.png){kind=logo}
You were just checking the time. That’s all. But there was a notification, and it could have been important, but it turned out to be a link to a funny post on BlueSky. And now it’s 47 minutes later and you’ve doomscrolled through page after page of news and reaction to the seemingly unending torrent of horror being visited upon the country and world, and you feel helpless, wound up, and sad. Oh, and what time is it? Stop! Stop this madness! Your phone is a whole gaming console in one tiny slab! So next time you pick it up, click onto one of these fabulous games instead.
All the following games are selected because they’re such incredibly good ways to spend those spare moments of time when you’d otherwise be tempted to look at the algorithm’s horror. These are the games that’ll fit in on the train ride, during coffee, or as you’re sitting outside waiting for your kid to emerge from the school, and they’re also a great way to while away the last hour before you fall asleep at night. As such, I’m not selecting games like Honkai Star Rail or Warframe because firstly they’re just better on a bigger screen, and secondly because that sort of game is an entire second job in itself. This is all about the perfect way to distract your brain and fingers in a fulfilling, non-terrifying manner.
Slay the Spire
Mega Crit’s legendary Slay the Spire might be more immediately associated with PC and console, but in the years after its 2019 release it was brought to iOS and Android in an absolutely perfect port. The pioneering roguelite deckbuilder remains as all-consuming today as it did seven years back, and the shorter battles and ability to quit out and pick back up where you left off make it ideal for quick plays on your phone. Or indeed entire evenings consumed with mastering a deck to defeat everything in your path. It’s one of the few properly priced mobile games at $10, but remember you’re buying one of the best games ever made, with a minimum play time of infinity hours.
Balatro
2024’s smash hit took its time coming to mobile, but arrived in glorious style. The poker-ish game took the world by storm on PC and console in February 2024, and then became the entire planet’s meta when it reached iOS and Android that September. It remains one of the finest ways you can occupy your spare time, each run a unique experience as you shape your deck and Jokers to win your way through the rounds and challenges. Like Slay the Spire, it’s $10, and worth every cent.
Polimines Deluxe
Spanish indie developer Molter Games might not be a household name, but puzzle game Polimines deserves to be. This combination of puzzles like Picross, Hexcells and Minesweeper creates a unique and enormously clever challenge. This mobile version combines both the PC’s Polimines 1 and 2, which works out perfectly since the sequel pretty much picks up where the difficulty for the first game left off. Every solved puzzle in the second half will make you feel like a complete genius. And the whole thing is only $5.
Sparklite
RPG Sparklite was generally liked when it came out in 2019, without blowing anyone away. It’s a gorgeous roguelite in which you play as Ada, on her broken airship, making trips to the world of Geodia below to gather items and “patches” and battle mighty Titans. Each failure is an opportunity for a new attempt, with the progression of creating new stores and crafting stations on her floating island, and applying the patches into machines that create a unique set of skills and attacks to shape how you play. It got a bit lost on console, even the great version on Switch, but it just works so incredibly well as a mobile game. A good run can fill a commute, and there’s a constant sense of progression that makes you want to pick it back up for another try on the way home.
The New York Times Games
No, not technically a game, but by far one of the very best ways to spend time on your phone. Wordle and others are free, but if you pay the sub (and you can get it incredibly cheap—I’m paying around $3 a month), you get access to the daily NYT crossword alongside Connections, Strands, The Mini (crossword), Pips and Spelling Bee, as well as access to their archives. There are now bots for a bunch of these that’ll analyze your play, and it just added two-player Crossplay, the most blatant, bare-faced Scrabble rip-off since Worlds With Friends. I start each day with Wordle and The Mini, end each day with the crossword and Spelling Bee, and the others sneak in for coffee breaks. (Bonus game: check out the amazing Squardle which also has an app.)
Stuffo the Puzzle Bot
There’s a good chance you’re familiar with the extraordinary old-school dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock. But the next game from one of its two main developers deserves to be equally lauded. Stuff the Puzzle Bot is one of the most brilliantly clever puzzle games you’ll ever play, one of those where discovering the solution makes you feel like you’ve made a momentous breakthrough and simultaneously want to buy flowers for the creator. The component parts look familiar—using a little robo to pick up and rearrange blocks of various types such that he can reach a level’s exit—but rarely has this been so exquisitely executed. The mobile version is perhaps even better than the PC build, with fingertip controls making so much sense.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Pixel Dungeon by Watabou (Oleg Dolya) was originally released for mobile in 2012, and was a delightful micro-dungeon crawler. But best of all, it was released as free software, with anyone else welcome to lift its entire code and create their own versions, even for sale. The result has been a huge range of splendid variants, and it’s generally agreed the best of these is Shattered Pixel Dungeon by Evan Debenham—it’s certainly my favorite. A project that was meant to last a few months has eventually led to 12 years of work so far, with new content added roughly every three months, and yet the game feels uncomplicated and welcoming to play. It’s $5, and will occupy you for the rest of time.
Loop Hero
Another PC roguelite that found its way to mobile three years later, Loop Hero feels so very at home on your phone. This is a game that’s essentially about walking around in a circle, but what a circle it is. Instead of controlling your character, you play “cards” that lay obstacles, enemies and advantages, as well as mountains and marshes, around the circuit of road on which the character walks. He or she then battles the path’s foes, with each loop more dangerous than the last, and you left deciding if you’ll risk another go-around or chicken out and bring your hero back to base with the loot to develop farms and structures and their resulting advantages. Making its game a literal loop creates a perfect one-more-go mobile game. It’s free to download, and then $7 to unlock the full game.
Holedown
The brilliant minds at Grapefrukt Games have brought us some all-time classic mobile games, like Rymdkapsel and Twofold Inc, and most recently Subpar Pool. But it’s Holedown that permanently lives on my phone. This brilliantly clever variant on the Breakout format has you bouncing squillions of balls around the screen, trying to destroy strangely shaped blocks by hitting them until their number is reduced to zero. And really interestingly, the core game is designed to be finished, a series of levels you will progress through, rather than presenting you with a Tetris-like increase in difficulty that increases until you inevitably game over. But it has that too, via an infinite mode with bragging rights for how far you can reach. It’s a sublimely satisfying game to play, and a very reasonable $4.
Crying Suns
If you’re after something a bit more strategic to stop those doomscrolling fingers, then it’s worth remembering 2019’s Crying Suns. Inspired by FTL, but putting you in charge of a far larger, far more involved ship, with several hundred crew members to worry about. With multiple sectors to explore, and deep tactics required for combat, this is perhaps one of the more involved games in the list, and yet as a roguelite it’s still intended to be played in more controlled bursts. It’s generally far better to be distracted by the peril of your fictional crew than anything going on outside the window just now. $9 for all that.
And now you…
This is a list that could continue on until it reaches the bottom of the internet; mobile gaming is a wonderful source of fantastic entertainment, and in between all the more involved and longer-term Diablo Immortals, revamped Square Enix RPGs, and Genshin Impacts are a billion options that’ll provide the perfect shorter-term alternative to a doomscroll. I picked these 10 because I thought of them first, but another day it could easily have been any number of other collections. So please, drop suggestions to any games you’d recommend into the comments!
English (US) ·