What are some mindless mobile games to play while listening to audiobooks?
Hi friends,
I’ve been enjoying listening to audiobooks a lot lately but find I generally have to be doing something (e.g. going for a walk, doing dishes etc) while I listen to them since it would be strange to just sit in a chair and stare and if I closed my eyes I might fall asleep.
I have found a couple of mindless games I can play on my phone while listening that don’t distract me from the story such as temple run, desert golf and amazing brick, but I’d be interested if anyone else had any suggestions?
I’d also be open to more substantial games as well so long as they didn’t have a lot of dialogue or require a lot of brain power (I’ve found trying to solve chess puzzles while listening to the audiobook just distracts me too much from the book for example).
Thanks in advance!
Desert Golfing and Simon Tathem's Puzzles are my go-tos. Specifically for the nonograms (called "Pattern").
Idle games with active play mechanics like Kittens Game can also work, if you're already familiar with the game and just wish to make numbers go up. Genuine warning that this one may take you over for a couple of months, if not years.
All suggestions are free of ads/IAP.
Simon is also the guy that wrote the Putty ssh app.
I play a lot of the Undead puzzle on his app. (They're also available on the web.)
Just downloaded puzzles and it's everything I've ever wanted in a mobile game. Thank you for this suggestion!
Freeflow is a puzzle game that’s pretty mindless and there’s at least 4 different “flavors” of the game. You have to connect colored dots on a grid without any of your lines crossing. There’s the original, hex-grid, grids with bridges, and grids with warps.
I’m like you, I enjoy having something to keep my hands busy. In addition to games, I use Anki. Don’t be afraid of the challenge, flash cards can actually be pretty mindless. Load up a deck of some vocab or a foreign language you enjoy, and it’s a great combination.
Any clicker game. My favorite is Universal Paperclips.
Recently I’ve been messing around in Alchemy Dungeon since we don’t have wi-fi or signal in the work break room. I just shelled out $2 for the ad-free one.
It’s a merge game, one of my favorite types of mindless apps, but I really enjoy the deceptively simple progression system. It’s not hand-holdy like so many others so there’s a genuine sense of discovery. I’m also just really a sucker for little pixel dungeon crawlers.
I like Bloons and Golf games.
These all work for this exact use case for me:
I can’t vampire survivors on phone cos it’s so much better on deck
Was gonna suggest Forager, but apperently it doesn't support newer version of android, you can install it from other stores e.g: Aurora and it'll work though.
Also try Brotato and Vampire Survivors
These look great, thanks for the suggestions! Currently downloading Vampire Survivors to check out now.
Warning about vampire survivors, that game is too addictive! I also want to throw in Universal Paperclip which also has a web version for free but you just need to request desktop version and turn your phone side ways to play it that way.
Both are great games that are probably best for bundling with exercise or reading an audio book.
Madfut has some parts that are pretty chill if you're into football
Peglin a pachinko rogue like where you throw orbs with various effects at pachinko pegs to deal damage to enemies slowly deck building stronger orbs to win. Takes inspiration from other deck building rouge likes i.e. slay the spire, but has a much similar game play loop of throw fun orb, watch pegs die, watch enemies die, repeat
This is an iOS recommendation, and it looks like it hasn't been updated in many years, but it still runs fine on the newest OS version for me. One More Line is one of my favorite mindless games, and I'll still pull it out if I just need to kill a few minutes.
Bird Sort fits the bill for me. (Bird pun free of charge for you there.) There are several different versions, some more cartoon-like than others. Mine looks like this. You can play Classic mode where you just sort birds into groups until they fly away, or the Challenge levels where they don't fly away and you quickly run out of branches to place them on.
If you can forgive a bit of self promotion, check out my A Dream of Amber