Playing on Android can be fun. But every time I take a look at the Play Store, I feel spammed with titles that just seem to rip you off. I am a casual gamer on mobile, and I am more than willing to pay a bit for a decent game.

The dark side

Unfortunately, most games on mobile platforms now follow a model of giving you a "free" game, and then put obstacles in your way, which you can pay out of your way. The classic pay or wait concept. But if you buy a few gems, then you can take a shortcut. In the end, this all ruins the game mechanics IMHO.

Another way of monetizing games is ads. Ads are difficult. I can absolutely understand the reason for monetizing your app, your web-page, your creative work. With web pages, it is rather simple: I can put ads on my webpage, and you can decide to use an ad-blocker. With applications, it is a bit different. One concept is to annoy you with the game mechanics (pay or wait), and make you watch ads to speed up things. Again, I think this completely ruins a game. Or, you annoy me with ads and offer me a way to buy myself out of the situation. Still, all the code of the advertisement is in the application, and nothing prevents the app creator from re-adding ads.

The bright side

There are still game developers, that believe in an honest deal between the user and the creator. You create a game that entertains me, and I am more than happy to pay for it.

The purpose of this web page is to curate a list of games, that follow this principle. Just to make it easier for you to find a game like this. And with a bit of luck, at some point, someone gives me a tip, that there is another game like those that I didn't know yet. So it helps me as well.

But wait …

… you feel like having a déjà vu? No, it is not a glitch in the matrix: I had made a site called Honest Android Games and have decided to close it down.

In a nutshell, someone already created a page like this. Unfortunately, that person decided to stop doing it. It was a great web page! I really miss it.

But since the idea of a curated list of media isn't that new, I wanted to re-create this page for a while now. Partly because sometimes you just have to do it if no one else does. Partly I think it makes a great hobby. And of course, because I wanted to play around with Rust, creating a static home page generator which is up to the task.

And while working on this, I am still undecided about how to name it. On the one side, naming it Honest Android Games feels being a cheap rip off of the original page. On the other side, that is just what this is all about: Honest Android Games!