Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren’t filled with microtransactions? For example: easy puzzle games, match-3 games, low-difficulty adventure games, or clicker-style games.

So far, the only good examples I’ve found are Monument Valley, Suika Game, and (sort of) Vampire Survivors.

I’m personally looking for games that have more progression or variety, but any suggestions are welcome.

  • PlexSheep@infosec.pubEnglish
    161·
    6 days ago

    My recommendation l is going back to the basics: chess, especially lichess.org

    You can choose a mode however you want, and it may or may not be stressful. Multiplayer with friends or random online people, choose a time between 30 seconds for a game and infinity to move.

    If you don’t want to play right now, you can solve tactical exercises.

  • Plagiatus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    7 days ago

    I liked egg inc for a while, if you’re looking for clicker type games.

    Other than that I can recommend

    • Stardew Valley
    • Peglin
    • Sudoku
    • Nanograms
    • Dungeon Village 1 & 2

    Multiple of these are paid, but I’m 100% on board with paying a small amount for an app rather than paying a multiple of that for in-game Battlepasses and whatevers.

    It annoys me a lot to say this, but Netflix has some excellent games in their roster. So if you have a Netflix subscription, check those out. I personally very much enjoyed

    • Storyteller
    • Into the Breach

    But they also have ports of some very good PC games like Spiritfarer, Terra Nil or World of Goo.

    • verity_kindle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Any little casual simulators by Kairosoft, the pay to play “full versions” are pretty cheap. Manage a lil apartment building, manage a tiny sushi restaurant, manage a little Japanese village. 8 bit style, very soothing. The free versions are quite limited in scope and cut you off from further progression after a few levels, but no microtransaction reminders, either. The mention of “Dungeon Village” reminded me, is that Kairosoft?

  • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    7 days ago

    If you like the older Pokemon games and can get the ROMs on your phone, PokeMMO is really cool. It’s an emulator that turns the first 5 generations of games into an MMO where you can take the same character across each region.

    There’s a handful of changes to the base game, but most are small: Berry farming is changed, there’s an Exp Share for EVs now, Sweet Scent is used to summon a 1v5 against wild Pokemon… There’s character customization… There’s some QoL stuff like shiny encounters having a sound effect and adding a confirmation box so you don’t accidentally flee, and the stats page for your Pokemon is way more detailed.

  • Bonje@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    7 days ago

    Mini metro Mini motorways

    I may or may not have opted to ignore the stress part.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    You can check out whatever is available on F-Droid. I personally enjoy playing Freebloks once in a while, it’s a mobile version of the Blokus boardgame

    An alternative is checking out itch.io, searching with the proper tags, like puzzle, might yield decent results for your tastes.

    You can also get Cookie Clicker or play the web version

  • Benaaasaaas@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    6 days ago

    Old school RuneScape, it has free “demo” version which you can easily put a 100+ hours in. And if you really love there is a subscription model that’s kinda expensive if you bill monthly, but no other micro transactions.

  • Mini_Moonpie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    There are a lot of great suggestions here already, so I will just share Mini Review with you as a discovery tool. I like to use them because they have a lot of filters to help you find a mobile game. For example, here’s their list for free, single-player, offline games with no ads or in app purchases, sorted by highest user score. They also have an app for both Android and iOS with the same info and filtering as the site.

  • lapping6596@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    7 days ago

    Blooms TD 6 - fun tower defense game with solid progression and everything can be earned by playing what I think is a reasonable amount.

  • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    A Dance of Fire and Ice is an incredible rhythm game that you buy once and that’s it. I think there’s an expansion pack but it’s a single purchase. Whether that’s your idea of “casual” really depends on what you like. You can always play chill low difficulty levels when you need to zone out, and high difficulty levels when you want a challenge. It can get stupidly hard.

    You can try a demo online at that link. It told me webgl wasn’t supported on mobile, but it worked pretty well for me just now on firefox, even if it was a bit laggy. It should work fine on PC.

    I pirated it on PC after my kids told me about it and ended up buying it three times on Steam and twice on mobile. It’s just that good. I’ve built a custom digital drum to play it and I’m now making a custom MIDI controller, so we’ll see if that does better when connected to the game.

    The game works as well on mobile, if not better because the touchscreen is so responsive.