Magic survival

The game that inspired vampire survivors. Also it’s way better than VS.

I was expecting some dlsite games since this has the NSFW tags.

This war of mine.

Mini metro has to be my top. Simple costs money so no ads (mandatory for me). You are basically just creating subway lines to move shares around and manage flow.

mindustry is good

Also I’m playing Morrowind on OpenMW these days

Not exactly fresh meat but if you want some old school proper mobile gaming experience, before it got enshittified…

Galaxy On Fire.

The first game sadly never got the HD treatment but it is still playable - that is if you can find an Android device that can still run 32bit apps, or a patched APK.

The second game got an HD release but didn’t get the “big screen” treatment, at least on iOS. But at least the game is available from the App and Play Stores.

The third game sadly got its servers pulled in 2020, though I have heard about modded APKs floating around that can work without the servers… but to be honest that game was quite the let-down compared to previous instances.

The developers of these games went on to work on CHORVS and Everspace 2, but to me neither game gave back that OG GoF feeling.

Fun fact: Monument Valley was originally iOS exclusive. So I’m not sure if the question implies “it has to run on Android” since the list include games that aren’t exclusive.

Anyway, Subway Surfers used to be the GOAT. Not sure how it is on Android, but on iOS, even with an iPhone 16 Pro Max (at the time, the best phone Apple had to offer) the game would stutter and lag. Of course, most of those gacha games suck, especially when you have to watch an ad to play. But the game used to offer a deal (might still do), $5 unlocked an IAP which doubled every coin picked up in a run (but, not in prizes) and disabled all mandatory ads. So you could still watch an ad to double a prize, or watch 10 ads to unlock three loot crates, one in each rarity tier, things like that, but you never had to watch an ad. It seemed like a fair deal. $5 to make the grind of collecting powerups and earning crew members a little more bearable, you didn’t need to see any ads, and it was a fair price for a fun little endless runner. Of course I tried to contact them about the performance issues, they wouldn’t hear of it. I tried writing reviews and they would just delete them. So eventually I gave up. Uninstalled the game. I did play it, several times a week (daily, some weeks) for several years. It’s a simple game, a little too easy until you get to top speed. Then (provided it’s working correctly), it’s fun. I feel like I’d be unstoppable if I had a controller. Which, I think, is why it doesn’t support them. There is actually an arcade version of the game, in which you do use a controller, but it has a time limit. So on the arcade, which I’ve played a few times, I’ve never crashed. Always ran out of time and it tells you to pay more to keep running. I wish they would expand the game, let you use a controller, and introduce new challenges to compensate for the extra level of control you have.

Past that I really don’t play games on my phone. I’ve played the first two Monument Valley games. I know there’s a third one, but haven’t gotten into it.

The Room games are on iOS, and I’m pretty sure they’re on Android, too. They’re puzzles where you are given a puzzle box and you have to use the touch controls to rotate it around and manipulate it to try to expose all of its secrets. It’s very difficult, and you can’t just touch everything. The game is a little smarter than that. Only the most deliberate actions are considered valid moves. Better to look up a guide, but it’s quite a slippery slope from “how do I progress” to the guide just telling you everything. Still, the raw beauty of these games is something to behold. And I don’t think they exist on computers or consoles.

Lifeline was another interesting “phone” game. Not sure if this one ever came to Android, but it should have, nothing about it demanded exclusivity to iOS. The game is presented as a text messaging app. You get a message from a character who has woken up in a strange area, and he needs your help. You are, effectively, his “lifeline.” You can’t kill him (or rather let him die) by ignoring his messages for several days, though I haven’t really tried. So he will say something like “yeah I woke up in this bunker and I found this phone with your number in it, it’s the only number in it, what should I do?” and it’ll give you choices. Like an RPG on consoles (e.g. Mass Effect, Fallout), you choose a phrase to answer, and your message will spell out something a bit more detailed. It isn’t an AI chatbot, you can’t just say whatever you want. It’s also not always instant. Sometimes the character will say “Alright I’m going to sleep” and then there’s literally nothing you can do for like 8 hours. When the character messages you, it will be like you’re getting messaged from a new messaging app (e.g. like if you installed Telegram for the first time, rather than get a text message, you get a Telegram message — you get a Lifeline message). And then whenever you’re ready, you reply to him. It’s cool because even if you stay on top of the app, you can only play it for a few minutes at a time. It doesn’t waste your time, and you spend time in between thinking about your guy. Again, I’m not sure you can lose if you ignore the guy. Sometimes though, you will give him bad advice and he will die, and the game has a clever way of handing this. I don’t think you have to start over, I think there is some kind of checkpoint system. Text-based RPGs are certainly nothing new, but this is a modern twist on that.

Oh, and of course there are emulators. So I’m not trying to wage some platform warfare here, but do you Android users have anything quite like Delta? Mainly its cloud backup. Okay so check this out. Say we both have iPhones and we both have Delta. I can long press a game, and AirDrop it to you, and your iPhone opens it with Delta and adds it to the library. Now that’s kinda cool. But what’s even cooler is, say I get a new iPhone, I install Delta from the App Store, I got an empty library. But, I go into Settings, and connect it to my Google Drive. 0auth, you know, it opens the web page, you log into Google, Google gives the app access. The app doesn’t see your login info. So anyway, after a minute or so, my games start appearing. Because they’re stored in Google Drive — along with my saves, and any cheats I’ve found/used. The sync thing, I think you can set it up with RetroArch, but I don’t think it’s built in, or that easy to do, and certainly not that pretty. Shame Delta only works with Nintendo consoles. Not sure why. No Sega, no PlayStation (even PS1). And it goes up to Nintendo 64. Pretty sure it could do GameCube and maybe Wii if they wanted to, but the developer is kinda inactive. You see updates every now and then but it’s mostly “bug fixes and improvements.” Kind of a shame, it’s got so much potential but it’s also so limited. But then RetroArch is basically unlimited, but it’s nearly monolithic with its (in)accessibility. (We have RetroArch here, too.) But no, not platform warfare… I ask because I also have a Galaxy S10, and I have a Backbone (or similar, I forget what brand it actually is, it’s that or the Razr one) for it. It’s USB-C, but unfortunately it’s Android only. Even though iPhones also do USB-C, the controller oddly cannot just support both. So, I’m asking because I am also an Android user… it’s just not my daily driver. In a few years I’ll replace it with something newer and I’ll daily drive Android for a few years. Basically tick-tock between the platforms.

Terraria. It’s $5.

Tiny Room Stories - Town Mystery

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiarygames.tinyroom

Shattered Pixel Dungeon may be the best android game available at the moment.

Guardian Tales

I’m not playing much on Android, but I have enjoyed Open Sudoku, and I was surprised Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is free on Android, which I enjoyed on PC.

For anyone interested: your have way more options for favorite game on Android than you think.

Emulation works great on modern phones. Eden emulator runs Switch games and some work very well with just touchscreen controls (e.g. Into the Breach).

If you’re ok with on screen controllers or with carrying around something like an 8bit Zero 2or Micro, then you could emulate a mind-blowing number of consoles and games.

Others have mentioned the Rusty Lake series, but I’ll mention it again, as those games are great.

I’m a big fan of Golf Blitz, although I haven’t played in a while as my screen is cracked and it’s harder to play as a result (got a few unresponsive areas). The game is a lot of fun, and although you can pay to advance, I made it to the top level without paying a penny or watching any ads.

Others I’ve enjoyed:

• Antiyoy
• Minecraft (obvious, but works well on mobile)
• Colorzzle
• Gorogoa
• A puzzle series with colour names (Black, Green, Pink, etc) by developer Bart Bonte
• OK Golf
• Prune
• The Room games

My most played android game is probably the port of Simon Tatham’s puzzle games. It’s available on GitHub, F-Droid or Google Play.

My other pick would be TIC-80, there’s thousands of games on there