Ask Lemmy

If you can handle frustration or know that a rogue-like is for you: Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Balatro, tbh I can’t confirm it’s lightweight but it’s pixel art so I imagine your phone can handle it

If you enjoy chess, I recommend Lichess

It's free, open source, no ads, you can play with or without an account, you play against bots or against people of all levels, you can use the app or you can play from the website or you can install the web app

Oh and it loads fast

Enjoy!

OK, I'll recommend you a few that are all open source, simple, free, with no ads, and should be handled by just any phone. You can find the games in f-droid between other places.

For those that are into crosswords: Forkyz

A slightly different take on sudoku style game: Gauguin

A game to place pieces removing full lines both vertically and horizontally, kinda like Tetris but pieces are not falling and you just put them wherever you want: 1010! Klooni

A tower defense game using hand drawn graphics: Anuto TD

And one I have from the play store, not open source, that is a clone of minesweeper, called... Well you can guess it: Minesweeper for android

All of those I have used on my own device and have worked great, definitely good time killers if you are into any of those kind of games.

That also don’t harvest all your data…

I have a Pixel 4a and it heats up a little playing Balatro, but all of the below it has no issues with:

Flipflop - a fun take on solitaire

Downwell - a vertical platformer

Holedown - an inverse breakout, minus the paddle

Desert Golf - a true indie classic!

Radiant - a Galaga/Space Invaders-ish shmup that's old enough to probably be lightweight these days.

anything by Kairosoft - a developer of sim management games I've been playing games from since I had a flip phone. Just find a theme you like and go crazy.

NYT games - They have more than Wordle! Connections, a word grouping game, in particular is fun, and so is Strands a themed word search. They're all updated daily for free on one app. They just lock off previous days' puzzles and the crossword. (Though they have a small quick crossword that's also fun.) It's actually discounted right now for an actual subscription

Reigns - I found this very fun. It's not for everyone. It uses Tinder's swiping to let you make decisions and try to run your kingdom. Good luck.

Prune - a puzzle that that relies on pruning your growing plant to reach the goal

80 Days - a narrative game with a decent amount of reading, as you attempt to buy, sell, and barter your way through your adventure.

Crossy Road - Frogger-inspired game with more maps and more fun.

Plague Inc - also a classic. Control a disease as you attempt to infect and destroy humanity. (This was popular before COVID.)

Burrito Bison - time your taps to launch your lucha libre across the map.

Super Mario Run - just simple enough to make you mess up sometimes. But it's not bad. I liked it.

Simon tathams puzzle pack

Any of the "colors" series from 'bart bonte' (search yellow, or orange, or blue and he should be the first to pop up, his other games are good too)

Balatro (the only one I'm not sure how light weight it is, I think it should be pretty light weight)

(As others have said, lichess)

Pythagorea

Magic research 2

Rebuild 3

Any of the "pathpix" series

Slice and dice

Unciv

A hundred more recommendations that are "okay" level of fun

These were listed yesterday

https://lemmy.world/post/23416167

Also, Andor's Trail is a huge RPG. Plenty of grind.

Three of my personal goto free options:

Nonograms are pretty simple logic puzzles in the same vein as Sudoku, but I enjoy them a lot. The app I personally use is Nonograms Katana.

Super Auto Pets is a really good, streamlined auto-battler. If you've ever played Autochess or Teamfight Tactics, its the same idea, but stripped to the down to the core principles and with a cute animal theme. Each turn you buy animals with abilities, then enter combat with another player and the animals automatically fight. Win 10 battles without running out of lives to win.

And not technically free without sailing the seas, but you should also be able to emulate gba games easily. Even if you don't like playing more precise games with the touch controls (like me) there are a few great turn based games like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem.

Get Lemuroid and go crazy on 16-bit era and GBA RPGs.

Seconding Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection. Quite a number of different puzzles, very lightweight.

All in Hole.

It really is a stupid game, but sometimes you just need occupied for a few minutes.

You slide a hole around and things fall in it. The hole gets bigger, and bigger things fall in. It's strangely satisfying.

Stardew Valley should be lightweight enough, it runs fine on my old-ish Kindle Fire.

Gubbins is a fun word game and a one time payment to unlock the ability to play more than once a day but it kinda chugs on the tablet. It's free to try it at least.

Vector Pinball (also available on f-droid) is a pretty decent pinball game. Very lightweight, free, no ads.

Also Vodobanko (not free) for a hostage rescue type game. There's a free version too if you want to try before you buy.

I'd say try out Super Auto Pets! It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you grasp the system it's very fun to come in 1-2x a week and do the weekly pack. They're also one of the most ethical mobile games I've ever seen when it comes to payments. Most of them are one-time only and actually get you a good amount of extra content. There is a monthly subscription thing, but last I checked it's basically just for cosmetics.

I like Sudoku

Super hexagon

I've had it for years through many phones,.so a modern cheap phone should run it fine. It's colourful, trippy and addictive in small doses.

Mini metro, slay the spire

2048, 10000000000

I enjoy playing Okay? .

The goal of the game is to craft the perfect trajectory, so that your ball hits all shapes on the screen.

The game is free, while allowing you to pay what you think it's worth. There are no ads, unless you want a hint.

The difficulty curve is well-shaped, however at the end some levels will leave you stuck for weeks

I like Farmrpg a lot, it’s free with no ads. The community is very friendly and supportive, so it’s a nice little nook of the internet.

Balatro

eOthello

Play Othello in your browser against people around the globe, no app install required. The website is really nicely built, very clean.

Mindustry is available in F-Droid.

Honestly I recommend looking through the entire Games section of F-Droid. There's good stuff in there like Freebloks and Chip Defense and Frozen Bubble.

Flappy Bird

https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.lonami.klooni/

If you ever played (and enjoyed) the flash game Hex Empire, you'll probably like Feudal Tactics, available on Fdroid, Play store, and itch.io

I find the Fdroid offerings dull personally... I just podcast or audiobooks instead.

But if I were to play on my phone, I normally like games that are also available on consoles. This can be Slay the Spire, Stardew Valley, and Vampire Surivors.... Vampire Survivors may slow down your phone but some of the other ones should be okay.

Theres also Peglin!!

ANUTO TD, SUPER METRO MEGA WARS (fdroid)

Suika Game The same great game for Switch, now available on mobile. Combine like fruit to evolve them into larger ones- keep going until you get watermelons. There are physics-based elements and if you overflow the play area, you lose.

Project Muse, and I'm the best in the world at it!

I discovered this game via a lemmy comment, and I feel like it's my duty to pass the addiction along: Cookie Clicker (I play on pc, but it looks to me like it'd be pretty light on mobile)

80 Days is a neat game with a cool setting. Not free though.