I’ve been trying to find some decent games for my iPad, and they all seem to follow the same pattern. Mostly how if you want to make any decent progress, you have to either start coughing up a lot of cash, or play the same boring crap over and over again. The ads don’t bother me so much as long as you’re not spending more time watching ads than playing the game.
What ever happened to paying 40 bucks or so upfront and just playing the damn game??
$, like everything else. You’re likely going to have to really dig to find any good stuff. It seems that in most anything these days the worst products are promoted to the front, not because they are good, but because of $.
Toleolu, what are some games that you have liked in the past? Maybe someone can suggest something based on that. Or you might give a site like Tastedive a try, which recommends things according to other things that you like. I haven’t tried it for games, but it has been pretty good for movies. And what little I have looked at it for music, I think it wouldn’t be a too bad way to find some stuff to listen to.
A lot of games have in game ads which will only turn off when you upgrade.
When it comes to mobile games I love solitaire … can play that all day long.
To avoid ads, turn the mobile data off on your device. Something like Settings/Connections/Data Usage/Mobile Data = off
One game that I really liked was Mini Clip’s 8 Ball Pool, I played that a lot, to the point where I got bored with it. Another game was a racing game from Smokoko called R.A.C.E (the C was backwards, don’t know what the initials stood for.) but I maxed all the vehicles out so it got pretty boring.
I don’t like the role play or strategy games and P v P games because I suck at them, always getting my ass kicked.
Like I said, I don’t mind the ads, as long as they’re not popping up on everything you do. I play on my iPad which doesn’t have a data plan so I don’t know if Morgo’s suggestion of turning off mobile data will do anything for me.
I recently downloaded Need For Speed No Limits, and at first that was pretty good. I even spent some money to buy some upgrades but I got to the point where I couldn’t play it anymore because I couldn’t upgrade cars to get to the next levels.
I especially don’t like the games that run out of resources like gas, ammo, or energy and then you have to either watch a butt load of ads to recharge, spend money, or just wait until they recharge on their own.
I don’t know if it would be your thing, but I really liked Human Resource Machine, and I think that Tomorrow Corporation doesn’t do the in app purchase thing in general.
You want to avoid ‘freemium’ games and find ‘paid’ games with ‘no in app purchase’. Try searching youtube for these lists:
Top 10 Best Paid iPhone Games in 2022
Top 10 Best Paid iPhone Games in 2022 Part 2
Thanks Brain, I’ll check those out.
I do that top game search quite a bit. I guess what I’m bitching about is the trend these games have taken overall. I miss the days when you could plop down 40 to 60 bucks for a game and just play it until you puked.
With everything going on these days, seems kind of trivial bitching about mobile games, but hell, I’m bored and just waiting around until I die. 
Playing Human Resource Machine, pretty cool, thanks.
I just hope the fact that I suck at logic won’t hold me back too much.
When I got tired of giving video arcade owners money I migrated to Chess and when I got tired of constantly wracking my brain I migrated to Backgammon.
There’s an aspect of strict odds calculation which objectively has a best move most of the time but by not outright blundering there’s a chance of winning against the very best. A ‘good feel’ for the game [gut instinct] is enough for strong play.
Offline I play against the following prog which I rate as kind of OK, it’s play is too reckless and not to be emulated, it gets away with it sometimes and wins about one in three games against me.
Backgammon galaxy is a free online site where the games are analysed by the best backgammon software ‘Extreme Gammon’ [or something like that] You get to pick the number of games in a match, maybe just one single game, which might only take a few minutes to play out but iirc 15 minutes can be selected for a one point match which is plenty of figuring/decision time.
The software rates your play, so sheer bad luck doesn’t lose you any rating points. All your games remain in the database and can be re-examined, a great learning tool as the software rates every move and shows what it calculates as best move.
There’s supposedly a free? download of Xtreme Gammon but I couldn’t successfully DL it for some reason.
It gets tough. Good luck with it. I spent days on some of those levels, working some of them out on paper, often during slow times at work. It’s classified as a puzzle game, but I think it should be classified as a recreational education game, or something along that line. Challenging but very fun.
7 Billion Humans looks good too, also from Tomorrow Corporation. I have it, but I never got around to playing it. Think I picked it up in a GOG bundle. One of these days.
Too bad GOG doesn’t sell mobile games. That could be a good help for avoiding the in-app purchase and advertising crap. GOG sells DRM-free games, but only for pc (Windows, Mac, Linux).
I don’t really play games these days, but a laptop is my preferred machine over anything else. No worries about running Linux and the mobile os limitations. And tons of games run on Linux these days. There is also the Steam Deck these days, although I don’t know how well it is doing.
Toleolu, another idea is game emulators. I don’t know what is what on emulators these days, but they have been around a long time for dos games, nes, playstation, etc. Surely there are some fun games that will run in an emulator on ipad.
I was cruising along nicely, but now it’s asking me to identify a negative number, move it to the outbox, but remove the minus sign. So -9 becomes 9, but I only have add and subtract available.
Holy crap!!
Let it stew a bit. You’ll definitely get it. The approach that worked for me on the tough ones was to really try for a while, then drop it for a while, but give it some small moments of thought during downtime when it popped itself back into my head. I could help out, but it would really be ruining the experience instead. I guess I can say this. Previous levels tend to inform the present level. Looking back with that in mind can be helpful, but not always. But yea, it can be tough but enjoyable at the same time. Like eating something sweet and really spicy.
Also, see if pencil and paper can be of help. And don’t forget that you have multiple ‘rooms’ in a level to try out different ideas.
Toleolu, have no doubt. Getting stuck is part of the fun. And beating on it, and leaving it alone. Then at some point you figure it out, or it just comes to you. And in that moment, you’re a genius. 
So I got past that - number thing, but it was a lucky guess. I used sub twice on the value.
I always sucked at math, I get how -4 sub -4 equals 0, but I don’t get how 0 sub -4 equals 4. 
I think it’s something that most people probably never get down into. I got into it because I suck at math. 
Or because I wanted a logical understanding. Take your pick.
You can think of subtraction involving negative numbers as the negation operation, which gives the NOT value. I don’t know how people who haven’t found a logical explanation of it tend to think of it. Here is how I tend to think of it (nevermind the auto-colors here):
-4 = negated 4, i.e. negative 4 = NOT 4
- -4 = negated negative 4 = NOT NOT 4 = 4
-4 - -4 = -4 negated -4 = -4 +4 = 0
0 negated -4 = 0 +4 = 4It would be interesting to know how you guys tend to think of it.
If the way I think of it makes sense to you, I would step back through the level with negation in mind.
That looks interesting, I never thought of looking for websites that have games, always just went to the App Store.
Anyone know of any other sites like the one Morgo posted?
All that’s Greek to me. Math and I never got along. Pie are round, not square!
I found a page on Git Hub that has solutions to the problems on Human Resource Machine. I give them a go on my own, but after a few hours I sneak a peek at that to help me move along.