Android Games Thread

And some of my favorites for my Nexus 7:

Super Hexagon - The only controls here are touching the left and right side of the screen to move the triangle and avoid the oncoming walls. It’s exceedingly simple, but extremely difficult. Some people hate it; some people love it. Keep in mind that you will suck for quite a while, but if you stick with it you may become quite proficient and last 60+ seconds.

Ridiculous Fishing - Another easy to learn, difficult to master game. The goal is to lower your line and tilt your device left and right to avoid the fish on the way down. Once you hit a fish, or get to the bottom of your line, the line will come back up and you then tilt your device to grab as many good fish as you can. Once your lure surfaces, the fish fly into the air and you shoot them out of the sky by tapping on them. You use your earnings to buy ridiculous accessories.

Organ Trail - A post zombie apocalypse version of Oregon Trail pretty much to the letter. Brilliant game.

Terraria - Okay I actually haven’t really played this one. Like Minecraft PE, I’ve had it on my device for a long while, but I’ve just never been able to get into it at all. A lot of people adore these games though, so maybe something is just wrong with me.

Jack Lumber - A wacky, lumberjack version of Fruit Ninja. Exponentially better.

Sparkle 2 - This is the best marble shooter game I’ve found for Android. I don’t think it’s quite as good as Zuma’s Revenge for iOS, but it’s still very nice.

Castle of Illusion - A well done remake of the classic 16-bit Disney platformer. I will say the controls aren’t the greatest on the touchscreen, but it’s doable. Wait until it’s on sale.

Sonic 1, 2, and CD - If you like the original 16-bit Sonic games, these versions are outstanding. They were reworked by Christian Whitehead and the engine used gives the game a proper aspect ratio as well as 60 fps, a remastered soundtrack, and some nice extras (like being able to spindash in Sonic 1, a re-implemented hidden level in Sonic 2, a time attack mode, as well as being able to play as Sonic, Sonic & Tail, Tails, or Knuckles, et cetera).

10000000 - A fantastic RPG, match-3 mix-up. I waited on this one for a long time because I’m not a huge fan of match-3 games, but this really does live up to the hype.

Shine Runner - Basically you pilot an airboat through river courses collecting money, then when you get to your destination you use your money to buy and sell various goods, then you choose another destination and do the same thing. The goal is to buy the goods when their price is low, and sell them somewhere else when the price is high. It’s not exactly a complex economic simulation, but it looks good, runs well, controls beautifully, and is really quite fun.

Bard’s Tale - The same modern reboot available on PC. It works very well on my Nexus 7, so if you’re interested, I would say it’s definitely worth the money.

Elder Sign: Omens - A board-game adaptation based on Lovecraft mythos. I have no experience with the actual board-game, but I’ve played a couple dozen rounds on here single-player and I really enjoy it.

Out There - Kind of a choose your own adventure space game. It has a lovely comic-esque aesthetic with some nice music and some amusing random events. I’ve never even come close to winning, and I doubt I will, but I don’t regret purchasing it.

Pixel Dungeon - My go-to Roguelike on Android.

Sorcery! - Like Terraria this is critically acclaimed and has a big following. Alas, I’ve never been able to get into it.

Virtua Tennis - The classic Sega-produced title. It plays very well on my tablet, though it does register my swings as “run here” more than I like. Grumble, grumble…

Plague Inc - If you somehow haven’t played this yet—you’re in control of a disease and your mission is to wipe out humanity. As your disease spreads you get evolution points that you can put into various transmission vectors, symptoms, etc, to help you control the virulence and lethality of your bug. Wonderful game.

Rayman Jungle Run / Fiesta Run - Mobile counterparts to the amazing Rayman Origin / Legends games. They share the same beautiful aesthetic, but these are pared down auto-running platformers. They’re still very nice games, though.

Swordigo - This is one of the better mobile action-adventure platformers out there for iOS or Android.

So yeah, there are a lot of great games available for Android. Hell this isn’t even half of what I have on my device at the moment, and I just deleted a bunch. Here are just a few games I have on here that I’ve barely touched which are supposedly great as well:

Gemini Rue
Machinarium
Inferno+
R-Type
Syder Arcade
Solar 2
Bardbarian
Delver
Doom & Destiny
Pen and paper RPG
QuestLord
Ravensword 2
Shadowrun
Star Traders Elite RPG
Wayward Souls
Star Command
Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land

I have about twenty more Android games from Humble on top of that which I haven’t even installed yet.

You can also run Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Doom 3 natively on here as well thanks to some free source ports. I can attest to RTCW running beautifully at full 1920x1080 (though obviously touchscreen controls leave something to be desired).

And we haven’t even begun discussing the emulation possibilities…

Thanks for all the great suggestions! Downloading many of these as we speak. I’m heading for a remote island location for a couple of weeks, and really needed to stock up!

A few hidden gems:

Cardinal Quest 2 - I went through a ton of roguelikes for Android, and this is my favorite. Free, with no timers (IAP are basically cheats).
Auro - Similar to Hoplite, by the guy who wrote 100 Rogues
Conquest of Elysium III - Port of singleplayer PC game by the same folks who made Dominions IV
Dr Who Legacy - Orb matcher like Puzzle and Dragons, except there are no timers and the IAP is unnecessary
Xelorians - Excellent vertical shooter
Mr Jack Pocket - Tricky deduction game based on the boardgame. Killer AI
Simple Rockets - Kerbal Space Program, but in 2D
Nightmare Collective - Unique dungeon crawler
Siralim - Monster collector RPG hybrid with tons of depth. Awful interface, though
Simon Tatham’s Puzzles - Sudoku, plus a few dozen more games for people that like Sudoku. Free, no IAP
Condado - Port of San Juan cardgame. Free, no IAP
Androminion & Dominion shuffler - Port of Dominion cardgame & necessary utility. Free, no IAP
Ur-Quan Masters - Star Control II port. Free, no IAP
Dynamite Jack - Nice little stealth game by the guy who wrote Galcon. Loads of community-generated levels for when you finish the campaign
XCOM Enemy Within - not exactly a hidden gem, but somehow it’s escaped mention.

Finally, the best thing about Android gaming is the wide variety of emulators available:
DraStic - excellent DS emulator
FPse - very good PS1 emulator
PPSSPP - PSP emulator
MAME4Droid - Mame emulator
RetroArch - general purpose emulator, including SNES and NES
MegaN64 - N64
GBA.emu or My Boy - GBA
ScummVM - Scumm emulator
DosBox - DOS emulator
Candy Apple - Apple ][ emulator, sure why not it’s free
and there’s a few C64 emulators but I can’t recall the names.

Hunters: Episode One (A nice tactical TBS system with characters that level up, but it lacks a story to tie missions together).

Don’t know if there’s an Android version but the sequel/second episode has a proper campaign.

I saw Civ Rev 2 on the store the other day. Anyone taken the plunge yet? $14.99 is pretty steep.

Don’t do it. Civ rev (the original) is the same game without the prettier but slower graphics of 2.

But Civ Rev 1 isn’t on android, uness it isn’t listed on the store.

I’ve been playing with those myself, and I’ve been impressed with Classic Boy, a free frontend with open-source plug-ins for PS1, N64, GBA, GB/GBC, NES, Genesis, and Neo-Geo. Four bucks buys ad removal (menus only, not intrusive) and some convenience and control options. I’ve been impressed with it so far.

There’s also an Android verson of ePSXe from the dev team for around $6 that does a nice job with PS1 games.

If I could get final fantasy tactics to actually work well on my nexus 7, I’d be really happy. I’m just fuzzy on all the emulator/rom stuff…

I’m pleased with the GBA emulation on Android – I’ve played FFT, various Pokemons, etc. with no problems and ROMs are trivially eash to obtain.
DOSBox is also another success, and I need to eventually get it back on this new device to run MOO2 (the Nexus 7 almost could handle it, this Note Tab 8.4 should be able to).
USE ports (Amiga) are all generally poor…core functionality is there but UIs are uniformly awful

If you’re into tbs and/or board gaming, check out Magnifico, aka DaVInci’s Art of War.

Star Control 2 is on Android!? I may have to reconsider which mobile platform is superior, just based on that knowledge!

Done!

Also just got Final Fantasy Tactics up and running…I may not get any work done at all now…

Thanks for all the informative posts lately, folks. Spent some of my Amazon coins on Magnifico and 10000000 for my Nexus 7.

Whoops, I didn’t realize that, sorry. In that case I’d wait for a sale to buy civ rev 2.

Here’s your monthly reminder that Google Opinion Rewards will reliably dole out $0.10 to $0.50 1-2 times a week. I’ve probably earned a total of about $12 from it thus far and bought a few cool games for myself with that :)

Is there any way to be notified when they go on sale? I just added CR2 to my ‘wishlist’ (little bookmark icon), and then I saw X-Com Enemy Within was up there now, too (when XC launched on Android, EW wasn’t available), so I added that, too. Will Google notify me when they go on sale?

One thing about Magnifico I neglected to mention. On a Nexus 7 everything is pretty small, and if your eyesight is bad (as mine is), this can be a problem, since there’s no zoom. It’s a great game, but when I play it now I play it on my desktop using an emulator. Slitherine/Matrix has a Windows version coming out in the next couple of weeks, so you may just want to wait for that.

They never announce prices in advance, so don’t ask.

No, Google Play doesn’t alert you to a price drop. I’ve used AppSalesfor wishlist price-drop notification, and I believe AppDeals has the same functionality.

Jack Lumber is the Amazon free app of the day. Fancy that.