The important thing is that they are not “addictive” or have (a lot of) ads. I can recommend GCompris, SuperTuxKart and TowerJumper.
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I tried to list everything I have played that can be emulated on an android platform, excluding very hard games or games with scary/adult elements.
- Easy-tier
- Pokemon Fire Red / Leaf Green (GBA)
- Pokemon Emerald (GBA)
- Pokemon Platinum (DS)
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue team (GBA)
- Chrono Trigger (SNES or DS)
- Mid-tier
- The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap (GBA)
- Hard-tier
- Mega Man X / X2 (SNES)
You can get most of the roms from Vimm’s Lair or CDRomance
Shattered Pixel Dungeon - open source, ad-free - turn-based rogue-like dungeon-crawler
Also cave story on retroarch. Its a masterpiece so why not.
Bloon tower defense 6, so worth the price
Balatro
I guess it’s kinda addictive, but only because it’s really good. It doesn’t feel like it was cynically designed to be addictive, if that makes sense. No ads or microtransactions!
Lego games
I probably started playing those when I was 5
If you download an app store like f-driod you can get good apps from there.
My kids like this Libre Memory game which is Memory and nothing else. You can also download apps for them to draw and other games
bloons td6
And the Kingdom Rush series (in the Tower Defense genre)
I got to check this out. I have btd6 on pc but on my phone I got it for free from epic. Infinitoide is another one which was good when I played it albeit very minimal.
Unciv is open source 2D Civilization V but I guess you said not addictive
If you want just a game that’s realistically super fun and kids can sink time into and engage with you can try the PvZ2 Altervz mod.
It has daily challenges but there are no microtransactions, ads, or any other malicious feature. Setup is a little tricky depending on which OEM you have (involves moving a file into a directory that might be hidden by default), but this is probably one of the best options.
Morrowind android port
no but on a real there’s a lot of android ports of old games that aren’t addictive, and all you have to do usually is click install on an apk file.
Here’s one that requires a bit more setup than that if you’re techy - https://www.reddit.com/r/TrackMania/s/QDNYzg499o
If that seems too tricky, I still highly recommend the original Trackmania Forever game if you’ve got ANY laptop. Super simple arcadey racing game - completely free - smooth as butter, lots of replayability, runs on anything, you can play against each other, has a track creator mode that’s easy to use, customisable cars - and on, and on. I used to play it when I was about 8-9 years old, then recently when I was babysitting I taught my cousin to play it - he was only 6 years old and loved it. Absolutely brilliant - I used to spend hours playing against my dad back in the day.
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Mindustry (factory management with tower defense and rts) is also available for android and is on fdroid too so no ads. It might be a bit addicting I guess.
Monument valley? The problem is it actually ends, eventually.
Or idk, old GBA games on an emulator? I spent way too much time on Pokémon blue growing up.
Oh definitely have them play old Zelda games. A link to the past is my fav.
Yeah, if I had kids, I’d give them emulated Gameboy games and lock the internet to avoid them getting ads or microtransactions or anything like that.
Kids would still enjoy those Mario, Pokémon, and Mega Man games, right?
Also, they’d be free and you could probably add hundreds.
At that point it’s just better to invest on one of those dedicated emulator consoles… They’re not terribly expensive and they’re natively offline. Plus, clicky buttons, which I think really enhances the experience.
downwell
might have too many microtransactions but i can recommend arcaea and noisz starlivht. both are free to play with no ads.
arcaea has you paying per song, while noisz has a paid club pass which just makes the game faster to grind.
noisz is a bit mature, mentioning sex, transphobia, awful parents, quite a bit of violence, etc. and is also gay as hell if you do end up picking it up.
