Clicker Heroes

This game is pretty ridiculous. All you do is level up, basically. It’s an idle game, which means that basically all you have to do is check it every so often and give your dudes levels and you earn a meta-currency called hero souls which lets you level up meta-heroes which give you extra damage and gold and it’s weirdly addictive. It also doesn’t take itself too seriously and isn’t super-annoying with the monetization–you can buy rubies (which can let you progress a little bit faster)–but you don’t have to in order to play. It’s also available on Steam, but I’ll note that the mobile & desktop versions are tuned very differently and your games don’t sync.

Blendoku and Blendoku 2

These are a pair of puzzle games which are based on blending colors–it starts out pretty easy but gets progressively harder. Which I like! And as you progress, you unlock painting levels where you have to try to arrange colors in such a way that they blend in the right ways for famous works of art (which are simplified).  Fun and meditative.  You can buy extra levels in each difficulty mode, but I’m nowhere near to that point.

Two Dots

The successor to a long-time favorite of mine, Dots. I’ve just started playing this one and am not very far into it–I’d downloaded it when it first came out, but took it off my phone for some reason or another.. It’s well-designed and is definitely a refinement on the previous concept–it’s added lives, levels, and some different mechanics, instead of having four different modes and minimal monetization there are a lot more ways for you to move money from your bank account to the developers. I don’t mind attempts at monetization and it’s not obnoxious about it and the game is definitely playable without it, it’s just…more obvious. I love the graphic design and illustrations in this game–and they’ve added some different twists to the gameplay in order to differentiate it from its predecessor and make it a lot more fun to play.

Also, their blog is adorable.