As Android phones and tablets have increased in popularity, the number of apps available for the platform has rocketed.
And that means more free Android games. There's a lot of junk out there but, fortunately, there are gems among the junk.
We've worked our way through a whole load of Android games to reveal the ones you should download to your phone.
So without delay, here is our pick of the 90 best free Android games available.
1. Angry Birds
The
amazingly popular iOS game earned over two million downloads during its
first weekend of availability on Android and despite myriad sequels and
spinoffs, it is still a great game to play.
The Android version of Angry Birds
is free, unlike the Apple release, with maker Rovio opting to stick a
few adverts on it rather than charge an upfront fee. The result is a
massive and very challenging physics puzzler that's incredibly polished
and professional. For free. It defies all the laws of modern retail.
2. Bebbled
Bebbled
is your standard gem-shuffling thing, only presented in a professional
style you wouldn't be surprised to see running on something featuring a
Nintendo badge with an asking price similar to that of a Blu-ray disc.
You
only drop gems on other gems to nuke larger groups of the same colour,
but with ever-tightening demands for score combos and scenes that
require you to rotate your phone to flip the play field on its head,
Bebbled soon morphs into an incredibly complex challenge.
3. Red Stone
There's an awful lot of square-shuffling games on Android and Red Stone
is one of the best. And one of the hardest. You start off with a big
fat 'King' square that's four times of the normal 'pawn' squares, then
set about shuffling things so the fat King can get through to an exit at
the top of the screen.
It's hard to accurately describe a puzzle game in the written word, but seriously, it's a good game.
4. Newton
Released in beta form, Newton
is a maths/physics challenge that has you lining up shots at a target -
but having to contend with the laws of nature, in the form of pushers,
pullers, benders (no laughing), mirrors and traps, all deflecting your
shot from its target.
The developer is still adding
levels to it at the moment, so one day Newton might be finished and
might cost money. But for now it's free and a great indie creation.
5. Angry Birds Star Wars
The
Angry physics phenomenon took a turn for the weird late in 2012, with
Rovio acquiring the rights to blend Star Wars characters with its
popular Angry Birds play mechanics. Angry Birds Star Wars
is actually pretty nice, with players using Star Wars weaponry to smash
down scenery alongside the usual destructive physics action. Not the
car crash IP clash we were expecting.
6. Drop
Some might call Drop
a game, others might classify it as a tech demo that illustrates the
accuracy of the Android platform's accelerometer, thanks to how playing
it simply involves tilting your phone while making a little bouncy ball
falls between gaps in the platforms. Either way it'll amuse you for a
while and inform you of the accuracy of your accelerometer - a win-win
situation.
7. Frozen Bubble
Another key theme of the independent Android gaming scene is (ports of) clones of popular titles. Like Frozen Bubble,
which is based around the ancient and many-times-copied concept of
firing gems up a screen to make little groups of similarly coloured
clusters. That's what you do. You've probably done it a million times
before, so if it's your thing get this downloaded.
8. Replica Island
Replica Island
is an extremely polished platform game that pulls off the shock result
of being very playable on an Android trackball. The heavy momentum of
the character means you're only switching direction with the ball or
d-pad, letting you whizz about the levels with ease. Then there's
jumping, bottom-bouncing, collecting and all the other usual platform
formalities.
9. Gem Miner
In Gem Miner
you are a sort of mole character that likes to dig things out of the
ground. But that's not important. The game itself has you micro-managing
the raw materials you find, upgrading your digging powers and buying
bigger and better tools and maps. Looks great, plays well on Android's
limited button array. Go on, suck the very life out of the planet.
10. ConnecToo
Another coloured-square-based puzzle game, only ConnecToo
has you joining them up. Link red to red, then blue to blue - then see
if you've left a pathway through to link yellow to yellow. You probably
haven't, so delete it all and try again.
A brilliantly
simple concept. ConnecTooused to be a paid-for game, but was recently
switched to an ad-supported model - meaning it now costs you £0.00.
11. Tetris
The most successful game to come out of Russia since, er, Russian roulette, Tetris
has lost none of its gaming lustre in the 25 years since it was first
released. And now you can play the game on your phone, and thanks to
EA's slightly irksome free-to-play model it is free! Well, free as in
you have to dodge some awfully intrusive ads. Still, it's got the
original Tetris music so we are happy and so should you be.
12. Trap!
Not
the best-looking game you'll ever play, with its shabby brown
backgrounds and rudimentary text making it look like something you'd
find running on a PC in the year 1985. But Trap! is good.
You
draw lines to box in moving spheres, gaining points for cordoning off
chunks of the screen. That sounds rubbish, so please invest two minutes
of your time having a go on it so you don't think we're talking
nonsense.
13. Jewels
Coloured
gems again, and this time your job is to switch pairs to make larger
groups which then disappear. That might also sound quite familiar. The
good thing about Jewels
is its size and presentation, managing to look professional while
packing in more levels than should really be given away for free.
14. OpenSudoku
We had to put one Sudoku game in here, so we'll go with OpenSudoku
- which lives up to its open tag thanks to letting users install packs
of new puzzles generated by Sudoku makers. It's entirely possible you
could use this to play new Sudoku puzzles for the rest of your life, if
that's not too terrifying a thought.
15. Abduction!
Abduction! is a sweet little platform jumping game, presented in a similarly quirky and hand-drawn style as the super-fashionable Doodle Jump.
You can't argue with cute cows and penguins with parachutes, or a game
that's easy to play with one hand thanks to its super accessible
accelerometer controls.
16. The Great Land Grab
A cross between a map tool and Foursquare, The Great Land Grab
sorts your local area into small rectangular packets of land - which
you take ownership of by travelling through them in real-time and buying
them up.
Then someone else nicks them off you the next day, a bit like real-world Risk.
A great idea, as long as you don't mind nuking your battery by leaving
your phone sitting there on the train with its GPS radio on.
17. Brain Genius Deluxe
Our
basic legal training tells us it's better to use the word "homage" than
to label something a "rip-off", so we'll recommend this as a simple
"homage" to the famed Nintendo Brain Trainingfranchise.
Clearly Brain Genius Deluxe
is not going to be as slick, but there's enough content in here to keep
you "brain training" (yes, it even uses that phrase) until your battery
dies. The presentation's painfully slow, but then again that might be
the game teaching you patience.
18. Coloroid
Coloroid
is aery, very simple and has the look of the aftermath of an explosion
in a Tetris factory, but it works. All you do is expand coloured areas,
trying to fill them in with colours in as few moves as possible - like
using Photoshop's fill tool at a competitive level.
19. Cestos
Cestos
is sort of a futuristic recreation of curling, where players chuck
marbles at each other to try and smash everyone else's balls/gems down
the drain and out of the zone. The best part is this all happens online
against real humans, so as long as there's a few other bored people out
there at the same time you'll have a real, devious, cheating, quitting
person to play against. Great.
20. Air Control
One
of the other common themes on the Android gaming scene is clones of
games based around pretending to be an air traffic controller, where you
guide planes to landing strips with a swish of your finger. There are
loads of them, all pretty much the same thing - we've chosen Air Control as it's an ad-supported release, so is technically free.
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