Games

Try searching on https://www.darkpattern.games It seems like a vast collection with reviews aimed at finding and naming healthy and unhealthy games

My recommendation l is going back to the basics: chess, especially lichess.org

You can choose a mode however you want, and it may or may not be stressful. Multiplayer with friends or random online people, choose a time between 30 seconds for a game and infinity to move.

If you don't want to play right now, you can solve tactical exercises.

Slay the Spire has a decent mobile version. Not sure about the casual part, but at least it's turn based

Mindustry is amazing, and free somehow

I liked egg inc for a while, if you're looking for clicker type games.

Other than that I can recommend

• Stardew Valley
• Peglin
• Sudoku
• Nanograms
• Dungeon Village 1 & 2

Multiple of these are paid, but I'm 100% on board with paying a small amount for an app rather than paying a multiple of that for in-game Battlepasses and whatevers.

It annoys me a lot to say this, but Netflix has some excellent games in their roster. So if you have a Netflix subscription, check those out. I personally very much enjoyed

• Storyteller
• Into the Breach

But they also have ports of some very good PC games like Spiritfarer, Terra Nil or World of Goo.

Stardew Valley and Terraria may both fit your list, although Terraria stresses me out a bit.

slay the spire has a mobile port

Pixel Dungeon: Roguelike, infinitely replayable. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watabou.pixeldungeon

Auralux: A simple real time strategy game. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wardrumstudios.auralux

2048: Simple to learn, difficult to master puzzle. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androbros.puzzle2048eng

If you like the older Pokemon games and can get the ROMs on your phone, PokeMMO is really cool. It's an emulator that turns the first 5 generations of games into an MMO where you can take the same character across each region.

There's a handful of changes to the base game, but most are small: Berry farming is changed, there's an Exp Share for EVs now, Sweet Scent is used to summon a 1v5 against wild Pokemon... There's character customization... There's some QoL stuff like shiny encounters having a sound effect and adding a confirmation box so you don't accidentally flee, and the stats page for your Pokemon is way more detailed.

Mini metro Mini motorways

I may or may not have opted to ignore the stress part.

You can check out whatever is available on F-Droid. I personally enjoy playing Freebloks once in a while, it's a mobile version of the Blokus boardgame

An alternative is checking out itch.io, searching with the proper tags, like puzzle, might yield decent results for your tastes.

You can also get Cookie Clicker or play the web version

I had nearly given up looking for good mobile games when I remembered that emulators exist. Nintendo DS games map pretty well to a smart phone, there are some games that use entirely touch controls. I'm using the MelonDS emulator and I've mostly been playing advanced wars: days of ruin and puzzle quest 2. Puzzle quest is pretty excellent and chill by the way.

Old school RuneScape, it has free "demo" version which you can easily put a 100+ hours in. And if you really love there is a subscription model that's kinda expensive if you bill monthly, but no other micro transactions.

One time purchase:

• Peglin ✨
• Luck be a landlord ✨
• Forager
• Dicey dungeons
• Dead Cells (optional DLC)
• Bloons Tower Defense 6 (out of the way IAP) ✨
• Terraria
• 20 minutes till dawn (has a non premium option with some micro transactions)

Free:

• Antimatter dimensions (long idle-ish game) ✨
• Legends of Runeterra (just play the story modes) ✨
• Team fight tactics (cosmetics only)
• Plague inc (and probably rebel inc, but I haven't played that yet) ✨
• Super Auto Pets (cosmetics and extra optional sets) ✨

Star on the ones I'd specifically recommend for casual play

There are a lot of great suggestions here already, so I will just share Mini Review with you as a discovery tool. I like to use them because they have a lot of filters to help you find a mobile game. For example, here's their list for free, single-player, offline games with no ads or in app purchases, sorted by highest user score. They also have an app for both Android and iOS with the same info and filtering as the site.

Solitaire, straight out of classic Windows (pre-advertising death throes):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.potatojam.classic.solitaire.klondike

Hoplite, classic turn based dungeon/puzzle:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magmafortress.hoplite

@PlzGivHugs Unciv, neat open-source turn-based 4X, obliviously inspired by the Civilization series

Blooms TD 6 - fun tower defense game with solid progression and everything can be earned by playing what I think is a reasonable amount.

Games I know of on Android:

• Ganz Schön Clever — Digital adaptation of a board game. It's like bingo except you roll dice and there's actual skill involved.
• Knotwords — Crosswords but instead of word clues, each region of the board indicates what letters appear there.
• Threes — 2048 was a ripoff of 1024, and 1024 was a ripoff of Threes. Threes is the OG.
• Sagrada — Digital adaptation of a board game. Build a stained glass window by rolling dice and placing them on your board in the right pattern.
• Simon Tatham's Puzzles — Big compilation of various puzzle types.
• Handshakes (by Pet Pumpkin) — "Solo co-op" sokoban puzzle where you try to get two guys to shake hands.
• inbento — Assemble lunch boxes by sliding tiles around to match the reference picture.

I use Privacy Friendly versions of Sudoku and Minesweeper on the F-Droid store. I also really enjoy Nonograms (aka Picross), and haven't found a good foss app for it, but the app "nonograms.com" has been a good experience for me. I paid like $5 for the ad free version and that's been it, nothing else.

Monument Valley and Gorogoa are both excellent and free of nonsense.

Both are available on mobile and Steam. Gorogoa also on GOG currently 70% off.

Meant to link monument valley 2: https://www.monumentvalleygame.com/mv2

Pixel dungeon, but it's not really low stress.

Wuthering Waves is Hella good. Technically it's an open world gacha game, but I played through all the storyline (the developers will be forever updating the story a la Genshin Impact), and I never spent a dime on it.

Also, I have spent money on Cooking Diary. However, I went about 3 months of daily play before I did, and it was more about me being impatient/telling myself "You got 3 months of daily play, you can drop the devs $4.99". I've played that game just about daily since Memorial Day 2023, and I've dropped $5.00 quarterly. There are regularly moments of infinite lives that exceed an hour or two, that it genuinely isn't necessary. I spend the money more as a "thanks for not making this ducking game contingent on microtransactions, making it good, and maintaining/update it."

Hoplite

2048. Though im sure that one has ads. Probably depends on what you grab from the internet, as usual.

Mobile games suck.

A Dance of Fire and Ice is an incredible rhythm game that you buy once and that's it. I think there's an expansion pack but it's a single purchase. Whether that's your idea of "casual" really depends on what you like. You can always play chill low difficulty levels when you need to zone out, and high difficulty levels when you want a challenge. It can get stupidly hard.

You can try a demo online at that link. It told me webgl wasn't supported on mobile, but it worked pretty well for me just now on firefox, even if it was a bit laggy. It should work fine on PC.

I pirated it on PC after my kids told me about it and ended up buying it three times on Steam and twice on mobile. It's just that good. I've built a custom digital drum to play it and I'm now making a custom MIDI controller, so we'll see if that does better when connected to the game.

The game works as well on mobile, if not better because the touchscreen is so responsive.

Any of the PAID games from Kairosoft. Dungeon Village, Grand Prix Story, Game Dev Story. He has since re-released all his games as f2p microtransaction junk, but the full price versions are generally really good.

Polytropia

I have clocked a lot of hours in Slice & Dice both on mobile and on PC well worth the 8 bucks even though I've paid it three times now I think. Honorable mention to Suika(Watermelon game) about 3 bucks on the Play store.

Stardew Valley has been out on Android for a while now.

In my experience the relatively small selection of the F-droid store is full of these type of games.

Troll patrol

Sudoku

Unciv

Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Pirate Solitare

..just to name a few All full versions, no ads or premuim options. Love F-droid, its a shame the selection is quite small.

You should download Mini Review

It is a currated version of the Play Store with many filters including paid/free, IAP, genres, ...

The reviews are very thorough and always include a paragraph about the "presatoriness" of IAP if any

Some good games I recommend are Alto's Adventure / Odyssey, any bejeweled game, Cell to Singularity, Idle Slayer, Monument Valley, Reigns, Sky Force Reloaded, and Stick Fight Shadow Warrior. Hopefully that's enough!