Google Android
Google's Android is the world's most popular mobile operating system, towering above Apple's iOS everywhere but in the USA and a handful of other countries. Commercial developers still tend to prefer Apple, as its users seem to have more disposable income, but indie and emulator developers have flocked to Android because it is much less locked down (yarr!). So it's basically PC mustard race, for phones. Speaking of which, it is possible to run it on your PC with Android x86.
Get your apps from:
- Google Play Store - Default "app store" that every 'droid phone should have
- AppBrain - An alternative way of browsing the apps available on Google Play
- UpToDown - A free apk repository
- F-Droid - A catalogue of Android free/open source apps
- Amazon Appstore - Amazon's app market offers a different paid app for free every day
- Itch.io - A collection of both free and paid Android games.
- Blackmart, Aptoide, Happy Chick, Mobilism - We won't provide the links, but you can certainly find them out there. You shameless pirate.
Some emulation apps are available at the SlideME marketplace, some are on the Google Play Store!
Important tips:
- Google Play gives a 2 hours grace period: after you buy an app, the Google Play page will display a 'refund' button. Handy if you get buyer's remorse or find your device can't handle some app well.
- Mind your hardware's limits. Don't expect an ancient device to run demanding games or emulators well. But this does not mean you need some $800 flagship; at this point, even a sub-$200 phone can be pretty solid.
- Buying unlocked phones from independent stores can be a better deal. Carrier-subsidized phones are ultimately more expensive, may have locked bootloaders, and often have added bloatware.
- Since Android is open, manufacturers are allowed (much to Google's chagrin) to add their own "touches" to the system, such as extra apps or a different interface. So, before buying, do some research and decide if you like the manufacturer's style. And even then, you can override much of the interface by installing alternative launchers.
- Yes, touch controls are a pain. But there are several Bluetooth gamepads with holders, designed specifically for smartphones, and some even for tablets. Not all games are compatible, so check this massive list (archive since site died). There are several brands of pads to choose, most famously iPega and Moga, but also Razer, Phonejoy, i-Rocks, iMpulse, GameSir, Mocute, Samsung, Nyko, Bigben, Speedlink...
- Other than smartphones and tablets, there are also many Android-based handhelds, micro-consoles, mini-PCs / TV boxes, smartwatches, and other devices.
Games
Notes:
- If a game has a free version or demo that is good enough to play without ever buying the full version, it counts as free.
- If a game is free to install, but pay-for-play, or offers little content before you have to pay to unlock the full game, it goes in the commercial list.
- If a game, either free or paid, is removed from the Play Store, it must be moved to the Delisted page.
Free games
| Screenshot | Title | Genre | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| File:Atomas Android screenshot.png | Atomas | Puzzle | Cool incremental puzzle where you must fuse elements on a wheel. Good to memorize the elements on the periodic table. |
| File:Asphalt 8 Android screenshot.png | Asphalt 8: Airborne | Racing | Over-the-top arcade racer in the same vein of Burnout. Excellent graphics that wouldn't be out of place in a regular console. Great intense gameplay and wubwub soundtrack. |
| File:Beach Buggy Blitz Android screenshot.png | Beach Buggy Blitz | Racing | Kart racer from the makers of Riptide GP. Drive around the beach collecting coins that look suspiciously like the awesome face. Graphics are detailed and crisp in standard Vector Unit fashion, and the game is optimized for Tegra 3. Originally a paid app, it is now free, so you should pick it up! |
| File:Crazy Taxi Classic Android screenshot.png | Crazy Taxi Classic | Racing | A Dreamcast classic in your pocket. Make some crazy money driving people around to the sound of Bad Religion and The Offspring. |
| File:Cut The Rope Android screenshot.png | Cut The Rope | Puzzle | Physics-based puzzle game where you cut ropes to swing a piece of candy along a level. Well-designed. |
| File:Cytus Android screenshot.png | Cytus | Rhythm | Great |
| File:Dan The Man Android screenshot.png | Dan The Man | Platformer | Cartoony arcadey 2D platformer/brawler. Punch and kick the thugs who are oppressing the peasants. |
| File:Dead Trigger Android screenshot.png | Dead Trigger | FPS | Very arcadey zombie apocalypse, very good graphics, although the levels are quite restrictive. |
| File:Deck De Dungeon Android screenshot.png | Deck De Dungeon | Dungeon Crawl / Card Game | A full featured dungeon crawler where you use a deck of cards to defeat various enemies gathering more cards along the way. One death and it's game over: time to restart! Has hundreds of cards and over a dozen characters to pick from each with their own decks and differing playstyles. Has zero microtransactions (just optional grinding!) and only one unskippable ad for the second game. |
|
Flow Free | Puzzle | Connect the color dots, but don't cross the pipes. Pretty addictive. Sort of a "cousin" to Huebrix. Has three spin-offs: Bridges (the pipes can cross at specific points), Hexes (play on a hexagonal field), and Warps (the pipes can go from one end to the other of the field). |
| File:Freedoom Android screenshot.png | Freedoom | FPS | It's Doom, only completely different but still the same. |
| File:Gridrunner Android screenshot.png | Gridrunner | Shooter | A trippy shooter from the king of trippy shooters, Jeff Minter. At first it looks like a clone of Centipede with sprites ripped from Galaga and the sound effects from Robotron, but other than the arthropod-ish enemies coming down, there are also cannons trying to zap you from above and from the side. Then the enemies start to fly in bizarre formations, you get some crazy power-ups, and suddenly you can't see shit because the screen is absolutely swamped with color-flashing bullets errywhere! The touch control is a bit clumsy, but it's still something worth seeing.
An unique trick is that holding the device in portrait position gives you the modern remake, but turning it left or right gives you the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 versions from 1982. |
| File:Horizon Chase Android screenshot.png | Horizon Chase | Racing | A fantastic arcade-style racer with beautiful graphics that mix modern and old-school. Pretty much a spiritual sequel to SNES classic Top Gear, the favorite racer of 9 out of 10 Brazilians (they even hired the same composer). |
| File:Modern Combat 5 Android screenshot.png | Modern Combat 5: Blackout | FPS | A good Cawadoody-wannabe... although clearly a step backwards after the spectacular MC4, the campaign is more segmented like Dead Trigger, but as a free game you can't really complain much. |
| File:Neko Atsume Android screenshot.png | Neko Atsume (Kitty Collector) | Simulation | Less of a game and more of a soothing distraction but addictive none the less. Set out food to lure in local cats. Take cute kitty pictures and try to collect all of the mementos left by your fuzzy friends. Has optional microtransactions or you can pay in-game money for the paid currency instead. |
| File:OpenTyrian Android screenshot.png | OpenTyrian | Shmup | Tyrian is a 1990s PC cult classic. Get in your spaceship and fight the evil corporation that wants to rule the galaxy. |
| File:Out Run Android screenshot.png | Out Run (Cannonball Engine) | Racing | Unofficial port of Sega's driving arcade classic. |
| File:PewPew Android screenshot.png | PewPew | Arcade shooter | A Geometry Wars style game with great controls, and will run on anything. Loads of fun and quite challenging. |
| File:Pixel Dungeon Android screenshot.png | Pixel Dungeon | Roguelike | Best Roguelike RPG available on Android. This is the Dark Souls of mobile roguelikes. The game is brutally difficult for beginners yet extremely addicting. You start as one of four classes that can each advance into one of two job types after you progress deeper down the dungeon, changing the way you fight enemies. You build your character by finding/upgrading weapons, armor, magic rings, magic wands, scrolls, potions and seeds. If the difficulty of the base game isn't to your liking, there are branches available to make the game easier, harder, or updated with different items or classes. |
| File:Pixel Puzzle Collection Android screenshot.png | Pixel Puzzle Collection | Puzzle | Picross-style puzzle. Upon completing a puzzle you unlock a picture based on one of the various Konami classic titles. |
| File:Puzzle And Dragons Android screenshot.png | Puzzle & Dragons | Puzzle / RPG / Monster collecting | Likely the game that started the whole free-to-play monster-catching RPG craze. You battle monsters using a match-three puzzle board, clearing orbs that match the elements of your monsters to attack. Instead of just swapping one pair at a time, for each turn you're able to drag an orb around for up to 5 seconds, and swap all the orbs on the board like a slide puzzle to set up combos.
You can catch monsters that you beat during levels, spend Magic Stones (freemium currency) to pull random rare monsters, and take on event dungeons to catch powerful boss monsters, and most of them can be evolved to stronger forms. Most every monster has a passive Leader Skill that applies to the whole team if used as the leader, and an Active Skill that takes some number of turns to charge. New dungeons and monsters are added regularly. There's also two 3DS games adapted from this, which were bundled together for their English release- Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition, and Puzzle & Dragons Z. |
| File:Real Racing 3 Android screenshot.png | Real Racing 3 | Racing | Perhaps the best-looking racer on Android, on par with Asphalt 8, only with a far more realistic tone. |
| File:Robotek HD Android screenshot.png | Robotek HD | Fighter | You're a robot that controls robots and you fight robots with robots with robotic powers. Requires in-game purchase pretty early on if you suck at the game. (which you probably will) |
| File:Sega Forever cover.jpg | Sega Forever | Various | Sega's project to offer tons of their classics for free, adding more every month. |
| File:Sonic CD Android screenshot.png | Sonic CD | Platformer | A departure from the first game, as it was made by a different team while the original one moved to America to do Sonic 2. Still widely praised for its excellent graphics and the ambitious designs: in each stage you have opportunities to go back in time and destroy Robotnik's roboticizing machine, thus assuring a cleaner, non-roboticized future. |
| File:Sonic 2 Android screenshot.png | Sonic 1 Sonic 2 |
Platformers | Excellent ports of the Blue Blur's first games. Rather than emulated, they were remade on a new engine with many improvements, such as extra character choices, widescreen, better framerate for the bonus stages, saving, leaderboars, and achievements. Only the physics are a teeny weeny bit off... just enough for the most |
| File:Sonic 4 Android screenshot.png | Sonic 4: Episode I | Platformer | Decent Sonic game that got good reviews. Physics are rather awkward in normal gameplay and outright terrible in the special stages. Level design is better than you would expect while the music is decent. It's one of the best Sonic games made recently, now on your Android phone. |
| File:Sonic 4 Episode 2 Android screenshot.png | Sonic 4: Episode II | Platformer | The follow-up to Sonic 4: Episode I. Better graphics, better physics, and better music, but a bit slower and more puzzle-focused. Sonic is now accompanied by Tails, whom he must use to make it past certain areas. This bad boy is optimized for Tegra 3, but make sure your phone/tablet is powerful enough, as even the non-Tegra version tends to have severe lag on some devices. Also features co-op mode. |
| File:Sword of Xolan Android screenshot.png | Sword of Xolan | Platformer | Pixel-style action platformer, explore, slash enemies, rescue hostages and collect treasures. |
| File:Simon Tatham Puzzles Android screenshot.png | Simon Tatham's Puzzles | Puzzle | A variety of open-source puzzle games. Great for killing time, as it can randomly generate new configurations. Non-copyright-infringing Sudoku, Kenken, and other, less newspapery games. Be sure to look in the menu, as each comes with an explanation of how to play. |
| File:Stair Dismount Android screenshot.png | Stair Dismount | CRUELTY | Drop a ragdoll down a flight of stairs with the right angle and force settings to damage it as much as possible.
I WARNED YOU BRO. I TOLD YOU DOG. |
| File:Super Androix Android screenshot.png | Super Androix | Virtual pet | It's a 100% free 2D platformer mimicking Super Mario Bros. 3; unlike SMB3, though, all the levels are randomly generated. You can use lame touchscreen controls, tilt your phone or tablet to move your character, or map your game controller or hardware keyboard to the game's functions. |
| File:SuperTuxKart Android screenshot.png | SuperTuxKart | Racing | The popular kart racing game where the racers are the mascots of various free software projects. |
| File:Zoo Keeper Battle Android screenshot.png | Zoo Keeper Battle | Puzzle | Zoo Keeper is a match-three game like Bejeweled. This free version only allows online multiplayer battles, so score like a madman in the 30 seconds per turn you're given and rage like one if your opponent takes you down in a single turn while you only got bad draws or missed the good ones under your nose. |
Commercial games
Stuff that you pay to download, or subscribe to play online.
Note: If you really don't give a fuck about the developers who made these great games, you could just google the name of the game and add apk at the end, and you'll almost always find an apk file from some site like apkmania, then just install it on your phone. Only works for games that AREN'T subscribe to play online. (Really though, if you enjoy one of these games and play it all the time, spare a few bucks and buy it from the store)
| Screenshot | Title | Genre | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| File:Arkanoid vs Space Invaders Android screenshot.png | Arkanoid vs Space Invaders | Paddle | Crossover between Taito's classic franchises, you control the Vaus and must deflect the invaders shots back at them to defeat them. While you can't die, stages are timed, so be careful. Features a ton of classic Taito characters as supports which grant special abilities. |
| File:Blazing Star Android screenshot.png | Blazing Star | Shoot 'em up | The classic arcade shooter from SNK, now on your Android device, featuring local co-op via-Bluetooth. |
| File:Cyclone 2000 Android screenshot.png | Cyclone 2000 | Shooter | Cool clone of the classic Tempest 2000. |
| File:Desert Golfing iOS screenshot.png | Desert Golfing | Sports | Extremely minimal, never ending golf game with pseudorandomly generated courses that is perfect to play whilst taking a poo. |
| File:Final Freeway 2R Android screenshot.png | Final Freeway 2R | Racing | Remember OutRun? This game's creator likely does. It absolutely drips with nostalgia for 80s arcade racers. |
| File:Game Dev Story Android screenshot.png | Game Dev Story | Time Management | Time management game where you create and manage your own video game company. Guaranteed to suck your life away. Similar games by Kairosoft like Dungeon Village, Hot Springs Story and Pocket League Story (soccer) are great as well. |
| File:Giana Sisters Android screenshot.png | Giana Sisters | Platformer | Another one of the earlier platformers on Android with native (sort of) control support and optimized for Xperia Play, based loosely on the DS and Facebook remakes of Giana Sisters. Anyone who has even heard of Giana Sisters already knows the basics. It's Super Mario Brothers, except not. Become Punk Giana to shoot fireballs and smash bricks. |
| File:GTA Vice City Android screenshot.png | Grand Theft Auto Vice City: 10th Anniversary Edition | Sandbox | One of the greatest GTA games ported to Android to celebrate the series 10th birthday. Solid port with suprisingly good controls. Has nearly all the content of the PS2 game but on your fucking phone. (Will run like shit on weak devices.) |
| JezzBall Classic | Puzzle, Arcade | It's just like the original JezzBall for Windows, only better. There's a free version, but that only lets you get up to level 3. | |
| File:Knights of Pen and Paper Android screenshot.png | Knights of Pen and Paper +1 | RPG | From the same guys who made Magicka. A neat little "retro" style RPG that plays more like a tabletop Dungeons & Dragons game. Will keep you entertained on long car rides. It's recently been optimized for tablets. |
| File:Little Stars for Little Wars Android screenshot.png | Little Stars for Little Wars 2 | Strategy, Puzzle | Great Game If you like Risk, Stratego, or Chess then this game is for you. Easy to understand game play and very difficult to beat at times. There is also a custom level generator so you can play past the main game and two-three player mode. |
| File:Meganoid Android screenshot.png | Meganoid | Platformer | Avoid the spikes and enemies, get the orange diamonds and teleport to the next stage. Pretty simple game. Unfortunately it has a metric ton of levels and no continue. You also cannot grind for many extra lives. |
| File:Modern Combat 4 Android screenshot.png | Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour | FPS | So shamelessly "inspired" by Modern Warfare that it hurts, but damn, it actually works. Very good gameplay and excellent graphics. |
| File:O2Jam U Android screenshot.png | O2JAM U | Rhythm | Oh shit nigger! Do you remember O2Jam? Of course you don't. It was a rhythm game MMO, similar to DJMAX and of course beatmania, that closed down. Now it's back on your phone! Contains most of the songs from the MMO, including everyone's favorite. The game is free, but songs are bought individually. |
| File:Oceanhorn Android screenshot.png | Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas | Action RPG | Your dad disappeared while fighting an ancient monster. Now, young boy, take his sword and go save the world! Oceanhorn may feel a little too familiar - the setting is a shameless Wind Waker clone, and the tilted perspective gives it a Landstalker-ish flavor. Regardless, it is very enjoyable. |
| File:Paper Monsters Android screenshot.png | Paper Monsters | Platformer | Simple 2D platformer with an art style similar to LittleBigPlanet. A bit like Cordy, but slower and with more focus on exploration. Tends to be compared with games such as Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong Country. Unlike Cordy, it tends to lag on older/less powerful devices. |
| File:Raiden Legacy Android screenshot.png | Raiden Legacy | Compilation, Shoot 'em up | Four-game compilation similar to Xbox 360's Raiden Fighters Aces that includes the original Raiden, Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters 2, and Raiden Fighters Jet, played vertically using touch controls. |
| File:Realistic Summer Sports Android screenshot.png | Realistic Summer Sports | Simulator | From the creator of Enviro-Bear, RSSS is the greatest and the most realistic summer sports simulator ever made. 15 different events and everything is controlled simply with one finger. Compete against your friends or computer and see if you can beat all the world records. |
| File:Realmyst Android screenshot.png | RealMyst | Adventure | You come across a book that serves as a portal to a deserted island, and as its puzzling structures lead to even more mysterious lands, you learn about a race who could turn writing into reality. Myst is a brain-melting classic of the adventure genre. |
| File:Romancing Saga 2 Android screenshot.png | Romancing SaGa 2 | RPG | Awesome remaster of the classic Super Famicom RPG, now fully in English! |
| File:Spirit HD Android screenshot.png | Spirit HD | Action | Simple but very creative action game. Defeat enemies by creating small whirlpools using your finger or stylus, but try not to crash into them. Art style is very reminiscent of Geometry Wars and can be played vertically or horizontally. Looks and plays surprisingly well even over HDMI out. |
