Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp went paid about a year ago and there are no MTX or ads anymore. You can also take a look at Epic, they offer a mobile app with giveaways of paid games just like they do on PC.

Most games on Apple Arcade is proper games.

Solomon's Keep and Solomon's Boneyard.

Keep is a traditional dungeon crawler and Boneyard is an endless wave survival game.

I honestly think Hayday is one of the best free farm games, It does have paid currency but it's not forced on you. You can watch optional Ads for a few daily random items but these are not forced, you're the one who has to click the ticket near the mail box.

Supercell make some of the best games that aren't fully scummy.

MDickie games are pretty fun.

Breakout 71. I could play for 30 seconds or 15 minutes. No ads, lots to unlock. Really like this one.

https://f-droid.org/packages/me.lecaro.breakout

Others have Mentioned Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Love that one too.

NO

Puzzle Heros rpg - this is a turn based match 3 game with diagonals and a time limit to match as many tiles as you can, this powers up your colour coded heros and you use them to defeat/harvest food based enemies to stock your food stalls. Stalls make money, money levels up heros, etc.

It's a 'reskin', albeit a very minorly changed one, of Match Quest, and the art/design is all really well done in an old school 8bit pixel style, with some really beautifully done layered scenery.

It gets a bit grindy and will take forever if you want to win every hero and level them all up to max, but as a casual game to dip into a few times a day to collect profits and loot old levels, and then spend twenty minutes or so playing levels, it's very fun.

I also recommend Flappy Dragon. It's a resin of the bird game, I think, idk I never played that one. The physics is fun and well thought out for each dragon and the dragons all have really nice designs.

Oh and it's probably been mentioned a ton on this thread already but Simon Tatham's Puzzles is a fantastic app full of puzzles that can be played offline.

Auto TD https://f-droid.org/packages/ch.logixisland.anuto

Yeah game-enjoyment is subjective. Mobile games don't require a 2-hour tutorial before full game starts so people play them. I seen people play the "ad-spam" games on bus without being bothered by the ads.

yes, if you like emulation. Just put a gamecube in there, maybe a playstation. I had fun with hoyo stuff too, but fuck the gacha mechanics.

Game Dev Story was a lot of fun.

Both KOTOR games have mobiles released that are pretty good

Space flight simulator is pretty fun

I like the board game Risk on mobile, and Lichess.

I play territorial.io and geoguessr

Vampire Survivors is great!

Mecharashi has had me kinda hooked lately. It's a mech builder with turn based squad tactics combat. It's got gacha elements but I haven't felt the need to spend any money. Free rewards have been plenty to get the pilots and mechs I want. It's also a noticeably crash free game. I often swap between apps, changing podcasts and whatnot. This makes many games I play crash or return to the login screen, but not this one. Highly recommend.

https://sudoku.coach/ is installable as a progressive web app and is probably the best sudoku app I’ve encountered. Extremely customizable and good for learning new solving techniques

If you like incremental games, the Kittens Game by bloodrizer is awesome. Free website, or like a 3 dollars one time payment for the app.

Luanti

https://gitlab.com/lecarore/breakout71

Swordigo

Infinitode - a tower defense game with a lot of meta progression

Recently I really enjoyed Acecraft which is a gatcha bullet hell with cuphead art style. Its really charming and very much skill based to a point. The only negative is this constant clicking on shit to collect all of the coin garbage which eventually made me quit it but it was fun for a while.

Lichtspeer is a nice time waster, Roundguard is a Peggle-Roguelike. For on the go I can recommend Krumit's Tale, Meteorfall, You must build a Boat, Hoplite, Shattered Pixel Dungeon , Reigns, Slay the Spire. I can also recommend Cryings Suns, Stardew Valley (of course) and Yes, your Grace.

Most are paid, but if you want to try a lot, get yourself a month of Play pass where most are included.

I Love Hue

It's a casual color puzzle game. Relaxing and minimally intrusive

On Android Nonograms katana for picross

Lichess.org for chess

Scummvm for retro adventure games, tons of other retro console and handheld emulators on the Google store and f droid.

I used to use alphacross for crosswords but last time I installed it I couldn't get the puzzle feeds I used anymore. I tried forkyz but it's hard to find active, compatible feeds.

And for general free as in gratis entertainment Libby depending where you are, archive.org, and librivox for books and audiobooks

For paid games agent a, baldur's gate 1-2