If you enjoy puzzle games then Baba is You, Snake Bird and Railbound will keep you busy for quite a while.
Balatro and Slay the Spire both have a lot of reply value. Very different games.
Papers Please
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a really good roguelike for mobile. Ton of variety, no ads, only thing you can buy is a supporter pack that gives the ui a different fringe color, and that doesn't get pushed.
Some good ones from the fdroid app-repo.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon - already mentioned roguelike
SGT-Puzzles - already mentioned microgame puzzlers
Frozen Bubble - already mentioned bubble-shooter
Vector Pinball - already mentioned pinball
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.artificialworlds.boxstacker/index.html - Physics puzzler
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simondalvai.ball2box/ - flick ball to the box for 3-stars
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.gpl.rpg.AndorsTrail/ - Massive story quest driven RPG
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.chadenas.cpudefense/ - Tower defense on a PCB
https://f-droid.org/packages/ch.logixisland.anuto/ - trad tower-defense
https://f-droid.org/packages/it.alessandropira.wesnoth114/ - hex turn-based fantasy RPG
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.lettucepie.flickybee/index.html - flick the bee through the course
Stardew Valley! It was worth the $5 already in vanilla, then it got updated with more content at no extra charge and then again. And now 1.6 is around the corner with even more. It is the love child of one dev that keeps on giving and giving and giving. And there are tons of mods of all kinds including entire world overhauls that adds even more replayability. Very much recommended.
Whatever emulator you can run and the ROMs of your choice.
Slay the Spire is one of my favorite games of all time, and has a nice android port I play before bed all the time. No ads, just caw caaaw
Threes
Fun puzzle game that got ripped off by 2048 and it's endless clones. They wrote a blog post on how shitty mobile game development can be.
Luck be a Landlord is fantastic! I just got it and spent way too much time playing it.
Ascension if you like deck builders. It has full expansion packs like getting the physical card game, but it’s fun without them and the expansions are cheap as hell. There’s a pack where you get tons of them that goes on sale sometimes. It doesn’t have dark patterns, but the packs could be classified as DLC I think. They’re just a couple dollars USD instead of 20-30 like the physical cards.
Full disclosure: I own the physical cards and fucking love this game.
Mini Metro. Its a transportation strategy game where you build and manage a city´s metro system through the style of the London tube map. You pay once and get the whole game. No ads or micro transactions.
Open Tyrian is an old shoot em up thats open source and has been ported to dozens of platforms, including android. It plays very well with touch controls.
If you want a Minecraft like game thats free and has no microtransactions I recommend Minetest (Now called Luanti). Its open source and has tons of mods.
Thank you so much for the Mini Metro suggestion! Loving it!
Minetest is a good suggestion, but it's worth noting that the base application won't have anything playable on install. A few of the games made with it attempt to recreate Minecraft, but it's not limited to that.
Also, while the core team has announced the name change, it's still listed as Minetest on both the play store and F-Droid.
~~Freeciv~~ Unciv on Android is an almost feature complete re-creation of Civilization 5 with minimal graphics. You can also download the JAR and run it on a desktop if you have a Java SDK installed. As a Civ player that started with 4, I found it easier to pick up than freeciv which is trying to replicate something more like Civ2.
Edit: provide correct name
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is great, it's an open-source dungeon crawler. Neither adds, nor transactions, micro or otherwise. If you want to pay tho, there's a donation link for the dev team.
And if you still want too play GBA games, check check out the Lemuroid emulator, it's also open source and has no adds. Works for nintendoDS too.
You can find both of these on F-Droid. They're also be on Google Play, but since I've only tried the F-Droid version idk if the other has adds.
the dev team
The team is one guy. His name's Evan.
I also highly recommend Shattered Pixel Dungeon. I've been playing it for years.
Great game. Been playing it for years.
However, the mobile UI has some serious issues since it was more of a secondary thought. It's really easy to accidentally tap to move somewhere and ruin an entire run that you were really enjoying. There's no undo or any way of editing the save to help recover the run. I've stopped playing for months because I was just so discouraged after shit like that constantly happening. In fact, I've hit that point just now.
Some stuff like that's definitely happened to me. My dumbest defeat was after drinking a potion of levitation to get last dome disintegration traps, accidentally tapped he wrong part of the screen, thought I might still have enough fuel to make it to the chest and I'd use my pirit chain on the way back... But nope, I fell right on a trap and died. I had an ankh, but not a blessed one, so even tho I could make it back to that room's entrance I had no way to recover my bag.
Mindustry is basically Factorio-meets-tower-defense. It's open-source, also available on desktop.
Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic, if you feel like playing rollercoaster tycoon 1/2 on your phone. They slightly altered the UI to make it more touch friendly.
Sweet! Imma make Mr Bones Wild Ride
Endless Sky is a solid space trader and combat game, free on f-droid
Frozen Bubble is a pretty fun bubble bobble clone, also on f-droid
Arx Libertatis allows you to play the full version of Arx Fatalis, a super in depth underground RPG inspired by Ultima Underworld. You need the PC game files to transfer to your phone though.
Balatro
Surprised Slice & Dice hasn't been mentioned, it's amazing. That and Dawncaster.
A useful tool is DarkPattern.games, which lists dark patterns in mobile games (such as micro transactions).
I am ready to dedicate my life to adding reviews to that site and getting more people to contribute. I want an app store that automatically filters out things below like a 2.
I am in love.
That site is sick! TYVM!
Started playing Balatro on my phone at work.
I didn't need to know mobile balatro was a thing, oh no. Not good.. not good.
How bad could it be, just a quick little game.
Don't download Balatro on mobile unless you want to lose your job, family, friends, and health. It's that addictive.
Yellow and the subsequent games are pretty interesting puzzle games
I didn't see Unciv recommended yet, it's a decent mobile open source version of Civilization.
Pocket City 2 also gets a shout-out, it's not very deep but a nice casual city builder with a one time purchase.
Balatro, works really well with touch, numbers go brrrrrrrrr
DATA WING is a great racing game with an amazing, short story.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a fun little RPG with lots of humour
Dribble is a surprisingly unique platformer, free with no iaps and unique swipe controls.
You can get ports of the marble blast games on Android, I particularly like Ultra.
Into The Breach
Slay The Spire
I have the following games on my iPhone:
Hoplite, Pixel Dungeon, micRogue
Kairosoft titles are typically $5 to $7 dollars. Tons of Dev and Tycoon style business builder titles. Most are fantastic.
The Netflix version of mobile games have their micro transactions removed (or at least all the ones I've downloaded).
Cookie clicker paid, stardew valley, Terraria, freedoom (gzdoom + open source IWAD packaged on fdroid store), mindustry, original peggle you can find apk on internet archive, opensurge, minetest engine with voxelibre game for open source minecraft.
I really enjoyed playing the platforms cats are liquid: a better place(there is also a light in the shadow, but that game is worse); catbird, nameless cat, kitty death room and the 4 dadish games
If you want a game that has microtransactions, but rarely try to sell you things, i would recommended the tower defense game(i think) the battle cats. There is also a 10 year celebration that gives you a lot of rewards
Https://lichess.org/training lets me pretend I'm improving my mind by playing.
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