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
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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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)
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.
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 Dungeon
Good Play Store:
Knights of Pen and Paper
Swords and Sandals
Sky: Children of the Light
Theres 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
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.
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!
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!
This list is a bit old so many games aren't supported on the latest android versions, but there are no micro transactions for any game on it. https://nobsgames.stavros.io/android/
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a great one, Balatro is exceptional in every way, and Slay The Spire is crazy good.
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.
Slice and Dice. A rouge-like dungeon crawler where each party member has a unique dice that you roll to decide which ability is used each turn. You can get it on itch.io. a cross platform license is $18 but an android only license is $9.
The game has an incredible amount of depth so I highly recommend looking it up.
Going to second this - there's just so many game modes, it's all so well balanced and 10 bucks is EXTREMELY reasonable with the amount of well made content
Kingdom two crowns
Bad north
Alto's odyssey
Geoguessr :)
And i won't mention Shattered PD because everyone else did...
Hoplite for replayability
Dungeons of Dreadrock is short but a fun puzzle game
I've recently tried Peglin and enjoyed it a lot. Sounds like something you might like (a mix between the Peggle formula and deck builder)
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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.
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?
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
In threads like this I will always recommend Swordigo. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.touchfoo.swordigo
It's an old side scrolling platform game. The gameplay is very nicely balanced so you won't have to grind anything. There's a few difficult jumps and tactics for bosses, but the difficulty increases gradually so you have a good chance of knowing what to do when you get to it, instead of being frustrated.
It takes a few days to 100% it. I think I've done it 3-4 times by now.
I've been playing unciv which is a civ clone. Nice and clean. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.unciv.app
Dicey Dungeons is great.
Zachtronics Solitaire Collection
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