I need some new games in my phone. I checked out the recommendations in the google play store just to realise, that they all suck. So I’m asking you, what are some lightweight(my phone is really slow so anything not lightweight will either take 40 years to load or outright crash every few minutes) fun mobile games you can recommend.
I have a Pixel 4a and it heats up a little playing Balatro, but all of the below it has no issues with:
Flipflop - a fun take on solitaire
Downwell - a vertical platformer
Holedown - an inverse breakout, minus the paddle
Desert Golf - a true indie classic!
Radiant - a Galaga/Space Invaders-ish shmup that’s old enough to probably be lightweight these days.
anything by Kairosoft - a developer of sim management games I’ve been playing games from since I had a flip phone. Just find a theme you like and go crazy.
NYT games - They have more than Wordle! Connections, a word grouping game, in particular is fun, and so is Strands a themed word search. They’re all updated daily for free on one app. They just lock off previous days’ puzzles and the crossword. (Though they have a small quick crossword that’s also fun.) It’s actually discounted right now for an actual subscription
Reigns - I found this very fun. It’s not for everyone. It uses Tinder’s swiping to let you make decisions and try to run your kingdom. Good luck.
Prune - a puzzle that that relies on pruning your growing plant to reach the goal
80 Days - a narrative game with a decent amount of reading, as you attempt to buy, sell, and barter your way through your adventure.
Crossy Road - Frogger-inspired game with more maps and more fun.
Plague Inc - also a classic. Control a disease as you attempt to infect and destroy humanity. (This was popular before COVID.)
Burrito Bison - time your taps to launch your lucha libre across the map.
Super Mario Run - just simple enough to make you mess up sometimes. But it’s not bad. I liked it.
If you can handle frustration or know that a rogue-like is for you: Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Shattered pixel dungeon is awesome. Definitely frustrating, and has a bit of a learning curve but it’s rad. Infinite replay value
I figured someone would already have beat me to this suggestion. The dev specifically keeps the compatible with older devices. There’s a community on Lemmy: !pixeldungeon@lemmy.world
Definitely a hard but fun game. I think I’ve made it to the 3rd zone/layer/whatever only once and died like a floor later. Absolute hype moment.
Fantastic game, but it’s got major issues with the controls on mobile. It’s extremely easy to accidentally tap a spot you did not mean to and ruin the entire run or just outright die from the single simple mistake. The dev does not seem to care much about implementing better controls for mobile, because it’s a desktop game first and foremost. Nor does the dev care to implement anything that would allow a person to undo an action or make it easy to copy/edit a save file and manually fix the mistake because something like those things could be used to cheat.
So, as long as you’re okay with those frustrations, it’s an amazing game.
Respectfully, my experience has been very different. I’ve been playing exclusively on mobile for years and have not had more control issues than any other mobile app/game. Worst case, you start a new run; that’s the beauty of roguelikes.
Respectfully, just because you’ve not had issues does not mean others have the same experience as you. I’ve brought this up in the Lemmy community and others have said they have this issue as well. https://lemmy.world/post/16954185
Also, “Worst case you start a new run” is not a great argument against implementing better mobile controls. It’s really disheartening when you’re really enjoying a run and you’ve spent a good amount of time on it all to go completely down the drain because of a small mistake that could be prevented with better controls.
No worries, I was just giving another perspective. Of course your experience could be different.
Disagree. This was a mobile first game and calling Evan a dev “that does not care” is a huge understatement. Playing a rogue-like and asking for a way to edit a save the game or undo an action doesn’t sound to me like you’ve played rogue-likes much.
I have been playing this since over a decade on a multitude of phones and tablets, yes, you can mistap. Not denying that, but its not so bad that this game would become in any way unplayable. You just got to be careful.
I’m not sure you read my whole message, because taking that quote out of context vastly changes the message. “that does not care” should be “does not seem to care much about implementing better controls for mobile”. I don’t much appreciate my words being twisted to be so negative towards the dev.
I’ve talked about these issues in more detail here:
https://lemmy.world/post/16954185Disagree again but seems the down votes are against me so I guess that’s just me. You brought up two different issues here, mobile controls and a save/edit system, which maybe can “fix” mobile controls for you but it a much more wide ranging implementation that completely changes how the game as a rogue-like works. So yes, you are saying the dev doesn’t care in multiple ways, not just mobile controls.
Your thread also this seems to be a 50/50 split between people having the issue and people not having the issue, which does make it more difficult to address as well. And I guess your “dev doesn’t care” statement came from Evan not replying there?
The statement comes from thoroughly reading the issues on the GitHub repo. He has stated his stance on save editing and similar.
He’s also said some things that somewhat apply to the other issues I mentioned, which certainly makes it seem it’s not much of a priority or even make it into the list of things to implement or improve.
Also, I’m not saying a save edit system would “fix” the mobile controls, but it would at least help give an avenue to undo some of the consequences from a simple mis-tap mistake.
These were listed yesterday
https://lemmy.world/post/23416167
Also, Andor’s Trail is a huge RPG. Plenty of grind.
Balatro, tbh I can’t confirm it’s lightweight but it’s pixel art so I imagine your phone can handle it
Balatro does have a lot going on graphically and even my pixel 8 pro starts to heat up when playing it. The game’s art style may be pixel art, but there are a lot of shaders on all the cards and the cards themselves are either 3d or have some perspective stuff going on to make them able to rotate away from the camera
also, there’s the giant shifting background which is another complex shader that can’t be turned off.
I think the game has been optimized since release a bit, but still, it’s not just simple card images.
Yeah hard to tell if it will work well, pixel art or not, and its a bit too expensive just to test it (there should be a way to cancel the order in google pay if I’m not mistaken though). On the other hand, such a fun game it is definitely worth it and the perfect phone game.
If you enjoy chess, I recommend Lichess
It’s free, open source, no ads, you can play with or without an account, you play against bots or against people of all levels, you can use the app or you can play from the website or you can install the web app
Oh and it loads fast
Enjoy!
And for those who enjoy chess but love chaos and seeing the world burn, you have Really Bad Chess
Which in my personal opinion, can be as fun as it can be irritating x)
OK, I’ll recommend you a few that are all open source, simple, free, with no ads, and should be handled by just any phone. You can find the games in f-droid between other places.
For those that are into crosswords: Forkyz
A slightly different take on sudoku style game: Gauguin
A game to place pieces removing full lines both vertically and horizontally, kinda like Tetris but pieces are not falling and you just put them wherever you want: 1010! Klooni
A tower defense game using hand drawn graphics: Anuto TD
And one I have from the play store, not open source, that is a clone of minesweeper, called… Well you can guess it: Minesweeper for android
All of those I have used on my own device and have worked great, definitely good time killers if you are into any of those kind of games.
Antimine is a really good open source mine sweeper clone for android. There is also Mines3D, not as polished, but adds a 3d element.
Oh thanks! I’ll need to check that one out!
I will also recommend pirate solitaire on fdroid. Web version.
That also don’t harvest all your data…
Vector Pinball (also available on f-droid) is a pretty decent pinball game. Very lightweight, free, no ads.
Also Vodobanko (not free) for a hostage rescue type game. There’s a free version too if you want to try before you buy.
thanks for the rec, been playing vodobanko half the afternoon. Solid game.
Simon tathams puzzle pack
Any of the “colors” series from ‘bart bonte’ (search yellow, or orange, or blue and he should be the first to pop up, his other games are good too)
Balatro (the only one I’m not sure how light weight it is, I think it should be pretty light weight)
(As others have said, lichess)
Pythagorea
Magic research 2
Rebuild 3
Any of the “pathpix” series
Slice and dice
Unciv
A hundred more recommendations that are “okay” level of fun
2048, 10000000000
All in Hole.
It really is a stupid game, but sometimes you just need occupied for a few minutes.
You slide a hole around and things fall in it. The hole gets bigger, and bigger things fall in. It’s strangely satisfying.
Get Lemuroid and go crazy on 16-bit era and GBA RPGs.
Three of my personal goto free options:
Nonograms are pretty simple logic puzzles in the same vein as Sudoku, but I enjoy them a lot. The app I personally use is Nonograms Katana.
Super Auto Pets is a really good, streamlined auto-battler. If you’ve ever played Autochess or Teamfight Tactics, its the same idea, but stripped to the down to the core principles and with a cute animal theme. Each turn you buy animals with abilities, then enter combat with another player and the animals automatically fight. Win 10 battles without running out of lives to win.
And not technically free without sailing the seas, but you should also be able to emulate gba games easily. Even if you don’t like playing more precise games with the touch controls (like me) there are a few great turn based games like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem.
Seconding Simon Tatham’s Puzzle Collection. Quite a number of different puzzles, very lightweight.
Stardew Valley should be lightweight enough, it runs fine on my old-ish Kindle Fire.
Gubbins is a fun word game and a one time payment to unlock the ability to play more than once a day but it kinda chugs on the tablet. It’s free to try it at least.
