I miss the days when there were fun little phone game aps that didn’t have a billion pop up adds or ongoing subscriptions or constant nagging to buy treasure chests. Sometimes I just want something a bit mindless to occupy me while waiting for appointments and feel like that golden era has gone. Now I’ll browse social media or news websites but it’s not really the same.
I still have Flight Control, Plants Vs Zombies, Peggle, Fieldrunners, and Jetpack Joyride from those early iOS days. I even paid $1.19 for some (maybe all?) of them.
Lucky! I’d be happy to pay for games like those, but as once off, not ongoing in app. However market forces seem to be that this is not profitable compared to ads or ongoing in app purchases. Pity.
If you're on Android, have a look at installing F- Droid. It's an FOSS app store. There's some great games available through there.
Anuto Tower Defence is a good example - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ch.logixisland.anuto/
Check out a developer called yiotro. His stuff aint flashy and almost entirely strategy/puzzle but are light on resources (i.e you can pick up and play/stop whenever without losing progress. Also won't kill your battery), and not most importantly not bloated with ads. The perfect time killer.
Some of his games are pretty fun/addictive/challenging. Paid versions are a few bucks and free for life.