Made for the passenger seat
Car games that never stall out
The worst stretch of a road trip is not the dead zone. It is the hour where one bar comes and goes, and a game that phones home freezes every few miles to find it again. Reel Games is a 50.7 MB download whose games run on the phone instead of streaming from a server. Rounds are short enough to abandon when someone needs the map, and the feed moves with a single swipe.
One bar is worse than none
Between towns you get a bar, then nothing, then a bar again. That pattern is harder on a game than a flat dead zone. Anything that checks in with a server picks the worst moment to notice the connection went away, and you sit there watching a spinner while the interstate goes by. A game that never asks does not have that failure mode.
Reel Games is a 50.7 MB download and the games run on the phone, so nothing in a round depends on where you are between exits. Global leaderboards sync when you have a connection again. Coming out of a canyon does not cost you the score you set inside it.
The map interrupts everything
Navigation is the phone's real job in a car, and it outranks whatever you were playing. Somebody wants to know how far to the next rest stop, and you are out of the game in the middle of a round. Short rounds make that cheap. You give up a round instead of a long sitting, and there is no loading screen when you come back to it.
A car also makes you look up. Reading a screen while the road moves does not agree with everyone, and the fix is the one you already use with a map: short looks, then eyes back on the horizon. That rules out anything you have to hold in your head for ten minutes at a stretch. It suits a game that ends before the next exit sign. Hand the phone over when someone wants a different song and you have given up a round, not an evening.
Some games suit the road better than others
Some games want a long unbroken look at the screen. Sudoku and Minesweeper are like that, since you read the whole grid before you touch it. Darts, Bowling, and Cup Pong want a glance and one motion, and then your eyes can go back to the horizon. Sort your feed accordingly. Swipe up to skip a game that is asking for more attention than you have, and swipe back down when the road straightens out.
A phone in a car is a shared object anyway. It goes back a row, comes forward when the driver wants the map, and goes back again at the next town. Word games hold up best under that treatment, because the board sits still while it changes hands and everyone can read it at the same time. Connections is the clearest case: sixteen words, four hidden groups, and an argument in the back seat about which four belong together before the phone has even reached them.
Choose by the gap
How long until someone needs the map?
On a drive you rarely get an hour. You get whatever is left before the next interruption, which is a more useful way to pick a game than by genre.
30 seconds
A red light
Something you can lose instantly without losing anything. Arcade rounds restart the moment they end, with nothing between the crash and the retry.
5 minutes
The gas stop
Long enough for a full round of a skill game. Aim, throw, score, repeat, and stop mid-sequence when the tank is full.
90 minutes
Between towns
A logic puzzle or a board game against the computer. Nothing runs on a clock, so putting the phone face down for ten minutes costs you nothing.
A dead zone is honest. It is the one bar that keeps coming back that ruins a game.
For the passenger seat
Four that survive being interrupted
2048
PuzzleThe board waits. Swipe up to something else when the map wins, swipe back down, and the grid you left is the one still sitting there.
How to playCup Pong
ArcadeBouncing balls into cups is the whole game, so it fits in a short stretch of road between handoffs.
How to playDarts
ArcadeAim, release, done. A throw fits between two exit signs, and looking up from it in the middle costs you nothing.
How to playConnections
PuzzleA grid everyone in the car can see at once, so the back seat argues about the groups with you.
How to play
Questions
On the road
- Do these games work when cell service cuts out on the highway?
- Yes. The games run on the phone rather than streaming from a server, so a round does not stop when the bars do. Global leaderboards need a connection to sync, so a score you set in a dead zone posts once you are back in coverage.
- What happens when I have to switch to the map mid game?
- You lose the round and not much else. Rounds are short, so an interruption costs seconds, and there is no loading screen when you come back. The round was never depending on the connection either, so a bar that vanished while you were in navigation changes nothing.
- Can passengers take turns on one phone?
- Yes. Rounds end on their own, so the phone changes hands at a clean stopping point instead of somebody quitting out of something. If the next person wants a different game, a swipe up gets one, and a swipe back down returns to the one you left.
Load it before you pull out of the driveway
Coverage between towns comes and goes. The library does not care either way, because it is already on the phone.
12 games free to start · 50.7 MB download · no ads