Submitted 4 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.
Nonograms Katana. I guess there are micro transactions for useless crap but it’s not pay to win. If you’re on iOS, it’s just the puzzles but if you’re on Android, it includes a “mini game” where you…build out a village? And fight monsters in dungeons? It’s really weird…but I’m in it for the puzzles.
Nonograms are great for puzzles that are hard enough to be satisfying when you solve them, but easy enough to be relaxing. I use Picture Cross Color on iphone.
It’s the perfect phone game!
This one is good but Hungry Cat Nonograms is the best mobile picross game imo. Thousands of puzzles, amazing controls, beautiful art. It has ads which can be removed with a single in-app purchase. Been playing for almost 8 years and they’re still releasing weekly content.
I certainly don’t want to argue about which is better as I haven’t played that one but Katana also has 155k puzzles! Users add a ton each day and you can follow your favorite artists. No purchase necessary and no ads (unless you watch one for some of the aforemented useless stuff)
I will say that there’s plenty of garbage puzzles due to them being user-generated. And a good portion are color nonograms which I don’t like all that much
Old school RuneScape, it has free “demo” version which you can easily put a 100+ hours in. And if you really love there is a subscription model that’s kinda expensive if you bill monthly, but no other micro transactions.
Mobile games suck.
Heh, it’s a numbered list.
markdown formatting is weird bruh, sometimes it adds spaces, sometimes it removes them sometimes it just fucking yeets newlines, sometimes it adds them, what a weird “standard”
Solitaire, straight out of classic Windows (pre-advertising death throes):
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.potatoj…
Hoplite, classic turn based dungeon/puzzle:
A Dance of Fire and Ice is an incredible rhythm game that you buy once and that’s it. I think there’s an expansion pack but it’s a single purchase. Whether that’s your idea of “casual” really depends on you. You can always play chill low difficulty levels when you need to zone out, and high difficulty levels when you want a challenge.
You can try a demo online at that link. It told me webgl wasn’t supported on mobile, but it worked pretty for me just now on firefox, even if it was a bit laggy. It should work fine on PC.
I pirated it on PC after my kids told me about it and ended up buying it Three times on Steam and twice on mobile. It’s just that good. I’ve built a custom digital drum to play it and I’m now making a custom MIDI controller, so we’ll see if that does better when connected to the game.
The game works as well on mobile, if not better because the touchscreen is so responsive.
2048
Not sure if it fits your criteria but the only mobile game I play is pinball deluxe. If you like real pinball, then you’ll love it, it tries to stay as true to real pinball as possible on some/most tables, it does have small transaction stuff you can buy but I still haven’t bought any including all the additional tables etc after playing it 6 months + and if you did, then it’s just an 8€ one time buy to get all the content and remove the ads, I’m gonna get that once I actually get bored of the “free” tables.
Yass, this was a daily driver for six months straight. The missions are actually fun and help you get access to free tables. Nice surprise, graphics are gorgeous.
“0h h1” is a fun, easy logic puzzle game that I find myself going back to when I have a minute to kill.
Slice and dice
I’m not sure it fits 100% with what you’re looking for, but I’ll take chance and recommend Slice & Dice (Google Play, Apple App Store). Free demo, no ads, single in-app purchase to unlock the full version. This game is easily the best value-for-dollar mobile game I’ve ever purchased.
A couple that I like:
80 Days - it’s not free but I think it’s worth it. It’s a sort of steampunk version of Around the World in 80 days where you have to plan your routes, and buy and sell things in different cities to make money. The main gameplay is sort of choose-your-own-adventure events that happen during travel and in different cities.
Card Thief - I just started playing this recently. It does technically have a microtransaction but it’s more like, they let you play for free if you don’t mind waiting for chests to unlock, or you can buy the game to bypass this. The main gameplay is sneaking through dungeons represented by a 3x3 grid of cards randomly drawn from the deck; collecting treasures and avoiding getting caught.
Card Crawl/Card Thief/Miracle Merchant are good puzzle-like games
Polytropia
I have clocked a lot of hours in Slice & Dice both on mobile and on PC well worth the 8 bucks even though I’ve paid it three times now I think. Honorable mention to Suika(Watermelon game) about 3 bucks on the Play store.
You should download Mini Review
It is a currated version of the Play Store with many filters including paid/free, IAP, genres, …
The reviews are very thorough and always include a paragraph about the “presatoriness” of IAP if any
desert golf and it’s follow up golf on mars are big hits at my house
Rodent Rush, it’s similar to Chips Challenge from back in the day but a bit different, and imho it’s a better game.
It’s only on iOS though as far as I can tell.
Shattered pixel dungeon has been a mainstay on my phone for what feels like a decade now
I really liked Lara Croft GO. It’s better than Hitman GO or other GO games.
I have a 2048 clone from F-Droid and a Solitaire-like games collection from F-Droid that keep me busy on flights, etc. No stress, easy, entertaining.
Monument Valley and Gorogoa are both excellent and free of nonsense.
Both are available on mobile and Steam. Gorogoa also on GOG currently 70% off.
Pixel dungeon, but it’s not really low stress.
Wuthering Waves is Hella good. Technically it’s an open world gacha game, but I played through all the storyline (the developers will be forever updating the story a la Genshin Impact), and I never spent a dime on it.
Also, I have spent money on Cooking Diary. However, I went about 3 months of daily play before I did, and it was more about me being impatient/telling myself “You got 3 months of daily play, you can drop the devs $4.99”. I’ve played that game just about daily since Memorial Day 2023, and I’ve dropped $5.00 quarterly. There are regularly moments of infinite lives that exceed an hour or two, that it genuinely isn’t necessary. I spend the money more as a “thanks for not making this ducking game contingent on microtransactions, making it good, and maintaining/update it.”
Any of the PAID games from Kairosoft. Dungeon Village, Grand Prix Story, Game Dev Story. He has since re-released all his games as f2p microtransaction junk, but the full price versions are generally really good.
This is the way. The 8 bit makes me happy in a way that I can’t explain.
Some good games I recommend are Alto’s Adventure / Odyssey, any bejeweled game, Cell to Singularity, Idle Slayer, Monument Valley, Reigns, Sky Force Reloaded, and Stick Fight Shadow Warrior. Hopefully that’s enough!
Reigns is so stressful, do not want! What are you trying to do, I’m spiraling just being reminded!
Word Cookies. I absolutely love it. You can pay for things, but it is absolutely not necessary and is basically only if you feel the need to use boosts that allow you to cheat your way past the level. I think it costs $2 to go ad-free.
It does give you regular popups asking if you want to buy coins, which I admit is annoying, but they are unnecessary to enjoy the game. There’s also endless opportunities to get coins and other boosts for free. I have something like 80,000 coins and dozens of boosts and other than the $2 to go ad-free, I’ve never given them any money.
You do have to have certain word skills to enjoy it as much as I do. If you’re the sort who can crush it at Boggle, it’s the game for you.
Assuming that you have Netflix, open it, scroll to games and open the section. There are tons of great games without any microtransactions or ads. They’re overwhelmingly commercial games licensed by Netflix.
I used to play Unblock Me. Made it maybe 1000 levels in various difficulties before stopping.
Anti-mine: foss minesweeper Blockinger: foss tetris Puzzles: foss app with 40 ish mini games Lexica: foss boogle Lichess: foss chess
Johngbac: gba emulator L game: one of the simplest game which will make you rage. Underhand: light card game.
Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Magic DosBox, not a game. But in combination with www.old-games.com , it’s a pretty good selection of all the old games made for Dos back in the wild west of indie games back before they were even called that. There are, of course, also old commercial games that have transitioned to freeware now too. Should be able to find lots of awesome games there. Moraff adventure games are particularly interesting. Bit of a steep learning curve, but great to come back to now and then. The site has reviews of every game and sorts them into categories. It can be a little overwhelming just due to the sheer number of available games, but take it slow, and work your way through. It’s worth the time investment to find gems.