Ask Lemmy

Didn't see it here yet, but Dawncaster is a really good roguelite deck builder that was actually designed around a phone UI so doesn't feel clunky.

Slay the Spire

if you like factory builder type games, try out mindustry or shapez

Hoplite - hex dungeon puzzle Spelltower - word puzzle X-COM (on a bigger screen)

There are actual AAA full games, Feral Games is releasing a lot of their games on Mobile now (Android as example), like Alien: Isolation, XCOM 2, GRID Legends, Several Total War Entries and Tropico.

Hitman Absolution launches now in October 16th.

There are also some from other devs, like Focus' Mudrunner and Square Enix's Life Is Strange.

If you want awesome casual ones, there's Balatro, Isle of Arrows, Keep on Mining (non-slop incremental), Dungeon Clawler, Siege Up! and All Aboard! of the top of my head.

Scrolled the entire page. Just to not see hill climb racing, and slither.io

The N64 and earlier emulate really well on mobile. It's a stretch to call those mobile games, but you can have like 1000 titles that take up a grand total of around 20gb.

Controls are pretty wonky in some games - it's hit and miss. Touch screen doesn't pair well with some, especially the N64 titles specifically, but it's usually good enough to be playable.

Unciv

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.

Magic Survival has been my main game for months; its such a simple game but really scratches that itch.

I'm a big fan of Shattered Pixel Dungeon!

-endless sky is pretty good -hyperrogue is interesting game, also quite good -dungeon crawl stonesoup is good

though i'm not sure if there are any good pure mobile games, as those are for pc too.

Flow free is pretty cool

Alto's Adventure. One of those simple is powerful games. Though it can get really frustrating as there definitely are situations where the game just decides that actually, you're done.

Into the Breach
You'll just need to find a patched .APK to play without a Netflix account.

Most of the mobile games I play have been mentioned by others, but I'll give a shout to one I haven't seen in the thread: Dungeons of Dreadrock. A fun puzzle game with a good amount of content. Free with ads, or ad-free with a onetime purchase; no MTX. Doesn't offer the same replayability as something like Shattered Pixel Dungeon, but I was happy with what I got.

Slice and dice, infinitnode

I really like the polybridge series of games. Bridge puzzle game worh great mechanics.

Lots of good PC ports. The Kotor series and Baldurs gate 1 and 2 and icewind dale ports are good.

Autochess is fun. Lots of opportunities to spend money but none are important, just cosmetic.

Balatro is good (if you like that game as i do)

And also a series of games called "doors" are fun to pass the time. Like a puzzle box where solving one element opens another until the door is opened.

It is 99% crap on the stores though. I tend to get ports and emulators for most of my mobile gaming.

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.

• Into the Breach (Netflix subscription)
• Shogun Showdown (Crunchyroll subscription)
• Balatro
• Slice & Dice

I've been playing old electron engine game like icewind Dale & Baldur's gate. Even Neverwinter nights runs & plays great.

I love Stardew Valley and Gameboy Color emulator

For games currently out and available:

• Slay The Spire ( a bit more than just something to pass the time with IMO, but again, it's a direct port from PC )

• SuperTuxKart ( I personally don't like the mobile version over control issues I have, but it's still real fun IMO, if you like good kart racers )

• Feudal Tactics ( definitely a time passer on smaller maps )

• HyperRogue ( trippy non-Euclidean game )

• Shattered Pixel Dungeon ( I suck at it, but it's a fun enough dungeon crawler )

• Mindustry ( PC port is more my style, but fun base defense resource extraction game overall )

For games to come out hopefully soon:

• Maze Mice ( I'm addicted to that game and am half tempted to buy it on mobile when it drops if the dev provides a way to buy an APK for the game instead of going through g••gle play. Think Superhot meets Pac-Man meets roguelite ( rougelike? ) )

Dawncaster - a portrait mode rogue deckbuilder. It's gorgeous and fun and actively developed - all new card expansions are free and the release cycle alternate them with paid expansions that give you new possible harder bosses (or different card art etc). So far we have 2300 cards, extremely well received visual impairment support (honestly the only game I know of that have good blind support), and over 700k words of text (for story, events, mechanics etc).

Overall I find the price model very fair - kinda like Path of Exile model?

Old school RuneScape

Solomon's Keep and Solomon's Boneyard.

Keep is a traditional dungeon crawler and Boneyard is an endless wave survival game.

Swordigo!

There are many great Indie Games. My far favourite are the ones by 'yiotro' which seems to be a single (Russian?Ukrainian?) developer. Each is some kind of strategy/simulation mix and very cheap with simple graphics but a lot of depth. I discovered his work from seeing Antiyoy which either is so old that I got a demo of it in a ~2002 gaming magazine, or a copy of that old game. Just amazing fun all around and the only reason I don't have any of them on my phone right now is that I can't stop playing if I install them (similar to Unciv and Shattered Pixel Dungeon, both FOSS and excellent choices that were mentioned already).

NYT Games app. Realistically its just advertising to get you to buy an NYT subscription. The Mini and Wordle are good for killing a few minutes each day.

Backpack Battles

Very fun strategic game, there are MTX in the game, but they're not necessary to play in the slightest.

I have bought a few things to support the Devs though.

Outside of emulators and other similar apps, there are some games that have decent mobile ports. Some of the good ones I know of are:

Lego Star wars: the Complete Saga, which as far as I can tell, seems mostly identical to at least most of the other versions but it lacks all of the co-op/multiplayer components. I did also see some minor graphical glitches but they didn't effect gameplay.

The 3D remake of Final fantasy 3. It seems identical to the PSP version but it's obviously running at a higher resolution and possibly a higher frame rate as well.

Bloons TD 5, other users have mentioned 6 but 5 is also good too.

HamSandwich, which is not available through the Google Play Store, so you may soon be stuck with the browser version when Google's changes to side loading take effect. Also, I recommend using either a keyboard or a controller, as the touchscreen controls are not that good.

The Enchanted Cave 2, the first one is also pretty good too but 2 has a lot more content and is a much better game all around.

I know that a lot of people have issues with games that have MTX, but I will defend these games if they are actually good and I can play them without feeling like I'm being force to put money in. Here are some of the games I can remember:

Honkai Impact 3rd, I haven't completed the story yet but I've played up to the end of chapter 28 of part 1 and I haven't had to put a single cent into the game. My only issue with this game is that, while the game does have keyboard support and the keyboard controls are decent, it doesn't have controller support for some reason.

Bloons Monkey City, this game is basically just Bloons TD 5 but with a city building mechanic and some online components.

The Walking Zombie 2: Shooter. This ones a bit weird but I've been playing this occasionally. It's a pretty decent FPS that takes at least some inspiration from the Fallout games. It's not a masterpiece by any means but it still seems worth mentioning. I just wish it had keyboard and mouse support.

Puzzle Heros rpg - this is a turn based match 3 game with diagonals and a time limit to match as many tiles as you can, this powers up your colour coded heros and you use them to defeat/harvest food based enemies to stock your food stalls. Stalls make money, money levels up heros, etc.

It's a 'reskin', albeit a very minorly changed one, of Match Quest, and the art/design is all really well done in an old school 8bit pixel style, with some really beautifully done layered scenery.

It gets a bit grindy and will take forever if you want to win every hero and level them all up to max, but as a casual game to dip into a few times a day to collect profits and loot old levels, and then spend twenty minutes or so playing levels, it's very fun.

I also recommend Flappy Dragon. It's a resin of the bird game, I think, idk I never played that one. The physics is fun and well thought out for each dragon and the dragons all have really nice designs.

Oh and it's probably been mentioned a ton on this thread already but Simon Tatham's Puzzles is a fantastic app full of puzzles that can be played offline.

I honestly think Hayday is one of the best free farm games, It does have paid currency but it's not forced on you. You can watch optional Ads for a few daily random items but these are not forced, you're the one who has to click the ticket near the mail box.

Supercell make some of the best games that aren't fully scummy.