this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Slay the Spire has a decent mobile version. Not sure about the casual part, but at least it's turn based

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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 :)

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Stardew Valley and Terraria may both fit your list, although Terraria stresses me out a bit.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Stardew Valley is a good one, but I definately wouldn't consider Terraria casual or low-stress.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Stardew Valley can be stress inducing if you are that type of player.

  • "Let me do a bit of fishing on the beach OH FCK it's already 1 AM. Intense cardio session towards my house before JoJo employees steal 1000G."
  • "I need to give Demetrius a gift by the end of the day. WHERE TF ARE YOU ROAMING ABOUT? Come take your gift!"
  • "Let me visit the shop for some seeds. WHO THE HELL CLOSES SHOP on a Wednesday? Am I the only one working in this town?"
  • "Marnie TF you closing shop at 3 PM! My chickens need hay and you are frolicking in the bar"
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I've tried it even with the razor kishi. No dice. This game was born for mouse and keyboard.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

The first link says not found :( maybe not available in Canada? Seems this one is a good replacement, will try it out? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shatteredpixel.shatteredpixeldungeon

Other ones say it was made for an old version of Android or incompatible, and can't be downloaded (I have a pixel 5 with android 14)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Short answer: yes.

Shattered Pixel dungeon is based on pixel dungeon, adds a bunch of new stuff and is reasonably actively developed.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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:

  • 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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

^^ A real Bro!

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Games I know of on Android:

  • Ganz Schön Clever — Digital adaptation of a board game. It's like bingo except you roll dice and there's actual skill involved.
  • Knotwords — Crosswords but instead of word clues, each region of the board indicates what letters appear there.
  • Threes — 2048 was a ripoff of 1024, and 1024 was a ripoff of Threes. Threes is the OG.
  • Sagrada — Digital adaptation of a board game. Build a stained glass window by rolling dice and placing them on your board in the right pattern.
  • Simon Tatham's Puzzles — Big compilation of various puzzle types.
  • Handshakes (by Pet Pumpkin) — "Solo co-op" sokoban puzzle where you try to get two guys to shake hands.
  • inbento — Assemble lunch boxes by sliding tiles around to match the reference picture.
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[–] MrCamel999 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I also enjoy "1010! Klooni" on F-Droid.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Try searching on https://www.darkpattern.games It seems like a vast collection with reviews aimed at finding and naming healthy and unhealthy games

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

@PlzGivHugs Unciv, neat open-source turn-based 4X, obliviously inspired by the Civilization series

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Mini metro Mini motorways

I may or may not have opted to ignore the stress part.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Mindustry is amazing, and free somehow

[–] ICastFist 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Definitely not casual or low stress, especially as you progress through the planet, but a great game nonetheless

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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, and the stats page for your Pokemon is way more detailed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The website https://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 a tower defense game that 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Stardew Valley has been out on Android for a while now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] ramirezmike 9 points 4 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The original Peggle. There's a free APK available on speedrun.com. Works flawlessly even on modern Android.

https://www.speedrun.com/peggle_deluxe/resources/ehelq

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (7 children)
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Magic DosBox, not a game. But in combination with https://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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why don't you try emulation? Most phones nowadays are capable of emulating easily up until Gamecube

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Personally, I don't enjoy it much without physical buttons :(

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Blooms TD 6 - fun tower defense game with solid progression and everything can be earned by playing what I think is a reasonable amount.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Card Crawl/Card Thief/Miracle Merchant are good puzzle-like games

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Solitaire, straight out of classic Windows (pre-advertising death throes):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.potatojam.classic.solitaire.klondike

Hoplite, classic turn based dungeon/puzzle:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magmafortress.hoplite

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Slice and dice

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