7 Best Mobile Games You Can Win At for Free (Actually Free)

Fun mobile games that don't trick you into in-app purchases to win or rank!
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I started playing mobile games a few years ago and find them a great way to pass the time, join active guilds, meet interesting, new people, and escape from daily life. Mobile games provide a portable outlet for gamers everywhere. On the train, in the car, in the waiting room, or where ever you might be, with the click of a button, you can be someone else, somewhere else.

The issue with mobile gaming is that many games require expensive in-app purchases to get full-access, rank, or win behind the free price tag.

It was 1994 when the first mobile game, a version of Tetris compatible with mobile, came out. Mobile gaming has advanced and improved over the years, providing full, open-world RPGs with unbelievable graphics and story-lines, augmented reality and even updated but nostalgic retro runners. There are entire communities dedicated to games like Pokemon Go, Brawl Stars, and League of Legends. It's an active and thriving community.

The issue with mobile gaming is that many games require expensive in-app purchases to get full-access, rank, or win behind the free price tag. In those cases, the amount spent on in-app purchases can by far exceed the average console game.

I wanted to create a list of fun games with great reviews and active communities for those who either want to try mobile gaming for the first time and don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to rank, or those who might be looking for some new games to grab from the app store that won't break the bank.

Posted in these interests:
h/gaming266 guides
h/ios74 guides
h/android21 guides

Gameplay

Yeah Bunny 2 is a retro-style side-scrolling platform action game with simple touch controls, cute bad guys, and cuter bosses.

After a long day's work, the game starts with Bunny and Chick, who are trying to enjoy the rest of their day only to notice the ship they're on isn't stopping and, soon after, crashes. When all the chicks go missing, they realize they've been kidnapped, so Bunny goes searching for them to free them all from their little cages. During Bunny's search, he collects carrots that can revive him and can be used to purchase furniture for his homes, coins that unlock different playable bunnies, and beats up bad guys.

The goal is to get record times for each level while finding all three stars and collect as many coins as possible. There are seven levels for each world, seven worlds total, and twenty extra playable bunnies.

Playable bunnies

  • Classic Bunny
  • The Amazing Spider Bunny
  • John RAMBUnny
  • The Incredible Bunny
  • Ninja Bunny
  • Captain Bunny
  • The Agent Bunny
  • Bunny The Hedgehog
  • Green Bunny
  • Flash Bunny
  • Panther Bunny
  • Super Bunny
  • Bunny Rick
  • The Legend of Bunny
  • Strange Bunny
  • Joker Bunny
  • Pool Bunny
  • SUPERBunny
  • BATBunny
  • Wolver Bunny
  • Iron Bunny

Cons

Once you start running in one direction, Bunny runs fast and will not turn around unless he hits a wall. When he hits the wall, he will boomerang in the other direction. Sometimes this means having to run in the opposite direction to get boomeranged into the right direction. Often, if you overshoot your jump, you end up waiting to be boomeranged backed to your jumping point again. While this is logical for the gameplay in this runner, it can be frustrating at times.

In-app purchases

For $2.99, you can remove ads. You can also purchase carrots, diamond packs, or coin packs. All of the in-app purchases are under $2.99 and aren't necessary to play the game or earn achievements.

Developed by

Adrian Zarzycki

Platform(s)

  • iOS
  • Android
  • Poki
  • PC
  • Bluestacks

Gameplay

AFK Arena is an idle RPG with an active and loyal community of players. One of the many reasons for having so many loyal players worldwide is the reward system in-game. Anytime a quest is completed, there are reward chests, activity points, diamonds, and more. Since it's an idle RPG, you get rewards that stack up even when you aren't playing, that you can collect next time you play.

The game takes place in Esperia, a once peaceful realm, but is stuck in the middle of a war started between the goddess of life (Dura) and the god of death (Annih). The Hypogeans, created by Annih, have overrun Espira. AFK Arena's players collect heroes from various factions with different strengths, bonuses, advantages, and abilities to fight the Hypogeans.

AFK Arena is an RPG, but it's also a game of strategy. The goal is to create strong teams with the best gear, emblems, and artifacts, all of which need to be suited to the hero and their faction. As you are advancing in the campaign alongside your guildmates, you complete all the daily and weekly quests, collect the resources needed to level your heroes, and ascend those heroes. There are also regular events, and new heroes are added as part of the events so that you can learn new backstories, collect new heroes, and adapt your team.

To watch the story trailer for AFK Arena click here.

Factions

  • Lightbearers
  • Maulers
  • Graveborns
  • Celestials
  • Hypogeans

Cons

My only two cons with the game are:

  • Chat- The chat in-game is iffy. There are often words that are banned within chat. For a brief period of time, the word game was banned in-game. While this issue has been improved substantially, I still find the chat over-all laggy and cumbersome.
  • Ascension- Ascending heroes takes substantial time and resources. If you are using a majority of one particular faction's heroes, that will slow down the process of ascension while you stack the needed resources and fodder heroes.

In-app purchases

If you want to make in-app purchases to up your game, you can visit the merchants to purchase diamonds, gold, soulstones, emblem chests, experience, enchantment tokens, and twisted essence heroes, and more.

Prices can range from .99$ for daily deals to 99.99$ for packages of diamonds, heroes, and VIP experience, or a combination of any of the above resources. While in-app purchases can help you beat difficult bosses, level up and advance much faster, and have an over-all leg up in the game, they aren't a necessity.

By completing quests, players can earn plenty of diamonds, heroes, and other resources without making purchases. Lillith Games even gifts players diamonds and other resources regularly in-game by visiting merchants, via mail, or by releasing redemption codes for holidays and other special occasions.

Developed by

Lilith Games

Platform(s)

  • iOS
  • Andriod
  • Bluestacks
  • Mac with an M1 chip

Gameplay

In Super Fowlst 2, you play a chicken named Fowlst who lives by the slogan, "I'm a renegade!" Super Fowlst 2 is a 2D action arcade game with an adorable pixelated design. This renegade chicken smashes and body slams into demons, collects coins, and fights scary yet adorable bosses. The main controls are: tapping right or left, jumping, bouncing off of different springs, and swiping up to use whatever item you have in hand at that time.

The game's goal is to collect as many coins as you can while clearing all areas of demons in record time. Coins can be used to purchase upgrades like:

  • Extra hearts- health
  • Egg bomb- to damage enemies every few hops
  • Rocket- Heat-seeking missiles every few hops
  • Magnet- pulls coins closer to you
  • Item slot- to carry extra power-ups
  • Body slam- swipe down to do a body slam on demons

Playable characters

  • Dadish
  • Baby
  • Possum
  • Pizza Punk
  • Ducko
  • Bunny Cone
  • Neil
  • The Sneak
  • Roy
  • Robo Fowlst
  • Surly Soda
  • Burger Billy
  • Freaky Fries
  • Not Hot Dog
  • Helichopter
  • Idiot Fish
  • Claire
  • Sea Nag
  • Fart

Cons

The controls in Super Fowlst 2 are basic and intuitive, but it is easy to overshoot the mark in Super Fowlst 2, which can be challenging when trying to smash a demon.

In-app purchases

Removing ads is only 3.99$.

Developed by

Thomas Young

Platform(s)

  • iOS
  • Android
  • Bluestacks

Gameplay

Murder in the Alps is a crime adventure and hidden objects game with an interactive, well-written story and dramatic, comic book-esque art. The game is based in the 1930s at a hotel in the Swiss Alps, which provides an intriguing ambiance for the murders and a challenge in finding hidden items since many of the items we recognize in modern society.

You play Anna, a journalist staying at the hotel where the murder is committed. Using her deductive skills, she begins trying to solve the crime and help her friend Otto, who owns to hotel. As you search for hidden objects, you also gather weapons, find clues, and try to solve a murder and other crimes and mysteries as you work through each chapter. There are also mysterious events added regularly.

Cons

The game takes energy for each task. Sometimes you may run out of energy and have to wait to complete a task. If you are looking for hidden items and click the wrong one too many times, the edges of the screen will freeze up with ice, but that is easily resolved since the game has a hint button for when you cannot find an item or don't know where to go next.

In-app purchases

There are in-app purchases for extra energy that range from $2.99 to $24.99, but by sharing to Facebook or subscribing, you can also get free extra energy. There are also in-app purchases for extra mysteries, hidden object games, and other games if you want extra content, but you do not have to pay to access the full game.

Developed by

Nordcurrent

Platform(s)

  • iOS
  • Android
  • Bluestacks

Gameplay

Super Cat Tales 2 is an adorable 2.5D side-scrolling platform action game very similar to Super Mario Brothers, only with cats instead of Italian plumbers, so much so in the Andriod app store, it's referred to as Super Cat Bros.

The story is as cute as the game itself. Alex the cat, being the considerate cat citizen he is, approaches a group of robots (The Tin Army) and asks them if they need help before being captured by The Tin Army and locked in a cage. He then meets McMeow, a super tough one-eyed cat, who uses his strength to break them free of their cages before making a plan to take down The Tin Army.

There is a slew of cats that you can collect and play along the way, which all have their own special skills. For example, Alex the cat is good at climbing walls, and McMeow is strong and is good at tanking the bad guys or breaking down barriers without taking as much damage. You can easily play the cats interchangeably as you move through World 1, as with the other cats you collect once you advance in the game.

There are a total of 7 worlds in Super Cat Tales 2, each of those worlds has 9 separate levels that take place in various places like Hikari City, S.S Gear, Kaze Towers, and more. To get to each level, you are required to attain a certain number of bells before moving to the final level in each world. If you don't have enough bells, you can run through previous levels to find the bells you've missed.

Playable cats

  • Alex- climbing
  • McMeow- strength and fighting bad guys
  • Shinji- swimming and skipping on the water
  • Kuro- lights up the dark with his miner's hat
  • Luna- impervious to damage while staying still
  • Olli- glides and uses the cape mentioned above
  • Amy- crawling through passageways that are too small for the other cats
  • Robo Kitty- the abilities of all the cats combined

Cons

The only con about this game is that some of the gear or extras require many coins, though this is easily solved by rerunning levels.

In-app purchases

Like Doodle Jump 2, you can pay $4.99 to remove ads from the game if the ads bother you. You can also purchase gear or extras that give you a boost in the game, like a shovel to dig for treasure, a band-aid to reduce stun time, a cloak to glide through the air, a dive mask that makes you immune to small underwater enemies, and more. You can also purchase more coins if you wish to, though that's not at all necessary in-game.

Developed by

Gionathan Pesaresi

Platform(s)

  • iOS
  • Android
  • Bluestacks
  • Mac with an M1 chip

Gameplay

Genshin Impact is an open-world RPG with beautiful anime-style graphics, a well-written story, and well-thought-out backstories for each character. Genshin Impact takes place in the world of Teyvat. At the start of the game, two siblings, a brother and a sister, are separated by a powerful, evil god. You get to chose which sibling you prefer to play with during that separation. You then lose your powers and are teleported to Teyvat.

During your time there, you travel, meet and attain many strong characters that welcome you into the world of Teyvat and accompany you on your journey. You get to play as many of the characters, use the elements to fight dragons and other bad guys, and experiment with different team combinations as you collect characters. There are several characters to play in-game and new characters added regularly. You also have a non-playable character named Paimon that acts as your guide through Teyvat and proclaims herself to be your best friend.

As you travel and collect characters, you unlock different powers and achievements. Because the game is open-world, you have free reign to hunt, forage, cook, do side quests, and go on adventures. For every achievement and adventure, there are in-game rewards that make it possible to play Genshin Impact for free. There are also several chests scattered throughout the land of Teyvat that are easy to attain through simple battles and side quests.

The controls are smooth and self-explanatory, even for non-gamers. A tutorial button allows for an easy refresher if you need a guide on how to do different attacks, create elemental reactions, attack weak spots, and more. You can gather items as you go, change your wind gliders in the dressing room, collect artifacts to enhance your gear, increase your abilities in the constellation, and level up your talents for each character.

Elements

  • Anemo- wind
  • Hydro- water
  • Electro- lightning
  • Pyro- fire
  • Dendro- nature
  • Geo- earth
  • Cyro- ice

Cons

The game has a substantial download required to get access to the entire game. In the game description, it states the download is 3 GB, but it is over 6 GB and takes some time to download. The game's graphics and gameplay alone is worth the download if you have the space needed.

In-app purchases

There are in-app purchases you can make to boost gameplay that mostly includes Genesis crystals. You can also get a blessings bundle, gnostic hymn, gnostic chorus, or travel notes.

Developed by

miHoYo Limited

Platform(s)

  • iOS
  • Android
  • PC
  • PS4

Gameplay

Doodle Jump 2 is a perpetual 2D platform action game developed on December 20, 2020. The original Doodle Jump was released specifically for iOS over ten years earlier and has long been considered a "classic" with an established cult following.

Like in the original Doodle Jump, Doodle Jump 2's controls are the same. By tilting your phone left to right, you move Doodle the Doodler so that he bounces from platform to platform, while attempting to collect different boosters and kill or avoid the bad guys. If you move too slowly or tilt your phone the wrong way and miss a platform, Doodle falls and you start over.

The goal of the game is to jump, collect stars for the upcoming levels, and, whatever you do, don't fall or get sucked up by a portal or spaceship, because the higher you jump the more points you score. To advance to the different levels and experience the different worlds, you have to collect the number of stars needed. The number of stars needed doubles from level the level, starting with 40 stars in level one and ending with 2,400 stars in level 8. As you advance all eight levels, you get to enjoy the changes in the scenery with the different worlds, Doodle the Doodler's costume changes for each world, and the cute, different monsters that match the theme of each world.

Levels

  • Caveman world- with prehistoric animals, primitive wheels, dinosaurs, and Doodle with a bone for a bow-tie
  • Desert world- including scorpions, sand-dissolving platforms, and a blue genie that turns Doodle into a cow, carrot, and other items/animals
  • Sleepy world- with pillow platforms, sleep themed monsters like sheep, and pillow-shaped spaceships
  • Aviator world- think jet packs, propellers, and Doodle in aviator goggles
  • Space world- including robots, moon rock platforms, and Doodle dressed like an astronaut
  • Rainy world- with Doodle in a raincoat and rainhat wearing monsters (I did mention the monsters were cute, right?)
  • Disco world- think shiny disco platforms, monsters that look like disco balls, fun music, and Doodle wearing headphones

Cons

The only con I found in-game was that level 3, sandy world, has sand platforms that dissolve. While this is supposed to pose a fun challenge, it really should have been a later level than its current position as level 3, because it is much more difficult than many of the later levels.

In-app purchases

As with most mobile games, there are some pesky ads. If you want to disable them, you can make a one-time in-app purchase for $4.99 and keep on jumping! There are no other in-app purchases with Doodle Jump 2.

Developed by

Lima Sky

Platform(s)

  • iOS
  • Andriod
  • Bluestacks

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