I wonder if there is a person out there who has zero games on their phone. Maybe people who grew up without cellphones in the age demographic 50 and higher. Maybe people who only had cellphones and smartphones come into existence after they left their teenage years. I was someone who during my high school years cellphones became a thing. At this time we had Tetris and Snake on a green and black screen. Then came the smartphones.
One of the things my teenage and almost teenage nephews like to do to socialize with me is to put my cellphone as close to my face as possible. Freaks me out, but then PSYCH I don’t have face unlock on my phone. The next step is to see which games I have and if any are to their liking to play, and then undeniably beat me at. This is where I can see our age gap in some non-existent formula of what kind of games we both like. They like games, that I can only describe as “Dance Dance Revolution” but you’re running down some skytrain rails, dodging the skytrain, and picking up coins. Often they are not as excited by MY favourite games…. Which are puzzles.
For some reason, back in the day, I used to find comfort and my ADHD stim with “Diner Dash” or “Hot Dog Bush”. If you are not of my age demographic and currently thinking WTF are those? They are essentially time-management games of cooking and delivering food to your customers, or in “Hot Dog Bush” you are building different fast-food meals and getting them to your customers before they get grumpy at leave. You can buy upgrades for your oven, your food item prices, etc. The strategy is that the game gets faster and faster and if you can’t keep up, you’re done for. Past Me used to love this as a quick way to clear my mind before sleep. But now that I have grown, and my tastes in games is ever-changing, and the games AVAILABLE are ever-changing…. I have a new favourite kind. A kind that I trick my brain into believing “we are building new synapses, and someday, sometime, all this game playing will come back to my advantage.”
ENTER IN my love of reality shows. I’ve watched Survivor, I’ve watched MTV’s The Challenge, and at this current time and day I am exploring Love Island Games for the first time. Hopefully out of one of those three you at LEAST know what Survivor is. Survivor premiered on May 31, 2000. As of May, 2025, 48 seasons have been completed and it has been renewed for its 49th and 50th seasons. In this show, “survivors” are taken to a tropical destination and with a basin to make clean drinking water… and MAYBE a bag of rice.. they are left to survive for 26 days. During which, as they slowly deplete from lack of nutrients, they are set to play these strategy games against other survivors. When they win … maybe they get building materials for their sleep structure… maybe fishing equipment… or maybe a luxury meal of crappy pizza and sugar-filled items to help them on their next games. Point being, the games constructed on Survivor are iconic for their mix of muscle, team-work, and puzzle-ready brains. Producers and game-builders of Survivor are held in high respect for the type of games created. For this, I can’t help feel that smartphone game app creators are influenced. I mean where else would one need to know how to empty and fill coloured jars of water like in Water Sort Puzzle. Or how to calmingly untangle a mess of rope, in a specific pattern, like in Twisted Tangle. How to load people onto a bus by matching the colour of the bus with the colour of the avatar and not creating line-up mayhem like Bus Jam. Or how to unjam poorly parked cars in Traffic Escape. These puzzles must have a use in some future form of my life!
Right now I can’t get enough of Hexa Sort. Essentially unstacking and stacking hexagons of the same colour to clear the board. This game somehow soothes my mind, offers level up stimulation that doesn’t have me lose interest, and makes me feel like a genius. So although I will likely never ever EVER EVER sign up for Survivor, The Challenge, or Love Island Games …. I can rest assured that I am secretly a genius who’s only ever appreciator is myself.
No this article was not a paid advertisement, but if you need a way to relax at the end of the day or a way to fidget during a favourite tv show… be like me and slowly become a genius with the puzzle games on our phones.
Written by: Volante Matheson
Contact: vmatheson1@my.bcit.ca