I play Genshin Impact. It's an extremely good game. The downside is the predatory gacha, but the characters are far from essential and there's no competition.

Occidental Heroes and Pew-Pew aren't bad

Some of the only mobile games I play regularly are Unciv, Mindustry and funnily enough Wild Rift.

i think its a low barrier to entry which means the app stores are flooded with crap. i'd probably suggest avoiding mobile exclusive games by default

If you try to search the Windows Store, you’ll also get a whole bunch of terrible mobile-esque games. I think the issue is having a “Game Store” integrated into a device, that cannot morally turn away games of any kind or enforce their own prioritization. iOS pretty much needs to allow any kind of app to stay fair.

If we could have a third party App Store on phones kind of like Steam, I think perhaps they could set a bar of quality that allows genuine, meaningful $10 games to be sold there. But, that’s a sizable barrier for entry when most tinkerers that would install a store like Steam are on Windows PCs.

Templar Battleforce is solid.

Most mobile games are toss though, yes. Free mobile games, doubly so.

Almost all mobile games and apps are bad. Google Play accepts pretty much anything and is filled with trash

There’s a free game on iOS called Builderment. It’s basically Factorio without the hostile mobs. An automation game with unlimited resources so you can solely focus on optimization. I have over 500 hours in my current world.

Commenting in here so I can try out some of the games listed because I have found very, very few games that weren't totally trash - either shit quality or an endless begging for money.

The very few that I do enjoy are Word Feud, The Kingdom Rush series, Flow Free, Block Puzzle and only a few other ones.

If you want to play mobile games but don't want to wade through the shit to find the good ones, I recommend getting Google Play Pass, it's mostly premium games (and a few standard ones with ads removed). It makes it easier to find the good games cause you just look at the play pass games. I stopped playing mobile games for years until recently when I got this. There's some classics on it too so it's been nice revisiting some games I used to play on my iPod Touch as a kid.

It's tough to find one that hooks you in but not all mobile games are bad..right I'm playing harry Potter magic awakened and it has me hooked

Yes.

I have rarely encountered a game made specifically for the mobile market to be good. There are some ports of, what I call, real games that work well on a phone. There are some open source versions of things that exist on PC that give the same experience on a phone (like OpenTTD being a nice "rip off" of roller coaster tycoon).

There are only two made for mobile games I can even really give praise to: Galaxy on Fire 2. It's as good as those kinds of quick play arcadey space games can be without going full on Elite or Star Citizen. Perfect for a phone. The other was Synapse and I don't even think you can find it anymore. It was, at the time, the only turn-based tactical game like Firaxis' X-Com games. But since both of the newer XCOM games are officially on the phone, it's not a genre devoid of good stuff.

Half the time I hear about a mobile game getting popular or is touted in these kinds of questions threads, it's something like Clash of Clans. Just crap that lets you play for like 15 minutes every 24 hours unless you start shelling out money. 😮‍💨

Get yourself GeForce now and a Bluetooth controller, you'll never go back to Android games.

Phobies is really good

My controversial opinion is that candy crush is actually brilliant, yeah they want you to buy gold but it's more fun not to. The same goes for a lot of advert funded / in app purchase games - they're fantastic mobile games if you ignore the money option.

Morrowind ports and similar aren't great mobile games, they're great games but candy crush I can pull out my pocket when I'm waiting for a bus and get totally drawn into a few rounds. Airport control is another example, draw lines to direct landing planes and avoid a crash - super simple and repetitive but its complexity grows, cut the rope likewise is a true game in my definition because you learn skills and develop your personal ability beyond just learning game mechanics. They're engaging and enjoyable with a complexity ramp and nice easy to understand ui and graphics - they're everything a mobile game should be.

There are some great horror and story games too, especially the Indy ones

Microsoft Solitaire isn't awful.

The other games it advertises though...

You can have my Word Cookies when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Highly recommend Dawncaster if you like Slay The Spire / deck builders. I think I paid $6 for it and I've probably played 40 hours or so. Just an honest to goodness straight up good game that happens to be on mobile.

No gache/gems/freemium nonsense/etc.

I would just like to share Cat Bird with all of you. An excellent mobile first platformer that shows that on screen buttons can work.

snake.io is a great little game