Questioning mobiles games

[Siyano]

I didn't know how I could title this, but basically im curious to know, like am I just not the target or just really dont understand?
I tried, uncountable number of games and most would fall on either these categories

1) The idle. I guess idle was just a very small thing back then and just slightly interesting for a few. But now, I just dont get, like you just watch animation going and press some upgrade button once in a while and that its.
1a) also since everything is a linear progression with no "end" i dont get why you would watch an ad or pay money to go "faster".

2) the gatcha rpg. At first it can be interesting but then when you can just press auto and 2x speed, then the game can just play itself.
2a) I saw a match 3 kind of rpg where just using the auto was just on average better than playing by yourself.

3) the "no effort" game. Those are the biggest and easiest to spew, I never understood how can any of those can get so easily away with tons of false positive 5 star. Game that usually have the most basic mechanics, bare minimum graphics, like the no skin grey person from the base asset, offer no challenge, as the most outrageous ads/min. Etc. Basically Shovelware..

4) and any that can fit into this and arent specifically related to one type.
Like the 1000 clones of Archero or such.
They have linear progression, which mean its get harder and harder to be more powerful, restrict how many "lives" you can, which can be as short as 20-30 min but you need to wait 5-8h to get those lives. A lot of "free" progression tied to daily/weekly and get harder and harder to complete.

And then last
5) the "build a [whatever]" like civilization or such.
The big one is mostly what I call the "wait gaming"
Build something then wait X amount of minutes to complete.

So if in a game I just watch animation going or that I need to wait 6 jours for anything, I just dont get it, what is even the point of playing the game if I dont need to do anything, have any real kind of agency or or that I can do thing for 5-10 min then have to wait 8 hours for something else?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

These aren't games that are meant to actually be played for long periods of time. They aren't interesting or engaging, they're just there to give you something to do when you're standing in line for 10 minutes at the grocery store or waiting for your starbucks order to be ready.

It doesn't matter that a game only has 10 minutes of gameplay before needing to wait 4 hours if you're only playing the game a couple of times a day when you're waiting in line for something.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I mean, if you don't like the story writing then you don't like the story writing I guess. There's also the bit where you can do personal challenges or meme builds for fun. Or you're just a fan of the franchise or whatever.

Or you just like puzzle games and/or Cookie Clicker, I dunno

There's good and bad examples of all of these and yeah, going by rating is basically useless

 

[CriticalGaming]

I mean, if you don't like the story writing then you don't like the story writing I guess. There's also the bit where you can do personal challenges or meme builds for fun. Or you're just a fan of the franchise or whatever.

Or you just like puzzle games and/or Cookie Clicker, I dunno

There's good and bad examples of all of these and yeah, going by rating is basically useless

I straight up have a cookie clicker addiction, not gonna lie.

 

[Dreiko]

The only phone game I play is a gacha rpg without an auto button. I totally agree that auto completely ruins the experience, and from what I gather people who like those are into them for the char interactions and story and collection aspects, and not to play an actual rpg.


Thankfully, fate grand order doesn't have an auto button, and the gameplay has continued to progressively get more complex as time goes on too, as well as the story, which is a continuing narrative with over 300 hours worth of content at this point, all of which can be experienced as a totally f2p experience too, since the free units they pepper you with all kick ass.



Basically most phone games are crap, but there's fgo and as it just so happens it's really time-demanding too so you don't even need to play any other ones, fgo is sufficient.

 

[Siyano]

well... for me I never found almost any game that lasted more than 1 hour, in the last 5 years or so, there maybe 3-4 games.
everything else I deleted them under even 15 minutes, because there were shovelware

 

[Dreiko]

well... for me I never found almost any game that lasted more than 1 hour, in the last 5 years or so, there maybe 3-4 games.
everything else I deleted them under even 15 minutes, because there were shovelware

The low bar to entry definitely lends itself to a ton of shovelware. But like I said FGO exists and it has a ton of content and time requirements so I'm good despite that. Did you try it? Both depth and production values are great, even the early game content which was created like 6 years ago is still better than most other stuff coming out in the current day, and the latest stuff is just a normal, albeit simplistic jrpg, very nice visual quality and animations.


I guess the one issue is if you're not into the fate franchise, since a lot of the stuff in it requires some level of familiarity with the lore and main actors.

 

[Siyano]

The low bar to entry definitely lends itself to a ton of shovelware.

there just basically no quality or bar to even meet. a game can be the must stupid with the most grievous ads/min and have e-store with "bundle" for 100$ that give basically NOTHING, google/apple play doesnt care, they just take in the 30% from all those "immoral" transaction

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

well... for me I never found almost any game that lasted more than 1 hour, in the last 5 years or so, there maybe 3-4 games.
everything else I deleted them under even 15 minutes, because there were shovelware

With Mobile there's a fair degree of "You get what you pay for" with them so free games don't tend to give much but cheap pay once games are often better.

Most of these have been ported to other systems hence how I know about them and only a few I found or got recommended.

Ticket to Earth - $4.99. - A Match 3 Xcom like tactics game. I got the PC version last Christmas Sale and it's lasted me a good 60 hours. I think just playing the story would likely take about 30 hours.

Monument Valley 1 & 2 - $3.99 & $4.99 - Puzzle games based round moving the environment around

Devil's Attorney - $4.99 - A court room RPG battler where you play a less than honest defence attorney used by some of the most shady people and it's your job to get them off a number of offences they've committed by various means such as evidence tampering of confusing witnesses.

Slayaway Camp - Available as a $2.49 with extra microtransactions likely for extra skins and episodes or Free 2 Slay version - a pretty fun sliding puzzle game with lots of 80s slasher and horror film references.

Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle - Free with in app extra episodes and skins and weapon loot boxes (entirely optional) - Basically by the same people as Slayaway Camp but they got allowed to play with the Friday the 13th Licence and while I can't speak to the phone game the PC version which is also free to play gave me a good 6 hours worth of content.

Knights of Pen and Paper +1 - $5 (I think) - it's a Pixel turn based RPG with meta stuff where you're also characters playing a D&D game so upgrading the room will change things in the game.

But yeh looking through the stores it's very much needle in a haystack to find games worth playing that don't end up kinda becoming bad later on or pay to win or something like that.

 

[Siyano]

Here are my gems:
1) Night of the full moon
A slay the spire like, with fable theme, playable for free and about 10$ now for the full version, totally worth it

2) Rogue adventure
A minimalist STS, f2p

3) breach wanderer
Yet another STS like

There were another STS like I was playing with pet like combat but sadly it got removed