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Comment by supercanuck | Hacker News Reader

For me, playing mobile games is essentially like playing Slot machines. Its this reason i don't let me kids play games on their mobile device.

It makes more sense just buying a Switch, which allows more interactive play with people, more coop and time limits without the feeling their is a slot machine effect happening

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Thats a very broad statement, there are a lot of great mobile games that aren't slot machines - even some from Nintendo. Mario Run, Threes, Alto's Adventure, SPL-T, Reigns, Leap Day - phew, and thats off the top of my head; there's a lot of choice on the App Store.

The real problem is that the App Store provides no search filters of any kind and nearly-useless browsing. If you could simply say “show me only games with no slot machines”, the experience would be so much better.

While I loved Alto's Adventure (and some more of those), and it was by no means aggregious, it does include things like watching ads to continue your run (at least once), and other microtransactions.

I don't think I'm a reactionary, and this is a problem on consoles and PC as well, but there is a lot of difference between mobile games and games where you buy an entire experience and everything relevant is designed into that system. Nothing is gated, you can make it easier through a difficulty setting, you can't make it easier by paying extra dollars.

Note that I avoid anything last 5 years EA and similar that can't for the life of them design games that respect their customers.

Spacechem was the best game I've ever played on an iPad, it suited the form factor perfectly. It's a real shame Zactronics dropped support for iOS [0]. FTL also works well and the touch controls are reminiscent of Star Trek's.

There's some real gems in the mobile space and more and more real games are migrating over. Nintendo of course have stomped all over the entire industry with some exceptional hardware and games this past year.

[0] https://twitter.com/zachtronics/status/658428388432982016

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