Submitted 5 months ago by PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works to games@lemmy.world
Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren’t filled with microtransactions? For example: easy puzzle games, match-3 games, low-difficulty adventure games, or clicker-style games.
So far, the only good examples I’ve found are Monument Valley, Suika Game, and (sort of) Vampire Survivors.
I’m personally looking for games that have more progression or variety, but any suggestions are welcome.
Stardew Valley and Terraria may both fit your list, although Terraria stresses me out a bit.
Stardew Valley is a good one, but I definately wouldn’t consider Terraria casual or low-stress.
Not to mention using touch controls for it is brutal. At least, for me it is. Might be decent if using a controller with your phone.
Stardew Valley can be stress inducing if you are that type of player.
Terarria can be played as casual or low stress. You choose when to advance the difficulty, and how elaborately you contruct your preparations for the next step. But for a largely stress-free casual playstyle, focus on being a summoner. Also, there isn’t much penalty for dying. So if you can wrap your mind around not being bothered by dying, then any playstyle can feel casual really. It’s certainly a tough mindset to achieve for some of us though, lol.
I agree. I only mentioned it because it was recommended to me as low stress, so I thought it was just me that didn’t get it lol
Note with Stardew Valley: it is not unplayable without a controller, but if you have clumsy sausage fingers like me, the poor touch controls really took me out of the game.
Stardew valley stressed me out so much I stopped playing before even reaching that first year party. It looks like a casual fun game, but there are so many characters to make friends (even if it’s optional, it’s stressful because of the implication). And you need to tend to your garden, and even if you don’t do anything, midnight rolls around and you feel like you didn’t do anything useful and it’s overall very stressful to me. May be it gets easier once you get sprinklers and whatnot, but early game was anything but casual and fun for me.
I like “Traveler’s Rest” because the game doesn’t force you to keep regular hours at your tavern. If you want, you can spend the whole day crafting and restocking until you’re ready to deal with customers again.
I completely understand. It was very overwhelming for me at first and sometimes can still be overwhelming depending on my how my computer is working lol
If you ever decide you want to try it again I highly recommend modding it (and I would be happy to send you what I use). That said it’s not a bad thing to play other games if you like them better :) games should be fun not stressful imo
Does terraria have a chill mode?
Not sure if you saw this comment above. Looks like there are ways to change the difficulty. I’m not sure that would help me though. The monsters move fast for me.
Pixel Dungeon: Roguelike, infinitely replayable. play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watabou…
Auralux: A simple real time strategy game. play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wardrum…
2048: Simple to learn, difficult to master puzzle. play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androbr…
My Boy: A Game Boy Advance emulator (Game files, called ROMs, not included). play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastemu…
Or the well-maintained and developed derivative:
The first link says not found :( maybe not available in Canada?
Last one says it was made for an old version of Android and can’t be downloaded (I have android 14)
Short answer: yes.
Shattered Pixel dungeon is based on pixel dungeon, adds a bunch of new stuff and is reasonably actively developed.
Install from computer:
adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block FILENAME.apk
liliputing.com/how-to-install-old-apps-on-android…
I’ll second Pixel Dungeon. It’s the only one I’ve played, but it perfectly fits OP’s reqs.
One time purchase: Peglin ✨ Luck be a landlord ✨ Forager Dicey dungeons Dead Cells (optional DLC) Bloons Tower Defense 6 (out of the way IAP) ✨ Terraria 20 minutes till dawn (has a non premium option with some micro transactions)
Free: Antimatter dimensions (long idle-ish game) ✨ Legends of Runeterra (just play the story modes) ✨ Team fight tactics (cosmetics only) Plague inc (and probably rebel inc, but I haven’t played that yet) ✨ Super Auto Pets (cosmetics and extra optional sets) ✨
Star on the ones I’d specifically recommend for casual play
You need to make a bulleted list because your lists came out as jumbled paragraphs. At a minimum you need to put two spaces at the end of each line to preserve line breaks.
I’ll fix it since you put in all the effort to write that up.
One time purchase:
Free:
Star on the ones I’d specifically recommend for casual play
^^ A real Bro!
Bro, kind and generous.
Had no idea, thanks
I reached Challenger on Teamfight Tactics in a couple seasons and I’ve gotta say it honestly gets a bit tiresome how often they change the game. Mortdog and Co do a great job on balance but you just can’t swap from set to set that often and expect things not to break. Plus they like to nerf the things I like the most, and that’s inexcusable.
I also didn’t really care for it as mobile game because you can’t hop in and out, you start a match you need to finish the match and they’re not short. Even the “quick” mode is like fifteen minutes long.
In other words? Great desktop game for people that don’t mind the meta changing entirely every six months. Great “mobile” game if you want to kill no less than thirty minutes.
I didn’t star it for a reason lmao, it’s a good game but not great casually
I use Privacy Friendly versions of Sudoku and Minesweeper on the F-Droid store. I also really enjoy Nonograms (aka Picross), and haven’t found a good foss app for it, but the app “nonograms.com” has been a good experience for me. I paid like $5 for the ad free version and that’s been it, nothing else.
I’m using Simon Tatham’s Puzzles for nonograms.
It’s basically this webpage in app form: www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/…/pattern.html
It doesn’t result in a pixel art picture when you solve it, if you care for that, but the solutions do have contiguous regions.
This works for me! Thanks a bunch!
I also enjoy “1010! Klooni” on F-Droid.
Will check it out. Thanks for the suggestion!
I liked egg inc for a while, if you’re looking for clicker type games.
Other than that I can recommend
Multiple of these are paid, but I’m 100% on board with paying a small amount for an app rather than paying a multiple of that for in-game Battlepasses and whatevers.
It annoys me a lot to say this, but Netflix has some excellent games in their roster. So if you have a Netflix subscription, check those out. I personally very much enjoyed
But they also have ports of some very good PC games like Spiritfarer, Terra Nil or World of Goo.
Peglin is available for Mobile?? Adios
Any little casual simulators by Kairosoft, the pay to play “full versions” are pretty cheap. Manage a lil apartment building, manage a tiny sushi restaurant, manage a little Japanese village. 8 bit style, very soothing. The free versions are quite limited in scope and cut you off from further progression after a few levels, but no microtransaction reminders, either. The mention of “Dungeon Village” reminded me, is that Kairosoft?
It is indeed
Games I know of on Android:
Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey are excellent
My recommendation l is going back to the basics: chess, especially lichess.org
You can choose a mode however you want, and it may or may not be stressful. Multiplayer with friends or random online people, choose a time between 30 seconds for a game and infinity to move.
If you don’t want to play right now, you can solve tactical exercises.
Try searching on www.darkpattern.games It seems like a vast collection with reviews aimed at finding and naming healthy and unhealthy games
That is an excellent site. Thanks for sharing!
Mindustry is amazing, and free somehow
Definitely not casual or low stress, especially as you progress through the planet, but a great game nonetheless
Whoops, yeah I skimmed over that part
Mini metro Mini motorways
I may or may not have opted to ignore the stress part.
YES I really need the sixth circle station in Manhattan thank you
I had nearly given up looking for good mobile games when I remembered that emulators exist. Nintendo DS games map pretty well to a smart phone, there are some games that use entirely touch controls. I’m using the MelonDS emulator and I’ve mostly been playing advanced wars: days of ruin and puzzle quest 2. Puzzle quest is pretty excellent and chill by the way.
On android, lemuroid is pretty good for this sort of thing and you can change the arrangement of your nds/3ds screens.
If you like the older Pokemon games and can get the ROMs on your phone, PokeMMO is really cool. It’s an emulator that turns the first 5 generations of games into an MMO where you can take the same character across each region.
There’s a handful of changes to the base game, but most are small: Berry farming is changed, there’s an Exp Share for EVs now, Sweet Scent is used to summon a 1v5 against wild Pokemon… There’s character customization… There’s some QoL stuff like shiny encounters having a sound effect and adding a confirmation box so you don’t accidentally flee.
In my experience the relatively small selection of the F-droid store is full of these type of games.
Troll patrol Sudoku Unciv Shattered Pixel Dungeon Pirate Solitare
…just to name a few All full versions, no ads or premuim options. Love F-droid, its a shame the selection is quite small.
Troll patrol isn’t in my fdroid :(
You are right, just checked it and its not there anymore. I downloaded it many months ago :(
Man mobile gaming is such utter crap in general, I hope the handheld gaming PC trend picks up and people start developing actual competing games for Android instead of micro transaction filled pay to win pieces of shit games
The problem isn’t that no one is making good games, it’s just that the mobile market is dominated by too many large companies intent on keeping it the way it is and enough of the consumers are ok with that.
The really good games I have played on mobile are mostly indie roguelike ports from PC, like Slay the Spire, Dead Cells or 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Or something more classic like solitaire, minesweeper or crosswords/nonograms/sudoku puzzles
The website nobsgames.stavros.io helps surface these, and let’s you filter out based on different things.
One that I like in particular is Gauguin. It’s a Sudoku-like with different math-y rules.
Anuto TD is also really good, but not so low stress.
Lichess, if you’re into Chess. It’s a great, no compromise, high quality app. Stressful if you get too worked up about competitive, but puzzles are at least relaxing.
Stardew Valley has been out on Android for a while now.
The original Peggle. There’s a free APK available on speedrun.com. Works flawlessly even on modern Android.
I got free of this addiction years ago.
I hate you.
Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector. You put down furniture. Cats sleep on the furniture. You get gold to buy more funiture, and the cycle repeats.
Isn’t that lousy with video ads now?
Admittedly I haven’t played it in, like, five years but when I did it only had banner ads in the pause menu
I'm seconding Simon Tatham's puzzle collection, Nonograms Katana, and Stardew Valley, all of which are in regular rotation and fill different niches in my soul.
Came here to say Simon Tatham’s puzzles.
I also like, from f-droid, Tower Jumper, and from Play, hillclimb racing.
Stardew Valley is casual, low stress, with heaps of content.
For quick few minutes I’ve recently been into Pirate Solitaire which is on F-Droid.
slay the spire has a mobile port
Hoplite
Why don’t you try emulation? Most phones nowadays are capable of emulating easily up until Gamecube
Personally, I don’t enjoy it much without physical buttons :(
Same here, that’s why I got me one of these tiny Bluetooth controllers. I have an 8bitdo Zero 2 which, while lacking joysticks, is very portable. Alternatively, a bigger and full layout but still pocketable remote is the 8bitdo sn30 pro, it’s rather slim and quite comfortable imo, and compatible with switch and PC too if you also game in either of those systems.
This isn’t exactly what you asked, but I highly recommend emulation. I have had ePSXe downloaded on every phone I’ve had for the past ten years to play PS1 games. There are so many good titles, all of them free, playable offline. You might like Intelligent Qube Mr. Driller Devil Dice for puzzles. I love playing final fantasy, legend of dragoon, suikoden, Spyro, crash bandicoot. I don’t care about graphics, but I am a sucker for playing through a story.
Gba games on my phone were the shit in my late teens
ScummVM is my emulator of choice, like ePSXe it runs on phones and opens it up to a bunch of classics
There are a lot of great suggestions here already, so I will just share Mini Review with you as a discovery tool. I like to use them because they have a lot of filters to help you find a mobile game. For example, here’s their list for free, single-player, offline games with no ads or in app purchases, sorted by highest user score. They also have an app for both Android and iOS with the same info and filtering as the site.
Oh this is great. Thanks.
You can check out whatever is available on F-Droid. I personally enjoy playing Freebloks once in a while, it’s a mobile version of the Blokus boardgame
An alternative is checking out itch.io, searching with the proper tags, like puzzle, might yield decent results for your tastes.
You can also get Cookie Clicker or play the web version
To add to that try puzzles, lots of nice games in there. I particularly like flow
Was gonna suggest the same thing! I like Net.
Blooms TD 6 - fun tower defense game with solid progression and everything can be earned by playing what I think is a reasonable amount.
BTD5 too. This is a very good recommendation.
Tetris
rockerface@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Slay the Spire has a decent mobile version. Not sure about the casual part, but at least it’s turn based
sylveon@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
It can be played pretty casually. A run usually takes around an hour but you don’t have to play it in one go. And on the base difficulty it’s pretty approachable. You definitely don’t have to play 500 hours to enjoy it. But you can if you want to :)
cRazi_man@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Slay The Spire is an excellent recommendation. Although a lot of people find roguelites stressful because they get stressed about losing progress. You just have to play with the right mindset:
No worries