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.
Old School RuneScape potentially fits this description
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.
- seen much praise of mindustry here on Lemmy, but not got into it myself
- rabbit escape is like lemmings/pingus
- I like go, but play casual. CrazyStone on Play works well for me. It’s doing something with the internet on startup, probably benign model updates, but I block its internet access.
- I also remember Doom and Destiny being very fun and fairly casual. The free version is not too bad on ads. The second one I never got far in - felt like it was constant ads interrupting gameplay
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
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: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/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!
Holedown
You just aim a ball and clear blobs before they reach the top. No timer. I usually play this with my screen split to YouTube.
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
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.
Pixel Dungeon: Roguelike, infinitely replayable. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watabou.pixeldungeon
Auralux: A simple real time strategy game. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wardrumstudios.auralux
2048: Simple to learn, difficult to master puzzle. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androbros.puzzle2048eng
I’ll second Pixel Dungeon. It’s the only one I’ve played, but it perfectly fits OP’s reqs.
Or the well-maintained and developed derivative:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.shatteredpixel.shatteredpixeldungeon/
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.
Mindustry is amazing, and free somehow
Definitely not casual or low stress, especially as you progress through the planet, but a great game nonetheless
I liked egg inc for a while, if you’re looking for clicker type games.
Other than that I can recommend
- Stardew Valley
- Peglin
- Sudoku
- Nanograms
- Dungeon Village 1 & 2
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
- Storyteller
- Into the Breach
But they also have ports of some very good PC games like Spiritfarer, Terra Nil or World of Goo.
Alto’s Adventure is a pretty chill game to play when killing time. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noodlecake.altosadventure
I also like the “connect the dots” puzzle games, like this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playvalve.connect.dots
Neither game requires microtransactions for the full experience. They might have ads, but my adblocker blocks them if they do.
Slay the Spire has a decent mobile version. Not sure about the casual part, but at least it’s turn based
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 :)
slay the spire has a mobile port
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.