Best Android RPGs You've Never Heard Of

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The Best of the Worst

One of the coolest things about Android gaming (and the ever elusive high-end Android RPG) is the direct result of it being the worst gaming platform of all time. How does that make sense, you ask? And what exactly the hell is the matter with this guy?

Let me explain: While Android is my platform of choice, Google Play’s vast library is an ocean of pay-to-play trash. That said, it is also true that within this excremental sea sit bright little islands. Some of these exotic locales are the homes of cross-platform games, AAA titles aging well or sometimes beloved indies. But elsewhere, out beyond the hidden recesses of the cross-platform atolls, beyond the farthest reaches of Android’s noxious expanse, far past the death of this metaphor, lie Android’s basement indies.

For those of us aiming to play quality games on our phones, it’s a destination not to be missed. But rather than expect you to brave these putrid swells (it refuses to die!), we’ve done it for you and have returned with the following handful of gems. We should probably mention that the criteria for the Best Games You Never Heard of lists are titles that have garnered 10K downloads or less, and are at the same time spectacular. Enjoy.

15. Aralon: Forge and Flame

Take a vast open-world RPG like Skyrim and pare it down in scope, graphics and gameplay, and you have Crescent Moon Game’s Aralon: Forge and Flame. When its predecessor Aralon: Sword and Shadow dropped in 2010, it made a big splash as there just wasn’t anything comparable on mobile at the time.

By 2015, however, when it’s sort-of sequel Forge and Flame dropped, it barely made a ripple. That said, if you are looking to play an open-world single-player Android RPG, options remain limited. And Aralon offers players a genuinely fun gaming experience. The title plays like an ARPG, offering fast-paced leveling system and a decent cache of skills and loot. The title offers up three races and four distinct classes. Each of the latter comes with fairly detailed skill trees, with most skills playing out in cool graphical flourishes. The story, however, something about a baddie who killed your pop—not cool—is entirely forgettable. But none of that really matters as the game overall is a blast.
Available on Google Play

14. Overlive

Overlive is an amalgam of survival RPG, text adventure and old school adventure game. It’s RPG enough to include it here. As text-heavy RPGs go, Overlive is seriously addictive. While zombie-themed games are 10 cents a dozen, Overlive offers a host of unique elements. The game’s premise of being stuck in a major city about to be nuked in the interests of mass zombicide isn’t entirely fresh as Zombie stories go, but it’s seriously engaging as the premise of a survival RPG. You have 180 days to escape, and the wealth of locations and incidents you encounter while trying to find your way is compelling, likely because the writing overall is first-rate. While the title offers only bare bones RPG elements, gamers open to text-oriented RPGs will find themselves in deep with Overlive’s smart mechanics and wryly amusing storytelling.
Available on Google Play

13. Quest Lord

Quest Lord is rendered in big fat old school Minecraft-sized pixels, sans three dimensions. We figure if you are reading this, you likely won’t mind. In fact, if you enjoy throwbacks to the 8-bit graphics of yore, you’ll no doubt find the title’s old-school visuals charming. Developed by sole developer Eric Kincaid, Quest Lord offers up a vast and detailed game world, with a nuanced overworld and underworlds, tons of loot, a huge bestiary and a cool storyline to boot. Even if you are not of an old-school inclination, you’ll find Quest Lord a superb Android RPG.
Available on Google Play

12. Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf

Lone wolf stands alone in the experience it creates for players much like an um… you know, a lone wolf. While the impetus behind Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf is a choose-your-own-adventure digital novel, similar to other famous traditional RPG games such as Dungeons & Dragons homebrew, the game focuses on players choosing their path, gaining amazing loot, and following the progression system. Weave into this mix some excellent real-time battles, said battles, rendered in fully-animated 3D graphics deliver a title a cut above Google Play’s crowded market of text adventures.

As with most text adventures, you progress by turning a page. Story text is accompanied by superb illustrations and, of course, choices. Battles can wax difficult. However, after losing a combat, you can either try the battle again, load your last save file or retry the enemy on a lower difficulty. Critically lauded when it was first released back in 2013, Forge Reply righteously issued a remastered version in 2017, and while this fabulous title offers a unique IAP-free RPG experience, it’s sadly only seen about a thousand downloads since.
Available on Google Play

11. Crystal Story Series

Beginning life as a lowly browser game, Emmanuel Salva Cruz’s Crystal Story proved successful enough to warrant a port and two sequels. Thoroughly fun JRPGs, the Crystal Story games are overflowing with quests and side quests, places to explore and a vast army of fabulous monsters to destroy. To top it off, the JRPG-style combat does its job well. There are some wonderful bosses and mini-bosses to battle as well as a trove of loot to uncover. If you look, there are plenty of games on Android developed by one-man developers, but very few approach the excellence of the Crystal Story series.
Available on Google Play

10. Nomads of the Fallen Star

A turn-based Android RPG with a world simulator feel, Nomads of the Fallen Star offers up some rather cool and unique gameplay.

The premise of its story is equally badass. You find yourself leading a party of heroes across a hostile world in the throes of being subjugated by the survivors of a crashed colony ship. As you move about its environs, you can see merchant caravans and parties of heroes and mercenaries traversing the map around you. What’s more, Nomads provides an open world in which you can pursue a variety of paths, such as mercenary work or striking it rich by trading between colonies, or you can just saddle up and pursue the game’s main quest. There’s also loot, leveling, combat and all the other RPG mainstays. While the visuals are what one might expect from a small developer, the game as a whole offers enthralling open-world RPG gameplay that’s not to be missed.
Available on Google Play

9. Galaxy of Pen and Paper

I know the Pen and Paper series is not exactly obscure, but, my friends, somehow Behold Studio’s Galaxy of Pen and Paper has not gotten the love it deserves. For the uninitiated, the Pen and Paper games offer a meta RPG experience in which you control a group of RPG players, hanging tough around the tabletop for a night of roleplaying in 1999.

You customize your GM and players, and set off on a grand tabletop-esque adventure. While the Knights of Pen and Paper Games concerned fantasy-based RPGs, Galaxy is all about sci-fi, and pays amusing homage to everything from Ursula K. Le Guin to Star Trek and Star Wars. The RPG elements, character developments, skill trees and loot may be a hair thin for some RPG fans, but the whole makes for an enjoyable role playing experience. What’s more, the pared-down trappings dovetail nicely with the title’s shiny 16-bit graphics and audio. Though the whole package offers only about 10 hours of gameplay, it is, like its more popular progenitors, an absolute treat.
Available on Google Play

8. The Quest

Way back in 2006, Redshift Games’ The Quest was the finest RPG ever made for Palm devices and Pocket PCs. It’s evolved and expanded a great deal since then—there are some 800 expansions. Though it’s been ported to every platform conceivable by man, it sits at about 10K downloads on Google Play—a crime, considering The Quest’s depth and breadth. It is, to be fair, a 2D open-world RPG that functions via a grid-based movement system. That said, it is also a huge, deep, multi-faceted RPG. The Quest’s gameplay and world are chock full of the sort of open-world RPG details one expects from an Elder Scrolls title. Offering up a gargantuan open gameworld, a multi-tiered leveling system, an alchemy system, challenging combat and a ton of storied quests, open-world RPG fans will find themselves in their bliss.
Available on Google Play

7. The Shadow Sun

Ossian Studios’ The Shadow Sun is about what you would expect from a game studio comprised of developers who worked on the seminal Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights series. While small in scope, The Shadow Sun is a genuine 3D open-world Android RPG. Featuring pausable real-time combat, an engaging fantasy story and rich character customization, it is certain to bring joy to RPG gamers looking for a hidden gem. What’s more, it’s rather pretty as well for an indie Android RPG. If you are looking for a real 3D open-world RPG, The Shadow Sun is one of only a few titles on mobile that is at once playable and engaging.
Available on Google Play

6. Templar Battleforce RPG

The Trese Brothers have done more for core gaming on Android than any other developer. In the past we’ve slapped their wonderful Heroes of Steel in this spot, but since that seminal Android RPG has justifiably hit over 100K downloads we continued our search only to find that the Bros’ superb Templar Battleforce RPG makes the cut. Last we checked, The Trese Brothers were the brains and sweat behind all of their excellent games. Every Trese Brother game we’ve played thus far is laden with smartly-detailed, compelling gameplay. Templar Battleforce RPG is no different.

It’s a tactical RPG that in many respects harkens back to a bygone era, specifically games like Space Hulk, Chaos Gate and other Warhammer 40K titles. While certain facets like the menu system could be more intuitive, the game is otherwise a deep tactical RPG, wherein you take on missions as Templars (*whispers* Space Marines), mostly thwarting the dastardly designs of the evil insectoid Xenos. The game offers a worthy variety of Templar classes, each with its own righteous skill tree. Also of note is the solid variety of flexibly-implemented tech with which to outfit your Templars, as well as often epic-sized, smartly-designed missions. Like all Trese Brothers’ games, Battleforce is regularly refined and updated. If you are into turn-based tactical RPGs, get it.
Available on Google Play

5. Grim Wanderings 2

Gameplay in Ellinia Games’ Grim Wanderings 2 can, at first, seem a bit obtuse. It is in many respects unique for a Android RPG, and there are a lot of menus to navigate. However, once you crest that hill, you will find a surprisingly deep turn-based RPG. For one, the game offers up a whopping 37 character classes to choose from, each with their own in-depth assets, including detailed attributes, abilities and spells.

As you traverse Grim’s hexagonal landscape, you’ll engage in numerous types of encounters, from a variety of NPC encounters to hosts of battles, the latter of which also play out on hexagonal grids and more often than not provide compelling turn-based tactical challenges. NPC encounters are also nuanced and entertaining. Most of these unfold by way of a card mechanic, with results often influenced by a character’s attributes and skills. If that weren’t enough, Ellinia Games has also weaved in a resource and crafting mechanic. Some resources your avatar needs for sustenance, while others can be used to craft arms and other loot. Mostly, you acquire resource hubs by defeating a territory’s garrison and thus unlocking mines and the like.

In less deft hands, a game comprised of so many elements might end up unbalanced. Instead what you have with Grim Wanderings 2 is a wonderfully complex RPG that will enthrall RPG fans.
Available on Google Play

4. Dark Quest 2

Placing Brain Seal’s Dark Quest 2, a switch port, on this list might seem like a bit of a question mark. But it’s undoubtedly indie and at about 1K downloads, it has clearly not gotten the love it deserves. Not the most visceral of RPGs, Dark Quest 2 features rather bare bones mechanics, smallish maps and turn-based gameplay. What it lacks in thumb-bruising intensity, however, it more than makes up for with its gameplay.

One layer unfolds within the confines of a small medieval town where you can hire up to six characters, upgrade skills and gear, buy potions and hop into the dungeon. Successfully mastering dungeon levels is more often than not predicated on carefully choosing the right party, potions and skills. With its limited parameters, winning battles and clearing a dungeon room often feels like engaging with a puzzle. No doubt said puzzle element will turn off some Android RPG fans, which is a shame because there is a real joy to be found in this simple, elegant RPG.
Available on Google Play

3. 9^th Dawn Series

Somewhere in the deepest recesses of our collective memories, there are, for some of us, vague recollections of a distant time when people played video games at home on sharply angular rectangular boxes. Names like Atari and Commodore pop unbidden into our minds. In this time before, Lord British, AKA game designer/astronaut Richard Garriott, created what is arguably the first digital RPG, and definitely the first open-world RPG with his awesome Ultima series.

The 9^th Dawn games draw inspiration from these great progenitors of the modern digital RPG. Aside from being homages to Lord British’s seminal series, however, the 9^th Dawn games are deep, engrossing RPGs in their own right. Both 9^th Dawn I and II offer a far more streamlined experience than the Ultima titles. And though the first two are turn-based, they still manage to move at a brisk pace, and offer all of the role-playing stuff we expect from an RPG.

A word must be said here, however, about the largely phenomenal 9^th Dawn III. It is in every way deeper—a host of new systems (notably crafting and deeper RPG mechanics) have been adroitly stitched into the 9^th Dawn RPG schema. What’s more, it’s an overall richer and more action-oriented experience (delivered in real-time and featuring more quests and baddies). Unfortunately, however, our reviewer ran into a save game deleting bug, unarguably the worst RPG bug ever, which is the only reason we did not place 9^th Dawn III at the top of our list. That said, no doubt a patch is in the works and the title remains one of the richest and most enjoyable Android indie RPGs we’ve ever played.
Available on Google Play

2. Atom RPG

Atom RPG arrived on PC sometime back in 2017 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. It dropped onto Google Play this summer with little fanfare. We were pleasantly surprised both to find it and to delve into its wonderfully dark world.

Drawing clear influence from the seminal early Fallout games, it is a decidedly old school post-apocalyptic RPG. How old school you ask? The title offers rich storytelling via quests and NPCs that will talk your ears off forever if you let them. Gameplay is fair but at times awesomely unforgiving, and its superb turn-based combat can be punishingly difficult, either that or I put too many points into personality and speechcraft.

To be fair it is, at the end of the day, a survival RPG. So if you are looking for something quick and light to play on your phone, this isn’t it. If, however, you are looking to enmesh yourself in a deep interactive world, uniquely set in post-apocalyptic USSR—the nukes dropped in 1986 in the world of Atom RPG—with more engaging RPG features than you can shake a stick at (And trust me here: We tried shaking a stick at the game. Nothing.), then this is your RPG. It is flat-out one of the most compelling RPGs Android has to offer.
Available on Google Play

1. Tales of Illyria

Little Killerz’ Illyria games are the lovechild of Disciples and Oregon Trail. I know… I didn’t know either but apparently it happened. The Illyria games are at once a survival sim and an old school Western RPG with JRPG-style combat.

There are three Illyria titles, all of them well worth your time: Tales of Illyria: Fallen Knight, Tales of Illyria: The Iron Wall and Tales of Illyria: Destinies. With Destinies, which is our favorite of the lot, developer Little Killerz managed to transform the game into an open-world title.

Headed up by developer Chad Mannicia, Little Killerz has developed an indie RPG series for the ages with the Illyria games. While they play in part like immersive survival titles, they also hit all of the RPG sweet spots. Each of the three feature engaging combat, skill and loot systems, rich world-building and interesting stories, with all of it playing out within the framework of managing randomized engagements, as your party travels the open roads of Illyria. It’s a great indie title by any measure and far and away one of the most innovative and compelling RPGS you can play on mobile.

A pertinent aside: Little Killerz’ fabulous RPGs were removed from Google for a time and were just recently restored. We couldn’t be happier that these excellent titles are back up on Google Play. If you’ve read this far, do yourself a favor and pick one up.
Available on Google Play