My current top 3 games are:

Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Super Auto Pets

Event Horizon - Frontier

...

What's yours?

Play Store 3D Pinball Space Cadet Download

From the article:

If you grew up in the Windows XP era, than you probably spent hours playing its iconic free game, “3D Pinball Space Cadet.” Now, “Space Cadet” pinball has been ported to Android, and it’s completely free.

One of the many things that Windows XP will be remembered for is the pinball game that essentially everyone who ever used the operating system played at some point or another. The game has been immortalized many times, and now it’s available on Android.

Developer Kyle Sylvertre used a decompiled version of Space Cadet Pinball from k4zmu2a on GitHub to bring the game to the Google Play Store for Android users. The game is optimized for touchscreens with the left and right sides of the display acting as the triggers, and you can also tap the far right side to use the ball launcher. The game runs in portrait mode, supports 18 languages, integrates with Google Play Games for a leaderboard, and is less than 5MB in size.

And it’s all completely free too.

There are no ads or in-app purchases here, as the developer “just wanted to see it on Android with a Google Play leaderboard.” On that note, cheats are disabled to keep the integrity of that leaderboard, but the developer hints that cheats might come back with an option to turn off the leaderboard.

In any case, it’s a nice hit of nostalgia. Drop your high score in the comments below.

Anyone playing COD: Mobile on Android? I was wondering whether you still need to grant storage permissions to play the game at all. I'm hoping that this is because of supporting older Android SDKs and not needed any more. Thanks for your help.

Some studios are still releasing premium games in 2023. Undead Horde 2 is a dungeon crawler with no ads or IAP, and it costs $10.

It features 3D blocky graphics, although less blocky than Undead Horde 1. The combat is moderately paced and depends more on upgrades than on button mashing, most of the time your minions do all the fighting. There are no puzzles, just some fetch quests to progress the story.

I want to connect my old PS2 controller with my Android for a game I am developing with Unity.

Suggestions i need:

1. Any app that would act as a medium that will take inputs and direct it to the game.
2. Any module or implementation I can have to make this work around.

Good games

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FireproofStudios.TheRoom3

Google Play link

I'm loving it.

Geo Gods Design Deep Dive

I highly recommend this new game from the creator of Card Thief, Card Crawl, and more.

Hi, I have been playing Potion Explosion and liked the game. It is a like match 3 game with a strategic twist, no IAP, only one payment. It is easy, brain teaser, with quick games ( 10 minutes ). I have explored other board games like Sagrada and Splendor. Do you know of other games with these attributes? Not necessarily a board game or match 3, but something fun, easy, and with puzzle-strategic component Thanks

Anyone seen any Android games that use Pathfinder 2e or DND 5e that let you use their battle rules to try out builds? Basically want to play a turn based game using their rules to test out character builds etc.
Anyone seen anything like that?

I've encountered many, many mobile games where the character needs to perform five different actions, so the developer adds five separate buttons to the screen. Of course you will mis-tap them and die in the middle of a boss fight.

The best touch controls are achieved when the dev designs the game around touchscreen, not attempts to adapt touch controls for some existing game.

For platformers there are two movement buttons on the left, and three buttons on the right part of the screen - jump, attack, and alternate attack or some action like dodge. Any more buttons make the game hard to play. There is also a common mistake of making buttons the size of a thumbtack. Ideally the buttons should be as big as a 5 Euro coin, that would be a third or even a half of screen width for most phones.

My recommendations are SuperTux and Swordigo.

For twin-stick ahooters there are two joysticks, and maybe one or two extra action buttons above the right joystick, but not anything more.

The best examples are Space Marshals and Crimsonland.

Top-view RPGs and dungeon crawlers also tend to use twin stick controls. The gameplay tends to be more relaxed, because you can slways grind few more levels and don't bother dodging enemy attacks.

Shoot-em-up is another type of game that works really well with the touchscreen. Your aircraft follows your finger no matter where you touch the screen, it's simpe and it works well. There is a wide variety of quality shmups on Play Store, try OpenTyrian for some classic DOS gameplay.

Honorable mention to swipe controls. You can swipe up/down/left/right without aiming for a specific button and even without looking at the screen, ao it's impossible to mis-tap the wrong button. The downside is that swiping is slower than taps, so the gameplay tends to be slower. Reaper is a good example.

First person shooters are okay for casual gaming, but playing any competitive Counter Strike clone like Critical Strike or Critical Force will earn you a friction burn on your finger, because you are swiping the screen non-stop to aim.

I'm not reviewing strategy games here, they can have 10-layer menus and dialogs and still be playable.

Some racing games support gyroscope as a replacement for the steering wheel, it works rather well.

And of course there are infinite runner games. I don't want to call the whole infinite runner category trash, there are some good runner games like SmashHit or Vektor or Alto's Odyssey, but if it's three lanes infinite runner, you will watch ads each 30 seconds, and the gameplay is only fun for the first 30 seconds.

Flappy bird. Best touch controls ever, but the game itself is garbage.

There is a specific class of mobile gamers who are using gamepads. The gamepad is great for sure, you have a separate button for each finger, however the gamepad is more often than not bigger than the phone, so you are losing convenience and need clothing with huge pockets.

Also, anyone else here come from Androidgaming?

I had loved this game when I had gamepass and when I saw it was available on Android with bonus episodes. The turn based game has a lot of replayability with characters that play differently and different episodes which remix the rules and abilities. The soundtrack is my favorite part because it's the right blend of chiptunes and killer sax riffs.

It's currently 5 bucks. I got it for free between google rewards and play store points from subscriptions, but I'd have paid for it because of my enjoyment on gamepass.