Games

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There’s a lot of bad ones, but quite a few gems out there. A lot of ports though too. Call of Duty Mobile was a blast when I had a gaming phone with the trigger tops on it, and you can also download a bunch of emulators and isos on androids. I was playing PS2 games on mine for a while! A lot of them on the google store are just cash grabs tho

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

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

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.

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.

Occidental Heroes and Pew-Pew aren't bad

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.

Templar Battleforce is solid.

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

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).

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