Smartphone gaming in 2022 has truly come of age. Gone is the reliance on shovel ware knock-offs and overly exploitative freemium titles. Advances across the industry ranging from increased investment in mobile games development, to impressive upgrades in smart device hardware, have come together to turn modern smartphones into the gaming powerhouses we always knew they could become. Yet with so many games out there, it can be a challenge to know where to go to find the best experiences available to Android users. Fortunately there are a huge range of platforms and services designed to cater to this demand, from comparison platforms such as oddschecker that provide their patrons with the best no deposit offers on online slots, to dedicated review websites like Metacritic that scour the internet for the best regarded mobile games out there.
However, in this article we’re going to be focusing on a specific area: that of alternative gaming stores. You see, the Google Play Store, Android’s officially supported app library is home to approximately 500 million games. As such you may wonder why gamers would ever need to look anywhere else to get their gaming thrills — but there is some cause to shop around. Alternative platforms, ranging from well established industry stalwarts, to challenger upstarts, offer a diverse and intriguing catalogue of games, some of which push the limits of smartphone hardware to deliver console-grade gaming right to your fingertips. Below we’ll be taking a look at the best Play Store alternatives for Android gaming out there today.
Google Stadia
Stadia is Google’s homegrown attempt at establishing a presence in the burgeoning cloud gaming market. For the uninitiated, cloud gaming is a disruptive new paradigm for gaming that looks set to change the status quo of console and PC dominance we’ve been living under since the advent of domestic gaming hardware. This is because cloud gaming eschews the requirement for users to own an expensive dedicated device like the PlayStation 5, or a comparably powerful custom gaming PC. The reason for this is that cloud gaming services stream real-time gameplay to your device of choice over the internet from a remote server-side gaming rig. This enables users to play Triple A gaming titles right from their smartphones or tablets.
Stadia features an impressive range of games including Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil: Village, and the critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption 2. What’s more, subscribers making use of Stadia’s Pro tier are also awarded a free game each month, ensuring you’re never lacking for something new to play. There are numerous competitors to Stadia in the cloud gaming space, though at present none can match the level of optimization displayed by Google’s, which serves as the definitive proof of concept of the new technology with low latency and minimal drops in framerate.
Steam Link
Game developers Valve are well known in the industry for publishing some of the greatest games ever made, including Half Life 1 & 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. Yet in spite of this impressive pedigree, Valve are nowadays best known for being the developers behind the immensely popular PC gaming community platform, Steam. This service has been running for almost 2 decades and has achieved a unique position in the PC gaming space with over 75% of all PC game sales taking place through its web-store. Simply put, Steam is synonymous with the best in PC gaming in 2022, with over 33,000 titles available in its catalogue. Of course, to make the most of what Valve has to offer you need to own a relatively powerful gaming computer, or have purchased the company’s very first true console, the handheld Steam Deck.
For those who have already bought in on PC gaming in this way, Steam offers a novel opportunity to bring your library with you wherever you go. Called Steam Link, it works on similar principles to cloud gaming services such as Stadia. Where it differs, is that rather than paying for the privilege of using someone else’s gaming rig to power your titles on mobile, you take advantage of your own hardware. Of course this relies on a high quality connection to link your devices, meaning it works best over WiFi or 5G. All these boxes to check makes Steam Link a niche option on this list, but for those who can satisfy all its necessary requirements it offers the ability to play any of the award winning, top tier games available on Steam right on their Android device, from wherever they are.
F-Droid
Whereas both Stadia and Steam Link are designed to work alongside Google Play Store, with both of them operating via installable applications found in its app library, F-Droid positions itself as a true alternative. This is because F-Droid is a catalogue of FOSS apps, which stands for Free and Open Source Software. As such, all the apps available on F-Droid are free of charge and have source code that is readily available to be accessed and modified. This is in contrast to the closed, and thus monetizable software found on much of the Play Store and iOS App Store.
There are many reasons why people prefer to opt for open source alternatives, from the ideological position that software should be intrinsically free, to privacy concerns over hidden spyware. Another compelling reason for going down the open-source route is cross-compatibility, as all the apps available on F-Droid can be installed and used across the majority of Linux operating systems. While this means that many of the apps and games available on F-Droid lack the bells and whistles of their Play Store contemporaries, they are all free of charge and come from trusted developers. Among the titles available on this platform are FreeCiv — a fan-made, frequently updated port of Sid Meier’s Civilization II and a host of puzzles and classic titles from chess to sudoku. There are also a range of emulators available on F-Droid, enabling you to play many classic SNES, Sega Genesis and Arcade titles free of charge.
Other Technical Reviews:- Reviews
