"Hoplite presents a deceptively simple premise. Taking charge of a proud little Greek hoplite, your quest is to clear dungeon after dungeon in search of the mysterious Golden Fleece. In traditional roguelike style, your gallivanting Greek moves across a tile-based board to battle demonic enemies not particularly keen to part with their Golden Fleece. Hoplite captures the look and feel of old-school roguelikes, with a clean and simple interface and appropriate sprite-based graphics." - Grab It Magazine
Free Android games are crap, most of them at least. Digital detritus, designed to manipulate rather than to entertain. The worst thing about them is that they take something that is good, even innocent, and by charging for elements that should be found, earned or experienced, they turn what is good in gaming into something crappy. By taking advantage of gamers’ desire to play and by charging piecemeal and aggressively for the stuff of play, they not only suck the fun out of our playtime, they slap a price tag on what should be just fun. In short, they suck.
Hoplite is a turn-based strategy game developed by Magma Fortress, which aims to make you think before you act. The game is available for iOS and Android devices, and if the title of the game confuses you, we’ll give you a brief backgrounder based on the description. In here, you have to make strategical choices to upgrade your abilities, as you play through procedurally generated levels to ensure that each game you play is different from the last. And since the word “hoplite” refers to a type of ancient Greek troop, the goal of the game is in line with that – your objective is to head to Depth 16 of the underworld and grab the Golden Fleece.
Cory Milne discusses the Android game Hoplite and relates it to ancient Greek military tactics.
CM: "Every now and then a game will come along, seemingly out of nowhere, and arrest large amounts of my time. Such was the case with a little strategy game on Android (and iOS) called Hoplite. The game consists of guiding your little hoplite soldier across a procedurally generated battlefield, acquiring upgrades and slaying monsters, in search of the golden fleece. Not only is it fun, challenging and free (there is a more content rich premium version), the game does a wonderful job of transferring 8th century BC (-ish. Historians can never agree on dates like this) battlefield tactics meant for large groups of fighting men, onto a single figure"
I still play Nethack all the time - roguelikes rule.