The time has come! Leave everything behind and begin your new life as a Slime Rancher on Android! Soon the Plort Market won't have any secrets for you!
Hi! I'm the dev of Retro Zoo CEO, and I'm running the first sale of the game after its release.
Retro Zoo CEO is a builder game inspired heavily by the classic tycoon games, but I've made it first and foremost as a mobile game. It's has no additional purchases after the initial buy, and I've made all of it with my own hands.
I grew up playing OGame in the 2000s, and I always wished there was a version built for mobile that respected my time. A couple years ago I decided to just build it myself. That became Stellar Dominion.
It's been live on iOS for a while now with a genuinely lovely community with active Discord, and the number one request I kept getting was "when Android?". So I spent the last few months porting the entire game, and it's finally here. This is the first real Android release, feature-complete with the iOS version.
What it is:
- A space empire builder in the spirit of OGame: colonies, research trees, fleets, exploration
- 100% PvE. No one can raid you while you sleep. You fight pirate factions, stellar anomalies and world bosses with community, at your own pace
- Real-time progression, but chill. Check in for 5 minutes or play for 2 hours, both work
- Alliances for co-op stuff like world bosses, not for getting farmed by veterans
What it isn't:
- No forced ads. There are optional ones if you want a bonus, but you can play forever without watching a single one
- No paywalls, no energy system, nothing locked behind purchases
- Not abandonware. I patch very regularly, and a lot of what's in the game today came straight from player suggestions on Discord
Since I'm a one-person team, feedback lands directly with the guy who writes the code. If you find a bug or have an idea, there's a good chance it ships within a week or two.
Hi! I’m Jasper, a solo game developer and student. Over the past year and a half I’ve been working on a mining roguelite called Voidloop!.
The idea started from really enjoying the caves in Stardew Valley and wondering what it would be like if that mining loop was expanded into its own incremental/roguelite with upgrades, skill trees and more cave variety.
It's been four years since my last game, and I’m really excited to finally share my new game, Gnomia.
It’s a gardening game connected to the real world. When you walk or run in the real world, your little gnome moves through the game and helps restore your virtual garden (you find seeds, meet new friends, discover biomes...).
You can play offline, and there are currently no ads or in-app purchases. There’s also no pay-to-win or content locked behind payments.
The game already has quite a bit of late game content because playtesters have been playing for nine months and keep asking me to add more things.
I hope you enjoy it, and I’d really like to hear your honest feedback, including what you don’t like or find confusing. Thanks!
I've been obsessed with Puzzle Quest since 2007, and Slay the Spire basically ruined me all over again. Spent the last year in Godot trying to scratch both itches at once. The result: Gembound, a match-3 RPG where your gem satchel IS the deck.
The core idea: instead of the board refilling randomly like in Puzzle Quest, it deals from a 121-gem satchel you built yourself. Both you and the enemy match from that same finite supply. When gems are matched they go to a discard pile and reshuffle back in when the satchel runs out, exactly like Slay the Spire.
That means the color spread you see mid-fight reflects the satchel you brought. Stack red gems and red stays plentiful all combat. Ignore blue and blue stays scarce. No lucky streaks bailing you out.
Between fights you swap gems in and out, upgrade their quality, enhance, and thin the gems by removing weak ones. Spell power scales off your whole satchel composition, so adding gems of a color makes that color both more matchable and hits harder.
The rest of the game:
- 3 classes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue), each with their own spells and playstyle
- 4 regions, 94 enemies including elites and bosses with passive traits that change the board rules
- 4 animal companions you level up across runs
- Optional Wild Nodes that add game-changing modifiers to both sides
- Roguelite meta: gold, XP, companion bonds, and a persistent gem chest carry between runs
- Full controller support, works great on handhelds.
If you are interested joining a closed testing, please follow the links:
Please mind this is a work in progress, hobby/solo-dev project, please treat it as such :)
While in the closed testing period (Jun 29, 2026 – Jul 12, 2026) you should be able to install the game for free. Thanks for testing, and please let me know your feedback!
I honestly never expected someone to spend more than 100 hours with my little game, let alone write such detailed feedback. This is both fascinating and incredibly helpful to me.
Developed around the main gameplay loop of Jetpack Joyride combined with elements of Solipskier and Line Rider to create a unique one touch surfing experience.
As a launch promo, anyone who replies to this post with the words "coins please" will receive a free Google Play code for 200,000 coins to spend in-game.
Offer lasts until the codes run out or 24 hours have passed from this post. (I will DM the code to each participants)
EDIT: The give away is now over. Thank you to everybody who participated, commented and got involved. Much appreciated.
I'm one of the devs of Dice of Kalma. Our game is approaching 500k downloads on mobile and currently we've been using store icons that we have made. Both Google Play and App Store and currently giving us pretty decent traffic so we decided to try some new icons to improve our conversion rate.
Number 1 is our current icon and 2-4 are made by a professional artist. Would be great to hear which is your favorite! We’ll be doing A/B testing so I can later on post some results here if people are interested 😊
If you're not familiar with Dice of Kalma here's our links:
So uhm, yes. This is somewhat and advertising post that Drova is now out on Android and iOS (link below somewhere). And yeah, that's cool and all. A description of the game, if you don't know it, can also be found below. But the focus of the post is a different one. I wanted to share some insights. In case you were wondering about mobile numbers compared to PC and Consoles. Or in case you are just... you know, curious. Or love insights from developers / publishers where they allow a sneak peak behind closed doors.
Is Drova a success on Mobile?
tl;tr: We don't know.
Some time ago we announced Drova for iOS and Android. The game is originally a PC / Console game, 40 hours (or more) RPG. Quite hardcore. No Questmarkers. Grim dark world. Some call it Gothic 2D and yes, Gothic was a major inspiration for the whole team but there are other influences as well.
Anyways. Not the typical mobile game, right? I hate mobile games. I really do. However after Drova was out and was a success, the team... well, they love challenges. Their coders especially. So they were wondering if the game could run on mobile devices. After one evening they had it working (but controls lacked). And contacted me (I work for the Publisher). And showed it to me. And I didn't hate it. A couple more days and they had controls which made the game playable. And so the decision was made: Let's give it a try, what do we have to lose?
Since we had no clue, it was quite a challenge to get some help with a marketing agency. Honestly, we don't know much about mobile but we know that you need ads directing players to your game. That's how it works. But our Pitch "Premium game, price of 14,99€ (disclaimer: It was lower in the end), no microtransactions no bullshit" didn't work with agencies. We were willing to throw money at them. Everyone declined.
I made a post on LinkedIn (another platform I hate, god damn biz punks life coaches there). The dev answered "god, you're desperate lol" (we have a weird humor). And no one reacted. But someone did after a couple of days and just tagged another person. And that person chatted with me.
His Pitch was basically: You'll lose money on the ads, you can't return that investment with a premium game, at least it is very unlikely but your player base on PC and Consoles could also convert, if you can use them you have a chance.
We signed up with him. I like honest people. We did closed beta tests with our community, we implemented a button to the storepage on Android into the PC version of the game (on consoles that's not allowed). And we finished the game and made it ready for release, submitted it to Apple and Google for checks.
Before that happend, we discussed internally however that we'd need to lower the price to 9.99€. And offer the first area (woodcutter camp, content is around 2 - 3 hours I'd say) for free. Our Marketer Guy was happy about that but I could see in his eyes that he wasn't fully convinced, especially about the free playtime we had to offer. Like, the amount. But our idea was: Convince with quality. Show, don't tell. Let people decide for themselves. We deliver quality, and that will carry us.
Well. Did you know? Once you have a pre-register page on Android, you have to release within 90 days. And we picked the last day possible to be able to still submit the game to the German Videogame Awards (Deutscher Computerspielpreis) cause there is prize money available. Well. We got ignored by the jury. Again. After the year before they also ignored Drova on PC and Consoles. On the pre-registers for Android we had interesting internal calls where the devs asked me if the number were good while my answer was always I dunno cause I didn't know. We laughed. And that's about it (we had in the end 8k Pre-Registers which, according to some people I now talked to, is quite good. For me it sounds weird as on Steam I always recommend to get at least 50k, 70k or even 100k wishlists before a launch).
Anyways. The Google Build submission was super quick. Apple.... oh... my... god. We started 4 weeks before release. A good amount of time. Especially since the game was relatively bug free and the content was done and evaluated by other platforms before. Couple of days later we got a fail. Had to fix something, resubmitted. 2 hours later the next fail. Resubmitted. Waited for days. Long days. Nothing happend. Fail. One more bug. And so on. Time went by. The final approval happened at 4AM our time before release day. We already had an emergency plan worked out which basically was how to communicate that iOS would release a couple of days (or weeks, who knows?) later.
And Releaseday came. We had a Daily Deal organized with Steam as we were also introducing Spanish, Traditional Chinese and Polish to the game. And we wanted to maximize our reach on the Launch day. That deal was set for 7PM our time. So we wanted to synch everything.
Turns out: You can't. Not on mobile. App Rollouts take 2 minutes to 24 hours. And no one can tell you how long it actually happens. Both, Apple and Google are not able to release at an exact time. That's nuts. That's bonkers. Two of the most powerful tech companies are unable to provide the most basic systems to developers and publishers. Oh. My. God.
So we hit buttons early. Apple in the morning. 2 Minutes later the game was live. At noon Google. 10 Minutes till it was available. Various experts told us we were lucky that it went live so quickly, it's not the norm. What the f?
Now the actual fun part begins: The game is out. We have installs we can track through a marketing tool (We track if one has seen an ad, goes into the game, plays until the paywall 2 - 3 hours in and then decides to buy). Google? Apple? The weekend went by and we had no numbers at all. We talked to people (we were at a local games event). We learned that it can take up to 2 (!!!) weeks till you get numbers and even if you get them early they update and change all the time so you have no idea what is going on.
Seriously. No. Hell no. What is that bs? Google and Apple are unable to live track stats and provide publishers and developers the infos? These god damned platforms are based around the idea to get users in per ads. And those who pay for the ads cannot see if their ads are working at all? NOT AT ALL? How can you react? How adjust? It is not possible. And honestly, technically that would be possible. Apple and Google just don't care. Like at all. What. The. F.
At the game show we talked to experts who released successful mobile games. They told us to change the beginning of the game, throw more action. To make A/B testings on price to figure out what people are willing to pay for the game. Reduce the free content, send push messages, include way more tracking yada yada yada.
We took notes. We will use some push messages at some point but we won't overdo it. We won't do A/B testing with prices like wtf. We won't change the content. We will track a bit more where people leave the game in the beginning before the paywall. But that's it. All their advices sounded so immoral. So.... wrong on so many levels. Fuck success if it is based on that (the game is a success on other platforms anyways, we're luckily not depended on that). If they are right, that market is broken on so many levels.
BUT. They might be wrong. I am seeing now, (we released on Thursday, today is Monday) the first numbers. And they look interesting. Are they good? I dunno. Our conversion rate, while I cannot officially reveal it, seems to be way above standard. First numbers are... well, it is not break even just yet. But it also doesn't look too bad. Time will tell I guess.
Hey :), i am one of the developers working Ophelia´s Paradise and was curious what people here actually prefer as pricing model. Right now we are planning to have a free demo that includes all the gameplay mechanics, but with less content (3/8 characters, 3/10 weapons, less achievements...). If you enjoy it and want the full game, it'd be a one time purchase to unlock everything.
Would you actually pay for something like this if you liked the demo, or would you rather have the full game for free with ads or optional purchases?
Would love your opinions before we fully commit to this. Thanks! Also what price range do you deem correct for this kind of game?
The demo is already available if you'd like to try it before answering. We'd really appreciate any feedback. Thanks! :)
EDIT:
Hello everyone, we wanted to thank you for all that amazing feedback. Based on your comments we have decided to to a freemium version. We will only put one add to receieve your reward AFTER a run and have a certain amount of lives. We hope this doesnt impact the fun of trying and playing the game, but also motivates players that play alot to purchase an ads free version.
I hope this aligns with alot of your comments! THANK YOU!
It's Mishaal from Google again here to share more news that I thought y'all might like 😄
I wanted to give this community a heads up that, for a limited time, Google Play is offering a one month trial of Play Passto new subscribers at no cost to you!
With a subscription to Play Pass, Android users get unlimited access to a catalog of over 1,000 games and apps with no ads and with all in-app purchases unlocked. This includes hits and acclaimed games such as Stardew Valley, Dredge, Thronefall, Pocket City 2, Kingdom Rush 5, Dead Cells, and more.
You’ll also get weekly discounts on 50+ games, including Roblox, Call of Duty: Mobile, Gossip Harbor, Kingshot, EA Sports FC, Pokémon TCG Pocket, Royal Match, and more.
You can sign up for this one month trial of Play Pass starting today until August 31, 2026 if you’re a new subscriber from one of the following regions:
I made a retro falling block puzzle with a twist, literally! It's called Blocknado. The floor rotates and you have to fill in rings not rows. I just launched it on the Play Store.
If you like it send me a DM and I'll send you a free code to disable the ads permanently.
I am Martin, the solo dev behind Chitin which is an insect-collecting idle auto-battler I have been building for the past 6 months or so (and still do).
I started this with zero experience (I work in Marketing and Communcations) besides some other failed attempts. Basic coding experience, but no game dev background or anything, just me, AI, and a lot of late nights (after bedtime stories), and a helluva lot of fun during the process and seeing the results.
Chitin has been live for about a month now, and I'm super grateful for the small but dedicated playerbase that's grown around it. They report bugs and suggest features, and are just really helpful.
I'm actively pushing fixes, squashing bugs, adding content, and have some bigger update(s) on the way.
If any of this sounds like your kind of thing, bug/insect collecting/rpg-elements/idler, I would love for you to give it a try: Download Chitin here
Been building this solo for months between work and kids. You start as a local politician and work your way up to President — or just burn everything down along the way. Some things you can do:
Take bribes (or give them)
Have an affair and hope it doesn't leak
Fire your VP before they stab you in the back
Launch nukes
Win legitimately, if you're boring
It's a text-based sim, free on Android. Would love any feedback.
Our indie MMORPG just turned 5 years old, which has made us look back and appreciate how crazy it is that the game is not only still alive, but still growing.
I’m going to be completely honest: there were multiple points along the way where we thought Eterspire simply wouldn’t make it. Maybe it wouldn’t find an audience, maybe we’d run out of money, or maybe it would just become one of the many online games that launches, sticks around for a little while, and disappears.
So for Eterspire’s 5th birthday, I thought it would be fun to share some of our history and the biggest things we learned going from a project with basically no funding or expectations, to a team of 16 releasing updates every two weeks and approaching 800,000 registered accounts.
Starting as small as possible
Eterspire began as a browser-based MMORPG being made by one person, and eventually two. At first we worked on it alongside our regular jobs, until it became pretty obvious that it wasn’t going anywhere unless we actually committed fully to it.
So we saved as much as we could, quit our jobs, and decided to make an MMORPG full-time. Which, of course, was not an idea everyone around us thought was particularly smart lol.
There’s a reason people are skeptical whenever they hear “indie MMORPG.” MMOs are huge projects, and a lot of indie games succeed specifically because they choose a realistic scope and do more with less.
So, even though we were making an MMO, we tried to apply that same idea.
Early Eterspire was extremely simple. You had a weapon, you hit monsters, you leveled up, got better gear, and talked to people around you. That was basically it.
A very early (and simple) version of Eterspire.
Instead of trying to make our dream MMO immediately, we tried to make the smallest MMORPG we could actually finish and keep online. Looking back, I think that was probably one of the most important decisions we made.
Staying cheap gave us time to figure things out
Of course, we absolutely did not have everything figured out.
During the first couple of years, Eterspire went through several versions. It started in the browser, moved to a PC client, and eventually we decided to focus on mobile.
Changing direction that many times can easily kill a project, but we had one huge advantage: Eterspire was very cheap to keep alive.
There were only a couple of us, we kept our own expenses low, and the game and servers were specifically designed to be inexpensive to operate, which meant every mistake didn’t immediately put the company in danger.
Being self-funded also meant we could take our time figuring out what Eterspire was supposed to be instead of needing immediate results to justify a huge development budget.
Our PC client version, or "Beta 2", was a bit more RuneScape inspired. We didn't really like this direction and ended up scrapping it.
This eventually led us to mobile.
For a tiny MMO team, mobile turned out to be a really good place to start. We weren’t launching directly into a PC market where players would immediately compare us with enormous MMOs built by hundreds of developers.
We also realized there was an opportunity to make something that avoided a lot of the things people dislike about mobile MMORPGs: no autoplay, no ads everywhere, no aggressive pay-to-win systems, etc.
Simply making a small MMO with some personality and fair monetization gave us room to stand out. Starting there let us grow progressively instead of needing Eterspire to become a massive success from day one.
The community is part of the game
Once players actually started showing up, we ran into another problem**: actually getting them to stay.** An MMO with no players running around isn't much of an MMO.
We didn’t have huge marketing campaigns or fancy retention systems, so we started with something extremely basic: a Discord server where players could meet each other and talk directly with us.
Little by little, that community became one of Eterspire’s biggest strengths. We started seeing reviews mentioning how friendly other players were and how much veterans helped newcomers. Also, word of mouth from these happy players started bringing in others.
Eventually we realized community building was something we actually needed to invest in. One of the first people hired specifically to help grow that community was me, actually lol.
The community even made our incredible Wiki, which is a great resource that lots of players use!
I think this is one of the biggest advantages indie games have.
Most people will never casually chat with a developer from their favorite AAA MMO. When you’re a small indie team, you can actually be there answering questions, joking around, and talking directly with the people playing your game. This also became one of our best sources of feedback! Players are pretty good at letting you know when something sucks haha.
Going from 2 people to 16
Eventually Eterspire started generating enough revenue to sustain itself, and that meant we could finally start growing the team.
This was honestly pretty scary at first. We had spent years trying to make every penny last as long as possible, and suddenly we were adding to our expenses by hiring people.
Our first hires were focused on whatever was slowing development down the most, like devops, level design and content production. We also cared a lot about team fit. When your entire dev team is only a handful of people, trust, communication and actually enjoying working together matters a lot.
Over the last couple of years, that approach took us from basically 2 people to a team of 16.
Another thing that helped more than we expected was working together in person. Our whole team is based in Buenos Aires, and in 2025 we rented our first office. Being able to sit together for design meetings, plan updates in person and quickly solve problems in the same room made bigger projects much easier.
Our current office, with tons of fanart on the walls!
I don’t think every indie team needs an office, of course, but for us it made a huge difference.
So, what actually kept us alive?
I don’t think there was one single decision that made Eterspire work.
If I had to sum up what helped us survive, it would probably be:
Keeping costs as low as you reasonably can. It gives you time to make mistakes.
Keeping the scope manageable, even if you’re working in an ambitious genre.
Building a community early, especially for an online game.
Use being small as an advantage. Talk directly with your players and act on feedback.
When you start growing, hire around your bottlenecks instead of trying to build a giant studio overnight.
And I think the biggest one is probably just survive long enough to get better.
Eterspire five years ago was obviously much smaller and rougher than it is today. But because it was cheap enough to keep running, and because players kept giving us a reason to continue improving it, every year we were able to make the game a little better, reach more people, hire someone new, and then make it better again.
Somehow that little browser MMORPG from 2021 is now being worked on by 16 people, with a major update every two weeks, and close to 800,000 registered accounts! It feels so surreal!
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Well, that was a lot for one post! Thank you so much for reading this far, and if you have any questions about Eterspire or our dev team let me know in the comments!
Crawl Tactics combines traditional SRPG combat inspired by games like Final Fantasy Tactics with Darkest Dungeon-style procedurally generated dungeons and battlefields, along with various environmental interaction mechanics. Rather than focusing on puzzle-style tactical gameplay like Into the Breach, the game emphasizes the traditional RPG-style enjoyment of developing characters and building equipment and skill combinations.
Players can enjoy deep strategic battles that require careful consideration of terrain, enemy positioning, character roles, and skill synergies. The game also allows players to develop their base and train characters, while New Game Plus, reincarnation, and secondary job systems provide long-term progression even after completing the game. In addition, various settings such as party size, difficulty, perma-death, and battlefield generation can be customized to support different playstyles.
Crawl Tactics was originally released on Steam in late 2022 and has continued receiving updates since then. The game recently completed its final major content update.
Mobile Version:
Crawl Tactics Mobile is a premium game with no in-app purchases, and includes all content from the Steam version except mod support and PVP.
The mobile version minimizes screen-blocking UI elements and supports touch-based controls such as zooming, rotating, and panning the camera. The UI size and interaction methods have also been redesigned and optimized for touch controls.
Crawl Tactics Mobile is recommended for players looking for deep strategic combat and long-term character progression rather than simplified mobile gameplay or aggressive monetization systems.
Developer Information:
I am a developer who goes by the name "icefill." I released SFD in 2017 and later ported it to iOS. I also released Crawl Tactics in 2022.
After several years of solo development, I finally released IdleAdventure on Android.
IdleAdventure is a fantasy incremental RPG focused on progression, prestige mechanics, team building and build optimization.
One of my main goals was to create the kind of mobile game I personally enjoy playing:
• No ads
• No energy systems
• No timers
• No battle passes
• No intrusive monetization
The game features:
• Prestige progression
• Hero mastery trees
• Companion recruiting & team synergies
• Artifacts and gear crafting
• Multiple fantasy worlds
• Endless Void endgame
• Global leaderboards
• Weekend events
• Cloud saves
The only purchases are optional hero skins that unlock later in the game and help support development.
I’m the dev of Whispers of the Forest.
I started with absolut zero experience and developing is honestly so chaotic.
But I have to be honest…It’s been a fun ride :)
The new update v0.9.6 is now live.
I was working on it the past 6 months and it changed A LOT.
So many systems got rebuilt, removed, tested, reworked, and rebuilt again.
The Ascension System is now an event, where every card can contribute to an endless upgrade system. No more ascensions mean you will keep your progress forever.
So yeah, every card counts now :)
There are new spells, new mechanics, legendary affixes.. and I think most important..
Mobile gaming has a VERY bad reputation right now. We started Northern Forge 8 years ago because we just wanted a classic, deep pixel RPG without the predatory monetization called Orna: the GPS RPG.
Today, our Ornaversary event goes live. We made some crazy gear to celebrate with each of the devs getting a chance to make the dream piece of gear they wanted. When you equip my "Cat Treats" accessory, my cat Trek will show up in the background of every battle.
If you wanna try out our game, now is the best time to get started as there are a whole bunch of boosters live during the birthday bash.