So, there you are. Done with your tasks for the day and sitting at your desk waiting for something to be tossed your way. You work eight hours a day but it’s not all filled with actual work. You need something to pass the time, preferably a simple game you can play on your office computer. You’ll also want your game to be easy to hide from the prying eyes of your boss and colleagues.
For all of your downtime needs, we’ve got five super simple games you can try out right now.
Crash Planning
Imagine Candy Crush but it looks like a spreadsheet. This is precisely the experience Crash Planning offers. As with the popular puzzle game by King, you need to align at least three matching cells of the same color. You can also rack up bonus points when eliminating multiple rows or columns in one go.
Apart from being incredibly simple to play, Crash Planning has another awesome advantage. It doesn’t look like a game at all. Unless your boss pastes their face onto your screen, they won’t be able to tell you’re not actually plucking away at a real spreadsheet. Might not be ideal if you don’t work with Excel in your job, though.
Solitaire Social
The classic game that office workers have been wasting time on for generations returns better than ever. Solitaire Social takes the solo card sorting fun of its namesake and makes it an even better online experience. It’s played like normal solitaire with the added bonus of competing against other players. Whoever completes their stacks first wins.
Beyond the multiplayer component, Solitaire Social offers a slew of other features. Boosters will provide you with all sorts of boons and advantages. Use the Shuffle booster to completely alter the board. Magic will grant you a special advantage card that could even lead to you clearing one solitaire. On top of all this, if you’re feeling even more competitive, you can participate in Solitaire tournament online and special events that’ll grant you even more rewards.
Type Racer
Your typical office computer is built for extensive typing for hours on end. Type Racer is a game that’s completely on the nose about it. As it says on the tin, you compete in a simple car race by typing words on your keyboard. The fastest typer wins. But you can’t just type gibberish. Instead, the game gives you a random text prompt that you need to copy into a text box.
This game is a great choice if you have to do a lot of typing in your job. From afar, you’ll look like you’re furiously plowing through emails and reports. In actuality, you’re competing against other players online to see who can type the fastest. The added bonus is that Type Racer trains you to be a much faster typist.
Trivia Machine
When talking about simple games, it doesn’t get much more fundamental than trivia games. All you need to do is answer questions by clicking on your screen, which makes them perfect for alt-tabbing while you do tedious work tasks. Trivia Machine is the perfect game for these instances.’
The game has a slew of different categories and difficulty levels to choose from, from history to movies. You can start by cutting your teeth at the Elementary difficulty level, then when you’re ready you can test your knowledge mettle with the Scholar and Genius settings. Trivia Machine also offers similar mini-boons as you’d find in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. For instance, there’s a button that allows you to remove one wrong answer per round.
Hello Wordl
No, the title isn’t a mistake. The game is called Hello Wordl and it’s the very first clone of the popular word game, Wordle. It plays exactly like the original with the difference being that you can play more than once per day. On top of that, the game also allows you to choose your own word length, making it a highly customizable experience that’s perfect for office downtime. Because you aren’t competing against anyone else, you can also take your time between guesses, meaning you don’t have to abandon your game when work is suddenly thrown onto your lap.
If you’re not familiar with how Wordle and, by extension, Hello Wordl play, it’s pretty simple. You’re given a series of boxes that denote word length and you’ve got a limited number of tries to guess it. After each guess, the game will highlight which letters you got right and whether they’re in the right place.
