6mo ago

Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren't filled with microtransactions?

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.

205 comments

Slay the Spire has a decent mobile version. Not sure about the casual part, but at least it's turn based
- 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 :)
  
  Slay The Spire is an excellent recommendation. Although a lot of people find roguelites stressful because they get stressed about losing progress. You just have to play with the right mindset:

Stardew Valley and Terraria may both fit your list, although Terraria stresses me out a bit.
- Stardew Valley is a good one, but I definately wouldn't consider Terraria casual or low-stress.
  
  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"
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  I agree. I only mentioned it because it was recommended to me as low stress, so I thought it was just me that didn't get it lol
- 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.
- Stardew valley stressed me out so much I stopped playing before even reaching that first year party. It looks like a casual fun game, but there are so many characters to make friends (even if it's optional, it's stressful because of the implication/expectation). And you need to tend to your garden, and even if you don't do anything, midnight rolls around and you feel like you didn't do anything useful and it's overall very stressful to me. May be it gets easier once you get sprinklers and whatnot, but early game was anything but casual and fun for me.
  
  I like "Traveler's Rest" because the game doesn't force you to keep regular hours at your tavern. If you want, you can spend the whole day crafting and restocking until you're ready to deal with customers again.
  
  I completely understand. It was very overwhelming for me at first and sometimes can still be overwhelming depending on how my computer is working lol
  If you ever decide you want to try it again I highly recommend modding it (and I would be happy to send you what I use). That said it's not a bad thing to play other games if you like them better :) games should be fun not stressful imo
  Edit: removed the extra "my"
- Does terraria have a chill mode?
  
  Not sure if you saw this comment above. Looks like there are ways to change the difficulty. I'm not sure that would help me though. The monsters move fast for me.

Pixel Dungeon: Roguelike, infinitely replayable. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watabou.pixeldungeon
Auralux: A simple real time strategy game. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wardrumstudios.auralux
2048: Simple to learn, difficult to master puzzle. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androbros.puzzle2048eng
- Or the well-maintained and developed derivative:
  https://shatteredpixel.com/
  https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.shatteredpixel.shatteredpixeldungeon/
- 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)
  
  Short answer: yes.
  Shattered Pixel dungeon is based on pixel dungeon, adds a bunch of new stuff and is reasonably actively developed.
  
  Install from computer: adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block FILENAME.apk https://liliputing.com/how-to-install-old-apps-on-android-14/
- I'll second Pixel Dungeon. It's the only one I've played, but it perfectly fits OP's reqs.

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
- 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
  
  ^^ A real Bro!
  
  Had no idea, thanks
  
  Bro, kind and generous.
- I reached Challenger on Teamfight Tactics in a couple seasons and I've gotta say it honestly gets a bit tiresome how often they change the game. Mortdog and Co do a great job on balance but you just can't swap from set to set that often and expect things not to break. Plus they like to nerf the things I like the most, and that's inexcusable.
  I also didn't really care for it as mobile game because you can't hop in and out, you start a match you need to finish the match and they're not short. Even the "quick" mode is like fifteen minutes long.
  In other words? Great desktop game for people that don't mind the meta changing entirely every six months. Great "mobile" game if you want to kill no less than thirty minutes.
  
  I didn't star it for a reason lmao, it's a good game but not great casually

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.
- Alto's Adventure and Alto's Odyssey are excellent

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.
- Peglin is available for Mobile?? Adios
- Any little casual simulators by Kairosoft, the pay to play "full versions" are pretty cheap. Manage a lil apartment building, manage a tiny sushi restaurant, manage a little Japanese village. 8 bit style, very soothing. The free versions are quite limited in scope and cut you off from further progression after a few levels, but no microtransaction reminders, either. The mention of "Dungeon Village" reminded me, is that Kairosoft?
  
  It is indeed

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.
- 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.
  
  This works for me! Thanks a bunch!
- I also enjoy "1010! Klooni" on F-Droid.
  
  Will check it out. Thanks for the suggestion!

Try searching on https://www.darkpattern.games It seems like a vast collection with reviews aimed at finding and naming healthy and unhealthy games
- That is an excellent site. Thanks for sharing!
- Thanks for this!

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.

Mini metro Mini motorways
I may or may not have opted to ignore the stress part.
- YES I really need the sixth circle station in Manhattan thank you

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.
- On android, lemuroid is pretty good for this sort of thing and you can change the arrangement of your nds/3ds screens.

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

Mindustry is amazing, and free somehow
- Definitely not casual or low stress, especially as you progress through the planet, but a great game nonetheless
  
  Whoops, yeah I skimmed over that part

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.

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.

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.
- Troll patrol isn't in my fdroid :(
  
  You are right, just checked it and its not there anymore. I downloaded it many months ago :(

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

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
- 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.
- The really good games I have played on mobile are mostly indie roguelike ports from PC, like Slay the Spire, Dead Cells or 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Or something more classic like solitaire, minesweeper or crosswords/nonograms/sudoku puzzles

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.

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.

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.
- Came here to say Simon Tatham's puzzles.
  I also like, from f-droid, Tower Jumper, and from Play, hillclimb racing.
  seen much praise of mindustry here on Lemmy, but not got into it myself
  rabbit escape is like lemmings/pingus
  I like go, but play casual. CrazyStone on Play works well for me. It's doing something with the internet on startup, probably benign model updates, but I block its internet access.
  I also remember Doom and Destiny being very fun and fairly casual. The free version is not too bad on ads. The second one I never got far in - felt like it was constant ads interrupting gameplay

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
- I got free of this addiction years ago.
  I hate you.

Hoplite

slay the spire has a mobile port

Why don't you try emulation? Most phones nowadays are capable of emulating easily up until Gamecube
- Personally, I don't enjoy it much without physical buttons :(
  
  Same here, that's why I got me one of these tiny Bluetooth controllers. I have an 8bitdo Zero 2 which, while lacking joysticks, is very portable. Alternatively, a bigger and full layout but still pocketable remote is the 8bitdo sn30 pro, it's rather slim and quite comfortable imo, and compatible with switch and PC too if you also game in either of those systems.

Tetris
- Low stress??? More like, where is that damn long piece!??
  
  That stresses you out bro?
- You animal. have you no mercy? XD
- Foss alternative with a really good UI: Lightblocks
- Tetris with touch controls is not my favourite way to enjoy Tetris though

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.
- Nonograms are great for puzzles that are hard enough to be satisfying when you solve them, but easy enough to be relaxing. I use Picture Cross Color on iphone.
  
  It's the perfect phone game!
- This one is good but Hungry Cat Nonograms is the best mobile picross game imo. Thousands of puzzles, amazing controls, beautiful art. It has ads which can be removed with a single in-app purchase. Been playing for almost 8 years and they're still releasing weekly content.
  
  I certainly don't want to argue about which is better as I haven't played that one but Katana also has 155k puzzles! Users add a ton each day and you can follow your favorite artists. No purchase necessary and no ads (unless you watch one for some of the aforemented useless stuff)
  I will say that there's plenty of garbage puzzles due to them being user-generated. And a good portion are color nonograms which I don't like all that much

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.

You can check out whatever is available on F-Droid. I personally enjoy playing Freebloks once in a while, it's a mobile version of the Blokus boardgame
An alternative is checking out itch.io, searching with the proper tags, like puzzle, might yield decent results for your tastes.
You can also get Cookie Clicker or play the web version
- To add to that try puzzles, lots of nice games in there. I particularly like flow
  
  Was gonna suggest the same thing! I like Net.

Blooms TD 6 - fun tower defense game with solid progression and everything can be earned by playing what I think is a reasonable amount.
- BTD5 too. This is a very good recommendation.

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

Slice and dice

Not sure if it fits your criteria but the only mobile game I play is pinball deluxe. If you like real pinball, then you'll love it, it tries to stay as true to real pinball as possible on some/most tables, it does have small transaction stuff you can buy but I still haven't bought any including all the additional tables etc after playing it 6 months + and if you did, then it's just an 8€ one time buy to get all the content and remove the ads, I'm gonna get that once I actually get bored of the "free" tables.
- Yass, this was a daily driver for six months straight. The missions are actually fun and help you get access to free tables. Nice surprise, graphics are gorgeous.

Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector. You put down furniture. Cats sleep on the furniture. You get gold to buy more funiture, and the cycle repeats.
- Isn’t that lousy with video ads now?
  
  Admittedly I haven't played it in, like, five years but when I did it only had banner ads in the pause menu

A couple that I like:
80 Days - it's not free but I think it's worth it. It's a sort of steampunk version of Around the World in 80 Days where you have to plan your routes, and buy and sell things in different cities to make money. The main gameplay is sort of choose-your-own-adventure events that happen during travel and in different cities.
Card Thief - I just started playing this recently. It does technically have a microtransaction but it's more like, they let you play for free if you don't mind waiting for chests to unlock, or you can buy the game to bypass this. The main gameplay is sneaking through dungeons represented by a 3x3 grid of cards randomly drawn from the deck; collecting treasures and avoiding getting caught.

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

A Dance of Fire and Ice is an incredible rhythm game that you buy once and that's it. I think there's an expansion pack but it's a single purchase. Whether that's your idea of "casual" really depends on what you like. You can always play chill low difficulty levels when you need to zone out, and high difficulty levels when you want a challenge. It can get stupidly hard.
You can try a demo online at that link. It told me webgl wasn't supported on mobile, but it worked pretty well for me just now on firefox, even if it was a bit laggy. It should work fine on PC.
I pirated it on PC after my kids told me about it and ended up buying it three times on Steam and twice on mobile. It's just that good. I've built a custom digital drum to play it and I'm now making a custom MIDI controller, so we'll see if that does better when connected to the game.
The game works as well on mobile, if not better because the touchscreen is so responsive.

"0h h1" is a fun, easy logic puzzle game that I find myself going back to when I have a minute to kill.

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.

There are a lot of great suggestions here already, so I will just share Mini Review with you as a discovery tool. I like to use them because they have a lot of filters to help you find a mobile game. For example, here's their list for free, single-player, offline games with no ads or in app purchases, sorted by highest user score. They also have an app for both Android and iOS with the same info and filtering as the site.
- Oh this is great. Thanks.

Old school RuneScape, it has free "demo" version which you can easily put a 100+ hours in. And if you really love there is a subscription model that's kinda expensive if you bill monthly, but no other micro transactions.

I really liked Lara Croft GO. It's better than Hitman GO or other GO games.

You should download Mini Review
It is a currated version of the Play Store with many filters including paid/free, IAP, genres, ...
The reviews are very thorough and always include a paragraph about the "presatoriness" of IAP if any

Rodent Rush, it’s similar to Chips Challenge from back in the day but a bit different, and imho it’s a better game.
It’s only on iOS though as far as I can tell.

I have clocked a lot of hours in Slice & Dice both on mobile and on PC well worth the 8 bucks even though I've paid it three times now I think. Honorable mention to Suika(Watermelon game) about 3 bucks on the Play store.

2048

Shattered pixel dungeon has been a mainstay on my phone for what feels like a decade now

desert golf and its follow up golf on mars are big hits at my house

Polytropia

Anti-mine: foss minesweeper Blockinger: foss tetris Puzzles: foss app with 40 ish mini games Lexica: foss boogle Lichess: foss chess
Johngbac: gba emulator L game: one of the simplest game which will make you rage. Underhand: light card game.

Though im sure that one has ads. Probably depends on what you grab from the internet, as usual.
Mobile games suck.
- Heh, it's a numbered list.
  
  markdown formatting is weird bruh, sometimes it adds spaces, sometimes it removes them sometimes it just fucking yeets newlines, sometimes it adds them, what a weird "standard"

205 comments