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
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.
I wonder if mobile version of Cataclysm-DDA is open-sourced, like the desktop one. It is the most mechanically complex zombie-survival roguelike you can probably 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That repo says that it Is no longer maintained and to check this repo instead: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)
AAAAXY
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
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.
I find Feudal Tactics to be a lot of fun.
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.
I really like Endless Sky!
It’s a PC game, but there’s an open source mod for phones on F-Droid
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
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.
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.
Breakout 71
