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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

the recent revival of hmm on ios by a major editor ( can’t remember the name) was such a disappointment... They completely changed the gameplay to adapt it to the current trend of buying things on the store to progress faster...

There’s such a big opportunity for a simple port of hmm on mobile with regular gameplay and maybe a small refresh of the graphics !

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Was that really HoMM? IIRC that's a HoMM-lookalike that's basically Farmville.

Sidenote, I absolutely detest the modern trend of games that push you to buy things every five minutes or watch an ad every half.

I gave my 6yro an old WiFi-only iPhone to futz around with and download a few games. She ended up with a bunch of shovelware that shows ads after every level, and the "levels" are trivial things built on top of some kind of physics engine. It is sad beyond belief.

Now I am despairing because I want to find a good mobile game, something that you can buy and play that feels like a FF6 or a Ultima or Super Mario type thing without annoying in-game purchases or wait-to-play mechanics. But it's slim pickings... it seems the industry has evolved to be codependent on those things and now that's what most of the content is like. :(

I am in exactly the same boat as you. I downloaded Head Ball 2, as 1 used to be a very entertaining game, and in 2 I spend 90 seconds in a match and two minutes watching ads, scratching scratchers and opening "free gift packs".

I ended up buying Planescape Torment for those 50 hours of engrossing story with no ads or payments. If you find any other games, please let me know.

I should create a website called "no-bullshit games", actually.

> I should create a website called "no-bullshit games", actually.

Please do. I actually half-seriously considered doing it myself more than once, but you have a much better track record of finishing side projects :).

I have started it, it will be at https://nobsgames.stavros.io in a day or two, I estimate.

I’m looking forward to seeing nobullshitgames.com!

It's taken :( Also, I'm trying to challenge the notion that everything needs to have a TLD, so I'm going to deploy it to https://nobsgames.stavros.io.

I would shop this! (and send it to others ) - especially if sending a playcard gift.

reminds me of about a year ago I was searching for ad free apps for the play store and found zero resources - I don't mind paying for something, but I want it ad free / total privacy and zero interruptions.. never did find a way to search the play store for things in this way.. it's even obscured within the play store on more details - you can get ranges of prices for in app purchases, but nothing tells me, pay X to get ad free..

So I found f-droid eventually, but I want a way to give from the play store to others - just no list of no BS games and apps..

luckily I found 'missed reminder' and 'rssDemon' long ago when it was easier to find a single-price-point, premium version available app.. now a days it's too much work trying to use the play store or the G search engine.. this noBS site sounds like heaven.

Try it (and submit some games)!:

https://nobsgames.stavros.io/

Obviously, the UI is going to be entirely replaced (and the iOS info fetching isn't ready yet).

How hard have you looked? There are full games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Knights of the Old Republic, Chrono Trigger, and more ported to iOS.

Don't be too surprised that free games are shovel-/ad-ware.

Apple Arcade is a pretty good fix for this; for a basic monthly fee you get access to over a hundred games with no ads or in-app purchases

Grab launchbox or some other emulator for Android and look into some of the ff6 ROM hacks out there..some of them are vastly different games yet maintain the feel of the original game and are a lot of fun. The nostalgia brings back a flood of childhood memories

This seems like a good opportunity to point out that FF6 is available for iOS for $7:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/final-fantasy-vi/id719401490

The App Store/Play Store has quite a few games without in-app purchases or ads (which you have to buy up-front, of course, but that's only fair), but all the ones that I can think of are ports or remakes of classic games that predate smartphones.

The mobile FF remakes were notoriously bad for being just an emulated game with a very crusty UI tacked on. Has anything xhanged?

If you're up for a hack-n-slash dungeon crawler, try Triglav. Their monetization strategy is selling item inventory space and cosmetics.

"shattered pixel dungeon" is probably the best phone game I've played.

How about giving them an old game boy or DS with a selection of games from your local used game store or ebay?

There was https://archive.is/20150311153857/https://mmh7.ubi.com/en/bl...

That URL won't load for me, is it just me?

Archive.is doesn't work if you use cloudflare DNS (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317)

A simple port of Heroes 3 is currently available on iOS (though only iPad, not iPhone)

I didn’t find it.. got the link ?

I take that back, it looks like it was pulled from the App Store a year ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosgaming/comments/8z6fyi/heroes_of...

That’s disappointing; sorry to get your hopes up

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