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.
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.
Or did it revolutionize the industry to it's endpoint, that we just don't want to admit was the natural conclusion of capitalistic society video games?
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.
A chunk of those aren't mobile-first games. Dead cells is like an award winning game on PC and console. They're good games. Maybe the metric should be "is this on other platforms , too?" Somehow the shitty models of mobile games haven't fully developed on other platforms.
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:
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
Just download a SNES/Genesis/GBA emulator, no need to waste time sifting through the piles of shit that is mobile gaming.
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.
May I interest you in The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind ?
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.
Monument 1 and 2 are great puzzle games well worth the purchase price.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
Just to nitpick, Morrowind's engine absolutely wasn't ported to Android. What actually happened is that we made an entirely new game engine from scratch that can also interpret Morrowind's game data. That's obviously massively more effort than 'just' adapting source code to run on a new platform, but unlike DOOM, the source code has never been made available to the public, so that was never an option.
Also, OpenMW's Android port is technically not official and tends to lurch from maintainer to maintainer, so if anyone reading this wants to help bring it up to scratch so it can be absorbed into the main project, that might be good.
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.
Wait FTL is on mobile? That sounds amazing..... dang it looks like it is ios only.
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
Vampire Survivors and Baba Is You
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Nowadays Apple Arcade is the only way to get somewhat quality games for mobile
There are some gems, but trying to find them is like trying to find a needle in a haystack and I gave up on it quite awhile ago.
Not all but most are terrible.
I'm currently having fun with Mario Kart Tour
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.
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.
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
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
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