Good Android games

Winged_Nazgul 2014-10-12 13:33:09 UTC #121

Anyone playing/addicted to Puzzles & Dragons needs to check out Terra Battle from the creator of Final Fantasy:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mistwalkercorp.guardians&hl=en

BillButNotBen 2014-10-12 13:39:15 UTC #122

Sigh. I read that as “from the creator of Fighting Fantasy” and got all excited for a second.

Eight_Rooks 2014-10-12 14:03:01 UTC #123

I mentioned it on the What Are You Playing thread. It’s good - possibly the best thing Sakaguchi’s ever put his name to, IMO (of course I’m not a big Final Fantasy fan ). But it’s still plagued by, if not literal paywalls, then blatantly engineered difficulty spikes to try and persuade you to spend money (bosses are ridiculous so far), rapidly increasing drains on your stamina meter, idiotic requirements to start doing anything really neat to tempt you into grinding for ages (you have to collect tons of random item drops to develop your characters, the time this takes needs more stamina, ergo more money if you don’t want to wait…) and on and on. To say nothing of the annoyances from the way the game is designed - it’s simultaneously one of the most thrilling and infuriating battle systems I’ve played in a while.

It is a very exacting puzzle game which is very, very much swayed by luck, which is a recipe for frustration - success depends upon moving your pieces into the right places as fast as possible, but without knowing exactly where enemies will appear ahead of time there’s no way to predict it. Triggering powerup nodes on the board can help immeasurably in getting a win, but there’s no way to tell where they’ll appear, much less guarantee your pieces will be in the right place to take advantage of them when they do. And the exacting way it enforces the rules doesn’t help - if you make a single mistake, picking the wrong path to move your pieces, the wrong square to move to, taking your finger off your piece a moment too soon, etc., it can and will punish you mercilessly.

It’s free, and it’s certainly far from the worst F2P system I’ve ever seen, so hey, if it interests you, go nuts. I’d recommend it far more than I would Marvel Puzzle Quest. But it’s not without its problems. Sakaguchi is certainly a smart man, and seems like a nice enough guy from the interviews I’ve read with him, but he’s not an exceptional designer by any means. Never has been, probably never will be.

BillButNotBen 2014-10-13 05:48:57 UTC #124

Does anyone know of an easy way to find out what level of in-app purchases a game/app has?

these days, the Play Store gives you a warning up front that it “contains in-app purchases”, but that could be anything from a one time activation fee of $0.99 to hundreds of dollars in charges for every single action.

There are several F2P games that i’ve been interested in (such as Marvel Puzzle Quest and similar), but it’s impossible to know in advance how good/bad the fees would be. If Marvel Puzzle Quest was $5 for an unlimited version then I’d pick it up in a heartbeat. It’s a shame they don’t offer F2P and Regular Paid versions of games.

Eight_Rooks 2014-10-13 10:29:57 UTC #125

Sadly I don’t think the Play Store does this. The App Store does - might be just the most popular in-app purchases, but it’s something, at least - but I don’t remember where the option is for Android if it’s there.

Also, if a mobile game (or any game, really) goes F2P it’s pretty much because they’re betting they can be one of the lucky ones to hit the jackpot, where the money they pull in will dwarf anything a paid version will net them. If that happens a paid version is often just a drain on their admin resources. Some small studios do two versions, but not many, and often you’ll see these studios ditch the premium release because they can’t afford to put the time into supporting it.

Sorry, hope that wasn’t patronising - you probably know all this perfectly well - I just get a little twinge like when I see anyone saying “…but I’d pay $10 for a paid release!” Yes, but they don’t really care; they’re betting on that slim chance that millions upon millions of people will pay $100+ over time and never even think about it.

Maknol 2014-10-13 11:45:10 UTC #126

There used to be a good site for this at www.honestandroidgames.com - but it seems to be gone now?

Shvager 2014-11-04 13:59:06 UTC #127

Double balance
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reptylix.doublebuble
New impossible like game! Do you like Flappy bird?
This game is really hard.
Not recommended to people with weak nerves)

BillButNotBen 2014-11-08 02:02:27 UTC #128

They seem to have started to add a price range for in-app purchases, even if its hidden right down the bottom.
Though of course it doesn’t tell you how much is actually NEEDED to enjoy the game.

cranberry 2014-11-11 19:21:20 UTC #129

After playing it for about two weeks I’m going to have to add “Beach Buggy Blitz” to this list.

On the surface it looks like a kiddie game and another in the endless string of Temple Run knockoffs, but after playing for a while you can see that it’s mich more than that. First of all: this game game has the best arcade driving engine I’ve ever experienced on a mobile device. I’ve never been much of a fan of the whole “rotate to the phine to drive” model, but BBB actually pulls it off with some style. Once you get the hang of it you can pull yourself out of certain crashes by violently jerking your phone to the side, and it fels pretty satisfying to do so. The overall physics are really well done.

The graphics are very impressive and on my Note 3 the game runs absolutely lag free despite massive environments and nice detail, meaning the optimization level must be quite high. Hitting a speed boost and flying through the air gives a great selse of speed. You’ll eventuallly leave the beach and race through forests, snow covered areas, and (my personal favorite) an active volcano.

Any cons? Not really, for a free game. It does take a while to get enough coins to upgrade your cart to the point you can reach the cool stuff. If you’re fumble fingered at racing games you may not enjoy this game as much as I do; when the speed gets amped up this game takes some skill.

BBB is F2P done right.

Maknol 2014-11-11 19:39:25 UTC #130

Why oh why did I start playing Doctor Who Legacy. Now I’m completely addicted and so is my girlfriend. I’ve been playing it without any IAP (to make sure I don’t have any advantage over her - she’s not keen on spending money on it) but I’ll most surely at least spend a fiver on some of the harder-to-get crystals just to get access to the supporter-only area. They sure as hell deserve it; the game is still updated constantly as new episodes of the series come out.

Winged_Nazgul 2014-11-19 12:36:01 UTC #131

Monument Valley is the Free App of the Day from the Amazon appstore.

icupnimpn2 2014-11-19 12:48:28 UTC #132

This is what I popped in to say. No one should pass it up.

Also will touch on Terra Battle. For a game with IAP it is fairly generous. Gold is given freely in campaign and special quests. The energy currency is used to recruit beget characters or to reset your stamina meter. Both currencies are given in the campaign and as daily bonuses for consecutive logins. The stamina that let’s you enter battles regent fairly quickly and also the max extends as you beat campaign chapters. It’s a fairly grindy game but they include special zones that will quickly level up lagging characters or provide extra gold but no xp for completion. I find myself wanting to play a few rounds a day but not wanting to marathon play as it gets a bit same. It is satisfying in small bursts and I have not felt the need to buy the currencies since they are apply provided. I do recommend trying it.

kahchun93 2015-09-01 08:50:38 UTC #133

Tower of Savior
ToS is a combination of a *match 3 game and an *RPG, with characters from various mythologies and cultures.
It is fun to play.
**

germany 2015-09-12 13:18:19 UTC #134

Play Plants vs. Zombies, the fun-dead action-strategy hit that’s won over 30 Game of the Year awards!

noiseredux 2017-06-07 14:59:20 UTC #135

some chat in the What-Playing thread suggested a necromancing of this thread.

Android is my portable gaming platform of choice. I’ve owned an embarrassing number of Android devices honestly, but the Shield tablet remains my favorite right now.

As far as what I’ve been playing lately…

The Elder Scrolls: Legends - technically the Android port is still in beta, but I’ve been playing it a bunch and find it just as robust as the PC port. Everything is snappy and smooth on a tablet and feels more refined than playing the PC version on a Windows tablet. Anyway, if you’re not familiar it’s a CCG with a TES theme. It certainly reminds of Hearthstone, but the main difference is the two lane system which means you’re basically playing two sides of the board at once. It’s like balancing two hands. It’s neat.

Fire Emblem Heroes - I’ve been playing this off and on since February. Great little tactical strategy game. Not super deep compared to the “real” FE games, but plenty of fun and Ninty has been great about adding new content regularly.

Super Blackjack Battle 2 Turbo Edition - this is also on Steam but I find card games etc fit tablets better. It’s basically just blackjack, but it’s been skinned to remind you of Street Fighter II. There’s multiple stories to see, and there’s also online multiplayer - though so far it’s just against randos and you can’t play vs. friends specifically. The online lobbies have been fairly dead when I’ve checked em.

Oh oh, that last one’s not free. It’s $3 I think. but I wanted to also mention that there’s an app called Google Rewards (used to be Google Opinions). Basically, every few days it’ll ask you some survey questions - usually about stores and buying habits, and it pays you in Google Play credit. Nothing big - say 10 or 25 cents or whatever. But it’s an easy way to build up a little rainy day wallet of funds to pay for cheap apps like this.

MD 2017-06-11 05:11:07 UTC #136

Thanks for the tip, that looks like it might be worthwhile. I feel like I should be uneasy about the privacy implications (especially having just read Data and Goliath), but I’m pretty sure Google already knows basically everything about me, and at least in this case I’ll know what I’m revealing.

As for games, I recommend Classic Words Plus as a solid no-nonsense, pay-once-upfront Scrabble clone. (Do be aware that there are a couple of cheats that are turned on by default, though – one that skews the tile draws in your favour, and another that limits the opponent’s vocabulary. Both can be disabled, but one other cheaty feature can’t: the game shows you whether a word will be accepted as soon as you lay it out, so you can trial-and-error as much as you like without punishment.)

I also recommend SpaceChem (demo here) – although I haven’t actually played much of the Android version, it seems like a decent port, and the PC version is one of my all-time favourite games. Ditto Machinarium.

I’ll link these no-nonsense versions of Chess and Go, too, because it can be hard to find them in the sea of adware.

And finally, Hoplite was recommended in that other thread, and seems promising. (I’ve installed but not yet tried it.)

BillButNotBen 2017-06-11 08:20:12 UTC #137

If you don’t worry too much about privacy, Amazon Underground is another good option.
Thanks to that, I played Monument Valley (excellent - highly recommended) and Sorcery 1 (not bad, i hear 2 gets better) and a few others for free.

I don’t know if they’ve improved it, but i found the controls on **Spacechem **android to be really annoying, slow and fiddly compared to PC. That was on a 7 inch tablet.

MD 2017-06-11 08:58:53 UTC #138

Ah that’s a fair point – I should have pointed out that my main tablet is a Pixel C, which has a fairly big (10 inch?), high-resolution screen. I know that Classic Words plays well on a 7-inch screen, but I can’t vouch for any of the others.

noiseredux 2017-06-11 13:18:45 UTC #139

good point on Amazon Underground… lots of free games there. That’s how I got KOTOR for Android.

Heliocentric 2017-06-11 15:33:16 UTC #140

The drm was a turn off for me (games get pissy if they can’t phone home), but zons free games are great make sure you give them false but mathematically plausible (see Wikipedia) card number so you can’t pocket buy something or get sharked into IAP.