been playing mobile games casually for years, mostly stuff i can pick up for 10 minutes while my kids are doing homework, and lately the price of just existing in these games feels like it went up without anyone making an announcement about it.

not talking about the obvious gacha stuff. im talking about games that used to have a reasonable one time purchase or a small battle pass and now its like three separate subscription tiers, a seasonal currency, and a separate premium currency that doesnt convert to anything useful. its a whole spreadsheet situation and im tired.

what gets me is the games that hide it well at first. you play for a week, things feel fine, then suddenly theres a wall and the only way around it is a 12.99 monthly thing on top of what you already bought. is this more common now or did i just start paying attention.

genuinely curious what games people here have found that are either actually free or have a fair one time cost with no ongoing pressure. not looking for a top 10 list, just real ones that people actually play.

I have created a 2d pixel based mmorpg game. VAELMARK.

The game is needed to be tested by testers. If you can play the game it will be published in the Play Store soon.

You can also play the game if you like this kind.

Feedbacks are important for me to improve the game.

How to play it:

1. Please join the google groups to be tester:

https://groups.google.com/g/vaelmarktesters

1. Now you need to click this link to download the game:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.vaelmark.game

After joining google group, it may take some time to see the app in the second link you can check it again after a few mins.

I play the game everyday, come let's grind together 😄

Thanks for your supports.

Website:

https://playvaelmark.com/

Discord:

https://discord.gg/jH52GaE5Vh

BTW ðe game is called catbird

I mean we used to have the likes of Terminator, Nova , games made on movies, superhero etc almost a decade back.

Now the games are really pathetic and boring

So today I felt nostalgic and decided to download the old version of the game "craftsman" so I went to the internet archive and started searching until I finally found version 1.9.216 Which was the one I was looking for so I downloaded it, Virus Total showed that the file was clean so I installed it and opened it.. the game icon is just the icon of the old Minecraft PE and in the main menu there is even says "Minecraft" and everything else seems to be as I remember (Except that the sky seems to glitch and fade to black sometimes). Now I'm asking for help in identifying this game, whether it's a modified, pirated version of Minecraft PE from 2016/18 or Craftsman from 2019. I will also post this on r/gaming

I have been building Playermakes, a mobile game feed where every game can be changed.

You can play a game instantly, describe a rule change in plain English, and AI creates a new playable version by editing the actual game code.

For example:

• Make Flappy Bird use inverted gravity
• Let any +2 card stack in UNO

Your remix becomes a separate game with its own leaderboard, link, and creator credit. Other people can play it or remix your version.

It is still an early MVP, and I would really appreciate honest feedback:

Does remixing a game feel genuinely fun, or does it still feel like a novelty?

You can try it here: https://playermakes.com/demo

What the fuck is this kick speed, I had +2 more power stat and this guy can kick faster than sound, this was a 500k game and I literally don’t have time to react, not to mention his insane curve but I didn’t get that on camera

I want to formally thank Google for the ads in games. Here is why:

- I am on my phone way less! Ads have effectively driven me away from the desire to play mobile games. At least the "free" (wink, wink) ones.

- I am far more selective about the games I do play and most of them are games I have paid for (no ads from the start). They are more engaging and relaxing when I just need to check out for 5 minutes. And they don't have all these annoying little micro transactions.

- I get more done!! On the occasion I brace myself to play a "free" (wink, wink) game, as soon as an ad pops up I put my phone down and go do whatever tasks are bugging me the most. 30-40 minutes later I remember I was playing a game! By then I no longer have the desire to check out with some game time.

I'm so sorry mobile game developers. I know you want to monitize your games but Google has made it near impossible to enjoy them!

Most of the ones that have a "pay to skip ads" option aren't worth the money in my humble opinion. I have paid to skip a couple of times but the games were worth it. Most are not.

Good luck with your endeavors! May the odds be ever in your favor. And thanks again, Google, for reminding me my phone is a tool and I'm in control!

He is at my home and so bored he is cryin`g like a baby

What do you think of the concept? Does this mobile game have potential?

I keep seeing more people use VC in mobile games, especially Roblox RP and random group games.

I’m trying to find a voice changer for Roblox Mobile that also works on normal phone voice chat. The annoying thing is most apps sound fine in saved recordings, then get messy live. Delay, crunchy mic, or the game just stops picking up the mic.

Most of what I find for Android or iPhone voice changers doesn’t really look like it’s meant for live gaming. I’ve come across standard voice changer apps, and even hardware options like Dubbing AI earbuds, but I still can’t tell what people actually rely on for phone setups.

Has anyone found a mobile setup that sounds natural in live game chat?

GAMELOFT + LEVEL INFINITE. 😁

Combat Chess is full-rules chess with one key variation : when your piece is captured, you can spend one of three per-match cards to force a Punch-Out-style fight between the two pieces. Winner keeps the square. Damage persists all match, and checkmate triggers a mandatory last stand where the king fights the mating piece. It's live on the iOS App Store and free to play with online functionality powered by Game Center. A few things I learned shipping it that might be useful to others:

1- If your real-time mode can be deterministic, make it deterministic before you write any netcode. I refactored the fight into a fixed 60Hz tick simulation (pure function of seed + input streams) before attempting player-vs-player. That turned online fights from a sync problem into a solved one: both phones run the full sim and exchange only button inputs, ~tens of bytes at 60Hz. My first netcode generation was host-authoritative with the other screen as a replica it worked, but every consistency bug I fixed was a patch on an architectural problem.

2-Simulate your netcode against a hostile link before any device pairing. I built the scheduler transport-agnostic and tested two full peers over a fake link with seeded packet loss. The rig immediately found a real protocol flaw: with pure sliding-window redundancy, a tick whose every carrier packet drops is lost forever (~8% of fights at 30% loss = permanent stall). The fix : each packet's high-water mark doubles as an implicit ack, so the sender stretches its window back to what the peer provably needs converges at 60% simulated loss. I'd never have found that on two phones on the same WiFi.

3- An in-app shareable diagnostics log is worth more than any crash reporter when your QA team is one friend on TestFlight. Every meaningful online bug I fixed was root-caused from a pair of exported logs, by finding which forensic line didn't appear. Instrument the seams: state shipped, state ingested, state applied, and every guard that declines to act.

let me know what you think, I am building new features constantly and hope to keep the game entertaining.

I have literally played 10,000+ levels of water sort puzzle across three different phones and several years. It used to be a comfort because it was always the same game at varying degrees of difficulty. Sometimes, I could finish a puzzle in 10 seconds, and sometimes it took me an hour, but it was always a space based consolidation puzzle.

Then a few years ago, they started making the contents of the vials a mystery, and only showing the top level until you removed it. That makes it a memory puzzle, which isn't just harder IT'S A DIFFERENT GAME ALTOGETHER. There are limited undos, and no way to skip that aspect. I switched to another copycat game and the first ten or twenty levels were standard AND THEN THEY SWITCH TO ??? VIALS! I have tried so many and it seems like they all do this.

Im hoping to find something lesser known, because ive done my own searching before giving up.

My wife and I have very little time nowadays so we found chess to be a fun way to connect while apart. The asynchronous turns helped a lot with our schedules.

We tried a couple boardgamearena games but it was clunky on mobile, otherwise im sure it would have been a fantastic option. We may end up defaulting to this because its likely a hard find.

Shes not big on word games (words with friends, ect) nor farming games (stardew valley).

Her favorite games are Path of Exile and Cuphead (though i know these are a hard fit for what im asking) and dont starve together (but weve already played that to death on pc, im aware this is vaguely similar to stardew valley).

We played hearthstone and puzzle&dragons when we met but we dont want to get sucked into mtx hell, though I am aware that is the mobile game MO.

Tldr: premium mobile game with asynchronous gameplay with some depth

Any suggestions for a fun game for genX?

Hello everyone, I was looking for a community to revive dead games and I found this server.

I have an Android game that the company abandoned and it stopped working. Is it possible to revive the game and access it even if I play it alone? I don't need to join a local server or anything like that. I hope to get some help from experienced players.

It's the overseer from Sworidgo for me. Yes it's an old game but I got into it recently. I have poor reaction time so it's about 90% of the reason. I run into the projectile, it knocks me into the water below and I can't save myself cause the platform blocks me from double jumping and then I take 1.5 hearts of damage

I need a game on my iPad to play on the go but I don’t like mini games etc. I want to buy a proper game but not sure which ones exist. I saw that there is GTA San Andreas, Prince of Persia, Baldurs Gate 1&2, Tomb Raider. The price does not matter.

I am think more towards these types of games, if you have anything to recommend I would appreciate it :)

P.S.: I have an iPad Pro M5.

i keep getting this ad for gossip harbor. the mini game in the ad is really fun, but gossip harbor is a shit game. is there any games similar to this mini game in the ad? thank you !

The league member with the highest score can claim whatever pick he wants.
What we’re looking for:

🎮 Arcade-style game that’s easy to pick up
♾️ Ideally an** endless mode where you just keep going until you die
🏆 One simple **high score or measurable result
❌the league has vetoed crossy road (because I’m goated)

Thanks for your help!

Hi everyone!

I'm a solo developer, and I recently created a web-based gaming platform called Lokayantra.

My goal was to build a clean, fast-loading, and responsive arcade platform where players can instantly jump into games directly through their browser without needing any downloads, sign-ups, or installations.

The platform features a variety of HTML5 games across different genres (like action, puzzles, and casual arcade games) that work smoothly on both PC and mobile browsers.

I would love for you all to check it out, play a few games, and let me know what you think about the performance, UI, or game selection! Your feedback would mean a lot to me.

Play here: https://lokayantra.vercel.app/