card quest which is taking up a lot of my spare time at the moment.
- Great game!

Monument valley is pretty good and has no ads or micro transactions

Hoplite is the one. No ads, great gameplay, no addictive pattern.

Probably not what you're looking for but this is my favorite time-waster.
https://abagames.github.io/crisp-game-lib-11-games/?pakupaku
- Wow, this is actually simple but strategic. Thanks for posting it!

Starts shootin corrupting wand
Shattered Pixel Dungeon gang rise up!
- Working on getting all the badges

Monument valley
- One (well, two) of my all-time favorites. Both in terms of gameplay/puzzle design, and minimalist graphics that are still interesting to look at.

Decidedly not arcade, but I absolutely love Shattered Pixel Dungeon as a phone timekiller.
- This and solitaire are the only games I would install on my phone.

Slay the Spire.
Geoguessr.
Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic.
- Can't talk for the two others but Slay the spire will kill you allot of time!

Slice & Dice is the best game I've ever gotten on my phone, I bought it over Thanksgiving in 2021 and haven't stopped playing it since. It's similar to deck builders, but dice based.
It's $7 on mobile, but has a good free to try demo. So you can see if you like it for free. It's also available on Steam and itch.io
The game is still in active development, but the dev only releases updates every 1-1.5 years. The updates are absolutely massive though and add a ton of content.

If you're into Pokemon and have access to the GBA/DS ROMs, PokeMMO is a great emulator that adds online MMO features to the first 5 generations of Pokemon. You can take one character across all 5 regions, and there's tons of QoL features.
- That sounds awesome. I always wished to be able to visit other regions in my pokemon games. It's one of the reasons why I enjoyed soulsilver so much

Into the Breach.
- Free if you have a Netflix subscription: https://www.reddit.com/r/IntoTheBreach/comments/w2y3ep/into_the_breach_is_now_available_on_ios_and/

If you like roguelike card builders, Dawncaster is great
- Dawncaster is excellent. I was amazed at how deep the game is for a mobile deck builder.
  It also uses an expansion based monetization rather than micro transactions and the expansions absolutely aren't necessary to get a lot of enjoyment out of the game.
- I really liked Dawncaster but then I didn't play it for awhile and when I came back it had changed significantly and all the builds that I used to win with consistently no longer worked out. Honestly it's probably more balanced now than before but I haven't spent enough time with it to get good again.
  
  Honestly I’m just bad at it so I rarely finish a run regardless. But it’s fun at least, and I bought the expansions mostly to encourage the business model.

supertuxkart SuperTuxKart (A 3D arcade racer with a variety of characters, tracks, and modes to play.
- vector pinball

The older Pokemon gameboy games (using emulator).
The Room series - puzzle/mystery style.
- The Room series are great games.
- Even NDS games should be pretty playable on a phone. Give Heart Gold/Soul Silver a try if you've missed it, they're the best Pokémon games.

Bloons TD? I whike away time on it occasionally.

Chess (on Lichess, either browser or app)
Got time? Practice openings or play online.
No time? Play 1 minute games online.
Inconsistent time (have to go any moment) or just casual? Practice puzzles.

Does it have to be arcade?
I love "papers, please".
- Glory to Arstotzka!

Bloons:td6

If you like twitchy reflex killers, two oldies-but-goodies from Terry Cavanaugh: Super Hexagon and VVVVVV.
Fun chiptune soundtracks, minimal graphics, and so much "I died already? Okay just ONE MORE try and then I really need to get some work done. ARGH - okay maybe ONE MORE try...." And when you finally succeed the dopamine is second to none.
- Fellow Cavanaugh fan spotted!

If you're in to a bit of a challenge then "Flow". There's many copies but I always played "Flow Free" for killing time.

Machinarium

I do chess puzzles on lichess

You Must Build a Boat and Triple Town are simple but excellent. Slay the Spire is incredible - can't recommend it enough.

Dead Cells and Peglin
- Dead Cells seems like it would be absolute ass on a touch screen, I've got 300 hours on it on PC but no thank you
  You folks that like to sync a controller to your phone might enjoy it though

With a little bit of know-how, you can get Balatro running on your phone, and Balatro is amazing.
To do it, buy the game then follow the instructions at https://github.com/blake502/balatro-mobile-maker
- I just tried this, holy shit it works perfectly. This is real bad for my productivity.
  
  Fair warning, the battery consumption is pretty high - plan accordingly.

Slice & dice stole all of my free time for a while. I definitely recommend it.

Lichess. It's also completely free.
- Lichess! To waste time, but to feel smart about it.
  I love it though

AM2R a.k.a. Another Metroid 2 Remake It's a fan game of the 2nd Metroid game, and is considered one of the best of the series, even though it's not an official release. It's more like Super Metroid than the Gameboy title is. You'll have to search around a bit due to Nintendo's D&C, but it's not hard to find (the internet archive has recent versions).
Minecraft It's a good port, but probably best played with a gamepad &| tablet.
Portal Knights A minecraft-like voxel game with more satisfying progression and combat, but less creative freedom. Plays well on newish devices, epsecially with lower-quality settings.
Terraria It's a great game all-around, but harder to play on mobile than PC.
Emulation This goes without saying if you like retro gaming. The best emulators I've found are the .emu apps by Robert Broglia. They can be bought from the play store, or obtained for free at his Github page. If you like original Playstation games, get the Duckstation emulator (produced by another dev.).

Sky Children of Light
Rusted Warfare
Endless Sky

I enjoyed both Monument Valleys, the Room series, and Downwell.

Sky Force and Kittens Game are the only two mobile games I ever played and still have installed on every phone

Night of the Full Moon is incredible.

Death road to Canada

Alto - very calming and engaging game where you go down a mountain on your snowboard trying to catch llamas and do aerial tricks. Excellent vibes, no bothersome ads or micro transactions i think.
- I'm sure it's possible to find older versions of the Alto games but recently they added forced video ads.
  
  Crap, maybe I paid to remove ads at one point.

If you have a rooted phone, an older android version, or the ability to access the android/data folder to move files around, I hear some pvz2 mods are pretty good. Only ones I can personally say are good are Refloureshed and Eclise, though it's been a long time since I've played Eclise. Both are harder versions of vanilla.

good ol' tetris

Coffee Golf
mineswifter.com
Tomb of the Mask
Downwell
High Rise by smpl
Vampire Survivor

Auralux 2

Swordigo https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.touchfoo.swordigo
- Swordigo is the single decent mobile game. Still, I didn't expect to see it already mentioned. Neat!

Board game adaptations tend to be good. Everdell and bottom of the ninth for preference.

Reigns is quite fun

There's an app I really like called Minireview, focused on finding and reviewing mobile games.

I've rather enjoyed 20 Minutes Till Dawn
- I've only played it on PC but I like this quite a bit as well

I Love Hue and I Love Hue Too. Also, My Friend Pedro. That one's pretty short though.

Minesweeper on fdroid

If you like puzzles, horror and all things weird, definitely try some of the games by Rusty Lake.
The entire Cube Escape series is available for free (a sort of excape the room puzzle).

Monument Valley 1 and 2.
Haven't found anything that isn't microtransaction and ad-riddled trash or a port of an older game since.

Atomas is pretty fun, it's super simple and looks really good

175 comments