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Comment by rjmill | Hacker News Reader

Well, there goes the rest of the week. I don't install games on my phone, but I always give SPD a pass because open source. The first time I installed it, I almost lost an internship because I was too focused on the game. The most recent time I installed it, my wife thought I was cheating on her because I was acting so shady and obsessive about my phone. Don't say I didn't warn y'all.

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If you only play open source mobile games and are afraid of wasting your time, make sure you avoid the factory tower defense game Mindustry which presents itself at https://mindustrygame.github.io/

Oh no, it's on f-droid, my hands are tied! I'll have to ahem contribute my free time to this important open source library.

And if you play on PC, also avoid Tales of Maj'Eyal (https://te4.org/), because of its depth and almost infinite replayability.

The crazy imaginative class selection in ToME (special shoutout to the chronomancer) easily makes it my go-to roguelike, but I do find I have trouble really feeling what the impact of my build choices are, although this is a common feeling with roguelikes - I probably feel it more in ToME because it feels like every level-up has a much broader decision space than most other roguelikes. Also that most enemies (at least early game) aren't a major challenge until you hit one that wrecks you.

Most of the time I go with "rule of cool", blaze ahead, and die somewhere around the time I get to the sandworm tunnels.

The farthest I ever got was what felt like the first real boss who just teleports you to <FUN> which came out of left field and my character in that run was _not_ prepared to handle that.

I'm still trying to beat it on normal difficulty. The farthest I got was first floors of the necromancer's tower, which is about 1/4 of the game AFAIK. I resist the temptation to try any add-on, there's so much fun without them.

That is why I am a fan of games that buff your character over repeated runs.

If more games did this, the difficulty slider could go away. As an added bonus, there is a satisfaction of getting to the point where you are so overpowered the game essentially breaks (see: vampire survivors)

the "open source" part https://git.net-core.org/groups/tome (GPLv3)

Couldn't play it on mobile. The UI just did not feel mobile friendly at all

What does that mean?

The complexity of the game's interface was not converted to a high quality mobile interface. It work, sure, but it was not pleasant to use

It's like viewing a desktop version of a website on mobile. It's usable, but kinda sucks and made me not want to play

I mean, what specifically seems not "high quality", "not pleasant", and "kinda sucks"?

I ask because I played the game and found it very easy (though obviously not as fast as desktop, but since you can pause...)

I have tried multiple times to play Mindustry, but always end giving up, it doesn't seem that well tested on touch screens.

On one of my phones it doesn't even render whole the items on the screen, making some actions unselectable.

The item box is scrollable. I didn't realize that till later in my game play. (I had been playing desktop version for some time)

Also, the small activation regions for some items/blocks/selections suggest it may be easier to play with one of those touch-active styluses.

Yeah I finished all of Mindustry on mobile, around half of it with stylus (it has a rubber ball)

Thanks for the hint.

Was on my way to suggest this game to avoid, which is also available for free on desktop.

Man, anyone will do what you are suggesting to avoid! we will bear the sin together.

Honestly though, Mindustry is so much better with keyboard/mouse controls. It's a shockingly good mobile factory/automation type game, but I'd just rather play it on PC. (Or Mac, which runs it fine)

Sure, but it's much harder to hide your laptop screen under the covers at 2am, back to spouse, shielding the light, keeping your secret safe. Plus, a screen tap is much quieter than a laptop k/m.

...What? Nobody else is doing this?

How does it compare to They Are Billions [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Are_Billions

I had the same issue and my solution was: I modified the code of the game to add cheats (make my character super durable), compiled it myself and loaded the apk onto my phone. Then I finally finished the game and my addiction ended.

I like this. Both for the astute problem identification and the self-empowered solution.

Usually I try to avoid cheats but I use them it in situations where I either get badly addicted or where I notice that I'm losing a lot of time with repetitive grinding

I just play as an archer/warden. It's a pretty easy class, I can beat the game maybe one in five times. Once you get the nature footwear artifact you've as good as won, and if you get a blooming weapon then it's a cakewalk.

Sniper is easier in my opinion. If you find a ring of marksmanship, it becomes pretty trivial with the sniper's armor bypassing and tier upgrades to the bow.

I think anyone hunting for a first win should play as a huntress or mage. Ranged attacks are pretty overpowered in comparison to melee and don't require as much position play. And since both classes begin with their final weapon, you don't need to rely too much on the RNG to survive.

They should put this review on their repo README. It’s making me want to play it. But it’s also making me scared to play it.

I don't play any computer games these days and haven't since I was a kid.

But I can confirm that pixel dungeon is an exception, I have lost many hours to it, but it has been years since I've played it.

IIRC shattered is a fork with slightly different game play.

I do love rogue like games.

Make sure you don't install Caves then, it's even better.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=thirty.six.dev...

Contains ads, hard pass.

I made a relevant thing: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/

Sites like yours are a welcome addition to the web. Thank you! I've been using a similar one: https://www.darkpattern.games/

Thank you! Dark Pattern Games is great as well.

I remember in the Play Games app specifically, you can filter games by ads. It turns thousands of games into a dozen or so!

Neat! For a brief time there was that "Honest Android Games" and I've wished for a replacement ever since.

I've been on this page before! Thanks!

Haven't seen an ad in many years.

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.adaway/

Me neither, because I don't install apps which have ads :)

I've never had much luck with system wide VPN-based ad blockers, and I don't have a rooted phone.

I'd pay a one time cost of 20-30 dollars just to get rid of the ads.

Free Open Source???

Unciv

https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv

Well, that's a pretty solid endorsement.

I never tried World of Warcraft years ago until that South Park episode came out. Currently about the only games I still play on my phone are chess and Plants vs Zombies 2, which for some reason has had me hooked since the very first one came out. Luckily, my wife likes it too.

I can confirm everything he's saying.

I spent way too much time playing xonotic

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