Recommend any OFFLINE Android Games with no ads?

Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Android@lemmy.world – 209 points –

Evening, all.

Looking for recommendations for any Android games that you enjoy which can be played completely offline without a data connection of any sort.

These used to be super common once upon a time, but these days it seems every single game I try just doesn't function if you are totally out of service area.

Would appreciate any tips! Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Some great suggestions in here! That will keep them busy a while. Thanks so much everyone.

110

Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Mindustry

Seconding SPD. Of all Android games, I think I've wasted the biggest part of my life on that one. An extremely well balanced and fair roguelike, even if that sounds contradictory.

I've enjoyed ports from PC games and emulation. Emulation is pretty good on android now, and that opens up a LOT of options for offline & no ads

You are absolutely correct! Only downside is it kind of sucks trying to control with onscreen controller. I suppose I'd better learn to share my bluetooth gamepad ;p

This is when Nintendo ds games and searching out games that had only stylus controls comes in handy. Stuff like Kirby Mass Attack or Warioware feel like native games. If you got a Samsung with a Spen then that's a dream combo.

Got an 8BitDo controller off Amazon, you can get a little clip for it that holds your phone. Best $20 ever. Kinda heavy to be gaming on the go but in bed it's great

Pokemon is really good to emulate on phones. Very slow games!

Puzzles - no internet, no cost, no pay-to-win, no ads, no fancy UI, just classic logic puzzles!

Mindustry and Unciv are my main recommendations. If you like strategy stuff, you'll have a blast.

My goto for offline gaming is usually emulation, typically pokemon. But I can also recommend the Bart Bonte puzzle games, Vampire Survivor and Shattered Pixel Dungeon.

Fire emblem and advance wars are also great picks!

+1 for emulation, especially games you never got a chance to play before when they were new

Slay the Spire is a heavy recommendation from me, though it does have online sync it works nicely offline.

Dead Cells & Titan Quest. Both are amazing games, work totally offline, no ads.

Playing Dead Cells on mobile sounds rough. How are the controls? Love it on my Steam Deck.

I used a wireless Xbox controller always, it was great!

There are onscreen controls available, but I wasn't interested in getting used to playing that way. But people play CoD (etc) with touch controls so, it must work fine probably? For them.

I got it and it was okay, but not something I ended up staying with. When it comes to ports stuff like Starview Valley or turn based stuff is things I've felt more comfortable to play.

Or Nintendo DS games that could be played entirely with a Stylus and using an emulator like MelonDS.

If the game does not need online features, then you can make any game "ad free" with an app like "NetGuard". Just block the app from accessing the internet.

Or add 'dns.adguard-dns.com' into Private DNS in your phones settings.

Shattered pixel dungeon if you like roguelikes; it's on the play store and fdroid

Yioto is a great indie dev with lots of gems, but if particularly recommend Antiyoy.

I'd also recommend Battle for Polytopia.

I'm fairly certain both these turn based strategy games will work fine offline.

Unciv and Shattered Pixel Dungeon have been on my Phone forever. Both available on FDroid.

If you like American football, big recommend for Retro Bowl - as the name suggests, it's an old-school arcade/NES style game heavily inspired by Tecmo Bowl. Plays really well on mobile, and has a small premium charge to permanently unlock some nice extra features (e.g. roster customisation).

+1 for RB

I'm completely addicted (I'm in season 90 or so); it's my go-to when I've just got a few minutes for a game. I think it's one of the best games on mobile.

Troll Patrol. The base game is with ads but can be upgraded cheaply to a pro version with no ads. It's an excellent match-3 rogue-lite RPG. I was playing it for the last two months. Similar to You must build a boat, for example. The developer also closed his subreddit because of recent API changes. He's a good guy, You can show him some love and buy his game.

Slay the Spire is a heavy recommendation from me, though it does have online sync I'm pretty sure it works offline...

Found an old archive so I'm going to ad to the thread myself:

Alto's Adventure and Alto's Odyssey both definitely work offline, but I'm not sure about them trying to serve you advertisements.

I also used to have a considerable library of emulated games on my phone and would use a bluetooth gamepad. I should probably go back down this road I think! I'd imagine emulation has come a long way since I was mucking around with it.

DATA WING, is a great game! Really well made, easy to pick up for a few miniuits and really well scripted!

I played that like a billion years ago. I don't remember much about it now, story wise, but it was fun.

Simon Tatham's puzzle collection is my fallback game for whenever I don't have internet or am bored with whatever other game I'm playing

Have you tried looking on itch.io? I recently got a few games from there (some are hosted on the play store but not all)

Only bad thing about browsing is that 80% of the games seem to be dating sims or visual novels (which is fine if you're looking for that, but annoying if you're not)

Edit: infidhells seems really fun, but haven't had time to play much, to use all the gameplay features it's worth playing with the sound on (though it has accessibility options for playing without audio).

SuperTuxKart I guess? It lets you to play offline, although online mode and add-ons are required internet connection.

The Layton games - the DS games have been ported to Android and totally slap. As someone who never had a DS, I'm enjoying this era of the games coming to Android and being playable here.

Vampire Survivors, 20 minutes till dawn, geometry dash. Space cadet for android - available on github, super meat boy forever.

Papers Please is what I mostly play on my phone on aeroplanes (if I haven't packed the steam deck). A classic that works well on mobile

Also, Mini Metro (and the rest of the series) is great.

Pixel Dungeon or Shattered Pixel. They're roguelike dungeon explorers. The latter is a continuation of the former, which hasn't been developed for some years now.

Rusted Warfare is a great RTS. It has offline and online server hosting (never seen that on mobile before). It feels like I'm playing an RTS on GameRanger.

Can recommend Oxenfree and Kentucky Route Zero. They are tied to a Netflix subscription on mobile though (on the other hand, if you already have Netflix, they’re free).

Besides that, Monument Valley 1 and 2 are amazing games. And The Room series is also very entertaining.

I also would recommend Broken age and Life is Strange but they seem to not be on the Google Play Store anymore…

Star Traders: Frontiers. Be a space trucker/pirate/merc. Singleplayer offline space turn-based RPG Pay once only but frequent free updates. No bullshit P2W, gacha, timers etc etc.

Bonus: kill xenos scum, customize your ship load out, satisfying crew combat.

Cons: annoying RNG card minigame for spying, blockading, salvaging. Enemies esp. xenos can get very unforgiving on high difficulty setting.

The Room is a fantastic series of lovely 3D puzzle box and room games! I really enjoy them :3

The phoenix wright and danganronpa series are both on android ad free.

Shadowmatic is a great little puzzle game. It's paid but the graphics and attention to detail are incredible.

Hm, says it's incompatible with my Pixel 5. Do you know if there's a way to run it on modern Android devices?

Strange, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just a bug? If you open the reviews section on the Play Store page for the game, and check the "Show reviews for: This device model" checkbox, do you see any reviews from other Pixel 5 users there?

Hm, it does say it hasn't been updated in 3 years, I'm guessing it's just old.

Angry Birds. I bought a ad free version for like 2 bucks and it's the original angry birds with no MTX.

Every game is a no ads game with blockada :)

Just saw your other comment about traveling, my go to game is Pirates Outlaws, cost a bit money but is offline ad free and very fun. I put a lot of flight hours with it

every game is ad free is you use pi-hole

Yeah but I'm all over the adblocking front at home. This is specifically for when we travel waaay out of civilisation but my kids still want to play some games. Pretty annoying that most of them don't work at all.

Not interested in packing the starlink dish for this purpose, I go out there to disconnect, that's kind of the goal.

I don't play on mobile but I can recommend;

  • Baldur's Gate
  • Sudoku
  • Devilution X
  • RVGL
  • Moonshades

My go-to for like 5 years has been StudyGE. It's just a Geography game, but for the rare ocassions where I have nothing else to do and I don't have Internet in my phone I go to it.

There's also the trivia game Dilemo, though that is in Spanish and I think it might have some ads, it's just that it serves them so infrequently that I'm not even sure if I hallucinated them. Like I think it only serves ads when you have been playing it for long-ass sessions, and I usually only play for a few minutes, so.

Witcheye is a good version of flappy bird, as its controlled with only one finger, with extremely difficult platforming.

Supermeat boy forever, great game all around but very difficult.

There is a Cultist Simulator there. I don't know about Android port much, but it's a good game on PC

Magic survival is a great little vampire survivor clone