Looking for games for my friend. She’s mostly looking for a casual timewaster for a bit of enjoyable escapism. She historically liked some of the “merge games” where it’s about merging icons on a grid, and a couple of the more traditional idle games but its so hard to find any without summy practices like dark patterns and abusive monitization.

So, what are some good casual mobile games? Ideally, the sort of thing your grandma could enjoy, but without the scummy practices that are widespread.

Edit: I’m looking for more “pure” casual games, rather than ones that are primarily puzzle or arcade games. Something more akin to Cookie Clicker, those old shovelware hidden object games, or Bejeweled’s zen mode rather than Tetris or Brickbreaker.

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    2 days ago

    There’s less, but still some great ones.

    Since you asked for non-predatory games, I still recommend spending some time searching F-Droid. It’s the only place I find most non-predatory mobile games.

    On f-droid, I would try out:

    • Burger Party
    • Breakout 71
    • Duck Run
    • Gurgle (Wordle)
    • Gridle (Wordle variant)
    • Luanti
    • SuperTuxKart

    And on Google Play or Aurora, check out (paid, but nice if they haven’t enshitified yet):

    • Mini Motor X
    • You Must Build A Boat
    • Ridiculous Fishing