Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren't filled with microtransactions?
Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren't filled with microtransactions?
Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren't filled with microtransactions? For example: easy puzzle games, match-3 games, low-difficulty adventure games, or clicker-style games.
So far, the only good examples I've found are Monument Valley, Suika Game, and (sort of) Vampire Survivors.
I'm personally looking for games that have more progression or variety, but any suggestions are welcome.
Pixel Dungeon: Roguelike, infinitely replayable. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watabou.pixeldungeon
Auralux: A simple real time strategy game. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wardrumstudios.auralux
2048: Simple to learn, difficult to master puzzle. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androbros.puzzle2048eng
One time purchase:
- Peglin ✨
- Luck be a landlord ✨
- Forager
- Dicey dungeons
- Dead Cells (optional DLC)
- Bloons Tower Defense 6 (out of the way IAP) ✨
- Terraria
- 20 minutes till dawn (has a non premium option with some micro transactions)
Free:
- Antimatter dimensions (long idle-ish game) ✨
- Legends of Runeterra (just play the story modes) ✨
- Team fight tactics (cosmetics only)
- Plague inc (and probably rebel inc, but I haven't played that yet) ✨
- Super Auto Pets (cosmetics and extra optional sets) ✨
Star on the ones I'd specifically recommend for casual play
I use Privacy Friendly versions of Sudoku and Minesweeper on the F-Droid store. I also really enjoy Nonograms (aka Picross), and haven't found a good foss app for it, but the app "nonograms.com" has been a good experience for me. I paid like $5 for the ad free version and that's been it, nothing else.
I liked egg inc for a while, if you're looking for clicker type games.
Other than that I can recommend
- Stardew Valley
- Peglin
- Sudoku
- Nanograms
- Dungeon Village 1 & 2
Multiple of these are paid, but I'm 100% on board with paying a small amount for an app rather than paying a multiple of that for in-game Battlepasses and whatevers.
It annoys me a lot to say this, but Netflix has some excellent games in their roster. So if you have a Netflix subscription, check those out. I personally very much enjoyed
- Storyteller
- Into the Breach
But they also have ports of some very good PC games like Spiritfarer, Terra Nil or World of Goo.
Games I know of on Android:
- Ganz Schön Clever — Digital adaptation of a board game. It's like bingo except you roll dice and there's actual skill involved.
- Knotwords — Crosswords but instead of word clues, each region of the board indicates what letters appear there.
- Threes — 2048 was a ripoff of 1024, and 1024 was a ripoff of Threes. Threes is the OG.
- Sagrada — Digital adaptation of a board game. Build a stained glass window by rolling dice and placing them on your board in the right pattern.
- Simon Tatham's Puzzles — Big compilation of various puzzle types.
- Handshakes (by Pet Pumpkin) — "Solo co-op" sokoban puzzle where you try to get two guys to shake hands.
- inbento — Assemble lunch boxes by sliding tiles around to match the reference picture.
Try searching on https://www.darkpattern.games It seems like a vast collection with reviews aimed at finding and naming healthy and unhealthy games
My recommendation l is going back to the basics: chess, especially lichess.org
You can choose a mode however you want, and it may or may not be stressful. Multiplayer with friends or random online people, choose a time between 30 seconds for a game and infinity to move.
If you don't want to play right now, you can solve tactical exercises.
@PlzGivHugs Unciv, neat open-source turn-based 4X, obliviously inspired by the Civilization series
If you like the older Pokemon games and can get the ROMs on your phone, PokeMMO is really cool. It's an emulator that turns the first 5 generations of games into an MMO where you can take the same character across each region.
There's a handful of changes to the base game, but most are small: Berry farming is changed, there's an Exp Share for EVs now, Sweet Scent is used to summon a 1v5 against wild Pokemon... There's character customization... There's some QoL stuff like shiny encounters having a sound effect and adding a confirmation box so you don't accidentally flee, and the stats page for your Pokemon is way more detailed.
I had nearly given up looking for good mobile games when I remembered that emulators exist. Nintendo DS games map pretty well to a smart phone, there are some games that use entirely touch controls. I'm using the MelonDS emulator and I've mostly been playing advanced wars: days of ruin and puzzle quest 2. Puzzle quest is pretty excellent and chill by the way.
The website https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ helps surface these, and let's you filter out based on different things.
One that I like in particular is Gauguin. It's a Sudoku-like with different math-y rules.
Anuto TD is a tower defense game that is also really good, but not so low stress.
Lichess, if you're into Chess. It's a great, no compromise, high quality app. Stressful if you get too worked up about competitive, but puzzles are at least relaxing.
Stardew Valley is casual, low stress, with heaps of content.
For quick few minutes I've recently been into Pirate Solitaire which is on F-Droid.
Holedown
You just aim a ball and clear blobs before they reach the top. No timer. I usually play this with my screen split to YouTube.
The original Peggle. There's a free APK available on speedrun.com. Works flawlessly even on modern Android.
This isn't exactly what you asked, but I highly recommend emulation. I have had ePSXe downloaded on every phone I've had for the past ten years to play PS1 games. There are so many good titles, all of them free, playable offline. You might like Intelligent Qube Mr. Driller Devil Dice for puzzles. I love playing final fantasy, legend of dragoon, suikoden, Spyro, crash bandicoot. I don't care about graphics, but I am a sucker for playing through a story.
Hoplite
slay the spire has a mobile port
Stardew Valley has been out on Android for a while now.
Magic DosBox, not a game. But in combination with https://www.old-games.com/ , it's a pretty good selection of all the old games made for Dos back in the wild west of indie games back before they were even called that. There are, of course, also old commercial games that have transitioned to freeware now too. Should be able to find lots of awesome games there. Moraff adventure games are particularly interesting. Bit of a steep learning curve, but great to come back to now and then. The site has reviews of every game and sorts them into categories. It can be a little overwhelming just due to the sheer number of available games, but take it slow, and work your way through. It's worth the time investment to find gems.
A couple that I like:
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80 Days - it's not free but I think it's worth it. It's a sort of steampunk version of Around the World in 80 Days where you have to plan your routes, and buy and sell things in different cities to make money. The main gameplay is sort of choose-your-own-adventure events that happen during travel and in different cities.
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Card Thief - I just started playing this recently. It does technically have a microtransaction but it's more like, they let you play for free if you don't mind waiting for chests to unlock, or you can buy the game to bypass this. The main gameplay is sneaking through dungeons represented by a 3x3 grid of cards randomly drawn from the deck; collecting treasures and avoiding getting caught.
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A Dance of Fire and Ice is an incredible rhythm game that you buy once and that's it. I think there's an expansion pack but it's a single purchase. Whether that's your idea of "casual" really depends on what you like. You can always play chill low difficulty levels when you need to zone out, and high difficulty levels when you want a challenge. It can get stupidly hard.
You can try a demo online at that link. It told me webgl wasn't supported on mobile, but it worked pretty well for me just now on firefox, even if it was a bit laggy. It should work fine on PC.
I pirated it on PC after my kids told me about it and ended up buying it three times on Steam and twice on mobile. It's just that good. I've built a custom digital drum to play it and I'm now making a custom MIDI controller, so we'll see if that does better when connected to the game.
The game works as well on mobile, if not better because the touchscreen is so responsive.
There are a lot of great suggestions here already, so I will just share Mini Review with you as a discovery tool. I like to use them because they have a lot of filters to help you find a mobile game. For example, here's their list for free, single-player, offline games with no ads or in app purchases, sorted by highest user score. They also have an app for both Android and iOS with the same info and filtering as the site.
Card Crawl/Card Thief/Miracle Merchant are good puzzle-like games
You can check out whatever is available on F-Droid. I personally enjoy playing Freebloks once in a while, it's a mobile version of the Blokus boardgame
An alternative is checking out itch.io, searching with the proper tags, like puzzle, might yield decent results for your tastes.
You can also get Cookie Clicker or play the web version
2048
Not sure if it fits your criteria but the only mobile game I play is pinball deluxe. If you like real pinball, then you'll love it, it tries to stay as true to real pinball as possible on some/most tables, it does have small transaction stuff you can buy but I still haven't bought any including all the additional tables etc after playing it 6 months + and if you did, then it's just an 8€ one time buy to get all the content and remove the ads, I'm gonna get that once I actually get bored of the "free" tables.
"0h h1" is a fun, easy logic puzzle game that I find myself going back to when I have a minute to kill.
I really liked Lara Croft GO. It's better than Hitman GO or other GO games.
desert golf and its follow up golf on mars are big hits at my house
I'm not sure it fits 100% with what you're looking for, but I'll take chance and recommend Slice & Dice (Google Play, Apple App Store). Free demo, no ads, single in-app purchase to unlock the full version. This game is easily the best value-for-dollar mobile game I've ever purchased.
Polytropia
Solitaire, straight out of classic Windows (pre-advertising death throes):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.potatojam.classic.solitaire.klondike
Hoplite, classic turn based dungeon/puzzle:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magmafortress.hoplite
Shattered pixel dungeon has been a mainstay on my phone for what feels like a decade now
Rodent Rush, it’s similar to Chips Challenge from back in the day but a bit different, and imho it’s a better game.
It’s only on iOS though as far as I can tell.
Slice and dice
You should download Mini Review
It is a currated version of the Play Store with many filters including paid/free, IAP, genres, ...
The reviews are very thorough and always include a paragraph about the "presatoriness" of IAP if any
Old school RuneScape, it has free "demo" version which you can easily put a 100+ hours in. And if you really love there is a subscription model that's kinda expensive if you bill monthly, but no other micro transactions.
I have clocked a lot of hours in Slice & Dice both on mobile and on PC well worth the 8 bucks even though I've paid it three times now I think. Honorable mention to Suika(Watermelon game) about 3 bucks on the Play store.
Anti-mine: foss minesweeper Blockinger: foss tetris Puzzles: foss app with 40 ish mini games Lexica: foss boogle Lichess: foss chess
Johngbac: gba emulator L game: one of the simplest game which will make you rage. Underhand: light card game.
Assuming that you have Netflix, open it, scroll to games and open the section. There are tons of great games without any microtransactions or ads. They're overwhelmingly commercial games licensed by Netflix.
I have a 2048 clone from F-Droid and a Solitaire-like games collection from F-Droid that keep me busy on flights, etc. No stress, easy, entertaining.
It doesn't quite fit, but there are a lot of boardgame phone adaptions, and they rarely have microtransactions. Cat lady, carcassonne, ghanz schoan clever, doppelt so clever, hex roller, rail road ink and roll player are some of my favorites
Andor's Trail, it's barely recogniseable as a "phone" game, other than that it does indeed run on phones. I don't remember if it had ads or anything, been taking it from phone to phone for over 10 years now. I don't think it had ads or anything. It's open source, but has a pretty consistent feel despite having like 50+ contributors so far.
It's an adventure RPG. The low level experience might be best with a bit of grinding, but.... casual grinding... lol. I kind of just wander around collecting "meat" until I feel strong enough to leave the areas near town and set out on the rest of the adventure. But there has been alot more work around town since the last time I started a new character. So it might feel more natural now.
Grand prix story and game dev tycoon.
Both good games, low stress, clear progression
Vector pinball
I don't think there's any meta progression as far as I'm aware, but I find Shattered Pixel Dungeon (available on both android and ios) to be a low stress enough game. I suck at it, so I've never gotten much further than the first boss fight, but the game is about running through randomly generated dungeons, going down floor by floor as one of 4 different characters.
Neopets still exists and is going strong! The community is wholesome and so amazing, You can play it on your phone's internet browser, it's wonderful nostalgic break from everything else, and they have a TON of free games built in... Solitaire, Pyramids, Bullshit, Battleship, Minesweeper, Brick Breaker, Mahjong, Blackjack, Poker, Keno, etc.
I still play every day and have a BUNCH of goodies for new players, if you do check it out!
Flow is a fun puzzle game with a hint of nostalgia
Beleentoro Pro might be something for you. Basically a chill factory game, which I enjoyed for a long time. Other games by the developer Yiotro might be worth a look too.
There are also free versions of most of their games available, with ads iirc (not sure, has been a while). But if you don't want the ads: the pro versions are really cheap. One time purchase for everything.Another idea I have a puzzle game called: Mekorama by Martin Magni. The last time I played you got an option to pay what you think the game is worth at the end of the game. But you don't have to.
Mini Metro by Dinosaur Polo Club is also really good, but comes with a purchase.
If you like tower defense, Bloons TD 6 by Ninja Kiwi is a must have. Comes with a purchase and has the option of microtransactions for cosmetics, but you can get those by playing as well. More importantly, it's tons of fun.
In case you've got a Netflix subscription, check out their games. They have lots of games in their repertoire which you would have to buy if you went through the App/Play stores. (Bloons TD 6 should be included there for example.)
Edit: corrected Bloons TD 5 to Bloons TD 6.
Word Cookies. I absolutely love it. You can pay for things, but it is absolutely not necessary and is basically only if you feel the need to use boosts that allow you to cheat your way past the level. I think it costs $2 to go ad-free.
It does give you regular popups asking if you want to buy coins, which I admit is annoying, but they are unnecessary to enjoy the game. There's also endless opportunities to get coins and other boosts for free. I have something like 80,000 coins and dozens of boosts and other than the $2 to go ad-free, I've never given them any money.
You do have to have certain word skills to enjoy it as much as I do. If you're the sort who can crush it at Boggle, it's the game for you.
Monument Valley and Gorogoa are both excellent and free of nonsense.
Both are available on mobile and Steam. Gorogoa also on GOG currently 70% off.
Meant to link monument valley 2: https://www.monumentvalleygame.com/mv2
Wuthering Waves is Hella good. Technically it's an open world gacha game, but I played through all the storyline (the developers will be forever updating the story a la Genshin Impact), and I never spent a dime on it.
Also, I have spent money on Cooking Diary. However, I went about 3 months of daily play before I did, and it was more about me being impatient/telling myself "You got 3 months of daily play, you can drop the devs $4.99". I've played that game just about daily since Memorial Day 2023, and I've dropped $5.00 quarterly. There are regularly moments of infinite lives that exceed an hour or two, that it genuinely isn't necessary. I spend the money more as a "thanks for not making this ducking game contingent on microtransactions, making it good, and maintaining/update it."
Pixel dungeon, but it's not really low stress.
First one coming to mind for me is Pillar Hop. Very simple, chill, and just had ads iirc (I block them, but I'm pretty sure it does, anyway.)
I made a post the other day about some gentle arcade mobile games which are currently free. I've only played Traffix so far, but it seems great.
If you don't mind a classic chess. Blitz/bullet/rapid/horde are different styles that don't take as long to learn enough to have fun. Chess puzzles or against the computer are available if you want to keep it strictly single player. Lichess for multiplayer or I like chess tactics pro for puzzles.
Crosswords, there are programs like alphacross that aggregate from other sources to try different puzzles to find ones that aren't too easy or hard.
Grim Quest and Grim Tides. Two games by the same person. I haven't played Grim tides yet, but it's also free. Grim Quest is not a particularly large game, but I've still managed to play it over many years. I did a full run of each difficulty one by one. There is a bit to learn before it feels easy and casual, but it does get there. To be fair, I try to play it without dying. If I let myself die, it would be alot more casual even from the start. Dying is not heavily penalized on default settings, but you can alternately choose to play hardcore. Otherwise dying usually just means you gained less money for that run, and didn't make the game any harder. The game only gets harder when you successfully clear a dungeon. You can also just exit the unfinished dungeon without dying and keep most of what you have acquired so far on that run, minus a small fee for quitting the dungeon.
There are preset difficulty options, but you can also craft your own custom difficulty. There are things you could spend money on, I think it may have started out with ads. But I consider games with ads that you can pay to get rid of as basically a free demo, and getting rid of ads is the purchase price if you like the game. So they don't deter me if they don't basically break the game to add ads to it, or affect the flow of the game whether the ads are there or not.
Royal Match and Royal Kingdom are both add free and free to play. You can buy stuff, but you dont need to
Golf on Mars and Desert Golfing. Super simple. No ads. Its just 2D golf that keeps on going with any gimmicks.
Exiled Kingdoms, its an older isometric 2D adventure RPG. Kinda feels like it would have been made 30 years ago for pc, but it was made relatively recently for phones. I don't think there was any micro transactions. It may have had an initial purchase price, not sure. That's usually what I look for in a phone game. The traditional model of buying a game and then just playing a game. No gross mobile game stuff.
Alto's Adventure is a pretty chill game to play when killing time. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noodlecake.altosadventure
I also like the "connect the dots" puzzle games, like this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playvalve.connect.dots
Neither game requires microtransactions for the full experience. They might have ads, but my adblocker blocks them if they do.
Mini Motor Racing might be a good match. It has some DLC available (additional cars), but none of it is necessary to enjoy the game.
Friends and dragons. It's a bit like easy chess with d&d style classes and species. It has transactions, but you can easily do well for free. I've been free playing for years (though I did throw them $10 around year 2 because of how much entertainment I got from it)
Not sure what sort of length on play you're looking for but wingspan and terraforming Mars are both really good board games that have good-to-quite-good mobile versions.
I really like Usagi Shima. There is not much gameplay, but it's a nice game to just relax for a few minutes. Also "Really Bad Chess" is a nice twist on chess. :D
I have lately been enjoying Legends if runeterra's Path of champions mode (PvE)
Old School RuneScape potentially fits this description
Probably Scalak, a 3D puzzle game. It isn't foss and is paid.
I'm enjoying isle of arrows right now. Tower defense but instead of having a set map and same towers you get to draw cards and have to make do with what you get. Some cards give you pathing for the mobs, other expand the buildable area, others give you towers. Simple and fun. Game pauses between waves so you can take as long as you want to prepare.
Cardinal Quest 2, it is possible to spend money, but honestly spending money would be worse than earning the stuff yourself. I still probably gave them some money, since I think the game was free. You don't have to have played Cardinal Quest 1, it's pretty story light. Kind of like playing Diablo 2 if you never played Diablo 1. Kinda the same game as the first with much better execution after learning some lessons. The game itself is pretty easy, but there are optional challenges you can take on that can be as their name implies. Lots of replayability as there are many character classes and 4 different stories. Over time you'll likely want to beat each story with each class. Mostly cuz it keeps track, lol.
You get to run/fly/swim/dive around and explore several mostly chill realms, helping out "spirits" and collecting light (one kind for currency, another to increase flying ability), and optionally interacting and cooperating with friendly randoms from around the world. There is a story to it which I won't spoil, but there is always more to do even after playing through it.
There are zero ads.
There are some optional transactions, but they aren't pushed constantly (there are changing "seasons", and you can buy a pass for each one which will give you access to special cosmetics and the in game currency to buy them with, but there is plenty to collect without it).
Seasons also repeat (not exactly as they were, but the spirits from them return and their items become available again) so if you missed something the first time around because you didn't have enough in game currency, or you took a break from the game, you'll get another chance at it (I also think items that were initially only available with the pass you buy for real money, later become available for in game currency).
Keeping that in mind, you can grind as much or as little as you like, and there is also a limit to how much currency you can collect a day, so there's only so much grinding you can do if you are so inclined. If you're not that bothered about buying all the items, you can take a really relaxed approach and just play through the tasks and explore at your own pace (even learn how to play an instrument lol).
The first time I played it a few years back, I didn't really "get" the game, or think to look up any information about it, so was just randomly flying around and getting confused and frustrated when things were a little less chill at points, so I quit. But a few months ago I decided to give it a second chance and having actually taken the time to understand what is going on in the game, this time around I'm enjoying it a lot more.
If you are comfortable with games that are not technically classified as freeware yet, but functionally, they probably should be... then emulation of older consoles is a great way to go too. While they are certainly not "legal", I don't think anyone playing them has ever gotten in trouble. Only the people that try to make money off of it find that the console companies are motivated enough to shut them down. Otherwise, it doesn't feel super risky to just play stuff. Just stick with games that are impossible to pay for if you want to be completely safe. There was a ton of good games on 16 and 32 bit consoles that you literally couldn't pay for now if you tried. And even as new as gamecube is getting pretty hard to possibly pay money for.
Newer stuff, I only feel ok emulating what I actually own. But as time goes on, newer and newer stuff becomes the new old stuff. A pretty wide variety of console emulators for android are in a good place now.
I do recommend a controller though if you go this route. Ideally one of the ones that also holds your phone for you. Either by making it into a switch/steamdeck kind of shape, or the ones that hold the phone above an xbox style controller. Both are good.
If you have a Netflix account, you can get Bloons TD6 for free on Android. It's fun and the microtransactions are completely unnecessary and hidden away. Beware it's a battery hog though
Also, if you like puzzles, look up the various variant sudoku apps from Studio Goya, particularly the one called "Cracking the Cryptic"
Soko++
Hmm, I was gonna say moonshades, last time I played it there wasn't much for things you could buy. But when I look now, there is. So I can't say for sure how unnecessary any of it would feel now, but it wasn't necessary back when I played last. It's kind of like the old early 3D party dungeon/maze crawlers where you use the arrow keys to walk one "block" at a time. There is only 2 party members in this. So you still sort of get the group synergy stuff, but each character is a bigger share of the team power. You could do a tank/healer thing or magic damage/melee damage, or not have either one focus on anything in particular.
I hope it's still not necessary to buy anything, it was a good game. But the store is pretty comprehensive now, so that has me worried.
Galaxy Genome, it's a space exploration game. Sort of a project to make a comprehensive 2D version of Elite: Dangerous. Or at least it started as that, I don't know if it has achieved and surpassed that by now. It was pretty far along last I played. And that was a while ago now. I kind of play games on and off for years, so that is mostly gonna be a running theme of all the games I post here. Games that you find yourself wanting to pick back up again, over and over.
2048 but a version from F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.secuso.privacyfriendly2048/
Cosmic Combo, an iOS port of Johan Peitz’ PICO-8 game Cosmic Collapse, is good.
I played a cool one called Pirate solitaire, very charming
I play chess, mahjong on mobile.
There's also final fantasy pixel remasters, Baldurs Gate, planetscape torment, shadowrun games and trials of mana on mobile too.
Antimatter Dimensions
Sparklite, I don't know what it looks like purchases-wise, it was free with gamepass and had no in-app purchases when acquired that way. It's probably one of the newest games I'll post about. New enough that it was possible to get it with gamepass, lol. The game sort of has a modern retro zelda feel. I don't think it's a particularly long game, but it's certainly enjoyable and pretty casual. I think if it has transactions, reading other reviews it might be like a "purchase the rest of the game" style thing. So basically a free demo that you can then choose if you like the game enough to pay.
Walk master
Gubbins is a fun word game, it's a one time purchase and apparently part of the profits go to charity due to Hank Green investing in it in a creative way.
Imagzle. There are "buy more levels" but there are plenty on the main one. It gives a picture, more or less, abstractly related to something. Art, movie, book, many random things
Potion Permit is about $7, but pretty fun. If you got $10 to spare, Ex Astris is a jrpg that's pretty good.
Oh n0 and Oh h1
Emulating a Nintendo DS and looking for stylus only games is my recommendation. Games like Kirby Canvas Curse, Kirby Mass Attack, and Warioware Touched are fun.