Shattered Pixel Dungeon may be the best android game available at the moment.

My most played android game is probably the port of Simon Tatham's puzzle games. It's available on GitHub, F-Droid or Google Play.

My other pick would be TIC-80, there's thousands of games on there

For anyone interested: your have way more options for favorite game on Android than you think.

Emulation works great on modern phones. Eden emulator runs Switch games and some work very well with just touchscreen controls (e.g. Into the Breach).

If you're ok with on screen controllers or with carrying around something like an 8bit Zero 2or Micro, then you could emulate a mind-blowing number of consoles and games.

mindustry is good

Also I'm playing Morrowind on OpenMW these days

Edit: And STK!

Slay the Spire

Polytopia

Bloons 6

LoLdle

Stardew valley is fairly solid

Unciv - Open source Civ game based on Civ V

I was expecting some dlsite games since this has the NSFW tags.

If you're open minded to emulation there are tons of options for consoles on android. The ones I use are AetherSX2 for PS2 games, myBoy for GBA, PPSSPP for PSP, and then if you want to get real crazy OpenMW for Morrowind and Winulator for 2000s era PC games (I have TESIV Oblivion running on a dog water Android phone at 30 FPS with Winulator).

Mini metro has to be my top. Simple costs money so no ads (mandatory for me). You are basically just creating subway lines to move shares around and manage flow.

Terraria. It's $5.

• All the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_Escape games (Rusty Lake)
• SPACEPLAN (idle game with great scenario and great music)
• the Conceptis puzzles (free stuff for free)
• Desert Golfing, and Golf on Mars
• Sorcery 1, 2, 3... (choose your own adventure)

Slay the Spire is excellent on mobile.

The classic star wars rpg Knights of The Old Republic is on android. I keep it on my phone so it's always an option for me.

Limbo is pretty great.

Been playing Open Sudoku, it's great

I'm not playing much on Android, but I have enjoyed Open Sudoku, and I was surprised Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is free on Android, which I enjoyed on PC.

endless sky, hyperrogue

Aside from other suggestions already made (but seriously the answer is SPD)

• Peglin - think if peggle was a roguelite inspired by slay the spire
• Mini metro - minimalist puzzle game where you built out a metro system
• Balatro - yes you can get balatro on your phone (it was in the op)

Edit: balatro was in the OP so I'll add another

• Brotato - made a bit harder than the PC version with the touch controls IMO, but still a good time killer on the phone

It's an old game but I recently discovered Kittens Game. I also love Balatro, but Kittens it is more complicated and deeper. It's basically balancing spreadsheets for fun. Don't look at the wiki until you can get 120 kittens.

Slice and dice

I would hate to know how many hours I've spent on this game. It's disgustingly addictive. I love it.

The ace attorney series

Danganronpa series

Rusty lake series

"The Room" series, excellent puzzle games with a great ambience

Solomon's Keep and Solomon's Boneyard are fun

Hole.io

It's completely ad-laden garbage but I looove the art style for some reason and the actual gameplay outside of the weird resource management shit they added to sell in-game currency is soooo satisfying.

Tiny Room Stories - Town Mystery

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiarygames.tinyroom

Enjoy Sudoku, CrossMe, Universal Paperclips. The first two I casually play now and then, the last one I obsess about and play nonstop to completion once or twice a year.

Not exactly fresh meat but if you want some old school proper mobile gaming experience, before it got enshittified...

Galaxy On Fire.

The first game sadly never got the HD treatment but it is still playable - that is if you can find an Android device that can still run 32bit apps, or a patched APK.

The second game got an HD release but didn't get the "big screen" treatment, at least on iOS. But at least the game is available from the App and Play Stores.

The third game sadly got its servers pulled in 2020, though I have heard about modded APKs floating around that can work without the servers... but to be honest that game was quite the let-down compared to previous instances.

The developers of these games went on to work on CHORVS and Everspace 2, but to me neither game gave back that OG GoF feeling.

Magic survival

The game that inspired vampire survivors. Also it's way better than VS.

Occationally one of these physics mini-games:

• Soccer physics
• Wrestle jump 2
• Basic biking

https://ottoojala.itch.io/

And for a short (fart-joke) laugh:
https://boern.itch.io/diarrhea-4
(but that's Browser/Windows/Linux based - not Android directly)

P.S. Still searching for a modern Android port of Spaghetti and Marshmallows

My favorite game on Android is currently Krumit's Tale, followed by Shattered Pixel Dungeon.

Do PWAs count? Sudoku.coach saved to the home screen is pretty much the best sudoku app out there (and I’ve tried a ton of them)

Currently it's a game called SeaFood.

It's kinda vore-y aesthetically (nothing nsfw but it's about pirate monster dudes tryna eat you), but the card game is actually pretty fun and challenging.

I like unciv which is an open source clone of civ 5 I think. If you like games like Vampire survivors I would also recommend Magic Survival which to my knowledge is the or one of the first games in that style for mobiles

Guardian Tales

You (and anyone reading) should replace 2048 with "threes". Its the original game that 2048 is based on (developer claims they never knew threes already existed but not sure about that), it has way more details and love aaaaaand it actually works as a game. In 2048 you win by going down,left,down,left,down,left, repeat until high score. In threes you actually have to think

Fun fact: Monument Valley was originally iOS exclusive. So I'm not sure if the question implies "it has to run on Android" since the list include games that aren't exclusive.

Anyway, Subway Surfers used to be the GOAT. Not sure how it is on Android, but on iOS, even with an iPhone 16 Pro Max (at the time, the best phone Apple had to offer) the game would stutter and lag. Of course, most of those gacha games suck, especially when you have to watch an ad to play. But the game used to offer a deal (might still do), $5 unlocked an IAP which doubled every coin picked up in a run (but, not in prizes) and disabled all mandatory ads. So you could still watch an ad to double a prize, or watch 10 ads to unlock three loot crates, one in each rarity tier, things like that, but you never had to watch an ad. It seemed like a fair deal. $5 to make the grind of collecting powerups and earning crew members a little more bearable, you didn't need to see any ads, and it was a fair price for a fun little endless runner. Of course I tried to contact them about the performance issues, they wouldn't hear of it. I tried writing reviews and they would just delete them. So eventually I gave up. Uninstalled the game. I did play it, several times a week (daily, some weeks) for several years. It's a simple game, a little too easy until you get to top speed. Then (provided it's working correctly), it's fun. I feel like I'd be unstoppable if I had a controller. Which, I think, is why it doesn't support them. There is actually an arcade version of the game, in which you do use a controller, but it has a time limit. So on the arcade, which I've played a few times, I've never crashed. Always ran out of time and it tells you to pay more to keep running. I wish they would expand the game, let you use a controller, and introduce new challenges to compensate for the extra level of control you have.

Past that I really don't play games on my phone. I've played the first two Monument Valley games. I know there's a third one, but haven't gotten into it.

The Room games are on iOS, and I'm pretty sure they're on Android, too. They're puzzles where you are given a puzzle box and you have to use the touch controls to rotate it around and manipulate it to try to expose all of its secrets. It's very difficult, and you can't just touch everything. The game is a little smarter than that. Only the most deliberate actions are considered valid moves. Better to look up a guide, but it's quite a slippery slope from "how do I progress" to the guide just telling you everything. Still, the raw beauty of these games is something to behold. And I don't think they exist on computers or consoles.

Lifeline was another interesting "phone" game. Not sure if this one ever came to Android, but it should have, nothing about it demanded exclusivity to iOS. The game is presented as a text messaging app. You get a message from a character who has woken up in a strange area, and he needs your help. You are, effectively, his "lifeline." You can't kill him (or rather let him die) by ignoring his messages for several days, though I haven't really tried. So he will say something like "yeah I woke up in this bunker and I found this phone with your number in it, it's the only number in it, what should I do?" and it'll give you choices. Like an RPG on consoles (e.g. Mass Effect, Fallout), you choose a phrase to answer, and your message will spell out something a bit more detailed. It isn't an AI chatbot, you can't just say whatever you want. It's also not always instant. Sometimes the character will say "Alright I'm going to sleep" and then there's literally nothing you can do for like 8 hours. When the character messages you, it will be like you're getting messaged from a new messaging app (e.g. like if you installed Telegram for the first time, rather than get a text message, you get a Telegram message — you get a Lifeline message). And then whenever you're ready, you reply to him. It's cool because even if you stay on top of the app, you can only play it for a few minutes at a time. It doesn't waste your time, and you spend time in between thinking about your guy. Again, I'm not sure you can lose if you ignore the guy. Sometimes though, you will give him bad advice and he will die, and the game has a clever way of handing this. I don't think you have to start over, I think there is some kind of checkpoint system. Text-based RPGs are certainly nothing new, but this is a modern twist on that.

Oh, and of course there are emulators. So I'm not trying to wage some platform warfare here, but do you Android users have anything quite like Delta? Mainly its cloud backup. Okay so check this out. Say we both have iPhones and we both have Delta. I can long press a game, and AirDrop it to you, and your iPhone opens it with Delta and adds it to the library. Now that's kinda cool. But what's even cooler is, say I get a new iPhone, I install Delta from the App Store, I got an empty library. But, I go into Settings, and connect it to my Google Drive. 0auth, you know, it opens the web page, you log into Google, Google gives the app access. The app doesn't see your login info. So anyway, after a minute or so, my games start appearing. Because they're stored in Google Drive — along with my saves, and any cheats I've found/used. The sync thing, I think you can set it up with RetroArch, but I don't think it's built in, or that easy to do, and certainly not that pretty. Shame Delta only works with Nintendo consoles. Not sure why. No Sega, no PlayStation (even PS1). And it goes up to Nintendo 64. Pretty sure it could do GameCube and maybe Wii if they wanted to, but the developer is kinda inactive. You see updates every now and then but it's mostly "bug fixes and improvements." Kind of a shame, it's got so much potential but it's also so limited. But then RetroArch is basically unlimited, but it's nearly monolithic with its (in)accessibility. (We have RetroArch here, too.) But no, not platform warfare... I ask because I also have a Galaxy S10, and I have a Backbone (or similar, I forget what brand it actually is, it's that or the Razr one) for it. It's USB-C, but unfortunately it's Android only. Even though iPhones also do USB-C, the controller oddly cannot just support both. So, I'm asking because I am also an Android user... it's just not my daily driver. In a few years I'll replace it with something newer and I'll daily drive Android for a few years. Basically tick-tock between the platforms.

My partner and I often collaborate on Lexica (basically Boggle but you can choose some game modes) while waiting for food in a restaurant. Sometimes also Lichess of late

Simon Tatham's puzzle game collection is already mentioned in the thread. I can only recommend it again

"Slay" is a paid little puzzle game that's a lot of fun (iirc like 5€ one time up front via Google Play). Very intuitive but I've not seen the concept before. The author made a bunch of small fun Windows games and ported this particular one to Android (maybe also available on the dark side, who knows). With a honorable mention of Antiyoy (expanding upon the concept) that you can also find there, the open source implementation is called Feudal Tactics

• https://f-droid.org/packages/com.serwylo.lexica
• https://f-droid.org/packages/org.lichess.mobileapp.free
• https://f-droid.org/packages/name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles
• https://f-droid.org/packages/de.sesu8642.feudaltactics

Now that they're out on mobile I gotta go with Subnautica and Little Nightmares

Others have mentioned the Rusty Lake series, but I'll mention it again, as those games are great.

I'm a big fan of Golf Blitz, although I haven't played in a while as my screen is cracked and it's harder to play as a result (got a few unresponsive areas). The game is a lot of fun, and although you can pay to advance, I made it to the top level without paying a penny or watching any ads.

Others I've enjoyed:

• Antiyoy
• Minecraft (obvious, but works well on mobile)
• Colorzzle
• Gorogoa
• A puzzle series with colour names (Black, Green, Pink, etc) by developer Bart Bonte
• OK Golf
• Prune
• The Room games

This war of mine.

CDDA and Dwarf Fortress, you can play it over SSH. Also Steam Link.

Libresudoku and Plague, Inc

Happy to see a fellow Hashiwokakero enjoyer. ♥️

For free games, I would like to add Gobble (by Never Ads) to the list. Unfortunately, I cannot find it in Google Play Store right now.

For paid games, After, Inc. is pretty nice.

Chuzzle 2.

Gauguin

Unnamed space idle - an idle game that is completely free, without ads and more complex than normal idle games

F-zero GX, lol

I don't know if this counts, but on my old android tablet back in the day, I use to play Titanfall Assault (?)

Really never played a mobile game as fun as that. I miss it whenever I think about it.

Been playing a ton of dicey dungeons recently.

Literally any nonogram games

Favo kills a lot of time for me. As does 2048 and any nonogram game.

Steam emulation

bloons td 6, prolly the best tower defense game, has tons of content and casual and competitive game modes

note that it has microtransactions/dlc but I never spent more than the $7 I got it for