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. If we've missed your favourite free Android game, let us know in the comments. 1. Angry Birds The
amazingly popular iOS game moved to Android a while ago, earning over
two million downloads during its first weekend of availability. The
Android version 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. Angry Birds for Android was first available to download from app store GetJar but is now available through Google Play. 2. BebbledBebbled
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 of £19.99. 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 StoneThere'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 a few months back 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. Sketch OnlineSurprisingly free of crude representations of the male genitalia, Sketch Online
is a sociable guessing game where users do little drawings then battle
to correctly guess what's being drawn first. It's like Mavis Beacon for
the Bebo generation. The version labelled "Beta" is free, and if you
like it there's the option to pay for an ad-free copy. But Google can't
make you. Yet. 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 MinerIn 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. ConnecTooAnother 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. ConnecToo used to be a paid-for game, but was recently switched to an ad-supported model - meaning it now costs you £0.00. 11. Titres Once you're successfully rewired your brain's 25 years of playing Tetris in a certain way with certain buttons and got used to tapping the screen to rotate your blocks, it's... Tetris. It hinges on how much you enjoy placing things with your phone's trackball or pad. If you're good at it, it's a superb Tetris clone. Let's hope it doesn't get sued out of existence. UPDATE: While Titres seems to have been removed from Google Play, there's now an official Tetris app available to download. 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. JewelsColoured
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 Training franchise. 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 ControlOne
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. 21. GalaxIRGalaxIR
is a futuristic strategy game with an abstract look, where players
micro-manage an attacking alien fleet. Pick a planet, pick an attack
point, then hope your troops have the balls to carry it off. There's not
much structure to the game as yet, but that's what you get when you're
on the bleeding-edge of free, independent Android gaming development. 22. Graviturn Graviturn
is an accelerometer based maze game, where the aim is to roll a red
ball out of a maze by tilting your phone around. Seems embarrassingly
easy at first, until increasing numbers of green balls appear on screen.
If any green balls roll off the screen you die and have to try again.
It's abstract. It's good. 23. Alchemy Classic There are a few variants on Alchemy out there, each offering a similarly weird experience. In Alchemy Classic
you match up elements to create their (vaguely) scientific offspring,
so dumping water onto earth makes a swamp, and so on. It's a brain
teaser thing and best played by those who enjoy spending many hours in
the company of the process of elimination. 24. ActionPotatoIn ActionPotato
you control three pots. Pressing on the pots makes them jump up into
the air, where they harvest potatoes. See how many you can get in a row.
That's the gist of it. And don't collect the rotten potatoes, else you
die. That really is it. The Google Play stats say this is on well over
1,000,000 downloads, so it's doing something right. 25. Scrambled NetScrambled Net
is based around the age-old concept of lining up pipes and tubes, but
has been jazzed up with images of computer terminals, high score
tracking and animations. Still looks like something you'd have played on
a Nokia during the last decade, but it's free - and looking rubbish
hardly stopped Snake from taking off, did it?
26. Dropwords Dropwords
is laid out like your standard Android block-based puzzle game, the
difference here is we're not dealing with gems - you make blocks
disappear by spelling out words from the jumbled heap of letters.
There's not an enormous amount of point to it, but you can at least
submit your scores and best words to the server, where an AI version of
Susie Dent will pass her approval. 27. Barrr What you do in Barrr
is man-manage a bar world, pointing men at the beers, games or tattoo
parlour, then taking their money off them once they're drunk and happy
like a good capitalist. And make sure they go to the toilet. Things, as
things do in games, soon start speeding up and it gets rather insane and
difficult. 28. TetronimoThe name gives it away - this is a Tetris clone. Or rather it's a game that uses the same sort of block-shifting rules as Tetris,
only with a very nice and user friendly touchscreen area beneath the
block pit to make it easy to play. We're having trouble locating this on
Google Play at time of writing - either a glitch or the inevitable
legal troubles. UPDATE: Tetronimo seems to have been removed from Google Play, but there's now an official Tetris app available to download. 29. Wordfeud Wordfeud is a superb little clone of Scrabble,
with a big, clear screen and online play options that actually work.
The game's been offered for free with some hefty advertising over it
thanks to the developer being based in Norway - which only received
paid-for app sales support recently. A paid version may arrive soon, but
Wordfeud remains free right now. 30. Friction Mobile Friction Mobile
is a very odd concept that makes no sense in still images. You fire a
ball into the screen, then try to hit that ball with other balls until
it explodes. The catch is you're not allowed to bounce balls backwards
into your own face. Because then you die. Sounds rubbish, but works
well. It's free, so give it a no-obligation, no-commitment whirl. 31. Geared Geared
is a weird little thing finally converted over to Android from iPhone.
It's an embarrassingly simple concept - players slot different sized
cogs into place on the screen, with the aim being to power one gear from
another. Then, as is video game tradition, it gets harder and harder.
Plus there are 150 levels of it all. 32. Meganoid A stunning little retro game, Meganoid
plays and looks like something that ought to be running on a Nintendo
emulator. But it isn't. It's new and on Android. It's a speed-based
challenge, using on-screen or accelerometer controls to jump and bounce
through ever-hardening levels. Developer Orange Pixel is aggressively
supporting it, too, with constant map packs, characters and more
regularly appearing for download. 33. CordyA standard and traditional platform game. Cordy
is a speed-based affair, with players running, jumping and collecting
their way through its pretty green levels, using an electrical cable to
jump, swing over obstacles and grab energy. Uses on-screen buttons so
can be a bit tough to play, but comes with 12 free levels to get you
going. 34. Angry Birds Rio Yet more Angry Birds for fans of the simplistic trial and error physics game. Angry Birds Rio
is another chapter-based effort as well, with developer Rovio leaving
tempting empty slots on the menu screen for periodic updates of new
levels. More of the same, but with a prettier, 3D look to it this time
thanks to a vague association with animated movie Rio. 35. Grave Defense Holidays As with Angry Birds,
the maker of this superb tower defence game has spun out a separate
version it fills with seasonal levels. Recently updated with an Easter
map, this free version of the game also includes Valentine, Christmas
and St Patrick's Day themed maps. Currently calls itself Grave Defense Easter. Easily one of the best examples of the tactical genre. 36. Words with Friends Free The popular iPhone Scrabble-alike is now on Android, with an ad-supported version up on Google Play for free. Words with Friends Free
should actually be called Words for People Without Any Friends, as once
installed it lets users play with complete strangers online - or pick
specific people from your contacts list. It's turn-based, so several
ongoing games can be strung out for days. 37. PewPew Very similar in style and concept to Xbox and Xbox 360 retro classic Geometry Wars. In fact, one might legally be able to get away with calling it a right old rip-off. Android PewPew
is a rock-hard 2D shooting game packed with alternate game modes. It's a
bit rough around the edges and requires a powerful phone to run
smoothly, but when it does it's a fantastic thing. 38. Tap FishA
nice looking little aquarium, that combines the timeless hobby of
staring at goldfish with game elements based around breeding new
varieties. There's a slight sting in the tail here in that Tap Fish
is one of the initial wave of "freemium" Android games brought into
life thanks to Google's launch of in-app billing. The really cool new
stuff costs little bits of money. 39. Beats, Advanced Rhythm GameA standard rhythm action, button pressing music game for Android. Beats
manages to outdo the official music games by including a Download Song
tab, where it's possible to install new song files created by users.
It's very hard and very fast. Just like they should be. Runs perfectly
on an HTC Desire, too, so there's no blaming glitches for not doing very
well. 40. Pinball Deluxe Pinball Deluxe
is an actually decent pinball sim for Android, and it's free. At the
moment it comes with four tables - Wild West, Carnival, Space Frontier
and Diving for Treasure. Ball movement is convincing, and although a bit
of the magic is lost thanks to having to use on-screen buttons, it's a
smooth enough experience. It's ad-supported. Don't press those. You
don't get a bonus. 41. Winter Walk Winter Walk
is madness. You play the part of a gentleman, out for an evening walk.
From time to time the wind picks up, so you have to hold on to his hat
to stop it blowing away. While this is happening, the chap's
internal monologue appears on screen, giving you an entertaining and
distracting read in the process, too. Very simple, but a perfect little
high score challenge game for the touchscreen era. 42. Colosseum HeroesPublisher Gamevil takes a break from churning out the role-playing games to give dumb action a go here. Colosseum Heroes
is a 2D slasher, where you simply try to survive for as long as
possible, building up your armour and weaponry to make yourself tougher
and meaner. Technically this is a "freemium" game paid for with
in-app purchases, but if you're prepared to spend a while building up
your character's skills manually, there's no need to pay out. 43. Stardash FreeDeveloper Orange Pixel has a knack of creating excellent retro titles, with Stardash a fine example. Designed to look like a Game Boy game from before many of you younger readers were born, Stardash is clearly a bit of a Mario
homage - but it's done exceptionally well and is endlessly replayable.
If you like it, and you probably will, there's an alternate paid version
that removes the adverts. 44. Scramble With Friends FreeZynga's latest puzzler Scramble With Friends Free
is technically a free game, but in order to get the most out of it and
play as it's meant to be played you'll need to use the in-app purchasing
system to buy "tokens" to let you access games quicker. Which leaves a
slightly bad T-A-S-T-E in the M-O-U-T-H, but at least it's free and
perfectly playable at a slow pace if you're just curious. 45. Dead on Arrival Dead on Arrival
is a very impressive looking 3D survival horror game, which dumps you
in a hospital infested with zombies. You then try to not get eaten by
buying new weapons, boarding up doors to keep the brain-eaters at bay
and using wall-mounted weaponry to quicken the zombie mincing process.
As with many of today's Android titles, there's the option to pay for
stuff within the game to unlock features and remove ads - but you don't
have to. 46. Stick CricketStick Cricket
is a fantastically simple little game that reduces cricket to its core
values - you just smash every ball as hard as you can. There's no
worrying about field positioning, just a bat and a ball coming at you
very quickly. Initially it seems impossible to do anything other than
make a complete mess of things and having your little man smashed
upside-down, but it soon clicks. 47. Draw Something FreeDraw Something Free
is the new phenomenon that's taking the world by storm (at the time of
writing, at least). It's basically a mobile version of Pictionary, where
you're given a choice of three words of varying difficulty, then tasked
with drawing them so someone can tell what it is. Syncs with Facebook,
too, for easy cross-platform play. If you like the free trial, there's a
paid accompaniment with more content. 48. Fragger The popular web-based Flash game Fragger is now on Android. It's pretty much a clone of Angry Birds,
mind, offering simple physics-based challenges based around chucking
grenades all over the place to make stuff blow up. It comes with some
rather intrusive ads, but that's the price you (don't) pay for sticking
with the free version. 49. The Sims FreePlayGlobal mega-corporation EA has gone literally mad, giving away its Android version of The Sims for nothing in the form of The Sims FreePlay.
In return for sitting through some full-screen adverts every now and
again, players get a decent mobile version of The Sims, complete with
pets, plants, lifestyle points and all the usual mundane activities that
make the series popular. It's not perfect, but does fit in most Sims
core features. 50. Super Bit Dash About as far away from The Sims as you can get. Super Bit Dash
is a retro-style 2D platform game, with controls as simple as its pixel
art design. The game runs at a constant pace, so all the player has to
do is jump and super-special-jump at the right time in order to avoid
smashing into the scenery. Obviously it's a lot harder than that makes
it sound.
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