10 free-to-play offline mobile games!

It’s the perfect time to disconnect. Maybe it isn’t because you want to; maybe it’s having an unreliable connection, hiding from work-from-home tasks, or you’re just about done with the internet for a while. Whatever it is, we all need a little dissociation from the hell the world has recently let loose.

Cover Fire

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJVRWW2nkNs
In Cover Fire, you lead a squad through sieged cities, deserts, and fields. You get prompted missions and encounter (surprise, surprise) enemies. Fundamental mechanics are to cover and fire which earns this game a slow clap for making it the name of the game. See what I did there. The game manages to maintain simple mechanics and controls while keeping some of the fun from playing an online fps. For people who like playing Call of Duty Mobile but don’t have a stable connection, fear not! This is a really good game that scratches the itch. 

Adorable Home

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wdbxv465_k
Adorable Home is a cute passive simulation mobile game developed by HyperBeard. The game seems to be a tip of the hat to Neko Atsume by Hit-Point Co., Ltd. with cats being the surrounding theme. Adorable Home lives up to its name quite literally with cute creatures visiting your lovely home at random hours of the day; bento boxes for your partner prepped and ready, and of course, your lovely cats! You can decorate your home, prep bento boxes, and play with your cats. Enjoy the calm and passive play.

Dadish

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d2uYFL0gY
Dadish is a dad and a radish. His kids have gone missing from his vegetable patch and he's off to rescue them. You'll be exploring a quirky world while facing off fast-food foes on your way. This mobile platformer is heavy on the nostalgia with it’s charming pixel design and snarky humor. But out of everything, you'll be humming away with arguably one of the best soundtracks I've heard from a mobile game. Don’t let that food you though. Stages can get tough to go through which makes this a potentially good mobile game to add for speed runs.

Tsuki Adventure

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyLZ649mG6I
Ever dreamed of settling down to the countryside? Well, you’re in luck. Tsuki Adventure is a relaxing, story-based game filled with charming and adorable animals.  You can check in on Tsuki throughout the day, collect and harvest items, and visit locations around the country. This game has stunning design and you’ll need to see it to believe it. The game is charming in how laid back it is while maintaining a good amount of interaction. The one thing that makes this game strikingly good is its storytelling. Every moment in this game is beautiful: from the stunning view, to the stories behind each new friend.

Hungry Hearts Diner

Get it on Android and iOS 
https://youtu.be/GDxE04DGLqI
This game will steal your heart away. If you’re looking for another Diner Dash game on mobile, you’ll like this one — but not for the reasons you’ll expect. Hungry Hearts Diner: A Tale of Star-Crossed Souls is such a wonderfully gentle game of a grandmother who keeps cooking for the people who come to her restaurant. You can talk to your customers and have a deeper connection to each customer as they drop by. The soundtrack to the game against the stunning graphics makes this game lovely. You should really give this game a go.

Kingdom Rush

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olHyQclaSlA
Kingdom Rush is a tower defence game developed by Ironhide Game Studio and published by Armor Games. I know this is me being obscenely late to the party, this was first released as a free flash browser game in 2011. The game has since been adapted for both mobile and Steam and has various iterations available. I'll be straight with you, I'm not a fan of tower defence games. But there's something extremely compelling about Kingdom Rush, whether it's cute art, the Candy Crush style story mode or just the mass of enemies that want to murder you. Either way, I almost didn't finish this article from playing this game too much.

My Home -- Design Dreams

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRw0XqJbRSo
My Home -- Design Dreams is a design simulation game with a twist of a match-three puzzle game. From a flat to a mansion, you can design and decorate everything the way you want it. Since staying indoors and needing to reduce all human contact, I was weirdly in the mood for some interior designing. Since that's impossible to currently achieve. I gave this one a go. It's a really good game that incentivizes the its match-three puzzle mechanics. If you're into designing your own home, you'll have fun playing this one.

Cat Bird

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQgtCUtEDfI
If you want a game that’s adorably challenging, I might have the game for you: Cat Bird. It’s a title developed by Rayumi Adventure, an independent studio headed by Ryan Carag. If you like pixel art, you might want to check other titles from the same studio because they’ve developed similarly designed games. This game is fun, adorable, and strangely unsettling when you find out in my review what I sat through.

Fallout Shelter

Get it on Android and iOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY4jCjufLG8
It's been out for years and, it's here for a reason. We can't just drop the classics on this list. Fallout Shelter is a free-to-play game that let's you control and build your very own underground vault. It let's you oversee a thriving community, building it one room at a time. You can explore the wasteland beyond your vault, and protect your inhabitants from incoming dangers from both outside and in. This is the kind of game that you'll keep coming back to, probably because you've just remembered your starving inhabitants. Good for fans of the Fallout series, or if you're yearning to build your own colony of vault dwellers.

Magic Tiles 3

Get it on Android and iOS 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeCu49UgQOQ
It wouldn’t be fair to drop the classics on this list. If you were playing Tap Tap Revenge when it was released around the early 2000s, Magic Tiles 3 isn’t a far cry. Magic Tiles 3 is a popular piano game that has you tap on black tiles before they reach the bottom of the screen. The game will seem simple at first but, once you get into the groove, it’ll get addictively difficult. Magic Tiles 3 has various quests that let you unlock more songs to try out and play. It even has a battle mode to compete against your friends and other players when you’re online. If you can, download as many songs as you can when you can.
I tried to add as many offline free-to-play mobile games under different genres as I could. Hopefully, you get to find the game to fill your time with something fun on this list. Not everyone has access to stable and reliable connection. Even then, not everyone wants to stay taped to the internet day in and out. So, if you have a good offline free-to-play mobile game to add, let us know!