Ask Lemmy

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.

The correct answer is video game steaming with a controller hooked up. Otherwise it's Minecraft..... And that's it.

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.

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.

Unnamed space idle

Chess.com

Plenty of bots to get my buttons kicked in chess.

Stardew valley.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon

WorldBox

Mindustry

Unciv

Balatro and peglin

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.

Free, ad-free, open source phone games

Unciv: Civilization V clone that runs on a potato; a grand 4x strategy game. It seems pretty mechanically complete and has a lot of content. Easily modded. (Graphics may not be to everyone's taste)

Simon Tatham's portable puzzle collection: Mathematically inspired Puzzle games with a lot of customization and reasonable interface. This includes classics like untangle (graph planarity) and solo (sudoku, but generalized). I personally really enjoy Tower, and hadn't seen it elsewhere (and like 15 more games besides).

Chip defense: computer science themed tower defense. By the power of Turing, Noether, and Knuth you can strike down malicious packets attempting to corrupt your CPU. Good content, fun towers and educational bonus material, and I think it looks rather good. (Minor gripe/warning: early levels are optimally played with a lot of tapping that is not very ergonomic; this drops off after the first few levels.)

Honorable mentions (not FOSS, but still free, MTX free, and no ads beyond fishing for a rating). Higgster's game compendium: collection of games in a consistent and pleasing artstyle. Includes things like solitaire, wordle, binaro, and mastermind (20+ games total, several more have been added in the last year). This is really very well done, give it a look!

Flocks: Sliding puzzle game with excellent graphics and animations. Lots of levels, introduces new mechanics regularly, and easy to pickup or put down. I quite enjoy everything Robert has made, recommended!

Balatro. Be warned though, it’s digital crack. One time payment though, no mtx

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.

Puzzles by Simon whatshisface
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles

Bunch of puzzle games, no monetisation

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.

NO

Chess.

Hasn't gotten an update in awhile but the community is thriving.

Steamworld Heist is so good on phones and tablets. Zero ads, dark patterns, or scummy behavior.

Stardew Valley, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Luanti with VoxelLibre, Mojo Launcher, Unciv, Lemuroid to play console games like Crash Bandicoot or Super Mario Bros, Geometry Dash (not the Lite version, that has ads), 2048, Vector Pinball, 1010! Klooni

Walkscape is a step counter and an RPG, it's pretty cool but not exactly a game you spend a lot of time on. You mostly just walk and then check your progress and make a few decisions for your next walk (inventory, equipment, tasks, travels...)

The mobile version of Papers Please is exquisite. I highly recommend reading the developer's documentary of it: https://dukope.com/devlogs/papers-please/mobile/

Mindustry: an automation tower defense game

Shattered pixel dungeon: a classic Roguelike dungeon crawler

Slay the spire: a deck builder Roguelike. Probably one of the most popular in the whole Roguelike genre

Peglin: a lot like slay the spire, but plinko instead of cards

Atomas (Playstore)

Shattered Pixel Dungeon (Playstore) (GitHub)

Slice & Dice (Playstore)

Vector Pinball (Playstore) (GitHub)

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.

Monument valley

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.

CrossMe is great, simple mechanic and hundreds of puzzles to solve.

Amazing brick

Hoplite

Pixel Dungeon

Tiny Folk

Unciv

Battle for Polytopia

micRogue

Doom & Dentiny

the mobile port of Chrono Trigger

and I strongly recommend the GBA and GameBoy emulators MyBoy! and MyOldboy! for playing those entire libraries on the go

Dawncaster - a portrait mode rogue deckbuilder. It's gorgeous and fun and actively developed - all new card expansions are free and are 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?