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.
If you ever played (and enjoyed) the flash game Hex Empire, you’ll probably like Feudal Tactics, available on Fdroid, Play store, and itch.io
ANUTO TD, SUPER METRO MEGA WARS (fdroid)
Get Lemuroid and go crazy on 16-bit era and GBA RPGs.
I like Sudoku
Suika Game The same great game for Switch, now available on mobile. Combine like fruit to evolve them into larger ones- keep going until you get watermelons. There are physics-based elements and if you overflow the play area, you lose.
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.
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.
I enjoy playing Okay? .
The goal of the game is to craft the perfect trajectory, so that your ball hits all shapes on the screen.
The game is free, while allowing you to pay what you think it’s worth. There are no ads, unless you want a hint.
The difficulty curve is well-shaped, however at the end some levels will leave you stuck for weeks
If you can handle frustration or know that a rogue-like is for you: Shattered Pixel Dungeon
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.
Super hexagon
I’ve had it for years through many phones,.so a modern cheap phone should run it fine. It’s colourful, trippy and addictive in small doses.
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.
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.
I’d say try out Super Auto Pets! It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you grasp the system it’s very fun to come in 1-2x a week and do the weekly pack. They’re also one of the most ethical mobile games I’ve ever seen when it comes to payments. Most of them are one-time only and actually get you a good amount of extra content. There is a monthly subscription thing, but last I checked it’s basically just for cosmetics.
Flappy Bird
Mini metro, slay the spire
