Ask Lemmy

You Must Build a Boat is an RPG/match 3 hybrid with no shady shit. Pay once. Own the game. It's pretty fun.

Hoplite - hex dungeon puzzle Spelltower - word puzzle X-COM (on a bigger screen)

I honestly think Hayday is one of the best free farm games, It does have paid currency but it's not forced on you. You can watch optional Ads for a few daily random items but these are not forced, you're the one who has to click the ticket near the mail box.

Supercell make some of the best games that aren't fully scummy.

A dream of mine is to make good mobile games, no ads, just a single low purchase. Realistically it just wouldn't be economically viable at all unless there is a free version with ads. But also realistically most mobile gamers aren't using a controller and touchscreens suck.

there are a couple, a lot of them are ports of PC Rogue-like Games.

alphabetically, these are the ones installed on my phone that I actually play.

Balatro Bloons TD 6 Luck be a Landlord Mindustry Mini Metro / Mini Motorways Monument Valley 1+2 Peglin Shapez Super Auto Pets Turmoil

The Room by fireproof games. Probably one of the first actual proper mobile games. Its spawned clones no IAP, no crap. Just fun, hard af puzzles.

Hoplite. Fun little iso turn based roguelike. Vampire Survivors. Reverse bullet-hell roguelike. Has spawned so, so, so many clones.. GTA:Chinatown Wars Have not played this is a very very long time, but i'm sure it still holds up (if its available). Old school (2d birds eye view) gta style.

These are games that work well without a controller, The Room actually would play worse with one. If at all.

Then of course theres emulators and roms and stuff.

Into the Breach
You'll just need to find a patched .APK to play without a Netflix account.

I found Gorogoa pretty interesting.

The only good mobile games that i can think of are ports.

Like Knights of the Old Republic.

Swordigo

Balatro. Be warned though, it’s digital crack. One time payment though, no mtx

Recently I really enjoyed Acecraft which is a gatcha bullet hell with cuphead art style. Its really charming and very much skill based to a point. The only negative is this constant clicking on shit to collect all of the coin garbage which eventually made me quit it but it was fun for a while.

Stardew valley.

Free, ad-free, open source phone games

Unciv: Civilization V clone that runs on a potato; a grand 4x strategy game. It seems pretty mechanically complete and has a lot of content. Easily modded. (Graphics may not be to everyone's taste)

Simon Tatham's portable puzzle collection: Mathematically inspired Puzzle games with a lot of customization and reasonable interface. This includes classics like untangle (graph planarity) and solo (sudoku, but generalized). I personally really enjoy Tower, and hadn't seen it elsewhere (and like 15 more games besides).

Chip defense: computer science themed tower defense. By the power of Turing, Noether, and Knuth you can strike down malicious packets attempting to corrupt your CPU. Good content, fun towers and educational bonus material, and I think it looks rather good. (Minor gripe/warning: early levels are optimally played with a lot of tapping that is not very ergonomic; this drops off after the first few levels.)

Honorable mentions (not FOSS, but still free, MTX free, and no ads beyond fishing for a rating). Higgster's game compendium: collection of games in a consistent and pleasing artstyle. Includes things like solitaire, wordle, binaro, and mastermind (20+ games total, several more have been added in the last year). This is really very well done, give it a look!

Flocks: Sliding puzzle game with excellent graphics and animations. Lots of levels, introduces new mechanics regularly, and easy to pickup or put down. I quite enjoy everything Robert has made, recommended!

Shattered Pixel Dungeon.

Infinitely replayable procedurally generated roguelike that is hard but fun to master, and a blast to play. It’s been on my phone for five years now and I still go back to it.

Totally offline, totally ad free, and still receiving active updates from the single developer.

It’s also got a pretty robust community.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon

WorldBox

Mindustry

Unciv

Infinitode - a tower defense game with a lot of meta progression

Didn't see it here yet, but Dawncaster is a really good roguelite deck builder that was actually designed around a phone UI so doesn't feel clunky.

Puzzles by Simon whatshisface
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles

Bunch of puzzle games, no monetisation

Balatro and peglin

Puzzle Heros rpg - this is a turn based match 3 game with diagonals and a time limit to match as many tiles as you can, this powers up your colour coded heros and you use them to defeat/harvest food based enemies to stock your food stalls. Stalls make money, money levels up heros, etc.

It's a 'reskin', albeit a very minorly changed one, of Match Quest, and the art/design is all really well done in an old school 8bit pixel style, with some really beautifully done layered scenery.

It gets a bit grindy and will take forever if you want to win every hero and level them all up to max, but as a casual game to dip into a few times a day to collect profits and loot old levels, and then spend twenty minutes or so playing levels, it's very fun.

I also recommend Flappy Dragon. It's a resin of the bird game, I think, idk I never played that one. The physics is fun and well thought out for each dragon and the dragons all have really nice designs.

Oh and it's probably been mentioned a ton on this thread already but Simon Tatham's Puzzles is a fantastic app full of puzzles that can be played offline.

I think no one mentioned these yet: My favorite tablet games are the ports of old BioWare classics like Baldur's Gate 1+2, Icewind Dale, ... Excellent ports imo, bur I did play them on a 10" tablet, I wouldn't try to play them on a phone. https://www.beamdog.com/games/

The correct answer is video game steaming with a controller hooked up. Otherwise it's Minecraft..... And that's it.

Stardew Valley, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Luanti with VoxelLibre, Mojo Launcher, Unciv, Lemuroid to play console games like Crash Bandicoot or Super Mario Bros, Geometry Dash (not the Lite version, that has ads), 2048, Vector Pinball, 1010! Klooni

The mobile version of Papers Please is exquisite. I highly recommend reading the developer's documentary of it: https://dukope.com/devlogs/papers-please/mobile/

Look for old games, that were released a long time ago before the “predation” was so required.

Osmos and World of Goo come to mind. Monument Valley 1 was a more popular, recent one in that vein.

Other than that, the FOSS and emulation recommendations here are great.