Mobile Gaming Actually Good Mobile Games Recommendation Thread

[Battlegrinder]

I think it's something of an accepted truth that most mobile games are awful, and more designed to drain your wallet via Pay to win mechanics, gambling, time sinks, and other tricks rather than actually be fun. But there are gems out there, and this thread is designed to help share and highlight the rare exceptions.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

If it's free to play, it's probably crap.

You're only going to get a good experience if you pony up money and pay. Usually that means buying a mobile port, like KotoR or Final Fantasy. But at that point, you mind as well just play those games properly on console/PC with a big screen, not on your tiny little screen covered by your thumbs.

The one, really good mobile game that works best as a mobile game that you pay money for and you're done, is Jet Cars Stunts. It's a simple, skill based game where you fly a car with a rocket engine through increasingly harder and harder levels. You fly off ramps and need to use the fuel to reach the next part of the course, but you have limited jet fuel so you have to conserve your rocket bursts. The game also uses the phone's motion system to steer, so there's skill involved in angling your rocket thrust while you are flying. It's simple but a ton of fun. Whenever I'm out and have time to kill, I'd whip out my phone and play this.




Otherwise, if you REALLY want a "free to play" mobage, then I'd probably recommend Granblue Fantasy. The devs are very generous and I have 120+ characters just from logging in during events for free, no grinding or laying down money required. It has an official English translation built into the game and has a sizeable community in the West. They don't wave the cash shop around in your face and there is no grinding required to get through the main story (which is the main appeal of the game) and there are no difficulty walls forcing you to spend.

You just need to be using either Google Chrome or the Safari browser.

• Go to グランブルーファンタジー
• Click the "Set Language" drop down and select English
• Click "New Game
• Play through the tutorial
• Create a Mobage account. Chrome automatically translates the page for you so it should be easy, standard account creation process. Sign in Granblue with the account and you're in.

Now is a great time to get in. Every day for the next week, you can log in and get 10 free draws. After next week, they start the gachapin event, where every day you log in and you will spin a wheel and randomly get anywhere between 10 to 300 draws, going through the first few weeks of January. You'll get dozens and dozens of characters for free for just logging in for 30 seconds every day, barely any effort required.

Save your crystals.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I'll actually disagree that there are no good games that are free. They exist but they're rare.

For example, Space trader. It's a semi-modernized port of an old, old Palm PDA game. It's not exactly cutting edge graphically:

But behind the scenes there's a lot more going on, the game has a surprising complicated economy, a number of special missions with unique rewards, and enough room for player freedom you can play through it several different ways. It's also fairly short, once you figure out how it works you can complete a play through in only a couple hours.


As for paid stuff, I'll recommend most of the Trese Brothers games (they make free ones, but those are basically demos, you want to get the paid stuff). Some of there stuff isn't exactly orginal, eg, Templar Assault is just Space Hulk, but I've played several games and they're all very good.