Games

I have lately been enjoying Legends if runeterra's Path of champions mode (PvE)

bloons td6 is a nice cozy game, one of my faves

Exiled Kingdoms, its an older isometric 2D adventure RPG. Kinda feels like it would have been made 30 years ago for pc, but it was made relatively recently for phones. I don't think there was any micro transactions. It may have had an initial purchase price, not sure. That's usually what I look for in a phone game. The traditional model of buying a game and then just playing a game. No gross mobile game stuff.

Loop hero is really fun imo! Also solitarica

Friends and dragons. It's a bit like easy chess with d&d style classes and species. It has transactions, but you can easily do well for free. I've been free playing for years (though I did throw them $10 around year 2 because of how much entertainment I got from it)

Gardenscapes is the original match 3 and build a mansion and is still my favorite. There are micro transactions to get additional power ups, but the fact that they are constantly updating with new seasonal events and you never run out of levels

Old School RuneScape potentially fits this description

2048 but a version from F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.secuso.privacyfriendly2048/

Gubbins is a fun word game, it's a one time purchase and apparently part of the profits go to charity due to Hank Green investing in it in a creative way.

Imagzle. There are "buy more levels" but there are plenty on the main one. It gives a picture, more or less, abstractly related to something. Art, movie, book, many random things

Star command, anomaly, world of goo, EDGE, knight of pen and paper...

These are some good ones I got from humble bundle over the years but many are quite dated so not sure if they're still around. No BS microtranactions

Antimatter Dimensions

Sparklite, I don't know what it looks like purchases-wise, it was free with gamepass and had no in-app purchases when acquired that way. It's probably one of the newest games I'll post about. New enough that it was possible to get it with gamepass, lol. The game sort of has a modern retro zelda feel. I don't think it's a particularly long game, but it's certainly enjoyable and pretty casual. I think if it has transactions, reading other reviews it might be like a "purchase the rest of the game" style thing. So basically a free demo that you can then choose if you like the game enough to pay.

Walk master

Alto's Adventure is a pretty chill game to play when killing time. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noodlecake.altosadventure

I also like the "connect the dots" puzzle games, like this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playvalve.connect.dots

Neither game requires microtransactions for the full experience. They might have ads, but my adblocker blocks them if they do.

royal match has no ads at all, its pretty fun just gotta ignore the microtransactions which is pretty easy to do at least compared to other games

Cosmic Combo, an iOS port of Johan Peitz’ PICO-8 game Cosmic Collapse, is good.

Word Cookies. I absolutely love it. You can pay for things, but it is absolutely not necessary and is basically only if you feel the need to use boosts that allow you to cheat your way past the level. I think it costs $2 to go ad-free.

It does give you regular popups asking if you want to buy coins, which I admit is annoying, but they are unnecessary to enjoy the game. There's also endless opportunities to get coins and other boosts for free. I have something like 80,000 coins and dozens of boosts and other than the $2 to go ad-free, I've never given them any money.

You do have to have certain word skills to enjoy it as much as I do. If you're the sort who can crush it at Boggle, it's the game for you.

Potion Permit is about $7, but pretty fun. If you got $10 to spare, Ex Astris is a jrpg that's pretty good.

I play chess, mahjong on mobile.

There's also final fantasy pixel remasters, Baldurs Gate, planetscape torment, shadowrun games and trials of mana on mobile too.