Best free Android games in 2015: 27 of our favorite freebies

It can be a minefield trying to find the best free apps the Play Store has to offer. Ever since the Play Store changed its policy so that games with in-app purchases can no longer label themselves as ‘Free’, it’s turned out that there really aren’t that many completely free games out there. But if a game lets you ignore the in-app purchases while still having a ton of fun, then we think it qualifies. Read on for our list of the best free games to play on your Android device so far in 2015.

• Best Android games of 2015
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Crossy Road

Falling somewhere between Frogger and infinity runners like Temple Run and Subway Surfers, Crossy Road is a cute game that’s great for those quick-fix sessions. So great, in fact, that it won ‘Best quickplay game’ at the International Mobile Gaming Awards. The longer you survive, the more gold you earn, letting you unlock new characters to traverse the endless 3D pixel-blocky world. It’s old-school and new-school, charming and challenging, and we love it.

Skyward

It may look suspiciously similar to the wonderful Monument Valley, but give Skyward a chance (it’s free, after all) and you’ll see that it offers something quite different. You control a red and a blue circle, and have to rhythmically guide them through Escher-like levels that are falling away behind you. Take too long, and the circles shrink to nothing. It looks fantastic, and there are no in-app purchases, so you get the full experience for free.

Subway Surfers

Subway Surfers takes over from the venerable Temple Run as the top infinity runner on Android, and rightfully so. Subway Surfers takes you to the subway/railway tracks of colorful, cartoony versions of famous places like Miami, Las Vegas, London and Bangkok. The idea is simply to run (very fast) along the railway tracks, avoiding trains and other obstactles, and picking up coins. Earning enough coins lets you unlock new characters and powerups. It’s great fast-paced fun!

New Words With Friends

This Scrabble clone changes the classic board game from something you need to sit down and play with your grandparents, to an online experience where you can play several people simultaneously, and take your turn whenever you like. The new version tracks your performance, showing you your scores relative to other people, the longest words you’ve played, as well as your overall win-lose record. There is now also an in-built dictionary feature, so next time you gain points for a two-letter word you don’t understand, you can find out what it actually means.

Hopeless: The Dark Cave

Horror, comedy and cuteness combine to great effect in this shooter about a small group of incandescent blobs in the middle of a dark cave, trying to fight off an endless horde of dark-dwelling monstrosities. There is no end to the game as such, just collect coins to upgrade your weapons arsenal for the next go, and do your best to keep the cute fellas alive. The game is not for the feint-hearted, because watching the brave blobs get swallowed up one-by-one by the darkness is a heart-rending experience.

Plants vs Zombies 2

Sequel to one of the most successful free-to-play games ever, EA’s Plants vs. Zombies 2 retains the spirit of the original while adding more zombies, plants, and power ups. This colorful tower defense game will suck up a lot of your time (and potentially money, if you want to make use of its in-app purchases), but you are guaranteed fun along the way.

Fruit Ninja

Fruit Ninja has been around for years now, but it is still just as addictive as it was when it first hit the scene. Swiping your finger – sorry, ninja sword – across the touchscreen to dish out deadly attacks to, erm, fruit – watermelons, bananas, peaches will fall by your blade. Slice your way through your five a day while creating combos and making highscores in this infinitely satisfying arcade game.

JetPack Joyride

Who doesn’t love a good jetpack? Jetpack Joyride is an endless runner with a twist: in this game you don’t jump to avoid hazards, you use your jetpack. It’s all about getting the furthest distance or earning the most points before inevitably crashing. Along the way you will find other vehicles, such as mechanical dragons, motorbikes, and teleporters to help you, as well as new outfits, power-ups and other unlockables.

Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans is a simple, highly addictive concept – build a town and its defences, then train your troops to fend off attacks from other players. As it’s a persistent multiplayer game, its duration is basically never-ending, and is one of the most popular games on the Play Store. Your progress syncs to your Google + account, so you can continue your game across multiple devices.

Candy Crush Saga

Candy Crush is now beyond a game, it’s a cultural phenomenon. The game is based on the concept of Diamond Mine, where you connect colors together in series of three to make them explode. It’s a tried-and-tested idea dating back to the days of Bejeweled, but something about the psychedelic world of Candy Crush has caught millions of peoples’ imaginations. What’s more,Candy Crush Saga often gets festive for holidays, so you’ll have unique features for Christmas, Valentine’s and Easter.

Asphalt 8: Airborne

If you are into racecar driving, look no further than Asphalt 8: Airborne, a favorite arcade game among Android users. Why do we love it so much? Well, it’s free for a start, and you get to choose between real-life cars that you’ve always dreamed of driving – from Lamborghinis to Ferraris – ripping them down courses in various stunning locations. Plus if you’ve got a competitive side, you can also drive in career mode which takes you through 8 seasons and 180 events.

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Angry Birds Go!

Angry Birds have more or less taken over the world, taking the form of soft toys in our bedrooms, breakfast cereals, and now Mario Kart-style racing games. In Angry Birds Go! you choose from a variety of Angry Birds characters and must race your way through fanciful terrains while shooting random objects at your opponents. Just like Mario Kart, the controls take some time to get used to at the beginning, but soon you’ll be slinging those birds down the race track with ease.

Dumb Ways To Die 2: The Games

Dumb Ways To Die was originally created as an educational game to teach you and your kids a lesson about foolish things that people do that often lead to embarrassing deaths. The sequel doesn’t have the same educational slant as the original, throwing the colorful characters into dangerous athletics games-style scenarios. You must jump over electric fences, unclog doorways, and ride dolphins for as long as possible. The game gets faster and faster, then after you’ve lost three lives, you’re dead. Simple, and hilarious.

Dead Trigger 2

Following the success of their first game, MadFinger Games released Dead Trigger 2, which is so zombielicious you’ll soon be asking for more blood and guts after just a few minutes of playing. You must travel through various undead-infested areas of the world, killing as many zombies with your jam-packed artillery of weapons. It’s positively disgusting, and that’s why we love it.

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Dots

We hope you didn’t forget how to connect the dots from your childhood, because this game asks for those set of skills all over again. Dots is an Android favorite, where you must combine as many same-colored dots as you can in just 60 seconds. There are also some other game modes, like endless mode, no-limits, un-timed (counts the number of moves) etc. The game design is also really nice and minimalistic.

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QuizUp

QuizUp landed like a bomb in 2014, revealing that everyone’s a sucker for a good trivia game. The sky’s the limit for the number of categories, with new ones added daily. It’s not just your usual ‘sports, films, history’ fare either, with categories ranging from Android, to Harry Potter, to Batman. You can also play against others from around the world to compete on the global leaderboards.

Flappy Bird

Oh Flappy Bird, how we long for thee… This basic game took the world by a storm, but was short-lived after the developer got cold feet over the success and pulled the game from the Play Store. Just tap the screen to  keep the Mario-style bird-fish thing airborne, navigating it through openings in Mario-style pipes. If you’re eager to get your hands on this rather than one of the million clones out there, we’ve figured out how you can still play Flappy Bird on your phone, but please do so at your own risk.

Timberman

Similar to Flappy Bird in its simplicity, Timberman was released in July of 2014. In this (basic) lumberjack simulator, you chop chunks out of the trunk of an infinitely tall tree, while avoiding the branches that fall from it. The game is ridiculously simple to understand, hard to master, and insanely addictive.

Badland

Badland has been lauded by games critics, ourselves included. It’s an adventure game where you tap the screen to guide a group of forest dwellers through strange, swampy forests full of eerie shadows and obstacles. Think of it as the connoiseur’s Flappy Bird. Aside from compelling gameplay, the graphics are great, there’s a multiplayer mode, and it has a fantastic soundtrack.

SHADOWGUN: DeadZone

SHADOWGUN is hands-down the best multiplayer shooter on Android, and will push powerful Android devices to the limit because of its demanding graphics. There are several classic shooter modes, including Deathmatch, and the Battlefield-style Zone Control. To better coordinate your team, or just yell insults at your enemy, there is also an easy-to-use multiplayer voice chat.

Boom Beach

From the creators of Clash of Clans comes Boom Beach. Like Clash of Clans, you must build and defend your base while building up your forces to attack and conquer enemy territories. The battles that go down on Boom Beach are among the best you can get on Android, because the order and the type of units sent really make the difference between victory and defeat.

Icomania

Another cult classic: Icomania is simple, but keeps you entertained. The game shows you a series of icons and you have to guess which movie star, cartoon, place, or various other category of thing in the world it is. If you get stuck, we’ve got all of the answers in our forum.

Pudding Monsters

Pudding Monsters is one of the hardest games on Android, but in a fair way that won’t have you flippantly smashing your device against the wall (we hope). You must move the eponymous pudding monsters in straight lines to prevent them dropping off the screen. It’s hard to explain, so take our word and give it this addictive game a try. This game was developed by the same creators as Cut The Rope.

Cut the Rope series

Cut the Rope is a veteran game by Android standards now. The aim is to feed the monsters candies by cutting candies that are teasingly hanging on ropes over their heads. Sounds weird? Yes, it is, and it’s utterly brilliant for it. Cut the Rope 2 adds a host of new characters and locations, while Cut the Rope: Experiments adds 200 new levels. All this for free.  You can’t say no to that, can you?

4 Pics 1 Word

Like Logo Quiz, there are many versions of 4 Pics 1 Word. The purpose of the game is to guess the concept that a picture is hinting at. If you can’t figure it out, then you will get a second image, then a third and finally a fourth and final picture. It’s a great brain exercise game to settle you down after playing some of the more chaotic entries on this list, like Timberman and ShadowGun.

Angry Birds series

This iconic series could not escape the list. There are so many versions of Angry Birds now – Space, Rovio, Epic, to name a few –  that they’d take up too much of our list if we added them individually. The basic premise is that you need to slingshot the birds (we assume they volunteer for this suicidal strategy) and knock down forts created by the green pigs.

Plague Inc.

This is certainly one of the darkest entries on our list, as you control an deadly virus attempting to wipe out the world’s population. Are you watching the news anxiously for the latest on Ebola? Try this game to get some insight into how such diseases can spread. Adapt to beat treatments, infect people on planes, and use all the other ruthless virus methods to replicate and spread. It’s dark, bleak, and morbidly entertaining.

 

Do you agree with our list? Have you discovered any free Android games that we haven’t mentioned here? Let us know about it, and it might just make the list one day!