Are almost all mobile games bad?

there are good games. but they most of the time do not get promoted. you need other websites or like reddit or lemmy with lists from actual players to find them. in store only the moneygrabs get promoted.

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IMO, smartphones had the chance to revolutionize the gaming industry, but ended up wasting almost all of that potential on skinner boxes riddled with ads and microtransactions. Most of the best mobile games are ports from other systems, like the mobile edition of Minecraft and whatnot.

I think Pokémon Go was possibly the closest any major publisher has come to actually realizing the full potential of mobile games as a format, but it still fell painfully short with massively dumbed down mechanics and an absolute grindfest of a progression system.

There are still a few good indie projects out there (I like Soul Knight) but generally the mobile gaming market is so full of absolute dreck that I usually just don't bother.

There are a few hidden gems (I enjoy Plague inc. and Rebel inc. on occasion, for example), but for the most part, the majority of mobile games are mtx-laden cash grabs. So the actual quality is commensurately low because the devs figured out they don't have to put in real effort to implement gambling and hook addicts.

There are a ton of good mobile games but the reason you can't find them is because 99% of what you see in app stores are paid advertisements. Every section is basically paid, and the few which aren't get botted by major companies. That app that has 5 million downloads and 4.6 average score? Most likely spammed with bots that give it 5 stars. Google Play is a disaster.

Here are some Android games I would absolutely recommend:

• Fancy Pants Adventures

• Data Wing

• The Battle of Politopia

• Sonny

• Plato

• Cube Escape Collection

• Pocket City (or its sequel)

• Bloons TD 6 (paid)

• Dicey Dungeons (paid)

• Dead Cells (paid)

• Downwell (paid)

• Baba Is You (paid)

• Levelhead (paid)

• Kingdom Rush series (paid, usually on sale though)

• If you own Netflix you get to play their catalogue of games for free. I recommend Into the Breach, Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon, Oxenfree

I could go on, but the point is ignore everything you see on the store. The store is garbage. Try to look for games that are well-talked about online.

Edit: Forgot to mention, there's an app called MiniReview where you can browse game reviews from people who actually care. It's a good resource if you're looking for good games.

Almost all mobile-only games from mobile-only game developers and advertised in mobile-only environments are trash. Look for mobile games related to other gaming environments or advertising channels. Android games through Humble Bundle are great (although they don't do mobile-only bundles any more?). Android ports of PC or Switch games tend to be pretty good. Open source Android games run the gamut of quality, but the ways they are bad are the same ways open source PC games are bad, not the very different set of ways that mobile games are bad (microtransactions, ads, etc).

After trying bunch of Android games I found Nintendo DS games that can be entirely played with a stylus have been the best games to emulate and play on mobile.

Edit: Kirby Mass Attack is great and felt like a native experience.

Some others that might be worth trying.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/925329-nintendo-ds/65539209

I find Dark pattern games site to be fairly informative on which mobile games are good and which are not. The Healthy Games section has bunch of good games while the dark games section has games you should actively avoid.

If game is listed as healthy and has a good rating there's a pretty good chance for it being actually good.

If you want good mobile games, look out for paid ports of PC indies, like:

• Door Kickers: Action Squad
• Baba Is You
• Bad North
• Bridge Constructor Portal
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
• Crypt of the Necromancer
• Dead Cells
• Don't Starve
• Don't Starve: Shipwrecked
• Downwell
• Forager
• GRIS
• Retro City Rampage DX
• Reventure
• ScourgeBringer
• Sparklite
• Teslagrad
• This War of Mine
• Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

Just download a SNES/Genesis/GBA emulator, no need to waste time sifting through the piles of shit that is mobile gaming.

My hard and fast rule is, "Don't play freemium games." The second I see stars, coins, tickets, tokens, I'm out. I exclusively play what are mostly ports from console. Trials of Mana, The Alliance Alive HD Remastered, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, Danganronpa, Spiritfarer, Oxenfree, Stardew Valley, Minecraft etc. I also have Apple Arcade from my Verizon package, and I play the Netflix games. Avoid freemium / gacha / IAP-riddled games, and some of the ports are at least decent.

Actually, if you have Netflix, there’s a decent number of good mobile games through that

It is really hard to find good mobile games.

Most games are just blatant pay to win fronts. I especially despise those "idle whatever" style games where you wait for your 'money' to rake up. Boring stuff.

With smartphones getting more and more powerful, I miss sophisticated games on it. And I am not talking Skyrim here. Even most stuff we could play on Newgrounds 15 years ago blows most of the shit in the store out of the water.

There is just not a big enough market for it, it seems.

It could just be you are not the target market for these games and you see through the bullshit. A lot of them are designed with shitty dark patterns to keep you coming back for more. Also, a lot of those reviews are probably fake to draw in the curious.

Mobile games aren’t games, or at least not what I’d consider a game. Mobile “games” are simple puzzles, swipe action fighters and click-and-wait builders. They are built around the concept of microtransactions and are in place to make developers money and to be a time-suck for the end players.

Monument 1 and 2 are great puzzle games well worth the purchase price.

There's no good mobile exclusive game, in my experience. There are plenty of great games that are 1:1 ports of their PC or console versions, with buy-once pricing and no microtransactions.

The ones I have installed on Android are: Baba is You, Slay the Spire, Peglin, Downwell, Super Hexagon, SNKRX, and 20 Minutes Til Dawn.

Apple Arcade seems to have escaped this cycle and has games that feel like early mobile games where developers made their games passion projects; games are focused on fun without any in app purchases, games get constant content updates, remasters of some of the best mobile games but without ads or in app purchases.

Pretty much. Unless you're an anime/gacha fan there really isn't any 'good' mobile games since the entire world decided that premium mobile games aren't worth it. Which pretty much fed back into itself. So the only thing approaching good will be either emulation/ports of games from console, the your mileage may vary genres (incrementals/idlers, and gacha) and the occasional diamond in the rough.

There are plenty of highly-rated indie games ported to Android and iOS. Why plays gatcha games and ads/microtransactions-laden mobile games when you can play Into the Breach, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Limbo, Samorost, etc for a small sum of money?

Yes, almost all of it is bad. But that's only because there's a lot of bad games on there. There are certainly great games on mobile, you just have to find them.

I used to visit the incremental games subreddit to find new, good ones.

After all, why download a game when others are willing to play test it for you?

Cultist Simulator, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Slay the Spire and Dead Cells are all good options. Admittedly they're all PC games you can play on mobile but they're still good.

Nope, you just have to dig...

• Minecraft
• Ocean Horn
• Terraria
• Don't Starve
• Neon Chrome
• Stardew Valley
• GTA III
• GTA Vice City
• GTA: San Andreas
• GTA: Chinatown Wars
• Bully
• Max Payne
• Star Wars KOTOR
• Limbo
• Roller Coaster Tycoon
• OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon)
• Portal

With some fiddling you can even run some PC games like Half Life 1 and 2, Doom 3 and Morrowind (not even emulated, their engines were actually ported to Android).

If you add emulation to the mix you can play everything up to the Wii if you have a half decent phone, which means an endless ocean of good games.

There are good mobile games out there. World of Goo, Little Inferno, Angry Birds, The Room, What the Golf?, Plants vs. Zombies, FTL, Genshin Impact, Jetpack Joyride, are good examples. There are also some ported games that are fantastic, like Minecraft, Papers Please, Roblox, and I'm sure countless others.

However, mobile devices don't have enough resources for many triple-A PC/Console games, they also don't have the ergonomics of a controller, and the screen is inherently too small for some games. Even if the technical issues could be mitigated, would you want to play something like Elden Ring on a phone? Likewise, would you want to play Angry Birds on your television? I think the best compromise is when mobile games are specifically tailored for the platform they are on. FTL and Plants vs. Zombies come to mind as great implementations. But if those type of games aren't something you like, then you're out of luck.

Just wanted to share that if you have a Netflix account, you can probabaly try some good mobile games. Here's some I found that were good:

Arcanium

Bloons

Into the Breach

Try getting your games from F-Droid instead of the Google Play Store. Although a lot of them might still be bad, because everything F-Droid offers is required to be Free Software, you can at least be assured that they're the kind of bad that comes from the amateur dev not knowing how to make a good game, not the exploitative kind of bad that's a glorified Skinner box designed to addict you and extract microtransactions.

Games from F-Droid that I like include:

• Shattered Pixel Dungeon
• Mindustry
• Endless Sky
• Feudal Tactics
• Vector Pinball

There are also a bunch of the usual traditional sorts of games: card games, tetris, chess, etc. l won't recommend particular ones for those since it basically comes down to personal preference, but I'll point out that you can pick any of them without worrying about them being infested with ads and shit, unlike in the Play Store where trying to find that one implementation of Solitaire that doesn't try to monetize you is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Vampire Survivors and Baba Is You

Magic the gathering Arena is on mobile and it is basically PC port of the game. Highly recommend if you are into collectible card games.

Gaming in phones sucks.

There are a lot of good-amazing games but they are buried under a mountain of garbage, as @simple@lemmy.world suggested I suggest you give the MiniReview app a try I'm pretty sure you will like it, it is pretty much a hidden gem that deserves more popularity

Avoid Freeium games. If you known what to look for, it’s pretty easy. Combat Master is a pretty good CoD clone. Galaxy on Fire II is worth a shot as well.

Not sure what you're into but Super Auto Pets might seem silly but is great to kill some time or when sitting on the toilet.

You can access a lot of content completely free to play and if you want more it's one-time unlocks in the form of expansion packs.

It's been years, and I see that it contains ads now, but I absolutely loved Super Stickman Golf 1 and 2. It is a simple 2D golf platformer with a ton of courses (at my time of last play you could download like 15 extra courses individually, on top of 6 or so to start). I'm sure it has been ruined by the freemium model, but it was a joy back in the day.

Virtually all free to play games are. The most popular are designed in a way to lure you in with freebies and gameplay that tickles you lizard brain in a pleasant way. Then, when you are invested enough, they annoy you with waiting times and artifical speed bumps just enough to make you spend bucks in their cash shop but not enough to stop playing. These games are basically slot machines masquerading as a game, where the only goal is to milk you dry of your income.

Nowadays Apple Arcade is the only way to get somewhat quality games for mobile

Not all but most are terrible.

I'm currently having fun with Mario Kart Tour

Whilst the vast majority of shovelware on Android is a low-effort cash grab, there are areas where mobile gaming shines. I personally play a lot of board game adaptions and mostly text-based incremental games like Kittens Game. Here's a great curated list of Android adaptions of physical board games: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HFYnQ95orfYCc3Vka1S66cL1GDgS6wfTR3uNwo8S37A/edit#gid=2025438514

Slice and Dice is a solid phone game, easy time waster and a lot of fun rolling some dice to kill some baddies. In general though I do think they are quite trash, but ports and emulators are probably the best option

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Simon tathams puzzle pack! They're all puzzles, all procedurally generated, but I challenge you not to find one you absolutely love out of the whole set.

I would suggest to use the website: darkpattern.games to find fairly designed games.

On the other hand, I fell for a pseudogacha but really engaging card game: Marvel Snap.

good pizza great pizza is pretty awesome if you want any suggestions

I was exploring for over half an hour for a paid games and didnt find anything decent to play

It is not you. There is a glut of terrible games on mobile. The reason: Most of the time, they are free to download with in-app purchases. The point isn't to play the game. The point is to try to see how much money people will pay for the in-app purchases.

It's definitely not you. You're right and most of them are complete garbage. Idk what kind of game you are looking for but Bloons TD6 is great. It does have an up front fee but if you buy it it's actually playable. It does have some microtransactions unfortunately but it's 100% totally playable without spending any money beyond what you paid to buy it. The Stardew Valley mobile port is another great one that does come with an up front fee and no microtransactions. Since the mobile version isn't actually done by concernedape himself though it isn't always up to date with the latest and greatest updates he has added to the game.

I would guess that almost all games ever created, in all platforms can be considered bad games. Mobile gaming could be the worst offender because the barrier to publish are low and they are easy to monetize via ads, or just by selling your data. Taking this in account, try to look at paid games and you are going to find good quality games like Dicey Dungeons or Slice & Dice.

There are good games, but usually they don't have the advertisement budget of these crapware companies that oversaturate the market. Best advice would be to look for good mobile games using other media, then get them on the store; not looking at the store's suggestion.

Space Marshals 1 and 2 Anomaly Warzone Earth and Korea ...

Holy shit I am not able recall anymore decent games I have enjoyed on mobile! 😂

Well definitely ports of old games from other platforms, like Professor Layton and Ace Attorney series.

I mean the bitter truth is, mobile games nowadays are completely plagued with the same cancer of trying to sell you stuff inside the game. Virtually every "worthwhile" game on mobile has become a flea market in on itself. So even the decent games a chore to get through to the actual meaty part. I used to enjoy PUBGmobile and CODmobile with my friends but even that I stopped playing because it was just rinse and repeat live service model of trudging through gutter waste. It became just an obligation to my friends rather than anything I would enjoy so I quit.

Problem is that nobody takes mobile as a serious platform for gaming. And somewhat sad reality is that the huge user base you see in mobile space, especially Android, is coming from people who are not going to spend a single penny on anything software.

If you find a good developer, it's worth checking their catalogue. For example, Butterscotch Shenanigans is one I am a fan of. Another to look at is Noodlecake.

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Try Shattered Pixel Dungeon and you wont need other games..its free, too (for non-ios)

Doodle Jump kids remember

I'm a big fan of BuriedBornes. Great little old school rpg to pick up and play. Lots of in depth mechanics and replayability.

I think perspective is key here. Setting aside the low barrier of entry that can't possible keep the truly dreadful garbage out, on mobile you're super limited on your input method (touch screen and not so great motion controls). This tends leads to devs gravitating towards the sort of genres that were historically plagued with low quality shovel-ware on platforms like the Wii. As others have said, true gems exist, although I'd argue that the best of the best do tend to ports from more capable platforms. Titles like Dicey Dungeons, Slay the Spire, and others along those lines have rich play mechanics underneath of the simple touch interface. It really all depends on how how far you want to dig, and how deep of an experience you want (there are hundreds of good enough match 3 games if that's your jam).

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These are my picks.

Infinitode 2: Pretty good standard Tower Defence.

Gravity Box: Very simple platformer where your only movement is rocket jumps. People say it has occasional ads but I've never seen any.

God Field: fun tacky card battle game. Quick games. Can play bots, private lobbies, casual or ranked. Anywhere from 1v1 to 9ffa. I would look up a guide online to find out how to play, as it doesn't have a tutorial (just a glossary).

Arknights: DISCLAIMER - Gacha game, I play f2p though just fine. You're only allowed a certain number of missions per day. Unique Tower defense game with levelable Pokemon for towers, except it's waifus instead of pokemons. Has lots of story (though you'll get through slowly).

Emulation very possible (though I dislike touch controls):

• Dolphin (wii/gc)
• Citra (3ds)
• RetroArch (any older system)

I've seen these mentioned in other comments:

• Mindustry
• Slay the Spire

I really enjoyed BloonsTD6 on my phone. I play it almost every day.

There is a card game called Rogue Adventure that I've poured hundreds of hours into over the years. Love it to bits!

I would argue that the problem with gaming on android isn't as much the quality of the games as it is the quality of google play.

Most games on the platform are not something I'm interested in, and while that goes for any platform google aggressively don't care about my preferences and would rather use most of the available space for ads instead. Sure, it has an algorithm suggesting stuff to you, but when "no" isn't an answer the algorithm isn't really useful to me (which is by design). There's no search for tags, no way to filter and even searching for the exact title of a game will present you with several other games before the real result shows up.

It also doesn't help that the ratings system is terrible. When (almost) every game has a 4.1 rating it isn't really of much use.

Well... I have GTA: San Andreas on mobile and that shit is damn near as good as console or PC

There are a couple good ones out there, but you wont find them in the Play Store, one example might be Morrowind, witch runs in Android nowerdays, with decenz Internet Steam Link ist also something to consider

If you like freelancer. Try Galaxy on fire 2. It's one of the best mobile games ever in my opinion. The controls can be a little clunky but they balanced it with the enemies being as accurate as storm troopers.

If you’re a football fan (American football that is), Retro Bowl is the best football game on mobile. It’s free, but the full game purchase is a whole $.99, and it’s the best buck I’ve ever spent. I’ve played that game more than any other on my phone. It’s surprisingly deep with quite a bit of strategy for a little football game, and it embarrasses the garbage that is the iOS Madden franchise. Here is a link to it.

And if you like futball, give Retro Goal a shot, it’s from the same developers.

The standards for mobile game quality are through the floor, but there some decent ones out there. At least the platform has some higher effort games now, like CoD Mobile and Fortnite, instead of just being infinite runners and coin dropper simulators.

Yes, there are some good ones (mostly indie games like stardew valley, poly bridge etc) also some like minecraft, the basic problem with mobile games is, that you would never payn60$ for a mobile game but for console games its normal

i think its a low barrier to entry which means the app stores are flooded with crap. i'd probably suggest avoiding mobile exclusive games by default

Your sample range of one that you saw out of tens of thousands of existing games means that no, you haven't seen every mobile game and cannot use that one experience to tar all titles. The barrier for entry is low so you will find a lot of rubbish, but there's plenty of gold out there which you maybe be familiar with such as Stardew, Final Fantasy pixel remasters, Slay the Spire, and some not so much, like Yellow, Stumble Guys and Deemo.

I play Genshin Impact. It's an extremely good game. The downside is the predatory gacha, but the characters are far from essential and there's no competition.

Occidental Heroes and Pew-Pew aren't bad

Some of the only mobile games I play regularly are Unciv, Mindustry and funnily enough Wild Rift.

It's tough to find one that hooks you in but not all mobile games are bad..right I'm playing harry Potter magic awakened and it has me hooked

If you try to search the Windows Store, you’ll also get a whole bunch of terrible mobile-esque games. I think the issue is having a “Game Store” integrated into a device, that cannot morally turn away games of any kind or enforce their own prioritization. iOS pretty much needs to allow any kind of app to stay fair.

If we could have a third party App Store on phones kind of like Steam, I think perhaps they could set a bar of quality that allows genuine, meaningful $10 games to be sold there. But, that’s a sizable barrier for entry when most tinkerers that would install a store like Steam are on Windows PCs.

Templar Battleforce is solid.

Most mobile games are toss though, yes. Free mobile games, doubly so.

Almost all mobile games and apps are bad. Google Play accepts pretty much anything and is filled with trash

There’s a free game on iOS called Builderment. It’s basically Factorio without the hostile mobs. An automation game with unlimited resources so you can solely focus on optimization. I have over 500 hours in my current world.

A huge amount of them are.

That said there are a number of games from the flash era that are still great.

There's a lot of good tower defense games. Bloons and kingdom rush I like personally.

Then there's ports like Minecraft, Stardew valley, Terraria

Commenting in here so I can try out some of the games listed because I have found very, very few games that weren't totally trash - either shit quality or an endless begging for money.

The very few that I do enjoy are Word Feud, The Kingdom Rush series, Flow Free, Block Puzzle and only a few other ones.

If you want to play mobile games but don't want to wade through the shit to find the good ones, I recommend getting Google Play Pass, it's mostly premium games (and a few standard ones with ads removed). It makes it easier to find the good games cause you just look at the play pass games. I stopped playing mobile games for years until recently when I got this. There's some classics on it too so it's been nice revisiting some games I used to play on my iPod Touch as a kid.

I have rarely encountered a game made specifically for the mobile market to be good. There are some ports of, what I call, real games that work well on a phone. There are some open source versions of things that exist on PC that give the same experience on a phone (like OpenTTD being a nice "rip off" of roller coaster tycoon).

There are only two made for mobile games I can even really give praise to: Galaxy on Fire 2. It's as good as those kinds of quick play arcadey space games can be without going full on Elite or Star Citizen. Perfect for a phone. The other was Synapse and I don't even think you can find it anymore. It was, at the time, the only turn-based tactical game like Firaxis' X-Com games. But since both of the newer XCOM games are officially on the phone, it's not a genre devoid of good stuff.

Half the time I hear about a mobile game getting popular or is touted in these kinds of questions threads, it's something like Clash of Clans. Just crap that lets you play for like 15 minutes every 24 hours unless you start shelling out money. 😮‍💨

• Stranger things 1984
• Hitman Go
• Lara Croft Go

The best mobile games tend to be ports. Stick Ranger is a good example.

snake.io is a great little game

Microsoft Solitaire isn't awful.

The other games it advertises though...

Highly recommend Dawncaster if you like Slay The Spire / deck builders. I think I paid $6 for it and I've probably played 40 hours or so. Just an honest to goodness straight up good game that happens to be on mobile.

No gache/gems/freemium nonsense/etc.

Lots of great games, but as already mentioned the FTP are a mess. I subscribe to the Google Play Pass, which give me a pretty good selection of games with no ads or in-app purchases. Helps protect me from the crap out there so its worth it IMO.

Yes.

Let me introduce you to: Arknights. It's an anime-themed tower defense game, which is unfortunately a gacha but it's generous and well-balanced enough that if you don't want to you don't need to pay a cent, and this is speaking as an F2P player. And don't get me started onnthe story, which is amazing (though the first few chapters are a little dull).

My controversial opinion is that candy crush is actually brilliant, yeah they want you to buy gold but it's more fun not to. The same goes for a lot of advert funded / in app purchase games - they're fantastic mobile games if you ignore the money option.

Morrowind ports and similar aren't great mobile games, they're great games but candy crush I can pull out my pocket when I'm waiting for a bus and get totally drawn into a few rounds. Airport control is another example, draw lines to direct landing planes and avoid a crash - super simple and repetitive but its complexity grows, cut the rope likewise is a true game in my definition because you learn skills and develop your personal ability beyond just learning game mechanics. They're engaging and enjoyable with a complexity ramp and nice easy to understand ui and graphics - they're everything a mobile game should be.

There are some great horror and story games too, especially the Indy ones

Phobies is really good

You can have my Word Cookies when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

I would just like to share Cat Bird with all of you. An excellent mobile first platformer that shows that on screen buttons can work.

Yes, I'd say if you cut out the pc/console to mobile ports then 95% of mobile games are hot garbage that aren't even worth the data its saved to, as they are most likely just thinly veiled spyware looking to suck as much of your money up as possible with as little effort as possible.

Like others have said, its like looking for a needle in a haystack of flaming hot garbage.

Get yourself GeForce now and a Bluetooth controller, you'll never go back to Android games.

I would say that most are subpar. If you are looking for a recommendation then I've been playing Orna (search on the play store) forever now and it's a great time. As hardcore or casual as you like with an overall great community and a developer that is active and engages with us.

Egg Inc. was alright but mostly yes.

I once had an android port of dune 2,I think it was of questionable legality licence wise.

I don't remember if it was in the store or if I loaded it.

I lost it's source but later another version surfaced, but didn't work as well.

I played through all houses twice each on mobile. Was a great time remembering my 1990's gaming.

If you are into racing games, I can recommend these confidently:

• Rush Rally 3
• GRID Autosport

Both are quite challenging.

No, you se-

Almost

Yes.

Yes they are.

Stay away from them on the whole, don't even bother discovering games through lists of mobile titles. Disregard any list that shows games that were not made mobile-first as a counter-example, those miss the point of the question.

I have exactly one game on my phone. Bloons Tower Defense 6. Without a doubt a great game!

Short answer no.

The answer to everyone looking for a new game is Super Snail, I believe full release is Aug 4th? Enjoy!

https://thelemmy.club/post/398879

I asked, Lemmy answered.

Might not be your cup of tea, but I like Dungeon Village 2.

Moonshades on android is a good knock off of heros of might and magic

Been playing Oddmar, a fantastic platformer on iOS.
It’s fun to play on the phone, but getting a controller and playing on the iPad is chef’s kiss

There's an Android app called "minireview" which has tons of reviews of games on Google Play and helps filter out the garbage.

Postknight :D

Since I didn't see it here.... Banner saga 1,2 &3 are absolutely wonderful.

Depends on what you like my friend!

Tap Wizard 2 and Home Quest have been recent favorites in the "idle simulation" space Also Vampire Survivors and Melvor Idle are both on mobile platforms so it is objectively false to call all mobile games bad 😉

Time is too precious for wasting it playing subpar games on mobile phones.

For me the best gaming experience is on the PC.

Id say League is probably the closest you’re going to get to a “real” game. Reasonable prices. No P2W. And the game is super polished and quality.