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[BigD145]

Out There is okay. Star Command never delivered on what it could have been and is largely just a couple minigames and boredom.

[IronTomato]

I forgot to mention, I played a pretty gud mobile game a couple years ago called The Blockheads, though I kinda forgot about it since, like I said, I don't usually play vidya on my phone. It comes for both iOS and Android, and it's kind of a cross between Terraria and The Sims, you qeue up actions and wait for your guy to do them while taking care of their needs. Last time I played it it seemed pretty much impossible to die, but aside from that it's okay. It is possible to go out of the app qnd do something else while you wait for the guy to finish an action, though it's not like Clash of Clans where you need to wait literally a month to upgrade a building or whatever. I don't think I waited for more than a few minutes for anything. Yes, there are microtransactions to buy Time Crystals, but they're mainly for bonuses and not for anything you'll ever really need. Plus it's possible to mine them up on your own anyway, and there are special picks you can make that multiply how many items ore gives you, which also works on Time Crystals, making them even easier to get.

So yeah, it has both of the big things which piss me off about mobile games, but both are actually used in a way which is not that bad. I had fun playing it for a while.

[Wiles]

These days pretty much the only game I play on my phone is hearthstone. It's a fun warcraft themed card game, though I'm sure most people have heard of it. I'm addicted and play way too much.

If you like MOBAs then Vainglory is a pretty fun game. I was pretty skeptical about playing that kind of game on a small phone screen but it actually looks and controls really well. It has been a while since I have played it though since it is a fairly large game and I have limited space on my phone.

Most of the other games I've played on my phone have already been mentioned in this thread (sproggiwood, pixel dungeon).

[hops]

I redownloaded Swap Heroes 2 again, which I recall that I stopped playing due to hitting a brick wall with how hard the levels get, but that in itself I suppose is a good thing since it says that the game is challenging, and there is minimal RNG involved save for perhaps certain enemies' decision to use AoE attacks/spiderwebs, and monster spawning.

[Zangi]

Been playing a pocket game called Soccer Spirits for the last few months.

Basically 11v11 match-up with cards mashing against each other for control of the ball and trying to kill the goaliescore a goal.
Korean voice acting and animu art style.  Waifu/Husbando material for everyone.

For the $$$ part, the game is generous(in-my-opinion) when it comes to acquiring the cash related currency, $$$Type1 and $$$Type2. The game also gives you plenty of chances to get the better cards, but you are at the mercy of RNG.  Obviously whaling = faster progression.

Spoiler: More Detail on $$$ (click to show/hide)

Types of cards:
Season 1; 2*, 3*, 4*, 5* and Legendary (Can be acquired normally and also via $$$Type1.   Legendary are rare, but can also be acquired(picked) using $$$Type2.)
Season 2; 4*, 5* and Legendary (Season 2 players can only be acquired by using $$$Type1.)
Various cards are also locked behind events that roll around every now and then.  Usually Season2 4* are all from events.

Direct $$$ only stuff:  They don't have a lot, but what the history so far as I know it...

1: 'Managers' which they commonly throw up, limited time, but they rotate these offers every now and then.  Spend X amount of money and get 1, spend even more money and get up to 5 more copies of them to max out the card.  These managers are not OP, pretty much non-essential.  (You can get better managers the normal way.)

2: Recently and controversially, they put up a character skin that changes one of the Season 1 Legendary cards into a female with new voice and everything.  Spend 110$ and get the skin, limited time only.

Special mention: For card progression, you don't need to do the bullshit max a card before 'evolving' or you'll gimp it forever garbage.  (This is one of my hangups about many of the shitty pocket games I've tried out.)

EDIT:

Kairosoft is king.

This.... but a few of its new games have been branching into the microtransaction you-can't-binge-on-it-anymore way.  (Salty)

[sambojin]

Fortress Legends is an enjoyable little dungeon romper, similar to The Quest for Epic Loot. It's essentially f2p (I haven't payed anything so far). By Namco Bandai, it's currently in openish beta in many places (Australia, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and plenty of other places). Graphically its got a very Diablo 1/2 vibe, and it's one of the few touchscreen action games I've played where the controls feel responsive. Online connection needed, due to the co-op nature of it.

Clash Royale is a fun little laning/strategy game based on the Clash of Clans franchise. Weird levelling/tiering system, but good to play for a quick competitive bash. I rarely play it at all these days, but it's certainly staying on my phone for when I do want to. Online only.


The rest of these don't need an online connection:

OpenTyrian has an android port, and is one of the best shoot'em ups ever. Plays surprisingly well on a phone. Laser/sonic ftw! Tap "Rear Weapon" to change it's mode, and don't use ammo-sidekicks and you'll be fine (which means no plasma storms unfortunately )

The Trese brother's stuff has been mentioned. If you don't mind paying a few dollars, Templar Assault is a pretty good Space Hulk clone to scratch your 40k itch. Star Traders is a good trader/exploration/trek-like and Heroes of Steel is a nice RPG. Very god devs these pair.

The Ur-quan Masters is a port of Star Control 2 and is available on android. Damn good game, but a bit fiddly on phone. You can cyborg your battles, but that's half the game.

FreeCiv works pretty damn well on phone. Plus, you get to start with an explorer. This makes Civilisation so much more interesting at the start that it actually feels fun. Civ is pretty good anyway, but something to do at the start (other than expand) is great.

I'm pretty sure I got freeCol to work on my phone at one point (Colonization clone). From memory it was fiddly, and not a good port of it. FreeCol is great, just not the android version of it.

FreeHeroes2 is a Heroes of Might & Magic 2 port, for all your oldschool TBS needs. There's a HoMM3 port, but I haven't tried it yet. FH2 works fine, but you've got to be extra careful in battle for correct positioning sometimes.

OpenXcom is basically awesome. Hoping that they'll re-port it once Meridian's .exe mods get into the vanilla build, because a facing indicator would be superb. Xcom is always good.

Battlestation: Harbinger is a pretty good space roguelite. It's currently half price, and the engine is quite nice. Apparently it's been fixed up a fair bit in both balance and replayability-wise, so it might be worth a look.

OpenPanzer does the Panzer General games for you, if you like WWII strategy sims. I've had it on my phone for ages, but never really played it.

The Battle for Wesnoth has an android port. It's an old rpg/strategy game for PC. Heaps of scenarios, heaps of campaigns, hex-based goodness. D/L takes a while, but worth it. Slow to play, but good if you've got a few hours to kill.


For emulation, my two go-to games are Sid Meyers' Pirates! and M.U.L.E on the Nostalgia.NES emulator. Immensely replayable, and work great on touchscreen.

For dosboxing, I use Magic Dosbox. It lets you set up touchscreen icons for things like long-click, right-click, keyboard hotkeys, etc. This makes stuff like Simcity 2000, The Incredible Machine, Lords of the Realm, and even Warcraft (barely, but you can set touch-hotkeys for creating/selecting command groups) all be quite playable on a phone. It also makes it quicker to load your games, because they're menu icons now (no command prompt needed). Also very handy for win3.1/win95 games where right-click is vital. There's a free version for one-game-setup-at-a-time for trying it out, but the paid version is worth it. Probably one of the only things worth buying on android really.

[BigD145]

MULE has an Android version.

[sambojin]

It turns out Stick Rangers does too. I just picked it up last night.

It's an action RPG where you control a party pf four characters (boxers, gladiators, mages, archers, etc), although control is a very loose term here. Pluck out of danger occasionally is probably more accurate. They sort of auto-scroll from left to right, battling enemies in various environments and collecting loot. There's a roguelite element to it, in that you keep whatever you've collected on death, but must pay a small fee to get your health back. A fair bit of equipment and party make-ups to play with, with plenty of combos to discover.

Not a great description, but the game is quite good, if a little grindy. Was a java web-game, but the port seems faithful to the original.

[MonkeyHead]

Forgot one worth mentioning.

Xenowar.

Its basically a take on the original x-com. Not overly complex, but has all of the features you would expect an x-comlike to have - tech progression, various ufos, multiple aliens, different weapons, and a punishing difficulty level where you will die a lot. Works well on a touchscreen, and there is a windows version as well as android.

[sambojin]

Just started playing Glory of Generals: Pacific War and it's quite good. A World War II TBS game set in the Pacific theatre, with tonnes of campaign missions (for all sides) and plenty of "what if" scenarios included as well (invasion of Australia/Canada by the Japanese, etc). It's on Android, but there's probably an iOS version as well.

Was good enough that I've also d/l'ed Glory of Generals HD, which is the European theatre campaign of essentially the same game. Less ships, more tanks. Yay!


It's hard, but not impossibly (or cash drivenly) so. At least at the start. Very satisfying to get a total victory, because the time limits are very tight. Hoping that levelling my basic general and financial centre is worth it, because some of the AI general's stats are godly compared to my own. You can "buy" these historic generals with ingame currency, but they're pricey, and I'm no where near that yet. Or just actually buy ingame currency with money, but I never do that if the game actually requires it for progress (which I'm hoping this one doesn't).

Contains some really cool Engrish for the tutorial and mission descriptions, but it's not too hard to work out what you're doing in it. Fairly well presented with decent sound and graphics, though I find the end turn and "undo move" icons a bit small for my liking. Then again, my phone is tiny too.

As strategic wargames go, it's not bad. Can save/load for smaller sessions, but I'll probably be plugging away at this series in big chunks for a while.
********

Only took a few hours, but I've decided it's grindy as fuck to try and get medals for upgrades. So I'll probably just hex-edit in an arbitrarily high amount. It's a good game, but I'm not going to spend hours upon hours redoing missions, or spend $8-20 on a time-waster game, just to make the content fun.

[sambojin]

Found a better series for mobile wargaming on Android.

Age of Fantasy (by the makers of Age of Strategy, ZeroTouchSystems).

While fairly simple graphically, it's quite a good game. AoF is set in a fantasy world, with humans/orcs/elves/undead battling it out, as opposed to AoS being set in a more generic "humans only" medieval setting.

Pretty standard fare, but where AoF really shines is the unit variety. Human mages slinging fireballs and casting buffs, elven druids scouting and summoning wolves, undead liches raising wave after wave of skeletons from the corpses of your deceased foes, and orcs getting buffed by their leaders and cutting down enemies with poisoned weapons as they mob them. Stuff you could never get in a real-world setting. And yes, there's dragons.

It's currently in beta, so isn't that well balanced or fully featured yet, but it shows a lot of promise. Plenty of campaigns based on fantasy licenses (and you can make your own), heaps of one-off challenge skirmishes, and a random mission generator (on lots of pre-set maps). There's also local co-op/versus and internet multiplayer, which I haven't tried yet.

((I've now tried multiplayer. It's great. It takes a while, but it is very good. I only play MP now in fact. A game takes about a week or two to finish (at about a turn a day), but it's very fun, with each race being rather unique in their play-style. I've got about 5-8 games going at once, so it's usually "my turn" on at least one of them))

The upgrade system is a little opaque, but fortunately they're not really needed to win. I just grabbed wizard's hut and stables to round out the human faction and that's about all I think I'll need. Undead are horribly OP, but they can be choke-pointed around hills, due to the expense and time of creating flyers for them with the mansion upgrade. I think. They're currently my favorite faction due to the brain-disengage factor.

((undead aren't nearly as OP as I thought. Good, but not broken. All races and units have their counters and niches against certain unit compositions))


There is a "map unlock" thing going on with in-game currency, something which I'm never a fan of, but it seems pretty lenient. As many upgrades don't seem that necessary, there's apparently plenty of gems to go around. Working out just what stuff "does" and what it needs is a bit of trial and error, especially with spells/abilities and which building gives/researches what, but that's just a documentation and UI thing.

Again, a bit of Engrish in the descriptions and help (or Spanglish this time?), but I'm sure they'll be fixed up soon. Remember to zoom in a bit when playing, it saves you fat-fingering builder spots, and building positioning is vital.

There's a bit of "helper" AI included. Build queues keep building, workers will keep working on their project, and archers will auto-fire for you if you forget to use them that turn. Not vital, but handy so that you don't completely miss several turns with your support troops. You always have to control mêlée troops, but that's so the AI doesn't kill off your guys accidentally. It's a nice little feature on bigger maps.


Anyway, the game shows huge promise. Once all the extra maps and campaigns get added in, the UI gets updated slightly, and a few balance problems are worked out, I can see it being the best TBS wargame on mobile by far. It might not have the pretty graphics of some, but if gameplay is solid and varied, then I'm fine with it. Considering it supports user-made content and scripted missions, you shouldn't ever run out of stuff to do in it.

It's currently donation-ware, so give it a go and see if you like it. It has great potential.

[hops]

I kind of wish Mobile Strike spent their money on making a game that isn't shit rather than hiring Arnold Schwartzenegger.

[sambojin]

Have a few quick random battles of Age of Fantasy to work out how the UI and building works.

It's easy, you just have to tap on the worker again, wait for the orange bricks, tap on them, then pick the building you want. Keep tapping when the building is where you want it, you can drag it to different spots adjacent to the worker if you need it somewhere else. Zoom in if necessary. Multiple builders/workers can and should be made and used on a particular project to boost your unit production, especially early on. Making 1-2 workers is rarely a dumb thing to do early on, even with high starting units. They're a resource multiplier. For: Humans-Stables/Barracks. Undead-Graveyards. Elves-Archery. Orcs-whatever. Just make the thing they don't at your town centres. Towns make everything, buildings make a couple of things. But they still make things, and that's the important part. Take towns, take more towns, but make buildings too. To make things to take more towns. And kill anyone trying to do the same. Learn this first.

Everything is a zerg rush until it isn't. Unless it's a knight/tank rush. Or archer spam rush. Or rock/scissoring anti-knight with a spearmen rush . Or a magic monkeying rush. Or rushing defense. But game turns are your economy, so get as much production as you can, each turn, early on. But realize that you might need other stuff later (boats, defenses, utility, whatever), and buildings are limited by towns, so rush those towns and buildings. So you can make tonnes of units to do all that other stuff whenever. Workers building stuff is important, but taking early towns is even more important. A balanced economy in this game means doing both.

Honestly, Protoss and Terran do the same...... Get your economy going, with a bit of exploring for free stuff/kills, and you'll be a happy little zerg'o'doom within 5-6 turns. No matter what race you play.


Then, after learning this, make up an ingame MP account and join up the Epic Team Battle. It "costs" 4 gems, but we'll win and double them. And since you'll be elves, you don't need squat. Spam quick archers, spearmen and druids, and hope for the best.

Still trying to set a GMT time for it (damn you spherical world), but yeah. Really want to try out MP for this one. It might take a while to finish though. So if anyone's up for a 2-player game at some time, give me a yell. No bets, just learning


((note: you don't both need to be online to do MP battles, it just makes it faster. Turns go quicker. Otherwise it might end up like PBEM chess. Damn interesting, but it could take months. So set a time to burst out an hour or two of turns and be happy. Turns take about 1-2mins maximum, times the number of players, even at end game. It ain't fiddly. Games go for about 20-80 turns usually, if the campaigns + MP is anything to go by. Maybe more for the Epic Team Battle, but that's why it's Epic ))

[Aqma]

I found it as well very frustrating digging through the tons of cash grab iap superficial games from the store, but after lots of digging I found the following ones which I like (maybe it helps other people looking):

Rebuild 3 - A very nice game, sort of 4x combined with a bit of colony management in which you lead a group of survivors to survive in a zombie apocalypse kind of game, take back the town, rebuild etc. I personally enjoy it a lot.

Birth of the empires - (completely free, 4x space game), this is a port of an open source game built by a community of players for PC. If you played birth of the federation, it is basically very similar as that was the original inspiration for it.

King of Dragon Pass - already mentioned, no point to discuss it again.

Terraria - minecraft meets 2d platformer, I think most people are aware of the PC version so I won't go into the details.

Pixel dungeon - a very nice roguelike, as well very touch friendly.

Out there - A resource management/exploration game. It has a very nice atmosphere and ambiance.

Cosmonautica - I just go this so can't comment a lot yet, looking at some of the reviews seems some people had some issues in the past with bugs, after an hour of play it works fine for me on my oneplus one. The gameplay is a sort of mix of different games, you have a ship, hire a crew, care for your crew, do missions in a procedural generated galaxy, trade, fight, etc. Looks quite interesting so far.

My dream come true would be for a port of Cataclysm DDA for android, but my pitch on the CDDA forum does not seem to be getting a lot of support. There does seem to be an IOS version, so for the ones with an Apple, this would be a very interesting one (did not test it as I only have android now)

[sambojin]

If there are any takers on Age of Fantasy, considering it's free, I'll set up a co-op multiplayer game vs the AI if you'd like.

No bets, no lose. 2v1 co-op, rofl-stomp the AI, just to get the hang of it.

Name a GMT time, and the race you'd like to play.

Gamename: Bay12 Learning Run
pw: dwarf

It's not set up yet, but give a message here and we'll try this whole free multiplayer thing out

I reckon a few of us should, depending on timezones and interest. Might make a whole new thread for it soon.

Anyone interested?