PaigeFTW: The Joy of Time-Wasters
I wasn’t built to play games on my phone.
You know the ones I mean: stuff like 2048 and Flappy Bird, the simply but sleekly designed games that entice players with score rather than story — the games you play when you need to kill five minutes but you’ve already looked through your Instagram feed twice.
Aside from my enduring interest in Pokemon Shuffle, I don’t have too many games on my phone. Oh, back when I liked buying apps more, I accumulated quite a decent mobile RPG collection, but I never really play any of them. When I’m waiting around for people, I usually open a Kindle book.
What it mostly comes down to is that I dislike having to start and stop playing abruptly. I like the immersion that gaming brings, the catharsis of becoming something other than yourself. You can’t just turn that on and off in two minutes. And I’ve always preferred games with more fully realized storylines than “get the 2048 block.”
(Perhaps this is all just resentment that I am unable to get the 2048 block.)
Nevertheless, here are a few mobile delights that I do find enjoyable:
- Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector: You collect adorable cats. That’s actually literally all. No, really. There isn’t a whole lot of gameplay involved … but there are a lot of cats.
- Bejeweled Butterflies: All the soothing gem-matching of Bejeweled, combined with frenetic panic as butterflies flutter towards their spidery doom. Absolutely not relaxing in the slightest.
- Fallout Shelter: Build and maintain a thriving Vault, with happy citizens and a prosperous economy. It’s a resource management game at heart — my kryptonite.
- Pokemon Shuffle: I will keep recommending it until more people play it. I love it! I’ve captured 168 Pokemon and played 856 games without realizing it!
