Underhand for me is one of the best meal sized games for Android atm. It's free, with no ads, and an interesting gameplay loop, where you play as a cultist trying to summon gods. I'd recommend everyone give it a try. As far as I know it's not on iOS unfortunately.
good a time as any to mention there are a surprising amount of JRPGs on mobile that are ports of old (and even recent) games.
Square Enix has a lot of it legacy titles on mobile as full games, I could fill a post simply listing all of them. So in short: half the Final Fantasies, Dragon Quest, Chrono trigger, The World Ends with you, Romancing SaGa... if it's an older 2D title from Square try searching for it.
if you are on IOS, I will make a special recommendation to play Fantasian. This was a game made from the "Father of Final Fantasy" and I have heard nothing but great things about it. But it is an Apple Arcade title and I have no apple devices, so I haven't been able to play myself.
another IOS exclusive, but a port of a classic 90's game: Lunar
Stardew Valley is an obligatory mention. Made in the times right before f2p models took over, and it arguably pioneered the modern faming sim craze.
Monster Hunter Stories (you may have heard of MHS2 on the Switch, this is a port of the prequel on the 3DS).
One particularly interesting one coming soon is Megaman X Dive. It was in fact a f2p microtransaction game, but Capcom turned it into a $30 offline game starting next month. I don't think the mobile pages are up yet, so there's a steam link. I hope this becomes a more common practice for the sake of preserving what could be years of content and narrative.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If I had to give an "anti-recommendation", I would be leery of any games made by Kecmo unless you are already an avid JRPG fans. they have a dozen RPGs on the store, and while I woudn't call them bad (like, quickly made RPG Maker game bad), they are extremely old and basic RPGs. The kind that gave the genre its stigma in the 90's before the Final Fantasy craze.
Vampire Survivors. Has DLC, but it's worth it. I believe there's a free version with ads. Also look up 20 Minutes til Dawn, which is free with ads or paid.
Bloons TD6. Has microtransactions but doesn't feel dark patterny or aggressive, and I have a very low tolerance for money grubbing. If you lose you spend easy to earn in-game currency to continue, or start over. Also if you make an account with Kiwininja you can sync to your PC or other device, but would need to buy the game again.
Sproggiwood: it's a roguelike with small dungeons, no micro transactions.
Free, no ads
Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It's a full traditional roguelike. You unlock classes between runs, and it can be played spoiler-free (no needing to look stuff up).
Pysol FC: The fattest solitaore games collection ever.
Lexica: Boggle but bigger and single-player.
Mindistry: Get it free on F-Droid, it's a tower defense/resource management game. You colonize zones and resist waves of enemies.
It's the autobattler by RIOT games, by for my money it's by far the best one in the market, and it certainly has the best support and content schedule.
It has a bit of a learning curve, but after a few hours I found myself addicted, and then again with each major patch (every 3 months or so)
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a fun, addictive dungeon-crawl with regular updates from its solo-developer Evan. It's completely free with a donation option, but has no advertisements.
Battlehearts is a fantasy battler where you make parties of four characters and take them to fight monsters in different zones, unlocking new abilities and getting gold for items. Also completely free with no advertisements.
Anything from Apple Arcade is microtransaction free and there are some real gems in there like Sneaky Sasquatch (the beginning is really simple, but it expands to a huge world).
Same with Netflix Games, if you have a Netflix subscription, all their mobile games are free, ad-free and have no microtransactions.
Since you mentioned Marvel Snap I assume you enjoy board/card games. Luckily there are a number of pay once and be done in that category.
Star Realms: a digital port of the deck building game. One on one game where each player acquires cards to add to their deck from a shared pool. Play those cards to attack your opponent and destroy their bases. One time cost for the base game and online multiplayer. Additional dlc options to add additional expansions (optional until you are sure you want more variety)
Enter the Spire: Roguelike card battle based dungeon crawler. Choose your class, path and fight through 3 acts of encounters until you face the final evil. One time purchase.
Wingspan: Excellent port of the board game. Collect birds and utilize their powers to achieve the most victory points. One time purchase with expansion as a separate dlc addon.
The Battle for Polytopia and the old Where’s My Water? Is still fun
Polytopia does have microtransactions but by the time you’ll want them they’ll be worth it
Where’s my water can be playrd without every spending anything
I can recommend a few, since the only ones I play/keep around are the kind that don't rely on MTX.
Cultist Simulator - Narrative card-based puzzle/resource management game where you are the head of a cult and make the choices for it, good or ill. Success or failure can depend on some trial-and-error...and reading wikis if you're stuck.
Mini Metro - A minimalist puzzle game where you have to create and maintain a subway system. It's fairly easy to pick up but a bit harder to master.
Wordament - A word search game put out by Microsoft. You have a small grid and have to create words using the letters given by dragging over them to form the word. It can get pretty tough on some levels; the Scrabble dictionary works great if you get stuck.
It is a hand drawn rogue-lite deckbuilder. This is one of the few mobile games I've spend money on and did not regret it a bit.
You can try the first class for free to get a feel for the game.
Every class has a distinct feeling to them and I've enjoyed playing all of them. There is a lot of replayability to find out who killed your grandma and it is a lot of fun even after finding the last boss.
The adfree extra removes any ad and you still have access to the extra boni (the ad icon is still there, but if you access it, there are no ads).
Also, Overboard, a fantastic whodunit-reversed murder commit mystery where you need to figure out through repeated tries how to get rid of your husband at sea and get away with it. It's a lovely little game. Pay once, no mtx.
Do you like board games? lots of good options there w/ challenges, AI, online.
Web based PWA like Wordle/Waffle
Must Play: Data wing. No ads, cost, fun little story and then done.
Tents and trees is a great little sudoku game that's free and has daily puzzles, no need to buy hints or extra puzzles if you don't want. Atomas is another fun little puzzle game
tried just a basic solitaire, sudoku, crossword, or chess app?
Dawncaster is one of the best games I've played on mobile, card based rogue like.
It does have a couple expansions (3) you can purchase, but they are relatively inexpensive and they put a lot of work into them. They also put out lots of big free updates as well
The Iconfactory just released an app called Ollie's Arcade that is just a gallery of retro-games.
There are technically micro-transactions, but it's basically just that each additional game in the arcade costs $2 to buy. So it's not like, fake currency or anything. It comes with a Flappy Bird clone and you can buy Snake and a Lunar Lander clone for $2 each. Presumably they'll keep adding more over time.
Also Apple Arcade is specifically a shortlist of games like this and it has a great selection. One I enjoyed a lot was "What the Golf."
It is an GPS RPG style game. Starts out fairly simple, but as you go up tiers there is a lot of complexity and build choices. Lots of different ways of engaging with the game, as well as constant events and new features.
It funds itself through selling cosmetics. You can buy things like keys to access dungeons, but those keys are fairly easy to get otherwise, so there is little need to. The game is designed to not make you feel like you need to pay for anything, and this is a conscious design choice on behalf of the developer.
I'm currently enjoying Pikmin Bloom, which is a walking game. You walk around planting flowers in your area/town/whatever and you send your Pikmin to fight mushrooms and collect various types of nectar.
Think Pokemon Go, but much easier to play and you don't need to stare at your phone all the time when you're out walking. It is by the same company Niantic, and while you can pay for stuff, it is absolutely not necessary.
Retro bowl is an amazing American football pixel style game. Easy to get into, VERY easy to sink many hours into. It is not free, but there is no subscription model and the developer keeps it up to date with current NFL rules and changes. Best poopin game, in my opinion.
I sort the games mostly by support for: controllers, cloud saves, and devices (Phone/iPad/TV).
As far as recommendations, it really depends what you're looking for! If you're looking for a console-like experience with a gamepad, a few of my favorites are:
Feel free to ask for specific genres or kinds of games and I'll give a recommendation if I have one!
1: By "buy-once" I mean any game that doesn't include any in-app purchases (IAP) that can be purchased more than once (buy-once IAP for things like "unlock full game" or expansion packs are fine).
If you have Netfix they offer a fairly good library of mobile games for free, no ads or in app purchases. I've used it to play Spiritfarer and TMNT Shredders revenge. Just hit the games tab in the Netfix app on your mobile device.
Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes (swgoh) is actually very free to play friendly. Was just reading a comparison to the marvel game and one thing that was mentioned is that you can max out characters completely free to play in swgoh, where as getting red stars in marvel is very difficult without paying. If you have time and like star wars, you can go all the way to end game content without paying.
Simon Tatham's Puzzles is a game with like 40 puzzles, it has kept me engaged for months now. No frills just lots of puzzles. It is completely free on Android and iOS, no ads, no data harvesting.
I've also been playing Rogue Adventure. It's a card based roguelike in the vein of Slay the Spire, but actually works well on phones and if you don't intend to do an entire run in one session. Lots of classes, cards, and several modes. Free to download and play, there are optional ads to occasionally get more gold or double your XP at the end of a run, but they're optional and you can pay a one time fee to remove them.
It's a sci-fi space roguelike with tactical grid-based combat. Only available on tablet, if I recall. Lots of different play styles supported, with several factions to unlock. 4/5 stars
Easy to learn, relatively simple and addictive turn-based strategy game. Free and no ads.
It's not new by any means, but I still go down holes of playing it regularly and because it's turn based it's perfect for playing while doing other things.
I paid for no ads on Rogue with the Dead and its been pretty fun as a idle game.
You hire troops for your army and march to the right. You switch off between upgrading side quests to get money faster and upgrading your troops and abilities. When you die, you get blue gems which can be used to hire new kinds of troops and get items. There's a currency tied red gems but you get a daily allowance of them which is pretty good if you go no ads.
If you're a fan of the strategy series, Civilization, there's an open-source version for both Android and desktop. I haven't noticed any difference in feature parity.
Off the top of my head these 8 games have stuck with me longer than most mobile games and I would recommend them to anyone.
A Dark Room
The Ensign
Universal Paperclips
Opus: Rocket of whispers
Opus: The day we found Earth
TerraGenesis - Space Settlers
Sheltered
Seedship
The Professor Layton trilogy is on iOS and Android for $10 each. Great ports from the Nintendo DS. While it’s a children’s game, the puzzles are plentiful and you encounter puzzles of all difficulty levels.
One I haven't seen mentioned is Blackbox. It's iOS only and costs a few bucks to unlock the entire game. The first few levels are free. There are no ads at all.
It's a puzzle game about exploring your phone, but you never have to touch the screen. Each puzzle has to do with some system function or hardware sensor- basically treating it as a little black box.
The puzzles are awesome and the art is delightful. There's also a lot of Easter eggs to find!
I don't mobile game much- but I really appreciate the simplicity & variety within the Lichess app.
It connects you to the same platform as Lichess.com, for open-source free chess. I appreciate it mostly for it's support for chess variants- such as Antichess, King of the Hill, Horde, and (my personal favorite) Atomic.
It's very well used even by grand & international masters, so even if you don't feel like playing a game, you can watch a number of tournaments with excellent gameplay (heck, even Magnus Carlson shows up periodically to play a bullet tournament).
My go-to is Slay. I used to play the Windows version of this game all the time... pretty sure I originally found it through one of those old Shareware compilation CDs. Was extremely happy to see that the developer did a mobile port!
I haven't seen anyone mention Ritual - it's a weird, kind of hack-and-slash, spell-flinging RPG with nice artstyle.
Also I feel obligated that Pokemon GO, while having microtransactions and being led by Niantic, is quite a good and fun game, as long as you're willing to go outside. It helped me stop being a couch potato and now I walk 50km every week and have a big collection of cute critters.
The lichess app or lichess. org is great for chess. It has a snappy interface and no ads or micro transactions.
Although these games have not been updated in a while, I would recommend smash hit and pinout by mediocre AB. These two offline endurance games are free with an option to pay for an easier difficulty and more modes (only for smash hit).
Smash hit is a simple game where you tap the screen to shoot balls at glass obstacles. You lose when you run out of balls, but you can gain balls by aiming for some specific glass shapes in the background.
pinout is a version of pinball where the board is extended upwards by a very large amount. The goal is to get as far up as you can while a timer runs down. You can extend your timer by aiming your ball towards white pellets, some power ups, and towards some quick mini game segments that provide a nice change of pace. Note that pinout has not had an update in 6 years and the game may not occupy the entirety of your screen if you have a larger device.
Gravity Defied is a trials motorcycle game and hands down it is my favourite mobile game of all time. I've been playing it for almost 20 years now and will probably play it for at least another 20 more with how many levels are available thanks to mod creators.
Magic Research, it's and "idle" game but progression actually takes some strategy and you have to figure out bosses definitely need to be actively fought.
On this note, I'd also love to see games that also aren't riddled ads. I'm happy to pay for something, but I want no ads or microtransactions or subscriptions.
Baldur's Gate 1&2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1&2
Also, if still available, GTA3 & Vice City & San Andreas trilogy. Controls are not that great but still perfectly playable.
Civlization 6, if you really don't like to have normal life.
A repackage of "They Need to be Fed" series by the original designer called "Eat Me Please" is always worth installing, imho.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.venbrux.eatme
Underhand for me is one of the best meal sized games for Android atm. It's free, with no ads, and an interesting gameplay loop, where you play as a cultist trying to summon gods. I'd recommend everyone give it a try. As far as I know it's not on iOS unfortunately.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.cornell.gdiac.underhand
good a time as any to mention there are a surprising amount of JRPGs on mobile that are ports of old (and even recent) games.
Square Enix has a lot of it legacy titles on mobile as full games, I could fill a post simply listing all of them. So in short: half the Final Fantasies, Dragon Quest, Chrono trigger, The World Ends with you, Romancing SaGa... if it's an older 2D title from Square try searching for it.
if you are on IOS, I will make a special recommendation to play Fantasian. This was a game made from the "Father of Final Fantasy" and I have heard nothing but great things about it. But it is an Apple Arcade title and I have no apple devices, so I haven't been able to play myself.
another IOS exclusive, but a port of a classic 90's game: Lunar
Stardew Valley is an obligatory mention. Made in the times right before f2p models took over, and it arguably pioneered the modern faming sim craze.
Monster Hunter Stories (you may have heard of MHS2 on the Switch, this is a port of the prequel on the 3DS).
Disgaea 1's remake and Disgaea 4
One particularly interesting one coming soon is Megaman X Dive. It was in fact a f2p microtransaction game, but Capcom turned it into a $30 offline game starting next month. I don't think the mobile pages are up yet, so there's a steam link. I hope this becomes a more common practice for the sake of preserving what could be years of content and narrative.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If I had to give an "anti-recommendation", I would be leery of any games made by Kecmo unless you are already an avid JRPG fans. they have a dozen RPGs on the store, and while I woudn't call them bad (like, quickly made RPG Maker game bad), they are extremely old and basic RPGs. The kind that gave the genre its stigma in the 90's before the Final Fantasy craze.
Vampire Survivors and Slay the Spire are very compelling on phones. FTL and Osmos for iPads.
All of these are paid.
Vampire Survivors. Has DLC, but it's worth it. I believe there's a free version with ads. Also look up 20 Minutes til Dawn, which is free with ads or paid.
Bloons TD6. Has microtransactions but doesn't feel dark patterny or aggressive, and I have a very low tolerance for money grubbing. If you lose you spend easy to earn in-game currency to continue, or start over. Also if you make an account with Kiwininja you can sync to your PC or other device, but would need to buy the game again.
Sproggiwood: it's a roguelike with small dungeons, no micro transactions.
Free, no ads
Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It's a full traditional roguelike. You unlock classes between runs, and it can be played spoiler-free (no needing to look stuff up).
Pysol FC: The fattest solitaore games collection ever.
Lexica: Boggle but bigger and single-player.
Mindistry: Get it free on F-Droid, it's a tower defense/resource management game. You colonize zones and resist waves of enemies.
I really enjoy Team Fight Tactics
It's the autobattler by RIOT games, by for my money it's by far the best one in the market, and it certainly has the best support and content schedule.
It has a bit of a learning curve, but after a few hours I found myself addicted, and then again with each major patch (every 3 months or so)
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a fun, addictive dungeon-crawl with regular updates from its solo-developer Evan. It's completely free with a donation option, but has no advertisements.
Battlehearts is a fantasy battler where you make parties of four characters and take them to fight monsters in different zones, unlocking new abilities and getting gold for items. Also completely free with no advertisements.
Z Origins. It's a faithful port of an excellent and unique micromanagement RTS. The controls fit touchscreens perfectly.
Anything from Apple Arcade is microtransaction free and there are some real gems in there like Sneaky Sasquatch (the beginning is really simple, but it expands to a huge world).
Same with Netflix Games, if you have a Netflix subscription, all their mobile games are free, ad-free and have no microtransactions.
Slice and Dice is a rougelike turned based combat and is everything I want in a game. Works well on Android.
Since you mentioned Marvel Snap I assume you enjoy board/card games. Luckily there are a number of pay once and be done in that category.
Star Realms: a digital port of the deck building game. One on one game where each player acquires cards to add to their deck from a shared pool. Play those cards to attack your opponent and destroy their bases. One time cost for the base game and online multiplayer. Additional dlc options to add additional expansions (optional until you are sure you want more variety)
Enter the Spire: Roguelike card battle based dungeon crawler. Choose your class, path and fight through 3 acts of encounters until you face the final evil. One time purchase.
Wingspan: Excellent port of the board game. Collect birds and utilize their powers to achieve the most victory points. One time purchase with expansion as a separate dlc addon.
Try BADLAND, a fast paced side scrolling puzzle game with a great atmosphere.
The Battle for Polytopia and the old Where’s My Water? Is still fun
Polytopia does have microtransactions but by the time you’ll want them they’ll be worth it
Where’s my water can be playrd without every spending anything
I can recommend a few, since the only ones I play/keep around are the kind that don't rely on MTX.
Cultist Simulator - Narrative card-based puzzle/resource management game where you are the head of a cult and make the choices for it, good or ill. Success or failure can depend on some trial-and-error...and reading wikis if you're stuck.
Mini Metro - A minimalist puzzle game where you have to create and maintain a subway system. It's fairly easy to pick up but a bit harder to master.
Wordament - A word search game put out by Microsoft. You have a small grid and have to create words using the letters given by dragging over them to form the word. It can get pretty tough on some levels; the Scrabble dictionary works great if you get stuck.
Night of the full moon.
It is a hand drawn rogue-lite deckbuilder. This is one of the few mobile games I've spend money on and did not regret it a bit.
You can try the first class for free to get a feel for the game.
Every class has a distinct feeling to them and I've enjoyed playing all of them. There is a lot of replayability to find out who killed your grandma and it is a lot of fun even after finding the last boss.
The adfree extra removes any ad and you still have access to the extra boni (the ad icon is still there, but if you access it, there are no ads).
All in all a game worth paying for:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ztgame.yyzy
Also, Overboard, a fantastic whodunit-reversed murder commit mystery where you need to figure out through repeated tries how to get rid of your husband at sea and get away with it. It's a lovely little game. Pay once, no mtx.
Do you like board games? lots of good options there w/ challenges, AI, online.
Web based PWA like Wordle/Waffle
Must Play: Data wing. No ads, cost, fun little story and then done.
Tents and trees is a great little sudoku game that's free and has daily puzzles, no need to buy hints or extra puzzles if you don't want. Atomas is another fun little puzzle game
tried just a basic solitaire, sudoku, crossword, or chess app?
Dawncaster is one of the best games I've played on mobile, card based rogue like.
It does have a couple expansions (3) you can purchase, but they are relatively inexpensive and they put a lot of work into them. They also put out lots of big free updates as well
The Iconfactory just released an app called Ollie's Arcade that is just a gallery of retro-games.
There are technically micro-transactions, but it's basically just that each additional game in the arcade costs $2 to buy. So it's not like, fake currency or anything. It comes with a Flappy Bird clone and you can buy Snake and a Lunar Lander clone for $2 each. Presumably they'll keep adding more over time.
Also Apple Arcade is specifically a shortlist of games like this and it has a great selection. One I enjoyed a lot was "What the Golf."
Hoplite - Slick little turn based strategy game. Free version is fun and the pay once version adds a ton of content.
I am having a lot of fun with Orna. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=playorna.com.orna
It is an GPS RPG style game. Starts out fairly simple, but as you go up tiers there is a lot of complexity and build choices. Lots of different ways of engaging with the game, as well as constant events and new features.
It funds itself through selling cosmetics. You can buy things like keys to access dungeons, but those keys are fairly easy to get otherwise, so there is little need to. The game is designed to not make you feel like you need to pay for anything, and this is a conscious design choice on behalf of the developer.
I'm currently enjoying Pikmin Bloom, which is a walking game. You walk around planting flowers in your area/town/whatever and you send your Pikmin to fight mushrooms and collect various types of nectar.
Think Pokemon Go, but much easier to play and you don't need to stare at your phone all the time when you're out walking. It is by the same company Niantic, and while you can pay for stuff, it is absolutely not necessary.
Retro bowl is an amazing American football pixel style game. Easy to get into, VERY easy to sink many hours into. It is not free, but there is no subscription model and the developer keeps it up to date with current NFL rules and changes. Best poopin game, in my opinion.
Keeping track of (and purchasing way too many) decent, buy-once1 iOS games is somewhat of a hobby of mine. You can check out my list here:
iOS Games Worth Playing
I sort the games mostly by support for: controllers, cloud saves, and devices (Phone/iPad/TV).
As far as recommendations, it really depends what you're looking for! If you're looking for a console-like experience with a gamepad, a few of my favorites are:
If you're looking for a mobile-first experience that uses multi-touch in a creative or unique way:
Feel free to ask for specific genres or kinds of games and I'll give a recommendation if I have one!
1: By "buy-once" I mean any game that doesn't include any in-app purchases (IAP) that can be purchased more than once (buy-once IAP for things like "unlock full game" or expansion packs are fine).If you have Netfix they offer a fairly good library of mobile games for free, no ads or in app purchases. I've used it to play Spiritfarer and TMNT Shredders revenge. Just hit the games tab in the Netfix app on your mobile device.
Free to Play
Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes (swgoh) is actually very free to play friendly. Was just reading a comparison to the marvel game and one thing that was mentioned is that you can max out characters completely free to play in swgoh, where as getting red stars in marvel is very difficult without paying. If you have time and like star wars, you can go all the way to end game content without paying.
Simon Tatham's Puzzles is a game with like 40 puzzles, it has kept me engaged for months now. No frills just lots of puzzles. It is completely free on Android and iOS, no ads, no data harvesting.
I've also been playing Rogue Adventure. It's a card based roguelike in the vein of Slay the Spire, but actually works well on phones and if you don't intend to do an entire run in one session. Lots of classes, cards, and several modes. Free to download and play, there are optional ads to occasionally get more gold or double your XP at the end of a run, but they're optional and you can pay a one time fee to remove them.
Crying Suns
It's a sci-fi space roguelike with tactical grid-based combat. Only available on tablet, if I recall. Lots of different play styles supported, with several factions to unlock. 4/5 stars
I haven't seen it recommended yet.
Antiyoy
Easy to learn, relatively simple and addictive turn-based strategy game. Free and no ads.
It's not new by any means, but I still go down holes of playing it regularly and because it's turn based it's perfect for playing while doing other things.
I paid for no ads on Rogue with the Dead and its been pretty fun as a idle game.
You hire troops for your army and march to the right. You switch off between upgrading side quests to get money faster and upgrading your troops and abilities. When you die, you get blue gems which can be used to hire new kinds of troops and get items. There's a currency tied red gems but you get a daily allowance of them which is pretty good if you go no ads.
If you're a fan of the strategy series, Civilization, there's an open-source version for both Android and desktop. I haven't noticed any difference in feature parity.
On iOS, there’s a bunch of games that are included with Netflix. Two of note are BTD6 and Into The Breach.
Off the top of my head these 8 games have stuck with me longer than most mobile games and I would recommend them to anyone.
A Dark Room
The Ensign
Universal Paperclips
Opus: Rocket of whispers
Opus: The day we found Earth
TerraGenesis - Space Settlers
Sheltered
Seedship
The only game I find myself coming back to on mobile is Rebel, Inc.
I’m a big fan of Boom Beach, which I think is the least micro transaction-y of the Supercell games. I maxed out ftp.
Steve Jackson’s Sorcery for iPad, it is so free of the usual evil I hesitate to call it a mobile game.
The Professor Layton trilogy is on iOS and Android for $10 each. Great ports from the Nintendo DS. While it’s a children’s game, the puzzles are plentiful and you encounter puzzles of all difficulty levels.
Little Inferno or World of Goo are classics.
Also you can play Morrowind on Mobile through OMW (OpenMicroWave) if you have the game files on PC.
One I haven't seen mentioned is Blackbox. It's iOS only and costs a few bucks to unlock the entire game. The first few levels are free. There are no ads at all.
It's a puzzle game about exploring your phone, but you never have to touch the screen. Each puzzle has to do with some system function or hardware sensor- basically treating it as a little black box.
The puzzles are awesome and the art is delightful. There's also a lot of Easter eggs to find!
I don't mobile game much- but I really appreciate the simplicity & variety within the Lichess app.
It connects you to the same platform as Lichess.com, for open-source free chess. I appreciate it mostly for it's support for chess variants- such as Antichess, King of the Hill, Horde, and (my personal favorite) Atomic.
It's very well used even by grand & international masters, so even if you don't feel like playing a game, you can watch a number of tournaments with excellent gameplay (heck, even Magnus Carlson shows up periodically to play a bullet tournament).
My go-to is Slay. I used to play the Windows version of this game all the time... pretty sure I originally found it through one of those old Shareware compilation CDs. Was extremely happy to see that the developer did a mobile port!
Plague, Inc is an excellent game that had almost no micro transactions in my memory
I haven't seen anyone mention Ritual - it's a weird, kind of hack-and-slash, spell-flinging RPG with nice artstyle.
Also I feel obligated that Pokemon GO, while having microtransactions and being led by Niantic, is quite a good and fun game, as long as you're willing to go outside. It helped me stop being a couch potato and now I walk 50km every week and have a big collection of cute critters.
The lichess app or lichess. org is great for chess. It has a snappy interface and no ads or micro transactions.
Although these games have not been updated in a while, I would recommend smash hit and pinout by mediocre AB. These two offline endurance games are free with an option to pay for an easier difficulty and more modes (only for smash hit).
Smash hit is a simple game where you tap the screen to shoot balls at glass obstacles. You lose when you run out of balls, but you can gain balls by aiming for some specific glass shapes in the background.
pinout is a version of pinball where the board is extended upwards by a very large amount. The goal is to get as far up as you can while a timer runs down. You can extend your timer by aiming your ball towards white pellets, some power ups, and towards some quick mini game segments that provide a nice change of pace. Note that pinout has not had an update in 6 years and the game may not occupy the entirety of your screen if you have a larger device.
Gravity Defied is a trials motorcycle game and hands down it is my favourite mobile game of all time. I've been playing it for almost 20 years now and will probably play it for at least another 20 more with how many levels are available thanks to mod creators.
Magic Research, it's and "idle" game but progression actually takes some strategy and you have to figure out bosses definitely need to be actively fought.
Lemudroid; I play so many old GB/GBC/GBA games during my commute
Not free since it's part of the Apple Arcade subscription, but Sneaky Sasquatch is a fantastic game for people of all ages.
On this note, I'd also love to see games that also aren't riddled ads. I'm happy to pay for something, but I want no ads or microtransactions or subscriptions.
I like cozy games on my phone, ideally.
Mini Metro is my go-to mobile game. Free on Play Pass, but it's not terribly expensive anyway. A great train/transit line layout game.