The best free arcade games for Android
Our favorite free Android arcade titles, fighting games and retro fare.
Yokai Dungeon
Free Android game Yokai Dungeon features a festival interrupted by the titular yokai – monsters, demons and spirits out to make a nuisance of themselves. Taking the form of what amounts to a furry ghostbuster, you set out to banish the evil critters – primarily by hurling things at them.
All these critters are fortunately corporeal and easy to squash, so you scoot about grid-like arenas, and shove boxes at the monsters to flatten them against a wall. It’s fast-paced stuff, with a fluid control system that keeps you zipping about.
Because the dungeons are randomly generated, no two games are the same. And with power-ups, periodic boss battles, and some arenas that span multiple screens, the hero of the hour won’t get bored dishing out justice in this beautifully realized arcade treat.
Knight Brawl
Knight Brawl is a side-on brawler, where medieval fighters leap about the place, hitting each other with weapons designed to do serious damage. But rather than immerse you in blood and gore, Knight Brawl gallops towards the absurdist end of the fighting-game spectrum – and then keeps on riding.
If you’ve ever played the creator’s previous efforts, such as Rowdy Wrestling, you’ll know what to expect. Cartoonish combatants bounce around, realistic physics having long ago left the building. You get the feel you’re just about in control, as if driving a car that’s always on the edge of skidding off the road.
It’s glorious – huge amounts of fun, and perfectly pitched for mobile. Moreover, there’s surprising depth, with several modes when you just fancy a scrap, and also missions to carry out.
Project Loading
Project Loading depicts the adventures of a loading bar on a quest to reach 100%. If you’ve ever wondered why such bars take ages to fill, this game explains why. Rather than inching from left to right, the bar here must work its way around all kinds of hazards and traps.
There are speed-up mats, and those that slow you down. There are bouncers and deadly crosses, and barriers to open with keys. Given the twitchy nature of the tilt controls, getting to the end can be a tricky business.
The lives system (refilled by watching ads) can be a drain when you hit later levels, but otherwise this is an engaging creation, with stripped-back arty visuals, a clever concept, and plenty of challenge.
Williams Pinball
Williams Pinball squeezes some of history’s best pinball tables into your Android device. Each has been lovingly recreated, with superb physics, lighting, and visuals. Although this being a free app, your experience does end up bouncing around some freemium bumpers.
You start by choosing one table to unlock from the selection, and you then gain XP, table parts, and coins from daily challenges (single-ball; score attacks). Parts and coins can be used to gradually unlock other tables for challenges, and then free play.
This takes ages, and we doubt many players will ever get tables to level four, where creator Zen Studio’s animatronic components come into play. Still, the vanilla pinball’s great, the challenges are fun, and at worst you’ll have one amazing table to play, assuming you pick well at the start. (Hint: Attack from Mars or Medieval Madness!)
Fly THIS!
Fly THIS has hints of mobile classic Flight Control, which some time ago vanished from Google Play. Like the older title, Fly THIS has you draw paths for planes to follow, so they land at airports. But instead of following Flight Control’s endless stylings, ramping up the panic until an inevitable collision, Fly THIS feels more puzzle-oriented in its execution.
You deal with fewer planes, but the maps are smaller and peppered with hazards, such as weather and mountains you probably don’t want to steer your aircraft into. You’re also charged with getting passengers from A to B – and must do so within a strict time limit.
The entire thing becomes a grin-inducing – and sometimes challenging and frustrating – juggling act. It’s different from the game that inspired it, but no less appealing.
Super Fowlst
Super Fowlst is the follow-up to claustrophobic high-octane avoid ’em up Fowlst. In this sequel, demons from the first game have overrun the world, and they can only be stopped by a head-butting chicken.
So, yeah, this isn’t your typical arcade game. As you dart left and right, like a refugee from Flappy Bird, you must line up your arc-like paths with fire-spitting enemies, and make use of the local environment to, for example, unsportingly crush foes under massive boulders.
There’s a lot to like here, including the procedurally generated stages, plentiful secrets and unlockable characters. And although we’d say the boss battles are a bit too difficult, Super Fowlst is so good you’ll keep on clucking until those giant demons are toast.
Sneak Ops
Sneak Ops is a retro-infused stealth game where every day brings a new mission. The goal is to get to the chopper by stealthily moving through an enemy compound without being spotted.
The game utilises intuitive top-down gameplay - initially, you can freely scamper about the tiles, but when deeper into your mission, it’s vital to carefully time runs past cameras – and regularly use your ability to smack guards over the head.
Getting to the chopper is tough, but if you don’t fancy starting from scratch on being captured, you can ‘buy’ restart points with floppy disks that litter the compounds – an odd quirk we suspect a real spy would give up their best attaché case for.
Fun gameplay and a fresh daily challenge keep Sneak Ops feeling fresh.
Spaceteam
Spaceteam is a superb multiplayer game that deftly showcases your ability (or lack thereof) to work as part of a (space)team. With between two and eight players connected in local multiplayer, you’re informed that your spaceship is fleeing an exploding star, and you must perform actions to stave off your transport being blown up in a manner that would be a major downer for everyone on board.
The snag is the controls were designed by a lunatic. They’re spread between everyone’s screens, and demands simply show up as text-based prompts, so you’ll be searching for the Dangling Shunter switch and Spectrobolt slider, while pleading with everyone to “please turn on the Eigenthrottle”. Captain Kirk never had it this tough.
Jodeo
Jodeo features a cycloptic blob being put through the grinder by a sadist. A claw-like contraption lifts the jelly-like critter above an ‘experiment’ and lets go. Your aim: to move it left and right, squelching over every edge of geometric shapes lazily rotating on the screen – without falling off.
With standard 2D forms, Jodeo might have been entertaining, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting. Here, you’re tackling 3D objects moving in and out of a 2D plane, along with other ‘scientific’ conditions, such as someone unhelpfully hurling meteors your way, or turning off a shape’s lines so you can’t see them.
The experience is short, but it’s hard to gripe about a freebie – not least given the protagonist’s seemingly permanent expression of sheer terror.
Beat Street
Beat Street is a love letter to retro brawlers, echoing the likes of classic arcade title Double Dragon. Yet here you duff up all manner of evil gang members by way of using only a single thumb.
This is quite the achievement. Old-style scrolling beat ’em ups might not have had a modern-day gamepad littered with buttons and triggers, but they still had a joystick and two action buttons. Here, though, you drag to move, tap to punch, and use gestures to fire off special moves.
It works wonderfully. Beat Street gradually reveals new abilities and features – not least weapon pick-ups, one of which rather unsportingly has you smack opponents over the head with what’s described as an ’80s brick.
Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert
In Silly Sausage: Doggy Dessert, the world’s stretchiest canine finds himself trying to worm his way through a land of cake, chocolate, ice cream, and a worrying number of spikes, saw-blades, and massive bombs.
Rather than walk like a normal pooch, the furry hero of this game stretches as you swipe, until his front paws can cling on to something. His bottom then snaps back into place. It’s quite the trick – but also a hazard if one end of his body ends up in danger when the other end is worryingly distant.
There are 50 scenes in all, along with tricky bonus rooms to try and beat. And although some of the later bits of the game are perhaps a bit too testing, this one as a whole is a very tasty, satisfying arcade treat.
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