2y ago

Recommend any OFFLINE Android Games with no ads?

Evening, all.

Looking for recommendations for any Android games that you enjoy which can be played completely offline without a data connection of any sort.

These used to be super common once upon a time, but these days it seems every single game I try just doesn't function if you are totally out of service area.

Would appreciate any tips! Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Some great suggestions in here! That will keep them busy a while. Thanks so much everyone.

123 comments

Shattered pixel dungeon
- This is so good that I bought it in iOS

All games on fdroid
- I don't know why I never realized that.
  
  Yeah this just hit me too. It seems so obvious now

I've enjoyed ports from PC games and emulation. Emulation is pretty good on android now, and that opens up a LOT of options for offline & no ads
- You are absolutely correct! Only downside is it kind of sucks trying to control with onscreen controller. I suppose I'd better learn to share my bluetooth gamepad ;p
  
  This is when Nintendo ds games and searching out games that had only stylus controls comes in handy. Stuff like Kirby Mass Attack or Warioware feel like native games. If you got a Samsung with a Spen then that's a dream combo.
  
  Got an 8BitDo controller off Amazon, you can get a little clip for it that holds your phone. Best $20 ever. Kinda heavy to be gaming on the go but in bed it's great
  
  Pokemon is really good to emulate on phones. Very slow games!

Unciv is a decent Civilization clone. And it's open source.
- Seconded! The top mods are worth checking out, too.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Mindustry
- Seconding SPD. Of all Android games, I think I've wasted the biggest part of my life on that one. An extremely well balanced and fair roguelike, even if that sounds contradictory.
- +1 for Mindustry

Bloons TD 6

Terraria

Almost every paid Kairosoft games?
- Cannot agree with this enough. Kairosoft games SLAP yo.
- Cannot agree with this enough. Kairosoft games SLAP yo.

Any Playdigious games is good.
Any Kairosoft games.
ICEY is such an underrated game. The narration and it's wit is so good.
Levelhead if you want platformer and want Super Mario Maker on your phone.
Limbo

Slay the Spire is a heavy recommendation from me, though it does have online sync it works nicely offline.
- I just bought it. The only problem is, that the font is relatively small.
  
  It's definitely cozier on a tablet for sure.

Supertuxkart
- Nice! The OG.

Stardew Valley, 10/10

Shattered pixel dungeon if you like roguelikes; it's on the play store and fdroid

My goto for offline gaming is usually emulation, typically pokemon. But I can also recommend the Bart Bonte puzzle games, Vampire Survivor and Shattered Pixel Dungeon.
- +1 for emulation, especially games you never got a chance to play before when they were new
- Fire emblem and advance wars are also great picks!

I quite enjoy Hoplite.
- Man there's been suggestions from every corner of the gaming galaxy! Thanks. Rock on everyone.

Simon Tatham's puzzle collection is my fallback game for whenever I don't have internet or am bored with whatever other game I'm playing

Dead Cells & Titan Quest. Both are amazing games, work totally offline, no ads.
- Playing Dead Cells on mobile sounds rough. How are the controls? Love it on my Steam Deck.
  
  I used a wireless Xbox controller always, it was great!
  There are onscreen controls available, but I wasn't interested in getting used to playing that way. But people play CoD (etc) with touch controls so, it must work fine probably? For them.
  
  I got it and it was okay, but not something I ended up staying with. When it comes to ports stuff like Starview Valley or turn based stuff is things I've felt more comfortable to play.
  Or Nintendo DS games that could be played entirely with a Stylus and using an emulator like MelonDS.

Puzzles - no internet, no cost, no pay-to-win, no ads, no fancy UI, just classic logic puzzles!

If the game does not need online features, then you can make any game "ad free" with an app like "NetGuard". Just block the app from accessing the internet.
- Or add 'dns.adguard-dns.com' into Private DNS in your phones settings.

Slice & Dice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.tann.dice

If you like American football, big recommend for Retro Bowl - as the name suggests, it's an old-school arcade/NES style game heavily inspired by Tecmo Bowl. Plays really well on mobile, and has a small premium charge to permanently unlock some nice extra features (e.g. roster customisation).
- +1 for RB
  I'm completely addicted (I'm in season 90 or so); it's my go-to when I've just got a few minutes for a game. I think it's one of the best games on mobile.

Similaritron (seems abandoned, but still works)
- Doesn't work on my phone (made for an older version of android) but it looks like the game "set", and googling that I found this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nelis.set (haven't tried it yet but it has the tag "offline" so looks good)
  
  That's weired. Runs flawlessly on my Android 13.

On this topic I wish there was a definitive place to find Android games that have controller support. No microtransactions.. I will have to download and try again first and then 90% of the time it doesn't meet my criteria for playable.
- Not sure if it filters for all those, but you can definitely filter for some things in the Google Games app. Certainly at least free and no ads.

Found an old archive so I'm going to ad to the thread myself:
Alto's Adventure and Alto's Odyssey both definitely work offline, but I'm not sure about them trying to serve you advertisements.
I also used to have a considerable library of emulated games on my phone and would use a bluetooth gamepad. I should probably go back down this road I think! I'd imagine emulation has come a long way since I was mucking around with it.

-https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hamsteroncoke.oxxo
-https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.esuli.it.CrisSpider
-https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.q42.ohhi
-https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.MagnusOlsson.LittleWhiteRocket
-https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ustwo.monumentvalley
-https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ustwo.monumentvalley2
-https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hamsteroncoke.zenge
- Is it just me, or are these links not linking?

antimine is a fun and well made minesweeper clone, also its foss

Yioto is a great indie dev with lots of gems, but if particularly recommend Antiyoy.
I'd also recommend Battle for Polytopia.
I'm fairly certain both these turn based strategy games will work fine offline.

I've been really enjoying Pocket City !pocket_city@lemmy.world

I believe Kotor 1 doesn't require a connection to play, and it's more of a tactical game, so it's not as annoying to play on a touch screen.

DATA WING, is a great game! Really well made, easy to pick up for a few miniuits and really well scripted!
- I played that like a billion years ago. I don't remember much about it now, story wise, but it was fun.

Unciv and Shattered Pixel Dungeon have been on my Phone forever. Both available on FDroid.

Slay the Spire is a heavy recommendation from me, though it does have online sync I'm pretty sure it works offline...

Battle for Wesnoth is cool once you get used to the weird controls

Mindustry and Unciv are my main recommendations. If you like strategy stuff, you'll have a blast.

every game is ad free is you use pi-hole
- Yeah but I'm all over the adblocking front at home. This is specifically for when we travel waaay out of civilisation but my kids still want to play some games. Pretty annoying that most of them don't work at all.
  Not interested in packing the starlink dish for this purpose, I go out there to disconnect, that's kind of the goal.
  
  I don't play on mobile but I can recommend;
  Baldur's Gate
  Sudoku
  Devilution X
  RVGL
  Moonshades

Troll Patrol. The base game is with ads but can be upgraded cheaply to a pro version with no ads. It's an excellent match-3 rogue-lite RPG. I was playing it for the last two months. Similar to You must build a boat, for example. The developer also closed his subreddit because of recent API changes. He's a good guy, You can show him some love and buy his game.

Patience balls

https://f-droid.org/en/categories/games/

Hocus. It's a MC Escher puzzle solving game! Google play link

Can recommend Oxenfree and Kentucky Route Zero. They are tied to a Netflix subscription on mobile though (on the other hand, if you already have Netflix, they’re free).
Besides that, Monument Valley 1 and 2 are amazing games. And The Room series is also very entertaining.
I also would recommend Broken age and Life is Strange but they seem to not be on the Google Play Store anymore…

Endless Sky is a space fleet building, trading, battling, exploration game. Free and open source.

Unciv and Mindustry, both which are also free, on fdroid, and open-source.

Pixel Dungeon or Shattered Pixel. They're roguelike dungeon explorers. The latter is a continuation of the former, which hasn't been developed for some years now.

The Layton games - the DS games have been ported to Android and totally slap. As someone who never had a DS, I'm enjoying this era of the games coming to Android and being playable here.

Peglin! It's an amazing peggle style rouge-lite

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eightyeightgames.tenmillion

Witcheye is a good version of flappy bird, as its controlled with only one finger, with extremely difficult platforming.
Supermeat boy forever, great game all around but very difficult.

Star Traders: Frontiers. Be a space trucker/pirate/merc. Singleplayer offline space turn-based RPG Pay once only but frequent free updates. No bullshit P2W, gacha, timers etc etc.
Bonus: kill xenos scum, customize your ship load out, satisfying crew combat.
Cons: annoying RNG card minigame for spying, blockading, salvaging. Enemies esp. xenos can get very unforgiving on high difficulty setting.

There is a Cultist Simulator there. I don't know about Android port much, but it's a good game on PC

Sand:box, plague inc (i recommend buying premium for both) and all games on f-droid.

OpenTTD! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openttd.sdl&hl=en&gl=US
It's a FOSS version of Transport Tycoon.

123 comments