Smartwatches are excellent for a lot of things. They offer practicality, convenience and even new forms of functionality. That doesn’t mean they’re all work and no play. There are plenty of fun things you can do with them, the most obvious of which is play smartwatch games to waste away your time. You never know when you’re going to find yourself waiting extra long in your doctor’s office, before your morning conference or somewhere else. Sometimes, the world just has a way of keeping you waiting on the sidelines. For times like those it’s great to have a smartphone to occupy your attention or better yet a smartwatch on your wrist that can do the same things.
Whether you already have a smartwatch handy, or you’ve been waiting pick one up it’s always great to know what you’re getting – or can get – from it. In that respect, we’ve put together a list of some of the best smartwatch games available right now. If you’re looking for a neat, addictive little tap or swipe based time-passer, you’ve come to the right place!
The Best Smartwatch Games You Can Find
There are devices – namely the original Samsung Gear – that can be sideloaded with full, mobile smartwatch games. To translate, that means you can install any android game on your Gear, provided you have the apk handy. It does take some finagling, and we wouldn’t recommend doing so for our casual users. That said, it’s good to know if you’re a little more resourceful and have experience in this kind of thing.
We’ve seen a few people get Playstation One emulation running, Doom, and even Candy Crush on their Gear smartwatch. How’s that for some of the best smartwatch games? Keep in mind, you probably won’t be able to do this on your own device, but it’s enough to give everyone hope – hope that there are truly some great games out there for smartwatches.
But enough about what you could do, let’s talk about what you actually can do with your smartwatch. Here’s a list of the best smartwatch games we could find for various devices.
Best Smartwatch Games for Android Wear
Android Wear is quickly becoming one of the most popular smartwatch platforms out there thanks to the Moto 360, LG G Watch R and Asus ZenWatch. With Google continuing to provide regular software updates and new features, it’s not a surprise to see the platform flourishing.
Believe it or not, there are tons of smartwatch games available for Android Wear devices that can offer hours and hours of fun.
2048 Wear
You may have heard of 2048, it’s been available for a variety of mobile devices for a while now. 2048 Wear is quite simply a miniature clone, adapted for playback on Android Wear devices. That means, if you own the Moto 360, LG G Watch or G Watch R, Asus ZenWatch – or one of the many other devices running Android Wear – you can download this bad boy onto your device right now.
If you’ve never played 2048 before, it’s not difficult to get into. It’s a number based puzzler, similar to Soduku. You swipe through various tiles in the on-screen grid to shift around numbers, and that’s pretty much all you have to do to navigate. You can double tap the screen at any time to view your current score total.
Of course, there is one minor issue we found during use of the game. If you long press on the screen – and it’s easy to do this by accident – the game closes. You can see why this would be a problem, as we’ve lost our progress several times due to a misplaced screen tap.
Still, it’s one of the better smartwatch games you can find available right now and it’s quite addictive. Give it a try if you have the opportunity!
TetroCrate
This lovely – and quite addictive – puzzler feels like it was designed specifically for smartwatches. Multi-color bricks and patterns appear on the screen and you must move them into place to create full lines, akin to the timeless classic, Tetris. The biggest difference in TetroCrate is that the blocks move at a slow and reasonable pace, they don’t fall, and you can move them to the appropriate location on-screen by swiping and tapping.
Tetris pros might find this game a bit too easy and forgiving, but then again you’ll be playing on a small smartwatch display. If the device were to be mounted on your wrist while you were playing a true Tetris clone, it would certainly be difficult – dare we say impossible – to catch blocks falling at breakneck speeds.
TetroCrate is a lot of fun, and it’s a great way to kill some time when you’re bored.
Birdie Wear
You had to know you’d find something like this on the list, what with the success of the all-popular Flappy Bird for smartphones. Birdie Wear is a Flappy Bird clone for Android Wear devices, in every sense of the phrase. The mechanics are simple. It plays like an endless runner with the bird constantly moving horizontally across the screen. Your job is to help it avoid all the various obstacles that will crop up, by tapping on the screen to move higher in the air. It’s just that simple. Tap the screen to move higher, and release to drop lower.
Of course, the game gets extremely difficult the further you progress because you’ll find your finger covering most of the screen making it harder to see oncoming obstacles. Still, it’s addictive and fun even if we can’t quite explain why.
Did we mention it’s free?
Best Smartwatch Games for Pebble
Even though the Pebble smartwatch lacks a touchscreen, it’s great to see some good smartwatch games appear designed just for the devices.
Pebloid
Surely, you know what Arkanoid is by now. If you don’t, then you probably shouldn’t be here reading this article. It’s essentially a Breakout clone that adds a whole slew of more advanced, and more addictive mechanics. If you don’t know what Breakout is, then we’re afraid we can’t help you.
Pebloid is an Arkanoid clone for Pebble smartwatches. It’s a lot of fun to play, but there are a few quirks, if you will. First, the Pebble smartwatches don’t have a touchscreen handy, so you’re relegated to playing games with the physical controls. That might not seem so bad, but once you give it a try – while the watch is mounted to your wrist – you’ll see just how awkward it is.
Asteroids
Asteroids is one of the most addictive games around (just imagine it redesigned for modern systems with updated mechanics). Luckily, you can play Asteroids on your wrist with your Pebble smartwatch.
There’s not much to explain when it comes to this game. You move around the screen trying to dodge the various asteroids floating around, all the while shooting to break them up into smaller pieces. Break them small enough and they will disintegrate, offering you an increased score.
Hatchi
This might be a bit of a stretch, because not everyone was in on the Tamagotchi craze back in the 90s. Hatchi is a Tamagotchi clone, parsed down for the Pebble smartwatches. Don’t worry, it also exists on Android and iOS if you don’t have a Pebble.
It essentially provides you a small, digital pet on your wrist. One that you can bathe, feed, play with and much more. In text, it doesn’t sound too exciting being responsible for yet another semi-living creature. Once you dive in and start interacting with your Hatchi, you’ll see just how addictive it can be.
Best Smartwatch Games for Samsung Gear (Tizen) Devices
The original Samsung Gear is powered by Android. Not to be confused with Android Wear, the slimmed down wearable OS by Google but instead the full mobile Android platform.
Samsung’s later devices like the Gear 2, Gear Live, and Gear S are powered by a proprietary OS called Tizen. That means, you’ll need to pick up games developed specifically for Tizen. Here are some of the best Tizen smartwatch games we could find.
Candy Crunch
Candy Crush is incredibly popular, because it’s addictive. Candy Crunch is an all-out clone of Candy Crush for Tizen devices. You can sort, swap, transfer and mix up pieces of candy all day every day to your heart’s content, all on your wrist.
There are also two unique games modes to Candy Crunch, called turns mode and time mode. Turns mode works as a puzzle mode where you only have a select number of turns — 35 to be exact — to get the highest score possible. In time mode you’re still shooting for that high score, but you only have three minutes to do so.
With a plentiful amount of game modes and content, Candy Crunch will keep you busy for a while.
WarFly
WarFly is one of those remarkably simple — yet addictive — smartwatch games that requires you to kill flies. Yep, it’s really that simple. The bugs will move across the screen and your job is to eliminate them by tapping when they fly by. As you play, it tallies up your score by how many flies you’ve killed and that’s about it.
It’s a great way to pass the time, and a great way to make regular use the Tizen Gear smartwatches if you have one.
Best Smartwatch Games for Apple Watch
The Apple Watch isn’t even out yet, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from putting together a list of great games for the platform. When it launches in April, expect to see some of these games available in the App Store.
Letterpad
Letterpad, the word-based puzzle game from Tiny Tower developers Nimblebit will most certainly be coming to the Apple Watch. If you’re interested, check out the included screenshot for a mock-up of what the game might look like on the smaller display.
If you’re not family with Nimblebit, all you really need to know is they specialize in highly-addictive, and fun mobile games.
Digital Pet: Think Tamagotchi or Hatchi
We’re willing to bet that if Hatchi has delivered an app for the Pebble lineup, it’s likely they’ll offer something for the Apple Watch — or someone else will. After all, it just makes a whole lot of sense to have an interactive, digital creature living on your wrist. While they do require a little bit of hand holding, cleaning, feeding, bathing and what-have-you they’re essentially self-automated. Okay, maybe not, but it would still be awesome to see — and it’s extremely likely we will.
Endless Runner
There are dozens of these available across various mobile platforms, consoles and hell, even PC. Games like Jetpack Joyride, Canabalt, Flappy Bird, Temple Runner and many more would be great for a smartwatch. Why? Because they usually only require you to press one button, or interact through gestures like screen taps or swipes. The mechanics are simple, and it’s just plain easy to play these no matter what device you’re doing it on.
We expect to see something come to the Apple Watch. In reality, we’ll probably see dozens — if not hundreds — of endless runner style smartwatch games on the platform. That’s already happening in the smartphone world.