Pocket Games
Arcade
Here you play with your hands before your head. What counts is timing, aim and staying calm as the game speeds up, and the games are made for starting again straight after you lose. You play alone, except in two cases, and there is nearly always a record to beat.
Some of these games come down to a tap at the right moment. In Stack you drop the block with a tap and whatever hangs over the edge is sliced off: you lose through a build-up of small mistakes, never a big one. In Targets you tap the circles before they vanish, but tapping where there is nothing also costs a life. Snake speeds up as you eat, and the most dangerous obstacle is the snake itself.
Others ask for precision more than speed. In Wallbreaker the angle of the shot is what matters: a well-aimed volley of balls keeps working on its own for seconds. Fruit Merge has no hurry, but its container doesn’t grow, and each fruit has to be dropped in the right spot.
The exceptions are Flick Soccer and Pool: in both you shoot by dragging your finger back like a slingshot, against the bot with three levels or with two on the same phone. Pool is eight-ball: you pot your group, solids or stripes, and then the black.
A game left halfway is saved and can be picked up later. On a computer, Snake, Stack, Knives and Wallbreaker can also be played with the keyboard.
- Flick SoccerHow to play Flick Soccer: three discs a side, slingshot shooting, three formations and a game to three goals. Two players on one phone or against the bot.
- Fruit MergeHow to play Fruit Merge, the watermelon game: eleven fruits, triangular scoring and the strategy of keeping the big ones at the bottom. Free in your browser.
- KnivesHow to play Knives: reading the log’s rotation, counting the free gaps, and getting through the levels where knives already stuck become obstacles.
- PoolHow to play Pool on Pocket Games: eight-ball with simple rules, solids and stripes, fouls and ball in hand, slingshot shooting with your finger. Against the bot at three levels or two players on one phone.
- SnakeHow to play Snake and how to reach high scores: moving in a serpentine, not boxing yourself in, and the three control schemes available.
- StackHow to play Stack: stopping the blocks at the right moment, the perfect-centre bonus that widens the tower again, and why width beats height.
- TargetsHow to play Targets: hitting the circles before they shrink away, the mines to avoid, and why tapping empty space costs as much as missing a target.
- WallbreakerHow to play Wallbreaker: a volley of balls bouncing off numbered bricks, a wall that drops one row with every shot, and the power-ups that make the difference. Free in your browser.