I haven’t had a lot of time to do much console gaming lately but I still would love to have a “go to” mobile game that I can whip out and progress a few levels or grind a few items or knock out a battle or match or two.
Interested to know what games have grabbed you and held your attention lately?
I can’t recommend Stardew Valley enough. It’s $5, but so absolutely worth it. Especially since there are no mtx, and is still getting updates, albeit a bit behind the PC version. One of the best uses of $5 on the app store imo
Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rails.
Genshin Impact successfully had my attention for over five hundred days. It’s a regularly updated game that can be played entirely F2P, and I love that concept. Anyone who claims that you have to whale to get good at the game is wrong. You just have to play the game and ignore that some Youtubers and Twitch Streamers seem to believe that fake big numbers are the only way to improve in that game. In reality, I’ve watched streamers ignore that, and instead opt to play with their favorite romantic pairing or favorite character because they just enjoy the game more that way.
Honkai Star Rails seems to be a similar concept, however it faces a dilemma where it is a turn-based game and as a result the battle mechanics, so far, have to be more carefully considered. For example, I run a defense-healer-single attack-AOE attack team. So far, I tend to die if I don’t do that. The gameplay is more simplistic than Genshin Impact, but the battles are stronger and tend to take longer. Bright side: because it was recently launched you get a bunch of free pulls! Yeah!
Honestly I found Genshin to be a very refreshing open world rpg. It’s pretty easy, low stress, and if you don’t buy into the streamer hype, very accessible cheap game.
The music is fantastic, and the world is beautiful. Cross platform also makes it a breeze to switch between my phone and ps5
I havent played Genshin but from what i have heard, Star Rail(from the same developer) is even better(though very different gameplay). Tighter story telling, amazing music(timed with in game actions) and a lot of quality of life features that dont exist in Genshin.
Having played both, Star Rail is just different. It takes a “quality over quantity” approach, so the content it has is better, but there’s not much of it. There’s maybe 20-30h of game in there right now, if you do everything. Genshin’s more like 200h.
Being a newer game, Star Rail has some QoL features Genshin doesn’t have, but they’re not the biggest difference. For me the biggest difference is that I can actually play a TB RPG like Star Rail on my phone, while I want to play something like Genshin on PC.
Chess/Lichess. Just a suggestion: There’s some apps and sites that have premium features, but: Lichess has all the features for free, no ads, is open-source and great UI. :)
I’ve heard of Lichess and have seen it recommended several times around here! I just downloaded it. I wish I was a better chess-player…I tend to do the same things over and over again and struggle with really “progressing” beyond basic moves/openers…I always end up getting crushed pretty early on.
Basically if i’m playing on my iPad it’s probably Slay the Spire. (Works on phone too, but i find it rather small).
Mindustry is my go-to when I need to kill time offline. Cross compatible with pc android and iPhone on LAN I think, I haven’t played multi-player in a long time. You could transfer save files as well. Originally a lite Factorio, last I played they added a new planet with different mechanics.
