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I have $15 burning a hole in my Google Play balance. Help me figure out what to spend it on.
Here's a list of Paid Games & Apps that I already have bought.
Utils
- Tasker
- KLWP
- Sleep as Android
- Nova Prime
- One or two Icon packs for Nova
Games
- Desert Golfing
- Death Road To Canada 2
- Meteorfall
- Mindustry
- Mini Metro
- Ordia
- Prune
- Reigns
- Reigns: Her Majesty
- RowRow
- Teslagrad
- UnCiv
- .projekt
- Sword and Sworcery
I'm looking for something worthwhile to spend it on. Is there a lesser known utility app that you use all the time? What about an indie game not getting the praise it deserves? Tell me about it!
You could get Play Pass for a few months, they have a ton of apps and games.
Or wait until Slay the Spire comes out for Android in a couple days.
I've heard a LOT of good things about Slay the Spire... I'll check it out, thanks!
It's out now if you are still interested.
If you enjoyed Reigns and Sword & Sworcery's brands of weirdness, check out A Dark Room. It's pretty cheap and almost entirely text-based, but one of the most gripping games I've played in recent years thanks to the strength of its writing and how it uses mobile interfaces.
To give you an update on this (if you were curious).... I BINGED this game. It was extremely good, got a completion time of exactly 160 minutes. Not sure if I'm gonna take the game up on it's idea of completion without the "factories", that seems like an exercise in patience lol
This was a great recommendation, one of the best I've ever gotten for games. Great stuff :)
Glad to hear it! I feel like I went on the same journey through the game, even that think with factories, heh. It doesn't seem like the kind of game with many options but clearly there are!
Just downloaded it, gonna give it a go. Thanks for the recommendation!
Games
Phoenix Wright Trilogy + Apollo Justice + Investigations
Drastic (DS emulator)
The Phoenix wright series just translates well to mobile. There's no weird physical buttons, it's a point-and-click adventure game, and a well acclaimed one at that. Also start-and-stop playing is pretty seamless.
Drastic is just a really good emulator - and DS games work extremely well for phones, since many of them were designed so that you could play all of it with the touchscreen. Also, I just prefer portait mode, it's much easier to hold imo, and DS games, since you need to fit both screens, work well in portrait - much less wasted space than normal.
Does these games work with a gamepad on Android?
I already know the series from the DS. It’s awesome.
whups, forgot to put that on the list. I have Nova as well. I'm using Spotify so no need to buy a music player (Though I bought GoneMAD several years ago), and I'm not a huge podcast sorta person. Thanks for the recommendations though!
Boring answer alert.
If you have trouble regulating your phone usage, Lock Me Out is a great app to help with that.
It’s free but you can pay for extra features.
I find forest a good app for a similar purpose with nice tree icons you grow for each block of time you set aside to not use your phone.
Forest is nice but not enough for the seriously addicted.
I’m in the process of swapping my iPhone for an Android device and the absence of real blocking is one of the main reasons.
I can see how it wouldn't work as much for someone who doesn't get a lot of anxiety about killing the tree.
Well, killing a fictional tree, yes. Killing an actual tree might prove effective :P
One model I think might work for me would be to run an idle RPG that required for me to be away from the phone in order to progress.
If you already have Tasker you might as well buy some of the pieces of the AutoApps suite. Especially AutoInput is one that I feel like could be pretty handy if you use Tasker heavily. Or "Join", which can send messages between multiple devices and can also be integrated with Tasker.
I unfortunately don't think I use my phone enough to get the full effect of using the auto apps suite. I barely even use Tasker anymore :/
Hah, I know that feeling all too well.
I was once completely hooked on Tasker (and Android tweaking in general) and was constantly looking around just to see what I could do, bought 4-5 pieces of the AutoApps suite, a couple substratum themes, some icon themes, all that jazz.
Then, a combination of "not going to school anymore" (which was my main reason to get off my desktop computer) and "slowly turning into a FOSS purist" happened and now the only reason I have Tasker even installed is for a couple things I barely even use, and I can't even use AutoApps even if I wanted to because of Play Store license checks (surprisingly Tasker itself doesn't seem to have any).
You can use that balance for youtube premium (including the music). Good spotify/apple music alternative.
(Even if youtube music way worse than GPM)
I used to spent my spare google rewards in Music section. DRM free downloads were really nice. I miss gpm.
It was good, ad long as you didn't care beyond 320kbps mp3.
These days I just use Soulseek to get FLACs and convert to OPUS to save space on my phone. I never really liked Spotify/YT recommendations anyway so this approach works fine by me.
I tend to only buy premium games. Here's my selection:
Most of these games have been discounted in the past, if you don't mind waiting for a sale. I think the only exception is Golf on Mars.
I really enjoyed playing Lost Frontier. Definitely worth the price.
I've added it to my wishlist. I'll wait and see how much Slay the Spire costs before buying anything else today. For all I know, it'll run me $10 👀
And it'd be worth every penny!
Bloons tower defence are always solid games. I think 5 is a little older so down to £3 and 6 is £5 now.
Taskito - a timeline based to do and tasks list, free for basic features and the addon bundle with calendar integration, projects and more is £5.99.
Bundled Notes is good too if you're looking for something more specifically for notes with reminders rather than tasks. It has a paid sub unlocking a Web client among other things.
I honestly don't have a good recommendation, I just wanted to comment and say I love this post. Listing your purchased apps and games is a really great way for us to gain incite into what would be good suggestions for you and I really love the idea.
Absolutely! I consider it a "Crowd-Sourced Recommendation Engine"