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What a hero collector actually is

A roster, a campaign, and a resource you never have enough of. The fights largely resolve themselves; the game is deciding which few characters you feed. That sounds thin and is not. The interesting decision is made hours before the battle, in what you chose to invest an irreplaceable resource in.

It is the most successful shape in free-to-play for a reason. It fits into ten minutes, it runs on anything, and it always has one more thing almost finished. It is also the shape with the widest gap between the generous examples and the cynical ones, which is what a page like this is for.

The first hour tells you which kind you have

The generous ones hand you a working team before they ask for anything. You finish the first session with something that functions, and the game spends the next week teaching you why it functions.

The cynical ones give you one character and a wall, and expect you to care about the wall. They are betting that a slot machine shown early is more persuasive than a game shown early, and for most players it is not: they leave on day two.

That difference is most of the ranking above. A collector that respects the first hour tends to respect the second month as well, because both come from the same decision about what the game is for.

Where the wall is, and what the answer to it is

Every collector has a point where the campaign stops moving and asks a question. The whole of the genre's reputation rests on what answers it.

The best answer is a character you already own. You are stuck because the team is wrong, not because the roster is small, and the fix is reading what your characters do and levelling the one you skipped. The second-best answer is time: the content is gated on equipment, and a week of farming clears it.

The worst answer is a purchase, and it is the one thing that takes a game off this page. A wall that only money passes is not difficulty, it is a toll.

Where the money appears

At the top of a ranked season, these games are pay to win, and no amount of patience closes that gap while the season is running. That is true of the genre and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

Below that, money buys speed and attempts: the same roster, sooner. The practical question is not whether a game sells power, because they all do, but whether declining to buy it stops you. Everywhere on this list the answer is a character or a week, never a card.

What the first week should look like

Do not spread your resources. A few characters properly levelled will clear more than twice as many half-levelled ones, and the levelling materials are the part you cannot get back. Almost everybody who quits at week three quits with a wide, shallow roster.

Do the daily content. It is the steadiest source of everything worth having, and it takes ten minutes. Read what your characters actually do before you invest in them, because the game will happily let you feed everything to the one with the best artwork.

Turn based is the reason these work in a tab

Nothing here needs a fast connection or a fast machine, because nothing here is resolved in real time. A fight waits for you. A stutter costs nothing. A laptop that refuses anything from a store will run these all evening.

It is also why they suit a short session. You can stop in the middle of a run and come back to it, which is not true of anything with a clock in it, and it is the difference between a game that fits into a lunch break and one that only pretends to.

Playing alone or in a guild

Group content exists in most of these and none of it requires you to speak to anybody. In practice the group is where the better rewards are, and joining an active one is the cheapest upgrade available to a free player.

What you should avoid is one that expects a schedule. These are games for short sessions, and the moment a guild turns one into an obligation with a start time, it has stopped being the thing you came for.

Which to start with

Start with whichever card describes an opening you would enjoy: a full team on day one if you have not played a collector before, a deeper roster and a farming loop if you want something to solve slowly.

Everything here is free to start and none of it asks for a card to open an account, so trying the wrong one first costs an evening. The order on this page is our answer; the bullets under each entry are the reason for it.