Today, Android is activated on over 2.5 billion devices and holds nearly 71% of the market, making it the most widely used operating system globally. On Google Play, video games undoubtedly top the list of the most popular apps. But here’s the thing: a massive audience needs it, and it’s not always easy to separate the wheat from the chaff between the thousands of free-to-play games, cult game ports from home consoles, or small indie nuggets.
To kill time in traffic, unwind during possible spring break, or dive into great games, follow our guide: you’ll find our selection of the best free games for Android. We chose to limit the number of games to 30, so we decided on the most fun games for those who want to have fun on their Android smartphone or tablet. Don’t spend a penny.
It should be noted that this is a series of free-to-play games, so in many cases includes in-app purchases. Some of the 30 games also added ads in menus or in-game, while others didn’t, hoping players would buy items when they liked the game. All models coexist. While the temptation can usually be resisted, it won’t affect your experience and enjoyment of playing the game.
All games were tested, and several issues we encountered were mentioned. Finally, we also can’t ignore the possibility of using your Android smartphone to run more demanding games and environments: with the Nvidia GeForce Now app, you can access a vast catalog of PC games. With a (good) 4G/5G or Wi-Fi connection, you can resume graphics rendering to benefit from games that the Android ecosystem can’t access. You can delegate computing to a remote supercomputer.
Hearthstone
A few months after its appearance on PC, Hearthstone fell to the Android platform with its compelling concept and brilliant execution. With a community of millions of players, the game is a blend of strategy games and collectible card games, all based on World of Warcraft. After choosing one of the nine available classes, you can play against the AI or other players online.
Golf Battle
Because it’s fun to play alone, but sometimes it’s good to compete with others, we invite you to discover Golf Battle. This unpretentious little game will take you to virtual greens and face your friends or standout strangers in a fascinating arcade golf game. In one-on-one or up to six-player matches, you can race to see who will be the first to reach the hole.
Just for added difficulty and fun, each route has obstacles or traps to overcome, spread over 40+ terrains. As you progress, you’ll be able to unlock new clubs and balls to customize your gaming experience. To take a break between intense matches, you can also try the classic game mode, allowing you to explore different routes at your leisure.
Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius
Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius offers a very retro pixel art experience that will delight all fans of the series (especially VI), and it’s probably one of the best RPGs available for free download on Android. Whether it’s picture quality, music quality, or longevity, titles are essential and sometimes almost make us think, But, is it a mobile game?.
Using the season system adds new parts and characters to the story, and the player sometimes puts on the shoes of Rain, Lasswell, Fina, and many others to defeat his enemies. Among other things, we found the turn-based combat system to be very important to the Japanese franchise.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Tom Nook settles comfortably in your smartphone! Kawaii from Nintendo. The successor to Animal Crossing: New Leaf on 3DS and a great alternative to Animal Crossing: When you don’t have a Nintendo Switch, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the mobile version of one of the most popular franchises. In Animal Crossing, you’re free to organize your space as you see fit and make friends with whoever you want: a Nintendo-style life simulator that’s easy and time-consuming! The goal this time is to customize your campsite with items and furniture, socialize with other villagers (anthropomorphic animals), and complete daily tasks. Resources also need to be collected to restore random rewards.
Even if the game is sometimes too insistent on microtransactions (free-to-play obligations), and even if the location is more restricted than the console version, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is the perfect game to pass the time and relax.
Mario Kart Tour
The fourth mobile release of Nintendo’s catalog, after Animal Crossing, Super Mario Run, and Dr. Mario World, Mario Kart Tour is also perhaps the most anticipated. This quirky racing series has been an astonishing success, in which banana skins and turtle shells follow controlled coasting and turbo-boosting. You operate your kart with one finger, measure the skateboard, take the springboard or throw all the legendary weapons. A treat, after a while of getting used to it! Swap it for the skinny screen of a smartphone, and luckily it retains all the flavors.
The Mario Kart game has been a very successful conversion of the cult kart game, and it benefits from an excellent implementation. The selection of races is pervasive, with some new tracks and favorites from previous editions. A challenge system that updates every two weeks also offers challenges. Nintendo just had to integrate a “true” multiplayer mode to make it the ultimate version of the series! You’ll soon find a feel for console gaming, with processing intelligently adapting to your smartphone’s screen.
Badland
Released in 2013 and winning Mobile Game of the Year in the same year, Badland is an adventure game that puts you in the role of a small creature who must progress through various environments fraught with danger. Badland was a massive success with straightforward gameplay and principles, and the sublime atmosphere provided a delightful gaming experience thanks to the mesmerizing music and graphics composition.
Pokemon Go
Does it continue to recommend the Niantic game that went viral in the summer of 2016, four years after its release? Yes, more than ever. If only to complement its extraordinary togetherness and sociability, millions of players still organize in discussion groups and find themselves, really, on the pitch. But also to highlight the quality of its follow-up through regular updates to enrich the game experience and promote specific aspects of one-off events. What other mobile game can say that?
Hunt for Pokemon outdoors, trade with friends, conduct multiplayer raids in arenas (both ranged or invited), PvP battles around the world, parade against Team Rocket in hot air balloons, and unique evolutions or purifications with the help of objects. The humble Pokémon… Pokémon Go has been incredibly updated since its launch. Whether you’re taking it as an alibi for hyperactivity or suffering from acute mastitis, all reasons are good to indulge in it.
Alto’s Odyssey
Released in 2018, Alto’s Odyssey is the sequel to the now-famous Alto’s Adventure, a minimalist runner that blends beauty and simplicity in a light-hearted and poetic game. This sequel builds on the principles of its predecessor’s success. It takes it a step further with more polished environments and a magnificent soundtrack that carries the action at every moment.
Throughout Otto’s Odyssey, you’ll have to traverse many lands with different landscapes, enhanced in shimmering colors through low-poly art direction. Lots of challenges, secrets, and other unlockable characters will be there to ensure you play for many hours. Don’t hesitate to download this title now, and you won’t regret it.
Shadowverse
If you like Hearthstone, the Shadowverse is likely for you. If it doesn’t necessarily shine for its ingenuity in gameplay, Shadowverse stands out for its emphasis on its history. The purest tradition of collectible card games offers simple mechanics that are easy to understand, but the relative complexity becomes apparent when you drill down into the details. There are seven different campaigns to play (one for each hero) that can be fully doubled up. The art direction inspired by comics culture proved to be the most successful in order not to spoil anything.
Bleach: Brave Souls
Bleach: Brave Souls, as the name suggests, adapts Tate Kubo’s famous manga into a mobile game. Although free, this title impresses from the start with the quality of work provided by the development team. Graphically, Bleach: Brave Souls leverages the capabilities of the latest generation of phones to offer a fully licensed service. But that’s not the title’s only strength, as Bleach: Brave Souls deploys dynamic gameplay beyond its simple plastic aesthetic, thanks in large part to the hack and slash genre. Each character benefits from a very extensive skill tree, which will allow players to customize their team as they see fit for all types of situations. Whether you know bleach or not, this title will be a huge hit that will make everyone happy.
Trials Frontier
Trials Frontier is the mobile iteration of the Trials racing game series created by Red Lynx and published by Ubisoft. Like its console-release counterpart, this episode puts us in the role of a test pilot who must navigate by accurately measuring a motorcycle’s acceleration, braking, and balance, each crazier than the next.
If we can’t find all the gaming requirements of the episodes released on the classic consoles, this little Trials Frontier is still excellent. Although everything offers a reasonably high challenge, it will not fail to satisfy addicts.
Total War: Kingdom
Developed by The Creative Assembly, the Total War series has been one of the mainstays of strategy gaming since its inception. The series is comprehensive, with an ingenious combination of real-time strategy and management for the most enjoyable experience. The studio created a stripped-down version of its game more suited to the nomadic format of the Total War Battle series.
The antiquity is over (the usual setting for the main series of games), and here we find ourselves in medieval England, where the ultimate mission is to unite the kingdoms to reign supreme. During the festivities, the management of the City will unlock a whole bunch of bonuses and improvements and, of course, real-time battles. Aside from the rather impractical interface, Total War Battles: Kingdom is an excellent little strategy game to enjoy without being complicated.
Battle royale
The latest from Supercell (the studio behind Clash of Clans), Clash Royale is undoubtedly a must-see. Located at the crossroads of MOBA, tower defense, and collectible card games, this little game has everything a big game has to offer. Before each match, you must build a deck of spells and creatures that you must use on the battlefield to defeat your opponent. Once the game starts, you must wisely use the various cards in your deck to invade the opposing faction while repelling enemy attacks. This seemingly simple title hides the tactical and technical depth that propelled it into esports.
Fallout Shelter
How to accommodate games like Fallout that are ergonomically unsuitable for touchscreens on the phone? Create a completely different game by taking only the universe. That’s how Fallout Shelter was born, an excellent resource management game using the legendary code of the same name. Players must develop an atomic shelter to collect survivors, optimizing the production of various resources, population, and shelter capacity. The addictive Fallout Shelter is also demanding, as it continues to run in the player’s absence.
Dragon ball legend
Last, in the big family of Dragon Ball mobile games, Dragon Ball Saga offers a different approach than Dokkan Battle (which is still a huge success). Featuring new characters from the past fighting the entire universe, the game offers gameplay that combines card games and fighting games, with each player building a set of moves before each match.
This title is still delightful based on the free-to-play mechanics that allow you to gain action and characters. It is regularly updated with many new characters and events—more than enough to satisfy a community of players craving content related to this still-popular series.
Fire Emblem Heroes
After Pokémon Go and Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes is Nintendo’s third foray into the vast world of mobile gaming. If the first two titles elicited mixed reactions (albeit with great success), Fire Emblem Heroes managed to garner unanimous support. It has to be said that the publishers have done things very carefully for this occasion. In addition to flawless technical and graphical parts, the game presents balanced and enjoyable gameplay and a free-to-play economy mode that rewards hardworking players.
While more limited than the classic episodes, Fire Emblem Heroes offers a wealth of tactical details that will delight fans of the series and newcomers to the series. Like its console predecessors, Fire Emblem Heroes proposes to build a team of heroes here from different episodes of the saga. You’ll then have to take them through several turn-based battles and progress through several levels to tell a delightful story.
Shadowgun Legends
Developed by Madfinger Games, creators of the Dead Trigger series, Shadowgun Legends is an RPG-infused FPS that’s no different from Destiny (if you know what we mean). Belligerent aliens have invaded the world. As Shadowgun, an elite warrior representing humanity’s hope, you’ll have to load the sideboard with bullets to remind them that humans don’t let each other off.
A reasonably simple starting pitch with an excellent header hidden in it. Smooth graphics, controls perfectly adapted to mobile device support, rich single-player missions, and multiplayer (cooperative and competitive) are all in the program of this title, allowing you to smash aliens for dozens of hours.
Dofus Touch
Released in 2004, Dofus is an MMORPG created by the French company Ankama. Like many other MMOs, Dofus allows players to embody various classes of characters, which are reviewed and corrected here using Ankama sauce. Very rich, the 12-player world offers its players many possibilities, from trade to crafting, through unique ecosystem management (some species may disappear in case of intensive hunting).
In 2016, Ankama released Dofus Touch, the tablet and phone versions of its famous MMO, after a lengthy adaptation process. Precisely like the PC version, this iteration is indeed ergonomically successful, and judging by the game’s feature list, it’s not an easy task. MMO players or not, Dofus Touch, is worth checking out.
PUBG – Mobile
Is it essential to introduce PUBG? It’s been a natural wave since its release, and this battle royale has shattered all records on PC and propelled the genre forward in a big way. It must be said that the Blue Hole game has it all: an excellent competitive FPS that can be played solo or as a team, and it offers an addictive gaming experience that many have tried to emulate with varying degrees of success. Look at the number of games released over the next few months based on the same principle.
Mobile needs, PUBG clones quickly took over Google Play, offering anything from more than enough (like Rules of Survival) to a genuinely not-so-bad gaming experience. But why settle for a copy when the original is now available for free on Android? You know what to do if you want to experience the thrill of a military, Gates, or Los Lyons trip.
Bloodline 2: Revolution
Lineage is a series of MMORPGs straight out of Korea, developed by NCsoft, with its first episode dating back to 1998. An original game set 100 years before the events of the second episode of the series, and it offers all the charm of a classic MMO. So its latest attack has made its way to mobile with Lineage 2: Revolution.
So fans of the genre and fans of the series will find their accounts here, as this title will allow you to choose your race and character class, discover a gripping story, and also take part in various events such as raids, underground Cities, clan wars and other large-scale PVP games. Best of all, the title is great for mobile gaming and has gorgeous graphics.
Dragalia Lost
For several years now, Nintendo has decided to seriously attack the mobile market by releasing games inspired by some of its most significant licenses. The Japanese publisher’s nose is hollow, as Fire Emblem Heroes, Pokémon Go, and other Animal Crossing have been hugely successful among players. Among Nintendo’s latest releases, Dragalia Lost is a brand new license in partnership with CyGames, veterans of free-to-play RPGs on mobile (Rage of Bahamut and Shadowverse, that’s what they are).
The purest Japanese action RPG, Dragalia Lost, tells the story of a young prince who can transform himself into a dragon, and his companions embark on a quest to save the world from a very dark threat. Brilliant, this title is a visual feast and offers fully voiced dialogue. If it’s based on classical mobile free-to-play mechanics, it’s pretty generous and rewards its players regularly. If this kind of title doesn’t let you down, definitely try it.
Super Cat Bros
If you need a retro platformer reminiscent of Super Mario of yesteryear, Super Cat Bros is almost certainly for you. If its name suggests it’s a vulgar clone of Nintendo’s cult title, the reality is slightly different. The plumber does give way to six kittens with different abilities that will evolve into many archetypes at different levels. What variety comes based on the 50 levels given to this title.
Features delicious pixel art graphics and straightforward touch controls, making it an ideal title for little ones—best of all, super cat, bro. Occupy our dear darlings like players who miss the significant era of 8-16-bit era platformers.