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Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#101

Post by capableweb »

NickC25 wrote: post #2

I don't really play mobile games. The one exception I have is chess. LiChess is a fantastic free app that has standard chess and a half a dozen different variations. Even has an offline mode where you can play the computer or play against someone locally on the same device. The problem with mobile gaming today is that it's such a cash cow that everyone has jumped on the lootboxes/microtransactions bandwagon. If you w…

> If you want no ads and high quality but want to play games on the go, buy a Switch.

Hardly comparable to a device you already own and also most likely always have with you. It's not a solution for many to carry a dedicated gaming device with them always, just in case they have 15 minutes they wanna play a small game.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#102

Post by muzani »

NickC25 wrote: post #2

I don't really play mobile games. The one exception I have is chess. LiChess is a fantastic free app that has standard chess and a half a dozen different variations. Even has an offline mode where you can play the computer or play against someone locally on the same device. The problem with mobile gaming today is that it's such a cash cow that everyone has jumped on the lootboxes/microtransactions bandwagon. If you w…

Switch is a bit too much commitment. Mobile is too casual and becomes pay to win. I wish there was a middle ground, somewhere that PC games reside. It might just be the Steam Deck.

I want to play games for maybe 3-13 hours. There's a sweet spot with say, Kairosoft games, but mobile has long left this zone.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#103

Post by muzani »

I like idle games and I think something like r/incremental_games have been an excellent source for it. Since Reddit is dying, a lot of the community have moved to Discord.

There's definitely demand for a curation site; I wonder why we haven't really seen any. Maybe the kind of people who would write articles ended up streaming? Game reviews were definitely a thing back when I was a kid.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#105

Post by warpspin »

If you're into 90ies style economic simulations, with a nice retro look also, look for Kairosoft games: https://apps.apple.com/mt/developer/kairosoft-co-ltd/id38147... https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=771063777790482528...

I especially liked their earlier games: Game Dev Story, Grand Prix Story, Dungeon Village

Replayability is limited after a while, but you will have fun for a couple of hours.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#106

Post by poetril »

All of my favorite high quality mobile games are desktop games that got ported. The ones I play the most are [1]Baba is you, [2]Into the Breach (requires a Netflix account), [3]20 Minutes Till Dawn, and [4]Vampire Survivors. Granted I'm not a mobile power gamer by any means, I usually only pull these out when forced to wait an extended period of time for something.

1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/baba-is-you/id1517281887?platf...

2: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/into-the-breach/id1616542180

3: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/20-minutes-till-dawn/id1635123...

4: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vampire-survivors/id6444525702

Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#107

Post by toast0 »

throw9away6 wrote: post #83
TillE wrote: post #27

There are a handful of mobile ports of desktop games which are fine, like Hearthstone if you're into that. It plays ok on a phone. But mostly they don't exist. And I'm convinced the root cause is that a tiny touchscreen is an awful medium for nontrivial games. You can make a tiny screen work with a controller, and you can make other types of games with a big touchscreen where you can present lots of information, but…

It’s not the screen there were plenty of great games for the gba gbc and DS all had tiny screens

All of those systems have buttons. The DS etc touch screen is different because you (often) use a stylus and there's less of the effect where your finger obscures the thing you're pointing at.

The Xperia Play would probably be ok for gaming, although I didn't own one. I think the N-Gage was too much of a compromise, but I didn't own one of those either.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#108

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

chaxor wrote: post #41

I think some of the best games I've found on the phone have been termux and connectbot. It's really fun to try to chain together as many jump boxes as possible and minimize latency or example. My lowest score is 100ms latency for 17 jump boxes that travel across the circumference of the Earth's equator a couple times. It's fun to try out different crypto algorithms or different ssh programs, etc, but it would be nice…

Crossing the earth’s circumference a couple of times in 100ms is physically impossible

Re: Ask HN: How do you find high quality mobile games?

#110

Post by threeboy »

Two of the best mobile games I've ever played are: Total Party Kill & Heart Star. Simple platform puzzlers done very well. Pay to remove ads (if you want) and then there's a bunch of levels, you beat them and the game is done - felt a lot like a good NES/SNES game does.

Total Party Kill (iOS) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/total-party-kill/id1462538547

Heart Star (iOS) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heart-star/id1159003700

Total Party Kill (Android) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adventurei...

Heart Star (Android) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adventurei...

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