I do like having games on my phone, but it’s always a struggle looking for games with 0 microtransactions. So would like a game I can out right pay for, or one with ads. The ability to disable ads for $5 is chill though.
I’ve played a lot of games that you can “have fun being f2p” but some days I just get really sick and tired of games I play trying to sell me things every 30 seconds.
So do you guys have any?
If not I may go back to playing GBA games on my phone XD
EDIT: Oh selling like expansions is probably fine if it’s legit like a full other game. I’m on android
- Slice & Dice
- Balatro
- Stardew Valley
- Terraria
- BloonsTD6
- Arcadium
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon
- Geometry Dash
- Mini Metro
- Brotato
- Slay the Spire
- Peglin
I Love Hue is really peaceful
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.
Seconding SPD, it’s great
Balatro and Slay the Spire both have a lot of reply value. Very different games.
If you enjoy puzzle games then Baba is You, Snake Bird and Railbound will keep you busy for quite a while.
Whatever emulator you can run and the ROMs of your choice.
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
Papers Please
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
Oh no! It looks like you don’t have enough block! Would you like to buy enough block to survive this round with 1 HP for $0.99?
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!
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.
I adore deck games, so will have to look at ascension!
Oh I love it sooooo much! I really appreciate the asynchronous multiplayer, where I can play a turn, send it to my partner, and they can take their turn whenever they want later on. I don’t love having to be attached to my phone while playing phone games and not able to quit whenever I want.
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.
There’s also a version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup on mobile. Although the UI is quite clunky with the control and shift commands imported from PC. But the gameplay is more elaborate than Shattered Pixel Dungeon, I’d say.
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.
You beat me to it regarding Unciv
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
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!
It’s been a while. Have you thrown your phone yet?
Still loving it! After fucking up a bunch of times I started reading up on some strategies. Still stuck on London, but I’m enjoying 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.