Asklemmy

Try 'A dark room'. It's a bit different, but it had depth and your can get into it. I also still love 'Plague inc.'.

• Another vote for "Slay the Spire", have bought it for all platforms and wasted too much of my time
• Horizon Chase Turbo is a very good arcade racer
• Danmaku Unlimited 2 and Danmaku Unlimited 3 for bullet hell shmups

Not arcade style, but Final Fantasy I-VI pixel remasters are IMHO great on phones.

My favorite mobile games are

Don't starve

Dead Cells

Emulating old RPG games through Delta or Lemuroid

Retro Bowl - 1980s style american football game

Super auto pets is incredibly based

Dunno if anyone mentioned Badland yet.

Looks difficult to play but is so well designed that it isn't

Peglin is super fun. It's wood-described as a peggle rouglike

Fancade is also great. It's an open engine for little arcade games, so there's always something new to play. There's different modes like an adventure mode and a battle mode. There are IAP's but they're purely optional and very unnecessary.

All games I'm going to mention aren't sending me any notifications.

Square on top is a bit like jump king, and let's you disable 'unwanted' Ads. You're still able to watch ads for your own gain, but dont have to.

Divineko is a fun shape drawing/reaction game that has very fair ad placements IMO.

Xeonjia is an ice puzzle game (you walk in one direction until you hit a rock) that reminds me a bit of Pokémon with its art style. I dont think it has any ads.

Those three are my go to's currently.

Twenty is my go-to. Blockus clones are fun too, and there are a lot of game modes.

This Ars article turned me on to it. Maybe click through some of his other suggestions-

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/05/why-twenty-is-my-latest-mobile-gaming-obsession/

Ignoring the arcade style preference: i like Cats are Liquid: A Better Place and Cats are Liquid: a Light in the Shadows

They are 2 platformers with abstract graphics, abilities and a sad(extremly confusing) story

Download TIC-80 is a fantasy console that also has an android app.

Inside it you'll have access to tons of games made for that console.

I've been some weeks playing "Shadow over the twelve lands" on android TIC-80 and it has been a great experience.

It's all open source too!

Rodent Rush, highly recommend. Similar to chips challenge. It’s iOS only though.

You could get some minigame type games from fdroid. I have a tetris game and a 2048 game from fdroid. There's also Super Tux Kart if you want something 3D

Sky Wings is pretty fun. It's super arcadey, has different ships with different abilities and shooting styles, different modes and difficulties. I've put in quite a few hours over the years.

The Flow Free puzzle games are pretty fun imo. I have most of the different ones installed on my phone, and some years back I actually bought a bunch of the expansions for the base version so I have a ton of puzzles to go through.

Honor of Kings is pretty good. Just ignore all the contests. You always start at the same ability as everyone else.

Card crawl

Balloon Fight is hilarious and a stomper

Hill Clim Racer has been a long time favorite. Still works great in airplane mode and well.

As far as puzzle games, SevenBloks is my most played game by FAR. I play on Toughness mode, and the games are pretty quick. It’s a combination of equal parts strategy and luck.

For sports games, Retro Bowl & Retro Bowl College (American football) are the best $1 per game I’ve ever spent. I’ve lost track of the number of seasons I’ve played on both.

here is some variety:

Brawlhalla is legit, Shell Shockers is funny, agar.io is simple but dope

damn i miss the old mario party for N64, i been meaning to find a good alternative free version

So far, „sky“ is pretty nice

there’s a really good port of dodonpachi daioujou on the iphone app store, idk about android. sorcery is another good one, based on an old steve jackson gamebook

AAAAXY is an incredibly trippy puzzle platformer available on F-Droid.

I got really hooked on Armory and Machine, there is an A&M2 but I've never played it.

Its the kind of game that only has a mobile version, it rewards you for coming back to it like any bad mobile game, but there are no ads, nothing to buy, and I don't think there is any data shared.

The premis is you are work on a machine, making it faster, better stronger, more automated, and more able to produce things. Things can be in turn, turned into items that let you travel and fight critters. The loot from the critters can be used to make your machine faster. Its all a vicious factorio-like loop, and show how fun these mobile mechanics can be when there is no company taking advantage of you.

Lapse and Lapse 2 - clones of the Reigns game

Plague inc

Lichess :P

Tyrian. 90's scrolling shooter ported over and mostly functional.