Home · How we pick
The method, in plain terms.
Five tests decide whether a game makes the list. A game has to clear all of them. Here they are, with the reasoning behind each.
I finished it, or nearly did
Every game is played on my own phone, not skimmed from a trailer. If I do not want to keep playing, it does not belong on a list called a recommendation. A weekend is the rough minimum before I will write anything down.
No gacha
No summon banners, no loot boxes, no randomised paid pulls with odds tables. Gacha design is built to keep you spending, and it is the single fastest way for a game to be cut from here, no matter how good the combat is.
No pay-to-win
Cosmetic purchases are fine. Buying raw power that another player cannot earn through play is not. Postknight sits on the list with an energy system and cosmetic shop precisely because it stops short of selling power. That is the line.
Real depth for the genre
Combat with weight, loot or upgrades that change how you play, and a world worth more than an afternoon. This is an action-RPG and dungeon-crawler guide, so a game has to actually deliver on that promise, not just wear the label.
A live, official listing
I open the current Google Play and App Store pages, confirm the developer, platform and price, and record anything unusual. Wayward Souls is iOS-only because its Play listing was pulled in 2023, and the card says so. If a game is delisted, the buttons reflect it.
What you will not find here
No affiliate links. The store buttons are plain, direct URLs to Apple and Google, with no tracking wrapper skimming a commission. No sponsored placements: nobody pays to appear or to rank higher. No fake urgency, no invented review counts, no "millions of players" banners. And no download files of any kind. I never host, mirror, or repackage an app, and I will never link to a modded or side-loaded version. You install from the official store or you do not install at all.
How the honest caveat works
Every game on the list carries one plainly-worded caveat: the thing that might make it wrong for you. Death Road to Canada can be unfairly random. Ravensword has aged. Vengeance RPG looks like the solo project it is. Writing that line is the most important part of a review. A recommendation you cannot trust to warn you is not a recommendation, it is an advertisement.
When the list changes
Roughly every couple of weeks. A game can leave if it adds gacha mechanics, gets delisted, or breaks on modern hardware. Ratings and prices shift, so the figures here are a snapshot from when each card was last checked, not a permanent claim. The live store listing is always the source of truth.