The Best Games For Five Free Minutes

Not every game needs to swallow your evening. Some of the ones I return to most are built for tiny windows of free time, and that is a genuine design skill.

Card games and arcade racers are perfect for this. A match lasts a couple of minutes, you can pause instantly, and nothing punishes you for closing the app. Quick-resume is a must-have feature for this category.

Puzzle games work too, as long as they let you set a level down and come back. The frustrating ones are those that reset progress if you tab away to answer a message.

The common thread is respect for interruption. Life gets in the way, your phone buzzes, someone calls your name. The games I keep installed are the ones that just wait patiently for you to get back.