The Google Play Store is home to some 500,000 games, with virtually every genre and playstyle accommodated for among this huge directory of titles. Yet in spite of this, this library cannot attest to being the one-stop-shop for every type of game available to play on Android.
If you’re wanting alternative gameplay experiences that fall outside the purview of the Play Store’s focus, or place a premium on security and open source code in your games, you may need to look further afield to meet your needs.
Here we’re going to take a look at some great alternative gaming directories to explore if you’re feeling the need to spread toys winds beyond the limitations of this mobile operating system’s official app selection.
Browser-based Services
It’s easy to forget that alongside the huge directory of apps and platforms one has at their disposal on Android there is a superabundance of novel gameplay experiences awaiting adventurous gamers through their web browser.
There are numerous great reasons why a player looking for alternative gaming experiences should spend some time seeing what’s available through this medium.
For one, while there are many gaming apps available in the Play Store, certain genres of titles, such as those belonging to the iGaming segment, are historically under-represented there. This is not so with browser gaming, which opens up a plethora of platforms and services only available through this format. Among these you’ll find leading providers of online poker games as well as a host of diverse (and diverting) titles uncommon to the Play Store.
What’s more, several browser-based gaming platforms, such as Newgrounds, are committed to keeping the classic indie online gaming sector that grew up around the discontinued animation codec Macromedia Flash alive and well. There you’ll find hundreds of entertaining and unique games from the early 00s that live on through HTML5 emulation.
F-Droid – Free and Open Source Software
Privacy and cybersecurity has never been a more pressing concern than it is today. As such, a growing number of gamers are doing all they can to exercise greater caution when it comes to selecting what they choose to install on their devices.
This is not without good reason, as even though the Play Store does its best to root out apps and games that ship with malware and unusual device permissions, this is always going to be an uphill battle.
While you can rest assured that well reviewed titles on the Play Store are unlikely to be harmful to your Android device, there is an alternative game library that will let you experiment and try out titles to your heart’s content without any risk of compromising your system.
This is F-Droid, a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) app library. This means that everything available on F-Droid can be vetted by third parties to ensure it has no suspicious code or malware.
While you may not find the likes of Asphalt 9 on F-Droid, there is a growing number of compelling and entertaining games to explore among its listings, from FreeCiv – an open source build of Sid Meier’s Civilisation II, to Shattered Pixel Dungeon, a popular roguelike procedurally generated RPG adventure.
