Occidental Heroes and Pew-Pew aren't bad

I think perspective is key here. Setting aside the low barrier of entry that can't possible keep the truly dreadful garbage out, on mobile you're super limited on your input method (touch screen and not so great motion controls). This tends leads to devs gravitating towards the sort of genres that were historically plagued with low quality shovel-ware on platforms like the Wii. As others have said, true gems exist, although I'd argue that the best of the best do tend to ports from more capable platforms. Titles like Dicey Dungeons, Slay the Spire, and others along those lines have rich play mechanics underneath of the simple touch interface. It really all depends on how how far you want to dig, and how deep of an experience you want (there are hundreds of good enough match 3 games if that's your jam).

If you want to play mobile games but don't want to wade through the shit to find the good ones, I recommend getting Google Play Pass, it's mostly premium games (and a few standard ones with ads removed). It makes it easier to find the good games cause you just look at the play pass games. I stopped playing mobile games for years until recently when I got this. There's some classics on it too so it's been nice revisiting some games I used to play on my iPod Touch as a kid.

Try Shattered Pixel Dungeon and you wont need other games..its free, too (for non-ios)

There are a couple good ones out there, but you wont find them in the Play Store, one example might be Morrowind, witch runs in Android nowerdays, with decenz Internet Steam Link ist also something to consider

snake.io is a great little game

Get yourself GeForce now and a Bluetooth controller, you'll never go back to Android games.

• Stranger things 1984
• Hitman Go
• Lara Croft Go

No, you se-

Almost

Yes.

Yes they are.

Stay away from them on the whole, don't even bother discovering games through lists of mobile titles. Disregard any list that shows games that were not made mobile-first as a counter-example, those miss the point of the question.

If you are into racing games, I can recommend these confidently:

• Rush Rally 3
• GRID Autosport

Both are quite challenging.

The best mobile games tend to be ports. Stick Ranger is a good example.

You can have my Word Cookies when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Almost all mobile games and apps are bad. Google Play accepts pretty much anything and is filled with trash

Phobies is really good

My controversial opinion is that candy crush is actually brilliant, yeah they want you to buy gold but it's more fun not to. The same goes for a lot of advert funded / in app purchase games - they're fantastic mobile games if you ignore the money option.

Morrowind ports and similar aren't great mobile games, they're great games but candy crush I can pull out my pocket when I'm waiting for a bus and get totally drawn into a few rounds. Airport control is another example, draw lines to direct landing planes and avoid a crash - super simple and repetitive but its complexity grows, cut the rope likewise is a true game in my definition because you learn skills and develop your personal ability beyond just learning game mechanics. They're engaging and enjoyable with a complexity ramp and nice easy to understand ui and graphics - they're everything a mobile game should be.

There are some great horror and story games too, especially the Indy ones

I would say that most are subpar. If you are looking for a recommendation then I've been playing Orna (search on the play store) forever now and it's a great time. As hardcore or casual as you like with an overall great community and a developer that is active and engages with us.

I would just like to share Cat Bird with all of you. An excellent mobile first platformer that shows that on screen buttons can work.