5 Games to Play in Your Spare Moments

Flipflop Solitaire is a new way to experience the classic card game. Regular solitaire is about untying knots of unordered cards into clean, sequenced stacks. Flipflop Solitaire is like the reverse of that.

In Flipflop, you take your knot of cards and tie it into other, maybe better knots. Eventually, you untie the knots you created into the final stack of rightly sequenced cards. The game gives players full, complete control over how the stacks are created, giving the game a lot more depth than you’d originally think.

On top of the various game modes that you can play, Flipflop Solitaire has plenty of achievements to obtain. These give players a reason to keep coming back and playing the different difficulty levels. And like traditional Solitaire, if you can get all of the rightly ordered stacks at the top, then you get a fun animation for your efforts

With the initial download of Flipflop Solitaire, players get to play 1-4 suites for free. However, the 5 Suite and 1 Suite Extended modes are only available through the full game unlock, which is available for $2.99. It also includes backgrounds, different card backs, and color schemes.

It’s time to scare and much more in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle.

The goal in each puzzle is to, you guessed it, kill all of the unsuspecting victims. The controls are simple and intuitive enough for anyone. Just swipe your finger in one direction to make Jason move that way. He moves until he hits a wall, object, or gets to his victim, so it’s like a sliding block puzzle mechanic.

Friday the 13th is split up into episodes. A new area is unlocked in each episode, and there are about 13 puzzles for each. While you’ll be starting out in Crystal Lake, Jason manages to find victims in high security prisons to Manhattan highrises.

If cartoon violence and blood bother you, there is an option to have the game PG, so it’s all toned down. Even if you end up turning down the gore, this is still an excellent puzzle game in general, so it’s worth sticking around for.

The game, for the iPhone and all iPad models, is free. There are additional in-app purchases that unlock more levels.

Come hungry when playing Campfire Cooking.

Like other puzzle games, Campfire Cooking is level-based. There are eight different trails (chapters) for players to explore, and each one contains about 10 puzzles for you to solve. The nice thing, though, is the fact that you can play the stages in any order, so if you’re stuck, you can just try a different level. However, you do need to solve a certain amount before the next trail gets unlocked.

The nicest thing about Campfire Cooking is that even though it’s a puzzle game, there’s still some rather endearing characters and story to everything. In Campfire Cooking, you’ll meet a grandpa who takes his grandkids out camping for vacation. There’s plenty of stories to share with everyone, along with many jokes and moaning about cell phone reception. These scenes take place between puzzles and are sure to bring a smile to your face.

Flip out for the fun puzzler Flipomacy. When you start Fliplomacy, there’s only the main theme, which is a pink-to-lavender backdrop, and your Diplomat is in pink, who must change purple flags to pink. As you complete a certain number of puzzles, more themes become available for you to use.

These themes change your Diplomat’s appearance, as well as the flags, and the symbols on the squares to represent special tiles. I love the other themes, and seeing how awesome the red blue theme with playing cards looks definitely keeps me motivated to keep going until I unlock it.

Like many other puzzle games, Fliplomacy is level-based. There are 150 puzzles that are split up over five chapters, so there are 30 stages in each. Unlike most puzzle games though, everything is unlocked from the start, so you can play the game in any order you want. So if you get stuck, don’t worry! Just go try a different puzzle and go back to the other one later. The freedom of playing however you want is definitely fantastic, and alleviates any frustrations you may have.

For the iPhone and iPad, you can download the game for $2.99. In-app purchases are available to unlock all puzzle, themes, and more.

Miracle Merchant is another solitaire like game with a twist. There’s only one game mode, but that’s all you need. There’s also no extras, such as shops or upgrades, so all of the focus is on the gameplay itself. The gist of Miracle Merchant is that you are the owner of a potion shop, and you have to fulfill customer orders by combining ingredient cards.

There are a ton of different potions to discover and create, with the results always dependent on the order in which you lay out the ingredients themselves.

Each round consists of you filling orders until you’ve cleared out the ingredient cards (you win) or you fail to get an order correct (you lose).

The game is a free download. A $1.99 in-app purchase unlocks the entire game.