Ask Lemmy

Soul knight is good, but does have micro transaction

Old school RuneScape

• 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

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.

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.

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.

Papers Please

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.

Yellow and the subsequent games are pretty interesting puzzle games

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.

Whatever emulator you can run and the ROMs of your choice.

Endless Sky is a solid space trader and combat game, free on f-droid

Frozen Bubble is a pretty fun ~~bubble bobble~~ Puzzle 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.

~~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

Halls of Torment released recently and seems to be a direct port of the PC version. I've been enjoying it quite a bit

I used a 3 month trial for Play Pass and have found quite a few games through it. It strips out ads and microtransactions and gives you all the content for free, at least in my experience so far. Some of the games in this thread are included. I'm debating keeping it after the trial

I have the following games on my iPhone:

• Infectenator - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/infectonator/id547566699?l=en-GB
• Plauge Inc. - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/plague-inc/id525818839?l=en-GB
• Mini Metro - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/mini-metro/id837860959?l=en-GB
• Reigns - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/reigns/id1114127463?l=en-GB
• Freeways - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/freeways/id1203896014?l=en-GB
• Myst - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/myst-mobile/id6444813759?l=en-GB
• Chrono Trigger - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/chrono-trigger-upgrade-ver/id479431697?l=en-GB
• 80 Days - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/80-days/id892812659?l=en-GB
• Netwalk - https://apps.apple.com/se/app/netwalk-network-puzzle-pro/id1614316916?l=en-GB

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.

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.

Balatro

Balatro, works really well with touch, numbers go brrrrrrrrr

The Lifeline series from 3 minute games is excellent if you like a twist on choose your own adventure games.

Kairosoft titles are typically $5 to $7 dollars. Tons of Dev and Tycoon style business builder titles. Most are fantastic.

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.