The best free Android games 2018

What's better than a free game? Pretty much almost nothing. Except when it is terrible and you have wasted time in downloading and playing it. Fortunately, there are a lot of fantastic free games for Android, and here we list the best.

Whether you're interested in word games, endless runners, platform games or puzzles, here's something for you.

Click to go to the following pages to see each category or read below for our selection of the week. And check our latest selection weekly.

Free Android game of the week: A Way to Slay

A Way to Slay turns the epic and extremely bloody sword fights into a kind of turn-based puzzle. You start each fight surrounded by angry enemies with a predilection for being overwhelmed and clumsy. Press twice on any enemy and your hero will make his way before painting the red screen with his interiors.

When making a move, your opponents also have the opportunity to adjust their positions, and they are vital to keep track of. Because if you venture too close to someone, it is your insides that end up decorating the scarce landscape.

The key to victory, then, lies in discovering the combination of movements that will make you come to victory, a lonely Survivor surrounded by a sea of ​​corpses. The best, assuming you have stomach and brain for that.

The best free racing games for Android

Our favorite Android 3D racers, retro, 2D and on rails.

Disc Drivin & # 39; 2

Disc Drivin & # 39; 2 is the turn-based driving game that was probably created when someone reinvented the shuffleboard game like Mario Kart and avoided that strange trend online. for web-based multiplayer contests.

The concept of a turn-based corridor is crazy and should not work, but it really works. As you move your little disk over tracks suspended in space, the tension increases when you face your opponent. You will learn to master the shortcuts, you will compress the dangers and also how to make better use of the bonus powers granted to your small disk.

It's absurd to think that one of the best mobile brokers on Android is flipping a coin around a race track, but there we have it. Miss this at your own risk.

Asphalt 9: Legends

Asphalt 9: Legends like its predecessors, it's a decidedly nitro-happy shot, bigger than life in arcade racing. He has his belt at an insane speed, he soars regularly in the air, his car turns and turns in a way that would cause his car insurance company to tear out his policy documents with fury.

This runner also differentiates himself by simplifying the controls for the point you do not need to address. The car moves on rails, with the sliding between lanes and the timing of actions as impulses and drifts. That might seem reductive, but this does not detract from the feeling of racing, it gives you a great sense of concentration over time, and there is a manual option if you really want that.

Being an Asphalt game, there is some grinding, but this is offset by your immersion in the most extravagant and dazzling arcade race on Android.

Asphalt Xtreme: Rally Racing

Asphalt Xtreme: Rally Racing takes the asphalt off the road. He gets rid of his collection of sports cars and larger urban circuits than real life for jeeps and trucks, and a lot of mud, dirt, rocks and dirt.

Another thing is the mechanics of freemium. As it seems to be the law for an Asphalt game, the exciting races are shattered by all kinds of timers and IAP doors. But leave that aside and you'll find Xtreme an entertaining and silly addition to the series.

Fly through deserts, canyons and jungles, with your SUV flying in the air in a way that almost certainly is not covered by insurance, never really gets old And although the basics – loads of nitro; floating physics; crazy tracks: they can be familiar, only the new environments make it worthwhile to download it.

Carmageddon

Carmageddon is an explosion of the past of PC games. He disguises himself as a runner, but often feels like you're hunting prey, even if locked in a metal suit at high speed.

The free-form sands of the game are road networks in a dystopian future. The people and the cows roam merrily as the deranged drivers break into pieces. The victories are achieved by completing turns, destroying all your opponents or knocking down all the living beings in the vicinity.

In the 1990s, this was shocking to the point that Carmagedón was banned in some countries. Today, low-fidelity violence seems strange. But the ironic humor of the game survives, sitting very well next to the inflatable physics, a kind of race, and deranged policemen who try to crush you into oblivion in case you get in their way.

Asphalt 8: Airborne

Asphalt 8: Airborne is a high octane runner who took a superficial look at realism. Then he decided not to bother with such an insignificant matter, and decided that he would prefer that you throw yourself at crazy speeds under the power of the glorious nitro, who often sends your car into the air.

It's not one for Crowd simulation, then, but this runner is perfect for everyone else. The bifurcated courses larger than life (hyperrealistic shots in real-world locations) are crazy and exciting. Instead of circling around a boring circuit surrounded by gravel traps, you explode rocket launch sites and volcanoes.

There are disadvantages: the IAP and the cynical timers abound, welding a huge comedy in the style of this elegant corridor. But for a dizzying speed, barrel shots in the air and lots of laughter, this corridor is hard to beat.

Sonic Forces: Speed ​​Battle

Sonic Forces: Speed ​​Battle reimagines Sonic The Hedgehog as an automatic racer based on lanes on the screen. What probably looks a lot like Sonic Dash, but here, you fight against opposition online.

With courses full of traps and pick-ups that you can grab regularly while running, Speed ​​Battle has hints of Mario Kart about it. The races are full of tense moments as you release a ball of fire, hoping to defeat a distant leader, or you have the checkered flag in sight, but you should know that your opponents are only a fraction of a second behind .

chests with timers; multiple coins; Glacially slow rising level. But Speed ​​Battle gives a colorful and entertaining turn to the automatic racers that is fun even if you keep your wallet tightly closed.

Data Wing

Data Wing has the appearance of a runner from top to bottom, but it is much, much more than that. That does not mean that the race is not good, because it is. Guide your small triangular craft around the neon courses, moving around the lift pads and scraping the edges of the track to get some extra speed.

But there is something else at play here: an underlying narrative in which you discover that, in fact, you are transporting fragments of data, all under the eye of an artificially intelligent Mother. Initially, everything seems fine, but it soon becomes clear that the mother has some loose electrons, especially when you start to glimpse a world beyond silicon.

With perfect touch controls, varied career levels, a few hours of history and a lot of replay value, Data Wing would be a bargain for a few dollars. For free, it is absurdly generous.

One Tap Rally

This game makes for racing what automatic racers do for platform games. One Tap Rally is controlled with a single finger, pressing the screen to accelerate and releasing to brake, while your car is automatically driven. The goal is not to hit the sides of the track, because that slows you down.

Win and raise in the standings, then play with a tougher opponent and faster. In a nice touch, said opponents are recordings of real attempts of other players, classified by time.

In essence, this is a digital version of slot machine racing, then, without the slots. But the combination of speed and strategy, along with a decent range of clues, makes you forget the simplistic controls. In any case, they become a blessing, changing the focus to learning track designs and sharp times. The best.

Maximum Car

If you think that opinion games are taken a little too seriously at times, Maximum Car is a perfect antidote.

Crush the same type of car over multiple races and you can buy it at the store, using coins purchased for terrorizing other road users.

Everything feels a bit like someone has removed the Burnout, added a piece of OutRun and pushed the batch through a visual filter similar to Lego.

Along with a brainless commentator ("I have a reading age of six!") Growling at regular intervals as you use your ice cream truck to destroy an unfortunate convertible to smithereens, all this makes it a pop of properly stupid and entertaining speed that is excellent in small doses.

Splash Cars

In the world of Splash Cars, it seems that everyone is a miserable grumpy apart from you. Your world is opaque and gray, but your magical vehicle gives color to everything that comes close. The police are not happy with this and aim to end your scams based on tones, closing your car to oblivion. There is also the tiny problem of a gasoline tank that dries alarmingly fast.

Splash Cars becomes a fun game of running away from the fuzz, buzzing through the buildings of a hair, grabbing gasoline and coins leaving them carelessly about, and trying to hit a goal painted amount before time runs out. Succeed and you go to bigger and better places, with increasingly powerful cars.

The best free strategy games for Android

Our favorite table games and card games, board games and favorite Android cards.

Hearthstone

Hearthstone is a face-to-face card game that immerses you in a world populated by hunters, wizards, warriors and other types of fantasy. Players take turns trying to reduce the health of their opponent to zero, playing cards that represent minions, spells and other abilities.

This genre is often disconcerting for the newcomer, but Hearthstone is an accessible and balanced game. Although the IAPs are on the prowl, cards can be purchased with the bling won in the game, but also with real money, the veterans have shown that you can burn the leaderboards without spending a dime.

However, you choose to play, this is a game that rewards those who are in it in the long term. Be patient and learn your mechanics, and you can become a master of this fantastic world of character and chance.

The Battle of Polytopia

The Battle of Polytopia is a turn-based game similar to a stripped Civilization designed specifically for the mobile game with a thumb. Each game makes you start with a single city, whose goal is to dominate a small isometric world. Or you run to be the best in 30 turns, or victorious when you're the only tribe still standing.

Wisely, Polytopia focuses more on accessibility than on depth. The technology tree is abbreviated, short of weapons. The maps are small. Cities can be conquered, but new ones can not be found with settlers.

Each of these decisions helps the flow of the game, but despite its compact nature, Polytopia offers many strategic opportunities. This is especially true when you venture into multiplayer online mode with other people, an open mode for anyone who buys one or more additional tribes.

First Strike

First Strike is Risk with nuclear weapons. You direct a nuclear power and you set out to take control of the world. Primarily, this means launching missiles at neighbors before invading them and researching technology to prevent your enemies from turning your country into radioactive debris.

This is a cautionary game. Futuristic graphics are linked by a grim soundtrack, and readings of clinical victims appear when an important population center is destroyed. Appropriately, victory does not come with a fanfare, but the game asks: "Do you win?"

The free version contains ads that interrupt the experience a bit, but this is an intelligent strategy of land grabbing. a message that we really do not want to see a devastating first attack, or even a single nuclear missile launched in anger in the real world.

South Park: Phone Destroyer

South Park: Phone Destroyer joins the strategy in real time with the chaos of cartoons found in the popular television show. If you've played Clash Royale, it's a bit like that, only with bad words, juvenile jokes and lots of cartoon cowboys and Native Americans who shoot at each other.

If you are a fan of the program, I will appreciate the entertaining story for a player with the famous faces of the program, who send messages and occasionally call you on the phone. The battles are also pleasant: the basic elements are accessible, but there is much depth in the long term.

Freemium's usual monetization spoils things a bit, as does enforcing online wins from player to player for progression. But for the most part, you'll be shouting RESPECT MA AUTHORITAH! until all those around you demand that you stop

Brave Hand

Brave Hand is a card game that starts with a basic solitaire at its base, welds to a game of 'greater or lesser'. and dispenses with the & # 39; lower & # 39;

Your goal is to clean the table of cards, beating the top card in any given stack. The downside is that most of the cards start upside down. You can use a low card as an "explorer" that forces two cards to flip. But beyond that, it is a possibility that dictates your fortune as you immerse yourself in successive cards in a pile, hoping that one does not win.

Despite being very dependent on luck, Brave Hand is convincing. Maybe it does not dislodge the likes of Sage Solitaire from the home screen, but it should attract fans of card games that want something new.

Really Bad Chess

This game flips the chess over your head in a brilliant way, playing with the pieces instead of the board.

During your first game in Really Bad Chess, you could examine what is in front of you and quickly come to the conclusion that you have too many queens. Your opponent, on the other hand, will have a suspicious lack of decent pieces.

This is intentional. In Really Bad Chess, the capabilities of the AI ​​never change, but the pieces do. As you improve, the configuration changes.

Get really good and you'll have to face the computer with a bunch of pawns while attacking you with as many queens as possible.

Free, you also get a daily puzzle and two attempts to overcome it. An IAP of $ 2.99 / £ 2.89 unlocks the local multiplayer and removes the ads.

Train Conductor World

You can complain about trains when you are expecting a late arrival during your daily commute, but play this game and you will thank your lucky stars that You are not in Train Conductor World. Here, the trains move forward and, mostly, towards frontal collisions.

It's your job to drag temporary bridges to avoid calamity and at the same time send each train to its proper destination – it's exhausting.

Since the shutdown, Train Driver World is demanding, and in a short time it will be a kind of "flicker" and everything will break into pieces & apos; The mentality permeates. For a puzzle and action game: Flight control on the slopes, if you wish, is an attractive and exciting experience.

Sage Solitaire

Having been ruthlessly stolen by a suitor (who cynically thanked the original developer of "apo" for his "inspiration"), Sage Solitaire finally came to Android. Reconsiders the solitaire for the mobile, mainly when it is slammed into poker. The cards are removed with the hands of poker, with the additional complication that each hand must use cards from at least two different rows.

Cleaning the deck and accumulating points requires a careful strategy and a bit of luck, not just the speed with which the lower batteries are emptied. Win three times and unlock Vegas mode, where you can try your luck betting on your skills (and, in all likelihood, losing a pot of virtual money). Regardless of the way you prefer, Sage Solitaire is one of those apparently disposable casual games that manages to take hold to the point of obsession.

Clash Royale

There is always a bit of discomfort when recommending a game from a developer nestled in the freemium game, but Clash Royale manages to be very funny however a lot of money that you throw The game is more or less a combination of card collecting and strategy in real time. The cards are used to place units on a single-screen playing field, and march around the enemy units, before taking them into your opponent's towers.

Battles are short and suitable for fast moving play, and although Clash Royale is designed for online debris, it can also fine-tune its strategies against training units if it is regularly sprayed. There are the usual timers and doors for upgrades, but the game largely does a good job of getting you matched against players of fairly similar skill levels, which means it's usually an explosion and rarely a drag.

Radiant Defense

Radiant Defense is a fantastic defense tower game, with a dazzling modern look. Do all the usual tower defense things, such as increasing the strengths of your weapon and deciding the best way to stop the endless enemy in motion, with some "super weapons" to unlock and hundreds and hundreds of waves to defeat. And everything looks amazingly beautiful on a large screen device.

In this era of austerity and scrutiny, we sold our last domino game for a long time and melted our Monopoly counters for scrap.

shooting games for Android

Our favorite Android FPS titles, double-stick blasters and retro vertical scrolling shots

PewPew

PewPew is a double-shank blaster in the classic mold. He does not have time for scripts. Instead, he throws you on a ship, throws innumerable enemies in your way, instructs you to tear them to pieces and dresses up with beautiful neon vectors from the old school.

From the beginning, this is an exciting and tense game. . The sand in which you find yourself is claustrophobic and is often full of ships and projectiles. Surviving during any period of time requires mastering the controls and learning how different enemies behave.

But there is also depth here. Once you have properly perfected your shooting skills, you can face a way with giant space rocks, and a version of PewPew that completely eliminates your weapons, probably making the pilot boats really wish they had added "bring a really big gun" to your to-do list.

AZ Rockets

AZ Rockets is tracking 99 Rockets, an incredibly tough precision shooter that features small triangular ships on rails. The objective was to destroy objects while the ships advanced on a predefined path. One failure and your game ended instantly.

AZ Rockets initially looks very similar, but this time the game is just "hard": a timer has replaced "an error means the game is over". Also, your goals are now cards, that when all the shots often express a message of encouragement.

You probably need it, but this combination of capricious and hard but fair gameplay creates a convincing concoction. And given the mechanical nature of the levels, this is a game you can potentially master, without being the kind of thumb genius necessary for success in 99 Rockets.

Shadowgun Legends

Shadowgun Legends is a first person shooter with the tongue firmly on the cheek. Set in a world where mercenaries are rock stars and extraterrestrials are so much cannon fodder, this is a bold, brazen and noisy piece of senseless arch violence.

If you're looking for nuances, head elsewhere. The story and the characters here are very thin. But if you're in action, Shadowgun Legends takes over the business. The missions are linear in nature and challenge you to be fast and precise. The combat is receptive and fluid, and soon you will find yourself piling up a lot of cash, updating your kit and increasing your fame.

Get good enough and your fanatical admirers will build a statue in your honor. It will not be enough to convince you that this is a console-quality shooting game, but this game feels perfect for mobile devices: simplified, small in size, free and fun.

Tower Fortress

Tower Fortress is a semi-random game, difficult to shoot. It develops in a mysterious tower infested with strange creatures. And if you do not ascend to the top, everyone is condemned, for some reason.

Reaching the top is not easy. Your elusive hero fires his weapon and can jump twice in a Sonic-style spin attack. That sounds good until you realize that even the most innocuous enemy can make you stumble, like seemingly benign frogs.

But then you get to the end of a section, enter a secret area with a key, grab a power-up, and feel like a boss. Until you meet a real boss, who will face you. One to persevere, then, and once your arcade thumbs are in top condition, give each of the four zones a full blast.

Drag & apos; n & apos; Boom

Drag & apos; n & apos; Boom shows that you should never encourage a teenage dragon. Here, the rebellious fire-breather approaches minimal landscapes, slides down hills, rises in the air, robs soldiers, and is usually a threat.

Fortunately, you can become the dragon, instead of being the enemy. The army preferred to have better weapons. The game is reminiscent of Angry Birds in the way you ping your dragon, but is also inspired by the double-stick shooters, Sonic the Hedgehog (super fast tunnel bits) and even The Matrix (slo-mo as a target).

Although it is true that there are no great variations in the 50 levels of the game and in the endless mode, it is difficult to be too critical. Drag & apos; n & apos; Boom looks great, and has the kind of windy and ingenious game that is perfect for shooting in the strange moment when you feel the need to free your inner dragon.

Time Locker

This vertical scrolling shooting game plays with convention in a way that messes up your head. The basic elements are familiar: you are overturned within a vertical scrolling environment and you must shoot ALL THINGS.

Once in a while, the eliminated enemies release bonus elements that increase your armament, providing the means to unleash a great destruction while screaming YEEE-HAA – if that's your kind of thing.

However, and this is a great & # 39; however, everything in Time Locker only moves when you do it. The temptation is to burn ahead, due to the bonus points that are earned by covering larger distances, and because the only thing that does not freeze when you do it chases you: a nothing that devours everything.

It is not always a good strategy, because the mistake in a single enemy or projectile ends your game. Risk versus reward, then, in this cool and excellent looking blaster that dares to try something different.

AirAttack 2

Bad news! It turns out that the Axis of Evil needs to be overthrown immediately, because it has access to a ridiculous number of planes and tanks, some of which are the size of small towns. Unfortunately, we have had some cuts, which means that our air force is now, er, you.

Still, we're sure you'll love your time on AirAttack 2, lulling a beautiful landscape shortly before bombing it, surviving the hellfire, and inflating your chest to an orchestral soundtrack.

Sure, you might have to reduce the graphics effects a bit on the older hardware, and it's a bit difficult to reach for later levels, but

The best free puzzle games for Android

Our favorites Android favorites, logical tests and road search games.

red

red is a puzzle game that challenges you to make the screen go red, although given the intentionally obtuse nature of many of the 50 challenges, you might be the one to turn Crimson after a few hours facing your wits against some of the most devious puzzles.

Start simply. A big red button is in the center of the screen, inviting you to press it. Do it and a thick red line fills part of the bottom. Keep pressing and soon the whole screen will be filled. Work done. Following!

Explaining something else about the game would ruin things, so you'll just have to believe that red is relentlessly inventive, often annoying and a bit like a minimal masterpiece.

Aquavias

Aquavias is a quiet puzzle game to find paths. The objective is to deliver water to the cities, which otherwise will suffer from droughts. Unfortunately, a buffoon has decided that the means to move this water is through high and fragmented aqueducts.

Each section, most of a single line or quarter of a circle, can be rotated individually, with the idea of ​​gradually forming a solid path for the water to follow.

Naturally, this is where you enter. Each tap rotates a piece 90 degrees in a clockwise direction. Depending on the level, you will have a limited number of movements, or a quick drain tank.

Over time, the complexity of the required routes increases, especially when the T-junctions enter the fray; but the game never becomes dominant, and its pleasing visual effects and soundtrack add to the charm.

Calculator: The game

Calculator: The game is a puzzle oriented to the sums, with a smart and sensible calculator that is eager to show its buttons.

The goal in each level is simple: use the buttons provided to reach a target number, within a limited number of steps. So, if you need to get to 9 and see the +3 and x3 keys, that's pretty simple.

The thing is that this calculator likes to play as much as you're playing. In a short time, he is happily adding buttons that allow him to eliminate digits of his total, to invest them or to send numbers through the portals.

This is not your standard desktop calculator, but it's much better than that. And it's a surprisingly entertaining game, since you're finally doing math.

Amarillo

La idea detrás de Amarillo es hacer que la pantalla sea completamente amarilla. El giro es que el juego tiene 50 formas diferentes de permitirte hacerlo, pero cada nivel no proporciona ningún indicio de la metodología requerida.

Inicialmente, el progreso es bastante rápido, cuando tocas la pantalla, arroja un punto alrededor de Angry Birds- estilo para rellenar un agujero, y luego sonríe cuando te das cuenta de que, por ejemplo, debes presionar un disco amarillo con el ritmo de inflar un globo.

Sin embargo, los niveles posteriores a veces son intencionalmente – y casi con alegría – obtusos. Puedes recibir pistas, pagadas por ver anuncios, pero hacerlo es como admitir una derrota en este rompecabezas mínimo e inteligente.

Cubway

Como uno de los juegos más abstractos que probablemente instales en tu dispositivo Android, Cubway incluye más de 50 escenas mínimas que recorres como un pequeño cuadrado rojo.

El objetivo es simplemente para alcanzar un objetivo, pero todo tipo de objetos bloquean su camino y responden a su presencia de diferentes maneras. Debe averiguar cómo superarlos a todos, a pesar de estar restringido en términos de movimiento: sus únicas opciones son las siguientes, aunque puede (y tendrá que hacerlo) detenerse, moverse lentamente o retroceder, según el peligro que se presente antes.

A medida que viajas, se revela una especie de historia, aunque el texto parece una extraña guía de autoayuda. De lo contrario, Cubway es un éxito: es intuitivo, la mecánica es fresca e inteligente, y la estética es infalteralmente atmosférica.

Dominocity

Si eres el tipo de persona que prefiere levantarse (y derribar) los dominós que jugar el juego real, Dominocity debería apelar.

En este rompecabezas de arcade , la idea es colocar el menor número posible de dominó para alcanzar una meta, mientras se agarran amuletos dorados en el camino.

Los controles son impares al principio. Toca para colocar un dominó frente al último y desliza el dedo para inclinarlo si es necesario, para cambiar de dirección.

Aun así, la colocación de precisión no es demasiado difícil, pero el éxito también depende de la velocidad. Esto agrega tensión a lo que, de otro modo, podría haber sido un juego agradable pero poco exigente, incrementado por la creciente complejidad de los caminos que debes conquistar a medida que te mueves a través de los desafíos de Dominocity.

Se trata de un rompecabezas bastante único y original que es fácil de entender. aprende pero es difícil de dominar, al igual que Tetris y otros grandes. También es divertido en ráfagas cortas, lo que lo hace ideal para juegos móviles.

Outfolded

Uno de los juegos de rompecabezas más tranquilos y perdonadores que jamás hayas jugado, Outfolded también se las arregla para hacer algo interesante con entornos de bloques mínimos y formas trundling.

Para cada uno de los En las escenas del juego, el objetivo es alcanzar una meta "desplegando" una o más formas. Each move you make, one of the shape’s faces disappears, leaving you with whatever’s left for further turns, and you can only move in a direction if you have an intact face pointing that way.

Early on, you can make all kinds of blunders and still reach the goal. But before long, the shapes become complex many-sided things reminiscent of Tetris blocks, requiring you to think carefully about the order in which their sides are unfolded and the routes you take.

Mess up and you can undo as many moves as you like. Even this isn’t galling, the rewind animation being pleasing even when you’ve already watched it several times on a particularly tough level.

Does Not Commute

This superb arcade puzzler finds you directing traffic about a small town. A vehicle enters the screen, and you’re told where it needs to leave, steering it by way of directional arrows. Easy.

Only, this town is afflicted with strange temporal oddness that means subsequent journeys overlap previous ones. Before long, you’re making all kinds of detours to avoid collisions with cars you’d a minute ago driven to safety, which would otherwise wipe seconds off the timer as you wait for damaged vehicles to limp towards their exit.

Adding to its smarts, Does Not Commute includes a storyline with multiple characters, playing out across its varied environments. The only snag on mobile: you must complete the entire game in a single sitting. If that sounds like too much, a one-off IAP unlocks checkpoints.

Kerflux

It's rare even in mobile gaming – frequently full of innovation – to find a fresh take on puzzling, but Kerflux surprises with a simple, original concept that's perfectly executed.

A crunchy chip-tune plays and you're presented with three waveforms. The music dulls, as if you're underwater, and that's your signal to start manipulating two of the waveforms so they combine to form the third.

Achieving this goal is straightforward, and you can initially blaze through the game's levels – even if a more leisurely pace is perhaps more rewarding. Before long, though, any complacency about Kerflux's apparent ease evaporates when additional waves appear and you're juggling four of them, trying to find the perfect combination that unlocks the next challenge.

Orbit

Although you play games, few of them are about play itself, in the sense of experimenting with a set-up or situation and seeing what happens. Orbit, though, while presenting itself as a puzzle game, is more a minimalist sandbox where you immerse yourself in the delights of creating tiny solar systems.

The game is played by slingshotting celestial bodies around black holes. They then proceed to leave colored trails in their wake, while gravity does its thing. Soon, you have planets clustering together, wheeling around one or more black holes, creating minimalist modern art while they do so.

It's all rather gorgeous and mesmerizing. The only snag is ads periodically wrecking the mood, although they can be eradicated with a single IAP.

RGB Express

In RGB Express, your aim is to build up a delivery company from scratch, all by dropping off little coloured boxes at buildings of the same colour. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Only this is a puzzler that takes place on tiny islands with streets laid out in a strict grid pattern, and decidedly oddball rules regarding road use.

Presumably to keep down on tarmac wear, roads are blocked the second a vehicle drives over them. Once you're past the early levels, making all your deliveries often requires fashioning convoluted snake-like paths across the entire map, not least when bridge switches come into play. Despite its cute graphics, then, RGB Express is in reality a devious and tricky puzzle game, which will have you swearing later levels simply aren't possible, before cracking one, feeling chuffed and then staring in disbelief at what follows.

The best free arcade games for Android

Our favorite free Android arcade titles, fighting games and retro fare.

Sneak Ops

Sneak Ops is a retro-infused stealth game where every day brings a new mission. The goal is to get to the chopper by stealthily moving through an enemy compound without being spotted.

The game utilises intuitive top-down gameplay – initially, you can freely scamper about the tiles, but when deeper into your mission, it’s vital to carefully time runs past cameras – and regularly use your ability to smack guards over the head.

Getting to the chopper is tough, but if you don’t fancy starting from scratch on being captured, you can ‘buy’ restart points with floppy disks that litter the compounds – an odd quirk we suspect a real spy would give up their best attaché case for.

Fun gameplay and a fresh daily challenge keep Sneak Ops feeling fresh.

Spaceteam

Spaceteam is a superb multiplayer game that deftly showcases your ability (or lack thereof) to work as part of a (space)team. With between two and eight players connected in local multiplayer, you’re informed that your spaceship is fleeing an exploding star, and you must perform actions to stave off your transport being blown up in a manner that would be a major downer for everyone on board.

The snag is the controls were designed by a lunatic. They’re spread between everyone’s screens, and demands simply show up as text-based prompts, so you’ll be searching for the Dangling Shunter switch and Spectrobolt slider, while pleading with everyone to “please turn on the Eigenthrottle”. Captain Kirk never had it this tough.

HeliHopper

HeliHopper is a helicopter game that involves quite a lot of hopping and an awful lot of crashing. In part, this is probably because helicopters are primarily designed for zooming through the air rather than jumping around like frogs, but there you go.

The aim of HeliHopper is simple: using a basic slingshot mechanism (think Angry Birds), you must direct your helicopter to another landing pad. Depending on the particular level you’re tackling, you might be able to nudge the helicopter mid-flight, collect bling, or complete several painstakingly precise ‘flights’ in a row.

An ideal arcade blast for quick sessions, HeliHopper provides a set of defined missions and nine endless modes. Although if you never want to set foot in a helicopter after smashing hundreds of the things here, don’t blame us.

Jodeo

Jodeo features a cycloptic blob being put through the grinder by a sadist. A claw-like contraption lifts the jelly-like critter above an ‘experiment’ and lets go. Your aim: to move it left and right, squelching over every edge of geometric shapes lazily rotating on the screen – without falling off.

With standard 2D forms, Jodeo might have been entertaining, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting. Here, you’re tackling 3D objects moving in and out of a 2D plane, along with other ‘scientific’ conditions, such as someone unhelpfully hurling meteors your way, or turning off a shape’s lines so you can’t see them.

The experience is short, but it’s hard to gripe about a freebie – not least given the protagonist’s seemingly permanent expression of sheer terror.

Beat Street

Beat Street is a love letter to retro brawlers, echoing the likes of classic arcade title Double Dragon. Yet here you duff up all manner of evil gang members by way of using only a single thumb.

This is quite the achievement. Old-style scrolling beat ’em ups might not have had a modern-day gamepad littered with buttons and triggers, but they still had a joystick and two action buttons. Here, though, you drag to move, tap to punch, and use gestures to fire off special moves.

It works wonderfully. Beat Street gradually reveals new abilities and features – not least weapon pick-ups, one of which rather unsportingly has you smack opponents over the head with what’s described as an ’80s brick.

Stranger Things: The Game

Stranger Things: The Game re-imagines the Netflix TV show, set in 1984, as a 1980s videogame. How meta, you might think… but it works.

You take on the role of gruff Officer Hopper, trying to uncover a mystery at the heart of Hawkins, Indiana. As you work your way deeper into the game, you gradually find new characters, each with individual powers that are vital for further progression.

This pixelated adventure game looks the part (despite not being quite as retro as games of the period), and offers an entertaining mix of straightforward puzzling (find an object; put it somewhere specific), and gleefully punching local security forces when they get in your way.

Well, it is set in the 1980s – you’re not supposed to solve mysteries with brainpower alone.

iHUGU

iHUGU is an arcade game that reckons everyone should get along and hug – just not too often. The bulk of the title is a quick-fire arcade memory test, where you hug each character you come across precisely once. If they’ve been hugged before, flick them by – or your game’s over.

Once you’ve powered up your hug bar, iHUGU provides a brief diversion in the form of a mini-game, which can be anything from darting about and grabbing leaves, to whatever the hug equivalent of a beat ’em up is (a ‘hug fight’, apparently). The entire thing’s endearingly daft.

With eight locations, 100 characters to unlock, and a character editor to create terrifyingly freaky monsters with which to hug, there’s longevity here, too. iHUGU also proves there are still new things to say in single-finger Android gaming. We hug it.

Up The Wall

Up The Wall is suitably named given that it probably will drive you mad. It’s an autorunner with a vicious streak, but also some serious design smarts.

You start out by selecting a character from the claw machine, and that determines which world you’re dropped in. You might be a rubber duck blazing along bathroom tiles, or a skull skidding through a fiery hell.

The aim: get to the end of a hand-crafted level to add the character to your collection.

Even the so-called ‘easy’ levels are tough, and the swipe controls are sometimes a bit iffy. But the trippy visuals, head-bobbing audio, and varied isometric worlds peppered with devious traps will keep drawing you back.

Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert

In Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert, the world’s stretchiest canine finds himself trying to worm his way through a land of cake, chocolate, ice cream, and a worrying number of spikes, saw-blades, and massive bombs.

Rather than walk like a normal pooch, the furry hero of this game stretches as you swipe, until his front paws can cling on to something. His bottom then snaps back into place. It’s quite the trick – but also a hazard if one end of his body ends up in danger when the other end is worryingly distant.

There are 50 scenes in all, along with tricky bonus rooms to try and beat. And although some of the later bits of the game are perhaps a bit too testing, this one as a whole is a very tasty, satisfying arcade treat.

Tomb of the Mask

Imagine Tomb Raider reworked as Pac-Man, slammed into Crossy Road, played in fast-forward, and dressed as if spat out of a ZX Spectrum circa 1983. That’s Tomb of the Mask.

You play as a hero aiming to ‘liberate’ gold from a tomb, but he finds a mask – and rashly puts it on. Recklessness here wins the day, since the mask bestows the wearer with the ability to climb walls and leap big gaps, giving him a fighting chance of reaching the end of scrolling caverns packed with deadly spikes, guns, and foes, and avoiding an encroaching glowing wall of death.

Whether playing through set-piece levels or the endless arcade mode, Tomb of the Mask is a fresh, fun, vibrant twitch game that marries the best of old and new.

Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever

This one’s far from the worst game ever, but it does feature an amusingly grumpy cat. It’s actually a set of simple mini-games, reminiscent of Nintendo’s WarioWare series, only here, they feature a miffed moggie that’d sooner be somewhere – anywhere – else.

Each miniature challenge in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Game Ever can be understood in an instant  – stamping a paw on a laser pointer by tapping the screen; firing the cat upward to secure a cardboard box of dreams; pressing shaped buttons to traverse a path and reach a fish.

The variety of mini-games keeps it fresh and interesting, and the game is often smile inducing thanks to its mix of colorful art, ludicrous concepts and eternally irritated feline.

The longer you survive, the faster and more demanding everything becomes. Fail and the grumpy cat scowls, but you’re also awarded coins to acquire new games by way of stickers won from a prize machine. Naturally, every one of them features the grumpy cat.

Memento Bay

This one-thumb arcade game combines classic slalom fare with the checkpoint racing and branching maps seen in the likes of OutRun. Using a single digit, you direct a little red boat through the waters of Memento Bay, aiming to collect ancient artifacts. At the end of each short stage, you head left or right to determine the next location.

Obstacles are a major foe – blunder into one and your boat is robbed of momentum – not great when playing against the clock. But you must also be mindful of the arrow at the top of the screen. This points towards the next checkpoint – miss one and it’s ‘game over’.

This feels harsh (a time penalty would have been better), but encourages repeat play. After all, the map never changes, so learn it and master the controls and you’ll one day be able to scythe towards the finish line.

Pac-Man

Namco’s arcade classic hardly needs any introduction. But just in case you’ve been locked in a cave since the late 1970s, Pac-Man features the titular protagonist, a rotund yellow mouth who munches dots in a maze patrolled by ghost-like monsters.

The aim is to eat the dots and avoid the ghosts. Grab flashing power pills and you can briefly turn the tables on your pursuers – by eating them when they turn blue and try to flee.

Despite being over 30 years old, Pac-Man remains a fun game, and the simple controls (basically, swipe in the direction you next want to turn) work very nicely on Android, as do the crisp old-school visuals.

For free, you get the original maze and several plays per day. More mazes can be unlocked using saved up play tokens – or you can buy more (and remove the ads) with various IAPs.

Hammer Bomb

Take an early 1990s FPS, smash it into an auto-runner, add a dash of Pac-Man, and you'd end up with Hammer Bomb. You're dumped in dank mazes and dungeons full of hideous beasts and must stomp along, finding keys, loot, weapons and the way out.

Levels are randomised, adding a Roguelike quality to proceedings, and the entire game's underpinned by a levelling up system. This means XP being awarded for killing loads of monsters, rapidly finding the exit, or performing other tasks, such as completing quests (which, in a nod to Ms. Pac-Man, involves hunting down roaming foodstuff).

Every few levels, you face off against a massive screen-high boss, darting towards it with whatever weapon you have to hand, before fleeing like a coward. Survive long enough and you can swap coins for upgrades.

Top tip: as soon as you've 150 coins and level 3 status, grab the radar, because Hammer Bomb is much friendlier when you can spot monsters on the top-down map.

The best free match games for Android

Our favorite free Android games where you swap gems and match tiles, aiming for a high score.

Six Match

Six Match is a new take on match games. Instead of swapping gems, you switch coins by having the suitably named Mr Swap-With-Coins barge past them. The twist: a number on the cuboid hero’s head denotes how many moves he has left before he freezes to the spot – six at most before he must make the next match.

This twist makes for a very different match experience – one that’s far more strategic than swiping at the screen like a maniac. You can’t afford to waste moves – particularly when Six Match introduces new concepts to help and hinder. These include bombs, coin-shifting cages that assist and frustrate in equal measure, deadly skulls, and poker-style card hands that boost your score.

The combination of factors proves clever and engaging, and offers scope for long-term play as you work out strategies to improve your score.

Push & Pop

Push & Pop is a sliding tiles puzzler, with mechanics not a million miles away from Threes! (or low-rent knock-off 2048), but this is no mere clone. Instead, it builds on the basics of shifting tiles or blocks around a limited space by also borrowing ideas from Sokoban and Pac-Man, before stripping everything right back again.

Play occurs on a five-by-five grid, around which you slide a cuboid. On every move, a new block appears somewhere on the grid. Arrange five into a solid line by pushing them and they disappear, freeing up space, and leaving behind gems the blocky hero can collect by eating or shoving blocks through them. Further complications are added when immovable blocks appear. Your game’s over when you become stuck.

With its neon visuals and ethereal soundtrack, Push & Pop takes simple foundations and runs with them, fashioning an intriguing, engaging, and surprisingly novel title.

Laps – Fuse

Laps – Fuse is a match-three game based around numbered discs. If three or more of the same meet, they fuse into a new disc with twice the face value. The tiny snag: you’ve limited slots to hurl discs into. The other tiny snag: the discs you hurl zoom about the edge of a circle. The other other tiny snag: you’ve only 20 laps to secure your high-score – and thereby Laps bragging rights.

This isn’t a thoughtful Threes-style outing, then – more an arcade puzzler on fast-forward. You at every moment you must plan ahead, trying to set up matches and chain reactions that fling your circling disc back a little way, buying you a few seconds of extra time.

It’s a tense, clever take on what’s become a tired genre. And should you master the main mode, you can unlock ‘endless’, ‘furious’ (faster), and ‘extreme’ (fewer slots – presumably for masochists).

Wilful Kitty

Wilful Kitty is a sliding tile puzzle game on a four-by-four grid. But before you yawn and assume it’s another 2048 knock-off (which itself was a Threes! knock-off), guess again. Because this game features cats. And all the things that cats really like.

The twist here is a little kitty moves about the grid as you swipe, and objects that enter the grid are combined into consumables and toys. For example, milk and a bowl becomes a kitty drink, and a plate and some fish makes a hearty lunch.

This shift in mechanics shakes up everything you knew about this kind of game – as does you being able to charge up a ‘satisfaction bar’ that when full unleashes a ‘Hyper Kitty Dash’, clearing a chunk of the playfield in double-quick time.

It’s entertaining serving the tiny cat’s every need – and surprisingly challenging, too. Because it turns out this Wilful Kitty has bite.

Age of 2048

Age of 2048 is effectively a reskin of popular swipe-based tile puzzler 2048. Now, 2048 was really a low-rent knock-off of the far superior Threes! (which has its own free version), but it had the advantage of being open source, therefore opening itself up to all kinds of variations on the basic theme.

In the original 2048, you swipe to slide numbered tiles about a four-by-four grid. Merged pairs then double their face value. But Age of 2048 is all about buildings.

Initially, you swipe bits of rock together, until you’re fashioning tents and stone monuments. Build a ‘wonder’ – the largest building type and the equivalent of the 2048 tile in the original – and you unlock the next stage.

Ultimately, Age of 2048 is still a slightly limited game, lacking the nuance and charm of Threes!. But its concept, design, and the addition of some useful power-ups, ensures it’s worth a download, and that it manages to stand out from the crowd.

Topsoil

With its four-by-four grid and penchant for rapidly restricting the playfield, Topsoil comes across a bit like a horticultural Threes! There’s no sliding cards about, though – instead, you’re presented with a string of things to plant, and prod open spaces to plonk them down.

After three, you get a chance to harvest – and this is where things become more complicated. You get more points for harvesting many plants at once, which requires them to be on adjacent squares. But on harvesting anything, the soil beneath is turned over. Soil cycles between blue, yellow, and green, and groups of plants cannot cross different soil colors.

The net result is a clever game where you must plan ahead, and where you keep digging for strategies to last longer and discover new plants to grow and harvest.

Imago

There are a lot of Android puzzle games that involve you sliding blocks about, but Imago is one of the best, even giving Threes! a run for its money.

You drag numbered tiles around a grid, merging those of the same colour and shape. On doing so, their numbers combine, but when merged groups reach a certain size, they split into smaller tiles, each retaining the score of the larger piece. Successful games require careful forward planning, with only a few moves it can be possible to ramp up scores dramatically, into the millions or even billions!

The game's relative complexity is countered by a smart modes system that gradually introduces you to Imago's intricacies. There's also a Daily Flight mode that provides a regular influx of new challenges, for when the standard modes begin to pall. On Android, we noticed a few minor visual glitches here and there, but otherwise this is a must-download puzzle game that's among the best on the platform.

Threes! Free

In Threes! Free, you slide numbered cards around a tiny grid, merging pairs to increase their values and make room for new cards. Strategy comes from the cards all moving simultaneously, along with you needing to keep space free to make subsequent merges, forcing you to think ahead.

On launch, it was a rare example of a new and furiously compulsive puzzle-game mechanic. Within days, it was mercilessly ripped off, free clones flooding Google Play.

Now, though, you can get authentic Threes! action entirely for free, and discover why it's 2048 times better than every freebie 2048 game (personality; attention to detail; music; small elements of game design that make a big difference).

You get 12 free games to start. Add groups of three more by watching a video ad. And you can always upgrade to the paid version if you get suitably hooked.

Bejeweled

There are loads of freebie Bejeweled knock-offs on Google Play, and so if you fancy a bit of gem-swapping, you may as well download the original. For reasons beyond us, Android owners don't get the multitude of modes available on some other platforms, but there's the original match-three 'classic', the can't-lose 'zen', and the superb 'diamond mine'.

In the last of those, matches smash a hole into the ground. You're playing against the clock, and over time uncover harder rock that needs special moves to obliterate. It's a frenetic, intense experience considering this is a match-three title, although high-score chasers might cast a suspicious eye over the offer to extend the time limit by watching an advert.

The best free platform games for Android

Our favorite free Android platformers, from classic retro 2D fare to full-on console-style adventures.

It’s Full of Sparks

It’s Full of Sparks is a speed-run platformer where sentient firecrackers must find a body of water to hurl themselves into before their fuses make them explode all over the shop. The first level is a sprint to the finish line, but the game immediately makes things more complicated.

You first don some red shades, which give you a button for turning on and off chunks of red landscape. Two more colors soon join the show. As the levels increase in size, you end up with a crazed, tense dash for survival, juggling bits of landscape via delicate finger choreography that’d impress even the finest flautist.

The game can be frustrating, and larger levels need quite a bit of trial and error, but this game’s charm and innovation ensures its spark won’t die for the duration.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Classic

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 arrived on consoles in 1992 and, like its predecessor, is a super-fast side-scrolling platform game. The aim is to zoom through levels, grab gold rings, and avoid the enemies and spikes liberally sprinkled about. This sequel also adds a Super Dash Attack to help Sonic obliterate foes, and 3D special stages, which recall newer Sonic fare on mobile.

The game is rightly regarded as a classic, and the mobile version is a rare example of retro done well. Rather than giving you a bog-standard emulator, Sega has fully ‘remastered’ the game in widescreen, added enhancements and secrets, and provided touchscreen controls that are actually pretty good.

There are obnoxious ads here and there, but they’re a small price to pay to get Sonic 2 on your Android for nothing; and if they bug you, a one-off IAP removes them forever.

Cat Bird

Cat Bird is another in a long line of platform games where a cute protagonist has somehow found themselves in a kind of videogame hell, surrounded by danger and death.

The hero is an oddball combination of cat and bird – although Cat Bird is a bit rubbish at the ‘bird’ bit, only being able to glide rather than fly. Level layouts are largely built around this ability, with the furry affront to evolution often gliding past saw blades by a hair’s breadth, before snagging keys and taunting doddering enemies.

Really, it’s all very familiar territory, but the delicate pixel art is lovely, with subtle animations like Cat Bird’s twitchy ears, and tiny hopping birds in the background. Also, the level design manages to smartly make use of the hero’s flappy nature, meaning success requires the use of your brain alongside twitchy thumbs. Download it meow. (Sorry.)

Flat Pack

Flat Pack rethinks platform games by wrapping levels around 3D shapes. The aim is to dodder or fly about, grab six sides of a golden cube, and make for the exit. But each level has its own twist, forcing you to think on your feet – or rotors if you’re careening through the air, heading for some spikes.

Early on, for example, you contend with ‘flipping gravity’. This requires moving around a cubic section of level in a specific way, so you can enter from another direction. One level is two huge blocks that smash together at regular intervals, squashing slowpoke adventurers who dawdle. And it only gets more disorienting from there.

This could so easily have been a gimmicky offering, but it’s the smart level design that transforms Flat Pack into a must-have freebie.

Hoggy 2

Hoggy 2 is a platform puzzler that feels like it’s escaped from a Nintendo console. The premise involves the evil Moon Men kidnapping the children of the blobby heroes. You must find where the kids have been hidden, somewhere inside a massive maze full of jars.

Each jar houses a bite-sized challenge packed full of platforms, enemies, traps, and fruit. Eat all the fruit and you’re awarded a key. Collect enough keys to unlock new areas of the maze.

The platforming bits are frequently deviously fiendish. Early levels ease you in, but you’re soon facing tests that seem impossible until you spot something crucial – a block you’d previously not noticed, or a different order in which to approach things – whereupon you feel like a genius.

Should you best all 200 hand-crafted levels, you can make your own in a level editor, or take on those the Hoggy community’s created. That this all comes for free is astonishing. Download it now.

Drop Wizard Tower

Drop Wizard Tower is a superbly crafted love letter to classic single-screen arcade platform games like Bubble Bobble. You dart about, knocking out enemies, grabbing gems and fruit, and duffing up bosses, working your way towards a final confrontation.

However, there’s a twist in that Drop Wizard Tower fuses old-school platforming with auto-running. Your little wizard never stops moving, and can only be directed left or right. And he only shoots the instant he lands on a platform.

You’ll likely fight against this at first, cursing Drop Wizard Tower for straying from traditional left/right/jump/fire controls. But the game really works on mobile, and when it clicks you’ll be zooming about, stunning foes with your magic wand, and booting them away to create tumbling ‘avalanches’ of enemies.

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic The Hedgehog hasn’t fared as well as one-time rival Mario. Whereas Nintendo’s mascot still features in first-rate platformers, Sega’s blue hedgehog is more often mired in freemium rubbish. With Sonic The Hedgehog, though, you’re getting the original Genesis/Mega Drive classic.

In fact, you’re getting more. This is no lazy emulator, but a fully remastered game, with improved performance and widescreen 60fps visuals. Although a touch fiddly at times, care’s been taken with customizable on-screen controls, and there’s gamepad controller support, too.

Most importantly, the game itself remains compelling, with Sonic zooming about colorful landscapes filled with platforms, traps, gold rings, patrolling enemies, dizzying loops and tunnels, and the occasional boss. Retro-gaming’s often a disappointment, but Sonic stands the test of time. If only all old games were reworked for mobile with such care.

Super Phantom Cat

We’re in Mario-style platforming territory with Super Phantom Cat, although only if you imagine the entire production quaffed a ton of sugar first. The Phantom World is a lurid, gaudy place, full of deadly traps, bling, and plenty of secrets. (A good rule when playing: never believe any wall is actually solid.)

Retina-searing art style aside, the game feels like a slam-dunk for any fan of classic platformers. Level design is smart, rewarding repeat play, there are varied modes, and the controls can be resized and shifted about if the defaults require banana thumbs on your device.

It is a bit ad-infested at times, but not to the point momentum is knocked. All in all, Super Phantom Cat is loads of leapy furry fun.

Super Cat Bros

Although Super Cat Bros looks like a retro title, it doesn’t play like one. Sure, there’s leapy platform action, like in Mario games, and a smattering of Alex Kidd exploration, but the controls are distinctly modern mobile fare.

You tap the left or right of your display to make your cat move (or wall jump when clinging to a wall), or double tap to dash (which finds the ktitie hurling itself into the air on reaching an edge).

At first, it’s disorienting, but soon Super Cat Bros becomes second nature, and you start noticing the smart design of the dinky levels, and how keenly observed the cat protagonists are.

Also, Android owners get one key benefit over people lumbered with an iPhone: the game’s proper name. (On iOS, it’s Super Cat Talesbecause Apple apparently thinks its users might confuse a game about cats for one featuring Nintendo’s famous plumber.)

Circle Affinity

A brutal, brilliant platform game, Circle Affinity finds its protagonist in a literal take on the circles of hell – only here there are considerably more than nine.

He scoots about the edge of each disc, leaps into it, and then must jump to the outer edge of the next circle, which bobs about in the air. All the while, massive teeth-like daggers close in, and demons march back and forth, waiting for you to blunder into them.

Games are initially short, and Circle Affinity almost taunts you on death, as you try to master the inherently-disorienting nature. Over time, you'll begin to survive a little longer, whereupon you'll be rewarded with new eye-searing color schemes and additional play modes.

Raider Rush

We do wonder when light-fingered archaeologists will learn. No sooner has the hero of Raider Rush grabbed a massive hunk of bling than the ancient temple he's in starts filling with lava.

To escape, he must bound from wall to wall, like a hyperactive flea, making his way towards beautiful daylight, before realising he's merely stuck in the next tower to escape from.

With 30 bespoke levels and an endless mode, there's lots of leaping to be done in Raider Rush, and the two-thumb controls (for hurling the hero left or right) make for a pleasingly frantic arcade experience, akin to juggling your little explorer to the surface (while presumably scolding the idiot for not leaving other people's possessions alone).

Leap Day

Touchscreens should be a poor fit for platform games, which typically require the kind of precision that only comes from a physical controller. This is why so many mobile titles opt for auto-running, distilling platform gaming to its core essence of timing jumps.

In Leap Day, your little yellow character is tasked with getting to the top of a tall tower. You can jump, double jump and slide down walls, but that's it. You must therefore carefully leap past cartoon foes and gigantic spikes, grabbing fruit along the way.

At various points on your climb are checkpoints, which can be bought with 20 fruit or by watching an ad. This means you don't have to start from scratch on coming a cropper. And when you do reach the summit, you can come back the next day for an entirely new level to try.

Bean Dreams

Although there are exceptions, traditional platform games rarely work on touchscreens. Fortunately, canny developers have rethought the genre, stripping it back to its very essence. In Bean Dreams, you help a jumping bean traverse all kinds of hazards, by sending the bouncing hatted seed left or right.

Each level is cleverly designed to offer optimum paths, boosting your points tally when hitting the goal having made the fewest bounces. Timing is everything, then, but there are further challenges that reward exploration. To find the pet axolotls spread across the map, or collect all the fruit, you must use different approaches, which adds plenty of replay value.

Platform Panic

Nitrome's fashioning quite the collection of smart Android games, which subvert existing genres in interesting ways. Platform Panic initially comes across as a vastly simplified platform game. You swipe to move and leap, and it's game over the second your little character comes a cropper.

But really every screen is a tiny puzzle that you must learn how to solve; and then every game becomes a memory test, with you in an instant having to draw on your experience as each challenge — sometimes mirrored — is sent your way.

Cally's Caves 3

Poor Cally. It's like she can't go for five minutes without her parents being kidnapped. It's third time unlucky for her in Cally's Caves 3, but lucky for you, because you get an excellent old-school platformer that costs nothing at all. Cally leaps about, shooting and stabbing enemies in a gleeful manner you might consider unusual for a young girl with pigtails.

The game's brutal, too, with a checkpoint system that will have you gnashing teeth when you die a few steps before a restart point. But the weapon upgrade system is clever (keep shooting things to power up guns!), there are loads of items to discover, and unlike on iOS, the free Android version has several extra unlocked modes.

The best free sports games for Android

Our favorite free Android golf, football, tennis and extreme sports games.

Score! Match

Score! Match reimagines the beautiful game (as in, soccer – or football if you’re British and the S-word sends you into apoplectic fury) as a turn-based match of wits where you draw passes and attempts at goal with a finger.

The basic premise will be familiar to anyone who’s played other Score! games,, but in this one you’re not attempting to recreate history’s greatest goals. Instead, you go head-to-head against other players online, in two-minute first-to-two-goal bouts.

There’s a lot of freemium gunk lurking: currencies; timers; loot boxes. Also, the AI’s wonky, and the commentary is laughable. But the underlying mechanics are great to the point none of that really matters – not least when you’re one-nil down and have only seconds to get the equalizer that will secure a penalty shoot-out.

Virtua Tennis Challenge

Virtua Tennis Challenge is based on the classic tennis game that years ago once graced the Dreamcast. Although it politely doffed a sun visor in the direction of realism, the game was very much a frantic, exciting arcade outing – and that’s just as true on mobile, as you scoot about the court, trying to better your opponent with a dizzying array of well-placed lobs and electrifying super shots.

Given its console origins, the game controls as well as can be expected. And that means badly if you opt for the gestural controls, which make your tennis star look like they’ve had a few gins too many before appearing on the court. But go for the on-screen D-pad and buttons, and Sega’s tennis game is a fine example of having your own little Wimbledon nestled on your smartphone.

Mad Skills BMX 2

Mad Skills BMX 2 is a one-on-one racing game. You pit your skills against various opponents, racing them on tracks packed full of ramps and bumpy sections designed to make you giddy as you zoom along.

And this is very much a fast game. When deep into a race, the scenery blazes by in a blur as you battle to beat your opponent and take the checkered flag. It’s a true arcade experience, with two-button/one-thumb controls making racing all about track mastery and careful timing.

Somehow, it often feels like a breakneck upside down Tiny Wings. And although it does eventually spray pay-to-win freemium in your face, for a good few hours this one’s wheelie good.

Battle Golf Online

Battle Golf Online is a major revamp of the original – and hugely entertaining – Battle Golf. Once again, the golf bit is stripped right back to two players whacking balls toward holes that appear from a lake. Some of these are greens with slopes to aid the ball’s progress. Others are rather more esoteric – a lighthouse with smashed-out windows; a submarine; the Loch Ness Monster with a hat.

The controls are straightforward – a tap to stop an aiming arrow and another to choose your shot’s power. And that’s just as well, because this game’s more about speed than precision – and the first to five wins.

Against the computer AI, this results in frenetic, entertaining battles, but the hole-in-one comes from online multiplayer, where you battle it out against real humans. Just watch out for people performing the so-called ‘pro’ shot, hitting and hoping before holes surface from the water.

Touchdowners

Touchdowners is, it’s fair to say, not an entirely accurate recreation of American football. Here, two three-strong teams (usually human, but sometimes skeletons or chickens), face off, their arms spinning wildly as they move. Also, the pitch appears to be a massive trampoline.

If you can wrestle your bounding trio into submission, you might get a touchdown. If the other side gets one: game over. (Unless you’re in Career mode, whereupon it’s first to three – or first to five in the final.)

It’s all totally stupid, but – much like Wrassling and Dunkersby the same team – loads of raucous, breezy fun. Just expect to be a touch disappointed next time you watch a real match, and the Miami Dolphins aren’t soaring through the air, desperately fending off an attack from a team of actual sharks.

Super Stickman Golf 3

This third entry in the Super Stickman Golf series is perhaps feeling a bit too familiar, but the game remains the best side-on golf to be found on Android.

As ever, your little stickman is charged with smacking balls about courses comprising floating islands, laser-infested bases, and space stations. You set your direction and strength, hit the ball, and hope for the best – although this time you can also add spin.

Power-ups eventually enter the mix, providing opportunities to discover new ways to lower your scores. There are also two multiplayer modes – a deranged real-time race and a more sedate turn-based affair.

The free version of Super Stickman Golf 3 is a little limited regarding simultaneous multiplayer games and access to new courses, but a single IAP unlocks the premium game.

Pokémon GO

Although a far cry from classic Pokémon titles, there's no getting away from the sheer impact of Pokémon GO. It's resulted in swarms of smartphone users roaming the streets and countryside, searching for tiny creatures they can only see through their screens.

In all honesty, the game is simplistic: find a Pokémon, lob balls at it, amble about for a while to hatch eggs, and use your collection of critters to take over and guard virtual gyms.

But despite basic combat and the game's tendency to clobber your Android's battery, it taps into the collector mentality; and it's a rare example of successfully integrating a game into the real world, getting people physically outside and – shock – interacting with each other.

The best free word games for Android

Our favorite free Android games that are all about letters, anagrams and crosswords.

Bonza Word Puzzle

Bonza Word Puzzle deconstructs the classic crossword. Rather than a clue for each word, you get one for the entire puzzle. Said challenge is essentially a completed crossword that’s been hacked to bits and sprayed across your screen like a cross between a Scrabble set and tetrominoes.

Early levels lead you in gently. When there are only a few pieces to manipulate, it’s not much trouble to complete the puzzle before you. But when you’re staring at a dozen or more tiny clusters of letters, figuring out how they all join up is an invigorating test.

Bonza does have IAP for level packs, but you get a decent selection for free. Even better: every day, you receive a new puzzle, giving the game reason to stick around on your device for the long term.

Dropwords 2

Dropwords 2 brings together Boggle and Bejeweled. You sit before a five-by-five grid of letters while a timer ticks down. When you spot a word that snakes through the board, you tap it out from start to end. Submit your word and its letters vanish; gravity then has its brief moment of glory, bringing in new letters for you to use.

Like in timed Bejeweled modes, fast matches are the key to high scores. However, keeping your timer bar full doesn’t just require rapidly submitting words, but also finding longer ones that’ll give you an extra second or two.

If that all seems a bit stressful, there are more relaxing modes too. And the app rather neatly provides a slew of other customization options, from larger boards to alternate typefaces – just as well, given the default Chalkboard that whiffs of Comic Sans.

Jumbline 2

Jumbline 2 is one for anagram fiends. Its main mode starts life as a row of scrambled letters, and a bunch of empty slots awaiting any words you find. Against the clock (which is surprisingly tense and exciting), or in a more relaxed timer-free mode, you drag to rearrange letters, and then draw a line beneath relevant ones to send a word to its slot. Get them all to try the next level.

There are two additional modes as well. Cloud Pop has you fashion words from letters found within clouds, using them before they vanish from the screen, but Star Tower is better, having you create the floors of a tower as it gradually scrolls downwards. Longer words make for taller floors, gaining you precious extra seconds to get your brain in gear and think of something suitably amazing with your next set of letters.

Letterpress

Letterpress combines the anagrams of Boggle with the territory capturing of Risk. Two players take part in a turn-based battle on a five-by-five grid of letters. Any letters used in your word turn your color – but there’s a twist: those surrounded by your tiles cannot be captured by the other player during their turn.

Strategy within Letterpress is therefore not just about finding the biggest words – and certainly not if its tiles are spread about the board. You must instead cunningly eat into your opponent’s territory while safeguarding your own. Battles become like an intense tug of war, ramping up the excitement and providing the kind of edge not usually found in word games.

Spellspire

Spellspire finds you as a crotchety wizard, trying to climb a tower. The snag is that heavily armed monsters want to stop you. This might not sound like the premise for a typical word game, but Spellspire adds a bit of magic to the anagrams mix.

On each floor, you get 10 letters to juggle and form into words that become fuel for spells. Short words only unleash a smallish magical blast, but longer words give your foes a serious kicking. Perform well on your quests and you’ll over time acquire new bling, with which to take on tougher floors.

There’s a bit of grind – you’ll need to replay levels to get enough clout to duff up even the earliest boss – but Spellspire is always fun, and you’ll smile from ear to ear once you start walloping foes with seven-letter words.

Alphabear

Alphabear has you spell out words by selecting them on a grid, but there’s a twist: use letters that are adjacent to each other and bears fill the space. As you remove letters around them, the bears continue to expand. At the same time, you’ll notice countdowns on each of the letter tiles – when they reach zero, they turn to immovable stone, potentially scuppering any gigantobear schemes you had in mind.

When your game’s done, you’ll be given a score and probably also a bear, which can act as a power-up in subsequent games. Frankly, this bit doesn’t quite click, given the bewildering array of bonuses on offer, and the rather overt nudge towards IAP to wake up tired bears. Otherwise, this one’s a furry good word game that’s well worth bear-ing in mind.

Typeshift

Typeshift rethinks anagrams, word searches and crosswords. Each puzzle comprises columns of letters you can drag up and down, the aim being to make a complete word in the central row. When you do so, the word’s letters change color. To complete the puzzle, you must color all of the letters.

Although completing puzzles at speed rewards you with higher scores on the leaderboard, such aspects to Typeshift are largely hidden. This is mostly a lean-back game to relax with, but should you hanker for an additional layer of brain-smashing, you can try cracking crossword-style puzzles where you match words to set clues.

It’s worth noting that Typeshift’s puzzles are hand-crafted, not algorithmically generated, so they do run out – and only some of them are free. Still, there’s always a daily puzzle to try your hand (or your best swiping finger) at.

Scrabble

Yes, the proper Scrabble, not some copyright-infringing clone that'll be pulled by the time you read these words. EA bought the license, tidied it up and stuck it out on Android, where it's a remarkably advert and in-app purchase free experience.

It's been beefed up with a few new modes, but stuff like the ability to sync with Facebook and play multiple matches is actually exactly what you need. A classic that's not been ruined. Hooray.

The best free endless runners for Android

Our favorite free Android games where you run, hop, drive or pinball towards a high score – or an abrupt end.

Will Hero

Will Hero is a superb, daft, frenetic one-thumb platform game featuring a bunch of squares. Perhaps it’s easier to animate such creatures, but a lack of torsos and limbs hasn’t made Will and his enemies any less violent. Instead, they’re intent on hacking each other to pieces.

Initially, you largely spend your time prodding the screen to move forward and attempting to jump on bouncing enemy heads, like a simplified geometric Mario. But grab a chest and all bets are off. You might find a massive sword or missiles within.

Will Hero then becomes a blast – a glorious minute or two of gore and destruction, before you lose your concentration for a moment and are sliced in half by an inconveniently placed and surprisingly dangerous windmill. This one’s great – install it immediately.

Power Hover: Cruise

Power Hover: Cruise is a spin-off from futuristic hoverboarding game Power Hover. Whereas that game mostly featured heavily choreographed levels punctuated by the odd boss battle, this one’s all about endless challenges that involve the robot protagonist eventually becoming a pile of scrap metal.

The journey, though, is wonderful. Several of Power Hover: Cruise’s modes could lay claim to being among the best endless runners on Android, and you get over half a dozen here, each with its own distinct feel, hazards and challenges.

As you arc across the screen, learning to master the board’s heavy inertia, you’ll be thrilled when dodging dancing lasers inside a pyramid by a hair’s breadth, whirling around a track snaking through the sky, and avoiding projectiles hurled your way by a psychotic monster living deep in an underground tunnel – and who everyone probably should have left alone.

A Hollow Doorway

A Hollow Doorway initially comes across a bit like its creator thought Super Hexagon wasn’t quite minimal enough. Instead of guiding a tiny ship through geometric walls, you have a rectangle to match up with approaching concentric always-rectangular walls.

And whereas Super Hexagon has you fling your spaceship clockwise and counter-clockwise using two thumbs, A Hollow Doorway has you rotate your door with one.

But though A Hollow Doorway at first feels reductive and simplistic, it soon reveals hidden depths. Each of the nine pattern-based semi-randomized levels has a distinct feel, and there’s a clever scoring system that rewards the deft of thumb who can complete several levels in a row without a crash.

Even with all this, it’s not the most complex of games – but it’s enjoyable and hypnotic fare, especially on a smartphone with a high-quality display.

Glitch Dash

Glitch Dash is a premium auto-runner. It’s also really, really hard. It essentially dumps you in an abstract world of checkerboard corridors peppered with traps. You must swipe to dodge, leap and slide, avoiding walls, laser grids, and massive scythes that some nutcase has left swinging from above.

The high-octane gameplay is augmented by an intense electronic soundtrack that broadly matches the moves you must make in order to survive. And unlike the majority of entries in this genre, Glitch Dash’s levels are hand-crafted.

This means when you fail (and you will – often, and sometimes when tantalizingly close to your goal), it’s down to your lack of mastery and an inability to make your thumbs do what you want them to. But you’ll try again right away. After all, you’re not going to let a game beat you.

Hoppenhelm

Hoppenhelm has an air of the familiar with its chunky pixelated graphics and tap-to-move mechanics, but this mix of twitch gaming, one-thumb action and arcade fare turns out to be surprisingly compelling and a little bit different.

The backstory finds the titular knight lost in dungeons that are filling with lava. With each step he takes, the lava drops back a touch – but you can’t simply hammer the walk button and escape a fiery death because the dungeons are packed full of hazards and monsters.

This is where the other two buttons come in. The sword is used to kill enemies, and the shield can protect from fireballs. Because Hoppenhelm is played at speed, the result is a thrilling combination of fast reactions, timing, prioritization, and swearing at your thumbs when the knight is devoured by a goofy floating head.

Infiniroom

Infiniroom is Canabalt in a box, infused with the sadistic nature of Super Hexagon. You prod the screen to make the auto-running protagonist leap to avoid electrified boxes that appear from every surface of a room you’re trapped in. And like a certain superhero, he happily runs up any wall he reaches, then along the ceiling and back down again.

It’s dizzying and chaotic, but Infiniroom further ramps up the tension by continually chopping and changing the play field. At any moment, you may get a second’s warning before a chunk of space disappears (don’t be there when it does), or a new area opens up. And then the game starts gleefully lobbing saw blades and lasers at you.

Not a relaxing game, then, but one you’ll want to play again and again. And given how short Infiniroom games are, you can pack plenty into the shortest break.

Flipping Legend

Flipping Legend is a demanding endless runner smashed into an RPG-like upgrade system. The protagonist embarks on an orgy of destruction atop a chessboard-like pathway, and can only leap diagonally.

This initially makes your head spin, not least because the path is a wraparound one. This means if you leap off of its left-hand side, you reappear on the right – something you frequently have to make use of, to avoid the many hazards in your way.

To further complicate matters, your health bar drains at an alarming rate, and only refills when you biff enemies. Grab enough bling and you can unlock power-ups for taking out multiple foes.

With an energetic soundtrack, a bunch of alternate characters, and a very smart chunky art style, Flipping Legend shows there’s still life left in endless runners (albeit as the hero is busy killing everything in this one).

Binary Dash

Zero points for innovation in Binary Dashwhich is another side-scrolling auto-runner where you tap to jump, and tap somewhere else to flip upside-down.

But many points for the combination of super-fast gameplay, superb level design, and a visual aesthetic that thumbs its nose at the modern-day penchant for mid-80s pixel art, instead hurling you back to the lurid charms of late 1970s gaming.

Yes, Binary Dash more looks like it’s been vomited out of an ancient Atari console, but it nonetheless has a quirky charm. And the game itself is great. It eases you in gently, helping you get to grips with flipping above and below the horizon, thus turning game-ending pillars into pits to leap over when you’re upside-down.

Before long, though, your thumbs will be seriously challenged by the tight choreography required to jump and flip your way to the ends of later levels.

Sky Dancer

Yet another into-the-screen endless runner, channeling Temple Run. Yawn. Only Sky Dancer has a certain something that keeps you playing – and that certain something is leaving your stomach in your throat every time you jump.

Much of this is down to the construction of Sky Dancer’s world, which comprises tiny chunks of land hanging in the air in a manner that rocks usually don’t have. As you hurl yourself off the edge of one, you must quickly maneuver to land on a platform below.

Battling gravity and inertia is exhilarating, especially when the game speeds up and you know the slightest miscalculation will result in you meeting a splattery end on the desert floor.

PinOut

Pinball infused with the DNA of an against-the-clock endless runner sounds like an odd combination – but it works. In PinOut’s neon world – featuring a gorgeous electro soundtrack – a massive table stretches far into the distance. Within: dozens of miniature tables comprising flippers, ramps, and more than a few traps.

The basic aim at every turn is to keep moving forward to the next mini-table – and quickly. Accurate ramp shots are key, and so mastering the game’s physics and the layout of its various stages is essential.

For advocates, this is a fresh take on pinball that works brilliantly in mobile form. And for newcomers, PinOut is freed from the frequently arcane rules of pinball, but loses none of its frenetic excitement.

Polywarp

Coming across like Super Hexagon got infatuated with polygons, Polywarp is a brutally difficult arcade experience that’s also maddeningly compulsive.

The basics are simple: your polygon sits at the center of the screen, and walls close in from the edges. By tapping the left or right-hand side of the screen, respectively, you reduce or increase your polygon’s edge count, to match the next shape that’s aiming to crush you.

Everything moves at speed and whirls about, like you’re playing in a washing machine packed with an endless number of lurid shapes.

Initially, Polywarp feels impossible, but you soon recognize patterns to commit to memory and master. Last 60 seconds and you’ll feel like a champ – until you realize a new, tougher mode’s waiting to humiliate your thumbs.

Cubed Rally World

More or less an auto-runner on a five-lane road, Cubed Rally World is all about belting along, steering left and right to avoid anything in your path. Survive long enough in this isometric landscape and you hit the checkered flag, where cube-oriented fame and fortune awaits.

But things get really interesting when you grab coins en-route and start buying new vehicles on the game’s home screen. Each vehicle shakes up the visuals and the manner in which you race – the dune buggy, for example, can leap majestically over sandy hills where the UFO bothers farmyard cows to add some variety into a older game format.

More importantly, for every vehicle you buy, a new track section is added to the rally, the vehicle you control automatically switching when you reach that point.

Amass a suitably large collection and there’s the potential for colossal scores – but completing the rally becomes significantly harder, which helps prolong longetivity.

Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire

Even now, years after Android proved itself as a major gaming platform, some developers seem to barely remember the touchscreen exists. If you reckon trudging through games with virtual D-pads and buttons can be a chore, Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire will be a little slice of magic.

You’re a wizard, defending a castle from interlopers attached to balloons. Cast spells by scribbling gestures to match symbols on the balloons and said flotation devices explode – much to the surprise of their owners, who then rapidly plummet towards a squishy end. Miss just one of them and your wizarding days are done.

From the off, this is a fresh, frantic survival game, especially when trying your hand at the super-fast extreme mode. Stick around for long enough and you’ll be able to utilize super spells too, turning enemies into frogs, and summoning a dragon. Which we all need to do on the odd Thursday here and there.

Disney Crossy Road

We're big fans of Crossy Road, which is both a lesson in how to update a classic arcade game (Frogger), and create a free-to-play business model that isn't hateful. (In short, throw free coins at players, don't make anything pay to win, and add loads of tempting but entirely optional characters to buy.)

With Disney Crossy Roadanything could have happened, but this is far from a cheap cash-in. Sure, it starts off very much like Crossy Road – just starring Mickey Mouse. But unlock a few characters (you'll have at least three within ten minutes) and you suddenly find yourself immersed in chunky takes on famous movies, such as Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph, and The Lion King.

Even better, these aren't mere skins on the original. Each world has unique features, from tiny graphical details that will thrill fans, through to subtle shifts in how the game is played that force you to dramatically change your approach.

Alto's Adventure

You might think there's little new in Alto's Adventurewhich is essentially endless leapy game Canabalt on ice. But refined visuals best even Monument Valley, with an eye-popping day/night cycle and gorgeous weather effects; additionally, there's a delightful soundtrack, and a kind of effortless elegance that permeates throughout, propelling Alto's Adventure beyond its contemporaries.

Ostensibly, Alto's Adventure is a game about collecting escaped llamas, but mostly Alto is keen on mucking about on snowy slopes. You zoom down hills, catapult yourself into the air, and try to somersault before face-planting. Extra challenge arrives in the form of chaining stunts to increase your speed, and outrunning elders, angry you're having fun rather than sitting in a stinky llama pen.

Rust Bucket

In Rust Bucketa cartoon helmet with a sword dodders about a vibrant dungeon, offing all manner of cute but deadly adversaries — skittering skulls, angry armoured pigs, and spooky ghosts. This is a turn-based affair, echoing classic RPGs, but its endless dungeon and savage nature transform it into a puzzle game perfect for quickfire mobile sessions. You must learn how foes move and react, plan every step and always keep in mind a single error can spell doom.

In its current incarnation, Rust Bucket cleverly balances enough depth to keep you coming back with the brevity that makes it ideal for on-the-go roguelike larks. Future plans include finite puzzle modes and expanded endless content.