Unfortunately 99% do suck ass these days. Rewind a decade and the Play Store used to have so many great games, even the free ones.

If you need decent mobile games: Space RPG series Space Courser (not sure if it still exists) Space Traders: Frontiers Mindustry (free and open source!!!) BTD5 & 6 (personally I use the Netflix editions) Terraria Stardew Valley Deadcells Wizard of Legend Villagers and Heroes (old school, small MMO cross platform with PC) Albion Online (same as above but bigger and newer) World of Goo Hyperspace Delivery Service Elder Scrolls Legends (I think it shutdown?) Polytopia Minecraft Gladiabots Pokemon Showdown (technically a web app) A whole assortment of console emulators!

Mobile games do (mostly) suck though.

A. For controls, power, and screen resolution, mobile is just the worst. If a game on mobile tries to imitate a controller, it takes up a while lot of screen space. If touch is used more like a mouse, I’ve never seen a game that needs touch specifically.

B. Mobile is a better platform for the shitty pocket casino games. When it’s impossible to leave the device at home, it’s much easier for a game to develop an addiction. That’s why mobile games like clash of clans get users paying upwards if $100,000.

Honestly the reality is mobile games just developed a horrendous development culture and incentive base.

What I find kind of baffling is why did mobile gaming manage to effectively kill pocket sized gaming systems. IE I’m seeing the positive sign of the semi-portable systems. IE Switch and steamdeck…

But the gameboys and PSPs were basically killed by mobile phones. But they offered, basically quality games… yes 4+ generations behind existing PCs and consoles. But fun complete games that were worth $20-$50 to drop, and actually get many hours of fun out of.

I miss Snake

Yeah, switch sucks. I loved my NES SNES growing up, so we bought a switch for the kids, but I hate it. I bought a Steamdeck and it’s far superior. Sad I wasted money on the Switch.