Ask Lemmy

The whole Cube Escape Series.

Hoplite, Pixel Dungeon, micRogue

DATA WING is a great racing game with an amazing, short story.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a fun little RPG with lots of humour

Dribble is a surprisingly unique platformer, free with no iaps and unique swipe controls.

You can get ports of the marble blast games on Android, I particularly like Ultra.

Mindustry is basically Factorio-meets-tower-defense. It's open-source, also available on desktop.

Fran Bow . It's a psychological terror click adventure, available on both Mobile and PC. On mobile I think it has 5 different chapters, and 0 transactions other than the buying price. Really recommend it!

I really enjoyed playing the platforms cats are liquid: a better place(there is also a light in the shadow, but that game is worse); catbird, nameless cat, kitty death room and the 4 dadish games

If you want a game that has microtransactions, but rarely try to sell you things, i would recommended the tower defense game(i think) the battle cats. There is also a 10 year celebration that gives you a lot of rewards

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.

as a Rhythm Game Enjoyer I always gotta recommend Cytus. There are paid songs but the base game has over 100, each with at least three difficulties :3

tho even if you like rhythm games I definitely recommend looking up the game first because I have yet to ever properly convince my other rhythm game-loving friends to genuinely play cytus. Still it is one of my all time favorite games

Well, backgammon is the best gambling game ever invented. Knowing how to play marks you as a person of distinction the world over. Computers can almost beat the best players in the world.

Lots of backgammon Android apps, the best is Backgammon NJ

mindustry is free on Android, it's a tower defense/factory building game (it's also open source)

I got bloons td 6 for like 7 bucks, for some reason it also has microtransactions but they are not required or pushed onto you. I think btd6 is the best tower defense game, it just has so much content and is still getting regular updates.

You can play Morrowind on Android through OpenMW Android. I think this is the most updated version but you have to build it yourself: https://gitlab.com/cavebros/openmw-android

Old school Runescape

Plague Inc - control a plague and try to kill all humans on earth (tactical simulation)

Interstellar Pilot and Interstellar Pilot 2 - human explorers jumped through a wormhole to distant space and lost contact with earth. Factions control different sectors, some are friendly some are warring. You start with a single ship and try to do anything between simple survival and building a new faction to conquer all of this new space. (Open world rpg with tactical simulation elements)

Battlecruisers - The machines won, humanity is no more. You are not the smartest robot and somehow you managed to accidentally hijack a military battlecruiser. You are pursued across the world's oceans by several navies while you try to figure out how to get out of the mess you created. (shipbuilder)

I grabbed Rusted Warfare RTS not long ago. It's a real-time strategy game. $1.99 on the Google Play store.

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 haven’t seen DATA WING by Dan Vogt mentioned! It’s a short top down “racing” game with really fun space drifting physics that’s 100% free to play with no ads and no micro transactions. Each level is only a minute or two long so it’s great for on the go

Puzzles

Bunch of puzzle games with no ads or transactions

Https://lichess.org/training lets me pretend I'm improving my mind by playing.

Balatro has no micro transactions but will consume your life regardless

SW: Knights of the Old Republic and SW: Knights of the Old Republic II are available for Android and iOS. These are complete ports of the original games, not knock-offs, and Aspyr did a pretty good job retooling the UI for mobile screens. I think they're totally worth the price.

The best Windows game ever made, ported to Android

Into The Breach

The Netflix version of mobile games have their micro transactions removed (or at least all the ones I've downloaded).

Open MicroWave (Morrowind)

Stardew Valley

Slay The Spire

I'm enjoying NecroMerger. It has optional ads (no forced short ads either) and the micro transactions are either some general buffs, ad-free version or gems. The gems are dished out royally imo, where I've purchased most of the premium currency content by just playing.

Something you can't play right now but can sign up to play for later: WalkScape. It's an RPG game in a similar style to RuneScape, but you actually have to walk to craft, skill and walk around the map.

The team has often said that they are against microtransactions and other monetization schemes that currently plague the industry, so they have plans to release a freemium version and a paid version.

Old school RuneScape

There is a f2p that you can get hundreds of hours out of, but the full game has a monthly membership. It’s possible to sustain the membership with the in-game money you make just skilling/pvm drops.

Haven't played many, but these were great:

Sword & Sworcery Android Apple

Sorcery! Series Android Apple

80 Days Android Apple