15 best open world games for Android

Open-world games are interesting. Players have the whole game world at their fingertips. They can explore, do the story, do side quests, and generally walk around the game world as they please. Grand Theft Auto III revolutionized the genre, and one of the world’s most popular games, Minecraft, is also open-world. You can find the open-world mechanic in shooters, RPGs (role-playing game), adventure games, and other genres. That means you have a lot to choose from. Here are the best open-world games for Android.

We’d like to give an honorable mention to Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds (Google Play). It’s a brand new gacha RPG with open world exploration similar to Genshin Impact. We’ll keep an eye on it to see if it’s worthy to make the full list.

The best open world games for Android

Dragonheir: Silent Gods

Price: Free 

Dragonheir is an immersive RPG game where you have control over 200 heroes. You can battle these heroes and shape your hero’s destiny and story however you like. The game has excellent graphics. It lets you explore the open world that has treasures, intricate puzzles, and entertaining activities like drinking contests and cooking competitions. A con that has come up a lot for this game is that you hit the paywall quickly. Although you can play without paying, it gets annoying.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition

Price: $9.99 with in-app purchases

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is a port of the famous open-world RPG (role-playing game) from the early 2000s. It features a long, complex storyline along with a massive world you can explore at your leisure. It’s a faithful recreation of the original and plays like the original. We recommend this on larger displays since the user interface can be cluttered. Otherwise, it’s an outstanding RPG experience. There are in-app purchases, but you can only buy voice packs for your character. The game also includes all of the DLCs from the original. The game hasn’t seen an update since 2018, but the developers are working on a rather large patch as of this writing.

Crashlands

Price: $6.99

Crashlands is one of the genuinely great open-world games on mobile. It’s an adventure game with RPG (role-playing game) elements. Players end up stranded on a planet and must retrieve the packages they promised to deliver. There are over 500 items to craft, a large world to explore, and players can even build bases and tame creatures. To top it off, the game includes cloud saving and cross-platform support. This is one you can sink your teeth into and play for a very long time. It’s also free if you use Google Play Games.

Don’t Starve (two games)

Price: $4.99 each

Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition and Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked are two excellent open-world survival games. You get dropped into an alien world where you must make ends meet alone. It features a classic survival theme with some modern twists. There are things to collect, craft, and build while you explore the game world. The game also includes multiple biomes and seasons. The only real downside is the controls. The touchscreen controls are a little iffy, but it does play a lot better on a controller.

Gangster Vegas: World of Crime

Price: Free to play

Gangster Vegas: World of Crime is one of Android’s oldest open-world games. It’s a riff off of the famous Grand Theft Auto franchise. The player is dropped into a city and can traverse the city at will while completing storyline missions and side quests. There are also a plethora of mini-games such as the casino, racing challenges, collectibles, and other stuff to keep the player busy. It pales compared to the sheer size and depth of a console or PC game like Grand Theft Auto 5, but it’s a serviceable replacement and an excellent open-world adventure game with shooter elements. 

Genshin Impact

Price: Free to play

Genshin Impact is one of the newer mobile open-world games. It’s very reminiscent of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You get a vast open world to explore and can crawl over every inch of it. The game even gives you a glider, making traversing more considerable distances easier. Regarding gameplay, it’s an action RPG (role-playing game) with some light gacha elements. Extra characters unlock through quests rather than pulling them with in-game money like most gachas. We immensely appreciate the attention to detail in this one, and it should remain popular and suitable for quite a long time.

Grand Theft Auto series (five games)

Price: $4.99-$6.99 each

Of course, we’re putting Grand Theft Auto on this list. Grant Theft Auto III modernized the open-world genre, and yes, it’s on mobile along with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Vice City, Liberty City Stories, and Chinatown Wars. Most people know how GTA works. You get full access to a massive city. There are side quests, storyline missions, and various mini-games to entertain you while you progress through the game. You can also steal cars, antagonize the police, and buy property in the newer titles. The games range from $4.99 to $6.99 with no in-app purchases. Rockstar Games also has Bully (Google Play link), an open-world game where you control a student instead of a gangster or mobster. Any of the six games make for excellent open-world experiences.

Minecraft

Price: $6.99 with in-app purchases

Minecraft is one of the most popular open-world games on any platform. The survival mode is a pure open-world experience. You can mine resources, craft, build, kill bad guys, go fishing, and traverse alternate worlds. There is a creative mode that is an open world, but it’s more of a sandbox experience than an open-world one. You can play solo or with friends and build some genuinely ridiculous stuff with some patience. The game is $6.99 with some in-app purchases for character skins if you want. They are entirely optional. Minecraft Earth (Google Play link) if you want to play the game in the real world.

Botworld Adventure

Price: Free

Botworld offers an open world filled with diverse environments, rare treasures, and secrets to uncover. You get to command your bots which have unique abilities. It also allows you to collect and customize your bots for maximum power. Players can choose from four species and customize their appearance. The game encourages collaboration through guilds, allowing players to complete quests and access exclusive events. It’s a good open world game but it does get redundant and repetitive after some time.

Old School RuneScape

Price: Free / $12.49 per month / $79.99 per year

RuneScape is one of the most popular MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) of all time. It’s also been around for almost 20 years. It’s an open-world MMORPG with both solo and cooperative play. There are a ton of missions and quests to play through, items to collect, gear to equip, and more. The game also has one of the deepest player-driven economies of any game. The free version includes most of the game. If you go with the subscription service, you get additional skills, a larger world, more quests, and 400 extra bank slots. It’s also one of the few MMORPGs with a subscription and no microtransactions. The developers released an actual mobile client for RuneScape (Google Play) if you want something a bit more modern. Most MMORPGs are also open-world, and we have a list of those right here if you’ll see more.

Pokemon Go

Price: Free to play

Pokemon Go might be the most open-world game ever. Players explore the natural world and use the augmented reality features in the game to play. There are gyms and Poke Stops all over the world, and you travel there in real life to either battle or collect items. The game evolved quite a bit from its early days. You can battle trainers, take over gyms, collect items, walk around to hatch eggs, and complete missions within the game. The game has the occasional bug, and long-time players are getting a little burned out, but the game is fun and family-friendly.

Portal Knights

Price: $4.99

Portal Knights is an open-world action RPG (role-playing game) with some sandbox elements. It has all the usual RPG stuff like level progression, a storyline, boss fights, and plenty of things to collect. However, the game includes a creative mode where you can build your island, and the world is randomly generated like Minecraft. You can also play multiplayer with other people as well. It’s a seriously underrated game and surprisingly cheap for how big it is. You can also play it free with Google Play Pass.

Sky: Children of Light

Price: Free to play

Sky: Children of Light is a little different in this genre. It’s an open-world game, but it doesn’t feel like a GTA or Minecraft experience. Instead, players drift around the world to explore all of its oddities. It’s a bit like Portal Knights, where there are seven different areas to explore, but you are free to explore them at your leisure. So, purists may not identify it as an actual open-world game. In any case, it’s delightful and we quite like the art style and atmosphere of this one. It’s a lot more relaxed than most others in the genre.

Terraria

Price: $4.99

Terraria is one of Minecraft’s biggest competitors. It takes place in a 2D world instead of a 3D one, but you still have a ton of freedom to explore as you choose. The game includes building, crafting, mining, boss fights, and other activities. You also get customizable controls and varying world sizes if you want something massive or smaller. The game was wholly redone not too long ago, and it’s now basically on par with the PC version of the game. It’s one of the greats in the genre. This one is also free via Google Play Pass if you have it.

Tower of Fantasy

Price: Free to play

Tower of Fantasy is an open-world MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Games). It plays and feels a bit like Genshin Impact, but we think Genshin has a little more polish. While progressing the story, you roam the game world and complete the near-endless supply of side quests. Players can create their characters and customize them as well. There are also some gacha elements, but it’s mostly for weapons. Combat controls are primarily action RPGs, where you roam around, find enemies, and use your abilities to defeat them. It’s not hard to get into, and it’s pretty fun once you do.

If we missed any great open-world games for Android, tell us about them in the comments. You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists.