Do you enjoy any mobile games at all? I know most of them are stuffed with paywalls and daft monetisation tricks, but have you ever stumbled across a proper gem hiding in the rubble?

The mini review app was started by a dude on reddit before it became oops all bots. It's focused on user recs and you can filter by things like max price, "no iap" and stuff like that. Functionality is way better than the google store.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=minireview.best.android.games.reviews&hl=en-US

Can't believe I'm the first one to mention Shattered Pixel Dungeon. You can find it on F-Droid, the Play Store, even Steam. The dev is also the mod of !pixeldungeon@lemmy.world.

Only the ones from F-Droid. No ads, no monetization. My current gem is Tessel

pc ports mostly. Subnautica and Stardew Valley come to mind, but there's plenty others

eta: Looks like Balatro is available... that... will be detrimental to my health

I made this list by looking at the games currently on my phone and then going through my full history on the Google Play store. I've run Android since I first got a smartphone and it's been mostly a game machine since then. I use a firewall to block internet traffic for most apps unless I want them to have internet. That cuts way down on ads. I'm currently using NetGuard. The list below is all the games that I both remember playing and remembered enjoying. Some of them may cost money and I got them when they were temporarily free and some of them might not be available anymore. If I have typos or if you can't find one, let me know and I can get the actual link from my app history.

Card Guardians
Vampires Fall
Vampires Fall 2
Slay (or Antiyoy Classic)
0h h1
Almora Darkosen RPG
Alto's Adventure
AnimA ARPG
Blosics
Card Thief
Champions of Avan
Cursed Treasure Tower Defense
Data Defense
Dicey Elementalist
Dink Smallwood
Dungeons of Dreadrock
Epic Conquest (and the 2nd)
Exiled Kingdoms RPG
Galaxy on Fire 2
Infectonator
Island Empire Strategy
Jack n' Jill
Lost Pages Deck Roguelike
Magic Rampage
Magic Survival
Night of the Full Moon
No Humanity - The Hardest Game
Peggle Blast
Reaper
Solomons Keep
Solomons Boneyard
Sword and Glory
Sword of Xolan
Swordigo
The Bards Tale
Tiny Bubbles
Vampire Survivors
Vendir Plague of Lies
Vodobanka

If you like Card Thief, I'm happy to report that all of the games by the same guy are top notch. Card Crawl and Miracle Merchant are two that I've owned for years and was really hooked on for a while.

There are many good ones, will have to look them up again, but currently on mobile I have:

I Love Hue (a hue puzzle game, also has a sequel that is apparently even better)
Tiny Bubbles (Another puzzle game, I think it's also available on PC)
Bowling Ballers (Netflix game, non-"endless" runner, you clear levels and get 3 stars, and there are about 5-7 worlds with ~50 or so level in each)

I love hue is very nice.

If you like idle games, Magic Research 2

Dawncaster is amazing. Probably my favorite mobile game.
Space Cadet is addicting.

Balatro is a great mobile game

I have been playing Melvor Idle for years now and loving it. It's like runescape without the gameplay. It brings back memories of the good old days of runescape botting. If you're a fan of watching number go up then it's worth a try.

It does have a premium version and DLCs but it's a good value and only a one time payment. I still haven't bought any of the DLCs because I'm waiting until I 100% the base game so I've gotten over a year of entertainment for $10.

Slice & Dice is a great RPG strategy game where your heroes have their abilities on dice and you know your enemy's actions so can plan which abilities you'll need. I've been playing it off and on for a while now. The demo is good and I bought the full game pretty quickly. No additional costs or ads.

Only play two games on mobile:

Magic Survival https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vkslrzm.Zombie For a bit of braindead pretty lightshow time. Love the art style for the skills and items.

and

Lichess https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.lichess.mobileV2 For a bit of... well, it's chess so you know what you're getting.

Lichess is also on F-Droid https://f-droid.org/packages/org.lichess.mobileapp.free

I'm legitimately addicted to Umamusume Pretty Derby, which is a gacha game but I've been playing for many months and while you can give them money they don't really push it very hard. There's a surprising amount of depth.

I also like idlers, shout-out to Almost A Hero and the hilariously unhinged Crush Crush.

For a more traditional timewaster I also play a lot of Downwell.

I've seen so much Umamusume Pretty Derby art and propaganda on my Tumblr, and now it just got best ongoing game award or smth at The Game Awards, so I'm slowly becoming convinced. I'm just nervous to add another gacha to my list 😅
- It's a fun sports management game. The races are often very exciting, you can skip them for time but I almost never skip races that might be close and find myself shouting encouragement at my phone in public, lol.
  You could always watch the original anime or the absolutely phenomenal Cinderella Gray spinoff, see how it strikes you. Legitimately pretty great sports drama and the characters are a lot of fun.
  If you do play, send me your Trainer code!

I have not played any mobile game recently, I play emulated games and streaming PC games on my mobile instead.

But I used to love these games:

Bejeweled (technically a PC game first, but perfect for mobile)
Angry Bird OG
Plants vs Zombies OG
Egg, Inc
Rebuild
Plague Inc

I probably missed some other gems because it has been a long time since I played true mobile games.

If you enjoyed Egg, Inc try out Obelisk Miner. No ads and entirely possible to play without purchasing any premium currency.
- Thanks! Just installed.

AAAAXY was very fun (its on f-droid).

Sky: Children of the Light is a genuinely fantastic game from the creators of Journey which leans deeper into the "connection" aspect of the latter.

The monument valley games are great

Not sure if anyone mentioned Polytopia, but it's one I keep going back to for single and multi player. There's a really good discord community for the online portion.

Yes, amazing brick! So fun.

Riptide GP: Renegade, I think I paid $3. It's a straight up racing game set in some future racing hopped up futuristic wetbikes through a variety of challenging tracks. Tilt to steer and finger dancing to do tricks. May not be for everyone, but I have definitely enjoyed it more than 3 bucks worth.

Also Zen Pinball, yes it only comes free with one table, but it's not a terrible table and for a few bucks a piece the payed tables are works of fucking art, it plays well and has been around long enough to have some very slick tables available.

Neither of my suggestions are free, but I feel that they are both cheap at what you get for the price, and I don't mind paying devs that aren't trying to fleece me.

Slay The Spire is on mobile. It used to have a few issues years ago, but these were sorted last year. Runs pretty well now!

legends of runeterra was my favorite card game in its heyday. the pvp is abandoned and the pve is kinda shallow but fun enough to play when i need a distraction.

One that I’ve played and occasionally go back to is Orna. It’s a location based RPG mobile game with lots of things to do. It’s a good way to get out and walk around for a while while gaming.

I got Eastern Exorcist for free on Epic a while back and it's a pretty good side-scroller action RPG. Good combat, fun bosses, no real complaints except for the fact that the game shows you the same tutorial message for the same mechanics like 4 separate times. But apart from that it's great.

I played a bit of Chaos Zero Nightmare recently, which if you can overlook the gacha monetisation and some gooner-bait designs is a pretty good roguelike deckbuilder.

I have a couple board game ports (eg: splendor). Mostly I don't even look at the app store anymore.

Roguelike and -lite:

Hoplite — deep movement-basef RL
micRogue — "chesslike" roguelite
Pixel Dungeon — a mobile homage to the ideas and mechanics of Brogue

RPG:

the mobile port of Chrono Trigger — 'nuff said
Doom & Destiny — Italian RPG, very silly but still deep and satisfying. The free version is the same as the paid, don't bother with the sequel.

Strategy:

Battle for Polytopia — base game and four civs are free, pay to unlock new civs
unCiv — FOSS
Rebuild (and sequels) — everyone's favorite zombie-themed browser game has a mobile port
Tinyfolks — very satisfying fantasy party management adventure

Management / Plate Spinning:

Merchant — sell goods to finance adventurers to fight monsters for loot to give to crafters to make goods to sell
Universal Paperclips — surprisingly deep story from a game about a factory that makes paperclips
Pikmin Bloom — walk around in real life to visit public art to grow Pikmin sprouts in-game that you send on missions to get materials to grow and buffs more Pikmin sprouts

Some of these cost money, most are free but with limited microtransactions, only Pikmin Bloom is freemium (but the in-game currency is easy to earn through normal gameplay and it's not PvP, so the users who put money in only cheat themselves).

Unciv is a great civilization builder for free on fdroid

If you like Scrabble, Wordfeud has no ads. I'm on the premium version of the app, but it's just the 1 time payment and then zero clutter in the app after that.

The devs also run a football pyramid style bi-weekly tournament you can optionally join which is fun and challenging

Exiled Kingdoms is a great 90s-style RPG. Absolutely worth paying for.

Mecharashi

It's a gacha with squad tactics style mech combat. It doesn't feel like you need to pay to get the units you want. I haven't been hooked on a phone game like this in years.

I liked a few. Some are no longer available though. I haven't really looked for new games in a while. The Room was a great series of puzzle games. Dungeons of Dreadrock was also pretty decent.