I’m moving away from proprietary apps and want to find open-source games on Android that are genuinely good, not just time-killers or kids’ titles.
My criteria:
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Modern feel and polished experience — something that feels like a real game, not a tech demo
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Made for adults: deep gameplay, challenge, real progression (any genre welcome — strategy, roguelike, RPG, racing, puzzle…)
I trust actual players over AI-generated lists, so: what open-source game on Android gave you the best experience, and why?
Idle Fantasy is fun but the gameplay isn’t that deep. It’s basically passive Runescape.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is your friend, then
Mindustry, its open source, free, has campaign and multiplayer mode, also available on pc. You can even support devs by buying steam version of the game
+1 to that, mindustry is tons of fun and has builds for most devices. I have personally sunk way too much time into it
Battle for Wesnoth
Hex, turn-based, fantasy game.
Tons of campaigns.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth/
Luanti (previously named minetest)
Block-builder engine, with 100s of game modes.
Unfortunately battle for wesnoth was not made for phone and plays pretty badly.
Tablet mode.
Unciv is basically Civilization 5 with pixel graphics.
There’s a part of my brain that actually prefers Unciv. There’s something very satisfying about mixing complex gameplay and simpler graphics (to me)
Yeah, same actually. The simpler graphics make it easier to understand what’s going on, I find.
And it just uses less system resources, which is good for battery life and being able to keep it running in the background.
Mindustry really had me hooked for some time. The devs call it an “automation tower defense RTS”. GPL-3.
I had to uninstall it to protect myself from losing my job after I realized I played for 8 hours in two days. This shit is addictive as hell
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is pretty great if you like graphical top-down turn-based games with procedurally generated maps.
Fuck dwarven monks and crabs as huntress lol.
SPD is great. Easy to pick up for a quick run, easy to get engrossed in. Looks great and controls are intuitive.
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Simon Tatham’s Puzzles is my long-time favourite and recently I got really hooked on Water Sort (though that one is a bit lackluster in custom game generation). I don’t know if these meet the progression or even deep gameplay requirements, but at least they are challenging and more or less polished.
Seconding Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, I’ve had a lot of fun with it
Astro Loop, roguelike shooter
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.astroloop.game
Surprisingly addictive
Yeah I’ve been playing a lot of that one lately. Sorta Vampire Survivors plus Asteroids.
SuperTuxKart
Fyi, looks like you’re best off installing via Obtainium if you want auto-updates. The FDroid version is from 2022, so it’s pretty outdated
I came here to suggest this one. Great graphics, and the karting feels good too. So many settings.
Tried this out on your recommendation and it’s a lot of fun! Thanks!
I really like Endless Sky!
It’s an open source PC game, but there’s an open source mod for phones on F-Droid.
Edit: i almost forgot the best part! Because the game play relies on text files in a certain format, the PC story mods work with the phone game!
I wonder if mobile version of Cataclysm-DDA is open-sourced, like the desktop one. It is probably the most mechanically complex zombie-survival roguelike you can find
It’s on GitHub, so I believe it is.
https://github.com/a1studmuffin/Cataclysm-DDA-Android/releases
That repo says that it Is no longer maintained and to check this repo instead:
https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA
(There are official Android releases now apparently)
I find Feudal Tactics to be a lot of fun.
Andor’s Trail is a pretty good roguelike. It goes very deep. Actually, maybe a bit too deep, I have trouble keeping track of everything that is going on! But it is certainly entertaining.
Going to give this a try.
Has excellent quirky humour, from being community built.
Also, make sure to equip some gear. Otherwise, zero combat skills.
I tried that one, but the grinding was enormous. Is the game like that, or did I do something wrong?
No, it’s pretty grindy. Well, unless I am doing it wrong too!
I just tried it. While I respect the art and the dialog was entertaining, I don’t think it fits the “modern feel and polished experience” OP is looking for. I almost completely gave up on it until I found the d-pad option and it really requires 2 handed play.
I agree a half finished game isn’t what OP is looking for, and a lot of the gameplay (especially later) revolves around finding your way through what are effectively mazes.
I play it one handed though. It’s turn based combat and when out of combat you just put your finger on the screen and it walks towards it? I didn’t even know a d-pad option existed 😅
The Fight button (I think?) was on the far upper left. So I had to move my lazy left hand AAAALL the way to my phone!
I just had to go back and check we were talking about the same game. There’s no fight button in the default control scheme, you just bump into the thing you want to fight, then a popup shows in the middle of the screen to start the fight.
Ah, I didn’t realize I could just keep bumping into them. I was looking at this Attack button thinking I had to tap that.
Oh that button! That shows after a battle has started. You can tap anywhere! Just tap tap tap on the screen and and long as it’s not a button you’re tapping on then it will attack.
Yeah. I am idiot.
Yeah, fair, The controls are a bit clumsy. I would argue that the story is quite polished though. Having a story-driven game like this is rather rare for open-source games.
Breakout 71
