Yep, there's a grass touching simulator. I mostly play Bus Simulator: Ultimate, though it gets my battery temperature to 55°C. Enough to hurt on fingers.
How is Endless Sky on Android?
I've been playing Escape Velocity/Override/Nova for as long as they've been a thing, and have done like 3 laps on Endless Sky on Linux as they've added content, the most recent one firmly placing it as the best execution of the genre for me, but I'm not sure how it would translate to a little touchscreen device.
I play on both Linux and Android, so I can directly compare. The UI buttons are a little small and the combat is a little different because you're poking the screen where you want to go instead of using arrow keys, but it's equally fun on either platform.
For me, it's using emulation. I'm currently playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door from the GameCube, and there are very few android games that can match the quality of older AAA titles.
I usually play on and off. My wife saw me playing and got it, now she's addicted. Our son saw that I had it on the switch too and started to play it this weekend. Now they are Stardew crackheads.
Orna RPG! It's a GPS game like Pokemon Go with a classic RPG style, no pay to win options, a great community, and Devs who listen to feedback with regular updates.
Genuinely the best GPS game I've played by a long shot.
My favorite Android game has always been, and still is, OSMOS. It used to be in the play store. You can still get it on Android from Hemisphere. There's also iOS, Ipad, Steam (for Linux), OS X and Windows versions. I love this game so much I keep an ancient 7" pad with Marshmallow 6 offline just for it (Because I had the original on it - You don't need an ancient device).
Open Sudoku and Endless Sky. ES saves the game as a text file. If you play it on PC and save a file the last line of the text file is the only difference. You can play the game on both and save back and forth. I only have FOSS apps. I don't have any google stuff at all. Both of these are from F-Droid.
I just play it differently on Andy vs PC. On PC I'm aggressive with a smaller force and take a lot more risks. On mobile, I "talk softly and bring a big stick." I usually use a large force around me and use the grouping feature to control my own security and fire power. I don't worry about firing at stuff myself and all of my weapons are turrets on my own ship. This is how I deal with the resolution difference in practice.
There is a resizing setting for the screen resolution. The main thing to be aware of when swapping between mobile and PC is that last line I mentioned. Save a new game on both platforms and you'll see the last line is the over all layout setting for mobile versus PC. They use a completely different interface. If you use the PC version on mobile bc you didn't change the last line on the save file, it can be impossible to play.
And you pay once and that's it! It's got frequent updates, and I've never felt pressured to spend in their store. Was actually happy to buy some heroes after a while, considering how much mileage I've gotten out of it.
The only commercial Android game I regularly play is Wordscapes. It's an almost embarrassing level of enduring basic bitch addiction, I don't engage with any microtransaction bait, I have a systemwide ad blocker... and I love it.
Otherwise it's all Emulators and Open Source (covered well elsewhere in this thread).
Puzzle game where you push blocks around. Blocks with words can be pushed together to change game behavior. For example on a level with Baba, Is, and You blocks together let you control your character (your character is named Baba). But if you push a block that says Door in front of the Is and You blocks you will suddenly control the doors instead of Baba. It's a really cool concept and the levels get extremely imaginative. And also difficult
It's been on PC for years. It's a puzzle game where you push tiles around to form simple statements, and those statements affect the rules of the level you're on.
Translated:
Lichess - Because chess is so good
Mindustry - Because the game is very well done and resource management is cool and relaxing
Slice & Dice - I like how the game uses dice for attacks and how the characters improve
Rhythm games, especially Phigros and COXETA. I also like the mobile port of Portal Knights, even if it is inferior compared to the other versions, and the developers have dropped this port.
I do really like that so far paying is completely optional. I found so many of the android F2P are good for a couple weeks (or only days) before you realize you need to spend money to really play the game.
Been really enjoying Night of the Full Moon. Slay the Spire like but the opponents have decks and play like players.
It's free to play with expansions and an ad free experience you can pay for. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ztgame.yyzy
It has quickly become one of my favourite games when I started playing a few months back. I mainly play on PC with a few QoL mods, but I think it works great on a smart phone as well! Great game to have in your pocket! The only bad thing I've encountered on Android, is that the cursor in the menu does not become visible when you've a controller connected. It's there, but you can´t see it. Kinda annoying, but I could fix this by forcing it with a mod (I forgot which one, but I can look it up if you want).
It's one of my favourite games to play when I just want to chill without thinking too much.
Idle games, good ones at least, are about developing a strategy and watching it play out. Complexity comes in how wide a variety of strategies you can play around with and how much they impact how things go.
I like time waster games for when I need to actually burn time or I'm waiting for something to go through, so an old but gold choice for me is Flow Free. I actually play it on an iPhone 4s but it is available for Android so I think it counts
I DO NOT SUPPORT CANDYWRITER. Play the original Instlife, the game the company Candywriter bought and deleted to destroy the competition. You being on Android you can grab an .apk file of it.
Instlife was developed by InstCoffee, a group of two indie game developers. Candywriter was at the time a 10 people company.
Instlife began development in 2016, and started gaining raising traction in 2017.
BitLife was released for iOS only during the Instlife massive boom in popularity in 2018, while Instlife still had no iOS version. Bitlife gained steam thanks to a few dirty tactics (Instlife ran no ad campaigns and completely free, while Bitlife constantly spent on video ads on other games and websites and had a in-game barrier forcing people to share the game on Twitter if they wanted to have all features) and being the only game on iOS of its type it during the boom of course started doing numbers.
For every Instlife update, Bitlife would come 1 week later with the exact same feature as a carbon copy. (With Instlife gone, Bitlife actually diverged heavily from the original concept).
When Instlife began making and distributing its iOS version, Bitlife started losing players moving to the original and at the time much more complete and polished game.
Not too long after the iOS release, Candywriter bought full rights to Instlife (the amount of money was never disclosured, but the acquisition was confirmed by both parties). It lasted a week under the new ownership, where it then got silently removed from both Play Store and Apple App Store and followed tweet from Candywriter announcing the acquisition and the imminent release of the Android port of Bitlife.
Dead cells, out there omega edition, 20 minutes till dawn, vampire survivors, titan quest, hollow knight, 9th dawn rpg 3, starrows, scourgebringer, undead horde
Been playing Golf Blitz for a couple of years and still absolutely love it. Also recently enjoyed revisiting World of Goo (although it now only seems to work if you have Netflix - I do, but it's a shame it's not available for everyone)
Does it have to be Android exclusive? I still play Duet infrequently. Simple but beautiful, pay once, and engaging gameplay. Besides that, I don't game much nowadays.
Friends and Dragons. I can't really explain it, but it's a little like chess plus an RPG. You don't need to pay, and it's enjoyable. I've been on it almost two years now.