There are hundreds of fantastic games available for Android, and many cost nothing. Whether ad-supported or based on a ‘freemium’ model, these titles are free – and guaranteed to make your day a little less painful.
To help you find just the sort of thing you’re after, we’ve grouped the games into sections, so you can quickly grab the best platform games, endless runners, arcade games, shooters, puzzlers, strategy games, adventures, racers and sports titles.
Dungeons of Dreadlock
You might need to stifle a yawn as Dreadlock kicks off, with its ‘worthy’ intro and conventional gameplay. Your brother’s been kidnapped and you need to work through a bunch of blocky dungeons set out in a grid pattern.
But that intro has the odd humorous moment that makes you wonder if this will be something more – and you’ll know it really much is when you’re a few levels in. Bar the self-aware humour, what grabs hold are the game’s relentlessly clever, frequently inventive puzzles and a smattering of smart storytelling.
Rarely does a game that starts out feeling so familiar transform into a mobile classic, but if you’ve any interest in puzzles peppered with the odd adrenaline-fuelled real-time sequence, Dreadlock is a must.
Touchgrind Scooter
The Touchgrind series has long carved itself out a niche on mobile, giving your digits a direct way to perform extreme sports. In Touchgrind Skate, two fingers become legs that flip a skateboard around; here, you’re instead on two wheels, bombing along on a scooter at speeds that would have any onlooker making loud gulping noises.
To say the game eases you in gently would be a lie. Like its predecessors, Touchgrind Scooter demands mastery. Initially, you’ll crash often and be ‘rewarded’ with terrible scores. But commit a course to memory and learn to pull off a string of death-defying stunts and you’ll feel like a Scooting god. Just probably don’t then try somersaulting off a building in the real world – that won’t end well.
Super Cat Tales 2
This follow-up to our previous favourite Android platforming freebie somehow manages to improve on its predecessor. You get that whiff of classic platforming, directing a band of moggies through brightly coloured settings. They leap about, grab bling, avoid nasty enemies, and occasionally slide down walls with that look cats get on biting off more than they can chew.
The controls are superb – two thumbs are all you need to run (double tap), jump (leap from a platform), and wall jump (tap in the opposite direction). It’s so good, you’ll want all virtual D-pads summarily banned. But the game itself is even better, with smartly designed levels and surprising moments aplenty. (Suffice to say, Stuff is never letting the office cat near a tank again, just in case.)
Swordigo
Before all games had to be 3D by law, the 2D adventure-platformer reigned supreme. You’d scoot about a vibrant world with a suspicious number of floating platforms, nab bling, and occasionally kick the living daylights out of monsters daft enough to get in your way.
On touchscreens, these games are usually a bit rubbish, due to iffy design and even worse controls, but Swordigo bucks the trend. You get a huge magical realm of monsters to fight, treasures to find, and towns to explore. Any whiff of nostalgia is rapidly expunged as you become engrossed in the plot, give giant spiders a serious kicking, and do your best Harry Potter impersonation with the aid of enemy-troubling spells.
Drop Wizard Tower
This one’s a love letter to 1980s arcade games like Bubble Bobble. Having been locked in a dungeon, the titular and heroic wizard vows to give the bad guys a serious kicking, which means climbing the tower, duffing anyone up along the way.
But instead of traditional move/jump/fire controls, Drop Wizard Tower is an auto-runner – and an auto-blaster. Your sprinting wizard can merely be told to go left or right, and blasts magic when he lands.
Initially, this disorients, but you soon realise it’s a clever, streamlined control method for touchscreens, and it brings a freshness to this type of game. Something a bit different than you’d expect then, but still worthy enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with the games that inspired it.